Neural network spells

Awesome. Coins & Scrolls and Throne of Salt have harnessed the unfathomable power of AI to generate gameable content. I shall now board their band wagon by asking for new versions of old spells.

WTF IS THIS ABOUT?

From the Talk to Transformer site:

Adam King built Talk to Transformer as an easier way to play with OpenAI's new machine learning model. In February, OpenAI unveiled a language model called GPT-2 that generates coherent paragraphs of text one word at a time.)

TEST DRIVE

Vance gave us the model for Vancian spells. Let's see how TtT finishes this famous bit of text:

Turjan found a musty portfolio, turned the heavy pages to the spell the Sage had shown him, the Call to the Violent Cloud. He stared down at the characters and they burned with an urgent power, pressing off the page as if frantic to leave the dark solitude of the book.

The book was then turned over and over again until there were only pages left, until there was nothing left but a memory that seemed to haunt him more than life itself."

"The book I was given, the one I kept staring at, was the secret key to everything I needed to know. If it was the Book of the Thousand Names, if it was the Book of the Spells...if it was written so that the soul was trapped in a perpetual cycle of killing and resurrection, then I would find it easy to manipulate that.

For I knew that, no matter what I did, the soul was always waiting, waiting to be used by someone who could understand it."

Wow. Self-disappearing book that tells you the secrets of soulcrafting? I wants. Fits in with my necromancy post, sorta.

GIMME THE SPELLS MAN

Sheesh. Starting from the AD&D spell table:

• Protection from Evil

When this spell is cast, it acts as if it were a magical armour upon the recipient.

As well, it renders the recipient invisible, immune to magical effects including those of divine wrath or hexes, immune to effects that target the caster with disintegrate or disintegrate undead (such as the spell disintegrate sphere) and immune to the effects of all of the save DCs granted by the spell. The recipient receives +10 per caster level on any saving throws allowed by the spell. This invisibility effects last until the spell ends or the recipient is no longer affected (at which point the invisibility lasts for 24 hours or until the recipient loses interest in it), whichever comes first.

I'm astounded that TtT was fed enough game text to produce this paragraph! Reruns of the generator produced Magic the Gathering-like rules. Also, this is some protection spell. Hefty immunities, save boosts, and invisibility? Sign me up.

• Speak with the Dead

Upon casting a Speak With The Dead spell, the cleric is able to ask several questions of a dead creature

(in this case, a goblin, or a troll), asking how the creature is doing, and if the creature is friendly, hostile, or unhappy. This can be used to determine what actions the cleric can take while casting the spell or during combat. A dead creature may answer questions about their current actions, the creature's past actions, and how the cleric wishes to deal with such. As long as the cleric is conversing with the creature, he can decide during each round that he has a free action for each question he asks or action he takes. The same is true for spells such as the spells detect spirits, detect undead, or locate objects. The cleric may choose to use this free action for any such questions at a later time, or he may take other actions as necessary.


Ok, so I need to harvest the head of a goblin or troll, but then it'll give me cool advice all the time? Useful, but no DM would miss the opportunity of making the head a foulmouthed hooligan. Which is extra awesome.

• Sticks to Snakes

There must, of course, be sticks or similar pieces of wood (such as torches, spears, etc.) to turn into snakes.

That's where it gets interesting and I think one of the reasons is that they can use things such as torches to cause the snake to be lured to a spot where he can get some food or something.  Some snakes are able to bite a snake with their teeth and these snakes don't care how they are trained to do that. That being said, there are lots of snakes that don't bite at all and therefore are very dangerous, even if they aren't venomous.  I don't like snakes that bite, but there is a big difference between bite and venomous venomous. A lot of snakes also bite and sting, especially venomous venomous snakes.  The type of venom to bite someone will depend on many factors, one might include how close you are to the snake and which area the bite


Reads like tactical advice. Which frankly I could use for this spell.

• Chariot of Sustarre

When this spell is cast by a druid, it brings forth a large flaming chariot pulled by two fiery horses which appear in a clap of thunder amidst cloud-like smoke.

The chariot makes an impressive roar as lightning streaks from its feet and tails, the thunder claps soundlessly from the back of each horse, and two enormous thunderbolts appear and smash directly into the ground, striking the ground.  This creates a thundercloud, which falls over everything in its path.

When this spell is used in conjunction with a fireball , the thunderclouds around the chariot are enhanced, giving it greater resistance to magic, magic-based attacks, and spells of 3rd level or lower. These cloud-like clouds can be thrown as though with a simple thrown weapon and produce sparks on impact, burning anything within 20 feet with a single blast

Awesome spell, so full of flavour. In fact...yes, need to work this into my Belswick game.

• Fool's Gold

Copper coins can temporarily be changed to gold pieces, or brass items turned to solid gold for the spell duration by means of this dweomer.

This spell has no effect over the land. If an area of land that can produce gold is destroyed by water, the magic of a gold item created there immediately ends.

Similarly, a gold item that is dropped or placed in a void causes the surface to sink to the nearest level below the surface of the surface, and the gold item itself is returned to its creator (with no further effects).

...whut? Looks like these magic coins can dig into the earth and raise water levels. Very much an OSR-type tool. This AI is wired right.

• Prismatic Sphere (2x)

The colours and effects of the Prismatic Sphere, as well as what will negate each globe, are:

Wartoad Description: This sphere is the most powerful of the three. Like the Shield Sphere, it contains an unknown type of spell power that is always there. The only way to use it is by casting something other than magic. Also unlike the Shield Sphere, this magic power does not dissipate and is constantly on the field. What will do is increase the accuracy and damage of a spell used within it. As the colour of the sphere is yellow, this sphere is a good choice for most of the maps. However, the Prismatic Sphere does not provide protection from Magic. Instead, it can be used as a powerful tool to weaken enemy characters.



...one of the spheres is Wartoad? Say no more, good mage. This spell is AWESOME.

Red - Frostbite
Black - Claw/Noxious Shell
Blue - Ember (which can also have a effect of the White Orb), or - Chaos Orb
Green - Shadowbolt
Red - Shockwave
Silver - Poison
Light Blue - Ice
Gold - Vizier. You can only have one Prismatic Sphere in your possession in the round that ends each turn. Note that on first turn the Prismatic Sphere can only be placed in your hand, on second turn it can be placed anywhere (except your Deck) in your graveyard, and so on. However this can be used to create a new Prismatic Sphere before your turn comes around, if that's not something you're used to. However as your turn comes around you can remove your Prismatic Sphere so that you can bring it to new hands.

As a player, I would worry about a spell that produces a Golden Vizier. But as a DM, I'm very much fine with it.