“The Aether” - Apothecary Marco
“The Aether is the Nexus's plaything. Whimsical, multicolored mist that dances around conduits of it. It is simply the form of someone's life force. Aether, while in the Nexus, dances visibly around it's vessel, the player and NPC's. There is a lot to be learned, and already known about the Aether, but, let's leave that to the most studied, shall we?”
“The Vessels” - Apothecary Marco
“Aether takes many forms. For us in the Nexus, that form is, well, us. It clings to our soul, or rather, engulfs it. It seems to use that to take up our latent forms, which, for us, is our form just before our untimely demise. The Aether makes up our form, and the rest? It just sort of dances around us. It's easy to see through, that is, if it actually got in our faces. No, Aether seems to just dance far above us in some form of circular motion in the top of the Nexus. As we walk out, it joins us, turning translucent on the physical plain.”
“A little bit of the Aether, though, clings to us even if it can't solidify, and this gains a color! An interesting fact. For me, it was a brown, though, I'm not exactly sure what that means. All the more reason to study!”
“Aether seems to be related to... something. I'm not quite sure, but I do have a perfect example! 2 new arrivals came in today, and they are the same color! This is wonderful. I'll just study them in secret till I learn what their differences and things are.”
“Funny thing about these 2. While I'm not one to point fun, they're aura's color is... pink. The closest I can come to a conclusion is that they're simply lovers. It would seem that the Aether's color coincides with a person's deepest personality traits. Lovely!”
“A new person came today... This is one of those few rare cases that were brought in not by the keepers, but, one of our own. Sebastian was out looking for his trinkets again, and he found this tall, foreboding fellow. His Aether is black. I don't even need to study him to know that that doesn't bode well for anyone, but, physical harm is impossible in the Nexus. I can breathe easy with that.”
“The Aether and Invulnerability” - Apothecary Marco
“Struck gold today. Very happy to learn this, as it allows me to be more astute with my studies and brewing. I'm invincible! Or rather, untouchable. Wasn't watching where I was going today as I was lost in thought as to why the newcomers were both pink, and I accidentally walked through Bagrin! Literally, too. My conscious stayed as it was and I merely kept walking through him. It was astounding! We both sort of... Disintegrated as we walked, and then regained ourselves a few seconds later.
Bagrin kept on walking, as I'm sure it hadn't been his first time with that, but me! I was astonished!”
“Can't touch a single other person. Now, that's not a bad thing, mind you, but it looks like the magic distance is 1 inch away before things start to come apart. Weapons especially. Rodrick was nice enough to try and stab me in the face when I told him I didn't know what weapons did as Aether. He cut me off on did. He laughed heartily, but... who does that?”
“The Aether and Magic” - Apothecary Marco
“So the Aether disintegration thing brought up a lovely question. How am I standing on these stones? I've gotten significantly better as a wizard these last few days, so I decided to cast one of my newer spells, Arcane sight. Oh my word... just... the things you see. I was blinded in one eye from the amount of magic, and I had to immediately cease the spell, but... everything. I know these floors are merely barriers. They have illusions, and the colors of the Aether in here is just... I won't be casting that again. It was a waste of a spell In my book, but, just 1 casting of it taught me so much so quickly. It might have been worth an eye.”
“Keeper Argus apparently realized what I'd done. He asked me to do it again, and I said it was dangerous. He assured me otherwise. Casting it again, he had placed a nonmagical aura on just about everything. The Aether isn't enough to hurt my eyes, but there's nothing magical about it. However, it is very beautiful to look at.”
“The Aether and the Soul” - Apothecary Marco
“Once again, Bagrin died today. I asked him what it was like, and if it had any detrimental effects. It was about this time I learned that we weren't as invincible as I'd hoped. He'd attempted to reach the Duke's quarters, again, and apparently some... monstrosity of a beast stopped him from doing so. Anyways, I learned that the Aether can't handle the fatal harm of it's vessel, and actually escapes into nearby vessels upon death.”
“A Vessel is anything that contains Copious amounts of resealed Aether, which, at the moment is anyone in the Nexus, and that's all. Regular, living creatures and people, if there are any people, can't gain it. Bagrin once died defending someone from the Nexus, Rodrick or Sebastian, I believe. Maybe the new healer? Not sure, but, part of his Aether joined her, and well, she got stronger? I'm not sure how to put it. She said it was as if all of her teachings had accelerated, or, massive amounts of insight befell her. Needless to say, the Aether apparently augments our abilities and accelerates our learning processes. Perhaps we gain it over time? I wonder how much I have...”
“The loss of Aether is a substantially awful thing, as, in my desire to learn what it was like, I... kind of got killed. Yes, it was in the Chilling pass of Argosol. Mind you I wasn't actually trying to die, no, I was simply looking for ingredients to put towards potions. It just so happened that I'd happened to run into one of that damned Lich's vicious sentries.
Anyways, upon death I... lost something. Potion ideas, knowledge, skill, prowess, everything. I lost experience, for lack of a better word. The Aether apparently is experience given form, and, well, if you lose all of the things you've ever done, well... poof.”
“The Aether and Equipment” - Apothecary Marco
“The blacksmith, Arcus, has apparently learned how to do something rather remarkable. He can shape a person's Aether, if they're willing. Now, this is something I've only seen him do, but apparently it's rather easy once you get the hang of it.”
“A weapon composed of Aether, when separated from a tangible source of a person's Aether, will disperse immediately, provided that person is dead. The Aether from this weapon will then cling to nearby conduits, effectively giving them experience.”
Alright, fancy wordings and NPC dialogue aside, here's the short and skinny of my problem.
This "Aether" stuff is the currency in my next game, and it's basically the conversion of a player's experience into pretty much everything. It can be used for pretty much dam well everything.
So let's look at something: Level 2: 2120 experience total. You want a full plate, and that costs 1500 gold, or rather, 1500 Aether. That's enough to not only set you back to level 1, but set you over 1400 exp from level 2.
Therein lies the problem, for me. I want to make Aether hurt the experience bar, but I don't want it to devastate the experience bar. I thought about giving more "Experience" for all of these things, but, that might make it far too easy to level.
The way my tiny brain sees it, is I either make monsters give tons more experience despite their level and keep all of the items as they are, or, by percentiles, cut down the amount of gold (Aether) stuff will cost. Care to help a guy out? Also, this "Apothecary Marco" is a guy who's been in this "Nexus" for a very long time, and has pretty much devoted himself to the study of the whimsical stuff.
One of the suggestions has been to simply give them, in extra experience, what they would have all gotten in gold. Suggestions?
Is Aether the only way to get expensive gear? Is gold and treasure not an option in this game for that?
The majority of the people on the physical plain live in villages, towns, and the like. Metropoliss and 1 step down don't have people in them, and even fewer have smiths, or wizards.
So yes.
What are your hopes/reasons for implementing this?
The players are frequently going to be meeting up against CR+1 combat situations, as the campaign isn't meant to be easy. Everyone starts out with 2300 experience, which is just enough to be above level 1. They have their option of equipment that's the equivalent to that APL, but all gold is immediately transmuted to Aether upon Arrival to the Nexus.
The Aether is something to be learned about, more than anything. It's substantial, and plays a key roll in the story as various lords learn about the nexus and it's tricks and traits.
The Lich of Argoss takes a maddening interest in it, for example.
The Aether is there to give players the ability to gain experience rather quickly, while at the same time giving them the option to gain great weaponry at null-costs.
I've experimented with the idea of halfing the prices on everything in light of the experience fact. That would drive +1 enhanced weapons down to 1119 Aether, which is merely half of level 1. Mind you it can get pretty ridiculous quick, but Aether is all about "Conversion"
Say you kill a Schir demon, whom had a +1 Halberd and was rather proud of himself. That's about 800 experience, if he's a Cr 5 with some fancy equipment.
However, on his person, he had a +1 Halberd, which is roughly 2300 some Aether to create. Converting equipment found in an area into Aether in the nexus grants the converter and his group half of the equipment's cost, split among them evenly. So you just killed a CR 5 Schir, which originally gave you 800 experience. Split his loot among party members in the form of Aether, and everyone just gained 800 + (1150/4) which is plenty of experience for one creature.
However, this is only if the player wishes to share it.
It's a mess at the moment, and I still need to change the percentages around to make sense, but, it's not impossible to implement this sort of thing. I was kind of hoping to get some assistance on some of the more math-savvy forum-goers.
There's just so many things that revolve around Aether in this game that it's kind of intense.
Dieing makes you lose every experience point you have of your current level. This means that if a level 1 dies, he stays dead, and raise dead doesn't work on an Aetherling as your soul makes up for lost time and zips straight to the boneyard.
Fortunately I put a rather large amount of thought to that, and figured that being reverted back to level 1 was plenty enough.
The act of dieing looks like this: 1280/2000 experience, dies, 0/2000 still alive, but level 1. And then no amount of dieing can go below level 1.
I also found a simple enough solution for the experience issue: White Aether.
When a creature dies, some of it's Aether goes into the players, while the rest of it's *white* Aether, simply attaches to them and follows them to the nexus.
This white Aether is always in a pool with the rest of the white Aether in the upper dome of the Nexus, though it's not a lot, starting out.
A schir demon can give 600 experience, and to 4 people, that's 150 "Soul" Aether each, which is a fancy way of saying experience. Soul Aether is converted to white Aether upon death, and only upon death. White Aether is simply the gold worth of all the crap they find, including gold.
500 gp of loot converts to 500 gp of White Aether, and White Aether can be converted into soul Aether, which is experience, though only at a 10 to 1 ratio.
How does all this sound?
Are your players down with this idea? If so, no problem, go right ahead. But it looks to me like it involves extra math and sacrifices on the part of the players for the soul purpose of making the game more challenging, which could be accomplished in simpler ways.