OSR: 'Pataphysician

Note: This post was originally drafted 5/18/18, 2 days after this blog was started.

Ubu Roi, the original 'Pataphysician.

In a previous post, I discussed the concepts of Crisis Energy and Probability Mining as well as putting forth my theory on magic on a more unified scale. While I argue that all spellcasters are, one way or another, harnessing Crisis Energy and Probability Mining, I believe there are those who act on this in a more active rather than passive role. Your standard Wizard is something of a magical layperson, they know enough to make a thing work and perhaps have read a few guides. Perhaps they got their B.A. of Thaumatology at the local community Wizard's Tower, but wisely realized that wizarding was not exactly a profitable enterprise and oh gods how am I ever going to pay these student loans back. For better for for worse, the 'Pataphysician is a Wizard who went the B.S. route and decided to go back for more schooling. Spell-Ferrets are lies for children to make understanding more easy, 'Pataphysician  understand that the more you know, the less sense it all makes. These are the sort of folks who, when told of Quantum Mechanics, ask where the Quantum Engineers are.

This, just its organic and its actually your brain.
art by Justin Oaksford

School: 

Perk: You understand that the reality we are living in one of nigh-infinite possible realities reached only through a series of choices and that there are dozens if not hundreds of other possibles realities being spawned every moment. Once a day you force a reroll for anything that could have conceivably gone otherwise, taking whatever the new roll is. You've not actually changed fate, rather you've stepped into a parallel self. You are also, for some reason, immune to dEr0 conspiracies. 

Drawback: Your constant exposure to Crisis Energy and manipulation of Probability makes it hard for reality to keep track of which you is you. Every day reroll your race on your GM's favorite random table.

Cantrips: 
1: You can make a flipped coin land on any side. Heads, Tails, Side, Bicep, Liver, Castle, Ursa Major...The coin reverts to its normal shape when it is out of sight.
2: If something is inside of a box, you can tell with absolute certainty if it is alive or not without looking inside.
3: You can put one thing the size of a grapefuit into quantum stasis. While not exactly locked in time, this causes the target to always flow on the path of Probability where it doesn't rot, age, or otherwise decay. It can still be damaged by other means though. 

David Mattingly's Subway Wizard. Because why not?

Spell What If list:

1 What if this was a different game?
R: 0 T: self D: [sum]/2 rounds or until expended
On the caster's next roll, instead of rolling for success do the followed based on invested MD:
1: Odds or Evens
2: Rock-Paper-Scissors
3: Rock-paper-scissors-spock-lizard
4: Morra

The caster can also choose to invoke best two out of three, three out of five, or four out of seven for an invested [dice]. Ex. Invest 4 [dice], choose Rock-Paper-Scissors, can play to Three out of Five with remaining two invested [dice]. 

2 What if I just kept moving?
R: Touch T: creature D: [sum] rounds
As long as the touched creature continues to move, any projectile shot at them will not reach them, as it will continuously have to reach the halfway point between their point of origin and their target. The number of dice invested increases size of projectiles effected:
1: Sling Stones
2: Arrows/Bolts
3: Spears/Javelins
4: Boulders

3 What if pain really was just weakness leaving the body?
R: Touch T: creature D: [dice] rounds
Touched creature gains Defense equal to 20-current HP but not exceeding [sum].

4 What if they picked up the wrong weapon?
R: 30 T: 1 weapon per [dice] D: [sum] rounds.
Severity of change depends upon [sum]
1-6: A less effective weapon of the same type (-1 to hit or -1 to damage)
7-12: A vastly inferior and possibly very different weapon (half damage, swords become blunt sticks or the like)
12-15: An almost totally nonlethal object (weapon damage becomes 1d1)
>16: Something potentially harmful to the wielder, like a runny glob of molten metal or an irate badger (1d6 damage, disarmed for duration)

5 What if every possible strike was made?
R: Touch T: 1 weapon D: [dice] rounds, or until discharged

Invest one weapon with the power to become a Possible Weapon. The next attack made with the weapon will branch into every possible strike that could have happened, melding multiple Possibilities into a single fractal Actuality. This spell is affected by the accuracy of the attacker. A critical hit will result in normal critical damage being rolled plus [sum]. A critical miss will result in the attack branching into a sphere of mishaps, doing damage+[sum] to the attacker and everything within range, friend and foe alike. Just passing the target's defense, however, will create a cone of attacks dealing damage times [dice].

6 What if you can only arrive, by first bridging half of the remaining distance?
R: 60' T: [Sum]/2 HD Creature D: [dice]*2 rounds, or until discharged
Targeted creature is unable to come closer than half the starting distance between itself and the caster, thereby continuously keeping it out of melee range. The caster, in turn, also cannot move closer than half the starting distance to the target. The caster may attempt a Strength check to forcibly move closer, thereby ending the spell early.  


7. What if God were one of us?
R: Across the table T: The GM D: Until the GM can say Joan Osborn or [sum] rounds, which ever comes first
A nerdy human in a logo tee manifests next to the caster. They possess completely average human stats and is considered a level 1 monk. The human will react as appropriate to the situation and has a morale of 2d6-2. For each ration that is given to the human that could conceivably be considered junkfood, they gain 1 HD, +1 Attack, and +1 Defense up to [dice]*2. The player who casts this spell is responsible for paying for pizza next session.

8. What if THA0 was still a thing?
R: 100' T: Party + [sum] HD creatures D: [dice]*2 rounds
All Defense (AC, THAC0, DEF, etc.) stats are swapped to their opposite on a d20. Thus 1 becomes 20, 20 becomes 1, etc. In the case of actually using THAC0, add 20 to Negative Defenses,.  

9. What if I had chosen a different profession?
R: - T: The Party D: [Sum] Rounds/ Permanent
The caster's player places their character sheet in the middle of the table and everyone else passes their sheets to the left. All players retain their character's basic identity but are now defined by their new character sheet. One player will be without a sheet, this is because the choices made by the caster in their altered youth resulted in that character's demise. Characters have refreshed HP and MD but revert to previous status when the spell is complete. Investing 4 or more MD makes this spell permanent. 

10. What if you strapped buttered bread to a cat?
R: 30' T: 1 [sum] HD Creature D: [dice]+2 rounds
Targeted creature flung 30' into the air and begins to spin in place at a high velocity. For the duration of the spell, the creature is unable to orient itself or move from its position and any attempt at an attack targets a random area around the creature. Target takes appropriate fall damage when the spell is complete and is nauseated for a number of rounds equal to the the number of rounds spent in the air.

Emblem 

11. What if everything were different?
R: 1 Mile Radius T: [sum]*[dice] Creatures, Terrain D: Permanent

The caster permanently transposes another reality on top of this one in a 1 mile radius area. The terrain is randomly changed to: 1. Forest 2: Marsh/Swamp 3. Desert 4. Taiga 5. Steppe 6. Mountains. All animals within the area are transformed into creatures appropriate to the new biome. All sentient humanoid creatures in the area (including the caster and their allies) are changed to a random new race (use the GM's favorite race or resurrection table). Inherently magical or unique creatures may be unaffected or may be allowed a Save vs. Death to resist the effects. 

12 What if the cat were alive AND dead?
R: Touch T: [sum] HD Creature D: [dice] rounds
Touched creature enters a state of quantum uncertainty, appearing as many dozen versions of the creature overlayed on top of one another. While in this state, any rolls made by the creature act as though they made the worse possible, best possible, and median result and take any associated consequences therein. If the result is truly paradoxical, like both successfully climbing a wall and also falling off of it, all observers must Save vs. Spell. If more observers fail than succeed, the target acts as though failed and visa versa. Furthermore those who failed the saving throw take 1d6 damage while their brain has a mild hemorrhage. 

Admittedly, Moondog was more of a Bard than a Wizard, but he looked the part!

Mishaps:
1. Take 1d6 damage as reality backhands you.
2. Reality has misplaced your instructions. You are incorporeal and stunned for 1d6 rounds as everything is sorted out.
3. You become overwhelmed with all the Possibilities before you, act as blinded for 1d6 rounds.
4. Spell goes into Crisis Overload. Spell recasts itself repeatedly at closest valid target until all magic die are used up.
5. Reality calls for a do-over. Reroll Magic Die for spell, take the less advantageous result.
6. Random mutation for 1d6 rounds, then make a save. Permanent if you fail.

Dooms:
1. You become aware that you are a character in a game being controlled by someone who, undoubtedly, does not have an 18 Int. Any time anyone at the table calls your actions into question, you have a 50% chance to loose that action as your player struggles with story logic vs. metagame logic.
2. Somewhere out there, there is a you who has only made bad decisions. This is now you. Reroll, in order, 4d6 for each of your stats, dropping the highest.
3. You've become so unstuck from fate and probability that reality decides it is far better off without you. You not only no longer exist, you never have and never will in this or any other reality. Time/Space adapts accordingly. Hand the GM your sheet and a lighter. Remember, this is your fault.

To avoid this fate, you must become self referential (such as becoming your own grandfather) or ascend to being an Ontological Truth, so bound to the foundation of reality that you might as well be Gravity or electromagnetic radiation. I suggest killing a true King and taking their place.

This guy knows what's up.

Thoughts

I don't know man. This was one of the first posts I started up when I made this blog and I just needed to get it of my drafts. It is weird and probably unbalanced and messes with meta and 4th wall a lot. I will eventually make a better 4th wall class. Consider this a combination of practice and a remember to myself how the Snake Wizard is absolutely a sign of growth since originally coming up with this class.

The Four Causes and How to Exploit Them.

Aristotle held that there were four kinds of answers to "why" questions, these being the Four Causes. The Material Cause, the Formal Cause, the Efficient Cause, and the Final Cause. To fully understand something, one must understand all of its Causes. I'm going to take my limited knowledge of the topic, surely get half of it wrong, and then put it to work for the OSR.

So let's go through the causes using, say, a plain wooden table.

I'm looking at you, bub. 

The Material Cause of the table is the wood that makes it up. Now this might seem simple enough, you are merely naming the raw material of the object. However, on a deeper level, this is implying that the material effect (wood) always had the resulting form (a table) within it all along.

The Formal Cause of the table is its design. Better put by wikipedia it is the "the pattern or form which when present makes matter into a particular type of thing, which we recognize as being of that particular type." This is closely linked to the Theory of Forms (something I will absolutely explore elsewhere) which posits that the things we experience are merely shadows of some truer archetypal Form. Linking back to the Material Cause, the Formal Cause laid inert within the material cause, waiting to be unleashed. 

The Efficient Cause of the table is the carpenter who created it. This is the closest to "cause" as we traditionally know it. The carpenter causes the table, the painter causes the art, the sculptor causes the sculpture. But, keep in mind, that these efficient or agent causes are merely the vector by which the Formal Cause may be made manifest from the Material Cause. When the sculptor chisels a statue from a block of marble, the statue had been within the whole time.

Finally there is the Final Cause. This is the reason for which a thing is done in the first place. The case of the table is fairly simple, its final cause is to be used to dine upon, or to write upon, or to hold a vase of flowers, etc. This comes from the concept of Telos, of an end purpose. The case of the table is a extrinsic telos, it is a final cause imposed by an outside force (in this case humans). It is argued by Aristotle that natural things have an intrinsic telos, a final cause that is present in them all along. The intrinsic telos or Final Cause of an acorn is to grow into an oak. This necessitates either a Prime Mover and/or some kind of Plantonic Forms to assign this. The other causes are determined by the Final Cause, for it is, after a manner, the destiny of the object in question.

Aristotle: Philosopher or 10th level Wizard?!

So lets make this an fit into a RPG.

Many players of RPGs and, I would think, most folks in the OSR community are rather familiar with various magical and supernatural beliefs and systems. One that is very common is the concept of a True Name. In Wizards of Earth Sea, the True Name of an object is entirely how magic is worked. The inhabitants of the Archipelago only give their nicknames, for they know their True Names can be used against them. In various systems of Demonology, you may only command a spirit by knowing its True Name. King Solomon held his power over spirits by having knowledge of the 72 Names of God.

I posit that to absolutely know a True Name is to know its Four Causes. This makes the understanding of inanimate objects significantly easier. This is why any wizard can enchant any simple blade. Material: Steel. Formal: Sharp Weapon. Efficient: Blacksmith. Final: To do harm.

However enchanting something living is more complex and more temporary. You may charm a man, or cause him to grow into a giant, or change him into a toad. However in most cases this effect is temporary. This is because you only hold a portion of that True Name, only a few of the causes. Jim the Fighter's Material Cause is Flesh/Bone (or Clay if you will), his Formal Cause is Man, his Efficient Cause is his Mother and Father, and his Final Cause, who can say? This is easier with beings such as Devils, Angels, and Elementals, for they were crafted for known and documented causes. But for mortals, possessing in them true Free Will, their Final Cause is intricate, changing, and perhaps unknowable except by the greatest of minds.

Why are sheep such a Baleful Polymorph staple?

The Four fits nicely with GLOG's casting mechanic of a max of 4 Magic Dice. Many spells scale in power as you invest more dice, potentially representing a deeper understanding of the fundamental Causes behind the spells and behind the caster's target. Mishaps or Dooms could be caused by a corrupted or insufficient understanding of the Causes, thereby resulting in a casting. Including my spells as "What Ifs" idea, you are trying to force a change or an effect against this universe's Causes, Causes that have been assigned and Causes that show why a thing currently is as it is. By subtly changing them, you work magic, but the universe is by far older and more concrete than any single mage and thus the true Four Causes almost always reassert themselves.

Notice in the description of the Final Cause, I reference the need for Platonic Forms or for a Prime Mover. Well luckily in fantasy that is far easier to deal with. You may have your gods, or in Pathfinder you have Abadar's First Vault, an actual repository of Platonic Forms. In my case, I have the Kings who are at once the Prime Movers of the causes and the incarnations of the Platonic Form of objects all in one.

Perhaps I'll make a Wizard school that deals with this on a meta level. I'm sure you lot can think of a variety of True Name or Words of Power type connection here. But for now I'll just leave you with this image of Aristotle getting ridden by Phyllis.

Crisis Energy, Probability Mining, and You

Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin, courtesy of lipatov

I am an unrepentant fan of Perdido Street Station. Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin, like most of China's characters, isn't the greatest beacon of morality you will find in fiction and this makes him feel so much more human as a protagonist. Furthermore I love The Scar, and its anti-hero/antagonist Uther Doul is a continuous mystery in a mystery that we can feel unfold through the eyes of Bellis Coldwine. But this is not a post about fanboying over these two characters, rather it is about the "sciences" that they each dedicate themselves to.

Crisis Energy is the energy of liminal states. It is both and neither kinetic and potential energy. It is the energy of paradoxes and transformations, it is the midway point between apples and oranges. A thrown rock is in a state of crisis. It doesn't want to fly, it wants to be sitting still on the closest gravitationally significant body. The longer it flies, the more crisis it is in. Grimnebulin figures a way to harvest this Crisis Energy as a self sustaining power source. Continuing the above example, Crisis Energy is used to make that rock fly. The rock, being in this state of Crisis, produces more and more Crisis Energy as it continues to fly, thereby providing the energy to keep it flying. It is a feedback loop offering unlimited energy, limited only by materials and imagination. After all, even Grimnebulin's Crisis Engine can't keep up in the end.

Probability Mining is something akin to a fantasy weaponized Schrodinger's Cat. Few people have not heard one multiversal theory or another that points towards a multitude of alternate dimensions. The Many-Worlds Interpretation, for example, posits that every action you make that involves any sort of choice or alternative results in the birth of countless new realities each representing every possible other alternative to that event. Probability mining takes this concept and runs with it, like a detached rail-car full of nitroglycerin speeding towards Tombstone (pop. 10000.) By essentially stealing from those alternate realities, an adept of Probability Mining can force those other Possibilities to instead be Actualities, or at least pseudo-Actualities. In the distant past, these techniques were used to craft many of the fanciful races of Bas-Lag (likely by modifying the possibilities of evolution) but was also used for sport, song, combat, and a host of other mundane tasks. We get a first hand look at it with the Possible Sword, Doul's favored weapon, that allows one to strike from every conceivable direction at once. When wielded correctly, this creates something of an inescapable blender.

Uther Doul and his Possible Sword, courtesy of Ashley Wood

Bas-Lag is filled with magic, but more often than not it is through a lens of science. Many RPGs, though, are not so limited. A spellcaster wants to fly, so they cast Fly. They don't need to worry about what is powering the spell, it just works. GLOG makes this a little more interesting as magic is no longer just some Vancian words, but is instead something like a metaphysical zoo. As Skerples of Coins and Scrolls put it spells are "spirit-ferrets, your spellbook is ferret jail, and your mind is a canon."

I posit that a spellcaster's mind is a matrix of Crisis Energy, a biological Crisis Engine if you will. It forces itself to believe things that are patently untrue, in order to create a tempting environment for "spell ferrets." These spells are, in turn, beings of Probability made manifest, living "What-ifs." What if I were flying right now? What if Jim was on fire? What if Aunt Gertrude could pull herself from the grave and eat people? These are things that are not actualities, these are things that reality as you currently know it has decided isn't happening. But you've just made them happen, by mining possibilities, you've created crisis. This is why more complex spells tend to last longer, the Crisis Energy is more self sustaining and more capable of resisting reality's grasp. It is easy for reality to wave away a ball of flame that exists for a tenth of a second, it is a lot harder for it to ignore Aunt Gertrude gnashing on Jimmy the Cultist's brain.

No Gran-Gran! No!