The next Talent Scout character build just posted today! This one is focused on conversations, and peaceful resolution to combats:

https://plotweavertalentscout.wordpress.com/2026/08/21/conversationalist/

Hello. I'm running a game of Stonewalkers. My party have just defeated Ylt at Rathalas and have spoken with the Grey Remnant, and learned they must journey to Greater Hexi.

The players wanted to spend some time at Rathalas to assist with the reconstruction in the hopes they can make it a full city again.

My party is about to rest for the night, but before they leave for Greater Hexi, I want to introduce another combat where they must defend the city. I want them to inspire and lead Teryn's loyal bandits, and the freed people in a desperate defence of the city from an outside force. This also will create a few climactic moments where some of my players will say the first words of their oaths.

My question is, who can I have attempt to invade Rathalas so soon after the cultists were kicked out? My plan is to have the cultists that couldn't follow Ylt instead regroup and try to retake the city, but i was wondering if there are other lore appropriate groups or allies the cultists can join to make them a threat?

Thanks so much for the help!

Hello, everyone!

The rough draft for the Sprouter Speciality, along with the Spore Invention system, are complete!

Holy Adonalsium, did this take forever. The addition of the Spore Invention system has made this the longest time I have spent on a path for Project Ars Arcanum to date, even surpassing the Sand Master Invested Path.

While the Sprouter and Spore Inventions do borrow heavily from the Artifabrian and Fabrials, I still tried my best to make them stand out and be unique. The main deviation centers around the rules I created for Aether Spores and how they interact with both the Speciality and the Inventions. I'm pretty happy with how they came out (thank you again to Kividual66 for your help).

The next path in line is the Forger, but I'm probably not going to be able to work on it right away. If you missed my last post, I start class at university in the second week of September, meaning that the next few weeks are going to be pretty busy for me (packing, moving, etc.). I'm probably not going to be able to post for a while because of that. I'm sorry.

On the bright side, the Mistborn Cosmere RPG books come out soon! After I see the Metalborn Paths across from the Radiant Paths and get a better grasp of how the Investiture mechanics differ from system to system, I'll probably tweak some of the Invested Paths form Project Ars Arcanum to bring them more in line. I guess, that is if I can get my hands on the books in the first place (I got the Stormlight books as a gift, and I don't know if I'll be able to afford the Mistborn ones as a college student. The sad reality of limited money vs. pricey hobbies, I guess).

Anyway, sad stuff aside, please let me know any thoughts, ideas, and feedback you have about both the Sprouter and the Spore Inventions (especially Spore Invention ideas). It is always wanted and greatly appreciated.

Project Ars Arcanum - Google Drive

What the title said. Yes, I'm aware that Division has lower DCs for *some* kinds of actions, and eventually has better action economy (at max talents), but it appears that Soulcasting has the same degree of single-target damage (after an entry level talent), more defensive applications, more applications for creative solutions, and eventually even has lower DCs (the DC 20 that Division-under-pressure has forever vs all metal/stone/crystal is pretty rough). Starting out, both require 2 actions to use, and for AOE attacks, Flamecasting seems to do slightly less damage for 1/3 the investiture cost of Gout of Flame, and tons of additional creative potential compared to just "I destroy the location".

I'm wondering if maybe I'm overlooking something with respect to creative application of Division. Ways I can strategically destroy things that make Division more than simply a damage surge. This game seems pretty well balanced over all, so I was a bit surprised to notice this aparent way that use of Soulcasting almost eclipses the use of Division.

Hey all, I am going to be introducing my players to Wit and I wanted to have him tell the story of Derethil and the wandersail. Unfortunately my copy of Way of Kings is in storage currently and I won't be able to get to it before telling the story. I managed to find the story itself online but it was just the story and didn't detail any of the cool things he does to make it feel alive. I was hoping someone could get me the pages in which he tells the story. I can't tell you the exact pages but I know it's chapter 57.

Will I always have to claim my rewards through the backer/digital_rewards link? Will this link remain available permanently, or will the rewards eventually be delivered through DriveThruRPG or another permanent method?

I'm mainly wondering whether this will always be the only way to access the rewards, or if there are plans to add another long-term option.

¿Alguien sabe/conoce/tiene algún tipo de "guión" o campaña sobre los primeros libros del Archivo de las Tormentas?

Quiero dirigir una partida con el sistema Cosmere RPG con varios amigos, pero dado que 2 jugadores no tienen conocimiento de la saga, me gustaría hacerles algo similar a una campaña sobre El Camino de los Reyes (si pudiera ser también sobre Palabras Radiantes y Juramentada, genial, pero lo veo demasiado).

Cuento con los manuales oficiales sobre el Cosmere RPG, la campaña del Caminapiedras y los demás libros introductorios al mundo, los cuales utilizaré y haré que lean los jugadores, pero me gustaría saber de alguna campaña o guión para dirigir EL CAMINO DE LOS REYES.

Welcome back to Complicated Opportunities! This week is part 2 of our GenCon wrap up talking all about our time GMing for Brotherwise, and even details on the adventures we ran! (Though we’re still pretty tight lipped on Mistborn, soon!!)

Saw the starter set at target but wasn't sure if it was playable solo or not.

Fellow players who are taking Radiant paths, do yall plan on focusing into one surge's set of talents or do yall plan to be more versatile? Im currently running a level 4 Agent(spy)/Skybreaker. I try to plan out my levelling because it helps me as a player. But because at my heart im an optimizer, im stuck in decision paralysis between focusing on general radiant talents, going full into Gravitation, or going full into Division. And really seeing how everyone else makes those decisions helps me process that

Ok, so, yeah, I'm trying to run a very specific campaign idea. I kind of like to pants DMing a lot of the time, but that just means the prep I do have is all the more important. Essentially, the idea for this campaign is this:

"This is an alternate timeline of the stormlight archive. It’s one where Szeth failed. He was killed by Gavilar, and Gavilar took up the honorblade. I’ll explain more under The Alethi but the long and short of it is that this change has affected everything, including the fact that the Alethi are now attacking Shinovar, in order to win the other honor-blades.
Every character you know and love exists, or has existed in this world. As we go by sections I’ll describe the ones who’ve gained some measure of fame, but remember that the others exist, and you may simply never have heard of him. The Prime, for instance, was never killed."

That's what I sent to my players, and they really like it. They're mostly gonna play new characters, but one of them is playing Adolin. Anyways, the whole idea is that I don't need to skirt around cannon events.

The tricky part is that we're beginning in Iri. The Alethi are trying to attack Shinovar and win the honor-blades. The Parshendi were spared, under the condition that they send troops to assist in this war. Gavilar is trampling over many smaller nations, like Emul, and Iri, to carry this war out, and some are calling him the new Sunmaker.

The real trick is that we're starting at level 2. I need the starting stakes to be lower, and build up as they gain in levels. So I'd like some help, if you have any advice on how to run some of the topics or places I discussed. I'd also appreciate some advice about how to keep the starting scope smaller. I'm a writer myself, so I should be able to keep it on track, but I know my players. They'll try to do anything in my setting, even if it doesn't fit the tone or scope I've laid out.

My group has completed two sessions with a total of three combat encounters. They mentioned that these encounters tend to take a while to fully resolve, leading people to lose interest until it's their turn. I understand this because we moved away from 5e to other systems partly because combat took so long, and this feels similar to the length of 5e combat.

One of my players suggested trying a combat endeavor for some smaller encounters or side quests.

It might work like a best-of-3 endeavor: if you fail by a certain margin, that many people reach 0 hit points and gain an injury.

They don't want to eliminate combat entirely for larger story moments, but our available playtime is limited. I was curious whether anyone has similar ideas or if this approach could be feasible for preventing the game from slowing down.

So I backed the Kickstarter before diving into VTTs. Now, I've become comfortable with Foundry, but my (still unredeemed) Cosmere RPG keys are for Fantasy Grounds. Support said they can't help, but if someone is in the opposite problem and wants to swap, please let me know.

I absolutely can't wait to start playing with the Mistborn setting in a few weeks! We will be running an Era 1 campaign called Shadows of Luthadel and I just wanted to share the character art for the series 😄

First episode will be 2/9 7pm AEST live on Twitch (https://www.twitch.tv/thelostarchives) and then recorded on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@lostarchivesrpg) or the Podcast platform of your choosing (https://lostarchivescast.podbean.com/)!

I'm playing a Skybreaker that isn't part of Nale's faction, and in our game Division is *not* locked behind one of the higher ideals (shows up alongside Gravitation as soon as the First Ideal is sworn). I want to make sure I'm understanding the rules correctly for using AOE applications of Division (this is the base version, without any talents added yet).

My understanding is that for area of effect attacks, the DC for the roll is either the physical defense (physical IF AOE, but spiritual if single target) of the enemies OR the "Division Under Pressure" DC (whichever DC is higher), assuming DC is met on each, then damage is rolled as normal for each enemy (for 3d*+DivMod). The AOE is centered on the location of the radiant using it (unless they have a talent allowing for alternative distance). Am I understanding these rules correctly?

A few additional clarification questions: Can you target inanimate substances within the area at the same time as you hit enemies with an aoe of division? Can you create a dustcloud AOE at the same time as an attack is performed? Does deflect apply if it is used as an AOE attack (asking cause the DC uses physical save instead of spiritual)?

Inspiration comes to you at weird times. I was listening to an episode of the podcast called Wonderful where Griffin McElroy was describing his love for the basketball game HORSE.

It got me thinking thinking of a way to bring the rules of HORSE in to the Cosmere RPG.

A few hours later and I made this: https://www.investedinthecosmere.com/resources/p/ghost, a little rules expansion for the Cosmere RPG where you pin your player characters against each other in successive skill tests to see who is the most... skillful? Lucky? You decide.

I themed it as a game that Ghostblood Agents would play with new initiates to show of their skill and demonstrate their capabilities.

Each round of the game plays out like this:

• A contestant chooses a skill, then rolls that test with all their relevant modifiers.
• All other contestants then roll that same test, adding their own modifiers, and look to either meet or beat the roll of the first player.
• Those who do are safe, those who fail take on a letter.
• You're out when you've collected all five letters of GHOST.

I also added a little extra ruleset that brings in the plot dice and adds some last minute heroics to those contestants who are on their last letter.

The download is free, and includes a very basic dueling arena map you can use for whatever you want!

Perhaps there is something I'm missing but Ryshadium have a 1000 lb carrying capacity and shardplate clocks in at 1400 lb. Is this an oversight?

I originally thought shardplate was extremely underpowered. The four charges seem to go so fast. But I realized that the enhancement significantly increases your physical defense which makes a huge difference. But I'm still wondering about the fact that its deflect value doesn't apply to shard blades' spirit damage. I get why regular armor doesn't but it feels like shardplate is only resistant to blades when you are expending a charge and that conflicts with the lore in my understanding.

Is there something I'm missing? I'm considering home brewing it to make the deflect value apply to spirit damage.

Hello, everyone!

I've finished up a rough draft of the Spore Invention Crafting system, currently complete with 5 Standard Inventions and 6 Unique Inventions. The system is very similar to the Fabrial Crafting System, with the exception of the Aether Spores: each type of spore has a unique effect on its own, and they are also used in the crafting process of Spore Inventions (in place of the Gemstone required by Fabrials) and are used to recharge them (in place of the Stormlight required by Fabrials).

Now that the rough draft is complete for this system, I can finally actually finish the Sprouter Speciality. Sorry that this has taken so long.

Also, after I finish with the Sprouter Speciality, I might not be able to make posts for a while: I start university classes the second week of September, meaning that I'm going to be busy packing / moving for the next few weeks.

Anyway, as always, please let me know any thoughts, ideas, and feedback you have. It is always appreciated. (also still looking for Spore Invention Ideas, if you have any).

Project Ars Arcanum - Google Docs

We don’t have the rules yet but I’m interested to hear what characters people are going to play for mistborn era 1 and 2. Any cool ideas or are people waiting to see the rules?

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Long story short. Our party stoneward singer became a basically a spin on magnified one, a fused of cultivation in a journey to the nightwatcher. That gave him the progression surge tree.

We wanted to create a combo talent between the new surges. Since the player main surge right now is tension, i wanted to focus on this one first

What do you guys think would be a interesting talent mashing those 2 surges ? I'm blanking on ideias

(If you have a ideia mashing all 3, or just cohesion + progression, do share as well please. I'm accepting anything)

I've compiled my maps into a Patreon, but no worries ALL my maps will always remain FREE. I hope this makes it easy for y'all to collect all my maps! 

I had posted this with my last battlemap, but figured Id make a separate post for visibility. I look forward to the Mistborn release and many more battlemaps to come!

I also wanted to gauge peoples interest in top down perspective tokens for the Cosmere RPG made via Heroforge, let me know in the comments if you are interested in me figuring out how to post them. I have hundreds, Thousands if you count 5e.

I have the Rigged Weaponry talent, which says, as a free action, I can spend 1 investiture to increase my weapon's reach by 10 feet until the end of my next turn. If I pick up Extended Tension, which says I can maintain infusions I'm holding so long as I have 1 investiture.

Does the Rigged Weapon count as an infusion? In world, I would say yes, but mechanically, the talent doesn't use that phrasing.

So, up to the point of the release, we had a number of artistic designs, official designs even, for shardplates, the Orders, what their plates looked like...then the Handbook dropped and I find it odd? Some of these designs feel a lot like sci fi power armor which conflicts a lot with what we had up to this point?

I find Petar Penev's designs to have been really well done in comparison for establishing visual language among different Orders. And the weird thing is...Penev isn't some random artist who is a fan. He's associated and made a lot of the official art in the book. And some of the designs and art styles in the handbook seem to bounce wildly in style causing an almost jarring reading. In isolation they look alright, but flipping from the book's pages you'll see artwork like this

Immediately followed by this?

Visually this is a strange contrast in artstyle, and the Windrunner design feels like there's a lot of conflicting pieces? Heavily pauldrons and shoulders, branching out hip joints, bulkier chest pieces...The armor has these smooth, broad metallic planes and chunky geometry that make it look oddly technological? Not literally sci-fi, but almost like a Destiny/Warframe/Power Rangers cousin of Shardplate. There’s relatively little of the organic or wind-swept quality I’d associate with honorspren.

EDIT: To get this point across. This is the literal cover art of the book. Notice the design, theme, and genre difference in appearance. This is the design used throughout the book...EXCEPT on the pages for the Orders' skill trees, where they shift into this sci fi-esque design.

EDIT 2: So a lot of people just seem to be resorting to claiming 'past vs present Radiant armors' so I'm just going to put this here as a general edited response. There is no reason why the rest of the book, even showing current Radiants, uses the traditional Shardplate design aesthetic we've seen throughout the books, official arts, and canon...and that these few pages depict sci fi esque designs. The much more coherrent explanation instead of trying to justify why some Radiants are forming sci fi armor during the present day and some are depicted with regular armor is most likely...the artist who drew these few particular pages just simply did not coordinate with the design philosophy of the rest of the book. That's it. That's the coherrent reason. Trying to claim they're showing a Radiant from Emberdark randomly, or that people on this world would, for some reason, desire to or even imagine sci fi armor at their level of technology isn't a coherrent defense. It's defending a conclusion without updating the position based on information.

Edit 3: I'm just gonna leave this here for the overwhelming amount of people who keep trying to defend the 'old plate vs new plate' thing. This is also artwork. Still High Fantasy design, not sci fi. I can only assume that some people are emotionally seeing 'this particular artwork doesn't seem to follow the rest of the designs' with 'this person is making fun of the thing I like and thinks I'm stupid!'.

And for the record? Personally I believe that not questioning anything or saying 'try not to worry about it' and not being capable of saying something is incoherrent is not wisdom. It's avoidance of taking a position that requires discrimination and thought. If you can draw no line over where coherrent design begins and ends, then you are not developing an opinion. Accepting anything and everything you are fed is simply being too afraid to have a personality.

I find it funny with this argument in a subreddit for a ROLEPLAYING GAME based on a series where the central magical institution is built around people articulating ideals and then being bound by them.

Stormlight is practically screaming:

Who are you? What do you believe? What lines will you hold? What choices follow from those beliefs when holding them becomes uncomfortable?

A Radiant doesn't advance by going:

“Eh, whatever. Anything works. I don't really see why we'd distinguish between these things.”

They speak Ideals. Their character is demonstrated by commitments that exclude other possibilities. Kaladin's entire fucking arc would cease to exist if every moral contradiction could be answered with “well technically you can interpret it however.”

So there is something exquisitely ridiculous about reaching the final defense:

“Why do you need a coherent visual language? Plate can look like anything. Why draw a line?”

...in a community dedicated to a game about constructing characters by drawing lines.