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There’s two common complaints levied against Animancy:
- It’s confusing.
- It’s overpowered.

Whether or not that’s true in fact, it’s true in terms of how it’s perceived by other players, and especially by DMs. So Animancy, as well as how the Planar Infinity works, is being changed.

The Planar
It’s an infinite space made up of energy, concepts, and strange parallels to the “real” world that most Alterans inhabit. It is infinite, because the real world is infinite. Mostly it is a place where thoughts and emotions become reality and are given form.

If something is in the real world, it is no longer in the Planar. You can no longer peer into the Planar to get a vibe for what’s causing something to go on in the real world. A ghost’s native habitat is the Planar Infinity, and the only reason they’re causing a ruckus is because they left it to materialize in the real world instead. Peering into the Planar only gives you a view of stuff that is either deliberately not manifesting, or is so weak that it cannot do so.

What does it look like? It depends on what emotions or concepts are bleeding into the real world. If the feeling is exceptionally dour, it can appear and make things in the real world appear to be literally monochrome or grey. If instead the world is invaded by chaos, it might appear as a riot of nauseatingly vibrant colors.

How do I interact with it? There are three ways the Planar might manifest in Altera:
- Convergence.
- Rifts.
- Alterans projecting themselves into it via avatars.

What is convergence? The Planar Infinity sometimes bleeds into the real world. This has all sorts of diverse causes, most commonly a great deal of arcane magic. It is trivial for something that is normally too weak to manifest its own avatar to pass over during convergence, or for reality to be bound more closely by a concept originating from the Planar than the usual laws of physical reality.

What are rifts? A hole can be torn in reality, exposing the Planar Infinity and allowing things to pass back and forth freely. This is how portals work (you walk into the Planar, you navigate through it to another rift, and then you leave via that second rift). The vast majority of Alterans simply cannot do this, but many things native to the Planar can.

Avatars
An avatar is a projection of one’s consciousness and will outside of their body. Most of the time, this is in the context of a powerful Planar entity manifesting an appearance within the real world. When a god comes to you, it is not god, it is god’s avatar. Ditto for powerful elementals, angels, whatever.

Animancers also make use of avatars. They project themselves into the Planar, but do not physically enter it unless they do so via a rift. Only their awareness and a trace of their will. However, this is still exceptionally dangerous. Animancers are much weaker inside the Planar than they are in the real world, as they are cut off from most of their power. Entities within the Planar may use their avatar as a bridge to possess their body and potentially evict the Animancer’s consciousness in the process. Or just do something much more mundane, like kill them.

Animancy
The magic of the soul. For most Animancers most of the time, this means interacting with their own soul. Rarely, this can also mean directly interacting with the souls of others.

Changes to Animancy From Previous Editions
Animancy is the school of preparation, not improvisation. They are exceptionally powerful when they have time to prepare. Invading an Animancer’s castle is tantamount to suicide. However, when put on the spot, an Animancer will quickly run out of tricks.

Animancy has the tools to research and prepare ahead of time. The ideal Animancer uses their magic to divine upcoming threats, and then prepares counters to them. If their intel was right, they’re extremely threatening; if it was wrong, their magic may be useless.

Animancy is almost entirely talismans now. Besides spells targeting just themselves, or projecting into the Planar, Animancers are going to be binding entities and emotions into objects and then using those objects to cast their spells. When creating talismans, feel free to still flavor them as being wards/jinxes/charms/relics/etc if you want.

Elementals, and other entities, do not want to enter pacts. Animancers are hated and feared for their power. The magic of Animancy is now more to do with enslaving or tricking Planar entities, not making friends with them.

There are four essential things that Animancers can do:
- Deflections. Projecting emotions elsewhere.
- Create Talismans. The bulk of what Animancers do.
- Incantations. Quick, spontaneous magic so weak it doesn’t require a talisman.
- Divination. Methods of finding out information.

Deflections
An Animancer is able to bottle up an emotion, binding it to something fragile that has arcane markings carved onto it which allow for the binding. It must be an emotion they have felt, bottled up at the time they were feeling it. Like anger during a moment of intense rage, or the peace and tranquility of watching a sunset.

When this fragile talisman is broken, a deflection is cast. An entity they can see is instilled with this emotion only if it is capable of feeling it, and if it is not overridden by an already intense emotion. After an appropriate amount of time (as little as a few moments, as long as the rest of the day, entirely at the discretion of the player based on how susceptible they feel their character is) the deflection ends. The character is aware that they were emotionally manipulated, and if they are familiar with the caster, is able to discern who the deflection originated from.

Another form of deflection is when an Animancer creates one for another person. In this case, the person must always be in contact with the deflection. If they feel the targeted emotion (rage for example), then the deflection absorbs all of it. This allows the person to persevere in spite of emotional distress, or undistracted by emotion. However, when the deflection is broken, they are overwhelmed by all the emotion they would have felt being released all at once.

Create Talismans
A talisman is an artifact created by an Animancer. They do so by binding entities from the Planar into physical objects. There are two chief advantages to this:
- The Animancer has complete control over what the talisman is capable of.
- Talismans cost half the price of regular artifacts (rounding down).

There is one chief disadvantage, the entity does not want to be bound. If the talisman or its enchantment is broken, the entity will break free and be trapped in the material world, unable to escape to the Planar. It will wreak havoc, specifically against the Animancer and its wielder if possible.

Can I use these rules for other blessings too, like institutions? Yes, absolutely, just change the flavor text. Instead of the institution being a church, it is instead an enchanted building, and instead of it being an ethos or creed enforced by a god, it is a restriction created by the arcane enchantment binding the entity.

How powerful the talisman can be depends on the level of the Animancer:
- Apprentices can make talismans equivalent to beautified artifacts.
- Journeymen can make talismans equivalent to sacred artifacts.
- Adepts can make talismans equivalent to holy artifacts.
- Masters can make talismans equivalent to angelic artifacts.

How powerful is the entity that breaks out of my talisman? This is a rough perspective:
- A regular person could probably survive an encounter with the entity that breaks out of a beautified talisman.
- An adept mage could stand toe to toe with the entity that breaks out of a sacred talisman.
- No mortal, except perhaps one stronger than a master mage, could contend with the entity that is loosed from a holy talisman.
- The entity within an angelic talisman would kill everyone in the room handily and then chase down the one who bound them to do the same.

If you’re curious, master and adept is the level where an Animancer has to start tricking the entity into accepting the pact and can no longer bind it through sheer force of will whatsoever.

Incantations
At Adept level, Animancers are able to manipulate weak natural phenomena without any sort of expenditure on their part. The tiny elementals within things like candle flames or drafts within a home fear them instinctually. They can snuff out candles in a room, manipulate little eddies of air, make the darkness around them darker, things like that.

Divination
Animancers are able to summon and ask questions of Planar entities, like ghosts or figments or the like. Doing so is identical to the ability that Oracles have, but targeting Planar entities instead of their god.

You must make a request in the Goodwill section on the forums, at a cost of one Goodwill for every question posed. These have to be made in advance, it gives DMs time to answer. You can ask up to three questions at a time, but no matter how many you ask, you will receive three answers. Two of them will be correct, and one of them will be wrong. You will not be told which are the two correct answers.

They have to do it properly. They could perhaps invoke the name of a known entity, but failing that, they must be in the right place with the right reagents to summon the right thing. Try to summon a figment of sunshine at night, and be met with the wrong, possibly dangerously wrong, entity.