Ye Olde Magic

As it is in most fantasy RPGs, magic and spellcasting is a central pillar of the game and the world of CORE20. “Magic Among the Worldborn” in the introduction to the CORE20 Magic Grimoire sets out the broad history of magic and its evolution in Isheridar — the fantasy world that establishes a baseline for the rules of the game. Your CORE20 campaign absolutely doesn’t need to be set in Isheridar (with a number of GMs I’ve talked to running CORE20 campaigns set in the Forgotten Realms and other classic settings). But talking about the relationship between that world and the game’s rules is an effective way of letting GMs and players understand how to adjust that relationship for their own worlds.

Primordial Power

Primordial arcane power was the first magic wielded by the worldborn, arising among the kobolds in their migrations out of the forbidden dragon heartland of Taliyad more than ten thousand years ago. The origins of primordial magic’s chaotic and destructive power are long lost to time, and are occluded by folk history that almost certainly misstates how the kobolds were granted the mastery of magic by their dragon kin. (Among other things, such lore is contradicted by the fact that dragons have never used primordial magic as far as any histories note.) Still, the magical and elemental fury of the dragons was almost certainly the model that the kobolds sought to mimic when they channeled eldritch power for the first time.

In the lands closest to Taliyad, the oldest tales of kobold witness history record that the first mystics to channel arcane power did so in a legendarily destructive and uncontrolled manner, driven by endless curiosity and a profound lack of self-preservation. Unlike spellcasting’s ordered flow of magic, primordial magic was a personal shaping of magical potential, catalyzing magical effects along the boundary between an invoker’s intent and the raw fury of arcane power. 

Over millennia, the kobolds honed this new art of personal arcane craft, recording it through narrative traditions and stone inscriptions in shrines dedicated to magic. In its earliest forms, primordial magic was an even more chaotic art then the longstanding primordial forms known and learned in the world today. Only a select few were able to fully shape and master the art in the days of the early kobold clans. But over time, the goal of taming the capriciousness of arcane power passed beyond the heroes and warlords who had first mastered its destructive potential, becoming the subject of critical research by kobold scholars and sages. Those who studied primordial magic were the first to understand the broader potential of arcane power — and it was through them that the channeling of magic spread to the folk of other lineages.

The Old Arcana

As it’s presented in the game, primordial magic is the oldest form of arcane magic, predating the spellcasting traditions that have long since supplanted it. Primordial magic is a personal magic, shaped and honed by intent and necessity in ways beyond the rigid forms that spellcasting allows. But within the game, primordial magic is defined in terms of spellcasting, with the rules effectively reversing the relationship between primordial magic and spellcasting to make primordial magic as easy to play as possible.

Primordial magic is modeled very much after the first presentation of the warlock in D&D, from 3rd edition’s Complete Arcane — the first D&D book I ever worked on as an editor (though the warlock class wasn’t one of my sections). Primordial magic is manifested as invocations — magical features that resemble the spells they evolved into, but whose casting is more fluid and more flexible.

Altering Invocations

Invocations respond to your will as a caster, and are channeled as unique representations of your magic. Historically, spells are the fixed representation of primordial magic that was once more freeform and personalized. As such, you alter your invocations by changing the mechanics of the spells you use as a baseline for those invocations, in ways that a spellcaster can’t. 

A primordial caster in CORE20 has the freedom to shape their invocations in many ways. They can alter the presentation of their magic, deciding whether an obscuring mist effect takes the form of swirling fog, clinging shadow, or a swarm of intangible insects. Casters can alter the range of their invocations at the expense of strength, creating a fireball at twice the distance by imposing disadvantage on the challenge throw that sets the save DC. They can increase the duration of their magic by dampening its effect, or can heighten effects by shortening duration. They can expand the number of creatures targeted by their magic by spreading out a slightly weakened effect over more targets.

You can check out the full scope of the rules for primordial magic in chapter 10 of the CORE20 Player’s Guide, or in a four-page PDF sample.

Building an Invoker

For simplicity’s sake, chapter 1 (“Building Your Character”) of the CORE20 Players’ Guide focuses on traditional spellcasting. The “Spellcasting Options” in the “Feat Packages” section don’t present an option for primordial magic — but you can use the following custom feat package and fast-start suggestions if you want to get your invocations on.

Primordial Caster

6 Feat Slots

You are a practitioner of a form of arcane magic older than spells and magic items alike. As a channeler of primordial magic, you harness raw arcane power, shaping it to your will and intent. Take this feat package if you wish to make use of arcane spells with your own distinct flourishes. You’ll benefit the most from this feat package if Intelligence (the spellcasting ability for a primordial caster) is one of your best ability scores.

Eldritch Spirit (arcane) ×1: You channel the power of arcane magic.

Primordial Caster ×1: You can channel arcane magic in its primordial form. You gain a number cantrip invocations equal to your Intelligence modifier, based on any arcane cantrip.

Invocation Mastery ×3: You are caster level 3, granting you three invocations based on any arcane spells of 3rd level or lower. You can manifest those invocations up to three times per day (or a number of times equal to your Intelligence modifier if it’s higher than 3).

Arcane Blood ×1: You negate the penalty to your critical points imposed by Invocation Mastery.

Fast-Start: Invocations

To quickly build a primordial caster character, you can select starting invocations and cantrip invocations reflecting common and useful spells. The CORE20 Magic Grimoire has full information on these spells.

The cost is broken out for each level of invocation, which comes out of your 150 gp starting wealth. You know a number of cantrip invocations equal to your Intelligence modifier. You know a number of higher-level invocations equal to your caster level, which can reflect any spells of your caster level or lower.

Primordial Invocation Package

This package contains the following invocations and cantrip invocations, reflecting the spells of the same name:

0 level (5 gp each): Detect magic, eldritch blast, mage touch, touch of fatigue

1st level (7 gp each): Mage armor, mesmerism, shadow shroud

2nd level (12 gp each): Blighted claws, harrowing retreat

3rd level (25 gp each): Blade storm, energy resistance

Art by Vagelio Kaliva

Divination With a Kick

A thing that’s been pretty common over the ten-plus years that CORE20 has been slouching its way from house rules to alpha playtest to proper playtest is that things get added to the rules that are pretty cool. And then a year or two later, I notice something else in the rules that I hadn’t thought about at the time of creating the New Cool Thing that suggests all kinds of potential for a Newer Cool Thing.

That was the situation I noted earlier this year when fine-tuning the “Lineages”chapter of the CORE20 Players’ Guide, and checking the setup of the eldritch affinity trait:

Eldritch Affinity

Choose a school of magic. You have a +1 bonus to the challenge throw for magic you channel of that school, including from spells and magic items. The most common schools for dwarf eldritch affinity are abjuration, evocation, and transmutation, but you can select any school of magic that fits your character’s backstory.

Eldritch affinity provides a nice mechanical benefit for spellcasting characters to boost the saving throws against certain of their spells. But it also provides a bit of suggested story by having each lineage’s version of eldritch affinity talk about the most common schools of magic tying to the spellcasting traditions of that lineage. (As with all such suggestions in CORE20, however, you’re always free to choose a different option that makes sense for your character.) 

Over a few iterations of the trait, I divided up the schools of magic between the twelve worldborn lineages in ways that touched on some of the broad themes underlying how characters of a particular lineage connect to the traditions of their past, and it all eventually felt pretty good. Except much later, I then took another look at human, lizardfolk, and orc eldritch affinity, all of which suggested divination as one of their schools of magic — and thought to myself, “Wait… how many divination spells have saving throws?”

The answer, traditionally, is “Not many.” Detect thoughts and scrying have always been the big two (and scrying in CORE20 loses the saving throw in favor of the caster making a Magic check to connect to their target). So I thought I’d fix that.

Glimpse of the Future

The following divination spells are brand-new to CORE20, and are set to appear in the version 1.1 playtest rules update, coming soon!

Blood Tell

Divination

Level and Sphere: 2 — druidas
Components: Lexis, somatic
Range: 60 feet
Area: 15-foot-radius sphere
Targets: Each living creature in the area
Duration: 1 minute per caster level

Saving Throw: Will negates

Magic taps into the prophetic power of blood for each living creature in a 15-foot-radius sphere within 60 feet, forcing them to succeed on a Will save or reveal their weaknesses when gravely wounded. When an affected target is bloodied, you learn their lowest saving throw modifier and any immunities, resistances, or vulnerabilities they have. While the target remains bloodied, you know how many critical points they have, and they have disadvantage on defense rolls, saving throws, and opposed skill checks against you.

Broken Will

Divination

Level and Sphere: 2 — animys, druidas
Components: Lexis, somatic
Range: 60 feet
Target: One creature
Duration: 1 round per caster level
Saving Throw: Will negates

Visions of inescapable fate sap the willpower of the target creature, which must succeed on a Will save or have a d12 bane on Will saves for 1 round per caster level.

Harrowing Fate

Divination

Level and Sphere: 3 — animys, arcane, druidas
Components: Lexis, somatic
Range: 60 feet
Target: One creature
Duration: 1 round per caster level
Saving Throw: Will negates (refocus at end of turn)

One creature within 60 feet is harrowed with visions of their own misfortune. The target must succeed on a Will saving throw or have disadvantage on all d20 rolls for 1 round per caster level, refocusing the save at the end of each turn. 

Arcane Material Component: A pinch of black sand.

Malicious Tell

Divination

Level and Sphere: 6 — animys, arcane, druidas
Components: Lexis, somatic, material
Range: 120 feet
Area: 15-foot-radius sphere
Targets: Each creature in the area
Duration: 1 minute per caster level
Saving Throw: Fortitude negates (refocus on taking damage or having another condition imposed)

The power of grim fate permeates each creature in a 15-foot-radius sphere within 120 feet, forcing them to succeed on a Fortitude save or grant other creatures prophetic warnings of their intended physical actions. While the spell is in effect, each target has disadvantage on attack rolls, defense rolls, challenge throws, and skill checks using Strength, Dexterity, or Constitution. A target can refocus the save on taking damage or having a condition imposed on them.

Arcane Material Component: The torn corner of a playing card.

Mind Dart

Divination

Level and Sphere: 3 — animys, arcane, druidas
Components: Lexis, somatic
Range: 60 feet
Target: One creature
Duration: 10 minutes per caster level
Saving Throw: Will negates

A tendril of divinatory power lashes out at one creature within 60 feet, who must succeed on a Will saving throw or have their presence bound to you. On a failed save, the target takes 1d6 psychic damage per caster level (maximum 5d6) and gains no benefit against you from concealment or total concealment for 10 minutes per caster level. 

Open Mind

Divination

Level and Sphere: 4 — animys, druidas
Components: Lexis, somatic
Range: 60 feet
Area: 15-foot-radius sphere
Targets: Each creature in the area
Duration: 1 minute per caster level
Saving Throw: Will negates

Magic assails the thoughts of each creature in a 15-foot-radius sphere within 60 feet, which must succeed on a Will save or reveal themself to you. You immediately learn each affected target’s attitude toward you and your allies — friendly, indifferent, unfriendly, or hostile — and you have advantage on Persuasion checks involving them.

Uncertain Fate

Divination

Level and Sphere: 6 — animys, arcane, druidas
Components: Lexis, somatic, material
Range: 60 feet
Area: 15-foot-radius sphere
Targets: Each creature in the area
Duration: 1 minute per caster level
Saving Throw: Reflex negates

Shadowy visions of the future attempt to bind themselves to each creature in a 15-foot-radius sphere within 60 feet, forcing them to succeed on a Reflex save or have their fate temporarily unbalanced. Whenever an affected creature obtains a clear success on a skill check or saving throw, or a clear hit on an attack roll, they become overwhelmed by uncertainty over their next actions and are dazed until the end of their next turn.

Arcane Material Component: A copper piece.

The Old Magic

The spellcasting and magic system in CORE20 will be familiar to anyone who’s ever unleashed a fireball in a d20 fantasy game. But with the baseline rules of the game built on a mythic foundation in which gods and deities aren’t real, extant figures constantly messing around with the mortal realm, I knew that I wanted to do something different with the idea of animyst domains (the cleric domains of D&D, with clerics rebranded for a “no gods, all monsters” kind of milieu).

Bonus Spells! Huzzah!

The first iteration of domains in the CORE20 alpha playtest (version 3.0, back when the game was still called d20 CORE) detached them from the portfolios of deities to make them more about the philosophy or focus of a particular animyst or animyst order. They used the model of domains in D&D 3.5e (which look a fair bit like domains in 5e), granting a special power and a number of bonus spells at different levels. They also inspired the creation of an analogous setup for druidas casters called dominions at the time (now druidas creeds). 

However, this setup had a problem right from the get-go, insofar as bonus spells are cool and all, but the utility of bonus spells falls off unless your character is a dedicated caster focused on hitting as high a caster level as possible. And although that kind of singular focus works fine in a class-based game, it really works against the “be whatever you want to be” ethos of CORE20 character building.

What Came Before

For version 7 of the CORE20 alpha playtest — which is the same exact ruleset as version 1 of the open beta playtest — I rebuilt domains and creeds from the ground up by looking to have them fill a space in the magic rules that I hadn’t yet filled. One of the things that’s always bothered me about D&D spellcasting is a lack of any sense of what the history of magic and spellcasting looks like in the game world. The D&D baseline of “Gods! More gods!” is part of this problem, with any number of standard campaign settings talking about how magic and spellcasting were gifts of one or more deities, who dropped that knowledge and art into the world ready-made.

I love the idea of history underpinning an RPG and its worlds. I love the idea of magic being a part of the world that evolved over time, starting small then improving and expanding in the same way that language and science and culture and politics evolve throughout history. So I asked myself the question: If spellcasting as we know it in the game is the current end point of the evolution of magic, what came before it? And I realized that domains and creeds could answer that question.

In CORE20, animys domains and druidas creeds represent an older magic, predating spellcasting by more than a millennium. A kind of personal and limited magic, the features granted by domains and creeds were the basis on which spellcasting was later developed. The spellcasting arts came to be because of the limited power and personal nature of domain and creed magic, and a desire to create a codified system of magic that would increase in power. (“Magic Among the Worldborn” in the “Introduction” section of the CORE20 Playtest Magic Grimoire talks at length about the history and evolution of magic in the game.)

Excerpt

The following excerpt from chapter 10 of the CORE20 Playtest Player’s Guide introduces animys domains and shows off a few common domain powers to set up the look and feel and domain and creed magic. The Player’s Guide features a whopping forty-six domain feats, each of them a unique magical power. Druidas creeds feature the same number of feats, with a bit of crossover to underline how animys magic evolved from druidas magic way back. And because domains and creeds are meant to represent a personal approach to magic, they make great fodder for players and GMs who want to expand the range of domain and creed feats in their games.

• • •

Animys Domains

An animys domain is a magical and philosophical doctrine that provides a focus for an animyst’s magic and spellcasting. A domain might represent the training of an animyst order or temple, a certain aspect of one of the old gods or the tenets of a new cult, or an entirely personal devotion to specific principles of magic and life.

A character takes the Domain of Faith feat to select a domain, then can take additional feats to gain unique magical features or specialized spells related to their domain.

The Old Magic

In the oldest records of druidas and animys traditions, formally recorded millennia ago but older by far, druidas creeds and animys domains were the earliest means of manipulating life magic. The magical abilities bestowed by creed feats and domain feats predated the development of spell magic, and the relatively limited power of creed and domain magic is thought to have inspired the initial development of life magic spellcasting.

In their earliest forms, creeds and domains were often part of complex cultural and faith traditions that limited their use, restricting domains to the followers of deities thought to control the power of those domains. However, such strictures are all but unknown today. Characters who are part of an organized faith or magical association might be directed by custom to take up only certain domains — for example, a member of an order of animyst healers who exclusively take the good, healing, or protection domains. There are otherwise no restrictions on what creeds or domains a character can select.

Animal Domain

The animal domain embodies the power and spirit of all beasts of forest and tundra, plain and sea. Animysts who choose this domain are drawn to the tenaciousness and dignity of animals, whether they demonstrate that as noble strength or feral fury. 

Chaos Domain

The chaos domain embodies the chaotic and unpredictable nature of existence and the inexorable march of time and decay. Those who follow this domain are agents of change and upheaval, creation or destruction, whether they tear order down to see what new order forms in its place, or revel in the sheer joy of disorder.

Death Domain

Those animysts who follow the death domain are fascinated by the mysteries of mortality, seeking always to understand the balance between death and life. Some see themselves as agents of death, protecting the sanctity of life until such time as creatures who meet their end can do so on their own terms. Others are agents of death, bringing an end to those they judge as deserving it.

Fire Domain

The fire domain embodies the fierce power of flame, and those who follow it are often driven by emotions whose energy fuels their actions and beliefs. They seek to control and direct fire in all its mundane and magical forms, and understand that the cleansing power of flame must sometimes be allowed to scour the world clean.

The philosophy and magic of the clerical fire domain are identical to that of the druidas fire creed.

Trickery Domain

The trickery domain embraces deception and cunning. Those who follow this domain use their magic to outwit adversaries and weave protective artifice around those they defend, and often support that magic with natural gifts of diplomacy and duplicity.

War Domain

Combat and martial prowess are the province of animysts who follow the war domain. Their study of magic focuses on force of will and skill at arms, whether they strive to protect allies in battle, to vanquish foes, or to stand up for those whose lives war would destroy.

The philosophy and magic of the animys war domain are identical to that of the druidas war creed.

• • •

Animal Aggression

Your magic controls the temperament of animals around you in combat.

Prerequisites: Domain of Faith (animal) ×1.

Benefit: As a minor action, you incite a shift in the belligerence of each animal within 30 feet of you. You choose whether to grant a target animal a d6 boon on attack rolls and combat maneuver skill checks, or to impose a d6 bane on attack rolls and combat maneuver skill checks, with either effect lasting for 1 minute.

You can use this feat a number of times per day equal to your Wisdom modifier (minimum three times). You regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest. 

This is a magical feature.

Mastery: You can take this feat once, at a cost of 1 feat slot.

Chaos Burst

A chaotic surge of energy courses through nearby foes.

Prerequisites: Domain of Faith (chaos) ×1.

Benefit: One creature you can observe within 15 feet takes 1d4 damage of a random type, rolled for on the following table:

d10    Damage Type 

 1       Acid

 2       Cold

 3       Fire

 4       Force

 5       Lightning

 6       Necrotic

 7   Psychic

 8       Radiant

 9      Thunder

10     Choose

If the target takes less than 4 damage, another creature you can observe within 15 feet of the previous target takes 1d4 damage of the same type. You repeat this process until a target takes 4 damage or you run out of targets. A creature can take damage only once from each use of Chaos Burst.

You can use this feat a number of times per day equal to your Wisdom modifier (minimum three times). You regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.

This is a magical feature.

Mastery: You can take this feat once, at a cost of 1 feat slot.

Death Touch

You drain the last dregs of life from a dying creature.

Prerequisites: Domain of Faith (death) ×1.

Benefit: As a standard action, you touch a dying creature to automatically impose three failed death saves on them. If the dying creature is not immobilized or unconscious, you must hit them with an unarmed strike to touch them.

You can use this feat a number of times per day equal to your Wisdom modifier (minimum three times). You regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest. 

This is a magical feature.

Mastery: You can take this feat once, at a cost of 1 feat slot.

Fiery Rebuke

Adversaries who challenge you feel the heat of your wrath.

Prerequisites: Creed of Nature (fire) ×1 or Domain of Faith (fire) ×1.

Benefit: When you are hit by an attack, you can use a reaction to deal 1d6 fire damage to one adversary you can observe within 30 feet of you. 

You can use this feat a number of times per day equal to your Wisdom modifier (minimum three times). You regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest. 

This is a magical feature.

Mastery: You can take this feat once, at a cost of 1 feat slot.

Trickster’s Spirit

Your natural proclivity for trickery is temporarily honed by your magic.

Prerequisites: Domain of Faith (trickery) ×1.

Benefit: As a minor action, you gain a d6 boon on skill checks made using Charisma for 1 minute.

You can use this feat a number of times per day equal to your Wisdom modifier (minimum three times). You regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest. 

This is a magical feature.

Mastery: You can take this feat once, at a cost of 1 feat slot.

Warrior’s Aid

Your magic lets an ally evade the most potent attacks.

Prerequisites: Creed of Nature (war) ×1 or Domain of Faith (war) ×1.

Benefit: When an ally you can observe within 30 feet is subject to critical hit, you can use a reaction to turn the attack into a regular hit.

You can use this feat a number of times per day equal to your Wisdom modifier (minimum three times). You regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest. 

This is a magical feature.

Mastery: You can take this feat once, at a cost of 1 feat slot.

Illustration by Eric Pommer

Death by Healing

Though you can play CORE20 any way you like, as should be the case with any RPG, the game is written from a baseline perspective of the world as a place where magic is everywhere. As would be expected in a such a milieu, magical healing is everywhere. Restorative potions and spellmarks are available for purchase in the public markets of any town or city, and restorative spellcasting services can be found in healing houses, temples, and spas across the land. Even in villages and hamlets too small for healing magic to be ubiquitous, mills and communal barns might keep a potion of cure light wounds on hand in case of an injury mundane healing can’t deal with quickly enough, and experienced adventurers know that it’s not uncommon to find a healer or midwife in the smallest thorp who can cast lesser restoration in exchange for a favor.

But as players and GMs of every fantasy game with ready access to healing magic understand, too much healing magic can quickly undermine the sense of peril that comes from a life spent fighting evil and monsters. For such characters, the threat of injury and even death needs to feel real. But if healing magic is too easily accessible, that threat can quickly become hollow. As CORE20 underwent its evolution from D&D 3.5 house rules into something bigger, I wrestled with this dilemma for a long while, and eventually hit upon what seemed like a cool idea: 

If one wants easy access to healing magic but easy access to healing magic reduces the threat that’s important to the narrative of the game, what happens if you replace that threat with a different threat? And so it is that in CORE20, every character understands that making use of healing magic can eventually kill you.

Life and Magic

Focusing first on the narrative angle — because for me, that’s always the best way to approach game design — magical healing in CORE20 revolves around that idea that magic is… well, supernatural. Which is to say, magic is unnatural. And even though magical healing has the incredible power to reverse injuries in moments that might otherwise take days or weeks to heal, it does so in a way that ever-so-slightly corrupts the natural health and healing ability of the body.

In CORE20, hit points are divided into two different pools of protection — critical points and defense points. I’ve talked about the narrative and design ideas underlying critical points and defense points (and how that system is actually the oldest part of the CORE20 rules). But to precis from the “Hit Points” section of “Chapter 9: Combat” in the CORE20 Playtest Player’s Guide, critical points measure your capacity to withstand physical injury, while defense points represent your ability to turn potentially lethal damage into minor damage through defensive prowess, innate hardiness, or raw instinct.

Defense points are a buffer that protects your more important critical points from getting knocked down, with damage-dealing attacks wearing down defense points first. Critical hits are a potentially nasty exception to this, so named in CORE20 because they deal damage directly to a creature’s critical points regardless of how many defense points the creature has remaining.

When an injured character takes magical healing, that healing restores critical points first, then defense points, rebuilding your body’s physical vigor and integrity before bringing your defensive acumen back up. But whenever magical healing restores critical points, the creature receiving that healing takes a −1 penalty to their critical point maximum. The unnatural process of magical healing leaves a kind of physical deficit that can add up over time, effectively lowering critical points each time magic is used to bring an injured character back from the brink.

Critical Thinking

In most cases, the downside to magical healing feels minor compared to the benefit. For a character down to their last 3 critical points, restoring 3d8 + 5 hit points from an ally’s cure serious wounds spell is more than worth the −1 critical point penalty that spell imposes. But over time, the regular use of magical healing plays into the campaign story as a thing that characters and players need to think about. 

In the short term, the differences between the different healing spells in the game and the potions and spellmarks that channel those spells’ magic take on an unexpected importance. A potion of cure light wounds restores 1d8 + 1 hit points. A potion of cure moderate wounds restores 2d8 + 3 hit points, bestowing about the same amount of healing as taking two potions of cure light wounds. But for a character with a severe critical point deficit, taking two of the cheaper potions of cure light wounds imposes a −2 penalty to critical points, where the more expensive potion of cure moderate wounds incurs only a −1 penalty. (If a character has lost only defense points, they can chug potions or crack spellmarks indiscriminately. Only healing magic that restores critical points imposes a critical point penalty.)

Critical point damage and a critical point penalty can both be restored during a downtime rest — and only during a downtime rest. CORE20 breaks from the increasingly laissez-faire attitude that D&D has taken toward healing up during long rests over successive editions, and the long rest that heals up one hundred percent of a character’s injuries is nowhere to be found in the game. (This is a big part of the reason why magical healing needs to be commonplace in a CORE20 campaign.) As such, anytime a character is badly injured (as represented by taking critical point damage), they get an automatic invitation to take downtime at some point in the near future. The character’s player gets to think about whether it’s best to take magical healing and later restore a critical point penalty during downtime (a relatively slow process, but usually a relatively low number) or push on injured and plan to later let natural healing restore those lost critical points during downtime (a faster process, but often a high number).

Injury in CORE20 is thus something a character is always thinking about, with each bout of critical point damage setting up the question of how best to deal with it. Short-term gain in the form of magical healing is easily had. But it comes with the long-term pain of a critical point penalty and the reduction of overall physical hardiness that represents. Critical injuries also allow characters and players to naturally embrace the idea of letting downtime play an important part in every CORE20 campaign, as an alternative to the movement toward breakneck speed-adventuring that’s become the norm in D&D over the last couple of decades. I know it’s tricky to talk about “realism” in a game about dragons and wizards casting fireball, but part of the narrative goal that inspired CORE20’s approach to magical healing was to bring back a degree of verisimilitude around the idea of injury. Characters having been beaten to within an inch of their lives is a big part of the narrative cycle of fantasy games, and having injury be something that isn’t just forgotten about after 8 hours of sleep serves that narrative well.

Art by Dean Spencer.

Battle Magic

CORE20 originally started as a set of homebrew rules for D&D 3.5, and even though the current playtest version of the game draws a lot of inspiration for 5e D&D (and even 4e D&D) in its approach to play and its language, the mechanical guts of much of the ruleset is set on a firm foundation of third edition — the first “modern” version of the game’s venerable ruleset.

One of the things 3e did that I loved unreservedly when I first dug into that edition in the heady days of the early millennium was a rethinking and drastic expansion of the place of magic items in the game, and specifically magic armor and weapons. AD&D (both 1st and 2nd editions) worked with a limited slate of armor and weapons imbued with specific types of magic. Elven chain mail, plate mail of etherealness, a sword +2 (dragon slayer), or a sword +1 (flame tongue) were all treasures that a player might expect their character to seize as a reward at some point. And if you’ve never looked at AD&D but those magic items still sound familiar to you, it’s because 5e’s setup for magic items looked back to AD&D for inspiration, with a relatively small number of types of armor and weapons with fixed properties.

I don’t find that approach as much fun as I found 3e’s approach, though. And thus was CORE20’s approach to magic weapons and armor born.

Armor and Weapon Features

Magic armor and weapons are a mainstay of the game for most CORE20 campaigns built around the fun of seeking out and fighting evil that must be vanquished through combat. In a world filled with monsters and suffused with magic, it makes sense that the breadth of magic available to heroes willing to stand up to evil should be pretty vast. As such, CORE20 borrows from D&D 3e the idea of weapons and armor being bestowed with magical properties that cover the widest possible range of utility. The baseline property for armor and weapons is the magical bonus that improves your character’s defense rolls and attack rolls, respectively — and which runs from the common +1 to the extremely rare +5 in CORE20. But that bonus-based boost is almost always the least interesting thing of all the things your hero’s armor or weapon can do.

Part of the reason I loved 3rd edition D&D’s approach to magic armor and weapons is the way it lends itself to customization. And given that fully customized characters is the foundation of CORE20, being able to customize armor and weapons is a powerful tool for players building characters and GMs building out the magical world through which those characters move. Sometimes armor or a weapon has a single specific function. Etherealness armor or a greatsword of defending both do what you’d expect. But armor and weapon features can be combined in any number of ways, with the increased cost of multiple features boosting the item’s rarity (and thus determining both how likely the GM is to give it out as treasure and how difficult it is for a character to create or commission it). 

This approach to magic armor and weapons creates a fertile foundation for a mainstay of fantasy — the hero known for unique weapons or armor wielded only by them, as opposed to every tenth adventurer having elven chain and a stock flame tongue longsword. So if your master thief has a hankering to build part of their reputation around the sanguine imprecation energy lash rapier they flourish in battle, you’ve come to the right place.

The table above and the table below detail the features available for armor and for melee weapons. (Similar tables in the CORE20 Magic Grimoire break out the features for shields, thrown weapons, ranged weapons, and ammunition.) Write-ups for a number of my own favorite features (including a few features new to CORE20) follow.

Selected Armor Features

Charging

This utilitarian armor is solidly made but features a dull finish. While you wear charging armor, any successful charge attack you make deals an extra 2d6 bludgeoning damage.

Transmutation; unusual; cost +750 gp

Feral

The face of this shield is scribed or engraved with the image of talons or claws. As a minor action, you can perform a command signal to have the shield make a melee attack against a creature within 5 feet of you. The shield has an attack bonus of 10 + your Strength modifier and deals 2d6 slashing damage. You can use this feature three times per day, regaining all expended uses when you finish a long rest. 

Conjuration; common; cost +400 gp

Ghost Guard

Armor or a shield with the ghost guard feature shimmers ethereally under bright light. While you wear it, this armor or shield protects you against incorporeal creatures, negating the advantage an incorporeal creature has on attack rolls against you.

Unlike most physical objects, armor or a shield with the ghost guard feature can be picked up, moved, and even worn or wielded by an incorporeal creature. While using the armor or shield, an incorporeal creature gains its full defensive bonus, and can still pass freely through solid objects.

Transmutation; unusual; cost +800 gp

Morphic

A suit of armor with the morphic feature appears to have the texture of cloth when first touched. When you perform the armor’s command signal as a standard action, it changes shape and form to assume the appearance and feel of a set of clothing of the same scope and coverage as the armor (so that a hauberk or breastplate becomes a shirt, armored leg pieces become leggings, a helm becomes a hat, and so forth). 

The armor transforms into the same set of clothing each time, whose appearance is set when the armor is created. The armor retains all its usual properties (including defense bonuses, weight, armor hindrance, and so on) and any magic bonuses and features while transformed. 

If you remove any piece of the morphic armor, that piece reverts back to its true form until it is donned again. The truesense special feature reveals the true nature of the armor while it is transformed.

Transmutation; unusual; cost +2,300 gp

Warding

This armor gleams with a faint glow each time you are struck in combat, hinting at the protective power it holds. When you are hit by an attack, you can use a reaction to give yourself advantage on subsequent defense rolls until the end of your next turn. You can use this feature three times per day, regaining all expended uses when you finish a long rest.

Abjuration; common; +750 gp

Selected Weapon Features

Brilliant Energy

This weapon appears to be composed mostly of light, appearing translucent even though its heft is solid. When you use a brilliant energy weapon to attack a living creature wearing armor or bearing a shield, that attack bypasses those protections to focus its power on the corporeal essence of your target, imposing disadvantage on the target’s defense roll.

This feature can be applied to melee weapons, thrown weapons, and ammunition.

A brilliant energy weapon can’t harm undead or constructs, and can’t be used to damage any object. The weapon always has the glowing feature, but its light can’t be deactivated.

Transmutation; unusual; cost +800 gp 

Defending

This weapon feels especially sturdy in the hand. While you wield a defending weapon, you can use a free action at the start of your turn to focus its magic on defense at the expense of offense. Until the start of your next turn, you have a d4 bane on attack rolls with this weapon and a d4 boon on defense rolls.

This feature can be applied to melee weapons.

Abjuration; common; cost +200 gp

Energy Lash

Traces of energy of a specific type — acid, cold, fire, lightning, or thunder — appear to flow out of this weapon each time it hits in battle. While you wield an energy lash weapon, you can use a standard action to perform a command signal and choose a creature within 30 feet of you. A bright tendril of magical energy erupts from the weapon to reach out for the target. Make an attack roll as if you were making a melee or thrown attack with the weapon. If the attack hits, the target takes 4d6 damage of the weapon’s energy type. You can use this feature once per day, regaining its use when you finish a long rest.

This feature can be applied to melee weapons and thrown weapons.

Evocation; common; cost +300 gp

Imprecation

This weapon feels strangely cold when first handled. Whenever you score a critical hit with this weapon, you can impose a curse of your choice on the target, as if they had failed a saving throw against the bestow curse spell.

This feature can be applied to melee weapons, thrown weapons, and ranged weapons.

Necromancy; common; cost +700 gp

Nimble

This weapon feels unnaturally well balanced when first handled. A nimble weapon can be wielded more easily when making multiple attacks, with a two-handed weapon treated as a one-handed weapon and a one-handed weapon treated as a light weapon for the purpose of determining that weapon’s bane on attack rolls. A nimble weapon isn’t considered a different weapon for any other purpose, and none of its other statistics or features change.This effect can be applied to one-handed and two-handed melee weapons.

Transmutation; common; cost +200 gp

Sanguine

This weapon’s tip gleams faintly even in the absence of light. When you hit with an attack using a sanguine weapon, you can use a free action to have the attack drain the vitality of the target, who takes a −1d4 penalty to their critical points. You can use this feature three times per day, regaining all expended uses when you finish a long rest.

This feature can be applied to melee weapons that deal piercing damage.

Necromancy; unusual; cost +500 gp

Subtle

This weapon is dull gray in color, and seems to disappear when not directly observed. Whenever you use a subtle weapon to attack with advantage, the attack has favored damage.

This feature can be applied to melee weapons.

Illusion; common; cost +50 gp

The Ways of Minor Magic

CORE20 can be played any way you like (as befits a game where your characters can do anything you want). However, the baseline of the game, as expressed in the rules of the Player’s Guide, reflects the expectation of a high-magic world. High magic doesn’t always mean powerful magic, though, and one of the most interesting ways to reflect the ubiquity of magic in the world is to play a character who dabbles in the minor magic of 0-level spells in addition to their main adventuring vocation.

The nature of the magic you can tap into through 0-level spells — orisons for animys magic, cantrips for arcane magic, and incantations for druidas magic — is wide and varied, and reflects a lot of the familiar themes of 0-level spellcasting in various editions of D&D. But rather than limiting characters to level dipping into a spellcasting class, tapping a magic-focused subclass that gives you more spellcasting than you want, or choosing an ancestry with a limited range of spellcasting talent, CORE20 offers three different approaches to letting your character get their minor magic on.

Traditional Build

3 Feat Slots

The path to traditional spellcasting in CORE20 calls for taking the Eldritch Spirit, Spellcaster, and Spell Power feats for a chosen sphere of magic — animys, arcane, or druidas. (All three of these feats are part of “Spellcasting Feats,” starting on page 322 of the CORE20 Playtest Player’s Guide.) If you channel arcane magic, you might also want to take the Arcane Blood or Toughness feats to deal with the critical point penalty imposed by taking the Spell Power (arcane) feat, representing that the power of arcane magic doesn’t play nice with the life force of a mortal caster.

Eldritch Spirit and Spellcaster grant you access to spellcasting power and the ability to cast 0-level spells. Spell Power then gives you the spell points that fuel your spells. Even though 0-level spells have no spell point cost and can be cast at will, you can cast those spells only while you have 1 or more spell points remaining. Once all your magical potential is exhausted, you have no power to draw on.

With this build, you need to purchase your starting 0-level spells and any 0-level spells you learn later. But because spells can always be freely learned in CORE20, there’s no limit to the number of 0-level spells you can master as long as you have the opportunity to seek them out. And because high magic is the CORE20 baseline, most campaigns will be filled with such opportunities.

Natural Magic Traditional Build

One Lineage Trait, Two Feat Slots

As a nice alternative to the traditional spellcasting build, you can take the natural magic lineage trait (part of the “Lineages” chapter starting on page 22 of the Player’s Guide), then take the Eldritch Spirit and Spellcaster feats for a chosen sphere of magic. As above, those feats let you cast 0-level spells. Then the natural magic trait lets you ignore the need to have spell points in reserve to cast those spells, granting you an innate reserve of magical power. (Though natural magic appears in chapter 4 of the Player’s Guide as a human and a kobold trait, characters can take traits from any other lineage if that fits your concept and backstory.)

Primordial Caster Build

Two Feat Slots

Primordial magic channels only arcane power, and in an older and rawer form than spellcasting (detailed starting on page 383 of the Player’s Guide). But if arcane magic is your jam, primordial magic (modeled very much after the magic of the 3rd edition D&D warlock) is a most efficient way to cast. When you take the Eldritch Spirit (arcane) feat and the Primordial Caster feat, Primordial Caster automatically lets you learn a number of cantrips — and at no cost, unlike for traditional spellcasting. However, you can’t learn any additional cantrips or swap out known cantrips for new cantrips unless you want to later continue along the path of gaining access to more powerful primordial magic.

Spelltouched Build

Two Or More Feat Slots

Taking up the path of a spelltouched caster represents an innate ability to channel eldritch power, unconnected to any spellcasting tradition or training. To create a spelltouched character (as talked about starting on page 380 of the Player’s Guide), you take the Eldritch Spirit feat for a chosen sphere of magic, then take the Spelltouched feat for each cantrip you wish to cast. A spelltouched build is the lowest-cost way to be able to cast a single cantrip, if one specific flavor of minor magic is the best fit for your character’s story. However, if you want to cast three or more cantrips, the spelltouched approach becomes more expensive than the other options.

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Questions about magic or anything else in CORE20? Email CORE20@insaneangel.com or join us on the CORE20 Discord server and ask away!

Art by Dean Spencer

Opus Arcana

While partaking of the excellent Eldritch Lorecast last week, I listened to the team talk with increasing degrees of lament about the chronic lack of a solid magic item crafting system in D&D. Different approaches from different games and game systems were discussed at some length, along with the different goals that characters and players often have for magic item crafting. (For those interested, that discussion is here.)

In the end, the consensus was that there are simply too many different approaches the game can take to magic item crafting, and all those approaches typically fall flat at some point. It was then left to the uber-talented James Haeck (who I’ve been fortunate enough to have worked alongside on numerous projects) to comment that there’s likely no way to ever make everyone happy with a magic item crafting system unless there’s a genius game designer out there who can thread that needle.

And, well, here I am. 😀

Chapter 8 (Player's Guide) and Chapter 2 (Magic Grimoire) Excerpts — Magic Item Crafting Preview

CORE20 has a fairly straightforward and extremely usable approach to magic item crafting, because that approach is built on a number of straightforward and usable foundational steps. At the base of the process is the idea that in the game, characters have ways to earn income during downtime that are tied to their skills. The wages that a character can earn week to week during downtime are synced up with the wages earned by NPC hirelings in the game, with most characters’ advanced state of skill use letting them easily pull down expert hireling wages whenever they’re not actively adventuring.

The rules for crafting mundane items are in turn tied to the rules for earning income. The game’s crafting rules are built around the idea that instead of earning a certain number of gp working for someone else, a character can instead create weapons, art objects, armor, alchemical substances, and more at half cost. Effectively, a character crafting an item pays half the item’s typical market cost for raw materials and overhead, then provides their own labor for free.

Building on the rules for mundane item crafting, magic item crafting functions in exactly the same way — albeit at a higher level of artisanship and specialized knowledge. Creating magic items involves the labor of master crafters, magic users, and the item crafter, but when all those artisans come together, they do so using the same rules for crafting mundane items. (The thing that allows crafting magic items to use the same rules of in-game economy as crafting mundane items is the way that magic items fit properly into the overall economy of the CORE20 game world, as talked about in a previous update.)

At its heart, the CORE20 system is a game focused on letting characters and players do whatever they want to do as heroes in a high-magic world. Making it easy for characters to craft magic items as part of downtime, making use of their own skills and of the connections with other characters and NPCs derived from their adventures, is just another part of that.

(Art by Dean Spencer)

The Means of Magic

One of the issues that’s dogged Dungeons & Dragons since the beginning is the eternal dichotomy between magic items being really freaking cool, and magic items getting kind of redundant because your characters just keep on collecting them forever. The fiction that fantasy gaming is inspired by has a radically different setup, creating scenarios where the finding of a magic blade or wand is a capstone moment in the single adventure that defines a protagonist’s life. But the protagonists of our games don’t stop at one adventure, and neither does their hunger for magic loot.

Chapter 2 Excerpt (Magic Grimoire) — Magic Items Preview

As long as magic items last eternally, every new magic item found in the game undercuts the awesomeness of all the old magic items sooner or later. Magic items feel important at the big moments in a character’s life — a sword claimed from the destruction of a battlefield, a ring seized from a fallen foe, a staff hidden away in a tomb for a dozen generations, and on and on. But as characters rack up more big moments and the magic that comes with them, older items that once felt memorable are inevitably set aside, becoming little more than footnotes in a life story of adventuring.

Games that make attempts to create a magic item economy — including third and fourth edition D&D — make this process a little easier to deal with by creating a sense that magic items are meant to be sold off at some point. But the scale of that economy seldom makes complete sense, built as it is around the paradigms of 1) adventurers are rare sorts of people, 2) magic items are so obscenely expensive that only adventurers can afford them, and 3) if the market is so small, why are so many magic items being made that old dungeons are all somehow full of them?

There are lots of different ways to try to shape a better approach for magic items from a world-building perspective. Chief among those are the easy options of carefully limiting magic items and absolutely not worrying about where they come from. (To cover all its bases, D&D 5e wholeheartedly embraces both approaches.) 

CORE20 takes a different approach, though, by working with the idea that magic is ubiquitous in the world, known to and made use of by most people. This ubiquity is driven by the idea that magic items are relatively inexpensive and freely traded, making up an important part of the world’s economy rather than just being the overpriced toys of adventurers and villains. And what makes both those ideas work is that magic items in CORE20 don’t last forever.

The workaday magic items known to every edition of D&D and pretty much all other fantasy roleplaying games, from weapons to armor, wands and scrolls, magic rods and idiosyncratic one-off items, are imbued with magic that’s ephemeral. It fades over time, with the magic of potions and scrolls draining away within months if they aren’t used, to weapons and armor fading more slowly but never lasting the length of even a moderately successful adventuring career.

Because magic items don’t last forever, their value within an overall economy makes them pricey but not preposterous. An ephemeral magic potion of cure light wounds kept on hand by a village healer for emergencies costs 5 gp — a week’s wages for an average laborer in CORE20. The magic of an ephemeral longsword +1 found as treasure has a nominal value of 200 gp, consistent with the value of a great many nonmagical luxury goods, but not in the same ballpark as multiple years’ laborer’s wages or the cost of a modest house. (In CORE20, an open magic-item economy and a more restrained baseline for the cost of magic means that characters earn a bit less for adventuring than they do in traditional D&D, whose biggest problem is giving characters things to spend their money on. But that’s a topic for another update.)

Ephemeral magic gives characters the opportunity to naturally set magic items aside when those items fade. But it also gives them the opportunity to decide that a favored weapon or magical implement is worth keeping around, because the same economy that fuels the creation and trade of ephemeral magic items also allows those items to be remagicked — and at a lesser cost than crafting or commissioning an item as brand new. In this way, magic items become another part of what builds the story of a character’s adventuring life.

(Art by Chris Yarbrough)

Stories and Spells

As talked about in the previous preview, magic is the place where fantasy begins and ends for me, and spell magic is the most prominent manifestation of how magic is meant to feel in the world of a CORE20 game. This is true for all characters, not just adventurers, and regardless of whether those characters channel spell power themselves. A warrior focused on training and battle, an outlander wandering the wilderness, and a scoundrel dedicated to social niceties and shady deals have no reasons to understand even the basics of the workings of magic. But the spells that map out the presence of magic in the world are as real to those characters as the mythic heroes and distant lands they’ve heard of but have never seen. 

Chapter 1 Excerpt (Magic Grimoire) — Spells

Spells aren’t just mechanics and flavor for certain characters, in other words. They’re a part of each character’s broader understanding of the world’s vastness and scope, and the starting point of what makes a milieu magic. Spells take the mystery and threatening potential of the eldritch power that suffuses the world, then turn that into the promise of personal power, of an edge in battle, of health and protection from harm. The potential of magic to change the world is summed up by spells, turning them from just a list of options on a character sheet into touchstones that make the magic of the world feel personal.

Spells help define the different ways in which magic manifests within the world, marking out the dividing lines between the traditions of animyst magic (CORE20’s term for divine magic), arcane magic, and druidas magic. The distinctions between the secret workings of those spellcasting spheres in the world of the game is a topic of such complexity that only a rarefied group of lorists and sages can claim to understand it. But every child who grows up hearing tales of adventure uses stories of spellcasting to define a personal sense of the differences between the enlightening and vengeful life magic of animysts, the unpredictable and unforgiving eldritch power of arcanists, and the gentle and furious primal magic of the druidan.

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CORE20 builds the setup of its magic item system on the foundations of third edition D&D — and then kind of doubles down on 3e, creating a game milieu in which magic is an integral and essential part of life across all the world, not just the world of wealthy adventurers. Among other things, this gives us a system in which potions and spellmarks (a magic item that functions exactly as a potion, but which takes the form of a small breakable object such as a tile) can encompass a wide range of lower-level spells. And that in turn means that spell magic is something of potential in-game interest to every character, not just spellcasters.

When I talk about CORE20 being a magic-rich game, that translates to the spells chapter of the CORE20 Magic Grimoire currently sitting at 609 spells. That’s a bit of a jump from fifth edition’s 361 spells in the Player’s Handbook, and a modest step head even of the 500-odd spells available in all 5e books to date. This preview details the full lists of animys, arcane, and druidas spells, running from levels 0 to 18. (CORE20 spreads out the traditional D&D setup of 1st- to 9th-level spells into 1st- to 18th-level spells, so that spell level and caster level sync up.) It then shows off a relatively small selection of 120 or so of those spells. This includes a number of eldritch classics with mechanics and presentation thoroughly revised for the CORE20 game, some standard spells that have been given a new spin with updated mechanics, and some brand-new stuff to help make the world of your CORE20 game magic.

(Art by Dean Spencer)

Magic Makes the World

From a design and mechanics perspective, magic and spellcasting in D&D have always fascinated me, because they’re the original (and still-dominant) expression of a mini-game existing within the main game. The rules for spellcasting have always effectively been a game of their own. They build on the baseline rules of the game, for sure. But they take those baseline rules to extents and in directions that exist nowhere else in the game. So this week’s preview explores those extents and directions in CORE20, showing how the spellcasting rules let characters bring magic to life.

Chapter 10 Excerpt — Spellcasting

For me, magic has always been the most vital and visceral part of fantasy, both in gaming and fiction. I love the way that magic defines a world and the people in it. I love thinking about the ways in which magic might change worlds that resemble our own, and I love building campaigns in which magic as a tool of good or evil shapes the play of the game. I suspect it thus won’t be a huge surprise for anyone to learn that CORE20 is suffused with magic on every level.

(Important to note: This doesn’t mean you can’t play a low-magic game using CORE20. One of the central foundations of the game is that all its various rules systems are modular and optional, and downplaying the presence of magic and spellcasting in the world is dead easy. That’s a full topic for another post, though.)

CORE20’s baseline approach to spellcasting will be familiar to anyone who’s played any version of D&D (as will the spells in the game, which will be the next preview). But the need to separate the progression of spellcasting power from rigid class mechanics sets up some cool CORE20 differences from the D&D baseline. Some of those differences (spell points as opposed to spell slots, for example) are actually still very much D&D, having been built on ideas from the 3rd edition supplement Unearthed Arcana (one of the few non-core 3.5e books whose material was published under the OGL back in the day).

The spellcasting chapter of the game covers a lot of material, as it pulls together all the information and rules traditionally spread out in a spellcasting chapter and the write-ups for the game’s spellcasting classes. It then expands into new options for magical characters that go beyond the baseline game, and which feed the essential CORE20 paradigm of letting players build characters in ways beyond what traditional class setup allows. But there are still three spheres of magic that define spellcasting — animys, arcane, and druidas, with “animys magic” being CORE20’s term for what D&D calls “divine magic.”

In the world of the game, animys and druidas casters draw on common magical history, marking how animys magic first developed as an offshoot of druidas traditions. Arcane spellcasting shares a common form with the life magic of animys and druidas casters, but is built on distinct traditions and more mysterious sources of magical power. But the similarities in the three spheres of spellcasting overshadow any of their differences, creating a framework that helps define the importance and prevalence of magic in the world.

(It’s worth mentioning that there are actually two other spellcasting traditions in the game. Spelltouched magic allows characters to channel one or more specific spells innately rather than as learned spells. And primordial magic is the older, more chaotic form of arcane channeling that gave rise to the more codified traditions of arcane casting. But we’ll look at those another time.)

(Art by JE Shields)

When the Spirit is Willing

I got an email recently from someone following the playtest previews, who asked if the abundant character-creation options in CORE20 meant that you could play a ghost in the game. I’m sorry to report that the answer is no — for now, at least. (That idea is actually pretty intriguing, because the same process of building a character by selecting feats representing training and insight should work just fine for selecting feats that represent broader supernatural power.)

But I also mentioned in reply that you can have a ghost as your best friend in the game, which I think is pretty awesome. The spirit guide is one of the game’s two featured companion types, alongside the companion creature (a broader version of D&D’s animal companion).

Chapter 7 Excerpt — Spirit Guide

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The idea behind the spirit guide is that a bond created by a character and an NPC, a faithful companion creature, or even a sworn nemesis can be so strong in life that not even death can break it. A spirit guide has a spectral physical appearance, but isn’t incorporeal or undead. Rather, they’re transformed by death into a celestial creature whose physical form can be reshaped at their whim, and whose bond with their chosen character defines their renewed existence.

The spirit guide is relatively new addition to CORE20, and came about when a player in my main and long-running playtest campaign had a story idea for their character — a stoic dwarf engineer, dabbler in personal magic, and bath aficianado named Ruh. During Ruh’s initial appearance in the campaign, he was in self-imposed exile, having left his wife Caralah behind in his homeland some three hundred leagues distant. So during a long downtime break for Ruh that saw him return home, the player crafted some campaign narrative detailing that Ruh and Caralah had made a solo journey to return a powerful relic stolen to its rightful resting place after it was stolen by adventurers years before. Only during that adventure, Caralah was struck down by a magical malady that claimed her life and put her beyond the reach of resurrection. 

The player’s initial idea was to establish that the fell magic that had claimed Caralah had somehow preserved her spirit in a way that would let her speak to and through Ruh, allowing her to appear in the campaign as a noncombatant NPC, but without adding an additional body to the party. The player had in mind that his future feat selections could reflect knowledge that Caralah was passing onto him, letting the love of Ruh’s life effectively ride shotgun on his return to the main party.

I said I loved that idea a lot… but that we could probably go one degree better with the concept.

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A few iterations later, another memorable spirit guide (part of my current campaign, in fact) is Beros, the spirit of a faithful childhood pet. Beros is companion to Thalia, a notary field agent of a healing order dedicated to the old gods of death, whose village was struck by an earthquake years before. The brave Beros worked tirelessly in the aftermath to rescue survivors, but died in a landslide while doing so — then came back as a brave spirit guide and a very, very good boy.

Spirit guides are awesome.

(Art by Indi Martin © 2015)

Feats of Heroism

Presenting a big mechanical preview! Featuring (so to speak) an up-close look at the feats that are the mechanical heart of what your character can do in CORE20.

Feat Preview

This preview shows off some of the most ubiquitous and useful feats in the game, which appear within a broad cross-section of character builds and archetypes. But it’s not the game in its entirety, for that entirety holds many, many more cool bits and surprises.

To put the setup of these preview feats in context, check back to “The Start” and the introduction to Chapter 1: Building Your Character. That PDF preview goes into detail about how the feat format is read, and the different ways in which feats can be selected to build your CORE20 character.

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Thanks to everyone who’s dropped feedback so far! It’s awesome to see people as excited about the potential of CORE20 as I am. You can always find me at insaneangel@insaneangel.com, or on Twitter @scottfgray.

(Art by Beatriz Galiano Montesinos, used under Creative Commons)