Post/Author/DateTime

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JulesCARV 03-07-06, 05:52 PM

What are your thoughts on incantations? Personally, I like the system. I think that psionics and incantations are the two best ways of representing magic -- the former showing quick, innate power, the latter showing learning and ritual. If I had to choose, I'd scrap the Vancian magic system, and then turn the spells into either psionic powers or into incantations. Vancian magic seems halfway between the systems, but doesn't really feel like how magic "should" be to me. (I can see mages gathering around, chanting, and performing long rituals, or I can see them shooting lightning out of their fingertips, but I can't see them preparing a "lightning bolt for the day," cinematically/novelistically speaking) Anyway, though, do you have any ideas for new incantations? I think it would be cool to have an incantation which involved creating an intricate sand mandala over the course of a few hours, and then at the end of the incantation, you blow it away. Maybe this would be for psionic characters, and the effect would be that you have a permanent psionic focus, that you can expend at will without losing, for a day, or something, because you've transcended impermanancy or something. Maybe this would require some autohypnosis and knowledge (psionics) checks? And some colored sand, of course. Then, of course, there's the Rite of AshkEnte, calling forth Death to answer your questions. Just kidding. There also needs to be a warding ritual that protect your campsite, home, etc. An incantation for writing unbreakable, inevitable-enforced contract would also be good. A seance incantation that would summon a specific spirit of a dead person might be good. It would be required, though, that the dead person had not yet gone to judgement in the outer planes: she would still have to be lingering in the ethereal as a ghost/wraith/whatever because of some sort of unfinished business.