Starting to draft out a few spells for Advanced Fantasy Battles. I’m not sure if I’ll actually build out a bestiary or a spell list in total, but a few examples are probably necessary, and perhaps any fans can pad them out as they draw from the original sources for a more complete list.

I realised, coming to drafting a psionic power, that I’d overlooked the psionic battle system, which in second edition is quite complex. And that makes me wonder if we want a wizardly battle system as well. Or rather, whether we can make a system that is generalisable between psionics, priestly magic, and wizardly magic, for competing spellcasters, based on the psionic battle system. I’m incredibly tempted here to pull out the Dungeon Crawl Classics spell battle system, but I want to hew to the original texts, as always here, so this is what it looks like in psionics:

• Most creatures have open minds, and can be attacked directly and caused damage or effects by psionic powers. Psionicists and psionic creatures have closed minds, and cannot be directly attacked.
• A successful power check hits the opponent, if you also beat your opponent’s score.
• A successful attack against a closed mind yields a tangent; three tangents make “contact” causing the mind to be open to attacks.
• There are five psionic defences and five psionic offences, and they’re more or less effective against each other.
• Once you’ve made contact, you can harm and effect the psionicist directly.

Ok. My problem with this is that it doesn’t feel as dynamic as a psionic (or other magical) duel should feel. I can see that they’re going for a sense of two powerful people, avoiding each other’s attacks. The most interesting thing here, I think, is the paper-scissors-rock aspect of the offences and defences, and I think we can lean directly into that.

Firstly, the names are hilariously unimaginative for the defences. And they’re nicely differentiated in offences. Secondly, this is a bit of a mess, and I think intentionally, because by design you don’t get these all until higher levels, and in order. Now, that’s not interesting to me, but rather I think there can be some strategy in your choices, and that’ll impact your duel with other psionicists. Just to clarify, Strongest means strongest attack against that defence.

I had to make a few arbitrary choices here, but effectively what I did was take the same ranges of weakest to strongest, and then arrange them more evenly so all attacks have the same range of effectiveness against all defences. I couldn’t get that to be the same for all defences, though. So, mind blank remains a poor choice, unless you’re defending against insinuation. Fortress remains the strongest choice, irregardless. I don’t think I can refine this much further, without first knowing how the rest of the system works, so I’ll come back to this.

If two psionicists engage in a psychic duel, they are both at the end of the initiative. If either of them act during the round prior to participating in the psionic duel, they are vulnerable to psionic assault.

When initiative reaches them, they can both make two psionic actions from this list: Offences, Defence, or Read Aura.

If they choose offence, they select one or two of the five offensive devotions. If they choose defence, they select one or two of the five defensive devotions. If they choose Read Aura, they know one of their opponents offences or defences, at random, before they select their other action.

Deduct psi pool as usual. The player character rolls an ability check for their offences. Treat each successful offence separately. If they’re strong against any of the chosen defences, they cause double effect. If they’re effective against any of the chosen defences, they cause normal effect. If they’re ineffective against the defence, nothing happens. If they’re reflective, they reflect normal effect back at the caster. All damage is deducted from psi pool before it is deducted from HP.

On the non-player character’s turn, the player rolls a saving throw for their defences. The same modifiers apply as previously.

I can fix the table now:

Ok! Well, this is functional, but it’s still a mess, isn’t it? It’s a mess because there are 10 selections and that makes for a huge, confusing matrix, even though it works. I often joke that we should bring back matrices in TTRPGs, but…well, it’s a joke. You don’t want to pull this table out. How do I fix this. I think I have an idea, and it goes back to my comment earlier about the uninteresting names. Here are the offences and defences: Mind thrust, ego whip, id insinuation, psychic crush, and psionic blast, mind blank, thought shield, mental, barrier, intellect fortress, and tower of iron will. I’ll combine the ones that are ineffective against each other above, to make just five choices.

• Thrusting Mind
• Whipping Thoughts
• Mental Blockade
• Crushing Intellect
• Blasting Will

I’ve rephrased them as stances, too. If they’re stances, they can act both defensively and offensively.

If two psionicists engage in a psychic duel, they are both at the end of the initiative. If either of them act during the round prior to participating in the psionic duel, they are vulnerable to psionic assault.

Each duelist chooses from the six stances: Thrusting Inquiry, Whipping Voices, Blasting Will, Mental Blockade, or Crushing Intellect, or Open Mind.

If they choose Open Mind, they can predict their opponent’s next move. On their next turn, their opponent chooses their stance, and tells them before they choose theirs; but they have no defence this turn.

The duelists reveal their stances simultaneously. If there is a short arrow between the two stances, the defender takes full damage. If there is a long around between the two stances, the defender takes half damage. If there is no arrow, the stance deflects the attack, and something nearby explodes or is thrown to the floor.

All damage is deducted from psi pool before it is deducted from HP.

Hell, yeah! This is fire. Simple, everyone understands the principle (you could even assign them hand gestures if you want). There’s a wildcard option in Open Mind, which is also a nice throwback. I think all stances should cause damage to Psi Pool, to simplify things, so these rules will have to modify the power descriptions for these ten powers. I’ll quickly render that graph as a table to make sure it’s coherent in different formats.

Ok, so I’m noticing something, though. There are six stances, and six disciplines. So should I assign each stance to a discipline? Right now, the names don’t reflect that, and I’m not entirely sure how I could make that work, truly. This is all telepathy. But there are nine schools of magic (for wizardly magic), and sixteen spheres of influence (for priestly magic), but I feel like you could break those schools and spheres down into broader categories of six, and then apply this rule set to them as well. Perhaps. I’ll set that ahead of me. For now, I have a neat little ruleset for psionic battles, and a guideline for ten of the most classic psionic powers.

The Advanced Fantasy Dungeons index is here!

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