About Ciphers..

[Arctic]

Well first of all , sorry for my english.

 

I play with psionics .. been wilders my preffered, and master a game with a sorcerer/psion multiclass and i can tell you that they are way different.

 

With psionics you have a complete diferent system, its more like a rest to recover inmense mana pool than a vancian sistem, and that alone with the mind flabour makes it worth for me, but if you get a little deeper...

 

Psionics have thinks like ,mind control , not the mage dominate, but thinks like ... you become miself (personality parasite),erase memory, manipulate senses , kill yourself (death urge, and this is so strong. ... see that big nasty monster that kill your party in 1 hit makking auto-crits to himself and nothing more ).

 

Then you have premonitions, mental barriers, protection agains domination ... a new tipe of healing were you get the wounds from your friends and then cure yourself, or even send your wounds to your enemys. Yo create links in the "souls " of your enemys making that kill one will kill both...

 

On other think a mage summon monsters, psionics dont, they create thinks from their mind ...

 

Well if you look at the power list you will see the point. it has a different flavour, and if you look at the disciplines , the equivalent of a necromancer and a conjurer in psionics is more like , an invoker and a metamorfosing warrior.

 

But its hard to see the differences without playing it , and i dont know how deep it will be in the game.

[JOG]

To me the Ciphers sound a bit like Jedi without lightsaber acrobatics, the problem I have with such "alternative magic" is that either it's just another (aka obsolete) school of magic, or it should be a character trait rather than a class. Someone born with such abilities may learn a mundane profession like warrior, rogue or baker before he becomes aware of his abilities, he would then use these abilities to improve his proficiency in the learned profession rather than starting from scratch in a new class.

Edited January 5, 2013 by JOG

[JOG]

A few more thoughts on this:

 

The power to manipulate the mind and feelings is dangerous, and needs a regulation system lest the manipulators will soon be the true rulers. In a world where priests and wizards exists, nobody depends on the services of an organisation of mindbenders, they would be locked away, or go into hiding.

 

So the PC would either be a runaway from a Cipher-asylum, a member of an underground organisation that serves as a more subtle alternative to an assassin guild, or it would be a random guy with a random class who managed to hide his talents so far. In either case, being a Cipher would either require a lot of fixed character background or add an extra level of character development to a base class.

 

 

 

BTW: For us non-native english speakers:

 

"Cipher" originates from the arabic word for "zero" and found its way into the mathematic terms of all european languages, once the old roman number system turned out to be impractical for more sophisticated calculations.

 

I know that today the term is used for:

 

- encryption algorithms (the mathematic aspect)

- dope-heads (a zero-mind)

- the circle in which a joint is passed around

- free-style raps (Circle? Zero preparation? Or yet another drug reference?)

 

So what exactly is the relation to the character class? Do they need drugs for their trade? Are they "decrypting the minds of other people"?

Edited January 5, 2013 by JOG