Episode 4 - The Circle & The Ward - Railguns and Dragons Reborn!

Hey folks, welcome back to Rail Guns and Dragons.

I'm your host Vince and I know this podcast has been on a

little bit of a hiatus since 2025.

In the middle of the year, as I explained on our blog Rail

gunsanddragons.com is that my Co host Rob decided that he did no

longer want to do podcasting. So he kind of left me in a space

with no one to podcast with. Now I decided here and there

what I really should do with this podcast and a couple people

in the Facebook groups had to said, well why don't you just do

it solo like you do your other podcasts?

And I said, yeah, I could do that for quite some time until I

find a suitable replacement Co host for this as I love

Palladium books. I'm an ambassador of Palladium

books. I mean, probably so is everybody

else, but I enjoy them. I have a huge library of

Palladium books and I really want to talk about Palladium.

I noticed there was a lack of just a focus Palladium podcast.

As far as fantasy. There's a couple out there that

do whatever they do. The Death Head Taco truck, I

believe that's the name of it. They do an awesome job.

Those two dudes just kind of sitting there and I think

they're in a truck and just talk about Palladium and I really

enjoy that one that they're really cool.

That's probably the only one I listen to or I could, you know,

want to listen to. But today I just want to say

welcome back. And if you want to listen in

today, we're going to talk a little bit about something that

might be interesting. I don't know.

We're going to go a little deep into the, you know, the book

we're running games for Palladium World since, I don't

know, the 90s, early 80s, I mean late 80s.

I've seen 1000 woven quests. I've seen changeling spies

infiltrate the Western Empire. I've seen enough fireballs to

burn down the jungles twice over.

It's been a lot of fun over the years, but there's something

special about Plating Fantasy Second Edition that I feel

doesn't get enough love. Everybody wants to play a wizard

because, you know, instant gratification, right?

You say the magic words boom, lightning bolt.

Or you play a warlock because you want to be best friends with

the cool fire elemental and you know, whatever you want to be

that cool fire elemental pet guy.

Well, today I want to talk to you about a sinking man's magic

user OCC the the class that requires prep time, strategy,

and a little bit of madness. I'm talking about the lost arts

that survived the Elvin Dwarven war.

I'm talking about Diabloist and the Summoner.

I've done a couple videos on these things on my YouTube

channel at youtube.com slash at the evil DM, the evil DM.

Now, if you've ever played Dungeons and Dragons, which

probably a lot of us have, and moved over here because they'll

like Palladium a little bit better, and you haven't played

these classes, so you're right dumb and never really played

them, it's going to blow your mind because they don't work

like anything you used to. So let's crack open this book

called Palladium Fantasy Second Edition and look why these two

classes, in my opinion, are probably a good flavor of how

Palladium works. So let's start with the

Diabolos. In the book they call him the

Silent Mage, and that's probably one of the cooler nicknames I've

heard Kevin put on a class, or any game designer for that

matter, the Silent Mage. I like that a Diabolos doesn't

really cast spells. They don't chant, they don't

dance around, they write. They are the master of wards and

ruins or ruins. Excuse me now war wise this is

huge in the Palladium timeline. During the age of elves, magic

was everywhere. But after the elf dwarf war, the

two sides realized that you had nearly destroyed the world with

rune magic. So they perched it.

They haunted down the rune masters and they killed them.

The secrets of making rune weapons, those indestructible

soul drinking swords that we all want to slit the throats of the

bad guys with and become the hero or maybe even be the bad

guy with the sword to kill the hero are long gone.

But the the obelisk actually remembers the alphabet.

They can make this. They can't really make the

swords anymore, but they can use the symbols to create magic

traps and protections. Let's look how let's look how

this works mechanically because a lot of people can't wrap their

head around these classes. And this is where the the

obelisk sometimes in, in my book, has become the ultimate

MacGyver in quotes of the party. If you remember MacGyver from

the 80s TV show, I'm not talking about the new one.

I've never watched that. The obelisk places a word symbol

on an object or a person. To make it work, they need to

combine symbols into like a certain phrase.

Let's say you're camping in an old Kingdom in the mountains and

you're worried about COBOL sneaking in.

Well, a wizard would have to stay awake and, you know,

possibly cast a spell or whatever.

A temporary spell, whatever key would maintain it, whatever.

The obelisk takes a piece of chalk, maybe some paints with

some resin, and draws a symbol on a rock.

Boom. He draws a symbol for alarm.

He combines with the symbol for area of effect.

Now if anything enters that area, the sound alarm goes off

and the Diablo's head. He wakes up, wakes the party,

and you ambush the Cobalts instead of them ambushing you.

But let's get a little nasty here because some people are

saying yeah, big deal. Let's say you're being chased by

a ball rock. You run through a door.

You don't dislock it, you paint a ward phrase on it.

You paint a trigger and by condition evil, inflict and

agony. Now when the demon touches the

door, he doesn't just get locked out, he gets hit with the magic

that causes stabbing pain in his head and stomach.

He loses initiative, he loses attack and his speed is cut in

half. And you know what the best part

about all this is? The Diablos is immune to his is

immune to his own wards. You can trap your own spellbooks

so that if a rogue in your party tries to steal it, they go blind

for 10 minutes. Not that I recommend, you know,

in party fighting, but hey, thieves, these thieves.

And I've had a lot of player characters and groups do this to

one another. So here is a catch That, and

This is why playing a Diabolist is kind of challenging and it

takes a little bit of time during a war really is an

instant. If you sketch it, it takes a

melee a round or two. If you carve it into what, a

stone? It could take hours depending on

how well you do it. But if you carve it, it does

last until the object is destroyed.

That is the benefit of it. I don't know.

Once you spent his downtime carving protection from undead

onto the armor of everyone in the party, it took him weeks of

game time. But when they finally raided

that vampire later, vampires really couldn't touch them.

They were walking tanks of holy repulsion at that point.

The power is that, and that is the power of the Diabolis.

They aren't artillery, they aren't your engineer.

You prepare the battlefield before the fight even starts.

They also get a permanence ward and this is like a Holy Grail

when it comes to certain things that they can do.

It costs a massive amount of PPE, potential psychic energy to

those that are listening for the first time to activate.

Usually requires A sacrifice or some type of Nexus point, but it

does make the effect of magic permanent.

And Speaking of PPE, that does bring me to the other lost art

here. The class that makes everyone

else at the table nervous. And I had a player who played

this class, the Summoner, and he didn't quite understand the

class itself, also known as the Circle Master or the Mad Mage.

My player who played this class thought we were playing first

edition of the time because we had just transferred over from

Advanced Dungeons and Dragons and we were playing pleading

fantasy or just Palladium as they called it back then.

And he thought by playing a Summoner based on some of the

rules that he would be able to command or control anything that

he wanted to without a problem. Well, little did he know that.

Yeah, while the original 1st edition book does leave a little

bit out of the rules, they did have to do something in High

Seas Book 3 to kind of do a little Q&A and update the class

as far as what it could and couldn't do and how long it

took. Things.

He thought he would just create this control that person, and he

would have like this ultimate munchkin power over everyone,

which, Oh well, didn't work that way.

People get saves. They can't just automatically be

under your control. But you know, Second edition

cleaned a lot of this up. So if a diabolist is an engineer

the summer, the Summoner is a nuclear physicist who doesn't

quite know if the reactor is stable.

In most RPG, summoning is just a spell like summon monster 1,

Summon Monster 2, right? You know, you've heard those

spells before. You cast it, a badger appears,

it fights for you, and then, you know, skitters away.

In Palladium Fantasy Second Edition, summoning is a ritual.

It is dangerous. It's dark and incredibly

favorable. And here's how it works.

A Summoner just doesn't wave a wand.

They have to draw a magic circle on the floor.

They need components, usually candles, gems, specific colors,

and, of course, blood. Yeah, I said blood.

To activate the summoning circle, you almost need blood, A

blood sacrifice of some sort. Now, before you get squeamish

and the book says, the book says it could be an animal, a

chicken, a goat, or a pigeon. But it sets the tone, doesn't it

really? I mean, you're ripping the hole

in reality and putting, pulling something through to do your

bidding or whatever. Here is the mechanics that make

this so intense. The battle of wills.

When you summer summer, when you summon A lesser demon, it

appears in the circle. It's trapped there, but it

doesn't have to obey you. You and the demon have to roll

off. The demon has to roll a saving

throw against your mental endurance ME attribute.

If the demon wins, it just sits there and laughs at you.

It insults your fashion sense and your mom, and it refuses to

help. Now, if you win, which is your

whole goal of summoning these things, it's subservient.

It has to has to obey your commands.

But here is the kicker in this whole situation, if you fail to

control it, you now have a demon living in your room who is very

annoyed. You could try to banish it back

to Hades, but there's a chance it resists that too.

If it stays, it might try to trick you into breaking the

circle, and if that circle breaks, well, you're now the

demon's bitch, so it'll be harsh, but that's how it is.

I love this mechanic because it makes magic feel really

dangerous in the Palladium world.

It's not just a vending machine. It's basically a negotiation

with the shark. If you kind of get me an idea

here. The Summoner has access to

different types of circles. You have protection circles,

which are great for camping in dangerous territory.

You draw a protection from undead circle and vampires,

literally, or whatever undead can just, you know, really can't

cross that line. Then you have your summoning

circles, which we just talked about, and you can summon almost

anything, angels, demons, elementals, insects, animals,

whatever. And then finally the power

circles. These are the big guns.

Let's talk about the Power Matrix.

This is unique to Palladium. It allows you to link circles

together. You can have a summoning circle

linked to a power circle that gives you the strength to

control what you just summoned. It allows for a complex magical

setups that you just don't see in other systems.

One of the coolest role-playing elements of the Summoner is the

concept of true names. In Palladium, when you have the

true name, you have power. If a Summoner knows the

character's true name in quotes, the name of your parent that you

were given, a name of your parents gave you at birth, he

receives a massive bonus to summoning and controlling you.

This leads to the great cultural quirk where characters in

Palladium world often go by nicknames or some type of public

name, keeping their true names secret to avoid magic slavery.

I even had my characters when we were playing the game have their

true name written on their character sheet and then what

people call them in public. So if you play a Summoner, your

quest isn't always for gold, it's mostly for knowledge.

You want to find the true names of the local bands so you can

summon them into a circle and forcing the call off as tax

collectors. You really want to do that, but

I've had characters try to do stupid things like that.

But why not? You want to find lost books that

contain the diagrams for the dimensional rift circle so you

can travel to other worlds and experience other things.

Now a quick comparison for few veterans out there.

Why play these two instead of a wizard?

A wizard is versatile. They learn spells.

They cast them fast, usually in two per melee around.

They are your combat artillery, but Diabolos and Summoners are

your force multipliers. A Dabol Diabolos makes the whole

party's year better. He puts wards on the fighter's

shield, so blinds the enemies. He wards the thief's bag so

nobody could steal from him. He creates the safe house where

you rest the Summoner. He brings the reinforcements.

Why fight the ogre Chieftain yourself when you can summon A

Gargoyd Lord to do it for you or summon a shadow beast to spy on

the enemy camp? Well, correction, he can try to

do that if he really wants to. He's high enough level, level

that is, and definitely a game changer when it comes to that

stuff. But you have to deal with the

stigmata when it comes to all these things.

The lore of the book is very clear.

During the Millennium of Purification, elves and dwarfs

haunted these guys down. Rude magic and circle magic were

often seen as dark arts. If you walk into a town in

eastern territory and narrow and announce your summer, people

might think you're a witch. They might think you can sort

with the Old Ones. And honestly, you probably do

consort with demons, and that's kind of part of the fun of the

whole class. So here's my challenge to you

out there. If you're starting a Palladium

fantasy campaign, look at the Men of Magic section again.

Skip past the wizard, skip past the warlock.

Look at the Diabolist, and look at the Summoner.

Think about playing characters who treat magic like science, or

a contradiction, or a contract law negotiation.

I should say. Play the Diabolist who is

obsessed with finding lost, ruined magic, carrying around a

notebook full of symbols and combinations.

Play the Summoner who is constantly trying to outsmart

the demons he calls up, walking that razor's edge between old

with power and being eaten alive by these demons he's summoning.

So these classes are for a role-playing depth that is baked

right into their mechanics. They struggle for components,

time management, they hunt knowledge it it drives the story

forward with role play and a lot of fun.

And one last tip for Game Masters out there running these

classes for their group, give them time.

If you run a hack slash game where players never stop moving,

these classes will feel useless and probably wouldn't fit very

well because they need prep time, need a few hours to do

what they need to do. So let them have some time.

Let them have a stronghold, let them set traps.

If you let them use your abilities, they will surprise

you every single time. There's nothing funnier than

watching an invincible NPC villain trigger a power ward,

link to paralysis condition, and drop like a sack of potatoes in

front of you. All right, I think that's going

to be enough for this episode. For this week, I hope you're

inspired you to dust off the book and roll up something

weird. Roll up something interesting in

the comments below on either on Spotify or you can go to

railgunsanddragons.com. Tell me about your experiences

playing in Diabolis. Did you ever mispronounce a

power word and blow up your own party?

I want to hear the war stories. If you enjoyed this, you know,

kind of a deep dive into the Pallium world, don't forget to

like the podcast on Spotify. Subscribe, rate US five stars.

And you know what else? If it helps, it helps the

channel when you do these things, either when it comes to

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And you know, every, every like and comment keeps the old ones

asleep for another day. No, I'm just kidding.

Until next time, keep your powder dry and your circles

sealed. Don't forget to head over to

railgunsanddragons.com and follow the blog there.

That helps out too. All right.

Good night, everybody.

The Story