Thursday, March 19, 2015

WITCH- Cowboy Vampire Magic for Doublecrossroads

Moebius' drawing of two witches mid-breakfast, from Blueberry.
  • Witches use 1d6 for their Hit Die. They never receive a Constitution bonus.
  • Their Defensive Number is 13.
  • Witches can use any Minor weapon (d4). Heavier weapons get in the way of arcane ministrations and attract too much attention.
  • They may also use pistols, though they may not do so while casting, and typically abhor nonmagical pistols.
  • Witches add their Intellect bonus to their Languages skill. Otherwise they speak Lawful and a language of their choice.
  • Witches can cast spells, organized by power according to Tiers. At 1st level, a Witch knows 1+Intellect bonus spells (so a Witch with Intellect 13 knows 2 First Tier spells).
  • Spells may be cast in two main ways. First, a creature with HD greater than the Tier of the spell being cast may be sacrificed as part of a ritual, meaning that casting a Tier 2 spell requires a creature of HD 2+ or greater. The Witch gains no XP for this. Second, a Witch may pay this blood price himself, casting a spell by reducing his current Hit Points by half for a First Tier spell. Higher Tiers cost additional HP for each casting; +3 HP for Second Tier, +4 for Third Tier, and so on.
  • All spells must be studied daily because the recipes rewrite themselves when the Witch sleeps, as if defending themselves. Spells must be kept in a grimoire. A grimoire may be memorized from, and kept safe, or it may be read from aloud, and put at risk. When a grimoire is destroyed a Witch does not lose their spells for that day but cannot recover their spells once they sleep, and must take great pains to replace their grimoire.
  • Witches must find additional spells of any Tier in the course of play. The Table below indicates at which levels a Witch becomes capable of casting which Tier of spell. They may add spells they find in other books or scrolls to their grimoire: Read Magic must be cast, and the Witch must wrestle with the translation, sometimes literally, with transcription taking an hour per Tier of the spell for each spell.
  • Only gagging, blinding, and binding a Witch’s hands can prevent them from spellcasting.
  • They do not hire normal Helpers. Instead, they have Thralls, who exist to serve the Witch's physical needs.For each Thrall a Witch sleeps with the night before, his Defensive Number improves by 1.
  • A Witch may heal by drinking the blood of a willing subject or helpless sacrifice who has not been used to cast a spell: the subject loses an amount of HP equal to whatever the Witch gains.
  • REMEMBER: Any being may be used either to feed and heal from, or to improve your Defensive Number, or to cast a spell. If you sleep with someone you've gained all the power you can from them, same with feeding on someone.
  • At Level 1 a Witch may take a Familiar, sacrificing one of their First Tier spells for the ability to beckon a Familiar. A Witch may create a familiar at later levels but must wait until the next dark moon. A Witch’s Familiar may replace/eat/become their grimoire. A Witch drawing strength from its Familiar’s blood recovers half the Hit Points it would have healed normally. This counts as a Helper.
  • At level 5 a Witch may use a machete (Normal weapon) in addition to daggers (Minor Weapons).
  • At level 9, a Witch may erect a tower (if she can afford to) and attract a Level 1 Witch and a Level 5 Witch. Other Witches may be summoned in the future. Witches can spellcast together from their (geomantically positoned) tower for maximum effectiveness.
  • At level 9, a Witch can Create Magic Items. They can invest an item with a spell (or spells!) by casting the spell through the item as part of a ritual costing 10000g per spell level. A permanent magical effect costs twice as much, and a unique magical effect costs 5x as much.
  • Witches may advance to Level 16.
Features Level XP HP
First Tier
Familiar
1 0 1d6

2 2500 +1d6
Second Tier 3 5000 +1d6

4 10000 +1d6
Third Tier
Machete
5 20000 +1d6

6 40000 +1d6
Fourth Tier 7 80000 +1d6

8 160000 +1d6
Fifth Tier
Create Magic Item
Tower
9 320000 +1d6

10 485000 +1
Sixth Tier 11 640000 +1

12 795000 +1
Seventh Tier 13 950000 +1

14 1100000 +1
Eighth Tier 15 1255000 +1

16 1410000 +1