Bay 12 Games Forum

Gift Run-Offs

Liking all the plans here! Lets try to narrow it down some.

Ageless Erudition and Dread Lord showing up a lot, we will lock those in.

Choose two (or one for Mutable Truth)

A- A Truth That Burns

B- Illimitable Darkness

C-Borer Beneath

D-Treasures of the Earth

EE- Mutable Truth

Unrelated proposal: Our phylactery is a diary in which we've written our secret truths.

I was thinking like a bident due to Underworld, but a diary can also definitely work!

   
Okay with the choice of Underworld, character creation is almost complete! We rolled up some stats; they are pretty high but that's alright considering the situation.

Last thing to do is to choose your starting Gift points! I’ll provide a curated selection of gifts from your Words, but you can suggest other gifts from the list (and in the case of truth feel free to suggest your own.


You have 4 points available. Each lesser gift costs 1 point, greater gifts cost 2. You are not required to take a gift from each word.

Lich King:

Lesser:
Ageless Erudition:
 Commit Effort for the scene to know any fact or piece of knowledge, or pass an intellectual attribute check, that a ingenius mortal sage could conceivably do or know.

Dread Lord
Lesser foe undead in your presence are absolutely obedient to your
commands and cannot intentionally harm you. Commands you give
them will be obeyed with human intelligence and necro-suicidal
devotion until they are out of your presence for at least 24 hours,
after which they revert to their usual behaviors. You may attempt to
likewise enslave an undead worthy foe as an Action, but the target
gets a save versus Spirit to become immune to the gift for the scene.

 Fist of the Grave
 Your unholy, eldritch power grants you a 1d10 magical attack with a 200 foot range. On a successful hit, you may Commit Effort for the scene as an Instant action to gain twice the attack's damage as hit points of personal healing, up to your usual hit point maximum

Greater Gifts:
A Heart Apart:
You possess a phylactery, excised heart, or other locus for your life, one which can be destroyed by ordinary violence. Unless this phylactery is destroyed, you cannot be permanently killed, and will regenerate from death in 24 hours from your largest remaining fragment. If the phylactery is destroyed, you can remake it, but it will not become effective for six months. You are instantly aware of any destruction of your phylactery, and while you can hide it or guard it, you cannot enchant it specifically to be protected from harm.
Already Chosen for you


Truth

Lesser Gifts:

Purity of the Brilliant Truth:
Commit Effort for the scene. Defensively dispel a hostile magical
effect on yourself or offensively dispel another gift for a round as if
with a miracle. This gift functions more swiftly than a conventional
miracle of dispelling, and the Effort need not be committed for so long.

A Truth That Burns
Commit Effort for the scene and choose a visible target. Learn the
knowledge of them or their plans that they least want you to know,
as judged by the GM. Worthy foes get a Spirit saving throw to resist
this subtle inquisition.


Greater Gifts:
Mutable Truth:
Commit Effort for at least the scene and choose a target in sight. You can alter their inner truths, including who they are loyal to and  their willingness to live. Lessar foes cannot resist. Worthy foes may use a Spirit saving thow to resist. This Truth may be reconsidered in the case of being very improbable or suicidal once the effort is reclaimed.



Underworld.

Lesser Gifts:
Borer Beneath:
You can pass through unworked stone or earth as if it were empty space. If you wish, you leave behind a self-supporting tunnel with a diameter slightly wider than you are tall; as an Instant action, you can withdraw your support of any such tunnel you have made and let the natural environment collapse it.

Illimitable Darkness:
Commit Effort for the scene to utterly darken all non-divine lights within one hundred feet per character level for the rest of the scene, creating a zone of perfect blackness. Fires still burn, but they emit absolutely no light, and no new illumination can be created while this gift holds. This radius of darkness moves with you. Worthy foes can save versus Spirit to intentionally create light, but only they can see the light they create. Blind creatures are usually unable to use ranged attacks and roll melee attacks twice, taking the worse hit roll.

Greater Gifts:
Keeper of All Beneath
Commit Effort for the day and indicate a particular person, object or type of object that you are physically capable of lifting. If such an object is anywhere below ground level within a half mile per character level, you draw it forth from the earth, regardless of how well-guarded or well-hidden it may be. Conversely, you may instead transport yourself and your companions to any chosen subterranean location within a half mile per level. This gift cannot move you or your allies more than ten miles total per hour.




Note: Votes should be done in plan form, as in don’t vote for individual gifts, but instead for whole combinations.

Even as a boy you pursued The Truth. Your parents taught you all about the world around you, but they couldn’t explain everything. The priests told you of the gods, and you thought that was truth, but wandering clerics told you another tale, equally true.

You always had this obsession inside of you, to find out the answer. You thought of the Truth as like a crystal, perfect with many facets. Perhaps you could comprend it all if you just dug deep enough.

Through rites fair and foul you ascended higher and higher in your understanding, climbing the peak towards the Truth.

By taking yourself to the brink of death and a ritual spiriting your soul to another plane, you saw it, the Truth.

It was broken. A million million swirling screaming facets of Truth, tumbling all together in a storm of uncertainty.

The Truth was broken. The Truth was wrong.

Desperate you flung yourself into the storm. The ritual began to drag you back into your body, but you were impaled by Truth all the same, killing you at the same time you came back alive.

The Truth is, you are dead. Always have been, in some sense. In all other Truths you are dead, blotted out for your hubris. Yet you, in some sense, are Truth and the Truth cannot die.

Perhaps this was your fate, to see Truth shattered and broken into a million different truths, to be embedded with a very shard of it. Maybe you always had it, past present and future all melded together.

You do know one thing though. You will return to Truth one day, and you shall force all the millions and millions of shards from the sky and return them to their rightful place.

You will restore the Truth.


Gain the Truth Word. You may always sense when the truth is spoken around you.
(There are other benefits as well, to be clear. We just need to come up with them!)




Falia clears her throat. You cock your head at her.


“Sir Magnimian, I would make a request of you.” She begins to say, a slight flush coming to her cheeks.


You wait to hear more.


“There is a traveling friar, going from village to village and rabble rousing. He looks for witches and those he declares are corrupt. I imagine he would take a rather dim view of the arrangement we are making here.”


Interesting, that the priestess would draw this friar to your attention.


“And you would like me to . . . talk with this person?”


She slowly nods her head, looking somewhat pained. You imagine that it might be morally difficult to send a Lich to someone’s doorstep.


“Like I said, he rounds “corrupt” people up, without caring so much if they are innocent. He, he took my niece. Said she was the sort to consort with witches.” Falia wrings her hands and avoids looking at you.


“She's a sweet girl. I don’t think she would get involved in any dark business, and she’s not the type to hurt anyone! Her name is Peria, would you please send her home to her mom at Colver’s Edge, if you talk with the Friar? She doesn’t deserve whatever fate Friar Gerus has in store for her,” Falia pleads. You can sense the truth, as she understands it, in her words.


You slowly stand to your feet and -

A- Accept her quest.  This Friar sounds like a troublemaker.

B- Refuse. Not your business getting involved in theological disputes.


You leave the village of Sander’s Vale and return to your Tower to make preparations, rather pleased with yourself overall on the negotiations. Sure, you don’t gain much right now, but good relations with your neighbors take time and the rewards will roll in. You make your steady way to your tower in the-

The Mountains: While the overall region is mountainous and hilly, your tower is on the slope of the mountain. Fantastic for rituals and for your defenses, it will make it somewhat harder to expand economically.

The Deep Forest Deep in the old wood lays your tower. Lots of timber and space available to expand, though the spirits of the forest may take issue with you.

Lakeside Bordering a lake nestled in the mountains, you get access to lots of water and a river. Downside is lots of people know about the lake and the creepy tower looming over it.

Something else? Examples like in a cave, middle of a lake, built into a cliff etc.

Laying out some more traditional Lich choices here.

-Sorcery: This word represents a deep understanding of magic and the fundamental power underlying vacation. Lesser magics can be mastered within weeks, and deeper magics that few can imagine lie within your grasp.

-Death: As a Lich King, you have a special relationship with death, but by choosing this word you become a master of the cycle. Death can be quickened or even reversed in those around you by your will.


But if you want to be somewhat different:

-Time: With the word of Time, one can alter the past and the future. As a Lich King, you will stand outside the stream of time, able to meddle and interfere to bend events to your own end.

-Truth: Pure, absolute Truth is the essence of your being. Lies and deceptions crumble in your presence, as you discern and can even fix the truth of a person or thing.  (My current take, but you can adjust or modify as you like!)

-Entropy: Everything decays, except for you. Entropy grants you the power over the natural process of dissolution, the inevitable increase of entropy throughout the worlds. To you is granted the ability to not only destroy, but also preserve in absolute stasis.



There are many other words which you can choose (such as Artifice!), but for this word consider how it was used to create your Lichdom.

There will be another choice for a third word in the next few updates to complete your “domain”, so just keep that in mind for this vote!

D

Sundown sounds good to me.

   

ACTACTACT:
Send 2 armies to Ningalin Prime.
(Third Army loaned to Deutsche Bank)