I just had a massive trainwreck of concepts do a total derail inside my head, and the result is something I cannot look away from. I will spoilerize.
Preface: I really enjoy the act of world building-- more than I do playing other people's worlds. If you find something you like, you may steal. I do not mind.
Ok, the first part of this trainwreck is the "on-touch" wands suggested previously. But, as the day wore on, I checked my mail, read slashdot, came back here to see replies, and a number of totally unrelated concepts collided with others that had unresolved but unspoken issues.
From slashdot, there was a discussion about literary heads FINALLY admitting that gender-neutral singular "their" is acceptable to use as a singular pronoun.
From here, there was of course, the wands topic, (and the festering unresolved issues of-- If you accepted this mechanic, you are going to end up packing a lot of dangerous wands in your swag bag to keep a balanced fighting style; Given this, what would be the core essence of such a fighting style? (consider the various ethos involved in the various Asian martial arts, and how they shape and govern those respective fighting styles, which leads to another problem: Why only one fighting style? Simplicity alone is not compelling, story wise.)
Then Rolan had to go and suggest a multi-armed savage outsider race.
Once started, the trainwreck could not be stopped. Other ideas that had festered quietly like simmering pots of reduction glaze for roasted chicken, lept out to be applied-- Riotous insight refused to be silent.
Out sprang this protean nucleus of a fan-made supplementary source book:
Imagine a race of beings that have limited true hiveminds; Each "person" is actually a synthesis of 5 individuals that, upon reaching maturity, fuse together to become one being. When these creatures reproduce, they use the genetic material of all 5 members of their being to fashion variegated offspring, but each offspring will ultimately join with 4 others, to one day become an adult.
Each "adult" member has 5 arms, 10 legs, and 5 eyes. They have radial symmetry, and "snap together" like pie wedges, so to speak. There is no "front" or "back" to such adult creatures. Their eyes face outward from the central axis of radial symmetry, and once fully integrated together, all 5 eyes work together for the newly matured creature.
During childhood, each "segment" has 2 legs, 1 arm, and 1 eye. They are clumsy (anatomically, they really need the others to be whole and balanced), but are able to perform autonomous movement, are capable of "speech" (such as it is), making independent decisions and actions, but have a very limited basis of experience to draw from, and are "unbalanced" in both mind and body. During maturation, they will form social ties with others of their approximate age, and form a coalition, which will then merge to become a new adult member of their society. Each child is also imprinted with a simplified distillation of the knowledge of its parent, but without the prism of 4 other minds to properly make sense of it, it becomes the subject of the child's own unique understanding/interpretation of that knowledge. In this way, the knowledge and understanding of the parent is transferred, but experiences a kind of genetic drift between parent and offspring.
Physically, they have a single gender. There are no males or females. Adults are simply fertile. Their basis as a polysynthesis provides genetic variation for evolutionary development and reproductive health.
Culturally, when developing, offspring are presented with various traditional choices, such as being presented with an array of tools, and seeing which the offspring takes the most favor to. If the offspring favors a constructive implement, it is further presented with choices later as it grows more capable of understanding, on what kind of instrument it most prefers-- Does it like doing artwork? Does it like caring for crops? -- Does it prefer martial pursuits? Etc.
Over-reaching in the adult society, is this metaphysical conception of "balance" and "wholeness". Just like the child offspring are unbalanced without the 4 others it will one day join with, adult society is also unbalanced without other adults aligned with differing professions. All farmers with no protectors, leaves the people with too much food laying around, and predators will surely come-- All protectors, and no craftsmen, and they starve or die of the elements. Due to the combined shared ancestry of this people, they are all aware of this instinctually, and so adult societies tend to be cosmopolitan, with adult syntheses taking on a variety of roles within a greater fabric of society.
Each adult is not "fully integrated" though. Rather, much like humans can have mixed thoughts on something, this is the default mode for this race of beings. They literally have mixed thoughts, but otherwise still retain their individual child identities, likes, dislikes, prejudices, etc. Each "slice" of an adult thus ADDS to a whole, without being totally subsumed by that whole. This is very important, as it strongly colors how their speech and writing system works. To them, a "Whole thought" is really the simultaneous expression of a concept from *ALL FIVE* perspectives, at once. The subtle interplay between the word choices, intonations, pitches, and implied intents of the 5 statements, is a hallmark of how their humor, their philosophy, and culture work. For the adult, the concept of the "whole" is taken metaphorically, for they are still very much just 5 individuals sharing a strong mental and physical connection, and relying on each other to provide deeper meaning and understanding, which comes about because of their retained individuality, and thus unique perspective and focus. Because each "Slice" comes from a different parentage, the ancestral knowledge and experience they each bring, causes a profound cross pollination of culture and ideation. So much so, that a kind of cultural homogeneity naturally occurs, given sufficient mobility of individual offspring to find pairings (which is facilitated by adult meddling), all ideas are expressed in their entirety and full spectrum of expression within the society, and this is the high ideal they strive for with their metaphysical conceptions of balance, and wholeness. Their "family" structure is "very complex", as each adult progenitor is brought together with 4 others, when an offspring becomes an adult, for each offspring. (essentially, 4 sets of in-laws, per child.) Given that they have multiple offspring, the inter-relatedness of familial structure becomes very taxing to contemplate, but meshes nicely with their cultural ideals. It is from this complex interrelationship between adult syntheses, that effective identification, training, tracking, and suggested associations are accomplished, as the many adults in the society will seek the maximal expression of the individual will of that offspring, and the ideal pairing arrangements for it to achieve adult status later.
Of further note, is that because these unions are not "total subduction" in nature, it is possible for two or more adults to willfully engage in a practice called "the knowing." In this practice, the adults in question will split apart, but retain a majority of their gestalt parts. (eg, may dislodge a single slice, with a maximum of 2 slices dislodged at a time.), then present it to the other adult, who then integrates it. In this way, the two adults can have a very deep and profound understanding of the other, by sequentially performing this action, until all of the parts have been temporarily exchanged and returned. Discussion of this practice with "outsiders" is considered vulgar. It is the closest thing to sex that they have, and is a more spiritual and deep connection thing than a physical thing. Literally, it is to KNOW the other, completely. It also enables a practice that is considered antithetical to their society, which is the rejection of an individual part of such a union, permanently, in favor of retention of another. It has the kind of stigma that divorce had 100 years ago, because it causes profound upset in the inter-related hierarchy that adults of this species create. This is seen as an act of disunity, unbalance, and discord. It is acceptable ONLY when a part of the adult whole dies, either from trauma, or from disease or old age.
Now that we have provided a germ for the physicality of the "Who", and given a nice foundation for the "why", here is how the trainwreck involves said wands, and even dex weapons in general:
Adults who are natural protectors (align with martial skills, and intrinsically seek to protect the wholeness of the society from predation or dangerous outside influences that would destroy that wholeness) will be comprised of individual offspring with weapon and tactical preferences. As a result of the cultural ideal of maximizing the educational and individualistic expression of each and every offspring combined with suggested optimal pairings, there are a wide assortment of "protector" specialties-- and the "dex weapon master" is one such creature.
Because the adult does not have a front, nor a back, it is *ALWAYS* facing the enemy, and can change direction of movement or attack at a whim. This is important, as it gives a profound physical advantage to dex based combat. Each "slice" of the adult has a weapon preference, and has high skill and independent action with that weapon. It can use that to its advantage, because one arm can wield a disintegrator wand, another a flame wand, another an ice wand, etc. This has led to the creation of whole schools of dex combat specializing in a single class of weapon (whips, wands, swords, etc). So much so that sufficient variety of that weapon class is expressed in the weapon choices of an adult who masters such a discipline, that literally, a "Sword master" has in gestalt, mastered every kind of sword, and can sweep into combat like a spinning top of doom.
Which "hand" holds a weapon has pretty deep significance to these creatures, as that "hand" is independent, and has preferences.
These creatures should be able to wield such weapons (wands) brutally, as they can easily and quickly apply tactical use of up to 5 elemental damage types, in rapid succession, with brutal efficiency.
I have toyed with the idea of one such proficiency being with said wands, called "the way of 5 wands", Similar to japanese swordsmanship's "way of 2 swords". One hand wields the disintegration wand, and cuts through enemy armor. One hand uses the fire-tip wand, and sears sensitive sensory organs, like the eyes. Another uses the shock-tip wand, and paralyzes enemy limbs-- etc.
Personally, I would suggest having these be played as random encounter monsters or as NPCs, due to the many minded nature they represent.
However, the weapons they have invented through this unique culture can be adopted (less effectively or efficiently) by single minded creatures, like humans, resulting in less hollistic approaches to their use, as humans only have 2 hands, etc. (explaining why these weapons are unbalanced in human combat-- they are not meant for human combat. This opens the door to the improvised weapons penalty to stop OPness.)
The creatures need not always be hostile though, as the same qualities that make them fiendish combatants would also make them into master craftsmen, able to have simultaneous lifetime experiences in mastering a single skill with each hand, and being able to produce complex and elaborate pieces through honed cooperation of their component parts. EG, one could hand them a damaged sword, and it could repair it while also restringing a bow, and fletching an arrow. etc. Just be sure to be polite, and hand the appropriate hand the correct item. ;P Likewise with political specialists, who could approach a political dispute from many directions at once.
A rule of thumb, is that adults tend to treat individuals from single minded races as if they were "child like", and have no problems thinking circles around most people. They can easily have a shared INT score well above that of even the smartest elf mage, for instance, and can combine spell proficiencies that are not allowable to other races. EG-- can have parts that are from diametric schools of magic.)
Those qualities make them dangerous for player characters to control: player characters trying to control one, would need to have character sheets for each component personality it possesses, with back stories for each one, and skill trees for each one. They cant use them to "just get around those rules" (like diametric magic schools). Refusal to allow player use of one is acceptable as a DM strategy, but the alternative really is to force multiple character sheets for each part, and treat each part as an independent character, but assign status effects to all 5 at once when and if they stick.
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Topic: Re: Dungeons & Dragons / PNP games thread: COBRA!!! (Read 941099 times)