Concert of Shamans

[Olaus Petrus]

Blood Magic is a great book, but it's a real pity that the book didn't have blood spirits chapter, because it would have been really cool. However it makes some references to spirit magic.

Concert casting rules explain that shamans can use concert skill in spirit combat, however rules don't explain how it should work in practise. I assume that in general it follows same principles as divine magic and sorcery concert casting and you pool up the skill points and divide them with spirit walking and spirit binding skills. But I was wondering will the entire concert go to spirit world or is it just the leader who discorporates and other shamans stay behind in the normal world and just channel their power to concert leader who is in spirit combat. While the question might seem trivial it's important to know if concert members can react to adventurers who try to interrupt their concert casting or if they participate to concert.

Another thing which confuses me are concert cast enchantments. It says that you can create concert cast enchantments with spirit magic or divine magic, but rules only give description of sorcery enchantments. Is spirit magic enchantment just a fetish? Concert could easily bind even the strongest spirits, but huge spirits are too powerful for individual shaman to control. But if enchantment is something else than just a normal fetish, then it can offer some means to control those spirits.

Also while concert can easily bind strongest spirits which individual shaman could control, it says that every memeber of the concert loses one spirit slot when they create enchantment. Normally fetishes use spirit slots of the person who uses the fetish and not the ones of the binder, so I'm bit confused how it is supposed to work. Is it supposed to permanently reduce the amount of spirits which the members of the concert can bind or will they get back their spirit slots once the enchantment is given to someone else? If the latter is the case, then it's a great way to produce powerful fetishes.

Any ideas how to handle these situations? I would really like to use some strong spirit magic in my game, but I'm bit confused.

 

[alex_greene]

Just calling up the Spirit Magic and Arcania of Legend: Blood Magic books and looking through them.

Applied to Divine Magic, the combined Piety + Invoke akills of all participants cannot exceed the combined Concert skill of the group; similarly, with concert sorcery the combined Grimoire + Manipulation cannot exceed the combined Concert skills of all participants.

So with Spirit Magic, it makes sense that the combined Spirit Walking + Spirit Binding skills of every shaman cannot exceed their combined Concert skill level; and that the maximum POW that can be controlled would be three times the critical range of either the Spirit Walking + Spirit Binding total or the combined Concert total, whichever is lower:-

"The POW of the largest spirit which can be bound or controlled cannot exceed three times the critical range of this skill. Thus a character with a Spirit Binding skill of 45% could control spirits of up to 15 POW."

Substitute "Concert" for "Spirit Binding" and you're away.

As for who gives up his spirit slot, I'd continue to rule that the possessor of the fetish is the one who has to give up his spirit slot, whether it be the leader of the concert or some character that he hands the fetish to. The others contribute their magic points to summon and bind the spirit, but only the possessor of the fetish, in the end, has to sacrifice the one spirit slot to possess and control the finished, spirit-occupied, fetish.

Just some idle musing. Hope it helps.

 

[Olaus Petrus]

Thanks for your thoughts. I did some additional research myself. While Legend Spirit Magic mentions that shamans can join together in concert against spirits it has omitted the fact that shaman and his fetch can form a concert too. It's in original Shamanism for Fun and Prophets (S&P 89) article, but it's edited out from Legend version. The article also mentions that in Spellcom there are other enchantments besides fetches which can be used to store spirits. I guess that the spirit slot rule in Blood Magic book is reserved for such items. Article also mentions that Spellcom has detailed rules for spirit magic concerts.

The World of Spirits (S&P 90) mentions that shaman concert can bind even the spirit lords.

And as an interesting bit of information it also mentions that Blood Magic sacrifices (especially avulsion) can be used to feed magic points to bound spirits (with the exception of healing spirits who don't want to feed with life force).

As I don't use Wraith Recon setting and my local gamestore doesn't have Spellcom, I have no idea what these alternative enchantments could be. So I probably have to improvise. Maybe they are spirit magic versions of sorcery binding enchantment from Arms of Legend or something similar. I think that items like a jar with jinn trapped inside or an ancient skull which is inhabited by a sickness spirit would make fine enchantments.

 

[Simulacrum]

Without evolving a whole new system - the easiest way to allow binding of spirits by people who are not Shamans is to allow a sorcerer with the Enchanting Ritual spell to create a Binding Enchantment.

As for calibrating the cost in dedicated Magic Points under Arms of Legend enchanting rules - don't know as I don't use them, but I suggest you would either base it on:

1) how many characteristics an entity has (ie 1 MP for each of INT, POW and CHA for a spirit, rather more for an Elemental), or
2) the Intensity (e.g. 1MP per Intensity, or some sort of escalating scale where you pay the cost of each Intensity level so Intensity 3 spirit = 1+2+3 = 6MP), or
3) a scale that uses a key Characteristic (e.g. 1MP per 3 POW of a spirit)

To get the entity into the binding enchantment you need to have the right sort of Dominate spell, and you probably need Mystic Vision running to target it in the first place. Using the bound spirit or entity requires another use of the Dominate spell, but being bound it does not get a resistance roll. Just don't fumble...and remember it has a Duration within which you better get the spirit back in its binding.

Now - here's the problem. In the standard Legend Spirit Magic Rules you can only access Spirits on the Spirit Plane, so if you can't Spirit Walk you are screwed unless you are Discorporated by a spirit, which is generally quite bad news, particularly if you don't have a high Spirit binding skill to fend off attackers. Sorcerers tend to have neither, hence without special spells being written in they can't really deal with spirits at all. As an aside, this was a design decision that in my personal opinion lies behind the percieved complexity of Spirit Magic. It's a head-scratcher to work out how you represent what you and your players expect a spirit (e.g. a ghost) to be like or to do because the whole spirit business was written up from the perspective of shamanism. Not impossible, but it takes some mental gymnastics.

So RAW, the above suggestion may make sense for demons and elementals etc but in practice it's tricky to make work for spirits. For my own setting I have resolved this by dumping the RAW underlying assumption about how material and spirit world interact - spirits can show up in and directly affect the material world too (they 'Manifest').