Saturday, October 8, 2011

The Pedhétl [pay-THAYTL] - the Psychic Reservoir, or Power

The Tsolyáni refer to the Pedhétl to as "the Enemy". It is said to represent the raw emotions possessed by an individual. Additionally, it represents the amount of other-planar power stored in the individual that may be used for casting magic. This capacity is stated to be fixed; as such, Pedhétl is the only stat that cannot [normally*] be increased after a character is generated.

In game terms it is used as the basis for casting magic, providing the base dice used to determine success or failure. It can be drained during spell casting, making subsequent spells more difficult to cast until the mage has rested. This is determined as part of the casting roll. A really bad roll can result in a spell backfire.

The basic procedure is:

Start with base dice equal to Pedhétl. Add or subtract any situational dice. The final number of dice are then rolled looking for successes in the normal fashion. (1-3 = success, 4-6 = failure)

To successfully cast a spell the mage must achieve two things:

1) attain at least one success;
2) the total of the mage's Hlákme(Intellect) stat plus the number of successes rolled must equal or exceed the spell difficulty level.

Any dice that roll a '6' are removed from the mage's psychic reservoir for the duration of the scenario.

If more '6's are rolled than successes then a backfire is said to have occurred.

By a happy coincidence, the spell difficulty level is the level of the spell in the old Gamescience "Swords & Glory" Players guide. ;-)

* allowing for the inevitable exceptions! ;-)

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