The number one thing I'd like to get clarified is: what is the permissible scope of magical effects? If you look at the ARC terms, each has more or less one effect mentioned per command. Is this supposed to be a restrictive set, or just examples of what is possible? If the former, this means that the might of Pathi's magic can be basically boiled down to 5 spells per element, which to me does not align with the theme of Pathi, which is "High Magic". Now, in literature there are certainly fantasy worlds where wizards are not prone to using it, Middle-Earth and Earthsea being examples. But I think with respect to this game, I think a more active wizardry is probably in order.

So, along the lines of this, if we keep the commands and terms design, I would propose that the commands give the basic flavor of what they do, e.g., control lets you move/fling the element, change lets you alter it form, within limits of the element (e.g., rock to sand or dirt, water to fog or ice(?)). The terms should then only document the per-command customizations (e.g., the alternate forms, creation limits, etc.).

But this flexibility also has issues, the main being, what are the limits of this color? When it comes to attacking someone or something, most probably wouldn't care what the color is, whether it's a fireball, flung rocks, a jet of water, etc. People expect this to be potentially damaging, and the form only dictates consequences. But often, magic is used for color, for example, I make ice cubes for my drink. Most wouldn't care about these. But then, what happens when color becomes a story effect? E.g., we need to cross a river or lake, and I postulate that since I can freeze water, I can make a path. I can legitimately see why this can be a problem, from being too convenient to being story-breaking.

In the end, this MUSH is about stories, IMHO. And we as players need to be cooperative with the storyteller (ST) and/or each other, even if it's an IC-adversarial situation. So, no power should just be allowed to "break" a plot—they can't take the time to cover all possible ins and outs as a ST, so while they should be flexible, so should we as players in the story also be flexible. Thus, my proposal is that we should use focus-invested power-tokens in conjunction with ST approval to use magic in a plot-affecting way. In the example I just gave, perhaps the ST might negotiate that it will take a little time to build that path magically, and during that time, the other players will have to fight to protect me. That allows the other players time to shine as well as me. By making this require a focus-invested token, I am given a "cost" so that I can only invoke such plot-effecting magic once in a while. And BTW, the ST is under no obligation to allow it, and it is up to them whether they think it rises to the level of needing a focus token at all.

In game terms, this means that the term gifts would be something like "token-3 power-token".

Next, I would like to mention that being an "adept" at Arcanis seems very point-intensive. Even "casual use" seems expensive, and maybe from a point of view of value, even more so. WHat I mean is this: to cast a single spell takes a minimum of 20 pts: BLD-PA (5), ARC-CT (5), ARC-commmand (5), ARC-term (5). AND if I want to actually attack someone with it, add in ARC-BM (5). If I want to have a bonus attacking, add ARC-BA (5). So that's 25-30 pts for a basic attack. Someone with a sword could do the same for 0-5 pts. In contrast, someone who is just attacking with fire could, I think, do it for 10-15: FIR-FR (5), FIR-WR (5), plus optionally FIR-WM (5).

I would propose to prune this tree a little. BLD-PA should grant ARC-CT so you need to only buy one. And ARC-BM should just go away, because you should be able to use spells for attack just like any other gift (I think it's uncommon to have a gift require another gift for attack purposes).

Next, there are not a lot of gifts with a bonus in ARC. The only one in the tree is ARC-BA. Now, I am not sure how many bonuses the "average character" has, but I only somehwat recently (talking in play time, since it really happened quite a while ago in real time) got MAG-SB, which is only applicable to magical duels. But regardless, IIRC, I was once presented with a +compare with someone who had 5 gifts with bonuses, one even at a-2 (BLK-SC), of which we don't have an equivalent. I'm being somewhat reticent to proposing more bonus gifts, but rather suggesting that balance of available bonus gifts should be evaluated. I might suggest that ARC-EM and/or ARC-SM could be given bonuses, and maybe even have the mastery gifts have an a-2 bonus.

If I totaled it up correctly, I have 100 pts in ARC gifts. Add in blood, MAG-SB, and the WAR magic gifts, and I have 125 points allocated, with seems pretty expensive. Again, I'm not sure what the average character has, so I'll just say that and we can compare :) Perhaps ARC-EM and ARC-SM could be 0 pts with the prereq that you need all the elements/commands, but not sure, especially if they are given bonuses.

In terms of new gifts, I would like to propose one where using a magical focus, e.g., the iconic wizard's staff, would give a bonus. The way I use mine, the crystal in the head glows when I cast a spell, so it makes it even more obvious from further away that I am doing so….

Lastly, we were talking on the org a fair amount about investigation skill gifts. I believe it's the case that the quality of "supernatural senses" were limited due to the fact that this also generally breaks plots, from experience in other games. On the other hand, without such things, it becomes difficult to act as an expert at analyzing items or other bespelled things or people. Most of the gifts limit you to just knowing the type of power involved (magic, pattern, etc.). So, it is difficult to progress further without the ST making the explicit decision that ones general background and knowledge is good enough to get detailed information, despite the lack of a gift. My position is that I would prefer to have gifts say that this is OK, but like the comment above, I think such gifts should never break a plot—they are pure ST plot devices to divulge secrets for the players to act on. Otherwise, we have the situation where the players might be uncomfortable asking the ST for more detailed info, and the ST wondering if they should really do it. The result is more inconsistency than I prefer.

I don't think any new gifts are absolutely necessary here. Just changed descriptions for the magic sense and MAG-AM gift would be needed.

So, thoughts? I left out bits from our org discussion about artificing. I'll let those who have a stronger view on it speak if they wish. Also, I am a straight wizard of Brass, so I can't claim any insight to any who are Custos or Alchemists. So please chime in if you wish.

And with any other realm, twice zero RP is still zero RP.

The argument that the PC population doesn't reflect the NPC reality is a dangerous slope, in my view. It makes it very difficult to open up a realm to RP, because the PCs are so 'special' as to be a completely ignorable minority. This puts the PC in the position of having to basically fight an immobile vacuum, where they can shout and fight all they want, nothing will actually change regarding their desires or situation.

If one is going to go that route, one should at least be able to make the PCs an actual 'class' of mages with rules that apply to them but not the general Pathi population - sort of an acknowledgment that most PCs just do not face the same situations as the Typical Pathian.

An option in that case might be to define the Exoterikos - or hey, if you want to say the Exoterikoi really do mostly stay in pathi compiling research, invent some OTHER class that means "mage who acquires information and conducts research outside of Pathi/gets involved in politics and events outside of Pathi", and start defining rules for that class which can benefit RP for the PCs while leaving the rest of Pathi in its isolationist shell.

Cos we might be Special as in rare, but we're also Special as in we can affect the world outside of Pathi - at least in theory. Pathi is not run by stupid people, just possibly paranoid people. If there are going to be people who leave Pathi *anyway*, people with ties to lands other than pathi, does it not seem intelligent and reasonable that the rulers of Pathi would find some way to treat this as a *resource*, even if officially it's disapproved of?

However, that would not, of course, reflect the PC population. We're all special :)

Another thing that makes a lot of the PCs special is that it seems like half or more have Amber blood, which makes them *very* special.

If you want to shake things up, have Pathi land on top of some other GC realm for a while :) Frankly, I don't know if its possible though, because I never learned any of the metaphysics of the place, even OOCly.

As for the Golden Hunter plot, it sounds interesting. One thing comes to mind though: most of the time, we don't /really/ fight with magic. We hurl around elements that were driven by magic. For example, one of my favorites was to create lava pebbles and shoot them at the target. Once accelerated, the rocks are real rocks, moving at real speed, and are hot as real lava. Is that a magical attack?

Another question is whether "magic immune" means "chaos immune"… :-P

In any case, I was never one looking for a fight.

I agree - pathi's IC isolationist policy has just about killed it as an RP venue. I do believe that it would benefit Pathi to work on altering the canon, as it were, to make it more accessible to non-pathians. There's also not a lot available to prospective players about Custos, so I've had to go with what little I know of them. (I think I've only met one PC custos, and she wasn't usually with her mage.)

Before I went on hiatus I had permission to take over the Golden Hunter plot, and I am still toying with the idea of Pathi deciding it's become so isolated and magic-dependent that a faction arises to *force* its borders somewhat more open - at the very least, to the level that Jade grants a sort of "status of personhood" to non-Jadians it likes. If people can't GO to Pathi to RP, and people can't READ about Pathi to understand it (even OOCly) the prop…well, it withers.

The mages that I've encountered were *not* all Testers - I think only one of the mages I met/worked with was a Tester. Mostly they seemed to go to Pathi to learn, and then take that knowledge back to their other-Shadow, either to rule it or defend it or whatever. Quinlan himself isn't a Tester; he's actually more…I think the word was "exoterikos", mage who is actually interested in researching the universe outside of Pathi (and, frankly, of the Golden Circle). Such mages could totally use a Custos (or two? is more than one allowed per mage?) and it's not unreasonable to think they might find people they think could handle the work outside of Pathi.

The Golden Hunter, as I understood it, is immune to magical attack. Thus, his appearance is a real *problem* for a Pathi whose Academy of Iron appears to be badly weakened (I seem to recall hearing a lot of the Academy of Iron got wiped out against the Black Road). Could this be used as a reasonable IC wedge to open Pathi up a bit more both IC and OOC?

Since most/all Custos came from Pathi, and everyone in Pathi is magically gifted, I think that is therefore true for all Custos. Now "magically gifted" may not mean a wizard, though my Custos was a mage as well. I suppose that should mean BLD-PA, but that is chargen-only. I guess MAG-SE would be OK as well, but that has some fairly high prereqs. I would probably tend towards being permissive, but then again, I'm not the propco…

ICly, it should probably be more surprising than not for a non-Pathi to have ever heard the term, much less meet one. After all, Pathis are supreme isolationists (well, except for those … Amberites!) and only a handful traveled outside—and most of those were Testers (which I was). My best guess is that in a given year maybe only 20-30 Pathis ever travelled, and not all had Custos (I didn't, for example).

In retrospect, having Pathi be isolationist and off-limits sounded a lot cooler than it was really practical. I think it made it a mostly "dead" place for RP. The Black Road invasion brought some badly needed socialization to the place.

Whatever you can do to rebuild interest in Pathi is great. But I notice from the +rwho that not many of us play much these days, so you'd be starting almost from scratch. That could be a liberating aspect, perhaps, as it leaves everything a much more open book.

Also, most new Pathians are mages, not custos. I'd really like to see more custos - I'd really like to see more bonded pair *Pathians*. And I think a way to do that is to open up Pathi a bit. It's already possible to be a 'late blooming mage' - that is, take the ARC-CT gift outside of chargen. Unless you've saved up a LOT of points from chargen, such mages are always going to be behind the chargen (raised in Pathi) mages; it basically takes nearly a year to cast one simple spell, two years if you have to include all the prereqs. That's two OOC years, and that's enough Special time for chargen, I think. Probably more than enough. MUSH time is supposed to be faster than RL, not slower.

It may've been getting around that I've tried getting a not-from-chargen custos at least once, too. This, however, which you'd think would be easier than a not-from-chargen mage, is actually harder; the gift is chargen locked. I think this rather unfairly limits the role of custos to "alt designed specifically for one character", rather than allowing organic relationships to form.

We are, again, talking Years Of Training - but Custos is merely a five point gift. Which, past chargen, means five months RL time. Is this too short, for someone coming to the gift 'cold'? We could add prereqs - say magicsense is required, or a fight bit (meaning the Academy of Iron doesn't have to teach you to fight PERIOD, just add the necessary skills to fight as a CUSTOS). Or a fight-lore requirement, or a quest where one gets signoffs from the mage one wants to be custos to, some training scenes with the academy of iron, tests of ability… or some combination of all of the above.

I think the custos is a very neat idea, and I think Pathi would be served as a prop by allowing it a better chance to be demonstrated in RP. Right now when I bring the term up to someone who hasn't played a Pathian, I get "What's a custos?" in return.

The prop is unlikely to grow if we're just the Land of Squishy Mages. (Men In Skirts Division.) I think that the option should be there, particularly since there are often fighting-type characters around who find themselves wondering what to do, how to grow. We could make 'custos' an option (provided there's a mage around for them to be a custos TO) and Pathi as a prop could possibly gain some IC weight on the grid.

Thoughts?

If one goes the WAR gift route, WAR-AM (Artillery) and WAR-BM (Battlefield) can make token-3 and token-6 bonus-token story-tokens, respectively. However, I normally consider such to be "large area effects", so while I might use those in a particular situation for a bonus, the color that goes along with it is that it affects more than just a single target.

Of course, it is possible to get other bonus gifts, but those are not magic-related, but rather situational. So, I've been thinking about trying to design a (or some) new gift(s) that could be an a-2 class bonus (+6) and/or focus-based bonus. One might consider this to be a magical FGT-like gift, perhaps.

I was wondering if anyone had started along this path, so we don't duplicate efforts. Also, if anyone has any ideas about the color involved with these gifts, or the mechanics, I'd be interested in hearing them.

Note you don't need BM to fight with it, BM gives you an advantage because you're trained how to fight with it…but you can fight without it. You're just not as fast or adept. (This was vital clarification made for mages that fought before the BM & BA were created)

Really? I didn't know that. I thought that you couldn't really use anything as a "direct" attack without at least ARC-BM (Battlemage, which existed from the beginning of the game, btw — I've had ARC-BA, Battlemaster, since the beginning myself). Battlemage gives no bonus, but Battlemaster does.

Arm's length: Would make that "an additional arm's length" to avoid confusion that the Term has to be able to be touched by the mage. (Meaning within range of being touched without moving, not HAS to be touched.) I am assuming the Terms can be affected outside of touching range, even if it's only an extra arm's length. (This actually flies in the face of past scenes, especially the Bug Invasion, where it seemed to be line-of-sight. I cannot confirm if this is in the rules as they currently stand, as I am typing this up from work.)

I wrote this up this way so that it gave a reason to hybridize ARC-SP (Space) with regular spells—that provides the rationale for attacks completely at range (if you can see the description, you'll know why).

I don't have a particular stance against ARC-EM, myself. But I think that without "metalanguage" to describe what the commands do, rather than have all these specific effects per-element, it really muddies the water as to what the hybrids can do.

The one write-up I do have a bit of a sentiment against is the scrying aspect of understand water. Our magic should have nothing to do with mirrors—it should solely be a water effect, but too much time has passed for that. I'd just like to turn the ship a bit back to a more watery basis.

"If it can be created at range, then a mage knowing just ARC-FI ARC-CR ARC-BM can attack with it."
*Note you don't need BM to fight with it, BM gives you an advantage because you're trained how to fight with it…but you can fight without it. You're just not as fast or adept. (This was vital clarification made for mages that fought before the BM & BA were created)

"My opinion is that since Pathi is supposed to represent "high magic", and its wizards renowned and perhaps feared, that being limited to only the effects mentioned are not in-theme. "
*Wholeheartedly agree.

*Arm's length: Would make that "an additional arm's length" to avoid confusion that the Term has to be able to be touched by the mage. (Meaning within range of being touched without moving, not HAS to be touched.) I am assuming the Terms can be affected outside of touching range, even if it's only an extra arm's length. (This actually flies in the face of past scenes, especially the Bug Invasion, where it seemed to be line-of-sight. I cannot confirm if this is in the rules as they currently stand, as I am typing this up from work.)

*I should point out I'm predjudiced against EM, because I feel that's micromanaging the "big powerful feared wizards" aspect into a point of dimishing returns. Someone who's good at water should be able to create fog without this…direct it, no, not without Air and control/SM, but they shouldn't need to spend the points to get this as well. They're not hybrids, they're states. Mud is earth with water in it, but you're not joining the water to the earth. Lava is a state of earth. Steam is water that's very hot and has vaporized, not a hybrid of fire & water. Rather, I'd prefer to see Elementalist refer to being able to affect two terms at he same time…one can multitask terms, with SM being for multitasking commands.

"It seems a bit incongruous that Create is used to create wind, which seems more like forming an elemental stream, and thus would be an effect of Control." Agreed!

"Again, stopping a wind seems more like an effect of Control. "
*I believe both could be applied here.

"The inability to maintain a bubble of air against an unfavorable environment was a ruling given as the result of a +submit. However, compared with the ability to control a globe of water or fire, I might request this be reconsidered as it is somewhat inconsistent."
*Again, agree

Fire: " They might be able to toss a book into a fire, and know it as if they had read it, but from ashes the wizard would only know that a book had been burned, its title, and general subject matter."
When did this change? We used to joke about Brand tossing books in the fire to read them. I love the idea of burning papers and books being a bad idea if you want to destroy them, if a Pathi's at hand.

Gift: ITM-AF - Arcanis Focus
Cost: 5
Powerbits: bonus-token token-3
Prerequisites: GP-ARCANIS/5 PICK+2:ARC-BA.ARC-EM.ARC-SM

An Arcanis adept is able to use a magical focus, crafted through a combination of Alchemy and Arcanis. The focus may take many forms, though all must be obviously carried, and when utilized, are obviously tied to the spell-casting (e.g., glowing, emitting a sound, etc.) in a mundane way. The adept becomes somewhat dependent on the focus, his powers increasing with it, but decreasing without it.

• If separated from the focus, an Adept will know the general direction and distance to it.

• A focus is a considerable item of power, and is resistant to breakage by mundane means. Great force or arcane means must be brought to bear to accomplish this.

• A focus, if made of a controllable element (earth, air, fire, or water), may be granted some minor color effects. For example, an stone staff may balance itself in an upright position, one made of water may be collapsed to a sphere, etc.

• "Normal" spells take less effort to cast. The difference is mostly a color effect, and only becoming relevant after extreme extended use. If a mage loses his focus, or tries to cast without it, however, the effort is much greater (which is also just a color effect)

• At the cost of extra effort, an adept may achieve an enhanced effect — maybe twice the normal for just color effects. In combat, "squad-level" area effects may be negotiated, but this is still just color — it cannot be used to attack more than one "significant" characters simultaneously, nor does it afford a bonus. However, it may be used against a grouping of "unranked" NPCs (and a single "significant" individual).

• At the cost of extreme effort, or prior preparation, an adept may concentrate an extended effect into one, concentrated spell. This is represented by a 3-focus token that may be consumed for a bonus. The target must be primarily a single individual, though effects on minor characters and/or color in the immediate vicinity may be negotiated on a case-by-case basis.

• With Arcanis Ritual, an adept may prepare a ritual and store it within the focus. This allows the adept to cast the ritual in battlefield situations (though it is not instant), and thus may negotiate its applicability in RP or on the flagpole. However, such usage is dependent on prior preparation, or at least sufficient undisturbed time (no combat, no travel) in order to store the ritual. Therefore, the use of such an ARC-RT token should be inspected to ensure that its creation meets this requirement.

OK, some rationales:

• A number of characters have Arcanis, but no focus. Therefore, I rationalized it by saying that this is an advanced skill, for adepts (where that means two out of Battlemaster, Elementalist, or Spellmaster).
• It's mainly color. Perhaps fancy color in the ability to attack more than one mook at a time, but that is probably something that's already possible.
• I'd try to keep it at a 5-point level. The extension of the ARC-RT to war magic status is certainly an enhancement, but not overly so, particularly with the caveat that the token must be "prepared". So, the major in-game benefit is probably the bonus token. Given how expensive Arcanis is to get to an adept level, I'd really like to keep the point cost down.

If you look at the blood gifts, they do tend to limit a jack-of-all-trades aspect. Generally, you have to pay a lot extra points to get more than one line, so it's not unprecedented. If I recall, the Cibola one is completely exclusive of all others, in fact.

But to me, having the blood of dragons is a great story hook that is sitting out there to develop at some time.

However, there's a bigger question that is going to come up. Is Arcanis really something that someone can "pick up" in the time frame of the game? This will matter if an existing PC wishes to learn it outside of chargen. I know I have generally talked ICly about the years of study, and how we generally only take the young. For playability, I can see allowing advancement in almost all of the gifts, but what about the base ability of ARC-CT? It would seem to make sense for it to be a chargen-only ability, but I can see why we might let this slide too.

My feeling is that it isn't necessary. What play and literature I've seen implies that the talent is fairly rare, and as is, GMs aren't going to hand someone ARC-CT without some sort of RP backing it up. Adding descent from dragons as a requirement is ultimately going to limit the play option of someone with a bizarre background that precludes dragon descent (son of a god, born of a river, grown in a vat, etc), but (IMO) doesn't really seem to add any significant color.

I don't feel that a gala/ball/masquerade/chit chat party is Pathi flavored. More leaning towards Kynan's idea. On the other hand, we could have events for set purposes. Randomness does not feel Pathi. We could drug some special fire units Corwin have during the party and borrow a bullet or two. :P

On the other side, the commune is such a bother. I guess we have secretaries who sit near a mirror/water pool all the time getting calls on our behalf.

I like the idea that we revere dragons and lament on their decline, it would create some conflicts other than us vs BR npcs with the rest of the mush. Though we'd need to backpeddle some things with many prop cos.

So, do we as a culture look upon dragons as simply the tool that taught us magic, or do we have a reverence about them? Some recent additions to GL-Pathi lore suggest the latter, I think.

I notice that some dragons are being run into at the moment. The above becomes an important cultural motivation if we decide to revere them, as we would probably look to protect dragon-kin. (In a previous post, I've even suggested maybe that it is the blood of dragons that is what allows for skill with Arcanis.) Pathi environmentalists, anyone?

And without being specific, if we revere dragons, and lament on their decline and almost extinction, we might have a long-standing feud with/dislike of a certain faction in Amber, so we should consider this carefully.

To learn Arcanis, OOCly you basically just need to get ARC-CT. ARC-CT has as prereqs:

• CHARGEN BLD-PA
• GP-ARCANIS/1
• GL-PATHI/3

GL-PATHI/1 has the prereq of GL-GC/4. Thus, technically it's not all that hard.

However, this leads to questions based on our actual background. Obviously, since we go out in search of people with "the gift", and since it seems that anyone with Pathi blood tends to have it as well, the capability to learn Arcanis is as much "genetic" as intellectual.

ICly, I think it makes sense (and would be cool) if we could stipulate that in order to learn Arcanis, you need some blood of dragons. Does that mean it should be a required thing to have BLD-PA? I'm not entirely sure. I'd be willing to let that slide, but perhaps with an IC note that generally speaking, you can't just teach someone Arcanis. PCs get to "have the blood" if they want, but that is not true of the general (NPC) population. In other words, someone can't go out and start an Arcanis University in Amber, and expect that to work…

If so, I was thinking along these lines:

• ITM-MF Magical focus

The idea is to see if maybe this is a 0-pt item, as it's fancy color with both minor pluses and minuses. On the plus side, it makes magic a little easier: less tiring, a bit more powerful (maybe up to 2x the effect). However, this is largely color, and doesn't have a direct effect. On the minus side, a focus should be obvious, and casting magic should include a visible effect (e.g., glowing). This is a small added downside to Arcanis, since it already has to be audible.

• ARC-FA Focus amplification
  • Powerbits: bonus-token token-3
  • Prerequisites: ITM-MF ARC-BM (maybe ARC-RT)

Using effort combined with a ITM-MF, the effect of a spell can be amplified, giving a bonus. The visual effect with the focus should be posed in quite a pronounced way.

• ARC-SS Stored spell (name still a bit TBD)
  • Powerbits: token-3
  • Prerequisites: ITM-MF ARC-RT

The idea here is to make spells that are somewhat less powerful than a ritual, but that could be prepared beforehand and stored in the focus. Or maybe, that could be cast with minimal preparation in the field. These would not have story-scope like full rituals.

Comments?

Thanks in advance :)

• Pathi is isolated — no outsider traders would be allowed access
• Pathi traders are wizards who both know how to Walk, and want to — this has been stated to be a low number
• Pathi has no access to transit powers that would allow for easy shipments of goods
• Pathi traders use small, single-crewed ships — no large cargoes

Thus, I can come to no other conclusion than that Pathi has to be self-sufficient for day-to-day living. From there, I simply used Greece as a template for what they produced. This is somewhat logical too, as ancient Greek city-states did not trade heavily, and so their agriculture was largely self-sufficient.

An appropriate candidate would probably need to be a Pathi resident, or have been one for much of the recent past.

Anyone interested, talk to me or Brand.

Change specifically allows you to:

… change the nature of air itself, thickening it, making it harder to pass through. This is not much more than an inconvenience for most, but it allows the creation of barriers that are effective against light projectiles.

For that to be true, it would have to slow a projectile (I'm guessing that means even a streamlined one like an arrow) considerably. That's what gave me the idea that it might control a fall.

If you have battlemage, I think you can probably swing various sorts of offense and defense stuff with Earth, provided you do the chanty bit. There's a show, Avatar: The Last Airbender, that has some neat visuals that might be appropriate for an earth-wielding arcanis battlemage. Though, less martial-artsy and more mage-y, I guess. I would venture we can create and throw rocks, summon up small clods of earth to parry blows, trip our opponents, etc. No need for proper shields. :)

mud to stone: Well, change is sort of like stone -> clay -> stone, which is about as cool. If you blend earth + water, then destroy the water, you've got hard, dry dirt, which isn't quite stone, but still kind of hard?

Finally, I think we need to clarify if metals are allowed. I guess the caveat is that things like making gold was to be avoided. But on the other hand, controlling/changing metals seems to not be too out of bounds?

• The caveat on using Create to provide breathable air in a closed area would seem to be negatable using Destroy (and to a lesser extent, Change—by concentrating the bad elements into a small area).
• Can Create + Control be used to provide breathable air in a somewhat open space, like underwater or in a low-pressure environment (like a high mountain, or smoky/poisonous outdoor area)? I would vote yes.
• I think it's pretty clear that no method of using Air can allow true flight. However, by using Change's density control, it would seem that one could use that to safely fall from most distances? And if that is the case, an iffy-er proposition would be to allow a very weird method of running and psuedo-jumping across a chasm.

I haven't tried to commune with arcanis un+wa yet, so I don't know what the current message strings are, but one of my alts can attest that a well-configured commune gift can concisely describe the limitations of the gift through the message strings.

It looks like the configurable points for commune messaging are:
attempt To initiator, on attempt.
xattempt To receiver, on attempt.
fail To initiator, on failure.
succ To initiator, on success.
xsucc To receiver, on success.
finish To participants, on commune end.
prefix Prefix you see when you talk.
xprefix Prefix they see when you talk.
rprefix Prefix they see when they talk.
rxprefix Prefix you see when they talk.
(from +help commune admin)

So I would suggest expanding the scope of the proposed change to include any necessary adjustments to the messaging strings.

The first is simple — add a capability similar to that of Air and Earth. This is probably not so much a change as just something it should be able to do, in comparison with the other gifts.

The character may see through water as if it were air, and able to enhance their vision to see over great distance. It also allows them awareness of anything that is touching the body of water — for this to function, the water must be reasonably contiguous and whole — a lake or a river — unless the character is also an elementalist.

The latter would allow viewing through fog or steam, for example.

The second is somewhat problematic, as it would be a change. The current method of scrying/communing requires a reflective surface that is currently reflecting the image of the subject — plus that image has to be reasonably clear and whole. Practically speaking, that has to be a mirror—people are rarely in a position to see themselves over a pool of water. Mirrors give the wrong "feel" to me, as there is an entire class of magic surrounding it. Also, think about how ovten you can reasonable think of seeing yourself in a mirror during a day — the caster might have to attempt this for hours on end. And on the other side, if the person is in a reflection, there's no IC way to refuse. Now we can get around those by simply using RP convenience. The caster just happened to try when the person just happened to be in front of a mirror, and not when it might be inconvenient for them. Of course this can have some amusing consequences at times, but that seems to be outweighed as you come to realize just how unlikely it happens to be. And consider if you are travelling — would anyone but a Pathi set up a mirror during rest stops just in case? Remember, it is not enough to have a mirror near — the person must be able to see their image, because that is what the caster would see.

So, I would propose that it makes more sense to bring this ability to its roots—namely, water. When the caster speaks the name of the person over their scrying pool, that call emanates from the closest water object in plain sight to the person called. This is audible, and the volume somewhat proportional to the size of that object. They answer that call by speaking the name of the caster. Only then does the image form in that water, and the conversation started.

This doesn't change the ability power-wise, but I think it fits better into RP. I suppose for continuity we don't need to get rid of the mirror definition, if that is a big problem. But we would commonly rely on the water linkage instead. So, instead of us having mirrors all over the place in our homes and buildings, we would have scrying pools. As we travel, perhaps many of us wear an earring from which hangs a small globe of water. And so on. It also provides an IC way for the person called to refuse — just don't say the caster's name.

However, I just realized that this does change one thing: You can no longer rely on starting a conversation with someone who OOCly agrees, but ICly would not. Perhaps we could define a method to do this, something that fits more in with the concept of "scrying" rather than just "communicating".

How about Friday, 25-Jan at midnight GMT, 7pm EST, 4pm PST?

If you would rather not create a Wikidot user to post with, you can +mail the org.

Weekends are possible, just not set in stone.

To me, the current names also suggests kitchen staff are being compared (favorably) researchers of out-of-Pathi secrets, which I'm guessing wasn't the intent? Tribunals also suggests a great deal of bureaucracy, which may or may not be antithetical to the process of conducting research. :) Just my two cents.

I'd also suggest switching the "inner" and "outer" circles (or maybe even calling the current "Tribunals" as "inner circle"). "Inner circle" usually connotes someone close to the center of things.