Invocation

Agreed on that. An anti-highstorm that still provided Light (not just at Odium's bidding) would be great.

I came into this thread expecting Dalinar=Kratos comparisons. But yeah, it could be fun to see him ascend to both, though if he does, I'd be most interested to see how it twists him.

Woo space! We're that one backwater place everyone avoids because we're crazy as a species and they don't want to deal with it.

ConstellAons.

Thank you. I'll be sure to ping you (unless you object) when I can post a major update, which will probably be this summer sometime. (If anyone else is reading this at some point in the future and would like to be added to the ping list, I can do that too!)

I've had to put it on hold for a short while to focus on being able to graduate, but I've determined it to be a system based primarily around a d10 instead of a d20 like Pathfinder and DnD, as well as having no hard level cap but instead several soft level caps that lead into prestige classes or fusion classes. Weapon variation is something I'm very interesting in making happen, but it's been hard to plan things for that in a way that's actually viable instead of horrifically breaking down. The idea that I've had that gets closest is the idea of a way to count familiarity with a weapon (starting with the equivalent of proficiency in a certain weapon group, then moving through how long you've used that particular weapon and for what purposes you've put it to) as a way to do that, but that's a lot of variables to keep track of on top of everything else, especially given how TTRPG combat tends to go. The current plan is to have armor be a set mitigation against certain damage types with a variation depending on the armor type and the type of damage. To use plate as an example, the person being hit would roll whatever dice is one step downward from the damaging dice (d10 damage becomes d8 mitigation, d8 damage becomes d6 mitigation, and so on) if they're being afflicted with slashing, and that roll would subtract from the damage roll to leave whatever's left as the amount of damage taken. For slashing, it would probably be 2 steps down on plate (d10 --> d6, and so on) for balancing purposes (i.e., otherwise plate is too dang broken to include). Blunt force would have no mitigation for plate generally, unless you get special enchantments that can't be added without losing some of the other advantages. On the flip side of that idea, enchantments to deliver extra damage against certain armor types exist and that would work in reverse. Hit someone in plate with a hammer with an enchantment of Thunderous Force on it and you get an extra die of damage of the full d10 of the hammer's damage. In the same situation but with a Force enchantment, you'd get extra damage according to one die that is one step down from the damaging die. Hit someone in plate with a hammer that has a raw Thunder enchantment and you get an extra die of damage that's two steps down from the base damage of the hammer. Additionally, armor will have a maximum amount of damage it can take per turn and per whatever the equivalent of a long rest ends up being. Per turn, mitigation just takes a penalty of an extra die downgrade. Per long rest...go past the amount your armor can take in one long rest three times without repairing it, your armor breaks. I'm still not at the playtesting stage, so we'll see how some of this goes when it does happen, but I'm confident I can work out most of the kinks given a chance.

Now I want to see Division empowered by Ruinous Investiture. Wonder if that would pull a Nightblood?

I want my dimension full of sentient bananas!

The end of Hero of Ages was a much different situation than what Raboniel and Navani were working with. For one thing, Scadrial was created entirely from the power of those two Shards, rather than the Shards descending upon the planet after Adonalsium was Shattered, so every inhabitant of Scadrial has a bit of both Ruin and Preservation inside them already in a way that the average Rosharan doesn't. For another, both of the holders of the Scadrian Shards were dead when Sazed took them up, so there was no other being with a reigning control over their Investiture. Also, have you read Era 2?

Journey before destination, right? So you know something may or may not happen. So what? You don't know for sure how it happens, or why, or what leads up to it. Like you said, it's quite odd of an idea, for Taravangian to become a Shard. It's not exactly easy to kill a Vessel and take their power, particularly for a dynamic of a man willing to do the things Taravangian can and has done without anyone being the wiser until he lets them be. Read on, discover the truth, and enjoy the path along the way. That's where the fun is.

I started it, got a ways in...and proceeded to forget what episode I was on.

The basic premise of the Frith series involves magical creatures being everywhere in the world, and people can bond them. One of the other uses aside from bonding them is turnings bits of them into magical items. The sword is one of those, so in a way there's long range capabilities because it can be transferred through one of the powers the main character (Volke) has. It's quite literally made from the magic of the main character's bonded creature, but other than that you'd have to wait quite a while for one of the fancier magic items to show up. There is another magic sword after a while that's more powerful, as well as magic flintlock for a while if I'm remembering right.

Cradle by Will Wight. Mage Errant by John Bierce. To some degree, Shami Stovall's Frith Chronicles count as well, though less than the other two unless a magic sword is an exception to your aversion against weapons.

At least the designs aren't awful.

Mistborn and Elantris are both solid entry points into everything cosmere, but Warbreaker can also be pretty solid as well. Elantris was published first, so if you want to go all the way on publication date as your reading order, that'd be a good place. Warbreaker has soul vampires. Mistborn has a lot going on, and it's all very fun.

I picked up the book, read to where the rat showed up, and immediately sent off a discord message to one of my friends (in spoiler tags, because she actually has a good sleep schedule) calling it. You better believe I threw that back at her when she got to that reveal.

That's basically what it's going to be. You choose a primary purpose (for fireball, choose Damage), a method (fire, in this case), and at least one form (ranged and round) and you've got a fireball. But if you've got the right build, your magic class can swap any portion of that for something else and make it have an entirely different effect. Damage + Fire + Wind and Fervor = Firestorm. Healing + Fire + Blood would purge blood-carried poison. And/or induce fever, if you want to be that kind of player.

Glad to know I'm not the only one on that. Like easy modifications instead of flat statblocks, that's on the list already and is arguably a core of the system since classes are unique each time you play as well, snowballing with unique spells.

On the horizon? Roshar's already had its first encounter with biological warfare.

I'd be down for magic charts. But I have a sneaking suspicion it'll be the champions...

Oh yeah, that's a good one. Better than the cookie cutter metagame-able ability blocks. This one's definitely on my list of inclusions.

For my fellow ttrpg nerds, what's one thing you wish was in more systems that just isn't? Preferably mechanical things, like prestige classes or flanking rules. Edit: Totally forgot to put this in here, but I may or may not be building my own system here and trying to gather information on whether I've got enough of what people actually want.

Another idea: the rules are displayed at the entryway to the whole park, etched into metal plates.

The world's weirdest roller coaster: it stays practically flat for the first minute or so, minus the occasional fake-out short hill, long past the point where it should have begun to climb the initial hill...and then drops you down, down, down as deep as can be made safe, with absolutely no warning. I call it the Sanderlanche.

I'd agree that it felt like it never truly fit, but I'm hoping for a rework, because I really like the base idea of it and would love for it to still be canon.