| From: | "Robert A. Hayden" <hayden@*******.MANKATO.MSUS.EDU> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Re: Witches |
| Date: | Mon, 4 Oct 1993 10:41:01 -0500 |
> It ssems to me that the focus has been on the Witch's use of materials to
> work her magic. Fine, that's a mage or shaman with fethishes and foci, you
> say. But what about a witch who MUST use such toold? That's a witch with
> a Geas. Hmmmm. . .but how about a witch who must use such tools without a
> Geas? I believe what we're talking about is, for lack of a better term, a
> Focus Adept. . .someone who can only work magic when using Foci.
That's an awful term, but I suppose as good as any. If you look at
'witch' in the mythopoeic sense, you will see that these soothsayers have
often had access to what would be termed in SR sense to be the astral space.
One thought I had was that if a witch lays a curse (which witches did a
lot of), what it actually involves is summoning a spirit or elemental and
then the conjured/summon critter is the one that makes sure the curse is
carried out. For example, if Bruhilda (heh) the witch curses me with the
inability to ever fire my weapon straight for three moons, for the next
three months I have a spirit or elemental hanging out with me who always
at the last second bats my gun out of the direction I want to fire.
Lifting the curse actually involves getting a mage or someong to dispell
the malicious spirit.
If course, if I curse you with a nose that will grow whenever you lie (ye
olde pinnochio syndrome), I actually summon a manipulation spirit who
causes your nose to grow.
The hardest part about this magic system is deciding exactly how witch
magic would work. The witches of legends had very very little inherent
magical power. They would almost always have to rely on herbs and rocks
and animal parts to concoct a spell, although periodically they would
whip something up off the cuff in an emergency.
--------
*ding* <-- that's a thought
Let's pretend that a withc has a magic rating of 1/3 essence, round up.
This give the maximum magic rating of a witch of two. Now, whenever a
witch casts a spell, the maximum level of the spell is equal to the
witches magic rating + modifiers for materials.
Now, each and every spell MUST be cast as a seperate entity and
seperately considered (ie, if I cast invisibility with certain materials
one time, and the next time I have different materials, the spell must be
refigured).
Witches are going to have little combat use because they have to fumble
with materials for nearly every spell, but where they can come into play
is their ability to concoct powerful spells that take time and expensive
materials.
Of course, the difficulty is coming up with a table or way to quantify
materials. Each spell must have components in it that are somehow
related to the spell, either through actual use or through legend.
For example, if I wanted to concoct a potion of invisibility, I might
need such things as:
Blood of Jellyfish
Mountain Spring Water
Crushed Charcoal (a purifier)
Somehow, each of those parts would fit into the spell as some + to the
rating of the spell.
Perhaps all witch spells must have an animal, vegetable and mineral
component to it, or CAN have all three, or something.
I'm becoming confused, so I'm going to stop writing. Was anything I was
saying making sense?
{[> Robert A. Hayden ____ <[} Question Authority
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