@bertani3518 In the PostxMalrex Document I am seeing your comments. I think you don't need to save that stuff with googleDrive ... It updates and saves what you type automatically.

I'm not easily offended ;) Especially when I know the other is trying to help. Give me a harsh truth over a sugarcoated lie any day of the week ... only way to get better and learn stuff. All of this is to make the best rpg-book we can after all ;) I suspect Malrex has struck some kind of deal with some eldritch deity ... the man sometimes seems to get double the time than we mere mortals :P

Looked it over and added my comments. Waiting on Jons comments then :)

Thanks for the comments. Will look it trough as soon as possible. I uploaded the four files malrex posted to my google.drive account. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1hWXy38uZrWWY_-0NGSxNTthTq7HvCMPv?usp=sharing With the above link everyone of us should be able to see, comment and edit the files. This way we won't have to send and re-send the files all the time and don't end up with sixteen different version lying around.

Yeah you got it. Whenever a shaman chooses to get the spellcasting he gets access to specific spheres of influence. All, Astral, Divination, Protection, Spirits are the general spheres that each spirit always gives access to, each spirit class gives access to two further spheres. So a shaman who wants to cast animal and plant spells should seek out Alive spirits, a shaman who wants to cham people and ward stuff needs to find a Abstract spirit. Take your time ... I'll let it rest until I get yours and Jons comments on the matter. I love the sacred bundle and will include it in further write-ups. It was only ommited this time because there is soooo much still to decide that I didn't want to overload the thing ;) The "reverse lich" sounds like a cool idea ... let me think on that. I've got an idea for a high level spirit sphere spell (spell level 7) that allows a shaman to instantly create a spirit from whole cloth by sacrificing part of his own life force to do it. And another high level spell that could allow a shaman to become a spirit himself ... maybe. Maybe banngeister could do something similar ... creating a human body trough some sort of sacrifice and then possessing it instantly. Will think on it ;)

Thanks :) Sorry to hear about your pet. What was it? I had to give away my birds when we moved this january. They're still alive .. but was a hard decision nontheless.

Here are the word files. Post is the above big post copied into a word file. The rest should be clear. Shaman types: There would only be one shaman type, but that one type would be very flexible. Each time a shaman bonds a spirit he can choose if the spirit gives him the access to the spheres of influence, the minor/major boons or the grand boon. Example: We have a level 5 shaman who is bonded to three spirits. The first bonding was at creation and the shaman chose to get access to the spells. As his first spirit only has 2HD and is of the archaic spirit class the shaman gets access to the spheres of All, Astral, Divination, Protection, Spirits, Elemental and Creation He can cast spells up to thirs spell level from these spheres. His second bonding was on his third level to a 4 HD archaic spirit. Now he could choose once again. Choosing the spellcastin option (spheres of influence) would give him nothing new as he would not gain access to new spheres and the potential maximum level of spells he could cast would not increase. For new spheres he would need a spirit of another spirit class, for higher spell levels he would need a spirit with 10 or more HD. Not that he could cast these higher levels as he himself is curently level 3 and thus limited to spell level 2. So the smart thing to do is to choose between the minor/major boons the spirit offers based on its Essences or the grand boon it offers. For the minor/major boons the player checks the spirits essences and decides if he likes the associated boons. For the grand boon I'm thinking we giv every spirit class a small list of grand boons to choose from. So Alive Spirits get the beast form ability, Ancestor spirits get some form of summoning and so on ... we would need to work on that. Our shaman from the example chooses the minor/major boons this time. His third bonding is at level 5 to a 10 HD Alive spirit. This time he chooses the access to the spheres again thus gaining access to the spheres of Animal and Plant. From now on he can cast levels up to 5th spell level in the spheres of All, Astral, Divination, Protection, Spirits, Animal and Plant because of his bond with the 10HD alive spirit. He can also cast spells up to 3rd spell level in the spheres of Elemental and Creation because of his bond to the first 2HD archaic spirit. (this also gives him the ability to cast up to 3d level spells in the spheres of All, Astral, Divination, Protection, Spirits but this is "overwritten" because of his bond with the 10HD alive spirit.) If he bonds another spirit at level 8 he can once again choose which of the three benefits (spells, minor/major boons or grand boon) he wants. The base idea is that most shamans will choose spellcasting for character creation but then can choose other stuff when they level up. A shaman needs to bond stronger spirits of different kinds to get high spell level access to all spheres thus we create a kind of automatic quest system ... players will need to search and bond strong spirits for the best goodies. I want to limit the amount of minor/major boons a shaman can have active at any time. Still a shaman can seach for a spirit with specific essences to get the minor/major boons he wants. The grand boons are the least developed right now ... I'm thinking that each spirit class gets 3 to 4 major boons that a player can choose from. (Of course a DM can simply decide that this specific spirit only has this grand booon to choose from) Stuff like animal transformations, ancestor summons, elemental control or emotion manipulation. More powerful than the major boons.

Glad you both seem to like it ;) I still somewhat feel like the dude that was invited into the house and then starts messing with the furniture. I will wait for your detailed feedback before working this stuff further. This way I can start working on some little other adventure I promised some guy on the internet a while ago ... for some obscure fanzine called Footprints I think it was :-P The spirit classes don't all need to start with "A" ... It would just be nice. We could also go completely german for the spirit classes. Archaic = Archaisch Alive = Am Leben ...which becomes Amleben Abstract = Abstrakt Ancestor = Ahnen

Ok so here comes a quick and rough snapshot of my current status. All of this is by no means finished in any way and all open to change and the like ... you know the drill. I just wanted to post the current status and check if this is and the direction it is heading are ok before I waste hours of work on something we will not use ;) Spirit classes and Essences I put Animal and Aboreal into one bigger class called Alive So now we have Archaic, Alive (Animal/Aboreal), Abstract and Ancestor spirits. I put together a list of possible Elements which I call Animistic Essences or simply Essences for each spirit class I included notes for rolling up essences and slightly weighted the outcomes. So you have a 40% chance of getting an Archaic, 30% for Alive, 20% for Abstract and 10% for Ancestor spirits. I think this makes sense as the further left you are on the table the "older" and more "primal" the spirit classes become and so the more of them should be around. To put it simply there is a lot more Wood than Fear in the world and a lot more Earth than wood. The Essences themselve tell you what the spirit is about and what kind of boons it can give a shaman it is bonded to too ... more on that in a moment. I wrote up a basic statblock template for spirits. We've got 4 power levels for spirits: Candelas which have less than 1HD and are pretty special. Torchlings which have between 1 and 9 HD, Firehearts which have 10 to 17 HD and Radiant which have 18+ HD. Base Int is the average Intelligence score of a spirit of this level. Magic resistance is the chance that the spirit ignores a spells effect. Magical defenses tells you which kind of weapon you need to hurt the spirit. DM spirit creation The idea is for the DM to decide which general power level his spirit should have (Torchling, Fireheart or Radiant), then decide on a number of HD and use the base statistics as a starting point to build up "his" spirit. The DM then can freely add powers and change the statistics, but I think the above table would be a good refernce point for DMs to gauge if their spirits are too powerful and so on. Player spirit creation The DM doesn't need many rules or subsystems for spirit creation as he can dowhat he wants. I think though that it would be clever for us to include a subsystem that allows players to create spirits for the game. At least the shaman and Warlock players would want to create "their" spirits and it could take some work off from the DM. Ruleswise this would work something like this. The DM tells the player the power level and the number of HD the spirits has. If he wants he can tell the player the core Essence of the spirit or the player can roll on the Essence table posted above (1d10 for the spirits class, 1d4+1d8 for the Essence). A spirit always has one core Essence, though he can have more. The player then rolls the HD to get hit dice, personality traits and Essence Points from the following table: Hit points should be clear Pesonality traits Personality traits tell you how the spirit acts as an NPC in a general way. together with its base intelligence this should give players and DMs plenty to work with. For each pesonality trait the player rolled up above he can roll on the follwoing table: I linked 6 personality traits each to one of the arcane schools. This has right now no effect but i would like to use it for the warlock-class. The idea would be that the personality traits of the spirits tell the us which spells from which aracane school a warlock can get from a spirit. So a lazy, sneaky and cruel spirit would give a warlock access to the schools of Conjuration, Illusion and Necromancy. Essence Points Essence points are kinda like build points which the player can then spend to further modify the base statistics. So you have your base statistics and one core Essence and a number of Essence Points (EssP?) Now the player can spend the EssP according to the above table to "buy" more Essences or upgrade the base statistics of the spirit. I honestly don't know if this would work or is worth the effort but I think players would love the ability to build their own spirits so here it is. Onward to the shamans Here is a rough write up of my idea for the shaman class. I took the last write up and changed it a bit here and there ... you'll see Still with me? Good :) I used the FG&G rules as my baseline for proficiencies and the like. I'm still not sure about the mana system you sometimes mention so i left it out for now ... but i don't think it would change much to add some mana points. Sacred Runes I added a sacred runes ability giving each shaman nice elittle magical rune he can use to get some minor bonuses for the cost of some HP. They also get some rune lore for free which fits their theme as keepers of ancient wisdom and so on. Banish Spirits I wrote up a specific version of the ability to banish spirits as I wanted to distinguish it from the normal turn undead ability. They can also bansich Banngeister though it is harder. Spirit Bond Spirit Bond is the bigest change I added. This is basically the shamans spellcasting ability, spiritual boons and stuff like beast powers and guardian spirits rolled up all in one. Instead of giving dozens of single powers and uses + spellcasting and the like I decided to include all of this in one rules package. So each time a shaman bonds a spirit the the player can choose which benefit he wants from the bond. What I haven't written up yet is the limit of how many spirit bonds a shaman can have active at the same time. This can get overpowered real quick i feel. To many spirit bonds and you have a monster of a character walking the dragonback mts., to few and the class will fell undewhelming. It should scale with the level but I always feel I am pretty shitty at balancing ... so tell me what you think here. Spheres of influence Should be clear ... the shaman gets access to the spells, the spirits power level decied which spell levels are available. The spirit sphere is new and I've writen up a few spells for it. Again I think I suck at balancing and the like so tell me what works and what not. Sharing Essence This is the biggest part. Each of the above essences would need a minor and a major boon ... which comes up to 64 boons minor and major each for 128 boons all in all. I think we can do this ... but it is a lot of boons :-P Still I think it is worth it because here you could really distinguish your shaman from the next one. And DMs could make up their own Minor and Major boons to give their campaigns something unique. I have some ideas for this already and here comes a little example: Example for minor/major boons: So a shaman is bonded to an Alive spirit with the Essences of Poison, Hunt and Darkness. The shaman would get three minor boons which are small, permanent effects that give him an edge. Poison: +5 to all poison related saves Hunt: proficency in Hunting Darkness: Darkvision The shaman would also get three major boons which are once per day effects he could use. Poison: All attacks make poison damage for a number of combat turns equal to the number of HDs the spirit has. Hunt: Designate a living being as your quarry. You can track the quarry flawlessly for a number of hours equal to the number of HD of the spirit granting you this boon. Darkness: create a magical darkness as per Darkness spell (treat HD of spirit as caster level) Grand Boon This is anoher tricky one. The beast powers, the ability to have a guardian spirit, the summon ancestor ability and the second options for the animal spirits and so on from the old write up would fall under this heading. Basically this would be big abilities that change the way the shaman is played. It may sound similar to a major boon but it would need to be greater and more powerful. Creating talismans Thats the part I am currently working on. The three talisman levels can hold different amounts of spells. A Phiole can hold three 1st lvl or one 1st. lvl and one 2nd lvl or one 3rd lvl spell. Same for the other two types. A Flakon can also store some amount of mana for later use A Karaffe can also store more mana and can release the invested Candelas either as a swarm of small spirits or as a merged stronger spirit to help the shaman. Spells of level 6 and 7 are too powerfull to be contained in a talisman and always need to be cast directly by a shaman. IBut this whole thing is stil Work in Progress and I want to add the crafting rules and rules for how Flakons and Karaffen work exactly the next few days. Death of a shaman At long last I added a section about a shamans deth and what happens to the bonded spirits. The whole spiritual shockwave thingy i added because A. It is damn cool in my opinion and B. it can be used for a quick hook to get a shaman someplace (he felt another shaman die and wants to investigate). So far from my side ... tell me what you think works and what not.

Roger that. Just send it over when it is presentable enough. I will be glad to take a look ;)

Up till the now the plague has ignored me and my loved ones ... though working is kinda hard these days. I will try to get my current spirit stuff write-up on here in the next few days. It is all there in my head somewhere ... getting it written down is the hard part :P If you want I can help or give a second opinion on the Pantheon ... always fun to brainstorm worldbuilding stuff :D

Yeah ... I always wondered why FG&G never seemed to .. .well get taken care of much. Every other OSR system is published and then cared for relatively well .. some even excessively so i might say. I talked to a few friend her ein germany a while back about translating merchant modules into german ... the conseus was basically: "Why would you do that if there is no system to play them in?" ... I gently reminded people that FG&G and other AD&D retroclones existed ... but alas they remained uncovinced. What mr. Barnhardt wrote up there sound good to me ... I'd be willing to help if it doesn't interferre to much with my merchant related duties ... I have enough to do here as is :P ... Then again ... If we can help there it would profit us immensly i think ... Maybe we could even broker some deal that the Dragonback mountains get to be some kind of fficial ASE setting or something ... Just a wild idea ... but i think if we work together here we can all profit from it "Apes together strong" ... you know the drill :P

Will take a look. Sounds promising ... the more people play/know of second edition clones the better our modules gonna sell and the closer we get to world domination :P

sigh ... sorry for the long wait guys. I'm still trying to wrap my head around some ideas and concepts I want to incorporate in this thing. And then theres the whole Corona situation her in germany ... I'm basically free from work right now, but have to babysitt my two children the whole day (Which I love ... but it is very taxing and tyring :/)

Clairsentience sounds nice. Attunements also rings a bell ... I was thinking about Animistic Essences or simply Essence. So every spirit has one or more Essences which are the basic elemental parts of the world ... Fire, Air, Blood, Honor ... and so on. I'm right now putting down a list of possbile Essences for each spirit type. Let me make a first draft writeup what I have in mind. I'll put the stuff we brainstormed so far into it ... then we've got a baseline from which we can discuss further ;) Holler If you need any help with Princes stuff ;)

Animism Sounds good. As a catch all general term fort he whole concept and what is going on it fits perfectly. Elements I am not that set on the name „Elements“ either … but if the shoe fits…. Spheres, Areas, Influences, Domains … I rather like the idea of calling it Animist Doctrines .. just for the fact that this is something that stands out 😉 Personality The Personailty trait for me tells the DM two things: 1. How much personality the spirit/banngeist has. 2. How humanlike this personality is. Then again having one trait that tells you two things at once isn’t always so clever … you’re basically putting a X/Y Graph into a single value. With a simple number you can’t model all the possible points on the graph. A spirit with high personality could be very humanlike or have a very strong character or even both … but you can’t tell that from a single trait/value alone. So maybe it would be better if we leave the matter of „how much“ personality a spirit/banngeist has open tot he DM at his/her table. So the personality trait only tells how humanlike the spirit is in thinking and behavior … We could drop „Personality“ and rename it to something more fitting then … maybe „Strangeness“ or „Alienness“ This way we could have: Low strangenes = humanlike , high strangeness = very alien to the human mind. Concepts When I design something I distinguish between „fluffy“ traits and „crunchy“ traits. Fluffy means it is mainly there for narrative purposes. Setting the tone, giving infomration tot he DM and such stuff. Crunchy traits on the other hand also have a mechanical aspect in that thei either introduce new mechanics or change/interact with existing ones. Concept until now was a rather fluffy trait for me. One or more keywords that inform the DM of some aspect of the spirit/banngeist. They are basically a roleplaying hint for the DM. But I really like the idea that „Elements“ grant access to divine spells and „Concepts“ grant access to arcane spells. I also love the idea that elements come from the world as is and thus give divine spells, while concepts get pushed onto spirits/banngeists and give access to arcane spells. New magical system We don’t have to design a completely new magic system. But I still feel we should make the magic of the spirits as unique as possible … even more so for banngeister as they’re even more special. First I want to say, that I only talk about the magical and special abilties of spirits and banngeister now. What shamans and warlock get we can set in stone next 😉 So Spirits and banngeister get access to the divine spheres according to the elements they have … we can add one or two or more new spheres specificially for that. Minor elements give acces to spells up to third level, major elements grant access to all levels. Concepts also grant access to arcane schools … but in a very limited way. Each concept gives three first level spells from one specific school … or one first level spells and one second level spell ... or one third level spell. Something like that. We don’t want every spirit tob e a walking spellbook … and it would be kinda hard fort he DM if he/she had to remember and manage dozens of possible spells for each spirit/banngeist. So while I think it’s great to give our spirits/banngeister access to divine and arcane magic in a limited way and regulated by the elements and concepts … I also think that we should design some unique spirit-only abilities to really help them shine 😉 Like the spells they get we could use the associated elements and concepts to decide which abilites each spirit gets. Or we define rough areas of influence and write 2 to 4 abilities for each area to choose from. Possible areas of influence: Growth, Decay, Change, Stasis, Order, Chaos, Life, Death, … We also could include a „design your own spirit ability“ guide into the whole thing so our DMs can create their own strange abilities. I really want spirits and banngeister to be strange and frightening for the players … so that they really want to have a shaman or warlock with them when they venture in the wilds. Power levels I really don’t know how many power levels we need :/ I tried to give a broad framework to model spirits from a speck of dust miniature spirit of something tiny to a gargantuan mountain sized spirit of a lake or something. Corruption Yeah … I think we could use the corruption value in many intersting ways to make banngeister different to work with shamans and warlocks. Bizarre abilities We could give a handy list of possible abilities and expand that list with future publications. Build your own spirit/banngeist guide I think we should definetly include a toolset for our DMs to build and design their own spirits and banngeister. We put important spirits/banngeister in the books with stats and all, we include some random exemplary ones if a DM has need for one … we could even include some half finished spirit/banngeist templates … so a DM could take on such template and quickly add a few abilities and spells and have a fully functioning spirit/banngeist. Utility is key here I think. I will write more in the following days … but I am pretty slammed with Real life stuff right now.

Im finishing up my submission for a One-Page Adventure Contest right now. WIll post my thoughts and stuff on the weekend ;)

Waiting on Jonbars comments regarding all this :) sounds all very good Malrex, I will answer in detail as soon as Jonbars comments come in ;)

seems to work :)

does this thing work?