Post by Phsycodelic on May 20, 2017 0:55:47 GMT
Cursing
Mystic Sorcerers
Mystic Sorcerers
The severity of the Curse is usually bound to the dots in the character's Severity rating (the dots in his Path), and the effects usually only happen once. With a number of successes, however, he can make nasty things happen to more than one person in a given group. A magician can't Curse someone more severely than his skill will allow if working alone. If he works with a group versed in the same Path, however, his anger carries more clout.
The basic system for Cursing is simple. The magician decides what he wants to inflict (within his ability), spends one turn per level of Severity magically collecting and focusing his hate, then discharges it in some cathartic fashion (a scream, a dance, a venomous email message, etc.). His player rolls Manipulation + Intimidation to work the Effect and spends a point of Willpower. His successes get divided between Relation and Severity (player's choice), allowing a player to custom-tailor his Curse. The Curse's Effect occurs soon afterward, at some point and in some way determined by the Storyteller, not the magician; he may choose who he effects, but not how.
Unlike most forms of Hedge Magic, Cursing can focus the will of a group into a force more potent than a single magician could muster. By acting in concert, an angry pack of Curse-skilled hedge witches can bring down death and worse upon their enemies. In such cases, each additional member grants a new dot to the pool, adding to either Severity, Relation, or both. In the case of group Curses, set the initial difficulty at 8 for simplicity.
Curses don't force events to happen or rearrange the laws of nature (that's the province of True Magic). They do, however, subtly nudge things or people already in motion towards the caster's intent. A hedge wizard's Curse may take days or even months to occur, but it will happen. Someone successfully Cursed may not immediately walk through a plate glass window, but she may find herself under a falling windowpane the next time she passes a construction site. In magical terms, such events are always coincidental and will only strike when a strong possibility exists for them to.
An especially skilled magician may invoke the Death Curse. By spending all her permanent Willpower, the player can add that Willpower to her Curse dots, and divide the total as she sees fit between Severity and Relation. The character then turns into a mindless husk and dies soon after, burned out by inner hatred. A witch with minimal skill in Cursing might only get four or five dots to spend, but a powerful one could wither a whole family.
Supernatural creatures may be Cursed, but they can resist the Effect with a successful Willpower roll. This roll's difficulty will usually be 7 or 8, but might go as high as 9 if the magician was especially powerful of successful. Naturally, the being in question has to be aware of the Curse in order to resist it. Short problems will probably just happen and be done with, but prolonged Curses can be discovered with a little work (consulting the spirits, checking auras with Prime magic, or Auspex, reading probability with Entropy, etc.). A mage's Arcane can take successes away from a wizard attempting to Curse her on a one-for-one basis.
As any wise practitioner knows, rearranging the paths of fortune can backfire on you. Botching a Curse will bring the effect back upon the caster in ways that should delight the most sadistic of Storytellers. Even if the roll is successful, there will always be some kind of fallout from a Curse, especially a severe one. The nature of this payback lies more with storytelling than with systems, but should be in line with the general power of the Curse and the ill will of the magician. Backripples range from dropping an expensive item (and having to pay for it) to foreclosure, physical ailments, or sudden disappearing acts on the parts of one's friends.
No Curse need be used at full potency. The caster may choose to revoke the Curse at any time prior to its effect. A magician skilled in this Path can also try to undo another's Curse with a Wits + Subterfuge roll (difficulty 9) and a Willpower Point.
Roll: Manipulation + Intimidation to add curse, Wits + Subterfuge roll (difficulty 9) to remove curse.
Cost: One Willpower to add or remove curse.
Modifiers: None.
Duration: Varies.
Price Of Failure: Unknown.
[ 1 - 6 ] Cursing Levels 1 - 6 ( XXX - Page X )
Successes | Severity |
1 | A brief inconvenience (dropping an object, saying something stupid, closing a door on your fingers, etc.). |
2 | A slip-up which results in lasting injury or embarrassment (stepping on glass barefooted, throwing up on the Japanese Prime Minister, breaking an heirloom, etc.). |
3 | A serious injury or illness, not incapacitating, but painful and inconvenient (broken limb, hernia, gunshot wound, etc.). |
4 | A lasting illness, not fatal, but debilitating (infection, stroke, heart attack, Alzheimer's disease, etc.). |
5 | Death, usually by some ghastly means (decapitation, impaling, mangling, torture, disease, etc.). |
Successes | Relation |
1 | One person only. |
2 | One close relation or friend. |
3 | Two similar relations (male heirs, lovers, parents). |
4 | All close living relations or friends. |
5 | All relations and friends. |
6+ | Relatives or friends for generations to come. |
[ 0 ] Cursing Rituals ( XXX - Page X )
Although the practices involved in Cursing vary tremendously, the system Effects are pretty consistent. There are no special rituals for this Path.