How would you introduce Stormlight mechanically to a game?

[DoctaDajman]

Hey all. Simple question with what I feel like is a difficult answer. 

How would you introduce using Stormlight into a pen and paper RPG for a homebrew mechanic? 

I'm not interested in the surges at the moment and would use a charge system if it happened to go that way... 

But what of just the passive effects of stormlight. You dont get tired. You heal at a level comparable to gold compounding. You have increased strength (at least to the point of your muscular skeletal systems limits i.e. your capable of using 100% of their effectiveness with no worries of lasting self harm). You move faster and have faster reaction times. Basically perfected to your spiritual self's limits and then it maintains that by healing the physical self to maintain that perfection always so long as stormlight exists. 

But when looking at an RPG how do you think this would manifest itself? 

Pewter allomancy is simple... give a rating and increase strength and dexterity by that rating for the alloted time. But stormlight brings with it so much more. At face value I feel like all stats could be argued to boost to 20 for the duration (call it the peak of a perfect human minus any other enhancements). But every character is built differently and obviously every spiritual self is different.

So instead of stat increases, perhaps stormlight just lets you double roll everything? Rolls with other mechanical advantage get doubled (1 roll becomes 2 rolls, and 2 rolls become 4)?  

How to handle the stormlight. Each sphere size has a charge limit associated with it. Each charge can give advantage for X amount of rounds on all rolls. Maybe even disadvantage for your opponent when they make a targeted attack against you. 

Some stipulation like stormlight will be used to heal you back to your full health at a rate of a determined amount of health per charge used? If you take a massive hit the stormlight will heal you until it is gone.

Surges could be used on a charge system as well. Treated similarly to up leveling or down leveling a spell using more or less charges for titratable effects (the threshold for how high or low you can use it is based on level progression).  

Big thing is that your limited to how much you can carry and you cant put it back in a gem once breathed into the body. 

 

This is just a thought exercise for fun. Interested to see others thoughts. 

[IcedOutPenguin He/Him]

5 minutes ago, DoctaDajman said:

Hey all. Simple question with what I feel like is a difficult answer. 

How would you introduce using Stormlight into a pen and paper RPG for a homebrew mechanic? 

I'm not interested in the surges at the moment and would use a charge system if it happened to go that way... 

But what of just the passive effects of stormlight. You dont get tired. You heal at a level comparable to gold compounding. You have increased strength (at least to the point of your muscular skeletal systems limits i.e. your capable of using 100% of their effectiveness with no worries of lasting self harm). You move faster and have faster reaction times. Basically perfected to your spiritual self's limits and then it maintains that by healing the physical self to maintain that perfection always so long as stormlight exists. 

But when looking at an RPG how do you think this would manifest itself? 

Pewter allomancy is simple... give a rating and increase strength and dexterity by that rating for the alloted time. But stormlight brings with it so much more. At face value I feel like all stats could be argued to boost to 20 for the duration (call it the peak of a perfect human minus any other enhancements). But every character is built differently and obviously every spiritual self is different.

So instead of stat increases, perhaps stormlight just lets you double roll everything? Rolls with other mechanical advantage get doubled (1 roll becomes 2 rolls, and 2 rolls become 4)?  

How to handle the stormlight. Each sphere size has a charge limit associated with it. Each charge can give advantage for X amount of rounds on all rolls. Maybe even disadvantage for your opponent when they make a targeted attack against you. 

Some stipulation like stormlight will be used to heal you back to your full health at a rate of a determined amount of health per charge used? If you take a massive hit the stormlight will heal you until it is gone.

Surges could be used on a charge system as well. Treated similarly to up leveling or down leveling a spell using more or less charges for titratable effects (the threshold for how high or low you can use it is based on level progression).  

Big thing is that your limited to how much you can carry and you cant put it back in a gem once breathed into the body. 

 

This is just a thought exercise for fun. Interested to see others thoughts. 

I would just give a bonus to anyone using stormlight, like +3 for any task requiring physical strength or endurance

[Jult]

You could always borrow a bit of inspiration from the upcoming Cosmere RPG.

Upon starting your Radiant path (before speaking the First Ideal), you gain Investiture as a new resource. You begin with a maximum Investiture of 2+ your Awareness or Presence (whichever is higher). Other RPGs probably don't use Presence and Awareness as stats, but you could likely find something comparable.

You also get 3 new Actions (paraphrased from memory):

1. Breath Stormlight - draw Stormlight from infused spheres or other sources. If enough Stormlight is present, recover Investiture up to your maximum.

2. Enhance - Spend 1 Investiture as an Action to become 'Enhanced'. While 'Enhanced' you have +1 Strength and +1 Speed. On subsequent turns, you can spend 1 Investiture as a Free Action to keep this effect going.

3. Regenerate - At the start of your turn, spend 1 Investiture as a free action to recover 1d6 + (your character level) health. This can be used even if you are Unconscious or otherwise prevented from taking Actions.

You also get access to your applicable Surges, which also cost Investiture to use. Right now, the beta version only includes Windrunners and Lightweavers (though there are teaser images of the Willshaper tree as well). If you want to use Surges outside of those 6, you'll need to either make them up or wait for the full release. But you said you're not looking at those yet anyway.

One other note: upon swearing an Ideal, you temporarily become 'Empowered'; which gives you advantage on all tests and instantly refills your Investiture to max at the start of each of your turns for the remainder of the current scene.

[DoctaDajman]

8 hours ago, Jult said:

You could always borrow a bit of inspiration from the upcoming Cosmere RPG.

Upon starting your Radiant path (before speaking the First Ideal), you gain Investiture as a new resource. You begin with a maximum Investiture of 2+ your Awareness or Presence (whichever is higher). Other RPGs probably don't use Presence and Awareness as stats, but you could likely find something comparable.

You also get 3 new Actions (paraphrased from memory):

1. Breath Stormlight - draw Stormlight from infused spheres or other sources. If enough Stormlight is present, recover Investiture up to your maximum.

2. Enhance - Spend 1 Investiture as an Action to become 'Enhanced'. While 'Enhanced' you have +1 Strength and +1 Speed. On subsequent turns, you can spend 1 Investiture as a Free Action to keep this effect going.

3. Regenerate - At the start of your turn, spend 1 Investiture as a free action to recover 1d6 + (your character level) health. This can be used even if you are Unconscious or otherwise prevented from taking Actions.

You also get access to your applicable Surges, which also cost Investiture to use. Right now, the beta version only includes Windrunners and Lightweavers (though there are teaser images of the Willshaper tree as well). If you want to use Surges outside of those 6, you'll need to either make them up or wait for the full release. But you said you're not looking at those yet anyway.

One other note: upon swearing an Ideal, you temporarily become 'Empowered'; which gives you advantage on all tests and instantly refills your Investiture to max at the start of each of your turns for the remainder of the current scene.

I haven't seen any of the beta writings from the cosmere RPG. It is an interesting thought and one that I had looked into to use a charge system. 

What I dislike about the system as you have posted it is the choice in action to heal or cast a surge or get empowered. 

In my mind stormlight should make you empowered regardless and use a charge each turn, and you should instantly heal so long as charges are available to do it. 

As far as I am aware, noone has purposefully rejected stormlights healing or postponed it have they?  I need to reread Shallan being stabbed through the heart. 

I feel like the action to breathe it in is perfect but then everything is passive and always consuming investiture until it is needed. Surges are the only thing the radiant can spend stormlight on at will. The healing will consume large amounts of stormlight automatically when needed and the physical benefits have always seemed more connected to the fact that the stormlight is continuously healing all imperfections allowing them to push past their natural limits (which absolutely appears and could be treated as an increased strength and speed from baseline but not in the same way pewter works.)  

Radiants with stormlight should be forced to be renewed to full health at whatever charge cost is needed to do it until stormlight runs out. Just my 2 coppers there. 

[Jult]

16 hours ago, DoctaDajman said:

As far as I am aware, noone has purposefully rejected stormlights healing or postponed it have they?  I need to reread Shallan being stabbed through the heart.

WaT Spoiler:

Spoiler

Shallan and Mraize do actively will themselves not to heal in WaT. I think we may see it a few other times earlier in the series when some of the first modern Radiants are trying to hide their abilities. And we could probably find some instances of Radiants 'un-enhancing' themselves to conserve Stormlight.

I do think all of the above are rare occurrences though. And I think you're right that, in the books, enhancing and healing feel much more subconscious and involuntary. Whereas not doing those things always felt analogous to holding your breath - it's possible, but it's resisting the natural actions that your body would have taken.

16 hours ago, DoctaDajman said:

I feel like the action to breathe it in is perfect but then everything is passive and always consuming investiture until it is needed. Surges are the only thing the radiant can spend stormlight on at will. The healing will consume large amounts of stormlight automatically when needed and the physical benefits have always seemed more connected to the fact that the stormlight is continuously healing all imperfections allowing them to push past their natural limits (which absolutely appears and could be treated as an increased strength and speed from baseline but not in the same way pewter works.)

They likely designed the game to give players more agency with these abilities because otherwise they would have been constantly keeping track of their ever-depleting Investiture, which doesn't sound fun. Imagine playing a Sorcerer in DnD, but you automatically lose spell slots every turn that you exist and automatically lose them even faster every turn that you are injured. You'd barely get to cast anything.

The Cosmere RPG gives you 2-3 actions per turn, so you could constantly spend 1 action to 'Breathe Stormlight' and replenish your Investiture IF you had a steady supply of charged spheres. Which would sort of fix the active draining issue, but you'd probably come out feeling weaker than a non-Radiant who just used all of their Actions to hit stuff instead of blowing an Action on breathing.

The devs probably sacrificed this little bit of accuracy for better game balance and a better player experience.

Edited May 23, 2025 by Jult

[DoctaDajman]

6 hours ago, Jult said:

WaT Spoiler:

  Hide contents

Shallan and Mraize do actively will themselves not to heal in WaT. I think we may see it a few other times earlier in the series when some of the first modern Radiants are trying to hide their abilities. And we could probably find some instances of Radiants 'un-enhancing' themselves to conserve Stormlight.

I do think all of the above are rare occurrences though. And I think you're right that, in the books, enhancing and healing feel much more subconscious and involuntary. Whereas not doing those things always felt analogous to holding your breath - it's possible, but it's resisting the natural actions that your body would have taken.

They likely designed the game to give players more agency with these abilities because otherwise they would have been constantly keeping track of their ever-depleting Investiture, which doesn't sound fun. Imagine playing a Sorcerer in DnD, but you automatically lose spell slots every turn that you exist and automatically lose them even faster every turn that you are injured. You'd barely get to cast anything.

The Cosmere RPG gives you 2-3 actions per turn, so you could constantly spend 1 action to 'Breathe Stormlight' and replenish your Investiture IF you had a steady supply of charged spheres. Which would sort of fix the active draining issue, but you'd probably come out feeling weaker than a non-Radiant who just used all of their Actions to hit stuff instead of blowing an Action on breathing.

The devs probably sacrificed this little bit of accuracy for better game balance and a better player experience.

Yeah. The name of balance will take over. Is there access to any of the beta or only through payment somewhere?  I am always fascinated to see how people spin it. I was a huge fan of the MAG just due to the 3 health pools allowing you to attack for damage physical health, mental Willpower, and social reputation. I have no idea how these guys are doing the cosmere RPG but I really hope that rioting and soothing aren't limited to a single pass or fail like D&D role play. 

[Jult]

3 hours ago, DoctaDajman said:

Yeah. The name of balance will take over. Is there access to any of the beta or only through payment somewhere?  I am always fascinated to see how people spin it. I was a huge fan of the MAG just due to the 3 health pools allowing you to attack for damage physical health, mental Willpower, and social reputation. I have no idea how these guys are doing the cosmere RPG but I really hope that rioting and soothing aren't limited to a single pass or fail like D&D role play. 

Yes, the beta rules are freely available on a few sites (the official rules will obviously cost money though). I got my copy through Demiplane. They also have a character builder tool and a few other helpful features that include way more info than I can see in the rules PDF. I suspect they have access to a more complete set of the rules to help with development. Most of the info that I referenced above came from the character builder tool (also free!) and not the PDF.

There's only one health pool in the CRPG, but you do have different defenses against physical, cognitive, or spiritual damage. I'm not sure how Rioting and Soothing will work, but I'd bet that it isn't a single pass/fail roll. Even normal persuasion checks aren't a simple pass/fail; all PCs and NPCs have a resource called Focus that can be used to resist or increase influence in a conversational setting. 

[DoctaDajman]

On 5/23/2025 at 6:17 PM, Jult said:

Yes, the beta rules are freely available on a few sites (the official rules will obviously cost money though). I got my copy through Demiplane. They also have a character builder tool and a few other helpful features that include way more info than I can see in the rules PDF. I suspect they have access to a more complete set of the rules to help with development. Most of the info that I referenced above came from the character builder tool (also free!) and not the PDF.

There's only one health pool in the CRPG, but you do have different defenses against physical, cognitive, or spiritual damage. I'm not sure how Rioting and Soothing will work, but I'd bet that it isn't a single pass/fail roll. Even normal persuasion checks aren't a simple pass/fail; all PCs and NPCs have a resource called Focus that can be used to resist or increase influence in a conversational setting. 

I am reading one cosmere RPG beta 0.3 I believe. So far it looks like it is played with D6s which I really like. Success on a 6 and fail on a 1... I assume they cancel eachother out?  

I see wit damage.  Was that changed to focus later or am I reading the wrong PDF? 

Other key element is tools dice which is nice. 

[Jult]

On 5/24/2025 at 10:06 PM, DoctaDajman said:

I am reading one cosmere RPG beta 0.3 I believe. So far it looks like it is played with D6s which I really like. Success on a 6 and fail on a 1... I assume they cancel eachother out?  

I see wit damage.  Was that changed to focus later or am I reading the wrong PDF? 

Other key element is tools dice which is nice. 

That sounds dated. I just checked and apparently Demiplane closed beta access on March 31st to prep for the full release.