Arcane Background: Totem Lords

Hey folks,

It’s been a while and I apologize for that. With the new year and nature of my job, I’ve been busy.

Still, those who follow my blog deserve some content and as such I’m going to show my notes related to an arcane background I’ve been kicking around.

This one isn’t for the Drowned War, but rather a different project I’ll be taking on after DW is complete.

So with that, I give you Totem Lords.

Totem Lords are techno idolaters, by patching into the ambient quantum fields a Totem Lord can perform Miracles.

There is a catch, this quantum manipulation has a draining effect on nearby life. Thus us of this power is exhausting and if a Totem Lord pushes too far into the probability field he’ll drain away his very soul.

Mechanically speaking

• The Totem Lord crafts a techno idol. This idol grants the Arcane Background Miracles and allows the players to take 1 starting power (ignoring rank)  related to the AB: Miracles background. They begin play with 15 power points.
• The Totem Lord can take any edge related to AB:Miracles, and can also select the Wizard edge.
• The totem is required to cast; If lost or stolen the Totem Lord builds another in 2d6 days.
• On a roll of 1 of the trait die (regardless of the wild die) the caster takes a level of fatigue. On a critical failure, the caster takes 2 levels. Fatigue can only be recovered by an hour of rest per level of fatigue.

There’s more, the Totem Lord can burn the energy from their own soul to cast.

The Soul rating is half the character’s Spirit die plus 2.

For example, if the player has a d6 in Spirit he would have a soul rating of 5.

A soul point can be spent to add an extra  d6 die to any roll, and the only limit is how many points the player has to spend.

The player with 5 soul points could spend all 5 and gain +5d6 if he chose too.

However, once all the characters soul points are spent, they die.

The points do not refresh and cannot normally be regained.

So, Totem Lords have the to potential to be very powerful, but must be careful with their how much of that power they use.