Off the Path: Words of Power, Part 1

The first Off the Path series will take the Words of Power system from Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Ultimate Magic and make it more to my taste. The general approach is good, and I see room to add a lot more to it.

Words of Power Overview

Runecaster by Gary Dupuis
Runecaster by Gary Dupuis

Words of Power in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game are pretty straightforward. There are many ‘effect words’, and a smaller number of ‘target words’ and ‘meta words’. Effect words ‘do something’ (burn targets, heal subjects, teleport the caster), target words determine what is affected by the effect words, and meta words change what or how this happens.

A wordspell consists of one target word, one to three effect words, and any number of meta words, within the limits of the caster’s ability. A fireball analogue wordspell might be ‘burst fire blast distant’

  • burst: 10-foot radius within close range, or boosted to 20-foot radius within medium range (level 1, or 3 if boosted);
  • fire blast: 1d6 points of fire damage per caster level (level 3, max 10d6);
  • distant: range extended from medium to long (level 0).

This wordspell has a single effect word with a minimum level of 3, the burst target word has a minimum level of 1 (or 3 if boosted, and why not do that?), and the distant meta word does not modify the level. This is a third-level spell doing 1d6/level damage (max 10d6) in a 20-foot radius at long range.

There are more targets, more meta words, and many more effects described in Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Ultimate Magic… and yet I see some things that could be added, and while it’s pretty close to what I want, I see a few things I’d like to do differently.

Changes Under Consideration

There are several things I’d like to try to incorporate.

Casting Cost Based on Caster Level

The psionics rules in D&D 3.x (and later in Dreamscarred Press’ Ultimate Psionics) base casting cost not on ‘spell level’, but on the ‘caster level’ of the effect. I find I very much like that, and want to incorporate it here. Higher-level abilities might be more efficient (more benefit for cost — cure light wounds doing 1d8+1/level, and cure serious wounds doing 3d8+1/level, both could be cast at a cost of 5 points, but one would do 1d8+5 points of healing and the other 3d8+5). I like the idea of unskilled but powerful casters throwing heaps of power at a spell in order to achieve what a more skilled caster could do more easily.

Reorganize Effects

There are many (137 effect words across 35 effect types, 10 meta words, and 6 target words)… but I they can be better organized and expanded. In fact…

Unified Power Framework

think I see the outline of a unified power framework that can be used to develop a variety of different power types. Spells, psionics, and martial disciplines (as from Dreamscarred Press’ Path of War) might all be possible here.

Closing Comments

This is a pretty ambitious change, to be sure… but it relates to several things I’ve considered over the years, and I think it can be done.

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