Divtech, Faith-Powered Technology

The other day, I've had a casual chat on the discord with Klaustrix and multiple other people about a magic system. He was looking for inspiration regarding divine magical technology, so we worked something out. I thought you might enjoy reading it, so here is my version of that.

This isn't related to Runehack, I could see it maybe growing into a world of its own though. I'll just have to feel inspired enough to develop this further.

The look of the future. LI's ABSTRACT - Cube Tiles, by Laticis Imagery 

Divtech

If you have some surface-level knowledge about quantum theory, you might have heard of superpositions, true randomness, and possibly some stuff to do with light. I don't know what exactly all of that is about, since I'm not a quantum physicist, but I can surely borrow some of it as a source of inspiration.

Constructing the most basic component of divtech is fairly common knowledge. It's a specific scheme of mirrors made out of a special material, that fairly randomly determines whether it reflects light, or lets it pass through it. All of this is enclosed within a cube, half of its neighboring sides is painted black (for the receivers), and the other half white (for the emitters), with the receivers/emitters in the center of each side. These components are called "faith cubes", and they are the most basic component of the divtech. How big are the faith cubes depends on how far the technology has developed - originally each cube could maybe be held in the palm of a hand on its own, but maybe as the divtech develops better and better methods of making smaller faith cubes, they could go below the size of 1 inch. I'm thinking they'd have magnets at their corners so that they could stick to one another, and so that you could only attach a receiver to an emitter instead of receiver/receiver or emitter/emitter.

You see, what people don't know is that the mirrors are not completely random. They work based on faith. Visualize it as each faith cube containing every possible arrangement of logical gates, that could be based on the three inputs output any possible combination of outputs determined by which mirrors do/don't let the light through. They could serve as simple carriers of signals, negating gates, AND gates, OR gates, and anything else, depending on what's needed.

In order to filter the device from outputting random noise, there are "focus filter" cubes between the faith cubes and output components. These function basically as an AND gate, giving output only when they're receiving an input from one direction, and at the same time when someone is focusing on the device.

How is such a device used and constructed? Well, you just stack as many of these cubes together as you can, and then focus on the device, thinking of the problem you wish to resolve, and you'll receive an answer if you believe you will get the answer. These devices are usually constructed by either studying the problem you're trying to solve a lot and meticulously putting together cubes in a perfect arrangement, testing it until you get the right answer, or by putting as many of these cubes together as possible and removing them bit by bit until you're left with only the necessary cubes for getting an answer. Once the proper structure is figured out, maybe one could make a more permanent version of the device by removing the sides of cubes that are attached to each other and welding the overall structure together instead of relying on magnets.

When it comes to the output devices, there could be literally anything. Rotors, light emitters, hard light 3D printers, and quite possibly more. Maybe you could even put the device into a chassis of sorts and have it move around on its own, however, you will it to move.

How the faith cube could in theory look on the inside. Just imagine the red lights to be centered on each side. Panopticum, by Michail Mavronas

Why Cubes?

No, it's not because of Minecraft. Long story short, it's the only way to perfectly "tile" a 3D space using one regular 3D. For more information on that, check out this article.

If you don't want to use cubes, truncated octahedrons can be used to tile the 3D space too, and each of them has 14 faces, which means it could receive 7 possible inputs and emit 7 possible outputs for each shape. I just made it cubes in this article, because it was the original shape, and it's the easiest one to imagine.

Divtech Art

Of course, there's some skill to constructing the divtech, so there's definitely some art based on it. Something that's not practical but a show of art or skill is flat divtech devices, with cubes arranged into a 2D shape. Another possibility is making screens that display anything one believes they should display using layers of faith cubes, filters, and display cubes.

Weaknesses

One important condition for the faith cubes to work is to keep them closed. If you know all of the facts, you can't have faith. Thus, each of the faith cubes is a closed system that can't be reverse-engineered when used in practice. That's what the biggest weakness of the divtech is - you will get your answer, but you must know how to formulate your question, and you can never use it to tell you how it gave you this answer. Kinda like asking your nerdy classmate for the homework solution without asking them for the process.

The next major factor is that these devices are rather inflexible. In our world, we use electricity that can be run through a flexible wire. But these cubes are not flexible. They must stick to each other in order to work. At least, until someone would create something that could bend the light. Maybe optic wires? Either way, the components themselves would be inflexible.

Of course, there's the factor of how much "special material" is there for the creation of faith cubes' mirrors. But material requirements are a part of all technology.

The greatest downside I can think of is the user's own bias. If you use a divtech calculator to, for example, "calculate 2+2 because I think it's 5", the device will find a way to calculate 2+2 in a way that results in 5. In order to use the divtech properly, one must clear their mind of any preconceptions of the possible answers. Afterall, these devices are black boxes, that will give you the answer you want.

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Anyway, that's about it for today. Just a little neat idea I had that I wanted to share. I could maybe try to develop it further in the future, but for now I think it's cool enough to share.

Thank you for reading, and have a nice day!

Villainous Cookbook: The Psycho Killer

Howdy! I'm afraid this is one of my last articles when it comes to the villainous cookbook series. I can't make promises of more than one article in the future, but if I'll ever get more good ideas, I'm going to make sure to write it out here.

As for some other plans, my work on the foundations of Runehack's worldbuilding is nearly done, and I'm working out some interesting cities to describe. I've also been working on my own RPG for one of the Runehack's cities, and on getting back into DMing (yes, I'm still burned out). Honestly, depending on how much time and energy I'll have these next few weeks and what I'll feel like writing, the next article could be anything: my final planned villain, first of the Runehack's cities, a more finalized first version of the Runehack's RPG, possibly a theoretical article on non-violent RPGs, or an article on something completely unexpected.

But until that's going to happen, I really hope you will enjoy this next villain. Their focus is more towards efficient murder, but their aim is to do so with little to no trace.

Preface

• My goal is to make an interesting villain using the player options found in the official and homebrew rules of D&D 5th edition.
• The goal is not to make a villain who deals the highest amount of damage. This is not the right place for that discussion.
• I will leave some details out to let the DMs adjust the villain to their preferences. Ability scores are one of them.
• To emulate character development, I will only make character builds at levels 4, 10, 16, and 20. Players should be at best equal to the villain's tier, optimally at a lower tier.
• Limitations breed creativity. But I will bend the rules if it makes the villain more interesting.
• If it seems overpowered, it could be because of rulebending (see the point above), or because I'm mixing homebrews that were not balanced with each other in mind.

Let's get to the article itself!

The Psycho Killer

"If you’re gonna be two-faced at least make one of them pretty."

― Marilyn Monroe

"God has given you one face, and you make yourself another."

― William Shakespeare

Who would have thought, it's surprisingly difficult to find images of soulknife-wielding betrayers online, so I guess for this article I'm going with general pics about betrayal.
Love and War, by a user named qissus. (No link, because the original deviantart account has been deactivated)

Ingredients List

• Faceless race (Travelers' Homebrew)
• Rogue 17: Soulknife (Tasha's Cauldron of Everything)
  
• Warlock 3: Ashen Choker (Travelers' Homebrew)

Tier 1

Psycho Killer is a rather simple build that relies on killing people without leaving a trace. According to a video published by DnDBeyond, that's possible with the soulknife rogue, and while they're not Wizards of the Coast, I'll take their word for it and roll with it.

We'll begin this build with 3 levels of rogue, and 1 level of warlock for a good start. While the psionic abilities themselves are useful for the build, I don't want to bloat this article, so I'll focus only on the essentials to keep this short. Just know that if the killer needs to use psionic dice, they're a d6, increasing by one step in each Tier (up to d12 in Tier 4), and they have a number of these psionic dice equal to two times their proficiency bonus.

Psychic Blades
(3rd-level Soulknife feature)
You can manifest your psionic power as shimmering blades of psychic energy. Whenever you take the Attack action, you can manifest a psychic blade from your free hand and make the attack with that blade. This magic blade is a simple melee weapon with the finesse and thrown properties. It has a normal range of 60 feet and no long range, and on a hit, it deals psychic damage equal to 1d6 plus the ability modifier you used for the attack roll. The blade vanishes immediately after it hits or misses its target, and it leaves no mark on its target if it deals damage.
After you attack with the blade, you can make a melee or ranged weapon attack with a second psychic blade as a bonus action on the same turn, provided your other hand is free to create it. The damage die of this bonus attack is 1d4, instead of 1d6.

Cursed Gift of the Choker
(1st-level Ashen Choker feature)
At 1st level, fire and ashes are easier to control as you feel slight pressure around your neck. After you deal fire damage to a creature with a warlock spell of 1st level or higher, you can force the target creature to make a Constitution saving throw against your warlock spell save DC. On failure, its throat is burned and it can't speak or use Verbal component to cast spells. On success, it's immune to this effect for 24 hours. The burned throat lasts until the creature regains HP in some way, for example by using healing magic or by resting.

These, along with the shapeshifting and hex spell give us a foundation for our build. Fire-themed cantrips are optional, but not necessary since the Ashen Choker's gift requires a spell slot to work. We don't have everything we need just yet. As usual, right now we assume our villain to be still training, someplace in the background.

Tier 2

In order to make this work, we'll get the elements we need by investing 6 more levels into rogue.

Soul Blades
(9th-level Soulknife feature)
Your Psychic Blades are now an expression of your psi-suffused soul, giving you these powers that use your Psionic Energy dice:

[...] 

Psychic Teleportation. As a bonus action, you manifest one of your Psychic Blades, expend one Psionic Energy die and roll it, and throw the blade at an unoccupied space you can see, up to a number of feet away equal to 10 times the number rolled. You then teleport to that space, and the blade vanishes.

This time I'm making an exception and including the feats in the Tier descriptions since they're vital to making this build work. We should begin with the Metamagic Adept and Mark of the Perfect Chord feats. With the metamagic feat, I would recommend choosing Subtle Spell and Quickened Spell metamagics, but you can swap them for others if you feel like it.

Metamagic Adept
Prerequisites: Spellcasting or Pact Magic feature
You've learned how to exert your will on your spells to alter how they function:

• You learn two Metamagic options of your choice from the sorcerer class. You can use only one Metamagic option on a spell when you cast it, unless the option says otherwise. Whenever you reach a level that grants the Ability Score Improvement feature, you can replace one of these Metamagic options with another one from the sorcerer class.
• You gain 2 sorcery points to spend on Metamagic (these points are added to any sorcery points you have from another source but can be used only on Metamagic). You regain all spent sorcery points when you finish a long rest.

Mark of the Perfect Chord
You are blessed by the eternal song of the Perfect Chord, for it has marked your soul. You gain the following benefits:

• Whenever you cast a spell, you can choose a 5-foot cube within 30 feet of you. Until the start of your next turn, the area within that cube is magically silenced.
• You can cast shatter once without expending a spell slot. Charisma is your spellcasting ability for this spell. You can't do so again until you finish a short or long rest.

That's about it for Tier 2, at this point we have someone who's quite capable of murdering. But... we can do better than this.

Tier 3

Let's give them 6 more levels of rogue, which puts them at 15 levels of rogue and 1 level of warlock. Besides boosting their Sneak Attack damage, it also gives them space for two more feats. Mark of the Ashen Wolf and Elemental Adept feats will finally get the build right where we wanted it to be. Finally, an extra ability that will prove to be very useful is Psychic Veil.

Psychic Veil
(13th-level Soulknife feature)
You can weave a veil of psychic static to mask yourself. As an action, you can magically become invisible, along with anything you are wearing or carrying, for 1 hour or until you dismiss this effect (no action required). This invisibility ends early immediately after you deal damage to a creature or you force a creature to make a saving throw.
Once you use this feature, you can't do so again until you finish a long rest, unless you expend a Psionic Energy die to use this feature again.

Mark of the Ashen Wolf
You have been scarred by the power of the Ashen Wolf, and its fiery might burns within your soul. You gain the following benefits:

• Whenever you cast a spell that deals damage, you can choose to have it deal fire damage instead of the normal type.
• You can cast hunter's pace* once as a 2nd-level spell without expending a spell slot. Charisma is your spellcasting ability for this spell. You can't do so again until you finish a short or long rest.

Elemental Adept
Prerequisites: Spellcasting or Pact Magic feature
When you gain this feat, choose one of the following damage types: acid, cold, fire, lightning, or thunder.
Spells you cast ignore resistance to damage of the chosen type. In addition, when you roll damage for a spell you cast that deals damage of that type, you can treat any 1 on a damage die as a 2.
You can select this feat multiple times. Each time you do so, you must choose a different damage types.

All of this goes right into the strategy this killer follows during their kills. They begin by casting hex on their target subtly, choosing Wisdom as a score that is affected by the hex in order to make them more susceptible to the killer. With the Mark of the Perfect Chord, they can also choose to magically silence the space the target occupies. They approach, shapeshifted into someone who is familiar to the target. Upon striking with their psionic blades (optimally from the back so that the target can't say anything about the murder even if they were asked through a speak with dead spell or similar), the target takes extra damage from hex, damage of which is changed through the Mark of the Ashen Wolf into fire. Due to this, the Gift of the Ashen Choker activates, causing the target to make a Constitution saving throw. If they fail, they won't be able to speak until healed some way. Whether they're alive or unconscious, the assassin makes one extra attack with a bonus action, either to help the target fall unconscious, or to give them some failed death saves (assuming you track those).

If the target is unconscious at the start of the next round, the killer can turn invisible with their action, and with bonus action get a head start by teleporting away in the easiest way possible. If they're not unconscious yet, repeat the first round, maybe replacing the off-hand attack with a teleport.

Tier 4

Now the Killer only gets some extras that will help them out in doing their job. Their final levels are rogue 17 and warlock 3. Recommended spell choice would be earthbind, and possibly suggestion (plus one extra of your choice). Recommended invocations are Devil's Sight for seeing in the dark, and one other invocation of your choice. Final feat is Mark of the Storm Lord, most important bit of that being that after casting a spell as an action, you get the benefits of the Dash action, as well as 1/SR feather fall cast. Finally, there's a treat to top the cake off, the final psionic ability that could make the murder even easier.

Rend Mind
(17th-level Soulknife feature)
You can sweep your Psychic Blades directly through a creature's mind. When you use your Psychic Blades to deal Sneak Attack damage to a creature, you can force that target to make a Wisdom saving throw (DC equal to 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Dexterity modifier). If the save fails, the target is stunned for 1 minute. The stunned target can repeat the saving throw at the end of each of its turns, ending the effect on itself on a success.
Once you use this feature, you can't do so again until you finish a long rest, unless you expend three Psionic Energy dice to use it again.

That's everything we could wish for when it comes to the assassin. They can get in, they can make their way to the target, and disappear just as quickly. No wounds besides some burn marks inside of the throat are visible, and the crime is already pinned on someone else who's now extremely suspicious, even more so once the corpse is interrogated with magic.

Leave No Trace

If you think that's not good enough because they leave behind a corpse and could be revived, I can offer you a brief alternative: Black Flame Zealot. While most of the features of this subclass I don't find quite as appealing, there's one that stands out at 3rd level that I would wholeheartedly swap out for the telepathy: Burnt Offerings. Here's the feature, with some small changes I would personally make to it to make it fit the subclass:

Burnt Offerings
(3rd-level feature)
Starting at 3rd level, any creature killed by your flaming psychic blades turns to black ashes before it hits the ground. A suitable offering to your hungry god.

Consider the motivations of your assassin. Are they taking slow steps towards taking power over the lands, or to tactically get someone to move up in their ranks? Can they be hired, or do they kill only those who they perceive as unjust, or wrong in another way? How would they react when approached by a party of investigators? How are they when off-duty? Do they leave any clues to their identity behind, or is the burnt throat good enough?

Or you could do it the old fashioned way and leave the body behind. Like I said, only a small scorch mark inside of the throat would be a clue. No pools of blood
Gwent - Assassination, by Ala Kapustka

Well, this was difficult to write, but at the very least it's out! It feels so far like the most underwhelming of the villains, which is part of why I plan to end the series soon. Like I've said in the second of these articles, I've set the bar for myself too high and I can't really fulfill it every time. May the Psycho Killer serve you well, and I'm looking forward to writing the final installment of the Villainous Cookbook! In the meantime, whenever you read this or think of it, have a nice day!