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Joker9125
I was reading these fourms and I heard of specialized elementals like metal or even booze elementals. I was wondering is their anything cannon on these types of elementals? If not what are the types you use and your house rules for them. Oh yea dont forget to list their stats.
Lilt
I don't think there is anything canon apart from the SR/Earthdawn link and the existance of other elemental types in Earthdawn.

If I was to stick a metal elemental in my game I think I'd give it extremely similar stats to an earth elemental and make it weak to water instead of air (or something).
Zazen
Whenever a player wants a weird custom elemental I tell him to make it as an ally. Among ideas I've heard/had are Weed Elementals, Porn Elementals, Coffee Elementals, and BO Elementals.

I did use sand elementals in a game once. They were identical to an earth elemental except with a sand-scour elemental manipulation attack and no reach bonus.
Fortune
If I was to incorporate new and unusual Elementals into my game, I'd probably make the interested character make an Astral Quest to the Elemental in question's home plane before he gained the ability to Conjure them. Even then, they would be limited to Conjuring them at a maximum Force equal to the related Astral Quest.

Or I'd make the whole idea a unique Metamagic in and of itself.
Zazen
QUOTE (Fortune)
If I was to incorporate new and unusual Elementals into my game, I'd probably make the interested character make an Astral Quest to the Elemental in question's home plane before he gained the ability to Conjure them.

That'd be pretty amusing, undertaking an Astral Quest to the Metaplane of Weed for the purpose of summoning Weed Elementals.

"You've reached the place of charisma. The Dweller on the Threshold keeps dwelling on the joint. Convince him to pass it without pissing him off."
Tziluthi
I'd hate to think of what the Metaplane of BO would be like. One great giant armpit or something.
Austere Emancipator
If there's an Elemental effect for that substance/thing described in MitS, I don't see a problem summoning such an Elemental -- other than the problem of having to make up stats for them.
Lilt
I wonder if an acid elemental would be considered toxic? What about a Citric Acid elemental? nyahnyah.gif
John Campbell
"Say hello to Fat Man, my plutonium elemental."

Wireknight
You just have to be careful that the elemental created isn't more powerful than any other elemental. A good rule of thumb is to just take a fire elemental and replace the innate spell and aura effect with the appropriate alternate elemental effect. That was my suggestion to a friend, who wanted to create a techno-mage who called electricity elementals rather than fire elementals. Innate Spell(Lightning Bolt) and an aura that did Electrical, rather than Fire, elemental damage, and the "new" elemental type is good to go.

Adding bonus elemental type damage to other elementals causes problems, as water, earth, and air elementals really have no elemental type damage effects or innate spells, and adding them requires taking other things away for balance. Fire elementals are easy, on a statistical level, to reconfigure for acid, sand, smoke, etc...
Lilt
If I recall the discussion in the ED thread, Metal elementals are a variation on earth elementals from the metaplane of Metal. As such another appropriate way to construct the other elemental types would be to take the closest elemental type and modify the powers slightly to reflect the different base material.

I personally would consider an earth elemental to be almost identical to an earth elemental, just slightly faster but less physically powerful. Lowering the strengh by 2 and body by 1 for +1 quickness (and effectively reaction) would seem appropriate.

I'm not sure about the elemental effects idea for all new elementals. Only one type of elemental, out of the 4 basic ones, has such an attack so to add an elemental attack to most of the new elementals you create would seem overkill.

It'd also be best to consider what the aid sorcery (and similar) services would be linked to.

I have heard from some people (I think they are baseing this on Earthdawn but I don't know) that there is an Elemental plane of Wood but that it has been highly damaged. I think that the wood element is also linked to health spells. Can anyone confirm/deny this?
Sphynx
QUOTE (Lilt)
I personally would consider an earth elemental to be almost identical to an earth elemental

Good call.... I'd consider them almost identical too. nyahnyah.gif

Sphynx
kenji
well, the whole "booze elemental" thing was a creative delusion of the offending character. and the rest of the party mages (though shamans) knew enough to say "yeah, riiiiiiight" to his interpretation. in fact, we were pretty worried about having to fight off a demon... never became a problem, though. wink.gif

of course, when a hermetic gives the command "booze up and riot, little buddy!" to his fire elemental, you know what kinda game you're playin.
Kagetenshi
QUOTE (Zazen)
Porn Elementals

Someone's been playing Progress Quest.
Do they drop Lube when they die?

~J
Zazen
I've never heard of it, but I'd sure like to see it. What do they look like?

The person who came up with this is a friend who has enough raw element laying around to summon an army of 'em smile.gif
Kagetenshi
It's text-based, so I have no idea. Pity, really.

~J
Sahandrian
I actually do have some unusual elemental types in my games. I made a Para-Elementalist metamagic that's used to conjure Paraelementals (see D&D 3rd's "Manual of the Planes") - Smoke, Sludge, Magma, and Ice.

There are also Metal elementals and a few subtypes (rust, mercury), and I think I had an Ash spirit too...
Austere Emancipator
Since Smoke and Ice are Elements as per the Elemental Effects in MitS, calling such Elementals "Para-" might not be fitting.
Zazen
QUOTE (Sahandrian)
I actually do have some unusual elemental types in my games. I made a Para-Elementalist metamagic that's used to conjure Paraelementals (see D&D 3rd's "Manual of the Planes") - Smoke, Sludge, Magma, and Ice.

There are also Metal elementals and a few subtypes (rust, mercury), and I think I had an Ash spirit too...

Do you have more detailed rules and stats that you could post? I'd very much like to see them. smile.gif
Lilt
QUOTE (Sphynx)
QUOTE (Lilt @ Jan 6 2004, 11:56 AM)
I personally would consider an earth elemental to be almost identical to an earth elemental

Good call.... I'd consider them almost identical too. nyahnyah.gif

ACK! it's not my day. I have the flu. leave me alone! *pouts* *coughs* *dies*
dead.gif
If you must know I meant sand elemental.
Lilt
I do like the idea of the combined elemental types (or para elementals if you want to call them that). You might just want to bear in mind that certain elemental types are going to be hard to summon as it's hard to find much lava around for summoning lava (earth+fire) elementals unless you live near an appropriate volcano.

Me and a friend once abstracted the inner-planes from DND and found the plane of mineral water between the planes of water and mineral (3 parts water, 2 parts earth, 1 part air, or something silly like that). If you mixed in 1 part fire then I think you'd have the plane of Volvic. It'd be funny to see a healthy-type mage who summons mineral-water elementals... biggrin.gif
Sahandrian
QUOTE (Zazen @ Jan 6 2004, 02:55 PM)
Do you have more detailed rules and stats that you could post? I'd very much like to see them. smile.gif

The paraelementals required that the mage know how to summon each of the halves, and have the materials for each half, or the mixed material, and that he have the ParaElementalist metamagic. The rest was on my site, but that section got deleted and I haven't gotten around to rebuilding it just yet.

And no, I never worked out their stats. But I suppose I could do that this evening, since I mostly know how I'd do it.
RangerJoe
I had heard that there was a mana-line which gave bonuses to connecting to the metaplane of sludge running through Jersey... then again, it might just have been a main-pipe.
Herald of Verjigorm
I'd like to see the setup to conjure a lightning elemental: the center of the circle is a Van de Graaf generator or possibly a Tesla coil (depends on whether you want AC or static, not sure what would be good for a DC elemental).
Kagetenshi
Just do it out near a high-tension line.

~J
Lilt
If you truly want a lightning elemental then I'd use a long metal pole and do it outside during a lightning storm.

It's also possible that AC, DC, Static, and Lightning elementals are different. Probably not to the extent that the stats would be that different, but they'd look different.
RedmondLarry
There are DC "positive" and DC "negative" elementals. Never get between them. wink.gif
Kagetenshi
Suddenly the rule that opposing elementals subtract the lesser force from that of the greater makes sense in a realistic setting wink.gif

~J
Fortune
QUOTE (Lilt)
It's also possible that AC, DC, Static, and Lightning elementals are different.

An AC/DC Elemental would Rock! biggrin.gif
Kagetenshi
.......................*Twitch*
Speaking of which, pain elementals! They can spawn lost souls!

~J
Lilt
QUOTE (Kagetenshi)
.......................*Twitch*
Speaking of which, pain elementals! They can spawn lost souls!

Umm. I think we have to wait 3000 years for the pain elementals. There's a matter involving a gap between worlds and stuff that needs to be reached first.

I don't think the positive/negative DC elemental thing works. I mean: Electrons always flow from -ve to +ve. You might be able to get a proton elemental but it would be possibly be considered toxic as IIRC beta radiation consists of loose protons. You may even have to summon it from a fairly strong Beta radiation source (in a vaccum) as I don't think it counts as pure when it's mixed with electrons and neutrons.

And yes, the AC/DC elemental would Rock. nyahnyah.gif

What do people think of creating an Orichalcum elemental? Could there be a hermetic metaplane of Orichalcum? It's supposed to be a mix of all of the 4 base elements in equal quantities, which would place it slap-bang in the center of the para-elemental planes. What powers would it have? How much would human-sized block of Orichalcum cost?
Hasaku
Except that something consisting entirely of protons would be intensely positively charged and would fly apart as it repelled itself, probably manifesting a powerful burst of beta radiation.

Even if it somehow held itself together, there's still the small matter of it ripping electrons from surrounding material with its positive charge, causing massive electrical arcs. What do you end up with? A hydrogen elemental! Stats like an air elemental, but can self detonate in an oxygenated environment, acting as a (Force)M fireball spell and dealing itself a deadly wound. smile.gif
Fortune
I think a Booze Elemental really should fall under the Spirits of Man category.
kenji
err... high tension lines are AC. otherwise the transmission losses would suck even worse.

but lightning is distinctly DC. of course, lightning is just really really big static.

and as for "charge elementals" or whatever (charge, of course, being entirely relative to "average" for the immediate vicinity... local ground is just that, local.) the entire convention of power flowing opposite electrons is just historical/mathematical convention. one could just as easily have set it up so that the electrons were the positive unit and the math just switches signs.
so if you wanna have a lightning elemental, rock on.

also: beta radiation is electrons. really really fast electrons.

---
ps: i forsee problems using modern++ scientific understanding to analyze/manipulate a magic system grounded in the hermetic rationale, which, to the best of my knowledge, was considerably derived from medieval bullshitters who called themselves "alchemists".
mixing these ideas may not yield a workable or even self-consistent system of magic.
Lilt
QUOTE (kenji)
also: beta radiation is electrons. really really fast electrons.

Ah. Am I thinking of Alpha radiation then? I've not done physics for ages.
Zazen
An alpha particle/"ray" is a helium nucleus, consisting of two protons and two neutrons.
Lilt
Bah. Perhaps I'm just dumb then.
Zazen
QUOTE (kenji)
ps: i forsee problems using modern++ scientific understanding to analyze/manipulate a magic system grounded in the hermetic rationale, which, to the best of my knowledge, was considerably derived from medieval bullshitters who called themselves "alchemists".
mixing these ideas may not yield a workable or even self-consistent system of magic.

Hey, Isaac Newton spent most of his time screwing around with alchemy. Surely there's something to it! wink.gif
Hasaku
Screw it. I'm manifesting a gamma ray elemental in my fixer's condo next time he price gouges me...

On an unrelated note (sorry), is there a paranimal similar to a Tribble? Maybe a Prozac elemental?
Lilt
I wonder if you get subtypes of Porn elemental?
Kagetenshi
Where are you going to find all the gamma rays for the source?

~J
Fortune
QUOTE (Lilt)
I wonder if you get subtypes of Porn elemental?

Only if you take the Fetishist Metamagic.
Moonstone Spider
Since in Shadowrun what you believe is what you get with magic according to MitS, you can really probably summon just about anything. After all even the "Normal" spirits change shape according to their conjurer's expectations.

That said, probably the oddest summonings I ever did was when I was GMing a game mostly for laughs. I had a sort of a hermetic mage who was somewhat eccentric and had created his own elemental system, his hermetic circles looked like pentagrams with the following elements:

Eggs
Cereal
Juice
Toast
Ham

Rumor has it he was so brilliant he created his magic system before breakfast.

I did have all the stats worked out but I don't know if I still have them. I remember Egg elementals had hardened armor while Juice and Cereal Elementals were the only ones who could engulf. I can't even recall what the Toast and Ham elementals did but I recall laughing a lot as the Shadowrunners tried to fight this guy.
Kagetenshi
I wonder how he'd do against that Toaster shaman...

~J
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