Shadows on the Horizon

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Spirits

Spirit Rules

A modified ruleset for dealing with spirits in Mind's Eye Theatre (this is based from the Hiddenflame/Tides of Power Rules with some modification).

Overview

First, this packet is primarily created with Mages and Garou in mind. Attempting to utilize it in other settings may not fit. It will be written primarily in the terms of the Middle Umbra, since that is the 'shared' territory between the two groups, but applies equally to the High Umbra (or Deep Umbra, in Werewolf terms).

1. A MET character attempts to mentally affect spirit. The character has 12 mental traits, and the spirit has 10 gnosis (the maximum value possible in the standard rules). If we say the character has an appropriate ability at 2 and available for a retest, and it is not cancelled, the character has approximately an 88% chance of winning. If the retest is cancelled, the character has a 66% chance of winning.
2. The same character in a tabletop game has all mental attributes at 4 (4x3 = 12, so roughly equivalent). Again, he has an ability rating of 2, and therefore a dice pool of 6. Since the target number of the roll is the spirit's gnosis of 10, there is only a 23.5% chance of getting at least one success, a 53% chance of straight failure, and another 23.5% chance of botching the roll. If this was a contested roll between the spirit's gnosis and the mage's dice pool against a base difficulty, the chance of failure increases (although the chance of botching does go down as well).

Obviously, this is an extreme example, but it illustrates the disparity of spirits between Mind's Eye and tabletop rules. In general, spirits become much less powerful in the base MET rules. Even the strongest spirits with 10 of each temper (Gnosis/Rage/Willpower) are relatively easy for a minimally experienced character to overcome, due to their trait cap starting at 11 and going up from there.

Some have adopted the practice of inflating the tempers of spirits above 10, but while this solves some of the challenge difficulties, it overbalances the game in other respects. For example, if the intent is to create a War spirit that can at least threaten a pack of Adren Garou with it's basic attacks, you want its Rage value to be comparable to their physical traits in Crinos. This means you would want a Rage value somewhere around 22 traits. However, if that spirit happens to be one that has the Blast charm, 22 Rage traits means that it can inflict 11 Aggravated damage with a single use of the charm, most likely instantly killing even well-armored characters.

Finally, it is difficult to tailor power levels for similar spirits. A typical fire elemental has a Rage of 10 – this leaves no room for creating large, powerful fire elementals apart from simply granting vast amounts of essence to the larger version. That essence, however, does not make it easier for spirits to win challenges, it simply lets them use more charms and take more damage.

This system is an attempt to address these shortcomings.

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Spirit Hierarchy

The first task is to categorize spirits by power level. In Werewolf/Mage, the categories are as follows, from highest to lowest:

Even these levels are not really well defined enough to base rules on – indeed, the Werewolf rules baldly state that an Incarna doesn't need traits, because it should be able to outright win on any challenge against a PC, never mind anything above Incarna level. Let's look at each of them in turn.

Divinity/Triat

This does not refer to “gods" attached to a given religion, but rather beings of such scope and power as to effectively be omnipotent. They are of such relative importance to the Umbra that their sway, in some ways, crosses all levels, realms, and pocket realities. For all this power, however, their very existence hamstrings them, and they cannot act directly, but must instead use proxies and servants. It may be more accurate to think of these beings as the concepts that make up reality itself. They comprise reality – the Realm being an amalgam of the “bodies" of all divinities, and different Umbral realms being sections where one or more divinity holds greater sway. Examples of beings at this level are The One, Gaia, the Weaver/Wyld/Wyrm, etc. Functionally there is no way to truly differentiate these beings from reality itself, interact with them, or help/hinder them in any way except by means of interaction with their proxies.

Celestine/Avatar/Aeon

More distinct than a divinity, this type of spirit encompasses beings which themselves represent the direct connection of a divinity to the affectation of reality itself. Where divinities thread themselves throughout the universe, Celestines are tied to specific concepts and spheres of influence governed by their patron divinity. These beings are often the face of a given divinity in monotheistic religions where there is a single, all-powerful deity; the Christian God, Allah, and Jehova are all avatars of the divinity known as The One, for example. Similarly, there is often a Celestine that serves as an amalgamation of gods tied to very powerful concepts – the Sun is a Celestine, but can be served by/can manifest as Helios, Ra, or any number of powerful Sun gods. How close the tie is between a given god and the Celestine it represents/shares a concept with is a matter of debate. Indeed, whether or not a Celestine can directly affect things is a matter of debate as well – in many ways, they may be too “close" to divinity to influence things directly. A common interpretation is that the Celestine must wear a given mask (an Incarna-level servitor or manifestation) in order to take direct action.

Incarna/Sovereign/Lord

These spirits are the most powerful “rank" of spirits that can truly exert any kind of direct control on their surroundings, or be interacted with directly by lesser beings. This includes what would be considered gods in the pantheistic, limited gods type of view – Thor, Isis, some powerful Chinese dragons, etc. It also encompasses totem avatars (Falcon, Stag, etc), and all other beings of roughly equivalent scope. At this level of power, there are few beings that can rival them, singly or in a group, except other beings of equal station. As an example, the Storm Eater was an Incarna, and required the sacrifice of 13 Legendary (rank 6) Garou at 13 different caerns in order to bind him. A Legendary garou or an Archmage might, depending on circumstances, be able to successfully confront a being of this rank, but it is far from certain. For anyone of lesser power, refer to the Werewolf rule of “Incarna wins."

Jaggling/Majordomo/Preceptor

This is the most diverse category as far as range of power is concerned, and the one that causes the most trouble mechanically. It covers from the most sedate glade child that is self-aware but has little actual power, all the way up to nexus crawlers, caern totems, and so on. Obviously, it is hard to make generalizations about such a vast range, but the major deciding factor on whether or not a spirit is a Jaggling or not is whether or not it is truly sentient.

Gaffling/Subordinate

These are the smallest spirits, the figurative insects of the spirit world, those that are not intelligent enough to possess true sentience. They are either weak embodiments of a concept, or tools created by a larger spirit in order to serve a specific purpose. They may or may not be able to converse, but if they can it is only within the scope of their nature that they might be able to provide information. Most of these spirits will not have the Materialize charm. In any given area, it is typically these spirits that make up the majority of spirit activity.

NOTE: Mage also occasionally uses the term “Incarna," but applies it to the “Celestine/Avatar" level. For the sake of clarity, that term has not been utilized here, but be aware of the discrepancy if utilizing Mage sourcebooks.

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Traits

Spirit Category: Werewolf terms are used here, but the Mage terms could be substituted
Example: The relative power of a spirit of the appropriate potency. Use this as a guide as to where you want a given spirit to fall

Trait modifier: Apply this trait modifier to the spirit's total traits in any given challenge. For example, the potency 1 fire elemental may have 7 rage. However, in combat, it would have only 3 traits to attack. Similarly, a mid level caern totem with 6 rage would have 20 traits to attack in combat. The one exception is when a spirit's trait is being compared to a trait with a similar range – most typically Rage/Gnosis/Willpower vs Rage/Gnosis/Willpower.

Trait minimum: This is the minimum trait value that a spirit of the appropriate potency will bid in any challenge. For example, if a potency 2 spirit has Gnosis 5, it will still bid 4 traits on a Gnosis challenge even after the penalty is applied.

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Abilities

The Potency chart resolves the issues of trait imbalances. However, another disparity exists – abilities. In tabletop, abilities are streamlined into the process of comparison to a spirit's traits because an Attribute + Ability roll has a maximum pool of 10 dice, as do any of a spirit's tempers. In MET, this balance is lost in the RPS/Traits system.

To that end, there are two options: defaulting to the nature of the spirit, or creating explicit ability lists for each spirit.

1. Nature of the Spirit – This is perhaps the easiest, ‘quick and dirty' way to represent the spirit. Think of two or three things that would represent the particular spirit's scope of influence. For example, you might make a fire elemental's scope “burning things, inspiring creativity, illuminating darkness." The spirit then gets 3 retests per Potency per day in any challenge that falls under those circumstances. Only one retest can be used per challenge, as per standard Ability rules. This also allows you to create slightly different flavors of spirits, giving them unique personalities. One fire elemental might have influence as described above and live in a forge, another might have “burning things, inspiring courage, rebirth in fire" and be dedicated to battle and searing the corrupt from the face of Gaia, to make way for new growth.
2. Explicit List – This is perhaps a better way to handle well-fleshed spirits in a chronicle, such as pack totems, etc. Simply assign the spirit abilities as you would any other character. It is recommended that the spirit be given 5 ability levels per Potency – this is to reflect that specific abilities are not as broadly encompassing as a generic “Nature of the spirit" retest. This also makes the “1 point per Ability trait" option for building spirits on pg 242 of LotW useful – it was provided as an option, but then spirits were given no abilities in the system.

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Essence/Power Points

Essence and Power Points are the same thing, simply the third and second edition terms, respectively. In second edition, Essence was independent of other statistics of the spirit. In third edition, they changed it so that a spirit's base essence was the sum of its Rage, Gnosis, and Willpower. In most cases, this was a reduction in Essence.

Essence serves as both fuel for a spirit's charms, and as its health levels. The latter becomes problematic in MET – Fighting a moderately powerful spirit with 60 Essence in tabletop, even a character with a Strength of 1 in homid is rolling 7 dice for damage (1 Strength + 4 Crinos Strength + 2 Claws). Since spirits cannot soak (without the Armor charm), this means that even the weakest character in Crinos would inflict 3-4 levels of damage per hit, on average. If you start considering strong ahrouns with combat damage enhancing gifts, you are looking at 8 or more damage per hit. Similarly, a disciple-level mage can fairly easily inflict 6 levels or so of damage with an effect, even without spending time to build up successes. In Mind's Eye Theatre, it is nearly impossible to do that much damage, except by the most powerful characters.

In addition, the Armor charm, as described in Laws of the Wild, is practically a direct cut and paste from the tabletop book. It allows the spirit to soak half its gnosis in damage from EVERY combat challenge for the rest of the scene. In tabletop, this is not a huge deal – the spirit goes from having 0 soak dice to a maximum of 5 soak dice. In LARP, this makes the spirit effectively immune to the vast majority of damage if it has at least 6 Gnosis.

Because of this, the following modifications should be made.

1. Aggravated damage done to spirits is doubled. This reflects the fact that MET characters cannot dish out the same amount of damage, but still have to burn through the same Essence pool. It also reflects that magical sources of damage are far more effective on spirits than mundane.
2. Spirits should have a base essence pool equal to their Rage + Gnosis + Willpower + (3 x their Trait Minimum).
3. The Armor charm should be modified as listed below in the Charm Modifications section.

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Charm Modification

Many charms in Laws of the Wild are essentially cut and pasted from tabletop, and do not fit well into the nature of the Mind's Eye Theatre system. Charms that present an issue to game balance and mechanics are listed below, along with new rules.

As a general rule, any charm that requires the spirit to make a challenge against a static difficulty should have the difficulty raised by 2, to reflect the new trait rules.

• Armor – The armor charm, instead of soaking half the spirit's Gnosis in damage per combat challenge, instead soaks half the spirit's Gnosis in damage per turn. It cannot reduce a given hit to below 1 damage. If a single blow ever does an amount of damage equal to the spirit's Potency, the armor is “blown away" and the charm must be reapplied, although it does soak the appropriate amount of damage on its way out. This makes armor very useful, but it does not make a spirit effectively untouchable. It also reinforces going after large/strong enemies in packs. Note: Armor absorbs aggravated damage before it is doubled, not after.
• Blast – The blast charm is unbalanced compared to other sources of damage in MET for two reasons. First, it requires no challenge on the part of the spirit. Second, it does a large amount of damage compared to other sources. The standard fire elemental can inflict 5 automatic aggravated damage per action, which is enough to kill most characters in two shots, even with armor. Thus, the mechanics of the blast charm should be changed to the following:
  
  "The spirit spends one essence and makes a static Rage challenge against the target's physical traits. Success inflicts one third of the spirit's Rage (round down, minimum 1) in aggravated damage."
• Freeze – The freeze charm states that the spirit spends Rage traits. However, a spirit does not have temporary ratings in Rage/Gnosis/Willpower. In addition, it has the same difficulties as the blast charm as far as inflicting automatic damage, except even more so. As written, a single high-rage spirit with the Freeze charm can inflict 9 aggravated damage to any number of foes nearby, instantly killing the vast majority of an entire sept. This is obviously a large balance issue. Therefore, the mechanics of the gift should read as follows:
  
  "The spirit may reduces its permanent Rage rating by up to half for the rest of the scene. For every point the spirit's Rage is reduced, everyone in the area must win a static physical challenge against the spirit's rage each round, or suffer one level of aggravated damage. Because this charm turns the area bitterly cold, subsequent uses of the charm (from any source) have no effect for the rest of the scene."
• Umbraquake – This gift suffers the same problems as Blast and Freeze, although since it deals bashing damage it is not quite so severe. In addition, it lists no cost, and therefore could be used subsequently at no cost until all foes are defeated. Therefore, the gift should read as follows:
  
  "The spirit spends one essence. Everyone in the area must win a static physical challenge against the spirit's rage, or suffer one third of the spirit's Rage in bashing damage. The spirit may maintain this Charm each round without reactivating it by simply expending a point of Essence at the top of each round."
• Updraft – References to spending tempers (Rage/Gnosis/Willpower) make this problematic, as does the automatic nature of the charm. The charm should read as follows:
  
  "The spirit spends one essence, and makes a static Willpower challenge against the target's Physical traits. If successful, the spirit causes the target to lift into the air and stay there for a number of turns equal to the spirit's Gnosis. The target may still take any actions appropriate to being held in the air."
• Calcify – Because this charm compares two traits on equivalent scales, do not add the spirit's trait modifier to its Willpower for the purposes of this challenge. In addition, the extended challenge makes things difficult without limitations. Finally, the charm has no mechanic to handle a target that does not possess Rage. The charm should read as follows:
  
  "The spirit spends up to five essence. For each essence spent, it makes a Willpower challenge against the target's Rage or Willpower, whichever is higher. Each success removes one of the target's Physical traits (or essence traits, for spirits), binding it in the pattern web. A target at zero Essence or Physical traits is immobilized until released by packmates, Wyld energy, or something else capable of damaging the pattern web. Traits return once the target is free."
• Break Reality – Again, references to spending tempers causes difficulty. Also, the lack of specifics as to damaging effects makes the charm seem too powerful in some ways. The charm should read as follows:
  
  "Spend an Essence and make a static Gnosis challenge against eight traits. This allows the spirit to make relatively minor changes such as making a liquid into a gas, making an electrically conductive substance nonconducting, or making something normally fire-resistant very flammable. Spend an additional essence for more major changes such as creating a door in a wall, shrinking or growing an object, or making an inanimate object come alive. If the challenge fails, the spirit loses an additional Essence and must make two simple tests. Failing both of theses causes the spirit to lose one Gnosis, permanently.
  
  If this power is used as a direct attack, then the spirit must make a static Gnosis challenge against the target's Physical traits, and any damage is limited to a third of the spirit's Gnosis."

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Combat and Challenges

A spirit uses its Willpower to attack, while Rage determines damage. A spirit's base damage with a melee attack is equal to a quarter of its Rage, rounded up.

Attacks on a spirit require a challenge against its Rage.

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Gauntlet

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