House Rules

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Planar Travel

  • So long as the planar isolation accorded by the Veil is maintained, the Outer Planes may not be accessed from the Mainland Material Plane. Therefore, spells or powers that allow conveyance with the outer planes are banned from PC spell lists.
  • Spells or Powers that allow travel or communication with any of the inner planes - Astral, Ethereal, Elemental, Quasi- or Para- Elemental, etc. - function as normal, but are considered Rare Spells.
  • At the GMs discretion, banned spells or powers may be brought into PC spell books or lists as Rare Spells, but still may not access the Outer Planes.
  • Spells that normally summon or bind creatures from the Outer Planes operate as GMs discretion. Many Remnant Outsiders still exist within the infinite expanses of the Astral and Ethreal, and so many spell effects can be replicated without accessing the Outer Planes.


Raising the Dead

There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. -Miracle Max

  • Due to the planar isolation accorded by the Veil, the metaphysics of what happens to the soul after death is poorly understood by earthbound sages. While the raising of the dead is a prominent feature of tales from antiquity (including Alexandria), such feats are all-but-impossible in the current era.
  • Most spells and powers that raise the dead - Raise Dead, Resurrection, Reincarnate, etc. - are not included on any spell lists, with the following exceptions:
    • Breath of Life (Clr 5)
    • Psionic Revivify (Egoist 5)
  • Limited Wish and Lesser Miracle may be used to replicate the effects of the exception powers above, but can not replicate spells stricken from the spell list.
  • Wish and Miracle may replicate the effects of any power stricken from the spell list, including spells that restore life. Even these most powerful magics, however, only work on the recently dead: no more than a few hours.


Psionics

This setting uses a variant of the "Psionics Is Different" rule, as opposed to the "Magic/Psionic Transparency" presumed of most game settings, a hybrid perhaps best described as semi-transparency." At present, this is a very rough outline of the exceptions and rules, and should be considered a work in progress. The DM has final discretion in all instances of transparency in their own campaigns.


1. Dispelling: Unless specifically designed to deal with psionics, no magic short of a wish or miracle can dispel a psionic effect. No psionic ability short of Alter Reality can dispel a magical effect. At the GM's discretion, a spellcaster with appropriate ranks in Knowledge:Psionics and/or Psicraft might be able to craft rare spells to deal with Psionic threats. If these spells are found in the wild, they may be added to spellbooks or spell lists as normal.


2. Damage types are transparent. Therefore, a psionic fireball will be reduced by magical elemental protection and an arcane cone of cold can be absorbed using Energy Absorption.


3. Physical artifacts created by magic may be effected by Psionics, and vice versa. (Example, a Psionic Freedom of Movement will allow passage through a wizard's Web spell, and a Priest's Freedom of Movement will allow passage through ectoplasmic entangles)


4. Psionic and magical abilities that give blanket protections are NOT transparent. (Example, a Psionic Freedom of Movement is not effective against a Cleric's Hold Person, and a magical Protection from Evil won't protect against a Psionic Hold Person.


5. Psionic and Magical effects that read minds, detect persons, or prevent scrying *are* transparent, and an exception to the rule above. So a Psionic Mind Blank is effective against a Far Sight spell, for example, and a Non-Detection spell will thwart psionic scrying, and psionic Scrying detection will detect arcane, divine, and psionic eavesdropping.


6. As suggested in the Psionics Expanded book, most creatures in the bestiary were created without psionics in mind, but clearly Psionics was never meant to trump dragons, mind flayers, etc. To address this issue, any creature with SR granted from an exceptional or supernatural ability (but not from an item or spell) has naturally occurring PR from the same source, only two less. So, a dragon with an SR of 25 would have a PR of 23. The reverse is also true of any creature listed with a PR but no SR.


Pathfinder Homebrew Rules

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