The stunning insight into our work process continues (If a ‘process’ can include name-calling, ridiculing, insults, and generally childish behavior). A little lighter this week because we spent a day together working, so less going on in chat.
Umm… Enjoy, I guess..?
Matthew uh, pass without trace?
Shawn Umm… What does it do?
Matthew A veil of shadows and Silence radiates from you, masking you and your companions from detection. For the Duration, each creature you choose within 30 feet of you (including you) has a +10 bonus to Dexterity (Stealth) checks and can’t be tracked except by magical means. A creature that receives this bonus leaves behind no tracks or other traces of its passage.
Shawn What kind of shit it that? Ugh.
Matthew 5e combining spells again, the bonus to stealth is a different effect than “you don’t leave tracks” which is the original intent of the spell
Shawn So, we’re suppressing light and noise. Evocation?
Matthew yeah, that’s probably it. yeah, here it is. it envelops you in a shadowy bubble of force which gently pushes things out of the way and replaces it again when you’ve passed through
Shawn Where are we putting Tenser’s disk?
Matthew tenser’s is 100% evocation
Shawn Yeah, the whole thing is evocation.
Matthew Ok, I’m not worried about the number of spells being balanced bewteen schools anymore. in vanilla, divination has 31, conjuration 53. actually 63
Shawn Yeah, they’re not balanced now. It would be nice if they were.
Matthew it’s not important from a game mechanic standpoint
Shawn But, that’s the point of the wheel It will allow DMs/PCs to balance their magic systems by mixing and matching with complementary disciplines.
Matthew right
Shawn So, I need a medieval phrase for ‘synapse hacks.
Matthew Describe what that is again?
Shawn These are spells like ‘sleep’ and ‘power word stun’ and ‘power word kill’. Stuff that fucks with your body via your brain.
Matthew Ah, ok, so like Namshub stuff
Shawn Sort of, yeah. If 5e was to have a Namshub, it would definitely be an enchantment thing.
Matthew Aw man, that’d be a good name for the school as a whole
Shawn Too obscure for most.
Matthew What are the three categories, including synaptic hacks?
Shawn Attitude Adjustments, Onerous Assignments, and Synapse Hacks.
Matthew Ok, so emotions, commands, and …
Shawn body control
Matthew like abductions?
Shawn No, more like Body Snatchers.
Matthew body control is more like the onerous one
Shawn It wasn’t a judgement of how awful it was by comparison. Onerous Assignments is alliterative.
Matthew assonant
Shawn You’re an ass hat.
Matthew and what I meant is that when you say “body control” I think “onerous assignments” like puppetmastery
Shawn Onerous Assignments are generally types of compulsions. Not straight control of the body.
Matthew yeah, like suggestion and what not
Shawn Yeah. I have a spreadsheet that lists the spells by type.
Matthew well, you could say something like “Mind-Body Control”, which asserts the connection between enchantments of the mind affecting physical symptoms
Shawn I’d like to stay assonant, if possible. Easier to come up with an adjective, so we need the noun.
Matthew Uh, ok “Master-Blaster Tasker”
Shawn Evil Interferences?
Matthew don’t like “evil” That means something
Shawn Intense?
Matthew Hmmm
Shawn Need a general word for events like being forced to go to sleep, or got be stunned, or killed.
Matthew No no, there has to be a good one. I like “Interference” though
Shawn Intimate?
Matthew That sounds like you’re casting a spell to cock block the dude
Shawn HA! That would definitely be an enchantment.
Matthew Internal Interference?
Shawn I could do internal interference.
Matthew Yeah, I think that works well
Shawn Also I don’t care for sub-schools. It’s awkward.
Matthew The word sub-schools, or the concept?
Shawn The word.
Matthew Well, we can’t use “classes”
Shawn Nope. Courses? Disciplines?
Matthew “Veins” or “Shades” Gotta sound magicy
Shawn No. I mean, yes, magicky. But not veins or shades. It should sound collegiate.
Matthew Discipline works, but seems to high-level
Shawn Subsets? Too math-y. Agreed on ‘discipline’
Matthew ooo, “Forms” or “Arts”
Shawn Forms like Harry Potter. Oh, wait, those were levels. OWLs. Arts is too broad.
Matthew Branch. Branches?
Shawn Branches is okay. I like forms best so far.
Matthew I like forms too. Like “Healing is a Necromantic Form”
Shawn Yeah, forms. It would be nice to be able to do ‘colleges’ with ‘schools’, below them but it ain’t that way. I don’t want to try to change existing terms.
Matthew I concur
Shawn So, forms. Unless we think of something better.
Matthew Of course Everything we do has the implied “Unless we think of something better” asterisk
Shawn Duh. Does it work? “The School of Enchantment has three forms that cover its spell effects Attitude Adjustments, Onerous Assignments, and Internal Interferences.”
Matthew Yeah, that sounds good, actually. “What is Internal Interference?” “Oh, it’s a form of enchantment”
Shawn Okay. That’s honestly going to fuck me up a little, because ‘form’ is a synonym for ‘kata’ in kenpo.
Shawn I started the weekly chat dump. We’ll need to mine the logs and finish that up for Monday, assuming we’re going to stick with that. Is it getting any hits?
Matthew Yeah, 1 whole hit, which was probably me. I’m okay if we just don’t do it again. Seems like a fair amount of work for so little gain
Shawn Only 1 page view for that? That seems unlikely. Besides, I already found a bunch of pics of interesting dump trucks.
Matthew lol If you want to put the work in, go for it, man
Due to the last part I wanted to say please keep going,as a gamer I find the chat logs and in general the content of project arcana hilarious and dead on.
Thanks for the support, David!
Don’t worry, we’re still crunching hard on this stuff.