Arduin Grimoire, Part VI

Classes, Part II

Am I Sufficiently Out Of Ideas It’s Time For A “You Got No Class” Joke?

Aw, Hell No. I Have Two Volumes Still Ahead Of Me, Better Save The Good Stuff For When I Really Need It

Yeah, That’s What  I Consider The Good Stuff. Still Interested In Reading This?

Now You Know Why My Site’s Unofficial Motto Is “Free, And Worth It!”

Rune Weavers

We’re getting into some of the more outre, which is French for “awesomely rad, dude” (or possibly “we surrender”, I kind of flunked High School French because I spent too much time playing D&D. Seriously.) classes, like Rune Weavers and Technos. Traders and Barbarians? Obvious extensions to the Dungeons & Dragons milieu. (Thank you, EGG, for introducing that word, and many others, such as ‘phylactery’, ‘antipathy’, and ‘antithesis of weal’ to my vocabulary.) Psychics? Less obvious, but given the publication of Eldritch Wizardry and the popularity of Darkover, et al, at the time, clearly part of the zeitgeist. (German for “Toss this word into conversations if you want to sound intellectual and/or see who has the cojones to challenge you on your misuse of it instead of just nodding politely.”)

But Rune Weavers? What’s a Rune Weaver?

“Rune weavers were the original human magik users, learning their craft from the reptilian races of eld.”

Whoa.

I mean, seriously dude. Whoa.

This.

This is why I love Arduin so much.

Why?

Because there’s pretty much nothing else adding more to that statement. Because Dave Hargrave tosses that out like Dream tossing bread crumbs to the pigeons, and then moves on. Because instead of giving us a locked-down, rigorously built, second-by-second timeline of the universe, he gives us a vague, off-hand reference to “the reptilian races of eld” who apparently taught humans magic.. er… magick… er.. magik… and that’s it. We are left inspired, not instructed. We (and by ‘we’, I mean, ‘me’) are free to take this and build on it (or ignore it), to add “reptilian races of eld” to our fantasy worlds, or not. (I usually do; most of my D&D-ish worlds have an era when dragons and their kin ruled the land, as part of my general tendency to have at least three or four long-dead globe-spanning empires as part of the backdrop; it’s the boilerplate code of my worldbuilding.) We are given a tantalizing glimpse of a mystery, not the solution; the shadow of the monster, not the anatomically-detailed action-figure. To understand why this is awesome, consider what you imagined the Clone Wars might have been when Obi-Wan first mentioned them in “Star Wars” (Not “A New Hope”. STAR FRIGGIN’ WARS), vs. actually learning all about them in excruciating detail. (Of course, I’m also the guy who wrote the sourcebook that provided detailed backgrounds for every planet mentioned in Babylon 5 that wasn’t already detailed.)

But we’re supposed to be discussing Rune Weavers here, right?

The use of underlines in various places indicates the lack of boldface in pre-DTP days.

• The “Do not divide as for other mages” is explained around page 30. As is typical of the era, mechanics are discussed well before they’re introduced, without a hint of where they might be found… and sometimes, they never are. Sometimes, mechanics are scattered in a dozen places, making it easy to miss a key bit and get everything wrong.
• One melee round per spell level, plus a one turn delay? Combined with the concentration rules (which we’ll get to, at the rate I’m doing this, sometime in 2018), this could be really nasty.
• “Overcasting”, or being able to cast higher-level spells at a risk/cost, is a mechanic many editions of D&D and D&D-ish games flirted with, but never really got past second base. It’s generally hard to balance because if you make it too risky, no one uses it, and if you make it reasonably reliable, it lets players steamroll an encounter by gaining access to out-of-band abilities like flight. It’s not certain from the text above if the failure when trying higher-level spells just means “You wasted your manna” or if it invokes some sort of backlash rule.
• It’s obvious that Rune Weavers would make, in modern terms, the perfect “Batman Wizard”: Not necessarily useful in combat compared to the “mobile artillery” mage (which is how wizards basically evolved out of the Chainmail Fantasy Supplement), but capable of casting lots of utility spells, including higher-level ones. “Scry, buff, teleport”, 23 years early!
• I am seriously wondering how you figure out what knowing, say, 15% about a magical trap or magic fountain actually means. 
• A Rune Weaver needs less XP to reach 105th level than a Thief does. Just thought you’d like to know that.

Techno’s (sic)

Blending technology with fantasy was commonplace early on in D&D, with Dave Arneson’s proto-D&D world of Blackmoor being steeped in it (later introduced officially in D&D proper via the Temple of the Frog in the Blackmoor supplement). Thus, it’s hardly surprising there’s a Techno class in Arduin, though the actual mechanics are… vague. I remember revising them to be, in essence, magic users, but each ‘spell’ was actually a device of some sort that needed to be carefully re-tuned after each use. That this mechanic integrated very poorly with the list of actual abilities granted to the class didn’t bother me at all.

By 15th level, I can make a flintlock. Meanwhile, the magic-user is casting Meteor Swarm.

• So, you’ll notice there’s nothing here about hit die size, weapon proficiency (I guess they’re proficient in all “technological” weapons), etc.
• He doesn’t write “Rune Weaver’s”, “Witch Hunter’s”, or “Psychic’s”, so why “Techno’s”? The world may never know.
• It’s hard to see how, played as written, any would survive… they don’t offer much to the party compared to a thief of the same level. Does being able to “figure out” mechanical traps let you disarm them?
• The ability to detect electronic emanations and radioactivity is pretty much only useful if a)The DM decides to include such things just for the Techno to find, and b)They’re set up so that if you don’t find them, the party is doomed. Otherwise…

Techno: “Wait, let me try to detect electronic emanations!”
Other players: “What, again?”
DM: “There aren’t any… moving on…”
Techno: “You didn’t even roll! I’ve got a 40% chance!”
DM: “Look, there’s no electronics in the Domain Of The Dread Lich Of Dire Doom. You don’t need to check in every damn room!”
Techno (smugly): “Oh, yeah, he’s covering it up. He doesn’t want us finding the secret radio transmitter!”
DM: “Oh for…” (Rolls dice). “There. I rolled. You still didn’t find anything. Happy?”
Techno (suspiciously): “Yeah, OK. I guess.”
Other players: “Finally! OK, we take the door to the north.”
DM: “You all die from radiation sickness as you open the lead door to the reactor core!”
Techno: “Damn it, if only I had been 10th level!”

(Pedants might point out that a reactor core must be controlled by something that would produce electronic emanations. Thank you, pedants. You killed the joke. It’s dead. Look at its corpse, so sad and pathetic. Are you happy now, joke killer? Are you proud of what you’ve done?

No, you don’t get XP for it.)

Medicine Man

Clearly, politically incorrect in this day and age. It should be Medicine Person.

Neil Peart is clearly 50th level.

• So, at fifth level, you can cast Cure Light Wounds on “all” five times a day. That’s actually a very impressive ability. Assume a typical adventuring party of 4-6, and, at the time, assume an equal number of henchpersons. While it’s not explicit, I’d assume “all” means “your party and hangers-on”, or at the very least “all the PCs”. So that’s equal to 5-10 castings of a first level spell, five times a day. That’s nothing to sneeze at, and if it was, you could cast cure disease (if you were over 10th level). People used to curesticks and the like don’t understand how rare healing was pre-3.0. It could take three or four days for the Cleric to heal everyone at low levels.
• The arguments over whether or not a spell was “true” offensive, or natural, or defensive, must have been Epic. Hell, Mythic!
• The “drum magic” that costs only 20% manna makes these folks also great “utility” mages… and clerics… and druids. Seriously, access to all three spell lists, even if you have to split your manna? That’s amazingly flexible.
• I have no idea what “detect hidden injury” is supposed to do. I’ve never encountered any mechanic in D&D for “internal bleeding” or any other form of “You’re taking damage, but you don’t know from what, or why.” Somehow, though, it was common enough in Hargrave’s games that he thought it was worth adding in the ability to detect it. Go figure.
• Lastly, while most of the other classes go up to 100th level or more, Medicine Persons only go to 50th level. I blame White Privilege.

Next time: The Witch Hunter class, and Magic In Arduin.