@Rubiksmoose Yeah - and I think the idea of quarterstaff as an arcane focus for a wizard is a pretty common trope.

@NautArch fair enough. makes sense. I'm always really leary of his "I'd allow it" type answers. That speaks more to "that is an acceptable house rule" than to "the rules say it is allowed" in my book.

Generally, as a DM, find me a realistic situation where it makes the game less fun for the rest of the group (myself allowed), and I'll ban it.

@goodguy5 Yup. My position is to always look for a way to rule in favor of the PCs before trying to come up with reasons to reject it. Generally, if it doesn't cause an issue I don't look for a reason to say no to it.

@Rubiksmoose have i mentioned how much i can't wait for my paladin campaign to end so I've got a different DM?

@NautArch you have! And I'm excited for you to do that as well!

So, in the case of your arcane focus as an axe/hammer/expensive monocle, "what does it hurt?". Have at it. If I feel like you're abusing it somehow, then we'll talk about it

@Rubiksmoose Generally, we get rulings against us. Often arbitrarily.

@NautArch The action economy really isn't hurt much, since most arcane spellcasters won't be using shields in the first place, and so would normally have 1 hand free for both weapon and casting.

@goodguy5 The expensive monocle/glass eye one was pretty cool. Normally, I'm generally against bypassing action economy - but with my own gameplay experience doing just that it doesn't seem like a big deal.

@NautArch I just don't get that attitude honestly. It seems so tiresome and unfun. For DM and PC alike. I can understand where it comes from, but don't understand how it persists.

@Rubiksmoose power corrupts?

@NautArch pretty much the only reason besides spite that would seem plausible.

@Rubiksmoose and i do wonder if spite is part of it. I'd normally say he tends to favor one player (which he definitely does with regard to inspiration points), but that guy has had some pretty unfun rulings thrown at him.

@NautArch hard to say/explain what goes on inside my own crazy noggin much less other people's.

@GreySage The action economy isn't hurt now, but what about the effects of bonus action inflation?

@Yuuki bonus actions just don't buy what they used to.

Why, just yesterday I spent 3 whole bonus actions on a gallon of milk. Can you believe that?!

@Yuuki Man, my sorcerer would kill for a bonus or reaction-time damaging cantrip

@Rubiksmoose Alchemy jugs required a standard action, I thought?

@NautArch I'm also against bypassing action economy when it has a meaningful impact. But casters (usually) don't need their offhand for things. They hold a weapon or something for flair and the occasional goblin. If you can reasonably just hold the item with your other hand while you manipulate your arcane focus, then whatever.

@goodguy5 Even if you had a shield on your other hand, you could draw or stow your weapon and use your component pouch if you had one. I don't see any reason to make a focus slightly worse than a pouch.

exactly my point

@goodguy5 unfortunately, action economy doesn't allow stowing a weapon for free.

which is dumb, because you can 'game' it by dropping/picking up.

you can "manipulate one item as a part of your movement"

instead allowing the caster to use his axe as the focus means that he can maybe open an extra door during his turn or something (gasp!) and feel like a badass when electricity shoots out of his axe, splitting the Orc's chest as lightning striking a tree.

hmm, i could have sworn stowing a weapon was an action

I'm ... uh.... 85-90% sure

lemme see if I can find it

you're right

but it's either/or, not both. so ou can't sheathe one and draw another

your examples are perfect

correct. and you can't draw 2 in one turn

You might be conflating 3.X where manipulating things was a move action

@goodguy5 definitely not, never played 3.x :) But I was confusing stow/draw vs just draw.

haha. fair

@NautArch My DM just lets me switch weapons as a bonus action.

I guess they figure it's not like I'm going to do something incredibly cheesy by switching to a javelin for this turn.

I kind of wish the 5e devs didn't put the whole "Actual components OR a component pouch OR a focus AND somatic components BUT you can use the same hand for any/all of the above" thing in and just said: You need a free hand to cast spells.

@GreySage Then you'll have wizards going around trying to attach a third hand to themselves.

@Yuuki But you can do that now!

@GreySage and that's still with free hand being pretty vague. That fact that you can momentarily hold a two-handed weapon in one hand as a legit bypass.

@GreySage but what if you're HOLDING the component pouch?! Then you don't have a free hand! lol

Personally I handwave all that away when I DM. You're a spellcaster, nothing is specifically preventing you from casting spells, you're good to go.

^

Though, I have always wanted to play a game where I made casters keep track of dumb shit, like bat guano

@goodguy5 ...why?

I don't even track mundane ammunition.

It would be a super rules-oppressively-heavy game. Track weight. Track Arrows. Track components. Track food intake. Money-changing fees. the whole works.

@GreySage Because logically speaking, wizards would be riddled with terrible tropical diseases from handling animal waste.

and as to "why"? idk. likely because I started with AD&D

just to experience it

@Yuuki Does that mean everyone who just got Fireballed also has Ebola?

no, fireballs kill ebola

so, as a side note, if the wizard stands in his own fireball, he does not get ebola

@GreySage No, just the wizard that's been handling copious amounts of bat dung.

Cross-contamination is serious business, yo.

WIZARD, wash your hands before casting "Heroes Feast".

The new campaign we'll have starting up will require me to find components. We basically start with absolutely nothing.

Can comments be questions about edits? Or is that better suited here?

I'm kind of looking forward to the challenge

@NautArch Can't you just use a focus?

@goodguy5 don't have one. we start with nothing but the clothes on our backs.

@NautArch what campaign?

@NautArch Don't forget to punch trees to build a crafting table.

@Rubiksmoose homebrew. It'll be generations after the current one finishes off. So there may be some lore about our old characters.

and however this one ends may impact the next in terms of the world.

My first order of business is to find a sheep (calling @nitsua60)

ah. the "near naked" campaign

@NautArch ah ok. The hardcover adventure we are running now starts like that so I was wondering if you might be doing that one. Not that it is a particularly unique starting premise on the face of it.

Gotta get some fleece

Also, spend your first three diamonds on a pickaxe.

@Rubiksmoose oh no. Yeah, we don't do published adventures :P

It'll let you mine obsidian and build a portal to Hell.

@NautArch clearly your group is just way too cool for mine :P

@Yuuki You can do that with iron and a bit of time (buckets)

@goodguy5 It's too much trouble to build a frame of obsidian using lava source blocks and water, imo.

@Rubiksmoose i'm not sure why we don't...we just don't. Well, It may be our general anathema to buying more stuff.

Not when you can just dig to bedrock and find three diamonds fairly quickly.

in 80% of times, I agree with you. But of the likely dozens of minecraft worlds, I've played, I've decided to bucket a portal a couple times

@NautArch darned good reason.

Although whatever you do, don't do this:

Especially don't do it next to your base.

that's a good way to kill a server

that poor sheep has no idea what's going on

@Yuuki don't try this at home kids

@doppelgreener Actually do try this home because you'll be booted from the server if you try it anywhere else.

lol

That is eeeevil.

@NautArch here you go buddy: twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/968578520464089089

to celebrate your progressing recovery

halp. what's the markup for strikethrough?

---strikethrough---

dang. I tried two, not three

ty

couldn't get that to work, so resorted to <s>

@Rubiksmoose the farside cartoon!

@goodguy5 Ah, for some reason the triple dashes only work in chat, not in posts

stricken

test <s>test<s>

@NautArch right?!

@Rubiksmoose added tweet and image to my answer.

@NautArch :D

@ACuriousMind What's the syntax for fixed width?

On second thought image probably is copyright issue? IDK about that actually

ｉｔ ｓｕｒｅ ｗｏｕｌｄ ｂｅａｔ ｔａｌｋｉｎｇ ｌｉｋｅ ｔｈｉｓ

@SPavel Backquotes.

like dis?

oho

@Rubiksmoose yeah, i'm not sure. but the image has the copyright on it, so it should be okay.

time to ａｂｕｓｅ 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘵 ʎɥdɐɹƃodʎʇ

Oh dear what have I done

@NautArch The worst that can happen is someone can ask you to remove it. Until that happens, you're good.

@ACuriousMind 😂🔥🔥🔥👌👌👌👌😜👌😜👌

aaaah

aaah?

aaaaaaah

My keyboard has no appropriate key to encode my reaction to this.

@GreySage ⁿᵒʷ ᵉⁿᵈˢ ᵗʰᵉ ᵃᵍᵉ ᵒᶠ ᵐᵃⁿ

@GreySage ⁿᵒʷ ᵉⁿᵈˢ ᵗʰᵉ ᵃᵍᵉ ᵒᶠ ᵐᵃⁿ

@NautArch it is not letting me upvote your post like 10,000 times. Why is that?

@BESW the look on the...unicorn's (?) face is priceless

Yes.

@ACuriousMind we're about to release a new unicorn design for one my compression sleeves. My daughter (who can't wear one, she's too small) will be thrilled.

It's The Lady and the Unicorn: Sight.

@BESW I went to see those

It's neat how people obsess over the mystery of the theme

A glimpse into a tiny, foreign world of a different kind of nerd

@NautArch Why would you need a horn on a sleeve?

@NautArch I'm looking for something to help that doppelganger

Self-defense?

See also the Unicorn Tapestries.

but I have an appointment. Maybe something summonable with truesight? like a celestial or fey?

anyway, good luck

@goodguy5 Blackmail?

A really good bribe?

@goodguy5 a single person with truesight wouldn't be enough to convince others. it's their word against everyone else's.

Heyo

Oh man, the things a bad guy in disguise could do when the party knows they have truesight.

Anybody would recommend a system with good focus on combat mechanics?

What does "good focus" mean for you?

Without magic :p

@NautArch You know where to find me. As for fleece, I'm due for a good shearing.

@Momonga-sama lol, that first description wasn't very good then xD

>:(

@nitsua60 hehe :)

Wait, I'm confused. "good focus on combat mechanics" = "without magic"?

@Momonga-sama I just mean you probably should have mentioned the lack of magic rather than saying it that way :P

I mean a system with widely build combat set in realistic world, without magic.

Is this okey?

yeah much more descriptive of what you want

After what level of technology are we applying Clarke's law? ;)

Cool now can I have an answer please? :p

My first instinct is GURPS; my second instinct is, no one should ever have to play GURPS

@SPavel Is it hard to learn?

d20 Modern rips out the magic part of d20, you can pick up supplements to tune it to the time period you want, but it's not as good as D&D (and that says volumes)

@Momonga-sama It's very fiddly

It may be an ideal fit for what you think you want

But I cannot guarantee fun

GURPS is one of those "I can do anything because I have expansion material!" systems.

4th or 3rd edition?

@Momonga-sama d20 Modern is based on 3rd edition

@Momonga-sama I'm trying to remember the name of a game I played a long time ago. It might be Twilight:2000

I mean, I would suggest 4e, but with the need for there to be no magic, for whatever reason, it just doesn't work

around half or so of the classes are magic

if not more than that actually

depending what you count as magic

I would not say that 4e fits the "set in a realistic world" bit even if you took out the magic

It requires suspending disbelief around "the fighter can only swing his sword in this particular way 1/day"

Honestly, D&D 3.5 with just the mundane classes and races and feats is not a bad combat simulator by any means, for a certain value of simulator.

But it also can't be guaranteed to be fun in such a configuration, and there is no setting (or compendium of enemies) that makes it easy to play this way

@SPavel that is a weird way to think of that, but wtv XD

I mean, is that really more of a suspension of disbelief than if,.... magic exists in the game?

@trogdor I didn't say magic, I said not realistic.

@SPavel I would say the same thing about 3.5 then,......

A "realistic" game would also have to excise many (in 3e parlance) Extraordinary abilities, such as being able to see for lack of photons

But that you can sort of kludge with "science"; for a 1/day use of a power fluffed as totally mundane... it's tougher.

neither of those editions was created to be "realistic"

@trogdor Indeed, hence the paragraphs that follow my statement

fair enough

What about Zweihander?

no idea

@NautArch STUPID DOPPELGANGERS

@Rubiksmoose heh, just saw my immune to charm comment?

@NautArch ...maybe

@nitsua60 @Shalvenay I have just tripped over an addendum to my answer on Hit points, since I found a description of Arneson's original Pre D&D HP system. An interesting feature of the proto system is that HP=XP .... and I of course added a link.

Dopplegangers have darkvision right? Trap everyone you think is a doppleganger in a dark place and swing a sword at them. If they dodge or block it they are the doppleganger.

...and so are you.

lol

because you can see them to swing the sword

What a fortuitous moment for @doppelgreener to arrive!

@Bellerophon one, that's an attack which is not a permissible action in this scenario. two, you'd e swinging at disadvantage then. three, the doppel could easily just let himself be hit and then you're trouble for attacking whomever everyone thinks he is :)

it's a very witch hunt type situation

@Bellerophon Are you genuinely proposing sticking yourself in a dark place surrounded with enemies all of whom have darkvision?

I do have an idea, but it requires the bard knowing Mass Suggestion. I"m waiting on the bard's spell list before posting it.

"we put you in water, if you drown you weren't a witch,..... oh wait"

@doppelgreener If you get murdered then you probably know who the doppleganger is.

@doppelgreener Or maybe they've just got a dwarven grandparent.

@Bellerophon Well I can't argue with that

@trogdor No no no, we weigh you against a duck, to see if you're made of wood, so we can burn you!

@BESW Yes, or they tripped

@GreySage fly my pretties, fly!

@KorvinStarmast I like that Arnerson's system clearly delineates wizards from heroes.

First DNA sequence everyone. Then put them in a dark room and tell them to stand still. Then have an illusion of a crossbow fire a bolt at where you know them to be. If they move or try and get out of the crossbows line of sight then they have darkvision or are disobeying your instructions.

@SPavel So does Chainmail, as a matter of fact.

@Bellerophon If you accuse enough people they'll just agree you're the doppelganger and stick you in the dark room to check

Classic part of the doppelganger handbook

n-not that i'd, you know, know what's in there for sure

@Bellerophon Reminds me of the bit in Arkham Asylum where the Joker ties Batman down in this fashion, and then shoots him; the "hint text" that comes up as the game loads from the last save point is "turn the mouse to dodge" which just turns your head

@Bellerophon As an effort to overcomplicate things, that method's success is nearly guaranteed. :)

@KorvinStarmast Further editions really dropped the ball on the wizard/hero stance

@SPavel Hero was a 4th level fighter, Wizard was an 11th level Magic User, and an 8th level cleric was a Patriarch.

When I finally got to 5th level as a magic user, in our first ever D&D campaign, we all tried our hands at pronouncing Thaumaturgist before we looked it up in a Webster's Dictionary to find out how.

It had taken a few false starts to get past 4th level, what with being hit by a wight one time, and wraith another time. :p

@SPavel what's this wizard/hero difference?

@doppelgreener They were particular benchmarks for their respective classes, with a lot of progressions wedged in so that players would progress gradually ... not sure if that is what Spavel is getting at.

@doppelgreener In the linked answer, there is a progression for who has how many points. A hero has 14, a wizard has 21, and a superhero has 28. Thereby proving that wizards are not heroes, but rather low blaggards.

@SPavel OK, let the martial versus caster donnybrook commence!

wizards are already canonically blaggards and not superheroes, donnybrook concluded

the best class is doppelganger

@KorvinStarmast It's not that wizards are more or less powerful than fighters, it's that they are cowards and knaves that hide behind their books instead of taking repeated, brutal hits to the cranium like real men

they are also not doppelgangers

doppelgangers take their hits to other peoples' craniums like real doppelgangers

Ah, but what if there be a doppelganger of a wizard?

That would be a doppelgranger.

@SPavel that'll be the day you can have a dwarf who's a fighter! and that'll never happen

@BESW haw!

(i do remember the day i went to try OD&D and the GM had to convey to us that, yes, dwarf and elf are actually classes in this one, and yes, that's weird, and yes, just roll with it)

classes

lol

neeeeerds

XD

@BESW ::slow clap::

@doppelgreener Stargate SG-1 does something like that too.

@BESW the RPG, where being Jaffa is a class despite that it's more analogous to an origin or a culture?

If you're a human, you choose your specialty based on your professional track. If you're anything else, being that particular flavor of not-human is your specialty track.

@doppelgreener Aren't Jaffa a species?

They have that chest cavity thing

and die without a symbiote

@SPavel in the sense that people with piercings are a species

Jaffa are humans that got genetically hacked by goa'uld to be larval incubators.

Oh, I thought the cavity thing was a surgical procedure done on otherwise normal humans?

i might be wrong then

ABOUT EVERYTHING

No, it seems to be a genetic modification that breeds true.

@doppelgreener Wasn't there some plot line about old dude's son who didn't have a symbiote so they had to invent that juice

Oh huh.

@SPavel I must not have seen that one

But aside from that, they're physically human.

I've only seen up to the end of season 4

@doppelgreener yeah they had more done to them than that, they can't survive without a larval symbiote

Dakara was Earth all along.

@trogdor oh wow okay!

oh yeah, no immune system without the symbiote

it's part of what keeps them dependant enough on the bad guys to keep working for them

@doppelgreener yep

@Yuuki awww. :)

that actually happens to my cats

they can not remember a thing that happened a year ago

even a Christmas tree

@doppelgreener A major plot arc in later seasons is looking for a medicine that lets the Jaffa survive through puberty and beyond without a symbiote.

@BESW oh awesome

is it just me or does this arrangement mean that most goa'uld are content to just sit there living in someone's body, never taking one over and expressing autonomy like the System Lords do?

No, the Jaffa can only host larvae.

When the baby goa'uld matures it needs to be transferred to a brain or both goa'uld and Jaffa will die.

@BESW The thing that is unclear to me is how they have so many Jaffa

(And, if I recall, the same hack that makes the Jaffa pouch a good nursery for a larva, also makes the Jaffa brain a bad host for a mature goa'uld.)

@doppelgreener And yet we had a blast with it. (The Dwarf/Elf as a class ...)

Imagine how many kids go through a school, vs how many desks the school has.

The goa-uld must die in DROVES post-maturity to justify having that many Jaffa

Plus, what kind of a species sticks their babies inside of their soldiers

@SPavel Goa'uld have a spawn mentality when it comes to their young: queens make a LOT of babies and don't care much what happens to them afterward.

@BESW personally I take that as the byproduct of the goa'uld mostly stealing other people's tech and being generally lazy

@SPavel Kangaroos?

lol

Remember, the goa'uld running the place are all paranoid megalomaniacs as a side effect of their life-extending technology.

Man, Teal’c must’ve been thrown for a loop when he visited Australia.

@Yuuki Reminds me of an apocryphal story where some developer on a time crunch hastily converted an FPS game engine into a nature sim; during the demo, they flew a helicopter over the outback and kangaroos would line up in formation and open fire on them

@BESW But think about what must happen to them

The 'second son" syndrome that destabilized medieval societies, writ large

It's surprising they managed to take over any planets at all

The goa'uld on the top of the pile maintain their position largely by keeping their children fighting amongst themselves for the favor of the parents.

Mature larvae are implanted in human slaves and given menial tasks to compete with each other over.

It's easier to keep your second sons under control when you've stuck them on a backwards world far away and they don't know the gate code to anywhere useful that you don't already control.

@BESW I had a great zing for this but I can't find the room we're allowed to do that in

@KorvinStarmast not suggesting it would've been any problem gameplay-wise, but looking back, relegating a race to a class (and saying dwarves can't be fighters or clerics or magic-users) is weird.

ah there it is

@Yuuki "these kangaroos!! we must liberate them of their overlords!" "teal'c, no, stop, hold on, we need to talk about marsupials."

@doppelgreener This "Marsupial", is he a powerful System Lord?

[teal'c has to be explained marsupials several times before he gets it]

System lords are named after gods, clearly Marsupial is named after Mars, OG God of War

Mostly I'm imagining Daniel and Samantha both overcomplicate it with science, and O'Neill just comes in and explains it simply and Teal'c turns to Daniel and Sam and asks "Why did you not just explain it like that" and neither of them can answer.

@doppelgreener It isn't weird if you understand that OD&D and AD&D 1e were explicitly designed as human centric. If you understand that design paradigm, then it makes sense. I was pleased to see that design model evolve into one with a broader reach ...

@KorvinStarmast You don't really need to defend it to me, I'm just saying how it is looking back from this end of the timeline

@SPavel No, gods are named after system lords :P

@ACuriousMind Implying they're not one and the same!? Heresy! You must be part of the resistance!

(actually that doesn't make sense in a teal'c-centric discussion)

Oh, that brings to mind though. Did we get a clear answer as to whether the system lords arrived and stole vestiges of Egyptian mythology, or whether they lead to the creation of the same?

I'm given to understand they never really created anything new, meaning they would've just borrowed what was there and used technology to create e.g. the snake armor to sell it.

I don't think it's ever explicitly stated, but--yeah, I think they took what they found and ran with it.

So Egyptian religion as we know it is very goa'uld-influenced, but they didn't invent the imagery and symbolism; they hijacked it.

I think the canonical idea is that they abducted a bunch of Egyptians and other humans of the time and posed as their gods since that was simplest.

I always felt that it was a little troubling that so many religions and mythologies were explained away as aliens except for Abrahamic faiths.

At the same point, I knew why because it wouldn't go over well given that Abrahamic faiths are currently dominant whereas just about nobody worships Loki or Osiris right now.

Still felt weird though.

Yes, the whole premise of the entire franchise is deeply racist.

Since it's founded on the conspiracy theory "pyramids are made by aliens because these primitive brown people couldn't have done it on their own."

I thought it was "primitive brown people did make it but they were forced to by aliens for raisins reasons".

Raining like Cha-razy! It's great! Forecast is Lightning storms for the next 3 days!

@Yuuki The original film is unclear on that detail. But that's what Roland Emmerich does: he grabs a conspiracy theory and wraps it up in blockbuster special effects to make it palatable to the general public.

@Yuuki I think one could argue that monotheistic faiths are not fit for this kind of impersonation since the warring between several "gods" of similar power would have been very evident to those being deceived, but you're of course right the actual explanation is likely less palatable.

Although it's interesting to know that the pyramids weren't built through slave labor at all but rather civil projects that employed citizens during the off-season when nobody could really do agriculture.

oh good!

i had learned about the architecture behind it but not about what form of labour was used

apparently they used sloped aqueducts constructed temporarily along the sides of the pyramids so that they could just tie leather balloons to the bricks and float them up as high as they needed to go

"employed citizens" may be a bit of a misnomer though since our modern ideas of citizenship or employment certainly don't directly apply to Ancient Egypt :P

(best image i can find at the moment)

@ACuriousMind the middle east was plenty used to False Prophets and the notions of contested gods even in the regions of monotheism.

so that's still doable

@BESW Actually it's "pyramids are made by aliens because these primitive people [of unknown color because no realistic descriptions of Egyptians exist] couldn't have done it on their own."

@GreySage Let's not get into the Ancient Egyptian race controversy here, and just say that for purposes of the conspiracy, "brown people" is a reasonably accurate description of the position I'm talking about.

@ACuriousMind I'm pretty sure Christiantity in the SG-1 universe was hinted at being started by the Ancients. In the later seasons they fight the Ori, which basically recreate medieval European society in another galaxy, complete with witch hunts and crusades.

Ah, the Ori arc. I had tried to forget about that :P

@ACuriousMind What Ori arc? I've seen all eight seasons and I don't remember anything about that!

@BESW That's the spirit!

> citizens farmers that had nothing to do during the wet season and were put to work in civil projects to avoid civil unrest

IIRC Buddhism was also an Ancient religion.

@ACuriousMind On the one hand, it was terrible. On the other hand, Morena Baccarin.

hey there @ACuriousMind

@Shalvenay hiya

@ACuriousMind how're things going?

Quite well :) How 'bout you?

@ACuriousMind doing OK. what's this upcoming weekend look like for you when it comes to being able to run DW?

@BESW Hi - quick question - what are the rules for shilling kickstarters to starboard?

@Shalvenay It's my birthday this weekend so I'll likely be busy with other stuff again :|

@eimyr Probably the same for miffling bootstrappers to port?

(I have no idea sorry haha)

No rules, but guidelines: think we'd be genuinely interested; put together a brief "what it is" (usually the KS title/subtitle works) with a text link rather than a raw hyperlink, and post that as its own comment.

If people are interested, it gets starred.

@eimyr If you've got some connection that's okay, too, as far as I'm concerned. Maybe even better =)

Shilling KSes by eimyr then

doing the same for your own work is fine; stack guidelines about disclosing your affiliation still apply

Liminal RPG is an urban fantasy game about people who don't belong fully to either the human world or the supernatural one: dhampirs, werewolf-kins, half-fae and not-quite-sorcerers to name a few. It also belongs to a very British genre, in which real world locations are embellished with fantasy elements which riff on their real-world features or history to form a quaint but relatable setting.

Full disclosure: I'm friends with the author and a contributor, but I do not benefit from the KS myself financially or contribute to it myself.

@nitsua60 I wish dude.

I suppose it does sound a bit World of Darkness, but I don't think that's an explicit inspiration, perhaps more towards Ars Magica if anything. Neverwhere certainly was, even if not mentioned.

I would like to know more about the mechanics.

I am particularly interested in the second mechanic from the right.