I imagine much like Teleologic Sorcery corrupting the Moon Mages' link to the plane of probability, their confound, Antinomic Sorcery is going to penalize the Clerics' link to the Immortals, AKA max devotion attainable.

Continuing the analogy to Teleologic, it could probably do Commune-like effects as spells and in so doing teach Theurgy as well as Sorcery.

As for what it would actually DO mechanically that isn't already covered by the vast arsenal that is the Cleric's repertoire of spells, I don't know. Clerics have plenty of stuff they do just fine without needing to resort to High Sorcery.

Kaeta Airtag

"I have faith in the current crop of GMs to not screw people over"

>>Actually an opinion cannot be changed or corrected. Nice try back of line.-VERATHOR
>>But it can be wrong.-Starlear

>I imagine much like Teleologic Sorcery corrupting the Moon Mages' link to the plane of probability, their confound, Antinomic Sorcery is going to penalize the Clerics' link to the Immortals, AKA max devotion attainable.

I dunno. Devotion works a bit differently for clerics, and screwing with it could pretty much cripple a cleric, I'd rather hope it didn't do anything like that. Maybe it'll simply consume devotion like communes?

If we view devotion as essential 'pull', or good will from, the gods, it'd make sense that screwing with the basic rules there would consume it.

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I'm a badger, I be badgerin'

Eh, I'd hope the GMs will steer clear of anything that really cripples devotion or theurgy training mechanics for now, since we only have one way to train theurgy (that is, communes) which is powered by one pool, devotion, if they get too agressive with this it could result in people not being able to circle because they can't train their required skill.

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I'm a badger, I be badgerin'

>Eh, I'd hope the GMs will steer clear of anything that really cripples devotion or theurgy training mechanics for now, since we only have one way to train theurgy (that is, communes) which is powered by one pool, devotion, if they get too agressive with this it could result in people not being able to circle because they can't train their required skill.

That's why Teleologic Sorcery teaches Astrology, and a good reason why Antinomic Sorcery would teach Theurgy.

>In practice, it will deal with the truly esoteric grey areas of religion

It's not so much sorcerers being "bad" (although they are), it's more like, hrm, someone taking a watch part to see how it really works without having the tools or knowledge to put it back together, compared to just using the watch and maybe putting in a battery every now and then.

Kaeta Airtag

"I have faith in the current crop of GMs to not screw people over"

>>Actually an opinion cannot be changed or corrected. Nice try back of line.-VERATHOR
>>But it can be wrong.-Starlear

I feel like we're getting a little sidetracked from the original question.

>>Since Raesh was asked to create a system similar to Teleologic Sorcery when Antinomic Sorcery is released I fear you are destined to be irritated.

Eh. Not so much create a system as leave some of the mechanical ties loose enough for the Teleologic system that the other high sorcery systems can tie into it if need be. Will Antinomic Sorcery cause some sort of corruption and interact with devotion? Likely, but plans aren't set in stone to my knowledge.

>>Teleologic Sorcery currently does this in the same was as any other sorcery spell (well, not the same way, Raesh told me it was a different calculation. In the end you still get to blow your arms off once in a while).

Yeah, technically it's a different calculation but the same can be said for almost everything going on with Teleologic Sorcery that makes it "seem" like a sorcery but still be a spell you can permanently learn as a Moon Mage. There's a lot of slight of hand going on under the hood to get them to look right by the time you guys see them (Though I did replace some of the approximations with better approximations with 3.0, such as Lunar/Elemental vs Lunar/Holy mana levels). Clerical and Warrior Mage Sorcery shouldn't need quite as much slight of hand since their mana systems are less complex.

Either way, Antinomic Sorcery is Sorcery. It's gonna have the same risks as any Sorcery.

>>Non clerics will not be able to use Antinomic Sorceries based on current magic theory as I understand it. All high sorceries require a confound and are, therefore, by definition limited to a single guild.

Yup. High Sorcery is limited to the Guild it belongs to. It's hard to speak about Warrior Mages and Clerics for sure, but in the case of Moon Mages part of this is because it's so fundamentally wrapped up in their confound (their connection to the Plane of Probability).

>>If you look at what Teleologic Sorcery does, it tends to fill gaps in the Moon Mage repertoire.

That's somewhat incidental. Most of the Teleologic spells are very much designed on "What if a spell did this with probability? What would the mechanical ramifications of that be?". There's really no reason Moon Mages couldn't have, for example, a stat debuff in another spellbooks. Tezirah's Veil didn't move spellbooks because the 2.1 function wasn't something Moon Mages shouldn't do (though it was poorly balanced), but because the description of it and the effect of it were poorly matched and we decided to go with maintaining the description since it made for a more unique spell.

That said, I recall a discussion where it was mentioned that if we were going to stretch guild boundaries somewhat the High Sorceries are the most likely place we'd do it. One of the problems with the concept was that it would imply Teleologic Sorcery should be good at AoE (the major Moon Mage weakness) - and while there's a few Teleologic AoE spells that have bounced through proposals none of them have been approved yet (One isn't very well defined and the other was grossly overpowered) and it's not really what the spellbook is about. On the flipside a lot of the really signature Moon Mage stuff (Travel, prediction, invisiblity) and to a lesser degree cleric stuff (Resurrection and playing with the dead) are things we're really wary of sharing meaning this ends up being "Clerics and Moon Mages get to steal Warrior Mage's thunder (and chain lightning)" which is hardly something we want to do.

-Raesh

"Ever notice that B.A.'s flavor text swells in direct proportion to how much one of our characters is getting screwed?" - Brian Van Hoose

>>The messaging for attempting to cast a Teologic spell as a non-moon-mage is pretty cool, and a nice touch that it doesn't just not work...

Yeah, it is. Unfortunately it's likely going away since I fixed the scroll system so TS spells can be signature and still spawn in the system (This was why they weren't signature before). Making them signature fixes some other headaches however.

Anyhow we're vastly afield of anything resembling a cleric topic.

-Raesh

"Ever notice that B.A.'s flavor text swells in direct proportion to how much one of our characters is getting screwed?" - Brian Van Hoose

>Since Raesh was asked to create a system similar to Teleologic Sorcery when Antinomic Sorcery is released I fear you are destined to be irritated. Look at it this way, High Sorceries are intended to provide tempting (but not core) benefits at a high cost. You are supposed to think long and hard before delving into high sorcery because of that price. A major sorcery "limiter" is inevitable and it is inevitable that it is one you will likely be unhappy about paying.

I don't mind drawbacks (and obviously expect them, especially of [S]orcery). However, there is a huge difference between a high-cost spell and schmuck bait. It needs to be a cost that someone out there is willing to pay, or else it just becomes a spell that no one will ever use.

I'm both curious and worried to see what they have planned. I'm just hoping that it's something at least partially usable instead of a dustmagnet that exists simply to prove that kind of Sorcery exists.



And for the sake of saying, I imagine Antinomic might hurt Commune potency/exp in the way Teleologic effects Prediction potency/exp, but maybe not.

>>>Antinomic Sorcery is the corruption of cosmologic Law, while the other high sorceries are corruptions of Meaning and Form. In practice, it will deal with the truly esoteric grey areas of religion ("Are Dergati and Huldah the 'parents' of the World Dragon?") and strange myths twisted into manifestation that are not quite in sync with reality ("What really happens when you Fade?").

>>So having been thinking about our Clerical brand of Sorcery a bit lately, I started to realize that I'm not really sure what corruptions of cosmological Law would really manifest as where spells are concerned. So, I thought I'd ask and see what everyone else thought about it. Any ideas on what it actually means or how spells of that nature would work, etc?

I've been thinking of starting a new character as a Cleric who is interested in the more heretical/sorcery side of the Guild, so even if Antinomic Sorcery is no where close to being out I've been starting to think about this.

If an aspect of Teleologic Sorcery for Moon Mages is the idea that instead of just perceiving the web of fate and the future you're actually imposing your own will onto fate, I could see how a corruption of cosmological Law is the Cleric's imposing of his or her own will on the Divine.

Has anyone read Robert Jackson Bennett's book City of Stairs? Absolutely great book, the technology is just a bit more modern than Dragonrealms with its use of gunpowder and early industrialization, but it still has an interesting feel to it.

Without too many spoilers, part of the plot is a pantheon of defeated/kill deities who had previously interacted heavily with society, similar to Elanthia. The story refers to some situations where it seems like the mythology believed in contradictory things, the equivalent of in Therengia it was believed that Dergati and Huldah are the parents of the World Dragon, but over in Ilithi there's another myth. And if somehow you talked to the World Dragon in Therengia he'd say "Yep, Dergati and Huldah are my parents" but over in Ilithi he would tell you something different. Additionally, while the history of the world is driven top-down by the decisions of the deities (Hey, let's stop fighting over religious differences!) a closer look at history reveals that the deities were instead adopting the views and perspectives that their worshippers were already coming around to. So the deities, far from being independent beings, were reflections of those that worshipped them.

The idea with Antinomic Sorcery could be that the Cleric is using specific areas of religion where there may be some dispute or strange myths, and using that to impose his or her will on the divine and how they would normally act and behave. So the outcome could be similar to communes, but with abilities that are slightly off from what you'd expect from the Immortal being called on.

This could also explain why your Devotion is taking some sort of hit. You relationship with the Divine is being undermined because you're playing up aspects of mythology that aren't widely believed, so YOUR version of the Immortals is now different than the version known at the local altar.

As for abilities, wasn't it said at one point that the only combat companion spell open to Clerics would be Sorcery? Summoning undead would be too far out of line for even a Cleric dabbling in High Sorcery, so I wonder what sort of companion would be summoned.

>>I often wonder what cleric high sorcery would look like, since they say that the high sorceries deal with corruption of what the guild typically does. Would that mean that you corrupt the God/Servant relationship and attempt to force your will upon the Divine? Does it mean you attempt to go against the nature of life/death and souls going towards the spiral and rebirth by either destroying a spirit entirely or preventing it from doing what it naturally would? Is it shifting worship from the established Divines in power and call upon entities that the Divines themselves are at odds with?

>>Would enslaving a spirit to force it to fight be considered necromancy or clerical sorcery? I know it isn't the realm of the philosophers, but would this sooner appear in a cleric spell or a non-Philosopher necromancy spell?

Yeah, if Necromancers didn't already exist I could see the case that a Cleric sorcery would involve going against the cycle of life and death and delving into spiritual necromancy (Necromancers are physical, summoning zombies and such, not spiritual, summoning ghosts and such). But the in-game lore is so heavy on the Immortals HATING the undead created by others, a Cleric dabbling in this would risk being annihilated, not just shunned by the powers that be. There's got to be something socially distasteful but still viable.

So if Clerics are all God-Servant, "Thy will be done," why not the corruption being an inversion, the Gods as OUR servants, "My will be done." Not by going to entities outside of the Immortals, but by imposing your sense of reality onto the Immortals. But limited, you're still a mere Cleric, so you can only nudge reality. So with the right rituals and chants you can recreate the tale of Kerenhappuch and Kertigen, trick the craftsman god again (doesn't he learn!?) and bring down the powers of her many colored skirt to attract creatures to a room, or seduce them into servitude, or something.

>>So if Clerics are all God-Servant, "Thy will be done," why not the corruption being an inversion, the Gods as OUR servants, "My will be done."

In real-life Theurgy (such as it is), there is a symbol that means "all that is base refined and given to the divine." If you invert it, it means "all that is divine debased and used for worldly purposes."

Can't exactly make a spell out of it, but it's a nice thought.

-Armifer
"Perinthia's astronomers are faced with a difficult choice. Either they must admit that all their calculations were wrong ... or else they must reveal that the order of the gods is reflected exactly in the city of monsters." - Calvino Italo

>>In real-life Theurgy (such as it is), there is a symbol that means "all that is base refined and given to the divine." If you invert it, it means "all that is divine debased and used for worldly purposes."

Would that symbol be the pentacle?

Saw this post and had to ask - where does one find out this meaning of the pentacle?

It's all in Wikipedia these days.