Rest up mate, we'll be here when you get back!
I think it makes auras more impactful for sure. Call me a fan.
I will be very curious to see what you come up with!
Well that makes at least three of us, so I guess it is staying. Glad you all liked the idea!
The Conairte (The Pack-Mothers)
The Conairte, once feared as the feral "Hound Pack" of Connacht, have evolved over generations into a vital, beloved fixture of rural life within the Coill-controlled lands. While they retain their deep, mystical connection to the beasts of the wild, they have turned their primal arts toward the preservation of life, growth, and birth. Today, they are known throughout the villages of Connacht not as reclusive beast-masters, but as the premier healers, herbalists, and midwives of the native Irish.
Where they once commanded ravening wolf packs for war, they now walk alongside gentle den-mothers, using their understanding of animal and human nature to safeguard both the hearth and the stable. Under the protection of the Coill Trí, a Conairte practitioner is a highly welcome sight in any settlement, often residing in a cozy cottage at the edge of the village where the boundary between the wild woods and civilized fields grows thin.
Deeply integrated into the daily struggles of medieval Irish life, the Conairte have completely shed their isolationist past to become indispensable pillars of the native settlements. Rather than hiding away in remote towers like many a Hermetic, these practitioners serve the community in a variety of ways. They are the first called when a difficult labor begins, acting as masterful midwives and healers whether the patient is a young village girl, a prized warhorse, or a wild deer in the sacred groves. Additionally, they use their profound understanding of fertility to tend village crops, cultivate wild orchards, and ward off devastating blights. Finally, they act as essential ambassadors to the wild, mediating peace between the village and local predators; if wolves ever threaten a settlement's sheep, a Conairte does not resort to slaughter, but instead negotiates directly with the pack to guide them to alternative hunting grounds or strike a peaceful compromise.
The Powers of the Conairte:
Animal Ken: Every Conairte communicates fluently with beasts. They do not dominate them through fear, but speak to them as peers, understanding their pains, needs, and instincts.
Summon AnimalsThrough melodic calls, whistles, or low hums, they can call upon the local fauna to aid them, whether summoning a badger to dig out healing roots or calling a hawk to carry a message.
Shapeshifter: A gift kept from their ancient heritage. To truly understand the beasts they heal and live alongside, a Conairte can slip their human skin and run as a hound, fly as a raven, or tread softly as a doe.
Healing: The Conairte have mastered the restorative arts. They can knit bones, soothe burning fevers, and purge poisons from both humans and animals alike.
Mythic Herbalism: The Conairte cultivate secret gardens where the mundane and magical overlap. They brew potent poultices, draughts, and salves from wild Irish flora, turning simple forest weeds into miraculous drafts of recovery.
Control Fertility: The crown jewel of their practical magic. This highly welcomed power allows the practitioner to encourage, suppress, or safely guide the reproductive cycles of animals, humans, and plants. They can ensure a barren field yields wheat, a prized mare conceives a healthy foal, or a human mother is blessed with a safe, painless delivery.
@Vortigern @Nithyn just making sure, are we adopting any house rules regarding stress rolls? Like botches on 1 and the exploding on 10, or exploding adding 10 instead of doubling, things like that?
I haven't approved any changes to dice roll mechanics.
You are welcome to propose some, if you have an argument as to why you would like them?
No, no. I was just doing some math on the numbers I can achieve right now and wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing anything.
I think a group thematically like this (with the areas of emphasis they have) could exist, I'm just not really digging this description and execution. Perhaps it would be better to start fresh instead of trying to make them an alteration of the other beast master take I made?
Question: are you thinking of going full hedge, or on being a magus Ex-Misc?
I get what Vort is saying. I think they feel less like beast masters to me and more like folk witches with strong focus both on animals and on healing (which isn't a problem).
Also the tradition, beyond the supernatural Virtues, is still undefined, and I think that can make a lot of difference on the end result. Eg. both Folk-Witches and Muspelli get access to Shapeshifter and Animal Ken, but the way both traditions use these abilities is quite different.
On that note, I think Muspelli could make a neat basis for this tradition (hear me!).
- Animal Ken, Summon Animals, Shapeshifter, Control Fertility as the four favored abilities, and every practioner has another two (eg. Hex and Entrancement, or Spadomur and Threads of Fate). Those could be based on the animal you transform into during Ettin-Mod (eg. maybe birds can see and manipulate fate)
- Ettin-mod: you transform into a massive animal
- Utiseta: use to enchant items with powerful effects, capable of offering trouble to hermetic magi.
Thoughts?
I think that's an incredibly interesting take, and I love it! So yeah, consider me sold?
I was thinking of going full Hermetic, but now I'd be sorely tempted to play a hedgie. Trust me, if @RafaelB there wasn't going tattoo artist, I'd considered a Gruagach. But that's another story entirely.
That said, I really do think I'll be playing a Hermetic here. Want to have some fun training might critter and making the biggest nastiest thing I can find my familiar. 'Cause that'll be fun. And funny.
If the assumption is a complete reskin and theme change of the tradition etc. then it could be pretty fitting.
Alright folks, just a little heads up from me that I'm going to be heavily burdened with school for probably the rest of the week. I'll try to post a little here and there but I won't have a ton of time.
Glad you two found it interesting, as a concept at least!
But I think the tattoo artist is callen. ^^
No problem, take your time!
My sleep addled brain knew what I meant damnit! But yeah you're totally correct. Meant to put him anyhow.
I don't think these would be stepping on each other's toes at all. They would be working in very different ways and might even complement each other well. I'm not saying you should go this way, just that my use of tattoos is totally different from the Gruagach use and so there is no conflict.
Alrighty, total random aside, but I was thinking that given that we have the canon example of Gift of the Frog's Legs, that it is very much possible to use ReCo to enhance the natural movements of a target (jump higher, run faster, hit harder etc). Granted, I'm thinking in a more generalized nature than Gift, so perhaps a complexity bump would be due, but still, in theory it seems possible?
My take: yes, but for anything requiring high precision (including combat) you'd generally need Finesse.
Eg. hitting harder would just make you bulldoze through the enemy (sacrificing Attack in favor of Damage).
Hitting harder but with Finesse, you could control your movements with enough precision to actually get a bonus (but personally I'd require a higher EF for the Finesse roll than what you'd need with just using your Single/Great Weapon score).
On the other hand a spell to charge towards your enemy, gaining some bonus to Initiative and Attack, but not actually being relied upon for the attack itself? Totally legitimate IMO, no need for Finesse (but perhaps an Athletics roll with low EF just to avoid tripping and falling, similar to Gift of the Frog's Leg?).
Very possible, just difficult to adjudicate due to lack of specific guidance. As long as you are ok with making up potential buffs I am ok with making up the results. 8P
I am inclined to say most such spells augment in a specific way, but that with some complexity you can broaden things a bit. But the nature of any particular buff spell/augmentation is likely at most a category of activity. Buffing more specifically I could see getting stronger results for being optimized around a particular activity instead of general. So I think you can get "general buffs" and "specific buffs" both out of such things, and they would/should function a little differently.
Generally I'd agree with your comments here. The Rego sorts of effects here using Base 10 achieve their effects mostly through optimized perfectly controlled motion. A higher base can add energy to that from extra Rego oomph, but getting all of that just right in a tactical sense involves timing and delicate control, which means Finesse.
Now I would also say human augmentation would include flat out "property" manipulation of the human body and mind to improve it either permanently (stat rituals) or temporarily. Temporary stat buffs I think via Creo are pretty self explanatory but I also think this is something that can/should be able to be done more easily with Muto. Creo has to deal with setting the base high enough to make the ritual versions appropriately scaled, and that also means temporary buffs are even higher than that. Muto inherently is temporary and therefore should arguably be easier. I think the scale of buff/improvement of the Muto Corpus Soak Bonus improvements seem reasonable for temporary stat buff spells.
Thoughts?
I think that makes sense, but not for a flat stat buff. That is, a MuCo spell can't increase Stamina directly, but it can give you a bonus to Soak by making your skin tougher, and it could give a bonus to fatigue rolls by giving you powerful lungs, or a bonus to resist cold by transforming your body hair into fur (with an Animal requisite). All of those are Stamina rolls/areas, but the bonus isn't to Stamina itself.
I'd also be wary of stuff, like... could I MuCo my body (possible Vim requisite) to withstand spellcasting better, getting a +1 to +5 bonus to spellcasting rolls (which are technically a kind of Stamina roll)? And if yes, would this break anything? Does this change the way the Order operates as a whole? Eg. would every magus walk around with a ring enchanted with a +5 version of this spell when going on important business?
I'm not saying to outrule the option for other buffs beyond Soak, but I do think that specific effects will need to be evaluated on a case by case basis (well, that's already one of the purviews of the SG, so nothing new here).