Welcome back as we focus on our 5th path of dragon magic, meaning we are now past the halfway point. Now the path of life could just be a list of various healing spells and across Gal Hadre there are dozens of variations of healing magic using the path of life. But I will not focus on them in this blog post as that would probably be very boring; and it was important to me from when I first started developing the eight paths that the Path of Life needed to be more than just healing spells.
While I will also not look at any specific spells, it should be noted that the Path of Life can be used as part of spells to bring various things to life. I have looked at short duration spells of this type before, such as the Crystalline Companion in the Glacial Path (that blog post can be found Here). But the Path of Life can be used in more powerful ways to affect life, making permanent changes to living creatures that would otherwise not work properly and cause the subject extreme pain, illness and likely death. The most commonly encountered creatures like this would be Trollkin, an entire species made from a fusion of mostly Human with Troll, that are fully capable of reproducing amongst themselves, and have spread in some numbers across much of Gal Hadre. But you can also find trollhounds and many magical beasts throughout the world that have been made using this power. It is even rumoured that a Firstborn dragon of life, Remneg the maker, has dedicated the majority of his life to making living weapons for the neverborn, unleashed when they wish to cause maximum destruction and chaos.
Now that I have spent probably the most time not talking about specific spells of any of the path focus blog posts let's get into some spells starting with Exhaust the Mortal Frame. This spell has significant range and causes the target to test against their constitution, with every degree of failure adding a level of fatigue. Even a basic failure still debuffs the target as having any fatigue imposes negatives on all checks related to actions; a significant failure can make the target pass out nearly instantly. This a great, non-lethal way to take down a threat, especially one not particularly gifted with toughness. Higher tier versions of this spell could target multiple creatures, have even longer range and/or harder checks to avoid the fatigue.
Next is another tier 1, is Purge Unlife. Technically able to damage anyone with the surge of life energy that is channelled, it’s main focus as the name implies is causing damage to Undead with it is highly effective at, dealing damage in a 3m by 3m area within 20 meters of the caster. Higher tier versions of this could hit a larger area, hit targets farther away or deal more damage to targets in the area.
The first tier 2 spell is Metabolic Overclocking, where the caster touches someone and uses magic to put their body into overdrive, above and beyond even what adrenaline surging through one’s veins would cause. Each round for one minute the target may make one additional half action, though if they do so they gain a level of fatigue. Any extra actions you get in combat can make a huge difference, especially if given to a real damage dealer. Of course given that many Path of Life mages have ways of dealing with fatigue as well, this isn’t as big a downside as it might seem. A tier 3 version of this spell could increase the length of time the spell lasts for, apply to multiple targets or maybe grant an extra full action instead of a half action.
The second tier 2 spell is Seek the Abomination, a spell that allows the caster to know the location of any undead within 100 meters. Given that the spell was developed by casters that are part of the Children of Life, it is used by many of their circles to hunt down undead that are reported to them. Which in theory is great, but the majority of the undead the Children of Life hunt down and destroy are completely harmless Vrak they come across. It is a fairly easy spell to cast, with the downside that it takes about double the length of time of an average spell to cast.
The tier 3 spell I am going to look at for this path is True Rebirth. More a ritual than a spell one casts without planning, it allows the caster to restore life to a recently deceased creature. Now it requires the soul to be willing to return, and the window to act is fairly narrow so in many situations you can simply not get to one of the very limited numbers of mages that know how to use this spell. Also it doesn’t really prevent someone from dying from old age, as without fixing the underlying issues that lead to them dying, they will just die again. Thus casters usually only use this when someone died from unnatural causes, or had an easily curable illness. It is the kind of spell that game masters should be very careful how easily it can be used without impacting the story significantly.
The path focus for Path of Life is centred around keeping the caster themselves functioning. It makes it easier to resist any ongoing damage, disease or poison effects the caster must check to resist. Basically internalising some amount of life magic that is constantly flowing through the caster.
What did you think of the Path of Life? Are there cool ideas you have for spells using this path? Which of the Path of Living Fire and the Path of Stone Awakened do you want to see next? Come back in a week as we take a look at the Tund armies of the Shard Cities.
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