Blackguards and Summoning Prisms

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Hexgoblin
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Blackguards and Summoning Prisms

Post by Hexgoblin » Thu Oct 07, 2021 8:32 pm

So, I realized today and was kind of surprised by that blackguards can't learn summoning streams through imbued prisms. Obviously I realize that they shouldn't be able to access summons of a stream that isn't keyed to their class, but they can't learn the contents of even the fiendish line of prisms. What happens instead, is that you trigger a message saying that "you must have an inkling of either arcane or divine magic to use this item."

That got me thinking, though. How do we define an inkling? A blackguard is a class whose central feature is the binding of powerful outsiders. If that's not what you're into, you may as well leave the class at a 3 level dip for Divine Might and Shield. A blackguard can furthermore learn the same streams from books. Doesn't the ability to comprehend and emulate an indepth treatise on the same matter constitute an inkling?

The blackguard doesn't have a spellbook (though they do in 3.5th edition PnP), but is keyed in as a divine class. It has innate access to divine wands, and falls within cleric alignment restrictions regarding deities. More importantly, it's a class more versed in the conjuration and binding of high-end outsiders than all but warlocks.

Thus, I'd argue that blackguards being locked out of accessing the prisms for their relevant summon streams is a bit of an oversight. Obviously, they shouldn't gain access to summons from Mechanus, Celestia or what-have-you, but they're already locked out from learning the latter from books, so the technology to restrict which streams they can and cannot learn is evidently there already.

In conclusion, then, I think blackguards should be able to learn the Demon, Devil, Yugoloth and Unseelie streams from prisms, which is the same ones they can learn from books. It makes for a bit of cool mentoring roleplay that I don't think a class so immersed in the summoning of outsiders should be excluded from.

Thoughts?

Archnon
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Joined: Fri Feb 15, 2019 8:05 am

Re: Blackguards and Summoning Prisms

Post by Archnon » Thu Oct 07, 2021 8:40 pm

You make a really compelling argument.

Honestly, if I had to guess, this is an oversight from when Blackguard got shifted to being a divine class with access to wands. Those prisms are so rarely used that you are likely the first to notice this issue and it might be a better fit for the bug forum. I associated that inkling phrase with access to divine wands. It would be interesting to test to see if other classes could use the prisms, for example, rangers, paladins, warlocks, hexblades, etc. Perhaps, the conversation should be about a prism update, though that might be for a different thread.

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Scylon
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Re: Blackguards and Summoning Prisms

Post by Scylon » Fri Oct 08, 2021 3:38 am

wait, can i use Unseelie as a BG?

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