Owen K.C. Stephens's Blog, page 102

Sigils and Sorcery

Sigils and Sorcery

And entirely random campaign setting idea.

In the Age of Achievements, the Empress of the Bhan created the Sigilbhan, a massive, complex rune that granted her and her agents the power to detect and quarantine evil outsiders and undead, so that no matter how powerful they were, they would be locked away rather than return to the outer planes and reform as new horrors.

Sadly one of the Empress’s son, Drau, believed that as a loyal agent of the empress he deserved rewards and power for working to promote good and overcome evil, and asked to be given the power she used the Sigilbhan to lock away. When she refused, telling him that the reward for doing good was a word with more good in it, and his actions did not prove true virtue if he performed them only to receive worldly rewards, Drau secretly swore to take the power by force.

Drau created his own rune, the Feldrau, which could infect the spirit of those it touched, and used it to turn many of the people of the world into drau-versions of themselves.

It is unclear if the people were once all one, but as the feldrau tainted those it touched, the became the drau-elves, drau-dwarves, drau-gnomes, dra-orcs, and drau-folk humans.

Drau lead an army against the Empress, drawing on the power of the Sigilbhan to grant his drau-forces powerful sorcerous abilities, shadowed versions of the true magic of the sigil.

He believed the Empress could not defeat Drau without shattering the Sigilbhan, which held vast planar evil within it which would be unleashed. The Empress tried to leach more power into the minor sigils of her agents, but when that did not stop Drau, she shattered he Sigilbhan, destroying or altering all Bhan and driving Drau and his most powerful agents mad with the sigilshock. Then, before the dark powers within the Siiglbhan could escape, she healed the Sigilbhan with her own soul energy—ceasing to exist in any form. The Sigilbhan now has no mistress, and it’s form is imperfect, leaking fel sorcerous power into the world.

The Bhan Empire fell. Darkness, both supernatural and just that born of fear, greed, hunger, and jealously, tore the empire apart. Lesser evils that had hidden in the edges of wastelands of the Bhan Empire rose and spread, causing wyverns, and giants, and aberrations to overrun much of the world.  And brigands, tyrants, and thief kings did much the same.

But the Sigilbhan, sigils, and sorcery continued. Nearly two centuries have passed, and scores of small kingdoms, city-states, and warlords have arisen.

The sigilbearers have inherited minor sigils, those given to agents and nobles who rules under the Empress, though such power is inherited, and while sigls have great power of light, such power *can* be used for evil.

The imperial church worships the person of the Empress in the form of the Sigilbhan–they know her sacrifice destroyed her intellect and consciousness, but believe the remaining sigilbhan, which mostly just fuels the sigls and slowly leaks the dark powers used for sorcery, is a deity and if enough belief and good will is focused into it, it shall be reborn into a true deity.

Sorcerers take the fell planar power leaking from the Sigilbhan and use it to create powerful magics. Though the source of their power is vile, the sigilshock destroyed the most powerful feldrau sorcerers, leaving Imperial agents who had studied drau as the most powerful source of sorcerous study. Most sorcerers claim they *must* convert the power of darkness leaking from the sigilbhan into other magics, or it will turn into native demons and haunts… though the imperial church generally disagrees, and sorcerers are sometimes tainted, and become drau.

Where there were once a single people, the bhan, there are now many groups—though most humanoids acknowledge they are ethnicities of a single people, and can generally interbreed. And of course, some are the drau, who appear no different than their non-drau brethren until they ingest so much fel energy their eyes, hair, or both are bleached to a uniform white. Most towns fear the drau, but it is hard to say who is and isn’t until a drau has vast powers.

The Power (And Risks) of Options over Set Abilities in Starfinder

This is something I have thought about for more than a decade, and which I want to write about in greater length someday. But a power I recently wrote up for my Starfaring Gunslinger (for the Starfinder Roleplaying Game) really drove the point home, so I thought I’d share the core idea.

Options of a set power level are more potent in making effective/overpowered PCs (depending where you are on the potency curve) than set abilities of the same power level, as long as the most effective use of those abilities is obvious.

So, what do I mean by that?

Well first, I mean that if you are building the class features of a new class (for example), and you give it +3 to a specific skill (let’s say +3 to Acrobatics), that is less potent than giving it +3 to any class skill. These have exactly the same game mechanical advantage (+3 to a bonus added to a d20 roll), but +3 to Acrobatics can only be used a single way. If a specific character build already has all the bonus to Acrobatics it needs (perhaps because a player is making a character that doesn’t rely on Acrobatics), the +3 is wasted. But the flexible +3 can be put anywhere it’s useful, making it easier to have different character builds make use of it, making it more useful to more characters.

But.

Not all skills are equally useful to all character builds. If, for example, a player thought that Acrobatics and Profession (dancer) were equally useful in a typical game, that player might place the +3 in the profession skill and assume they had made an equally-potent choice. There MAY be cases where that’s true, but not understanding the most effective use of skills makes that flexibility more likely to lead to frustration for that player.

(The skill rules, in general, do a pretty good job of telling you what each skill is used for, making the relative effectiveness of each fairly clear. But maybe it would be worth the extra complexity to either balance them better, or show why they aren’t equally weighted, despite using equal resources to access.)

In the Starfinder Roleplaying Game, this idea influences most class abilities. Rather than get a lot of flat assigned abilities, most classes have at least one variable power set you pick, and many have lists of abilities made available ever few levels. Gear boosts, envoy improvisations, magic hacks, and so on, give a range of options PCs can pick from to make a character that is effective the way they play it.

At the same time, if you don’t know when an ability is most likely to be useful, you may pick something you think will come up a lot, only to find it requires careful set-up or a play style your group does not support.

Which brings me to the ability that set all this off:

Spotter’s Observation (Ex): [1st level][Language-dependent, sense-dependent] As a standard action you can gauge the distance to a specific target you have line of sight to, and give advice to your allies on what factors may affect ranged attacks against that foe. Any ally you can communicate with (either directly or through comm units) halves any penalty from cover or range increments they take to ranged attacks against that target until the beginning of your next turn.

If you have the get ‘em or improved get ‘em envoy improvisations, you can use spotter as part of the same action you use for those abilities rather than as its own standard action.

Hopefully both the name and the way the ability is written makes it clear that this is an ability for someone who wants to play a support role, and who has allies likely to make powerful ranged attacks against foes that are far away, in cover, or both. It gives special options to the envoy, because envoys already work well in this role and have a great deal of synergy with something like this. If your group includes a technomancy who prefers status effect spells and a melee solarian and a melee soldier, this ability is a bad choice in terms of potency. If the group is playing a sniper squad who want to handle most issues from 1,000 feet away at mini8mum, it’s a great one.

Speaking of Great Choices

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Starfinder Species in Really Wild West (Part 2)

We went over why it’s worthwhile to consider where the species from the Starfinder Roleplaying Game have major population centers in the world of Really Wild West (and why we won’t be using them as stand-ins to replace the humans of any real-world culture) in the first post in this series, where we also looked at the RWW take on androids. We continue our look at this idea with the kasatha and lashunta. It’s worth repeating that these touchstones are designed as one set of options, not absolute rules. Just as humans from differing ethnic and cultural backgrounds can be found on every continent, so too can our new sentient, sapient species be found in every culture of the Really Wild West.

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Kasatha

Since one of the big defining traits of kasatha is that they have 4 arms, there’s an obvious temptation to have kasatha be linked to Hinduism, because of the prevalence of multiarmed deities in Hindu. However, Hinduism is a massive, modern religion with tens of millions of worshipers, in which things like what a deity carries in each arm can be important, and about which I am not an expert.

Looking to tie the multiarmed aspect to something less crucial than gods, Greek mythology has numerous multiarmed humanoids such as the Gegenees, and Hecatonchires. Though these are presented as giants, that just also gives me a place for Shobads. And there’s lots of ancient and closer-to-18901 history involving Greeks that is fascinating and interesting, which can help serve as context for kasatha players.

So if the Greek empires were all mix of human and kasatha, by the modern era of Really Wild West that can be expected to have large populations throughout Europe, northern Africa, and western Asia. Greek ships were visiting the Americas by the early 1600s, and a significant Greek community developed in New Orleans during the 1850s. By the 1890 there were tens of thousands of Greeks in North America alone, many of them from the Ottoman Empire.

Lashunta

One of the defining traits of lashunta is their telepathy, which makes placing them in the world a bit tricky, because what westerns think of as telepathy doesn’t really have any notable real-world equivalents, even in theory or fiction, prior to the 1800s, which is too late to form a culture from that is well established by 1891. However, the Japanese idea of ishin-denshin (literally “”what the mind thinks, the heart transmits”) certainly seems similar to telepathy. That idea seems to have developed in China where it has links to traditions of Zen Buddhism.

So, having lashunta have developed in Asia, with strong populations in places where Zen Buddhism is prevalent (China, Japan, Korean, Vietnam) gives cultural texture to how the actual power of telepathy in Really Wild West might have been viewed in varying real-world cultures. It’s important to note that lashunta don’t replace any of those real-world cultures or the religious and philosophical advancements they created. But it does give context for how to view a fictional species in a historic framework. And all those nations have rich histories that include massive exploration, trade, and diplomacy as well as immigration which can place an Asian-origin lashunta anywhere in the world a player wants to be from (even before allowing for lashunta families who may have migrated from those nations centuries ago).

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Starfinder Species in Really Wild West

When running a Really Wild West game, which takes Starfinder Roleplaying Game concepts and sets them in a weird west version of the real world in 1891, one of the questions that can come up is where the nonhuman species come from. Given how much cultures and nations and lone people can interact, overlap, and move around, any individual character can obviously be from anywhere—in real-world history it’s easy to find Japanese expatriates in Manila and Mexico in the early 1600s, so ethnicity, nationality, and geography aren’t always as linked as typical examples of each might suggest.

But a question remains of where the most common cultures and ethnicities of various nonhuman species are found. It’s a bad idea to replace entire real-world ethnic groups with nonhumans, since that erases the possibilities of real-world options and may tell a player that their actual ancestry isn’t important enough to keep, but if we are presenting a world where dozens (or even hundreds) of species are sharing the planet, it makes sense to consider where our fictional species fit reasonable well with real-world culture, and key those as major cultural and population centers for kasatha and lashutna and others.

This is especially important for the Starfinder Roleplaying Game species. It’s easy to place dwarves, elves, gnomes, haflings, half-elves, and half-orcs in the European areas that inspired them and that lots of fantasy and modern games have drawn from to build fictional cultures for them. You can assume they all overlap with humanity 100%, or make the major population centers line up with the countries you think make interesting matches—perhaps dwarves are German and elves are French. Or perhaps dwarves are French, elves are Germanic, and gnomes Russian or Scandinavian, and orcs Spanish. There’s enough fiction and game material with those races to make it easy to build or match cultures to serve as backgrounds for them.

But there’s not nearly as much material to draw on for androids (especially as Really Wild West envisions them), vesk, or ysoki, and even less for kasatha and lashunta. Since the Really Wild West is set in an alternate version of the real world, if I want to place these new species somewhere I need to either think of places where I can add them to the existing populations, or add new places. I could slap a few new small continents—Atlantis. Lemuria, and Mu come to mind—in the middle of oceans to give me new space for new cultures if I wanted to, but that’d take a lot more effort than I am looking to do just to create some cultural touchstones.

It seems perfectly reasonable in a campaign setting that adds multiple new sapient, sentient species to a fantasy version of the real world to have those species be tied primarily to specific regions or cultures, so that is the approach I took here. That leaves the question of where to place each of these species primary population centers, and for that I looked at each in turn to determine what core feature or concept helps define each and how those can be integrated into existing real-world regions.

I used real-world art references for the art order representing clothing and styles for these new species. That’s not to suggest that all of the Starfinder Roleplaying Game species come from only these regions or look like the characters below, but it’s a baseline to give GM and players something to draw from.

Over the next few posts I’ll give some details where each of these new species is being centered in the world of Really Wild West, and why, beginning with the androids.

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Android

Androids in the Really Wild West (far left) are visually and culturally notably different from androids in standard Starfinder Roelplaying Game campaigns. Given the 1890s aesthetic of the RWW, androids are presented as old-school robots, closer to Metropolis than Blade Runner. They could never pass for human. They function with the same rules, but the definition of android in this campaign is closer to “humanlike in form” than “machine that passed for human.”

Complex machines claiming to be automatons and clockworks did exist in the era, perhaps the most famous of which is the chess-playing automaton created in 1770 by Wolfgang von Kempelen of the Hapsburg Empire, who usefully for our purposes also created a speaking machine. While von Kempelen’s chess-playing machine was not a true automaton (it hid a chess player in its integral cabinet), that looks a fine origin for our manlike machines. If the first automatons were created in 1770 in the Hapsburg empire, they can easily have spread to be much farther and wider by 1891. The Austro-Hungarian Empire that formed out of the Austrian Empire that followed the Hapsburg Empire is a European melting pot, and numerous immigrants from that region moved to  New York City, Pittsburgh, and Chicago early in the 1800s, and then were part of the century.

We can assume that older androids are from the Austria and Hungary regions, and newer ones likely constructed in the big cities of New York City, Pittsburgh, and Chicago. At some point some form of Turing Test has developed, and androids have won recognition as “people” in the United States, Mexico, and most industrialized nations of the world. But they lack strong family roots, and are often looking for opportunities to make a life for themselves.

We’ll address the kasatha, lashunta, shirren, vesk, and ysoki soon!

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More Gunslinger Abilities (for Starfinder)

To add on to yesterday’s gunslinger abilities, here are some drawn from a gunslinger archetype (one of which requires you take the Gunslinger Feat to access… at least for now). These work for normal Starfinder Roleplaying Game campaigns, or the Really Wild West setting hack.

While I’ll release full rules for these as an actual product, for now note that whether you use the archetype or feat to access these, you can only select abilities with two different possessive title forms. In other words if you take a “Gunslinger’s X” and “Ace Shooter’s X” abilities, you can’t also take an ability titled “Blatherskite’s X” (as there will be many more possessively titled abilities in the final product).

New Gunslinger Abilities:

Ace Shooter’s Resolve (Ex): [3rd level] As long as you have at least 1 Resolve Point, you can make a ranged attack as a standard action and ignore the effects of concealment (though not total concealment) and cover (other than total cover) against that shot.

Ace Shooter’s Vigilance (Ex): [7th Level] As long as you have at least 1 Resolve Point, your ranged attacks to not provoke attacks of opportunity.

Ace Shooter’s Pinning Shot (Ex): [15th level] When firing a small arm, longarm, or heavy weapon that uses darts or arrows (such as a crossbolter) you can make 1 attack as a full action to give the weapon the entangling special weapon property.

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Really Wild West Gunslinger (for Starfinder)

So, of COURSE, the Really Wild West has to have gunslingers, and since RWW is a setting hack for the Starfinder Roleplaying Game, that means I need gunslingers for that game… at least up to 10th level (RWW’s current cap).

That said, a big part of the fantasy gunslinger class is that it gives access to firearms, and makes them less-terrible and less-unreliable choices. Since small arms, longarms, and sniper rifles aren’t terrible choices and are easy to gain access and proficiency with, there’s no need for a class that takes up a lot of its abilities fixing those fantasy-rules-related issues. Also, RWW is the kind of setting where a mechanic, mystic, or even solarian could all be gunslingers, so why restrict the concept to just one class?

I’m working on a longer version of the Starfaring Gunslinger rules that will cover some archetypes and go to 20th, but that’s likely to actually be a full product. This is a preview.

There are two ways to get gunslinger abilities: the gunslinger archetype, and the gunslinger feat. You can use both, if you wish.

Gunslinger Archetype

You are more than proficient with guns, you are focused on them to a degree most gun users can neither duplicate nor understand.

Special: You must be proficient with small arms, longarms, or sniper rifles to take this archetype.

Gunslinger Ability: At 2nd, 4th, and 6th level you may choose to take gunslinger abilities as alternate class features (using the normal archetype rules).

If you make this choice more than once, each time after the first that you make it you gain two gunslinger abilities, rather than one. (Thus if you selected this option at all three level, you’d have five total gunslinger abilities.)

Gunslinger Feat

You are a master of slinging guns.

Prerequisites: Proficiency with small arms.

Benefit: Select one gunslinger ability.

Special: You can select this feat more than once. Each time, you select a new gunslinger ability of your character level or less.

Gunslinger Abilities

Regardless of how you gain your gunslinger abilities (feat or archetype), you can only select a gunslinger ability of your level of less. Unless it specifies otherwise, you can’t select a gunslinger ability more than once.

Gunslinger’s Dodge (Ex): [1st Level] You gain an uncanny knack for getting out of the way of ranged attacks. Once per day when a ranged attack is made against you, you can move 5 feet as a reaction; doing so grants you a +2 bonus to AC against the triggering attack. This movement is not a guarded step. Alternatively, you can drop prone to gain a +4 bonus to AC against the triggering attack.

Once you use this ability, you cannot use it again until you spend 1 Resolve Point to regain Stamina Points taking a 10-minute break, or regain your daily abilities. You can also use this even when it is expended by spending 1 Resolve Point.

Gunslinger Initiative (Ex): [3rd Level] As long as you have at least 1 Resolve Point, you gain the following benefits. First, you gains a +2 bonus on initiative checks. Furthermore, if you have the Quick Draw feat, your hands are free and unrestrained, and the small arm is not hidden, you can draw a single firearm as part of your initiative check.

Gunslinger Specialization (Ex): [3rd Level] When you take the attack of full attack action with a small arm, without using any class feature or feat that increases attack rolls or damage, you add damage equal to 1-1/2 your level to damage done with small arms (instead of Weapons Specialization’s normal bonus for small arms of half your level).

Pistol-Whip (Ex): [3rd Level] You can use your small arm, longarm, or sniper weapon as a melee weapon. Select a bludgeoning basic melee weapon with an item level lower than your ranged weapon. Treat your ranged weapon as this melee weapon for purposes of threatening spaces, making attacks of opportunity, and dealing damage, but grant it the knockdown critical hit effect (replacing any critical hit effect it normally has). When used in this way, the weapon still benefits from any weapon fusions it has that would apply to an unpowered bludgeoning melee weapon.

Utility Shot (Ex): [3rd Level] If you have at least 1 Resolve Point, you can perform all of the following utility shots. Each utility shot can be applied to any single attack with a ranged weapon, but you must declare the utility shot you are using before firing the shot.

Blast Lock: You make an attack roll against a lock within the first range increment of your ranged weapon. A Diminutive lock usually has AC 15, and larger locks have a lower AC. The lock gains a bonus to its AC equal to its item level. Hold portal grants a +5 bonus to the AC of a lock against this attack. On a hit, the lock is destroyed, and the object can be opened as if it were unlocked. On a miss, the lock is undamaged. It can still be unlocked by successfully performing this deed, by using the Computers or Engineer skills.

Scoot Unattended Object: You make an attack roll against a Tiny or smaller unattended object within the first range increment of your ranged weapon. For this purpose, a Tiny unattended object has an AC of 5, a Diminutive unattended object has an AC of 7, and a Fine unattended object has an AC of 11. On a hit, you do not damage the object with the shot, but can move it up to 15 feet farther away from the shot’s origin.

Stop Bleeding: You expend one usage of a ranged weapon and then press the hot barrel (or hot energy vent, or power cable, or some other part of the weapon that heats when it uses energy or fires) against yourself or an adjacent creature to staunch a bleeding wound. This ends a single bleed condition affecting the creature. You can do this in place of an attack (as a standard action, or part of a full action allowing multiple attacks).

Dead Shot (Ex): [7th Level] As a full action, you can expend 1 Resolve Point to make a single ranged attack, rolling your attack twice and using the better of the two results. This functions with Gunslinger Specialization and can be combined with the full action to aim and fire a sniper weapon, but does not work with any other class feature or feat that increases attack rolls or damage.

Startling Shot (Ex): [7th Level] If you have at least 1 Resolve Point left, when you successfully use covering fire or harrying fire against a creature, you also cause it to be flat-footed for 1 round.

Targeting (Ex): [7th Level] As a full action, you can make a single ranged weapon attack and choose part of the target’s body to aim at. If you hit, you inflict the following effects depending on the part of the body aimed at. If a creature does not have one of the listed body locations, the GM can determine if it has an equivalent body part or not [and may require a Perception or Life Sciences check (DC 15 +1-1/2 target’s CR) for you to know and recognize such an equivalent]. Creatures immune to critical hits or critical hit effects are immune to this ability.

Once you use this ability, you cannot use it again until you spend 1 Resolve Point to regain Stamina Points taking a 10-minute break, or regain your daily abilities. You can also use this even when it is expended by spending 1 Resolve Point.

Arms: On a hit, the target takes no damage from the hit but drops one held item of the your choice that it can drop, even if the item is wielded with two hands.

Head: On a hit, the target is damaged normally, and is also confused for 1 round. This is a mind-affecting effect.

Legs: On a hit, the target is damaged normally and knocked prone. Creatures that have four or more legs or that are immune to trip attacks are immune to this effect.

Torso: Targeting the torso causes any critical hit effect your weapon possesses to be triggered on an attack roll of 18 or better (the die shows an 18, 19, or 20) that hits the target’s AC, even though an 18 or 19 is not a critical hit.

Wings: On a hit, the target is damaged normally, and must make a Fly check (DC 15 + 1-1/2 your base attack bonus) or fall 20 ft.

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Social Technomancy for Starfinder

While the technomancer spells presented in the Starfinder Core Rulebook focus on mixing magic and specific, physical applications of technology, as residents of the modern world we know that technology is much more than a set of devices. Social technologies exist, from things like first aid techniques to social media to advances in the social sciences and philosophies, as well as data organization and storage techniques, metadata analysis, and so on. Surely in a galaxy that has spellcasters blending arcana with other fields of study, technomancy would leak into every aspect of advanced knowledge.

So, here are some technomancy spells that investigate other paces magic and advanced techniques might overlap. It also introduces some new focus rules—elements that are useful to casting a spell, but not mandatory.

Cram (T2)

School transmutation

Casting Time 1 standard action

Range touch

Target one creature

Duration 1 minute/level (see text)

Saving Throw Will negates (harmless); Spell Resistance yes (harmless)

With this spell, the caster can take the knowledge from any text-based, audio, or video source and implant it into the mind of the target creature. This grants the subject a number of bonus ranks in one skill of the caster’s choice to bring the target’s total ranks (their own ranks + bonus ranks) equal to half the caster’s level (for Int-, Wis-, or Cha-based skills) or 1/4 the caster level (for Str-, Dex-, or Con-based skills). A caster that has access to an infosphere can generally use this to grant ranks in any skill, or a computer can have sufficiently complete versions of the relevant information downloaded into it for the same cost and effort as adding a secure data module.

Focus: If the target has a source of information on the granted skill on their person (such as a book or a datapad with the information downloaded into it) the spell’s duration increases to 10 moinutes.caster level.

Fashion Plate (T1)

School transmutation

Casting Time 1 standard action

Range touch

Target one set of clothing

Duration 1hour/level

Saving Throw Will negates (harmless); Spell Resistance yes (harmless)

This spell transforms the appearance of one set of clothes. The clothes may be transformed into a specific set of normal clothing, or they may be turned into clothes appropriate for a particular group of people. For example, a mage could change his ragged jeans and leather jacket into a business power suit, or skateboarding street gear, or a karate gi. This has no impact on any game mechanical bonuses the clothing offers—a cold weather suit works just as well when it appears to be swimming trunks. This spell ends if the clothing is taken off.

Focus: If the caster has access to fashion information about a specific group (normally available automatically with access to a related infosphere, or compiled with a DC 15 Culture check), this spell can make clothing appear to be perfect for interacting with a specific group or segment of society (such as a specific gang, or a specific social class in a specific city). When wearing clothing perfectly matched for such a group, the clothes grant a +3 circumstance bonus to all Charisma checks and Charisma-based skill checks made with that group. One set of clothing can only be perfect for one group at a time.

Instant Therapy (M2, T2)

School enchantment (language-dependent)

Casting Time 1 minute (see text)

Range close (25 ft. +5 ft/2 levels)

Target one creature

Duration Instantaneous

Saving Throw Will negates (harmless); Spell Resistance yes (harmless)

This spell removes the confusion condition from the target. It also acts as a dispel magic and remove affliction against all fear and mind-affecting effects on the target, moves the target one step closer to healthy on the mental disease track.

Once a creature has been the target of this spell, it can’t be targeted again until it has undergone a 4-hour traditional therapy session.

Focus: If you have a mental health file for the subject, the casting time for this spell becomes 1 standard action. A target can give you a file they have access to, or one can generally be compiled over 24 hours with a recall knowledge Culture check or liberated from modestly-secured infosphere sources with a Computers check (both DC 15 + 1-1/2 target’s level).

Rap Sheet (T0)

School divination

Casting Time 1 minute

Range close (25 ft. +5 ft/2 levels)

Target one creature

Duration Instantaneous

Saving Throw Will negates; Spell Resistance yes

This spell gives the caster knowledge of one target’s legal record. This acts as a Culture check to gain information about the target as if the caster has ranks in Culture equal to her caster level and has access to a relevant database, but only covers information such as arrests, torts, convictions, adoptions, marriages, divorces, and bankruptcy. Only legal records are revealed, and only for the identity of the target as understood by the caster—disguises are not automatically penetrated and actual guilt or innocence is not revealed.

Speaking of Social Magic!

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Updated List of Very Fantasy Words

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More Species-Based Insults and Exclamations for the Starfinder Roleplaying Game

My post on a d6 each worth of species-based insults and exclamations for androids, shirren, humans, and ysoki from yesterday was much more popular than I expected (I picked up three new backers for my Patreon in one day).

So, even though no one asked for them, let’s round out the Starfinder Roleplaying Game core races with kasatha, lashunta, and vesk!

Species-Specific Insults

Kasatha

1. Faceless coward

2. Hat-rack

3. Spikehead

4. Hipless freak

5. Brain-slicer

6. Dust-muncher

Lashunta

1. Mind-peeper

2. Bug-elf (or) Dwarf-beetle

3. Lizard-lover

4. Data-licker

5. Cantrip-Humper

6. Meritrollop

Vesk

1. Heatless lump lizard

2. Pea-brain

3. Deathmongering war-worshipper

4. Walking suitcase

5. Doshclod

6. Cloac-er (Short for cloaca-frudder)

Species Specific Exclamations

Kasatha

1. Lips!

2. Sandhead

3. By the long journey

4. Slivers!

5. Doyen-sucker

6. Waster (or) Waste of Space (or) Useless Waste

Lashunta

1. Ignorance-eater

2. Mindblind

3. Sewer-head

4. LYING!

5. Meritless (or) Unwarranted

6. It’s a Gift of Nothingness, and You Took It.

Vesk

1. Loser (or) Coward

2. Weaponless Wonder

3. Timid Teeth

4. By the Three Blades!

5. Backstabber (or) Traitor (or) Backstab!

6. Cloac-er (Still short for cloaca-frudder)

Patreon

Even more directly than most, this post is brought to you by the backers of my Patreon! Especially Copper Frog Games, a new Sponsor! You can find them or on Facebook at facebook.com/copperfroggames, and appearing at PAX East in the Indie Megabooth with “Pigment”, and “Chiseled” (Kickstarting this summer!).

Species-Based Insults for the Starfinder Roleplaying Game

In a podcast I was doing, someone claimed they’d throw Patreon money my way if I’d post 1d6 (each) curse words for Androids, Ysoki, Shirren, and Humans. Not one to pass up a writing challenge that involves making money, I here I am doing that.

But.

I’ve talked about fictional cursewords before and, while I wish it went without saying, it seems prudent to mention that there are pales fictional swearing shouldn’t go. Yes, people cuss. Yes, that can be a useful and interesting part of roleplaying. But especially when looking at species-based cussing, never bring gender, real-world ethnicity, socio-political position, religion, or anything else rooted in reality into it. We should be roleplaying to have fun, and that needs to stay away from language that uses real differences between us as insults or stand-ins for bad language.

No one should be so attached to fictional deity Klono that explaining Holy—Klono’s—Iridium—Intestines!” is going to upset anybody. But as soon as you use any real-world (or even thinly veiled from real world) elements in your cussing, you are risking other people’s feelings in the name of a drop of color for a not-real person, and that’s not cool.

With that said, here’s four d6 lists of:

Species-Based Insults

Androids

1. Piece of Synth

2. Circuitface

3. Custom-built slave labor

4. Milk-for-guts*

5. Rent-a-soul**

6. Digi-brain

*Assuming the android leaks white goo like the ones from Aline/Aliens do. This doesn’t have to be true, just a common cultural opinion.

**Based on dislike of the android renewal process

Shirren

1. Boneless wonder*

2. Spiderbait

3. Hiveless drone

4. Fangneck

5. Chitten-butt

6. Buffet-stuffer**

*Assuming they have eskeletons

**A suggestion that the shirren is food, and belongs on a buffet.

Humans

1. Mindblind lashunta

2. Worldless

3. Breeder

4. Sweat factory

5. Clawless/toothless/tailless

6. Spunthole

Ysoki

1. Rat-tailed

2. Fleabag

3. Scavenger

4. Hairball

5. Plaguemouth

6. Junk-waffle

And then four 1d6 lists of:

Species-Specific Exclamations!

Androids

1. Slaver

2. Meatbags

3. Genebait

4. Glitching (or) Son-of-Glich

5. Sparks

6. Sagging (or) Wrinkled*

*Since androids don’t show signs of age.

Shirren

1. Swarming (or) Swarmed (or) Swarm-mind

2. Repetitive (or) Predictable (or) just Reps!

3. Thoughtless

4. Parasites!

5. Compound Stupid*

6. Webbing! (or) Webhole (or) Webtastic

*As in, stupid seen through a hundred compound eyes

Humans

1. Frudd

2. Godsdammerung

3. Lose it! (or) Lost!

4. Genejoke

5. Twist (or) Twist You (or) This is twisted!

6. Spunthole

Ysoki

1. Traps!

2. Fleabag

3. Itches (or) Itch-laden (or) Son-of-an-Itch!

4. Hairballs

5. Matted

6. Pinkies

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