Eldritch Magic in ACKS II

Ceremonies, Spell Lists, and Availability

The Heroic Fantasy Handbook is perhaps my favorite RPG supplement of all time, and the heart and soul of it lies in eldritch magic, a new magic type to combine and replace arcane and divine magic. Classic heroic fantasy fiction seems to make little fundamental distinction between sorcerers and priests; goeteia differs from theurgy or magia primarily in its alignment, rather than its mechanics. And so eldritch magic combines the powers, and the constraints, and becomes a fantastically thematic element of setting design that transforms the default D&D flavor into something grandiosely epic.

My current and longest running campaign, the Shattered Lands, uses eldritch magic exclusively. We adopted many variations and participated intensely in the playtesting of ACKS II, but now those rules are stable once more, and I’m reviewing my houserules and updates and compatibility notes to standardize them. Over the years, I’ve added a number of custom spells, and worked out a couple large scale rebuilds of the eldritch spell list from the ground up, and at some point I may be persuaded to share those, but for now I’m focused on the spells within the HFH and ACKS II.

This post is not at all intended to teach about eldritch and ceremonial magic; the HFH does a good job of that. Rather, it will equip a Judge, having read that book, to update it to ACKS II in broad strokes. I have already updated the classes therein, so here we’ll focus on the nuances of eldritch and ceremonial magic themselves.

Mechanics of Eldritch Ceremonies

In terms of the actual mechanics of eldritch and ceremonial magic, little needs to change substantively. Those systems were created to be independent, and nothing fundamental has changed in the Imperial Imprint that would alter that. The spell progressions work fine as they stand. Really, the only major change is that complex ceremonies should take eight hours rather than six, due to the change in the duration of a dedicated action.

That said, in my experience with eldritch magic, a couple of houserules have presented themselves as very valuable constraints.

First, rather than the ability to perform ceremonies being an all-or-nothing phenomenon, I have changed it so that each point of stigma gained reduces the maximum level of ceremony that can be performed from repertoire (and the maximum level of spell that can be cast, for caster-ceremonialists). For example, a 5th level loremaster has a repertoire of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd level ceremonies. If he takes one point of stigma, then he can no longer perform 3rd level ceremonies from his repertoire. When he takes a second point, he loses access to 2nd level ceremonies, and on a third (and final) point, he loses access to 1st level ceremonies. Casting ceremonies out of repertoire is supremely perilous and comes up very rarely.

Incidental to the above, I’ve also found it useful to make each night of rest purge only a single point of stigma, to lean into the longer timeframes that ceremonialism tends toward; I aesthetically like the outcomes of this, but it’s not particularly important to broader balance and not doing that works fine as well.

This is also a soft nerf to caster-ceremonialists, who are nonetheless extremely powerful (and admittedly, pay a considerably higher XP cost).

Second, the Contemplation proficiency occurs on many ceremonialist spell lists but is never defined in how it interacts with ceremonies. It is intuitive to conclude that it lets them purge a point of stigma, but the critically important caveat to that is that it can be used once per purging of stigma, not once per day. Otherwise, someone can charge trinkets endlessly, purging their accumulated stigma one point per day to avoid any limit save expense on charged trinkets. Additionally, caster-ceremonialists who take the proficiency must choose at the time they take it whether it will apply to their spells or their ceremonies, but not both (unless they take it a second time).

Last, more as a general note for building custom classes, I will say that the nature of the classes in which they occur is important to the balance of caster-ceremonialists — only available to universally hated Zaharans, and incredibly rare Nobir (who will tend to have worse stats than they might otherwise, given their inability to trade stats down below 11 with -2/+1s). I would caution strongly against making caster-ceremonialists more available without serious drawbacks or constraints.

A Revised Spell List

The ACKS Imperial Imprint makes a number of changes to the list of available spells relative to the first edition of ACKS. Some of these spells were cut due to space, some because they were weak and unworthy of inclusion, and some because they were overly strong or served ends disruptive to game balance. Spells of the first type may well be preserved in eldritch magic; spells of the second I would recommend trimming out, or improving; and spells of the third type I highly recommend cutting entirely. Many spells in the book are updated in ACKS II, and I likewise recommend using the new versions; some spells also had their levels change. Some have likewise seen no updates; at some point, I’d like to go through and properly update eldritch spells for full compatibility, but in the meanwhile, a more piecemeal commentary must suffice.

On that basis then:

• Of the first type, unseen servant was trimmed purely for space reasons, and indeed almost made the final cut. Eyes of the eagle should be reduced to doubling spotting distance (IIRC), but is likewise a fine inclusion. Hypnotism, blindness, the various drain life spells, voice of persuasion, brazen bull, glitterdust, hypnotic pattern, noxious cloud, paralyze, sorcerous bolt, sphere of visibility, endless slumber, uncanny gyration, voice of command, feeblemind, sorcerous blast, corrupting dream, starfall, and weave metal are fine as well. Gentle repose, inflict lycanthropy, reflesh of the bones, and restore semblance of life serve rather specific roles, and could be cut for that reason, but are also very thematically appropriate and reasonable inclusions.

• Of the second type, magic mouth was rolled into auditory illusion; ventriloquism was cut entirely. Ensorcellement, faerie fire, enthrall, snake charm, command plants, control animals, and projected image were likewise removed. Slag armor is not inherently a bad spell, but is generally unpopular because it is both circumstantial and highly likely to destroy magic treasure, and was thus cut. Remove geas became a function of remove curse at sufficiently high caster level.

• Of the third type, trance, detect secret doors, esp, find traps, knock, wizard eye, and reincarnation should all be removed. Conjure dybbuk was noted to be exceptionally potent, and is replaced with conjure incubus. Enervate and control undead were cut due to changes in the spell building system; call of the giant eagle was cut for similar reasons, but is easily replaced by call of the aerophract steeds. Weave stone is acceptable as a 5th level eldritch spell, but was cut from II because it would be merely 3rd level arcane and have a considerably larger impact on society.

In other relevant commentary, incite madness was moved from 1st to 3rd level and should remain there. Infuriate beast was moved from 2nd to 1st and that is likewise a change for the better. Command animals and command person at 3rd became dominate beasts and dominate humanoid at 2nd level. Nondetection at 3rd became indiscernibility at 4th, with a full 1 day duration. Invisibility and inaudibility were 2nd level spells in 1e, and moved to 3rd level in II; the HFH puts them at 4th level, but after substantial playtesting I think leaving them at 3rd is fine. Having both avian messenger and shared dream at 3rd level makes avian messenger largely obsolete; I recommend moving shared dream to 4th level. Telepathy should be 4th level rather than 3rd, and angelic aura should be moved from 5th to 4th, to match II. Sustained protection from good is incorrectly listed as 4th level eldritch in the HFH and should be 3rd. Summon hellhounds moves from 5th to 3rd; summon ooze from 3rd to 5th. Bath of the goddess, dispel evil, and panic should be moved from 5th to 6th level. Control plants at 6th becomes dominate plants at 5th.

Perpetual illumination/tenebrosity, augury, infravision, divination, winged flight, atonement, and flight should notably remain at the levels given in the HFH (2nd, 3rd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 5th, 6th, and 6th respectively), along with all of the elemental spells not referenced here (which generally were imported into II at a lower level). Personally, I would also move water walking from 4th to 3rd (where it’s still far from a top pick). Communion and restore life and limb should remain 7th level rituals, though I would revert communion somewhat closer to the 1e form that directly consults a divine being, given this difficulty.

Blinding flash, kindle flame, earth’s maw, fangs of the earth, and some other elemental spells did receive modest improvements in II due to arcane magic being slightly better at blast than eldritch, but these remain well within the scope of breakthroughs and I would continue to use them as given in II.

Note that some spells that were updated from the HFH to II suffered minor (and sometimes substantial) name changes, e.g. eldritch protection becoming divine protection. The conversion guide catches many of these. The assortment of resist [element] and immunity to [element] spells are notably replaced with the more holistic energy/physical protection/invulnerability spells.

For new spells introduced in II, I would add restore disability and disfigurement as a 6th level eldritch spell, and conjure petty elemental along with its higher level variations at their respective levels. Desiccate, discern gist, illusory figment, sunflare, transform beast, dominate monster, sustained swift sword, call of the regal pride, deep slumber, spirit of healing, carnage, rouse the fallen, and madness of crowds are other good additions.

Availability of Eldritch Magic

Last, I wanted to foray into something novel that I developed myself but have found very useful: a set of custom tables for ceremony availability by market class. These end up somewhat differently than for arcane and divine magic, because while a spellcaster can potentially sell all of his spell slots on any given day, a ceremonialist is going to spend all day methodically performing a single ceremony (probably of the highest level in his repertoire) to minimize his risk of mishap. Thus, availability of spells of a given level is based purely off the number of casters for whom that is the highest level spell in their repertoire, rather than also including all higher level casters.

Likewise, because the ceremonialist is only potentially selling one ceremony per day, he has to charge proportionately more — and yet more again to offset the small-but-perilous risk of a mishap. Thus, ceremonies are more expensive than are spells. I recalculated these numbers for II, and have some reservations about them being somewhat too high, but as I ended up getting numbers quite close to those calculated by the excellent Helgeran on the Discord some time back, I’m willing to let them stand for the present and see how they work in playtesting. I expect these numbers to result in even level characters just making their wage and odd leveled characters making considerably more than that, but if they have membership in orders like the Tower of Knowledge that claim half their profits from selling spells, it would instead end up with odd leveled characters just about making their wages and even leveled ones needing more income. 13th and 14th level characters won’t come close to making their wages at all, but that is an appropriate match to the default arcane/divine rules.

Third, there are no set demographics for the incidence of ceremonialists. One can simply replace all arcane and divine casters in a setting with ceremonialists, resulting in 30% of levelled characters being such, but this makes them a very sizable chunk of levelled characters and such a high level of magic in a setting is ill-fitting for most of the heroic fantasy settings that inspired the HFH. Thus, I have built not one but three tables of spell availability, based on the desired demographic incidence of ceremonialists as 30%, 20%, or 10% of levelled characters, as follow (and because I assumed that on average only half of such characters are actually involved in selling ceremonies as a service on a given day, if you assume a higher proportion do so then you can also easily model 15% or 5%).

As a further note on the above, black spells are generally illegal and will require Streetwise or Black Lore proficiency to access on the black market, where they will cost 4x the listed price (a surcharge to offset the perils of corruption). Grey spells should be treated as white or black likewise, based on whether their casting would inflict corruption.

Ceremonialists selling spells follow the normal rules, with a 1 in 6 chance of selling whatever level of ceremony they wish to perform. If they perform ceremonies at regular speeds, or even hastily, they can potentially make quite a profit — but sooner or later, their risk-taking will catch up to them, and by suffering they will learn why it is traditional to only offer such spells methodically.

Moving Forward

Originally, I was planning to make this a post about the nuances of how eldritch and ceremonial magic impact a campaign and fundamentally differentiate it at a setting level from a setting where arcane and divine spellcasting is available. But for that to make a meaningful contrast with ACKS II, I needed to first explain how I’d adapt the rules of eldritch and ceremonial magic to suit ACKS II, and so here we are. At some point, I may share a more detailed revision of the spells themselves, and share the many custom spells my players and I have added, but this is a sufficient starting place to be able to dig more broadly into the implications of eldritch magic and that is a more immediate aim of mine.

And as ever, if you make use of the above, let me know how it goes! The ultimate test of a ruleset is in gameplay at the table, and I am always eager to hear feedback on how things hold up when put into practice.