JohnSolaris

Cradle of Divinity (signups always open)

If my character takes a core in Cold and a core in earth, are the resulting, 2/6 in dark and light enough to have minor bits of that in powers, or should one keep to things with more than that?

@Raptorman

Yes, the point of those extra masteries is so that you'll be able to take some minor abilities in elements other than your main ones.

Cradle of Divinity (signups always open)

What should one take if they are looking for body horror powers and shapeshifting stuff?

@Raptorman

Body horror? Probably Life and Dark. But I'd rather that you don't take that combination, since we already have another character with that.

Shapeshifting? If you intend to keep being made of organic matter, you could have Life. But you could gradually change your body into being made of some other substance as well, in which case you could take Earth, Water, or Air.

Cradle of Divinity (signups always open)

Was think to go dark + fire or aether route, can you expand on the possibilities with the pairing?

@Grimoire

Fire + Dark usually makes hellfire, which easily burns normally nonflammable materials and deals a mixture of Dark and Heat damage. Those two are both destructive elements, so combining them usually gives you high-damage attacks.

As for Dark + Aether, that's probably good at assaulting opponents' minds with negative emotions and feelings, e.g. pain and fear. You may also add the metamagical effects of Aether to Dark, and result in energy drain or disruption that passes through solid matter and targets structures made of energy.

Cradle of Divinity (signups always open)

1)I've made my character under the assumption that Life + Dark = Mutation, more or less. Am I correct on this?

@Laue

There are many ways to combine multiple elements, so yes, Life + Dark can be mutations. Another common combination of the two is undeath.

2)Expanding on that, how would trying to offensively mutate others work? Like an infection which could transform/mutate the victim into a feral abomination. That is sort of a mind control, even though that would never specifically target the mind - it's the body and the brain that were forcibly changed.

@Laue

This... wouldn't work very well, to be honest. Mutations tend to be extremely unpredictable, so you're almost never going to know what kind of effect you're going to inflict on your target. Sure, the mutation could damage the victim's body, or drive the victim insane, but it could also make the victim stronger; it's generally too unpredictable to be very useful in a fight against someone on a similar power level as you. It might be useful against large swarms of relatively weak enemies, where you turn one of the mooks into an insane rampaging monster that attacks the rest of the mooks, but that's a bit too situational. Against normal enemies, you're better off sticking to poison or something else that's guaranteed to inflict damage to the target.

Also, brain damage can indeed damage the target's mind. But since the mind is not being directly tampered with, you can't really control how the mind is going to get damaged. The victim will most likely be driven insane, yes, but the insanity could potentially manifest as an insanely powerful obsession to exact vengeance against you at all costs, or some other kind of thing that actually makes the victim more dangerous. As I said, it's far less reliable.

3)What's an ambitious bioengineer with no morals without a zombie virus. How realistic would it be? All these assumes John studies/analyzes the species he wants to infect beforehand. Maybe even tailors his mutagens/viruses for specific races?

@Laue

At least one magical zombie virus already exists in the Cradle, which kills its victim and reanimates the corpse, so it's possible for your character to learn that as an ability and develop his own variants. Magical pathogens like this can potentially infect any being that has mana vessels, so you won't need to tailor it for specific races. But some beings (e.g. inorganic beings in general) are inherently more resistant to Life-based magical pathogens, and you can't really do anything about that aside from making your pathogens more efficient and/or powerful.

@gammaflux: Your character is accepted.

Cradle of Divinity (signups always open)

Reading through the accepted characters, it seems John and Rick share quite a bit of similarities, except the bad stuff John does is always solely for science, discovery and/or curiosity. Which brings me to a few questions.

1)Analysis magic. I would assume it would a psionic type, basically something that would allow John to analyse various tissues (and flora) to determine various things about them, allowing his Pharmaceutics skill to be of some use. Also allow him to expand his anatomy knowledge to more creatures, after he dissects them, of course.

2)Souls, more specifically, is something like dissecting a soul theoretically possible, and what would be the results, because John would do that if he could.

@Laue

Well, what you see on the character sheet is less than half of what we have planned for Rick, so the similarities are going to end soon.

Now, to answer your questions.

1. A general-purpose magic scan should probably be an Aether ability, yes. You could potentially have a Life-elemental scan that's more specialized on organic matter, but it would be less effective on the inorganic creatures (e.g. golems, elementals) that you're going to face.

2. Unfortunately, soul dissection is far too difficult for any player character to accomplish in any feasible amount of time. At the very least, decades of research would be needed, and I doubt the game would last that long in-universe.

@whist: Your character is accepted.

Cradle of Divinity (signups always open)

@Laue: Your character is accepted.

Cradle of Divinity (signups always open)

@ravenDivinity: Your character is accepted. Good job on the detailed descriptions; I can tell that you put a lot of effort into them.

Cradle of Divinity (signups always open)

@Laue: There are a few problems with your character sheet.

1. I guess I should clarify this more in the first post, but "the Worldsphere" is not the setting that this game takes place in. It's an entirely separate planet in a different solar system that my novel takes place on, so it's completely unrelated to the Cradle of Divinity aside from being in the same universe. I only linked to the document because the two settings have the same laws of physics. So yeah, please change all instances of the Worldsphere to the Cradle.

2. This is only 2015, so it might be a bit far-fetched to have already developed cures for previously incurable diseases, in your character's backstory. At most, the drugs should still be in the experimental stage.

3. The Cradle's flora is very different from the Earth's flora (e.g. magical plants), so it's highly unlikely that your character can craft potions using just knowledge of Earth plantlife. He can learn the potionmaking skill later, but he can't start with it.

4. Your character starts with nothing but the clothes he's wearing. That means no smartphones. This may seem like a trivial point, but it'll become kind of important later.

Everything else about the character is fine, though.

Cradle of Divinity (signups always open)

@Magnato: Yes, that's much better now. Your character is accepted.

FYI, all player characters don't need to breathe, so you don't need to worry about the Water Adaptation ability not giving waterbreathing.

Also, I should clarify that familiars don't need to eat, drink, sleep, breathe, or excrete either, even if they were not exempt from these needs prior to becoming familiars. Player characters and familiars absorb ambient energy from the environment to sustain themselves, though food and drink may still restore energy more quickly if they're tired.

Cradle of Divinity (signups always open)

What sort of abilities could one get when combining aether with ice or with water? I know what aether may be used for on its own, but not what aether may do when it is paired with another element.

@ravenDivinity

Hmm... I can't immediately think of any ways to combine Cold or Water with mind or spacetime magic. On the other hand, Aether also deals with magical energy itself (I'll update the element description to match). So... Here are some ideas.

Aether + Cold: An energy that freezes up the circulation of magic in the afflicted area, making magic harder to use. May also slow down and damage energy-based beings.

Aether + Water: A magical liquid that efficiently conducts many different kinds of magical energies. Allows for different energy types to be dissolved into the liquid to give it different properties.

Aether + Ice: Similar to the magical liquid above, except the energies are preserved in a crystal of frozen magical liquid. Crystals containing defensive energy types could be used as shields, and ones containing offensive energy types could be used as bombs, or something like that.

Those are just some rough ideas.