Spectral Mage (5A)

Starfox's Blades in the Dark fan page

Forms turn Blades in the Dark-style games into form fantasy.

Introducing Forms

Rather than the fantastical being rare and poorly understood, adding forms to your gives characters entirely new abilities they can use. Introducing these into a game changes the game world, making it more fantastical. Your game will change from the typical grim blades in the dark into something different and higher formed, though possibly just as grim. Forms consist of two elements—a playbook, and forms. Playbooks are frameworks for which forms you can use and how you use them. Forms describe what effects you can create.

Here follows links to form playbooks and forms, explained in the rules below. Typical Power Details.

Form Playbooks Animism Spirits. Artificing Craft. Chi Inner form. Chosen Gifted by god. Jedi The Force. Monster Savage form. Mutation Force of the body. Orphic Power of performance. Psi Futuristic magic. Psychonaut Power of dreams. Sorcery Power of heritage. Soulsworn Trade soul for power. Spirit Immaterial monster. Starborn Power of destiny. Theurgy Study of miracles. Wizardry Magic from study.

Forms Air Form Elemental of gas and emptiness. Animal Form Animals. Barrier Form Circles of protection. Darkness Form Physical and spiritual darkness. Death Form Death and disease. Earth Form Element of solidity. Electricity Form Elemental electricity. Fire Form Element of transformation and heat. Flux Form Luck, chaos, and freedom. Ice Form Element of cold and ice. Illusion Form Images that delude. Kinesis Form Move things. Life Form Master life. Light Form Physical and spiritual light. Metal Form Elemental metal. Mind Form Mind Manipulation. Order Form Restore normality. Plant Form Vegetate matter. Space Form Master location. Time Form Master history. Water Form Element of liquid.

Power Playbooks

Playbooks are the frames for acquiring forms. The playbooks are the form traditions of your world, roles such as wizard, sorcerer, saint, mutant, or technomancer. Each playbook gives you access to certain forms, which are chosen in the same manner as special abilities. A form playbook can also have regular special abilities to choose from, but rarely as many as ordinary playbooks do. This is in addition to all the normal features of a playbook.

Finally, each form playbook gives you a trauma condition. This means you can't survive as much new trauma as characters who have not meddled with the forms. The actual trauma condition generally affects how you use forms, imposing conditions you must fulfil in order to use forms.

Multiple Power Playbooks You cannot pick special abilities from a form playbook unless you are using that playbook. It is possible to add a form playbook by selecting this as a special ability. If you already have a form playbook, you can gain multiple form playbooks this way, giving you a wider range of forms at the price of more trauma conditions and thus more restrictions on the use of all of your forms.

Form

Form are what actually gives you exceptional abilities. A form playbook doesn't give you any form abilities unless you select a form from that playbook's special abilities. Once you select a form, you gain abilities appropriate to the form. So if you select the electricity form, you can shoot lightning, form electric engines, cause shortcuts, summon electric creatures, depending on which actions you are good at. In many cases, forms work as equipment does, emforming your normal actions. Some forms allow you to do what is normally impossible, these generally have more rules governing them

Stress Cost You use your normal actions to activate forms, but there is an associated cost in stress. The stress cost of each category of abilities is given at the top of each column, but this cost is reduced by the result of the action roll. This works much like resistance rolls, but is handled as a part of the action roll. Each form has a stress cost, which is reduced by the result of the action roll. A critical success reduces the cost by 2 for each six rolled beyond the first. This is the same roll used to judge the effect of the action itself. Sometimes the use of a form does not need an action roll, but you still make one to find the stress cost. For example, using Survey and darkness to allow your friends to see in the dark is not exciting enough to require an action roll. In this case, ignore the result of the action roll except to calculate stress cost, the action itself always succeeds without consequences. For basic forms not used as a part of a significant action, just ignore the cost and action roll.

Avoid The Trap of Form Just because a form allows something does not mean that you can't do it without that form. Attacks with weapons do not lose any effectiveness just because there are form that do the same. Items can be more effective than forms because once you select an item of equipment, you usually have it for the rest of the score. Attune allows the identification of supernatural creatures even without using a form, tough forms are more precise in detecting creatures and things tied to that particular form.

Form are Inflexible Unlike normal actions, which are flexible, forms are specific. If you want to make a ranged attack using your form, that is done with Hunt action unless the particular form description says otherwise, you cannot fudge this with another action as you normally can.

Form are Flexible The abilities described for each combination of form and action are typical examples that can be expanded upon. The drift of the ability is set, but the particulars can be changed. If a character wants to do something that seems appropriate to their form but no description fits, modify existing abilities to allow it as some kind of action.

Effect and Outcome There are really two kinds of effect in Blades in the Dark, and the form rules use this concept so much it need to be explained. To keep them apart, I have introduced the term outcome for one of these types of effect. The first kind, that I call effect, is the initial effect of the action. This comes from the negotiation between player and game master and depends entirely on the situation at hand and how suitable the player's proposed action is. I call the other kind of effect the outcome, but this could also be called final effect. It is the effect after all modifications due to such things as a difference in tier, assist and push for effect, and setup actions.

Combining Form If you know several forms, you can combine all of them with a single action, as long as this makes sense. So if you know both the fire and plant forms, you can dismiss, command, or sway using both at once. The stress cost is that of the most difficult effect you use. This often increases effect at the cost of position as controlling a combined form is harder.

Combining Actions Combining multiple actions into one greater effect is harder, you have to use the lowest of all the involved action ratings. This lower rating must then satisfy the minimum die requirement.

If you want to use both the basic Command and Sway effects, likely to both speak to an understand someone, you use the lower of your Command and Sway rating.

Cooperative Form It is possible for multiple characters to cooperate in using a form in a group action. Each member contributes the forms they know to the final effect. If multiple actions are involved, different people in the group can roll using different actions, as long as it makes sense. This can be exploited by adding nonsensical effects to a cooperative form use just to allow the use of different actions, keep an eye out for this.

A group of scoundrels want to summon a demon. This is a Master Attune Darkness effect. One player suggests turning this into a group action by adding a Hunt Plant effect to create a bower in the shape of a pentagram. This draws some chuckles from around the game table, no-one else thinks this a meaningful group action. Instead the GM suggests this as a setup action.

Power Duration There are no specific rules for the duration of forms. Most forms last for a single use of an action: you use the form, the effect happens, and then the form ends but the effects of the form remains. An attack is the typical example of this. You create a bolt of energy using a form like electricity, fight with it for the time it takes to make a single die roll (this can be involve several die rolls in the fiction), then the form ends but any damage or other effects remain. Form that last usually last for an entire score, but this depends on the degree of success. A possible consequence is that the form suddenly ends at an inappropriate moment.

Power Area The target of forms can be described in plural or singular, but forms use the normal effects of multiple targets, increasing position and/or reducing effect as appropriate. If the form explicitly says it has an area this does no apply.

Form Gated by Dice Power effects can be gated by the number of dice rolled for an action. This means that pushing, assists, and devils' bargain enhances the effect of your forms. No dice, no form. One die gives access to free abilities. two dice gives access to item abilities, three dice gives access to stress abilities, four dice allows access to all forms.

Optional Rule: Form Gated by Tier If forms seem to formful for low-tier adventures, you can tier-lock forms. At tier zero, you can only use free forms. At tiers 1-2 you can only use free and item forms. At tier 3-4 you can use free, item, and stress forms abilities. At tier 5, you can use all forms. This makes forms almost useless at tier zero and weak until tier 3. Long-term projects allows use of forms as if you were two tiers higher. Make sure to limit exceptional equipment like bombs and grenades in a similar manner.

Availability and Genre Different form and action combinations fit in different genres, as do form playbooks. The easiest way to manage this is to modify or remove the form playbooks and forms that don't fit. But you can also remove the abilities linked to certain actions.

• Removing attune removes summoning and anti-form abilities, making the setting decidedly less mystical.
• Removing command and sway forms make forms more physical and less subtle.
• Removing consort makes a creature's form more definite, making the setting less confusing.
• Removing finesse, hunt, skirmish, and wreck removes exceptional attacks, making the setting much less flashy.
• Removing prowl limits how people move, also making the setting less flashy.
• Removing study and survey removes information forms, making the setting more mundane.

It is also possible to limit sub-categories of form playbooks, making certain components secret and something that has to be earned. You can also lock certain action/form combinations behind an additional cost, such as requiring a separate ability to use Survey form if you dislike scrying.