GC3/MagicCards

Combining Exalted and Magic Cards.

One of the players in the game I am in collects Magic The Gathering Cards. In an rpg game he ran he actually created a magic system where players use magic cards in. I realized that Exalted is a better fit for Magic Cards than his homegrown system so I decided to try to create a set of magic card rules for Exalted here. Here goes. Any comments?

Wyld Magic -- The Fivefold Colored Path

In the First Age, creation had a frayed edge that the Celestials had to strengthen: where creation met the Wyld. Practicing with runes and images and sound, the ancient sages discovered a system to affix the Wyld into preset shapes. This Fivefold Colored Path is a simple way for the Celestial to control the Wyld. Using this occult system a practioner of Wyld magic can summon up vast energies and creatures from the Wyld. Wyld magic has it's strongest effect in the wylde itself, but it can have a considerable effect in Creation too.

Note there are certain books of ancient lore that provide some of these charms for free to those who read them.

Wyld Charms

There are several Wyld charms.

The Light White Path of Plains

Cost : 0 motes Duration: Permanent. Minimum Occult 4 Minimum Essence 3 You can use white cards.

Also:

• The Red Path of the Mountains
• The Green Path of the Forest
• The Dark Black Path of the Swamp
• The Blue Path of the Most Secret Magic

To learn more than 2 paths requires essence 4. To all 5 paths requires essence 5 and occult 5.

Flowing with Wyld Magic

Cost: 10 motes Duration: 1 scene Type: Simple (5 round action) Minimum Occult: 4 Minimum Essence: 3 Prerequisite Charms: At least one of the color charms ====

When the exalted uses this charm, he may bring forth a magic card deck and draw his initial hand. A flare of power flows out to Essence * Essence * 10 yards; all Essence aware beings can feel the wylde energy flowing. Even mortals and animals can feel that something odd is going on. Any practictioner of the Fivefold Colored Path will be able to pinpoint the exact location and the Essence of the effect. Indeed, practitioners of the Fivefold Colored Path who have drawn their cards can attack each other with magic cards despite line of sight or other range issues, since they can feel the power.

On following rounds, as a 5 speed action, or a simple action in exalted 1.0, the mage can play cards exactly as in the game Magic The Gathering, but he needs the other charm (below) to tap cards.

Flurrying magic: You can flurry rounds of magic, at the usual cost to your dcv (and to the dcv of all your monsters). This means you could play several rounds of magic at once. (Untested rule).

Controlling the Wyld Magic

This charm is learned for free when you learn Flowing with Wyld Magic. It's specified as a seperate charm for simplicity of presentation.

Cost: 1 mote Duration: Instant Type: Reflexive, also can be done more than once in an instant. Minimum Occult: 4

Minimum Essence 3 Prerequsitive Charms: Flowing with Wyld Magic.

This charm lets you tap cards. Each time you tap a card, you have to pay a single mote. This charm cannot be in a combo with any other charm. You need to pay a mote to tap land, to get mana which is what you use to play cards with.

Shaping the Wyld Magic

Cost: 10 motes and 1 willpower Duration: Instant Type: Simple action (speed 5). Minimum Occult: 5

Minimum Essence 3 Prerequsitive Charms: Controlling with Wyld Magic.

This charm lets you choose your starting hand to a preset combination. You must Shape the Wyld magic immediately before you flow with Wyld magic.

Effect of Cards:

In the Wyld, all effects are real. When you play a creature card, a real creature is created. When you play a land card, a land is created. It might be miles across or only the size of a city block. Enchanments, healing, and all other effects will affect real creatures. If you cast Flight on yourself, you can fly. If you cast River Of Life, you can regain wounds (1 wound per point, either bashing or lethal but not aggravated).

In Creation, the effects are greatly muted. The land cards create small glowing images of lands that orbit you. Creature cards create somewhat translucent glowing creatures. Enchantments only work on summoned creatures: they don't work on real ones or on players. Healing can only heal damage that has been caused by Magic Card effects or damage on these summoned creatures.

Statistics of Creatures: In Creation

For every point of attack, the creature can attack and get 2 successes (no need to roll) and inflict 2 damage. So a 3/3 creature when attacking would always get 6 successes and would inflict 6 damage. If you did not try to parry or dodge this creature, it would inflict 12 dice of damage.

As far as toughness is concerned, the creature (based on the art of the card) will fit into one of two categories:

1) Skillful fighter. The creature gets 2 dcv per point of toughness, and has a soak of toughness -1. The aforementioned 3/3 creature would get have a DCV of 6 and have an ablative soak of 2 and an ablative hardness of 2. 2) Heavy creature. The creature has a soak of toughness*3 -1. In this case the aforementioned 3/3 creature would have no dodge but would have an ablative soak of 9 and an ablative hardness of 9. Walls would generally fit into this category.

Magic card creatures in creation have no wound points whatsoever, (except in the wylde) and if any damage is done on them they explode into a puff of smoke. The damage die does not even have to be rolled: any 1 pip of damage over base hardness causes instant death. However, remember they usually have higher hardness values. Hardnessis a level that lets you ignore the automatic damage die. (Normally if you attack someone with a soak of 8 and you only have a damage of 4 you do some damage, but not to these creatures).

Ablative soak and hardness: for every point of damage the creature takes in the same round, their soak and hardness are reduced. However, on your next turn, all this ablation goes away. For example, a 6 soak creature is hit once for 4 points of damage and then again for 4 more points in the same turn. He is dead. However, another 6 point creature is hit for 4 points on the first round and 4 points on the next round. He is fine. (In exalted 2.0, damage is restored at when the controlling player's DCV refreshes).

Magic creatures, if tapped to attack, can attack any non-magic card being.

If not tapped, they can hang near the sorcerer and "block", that is, interrupt attackers and get in the way to protect their master. The normal rules of magic apply: non-flying creatures cannot block fliers, etc. Exalted may be able to stunt their way around them as well. Creatures may be summoned anywhere within the Essence * Essence * 10 yards of the practioner, but not closer than 5 yards of any opponent. If you want them to protect you you must summon them within 1 move of you. They can move as if your Occult rating was their Dex.

Magic Card creatures in creation get no psychological stats, such as Valor, Perception, and can make or fail no rolls. Instead, the mage controller gets to make the rolls against his statistics. Magic Card creatures can have a strength equal to their attack for the purposes of bashing down doors: add +2 if the art of the card indicates a big creature and subtract 2 if it indicates a small creature. In the Wyld, the creatures are independent, getting their own statistics, and sometimes acting on their own initiative.

First Strike: These creatures, rather than acting on your base initiative, can be commanded on your initiative +6 (for 1.0 rules) or in 2.0 rules, they can attack at a greater range, as if they had pikes. Banding: These creatures can spread out damage just like in the magic card rules: they must be close to each other. Flying, MountainWalk, ForestWalk, etc. These unusual modes of transportation apply in the appropriate real terrain as well. Chreatures that "block" can attack the creatures they are blocking with no penalty for holding initiative. If a blocking creature has lower initiative, it can still attack back even if it dies (it gets a dying blow, the easiest way to imagine this is that it explodes, and the wild energy does damage as if it had attacked).

Walls: Can be up to 3 yards long per point of essence the controller has. Enchantments that raise or lower statistics raise or lower these statistics.

Statistics of Damage

Spells that inflict damage count as attacks by creatures. A Shock spell that does 3 points of damage counts as an attack with 6 successes and 6 points of damage. They can be dodged, and with a stunt, parried. Spells that inflct damage can be cast against real creatures, even in creation. Spells cannot go farther than range (Essence * Essence * 10 yards). They must be aimed by sight, unless aimed at a magic card creature or active practioner of the Fivefold Colored path, in which case they can bend around line of sight and hit the target directly.

In creation, you cannot cast enchantments on real things, and healing on real people can only heal damage done by magic cards. Healing on creatures can remove ablative losses.

In the wylde, the creatures can also do the normal things creatures can do. For example, a pegasus could serve as a flying mount.

Deck size

Deck size: if you have 35 or more cards in your deck, you can use the normal 7 card hand. With only 30 cards, your hand drops to 6. With 25 cards, your hand drops to 5. See the pattern? Each 5 cards in your deck gives you 1 card in your hand. The smallest hand is less than 5 cards, in which case your normal playing hand is only 1 card.

How to obtain magic cards

The cards don't represent cards in the fiction: instead they are patterns impressed on your subconcious by meditating on the images and learning the runes and words of power. Images and runes must be learned by visiting libraries and doing research. Artifacts, however, might represent real artifacts in the real world.

It is suggested that the storyteller only permit players to use cards if they own them and bring them to the game.

A person can start with a number of cards equal to his Occult + Lore + Intelligence, plus any benefits for the "Library" background in the Player's guide (count 4 cards per bonus die).

Bonus card

The real land you are in in creation affects your cards. If you are in a mountainous region, and you Flow with Wyld Magic, you automatically get a "mountain" card played for you... and not one from your deck. This free card is on the table when you draw your starting hand.

Note that the Shadowlands automatically (regardless of their other terrain) provide a Black card. Shadowlands-mountain will provide a Black and a Red card on the table to start with.

Some of the other realms might give similar bonuses.

Dragonblooded

Fire and Earth dragonblooded have an affinity for Red cards. Water dragonblooded have an affinity for Black and Blue cards. Air dragonblooded have an affinity for plains cards. Wood dragonblooded have an affinity for Green cards.

When using a deck with only their color, it costs only 5 essence to Flow with Wylde magic.

Note: Although there are 5 colors, they don't map very well to the 5 elements.

War level Wyld Magic

(Untested). When involved in a war level action, when you spend a Willpower when summoning a creature, you can summon a unit of creatures instead.

Comments:

Aside from my personal dislike of the extra e added to 'wylde', this looks neat. The damages/soaks etc seem rather low, though, especially for the essence levels used. One final question/problem is the issue of mana. Assuming cards still need mana to play, it's almost impossible to do anything until you learn the tapping charm. Not completely, as there are a few ways around it, but still. The other issue is manaburn, which presumably would cause damage as per usual rules, but it perhaps should be explicitly stated.

Perhaps a small bonus for cards played in creation on their appropriate landscapes might also be cool - to represent the fact that a -real- plain or mountain or whatever gives such cards a more solid grounding in reality than others might have.
-- Darloth

==== Comments Noted:

Fixed the e in wilde. Upped the damage. === GC3