Publication:Complete Gear/Variant Rules/Small Influences

This material is published under the OGL

Small Influences

At some tables, Complete Gear rules open up the game for abuse – especially in terms of magical healing. In a standard game, a player who desires to heal their character through the means of a potion or wand must first find a shop – or at least a potion maker – from whom the character can buy the potion. This is not always easy to do in the middle of a dungeon or on an alternate plane of existence. However, the rules of Complete Gear automatically imply that a potion or wand of healing is always just an attunement away. It is an exploitable aspect of viewing items as defined by the character. To accommodate this possible abuse, the variant rule that follows can be introduced into the system.

As a variant, the process of attunement has a unique effect upon smaller influences. Any limited use influence that costs less than 3,000 IPs destroys the mundane object once the magical use has been expended. What this implies is small effects – such as most potions, oils, shards, scrolls, and wands – are limited in their ability to be used over and over again unless a character has access to a great many vials, flasks, or jars.

For example, a character may have spent 750 IPs on a Cure Serious Wounds influence to make a potion. When the character imbibes the fluid from the mundane flask, the character receives the effect of the influence. However, the object holding the potion is irrevocably destroyed and unable to be used again for the purposes of attunement. Should the player again want their character to spend their now unspent 750 IPs on another potion, they would need access to a brand new container.

Another interesting angle to this variant rule is with respect to most scrolls or power stones. Should a character use a few IPs to produce some usable scrolls or a few power stones, the character must do so knowing that the mundane element will be destroyed upon its use. There is nothing more unsettling than watching a character see his last piece of parchment disintegrate in the middle of an adventure, but it is a reality for this variant rule. Or perhaps when a power stones is drained of the few remaining power points and shatters into millions of harmless pieces of dust, it can have an interesting effect on any commoners who may not understand what happened.

Additionally, this variant can be extended to permanent influences of less than 3,000 IPs if desired. Permanent influences – like many of the cheaper wondrous items – are usually not affected by this so long as their effect is kept permanent. Should something come along to disrupt the functioning of the effect (like a null-psionic field, an anti-magic zone, a dispel magic/psionic effect, or even a player deciding to stop allocating IPs to the specific influence) then the mundane object is in fact destroyed. In this case, any IPs that had been allocated to the now useless influence are treated as unspent. Should the character desire to use the lost influences again they will need new mundane items as well as time to spend in the appropriate attunement process with the new items.

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