The Arcanist in Amazing Adventures

Before I get into today's blog, I'd like to mention a few sites you may want to check out.

1. First is the official Amazing Adventures Facebook page.  Here you can find general news and announcements about the game, and can post your own thoughts and ideas.
2. The second is a pretty cool Google Plus group run by the inestimable Joey Mullins. This one has some neat fan-created material on there and could use some more membership!
3. Finally, and most of you probably know this, but be sure to check out the official Amazing Adventures message board on the Troll Lord Games Forums!

Now, onto the main blog!

One of the most common questions I get from people about Amazing Adventures is, "why the Arcanist? How is a D&D-style spellslinger in any way pulp?"

Okay, that's two questions. But the second is basically a re-phrase of the first.

I've actually had people go out on a limb and unequivocally state that the Arcanist doesn't belong in the game. On this point, I have a couple of responses. The first, obviously, is, "then don't use the class in your game." Amazing Adventures is a toolkit game, and the book is pretty explicit that not all classes will necessarily be available in all campaigns; players are expected to check with their GM to see which classes are appropriate.

To those for whom that explanation doesn't hold water, I submit that the Arcanist in the style in which it is presented does indeed fit into the pulp tradition. This goes back to my inaugural posting on the Troll Dens, in which I discussed the various definitions of Pulp. AA covers two basics in the introduction: Literary and Serial, and while these two certainly apply to gaming-style Pulp, there are literally dozens of other avenues you could pursue.

Lest you think I'm just using a blanket statement to justify a pet class, I'll get a bit more specific. 

Comic books--especially those published in the Golden and Silver Age of comics--are part and parcel of pulp fiction. And while it would take an entire book unto itself to do super heroics with the SIEGE Engine, Amazing Adventures does allow for certain styles of comic book to be covered. Dick-Tracy-style comics, for example, can be well done with Gumshoes, Hooligans, and Gadgeteers. And obviously, there's a huge place for the Arcanist in those two comic eras:

 

In addition, in the more modern "pulp" tradition--that is, those novels and tales that mimic the classic pulps for the modern age--we have the ever popular Harry Dresden, who is a multiclassed Gumshoe/Arcanist if ever I saw one. 

Now, in the more classic Weird Tales literary pulp tradition, I'll grant that sorcerers tend to be darker, more mysterious, and are often villainous. They generally appear in the Oriental Tales subgenre and are often antagonists. Those who appear in Western-themed stories are often in Lovecraftian horror stories, and are inhuman and insane. The GM is free to only use Arcanists in that tradition if she feels it appropriate.  

Darkening the Arcanist

I do have plans to introduce in a future sourcebook a darker spin on the Arcanist, with new spells and rules for corruption and madness. For the time being, though, if a GM wants to include an Arcanist in her game and tie magic to a darker angle, I'd recommend simply adding a SAN cost to all spells. For spells up to 6th level, minimum SAN loss should be half the spell's level, and max SAN loss would be the nearest die type. Thus, a first level spell would be 0/1d4, where a sixth level spell would be 3/1d6. 

For spells above sixth level, start into die types for minimum loss, and continue the progression for max. Thus, a seventh level spell would be 1d4/1d6, an eighth level spell would be 1d4/1d8 (I got the 1d4 by halving the spell level and going with the nearest die type. Half of 8 is 4, so 1d4). Ninth Level spells, then, would be 1d6/1d10 SAN Loss to cast.

Those numbers are off the top of my head; you may need to tweak them some to work for your game.

Since this adds an additional down-side to playing the Arcanist, I suggest also granting them the Forbidden Lore Knowledge (Amazing Adventures, p. 56) as an additional Class Ability. This extra benefit (a sort of "true" occult knowledge) should help to offset the down-side and allow you to maintain the normal experience progression for the class.

These minor tweaks to the system should sufficiently darken the Arcanist so that the class better fits into a Lovecraftian-style game, or into an Oriental Stories mold, especially when combined with GM oversight into which spells are allowable ("flashy" spells like fireball, for example, will probably not be suitable for such a game).