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ElFenrir
Alrighty, well, i finally typed the damn thing out. Comments, suggestions, please. I havn't had a chance to playtest this yet, and I still have to do a little bit of tweaking of spirits, but this SR4 'create your own tradition' thing is great, I gotta say.

Tarot Magician Tradition:

Drain: Willpower+Intuition. Tarot magic is much more 'intuitive' than logical.
Spirits:(individual powers still pending. Most will copy their elemental counterpart however.)

Light: Use stats as Fire.
Dark: Use stats as Water.
Mind: Use stats as Air.
Body: Use stats as Earth.
Soul: Use stats as Man.

Tarot magicians follow a particular 'card' as their 'idol' or 'totem' as you will. They refer to them as Mentor Spirits, much like Shamans or Idol worshippers, and they have advantages and disadvantages to each one. Tarot Fetishes are always some sort of cards of some kind...usually the Minor Arcana cards(5 of cups, 7 of swords, etc.) The Major Arcana are what are represented in the Mentor Spirits.

I took the basic descriptions from a Tarot site, and from what bit of knowledge of Tarot cards I have, and made the spell/spirit/skill adjustments from there.

I feel that some of the Mentor Spirits might have too harsh of penalties for their benefits in a couple of cases, and vice versa. Anyone is welcome to give some feedback there, as I really would like to balance them well.

There are 22 Major Arcana...0-21. Im not sure what they're going to call their Lodges or anything yet, but that will just be for flavor and the like.

[ Spoiler ]


Alright, i used outside sources for Tarot for this, as my knowledge of the Tarot is not perfect. But i think i might have something here.
Squinky
Pretty damn good.
Eyeless Blond
Well, as to Mentors, keep in mind that they're no longer free, so they should provide a bit more bonus than penalty. Thus, those that have neither bonus nor penalty really aren't Mentor spirits anymore.
ElFenrir
Ah, you're right. I am still thinking a bit 'SR3' ish here. Well, luckily, that's only the Fool, so i'll just need to tweak that one a bit. All the others have bonuses and penalties that go with them. The old totems and mentor spirits don't seem too unchanged from SR3.

Thanx for pointing that out. I'm not sure what i want to do with the Fool, though, with the 'Coyote' like aspect about it. I'd let put a rule in to let the PC choose a benefit and a hinderance, but then you'll end up with a bunch of '+2 Combat spells, -2 Illusions or -2 Spirit or something. Unless I perhaps give a set of bonuses or penalties they can choose from (+2 Combat and Light spirits, -2 Health, OR +2 Detection and Illusion, -2 Manipulation, OR...etc, etc.) Might work and keep with the ideals.
Ophis
Interesting, not sure if I agree with the take you found on some of the Majors, death and the devil mostly.

Death leaves plenty of lose ends, the person who dies just gets to ignore them...

The devil is in my eyes more to do with being controlled by basic instincts, I really don't like that whole "no soul" bit.

I wouldn't probably do the Majors as mentors as the major arcana represent spirts less than they do the magician (or if you believe some civilisation), the magician move thru them as stages of developement starting as the fool, unaware of his potential and the trial he faces, becoming each card in turn. Maybe you could tie it to initiation grade maybe as titles.

As to the spirit types, i'll admit I'm against adding lots of new types so I'l make these suggestions based on the normal ones. The suit is the important bit to a user of tarot

Combat - Air (or fire depend who you read), the suit of swords (aggresive, desisive)
Detection - Man, the Major Arcana (the model of your soul, know yourself and understand the world around you)
Health - Earth, the suit of Disks (material things, the physical world)
Illusion -Water, the suit of Cups (compassion, emotion)
Manipulation - Fire (or air see above), the suit of wands (will, control)

These definitions are taken from my own reading so work for me.

If you do want to make the majors as mentors, and I can understand that the basic set up for them is

Bonus +2 to specified magic test, skill, or other test. and another one of these.
Hinderance -1 to specific magic test, skill, or other test.

As you can see much more benefit.

hmm this post has gone on for a while I'll stop for the mo...
Jestercat
That's not bad...if you want some help, I have a friend who seems to be quite the expert Tarot reader and has a good interpretation of the meanings. She's a bit dense for these forums, but I can put you in touch with her if you'd like. smile.gif

Good work though. Heck...I'm almost tempted to drop my hacker for the upcoming marathon game and play one of these.
Apathy
QUOTE (ElFenrir @ Dec 19 2005, 10:12 PM)
Light: Use stats as Fire.
Dark: Use stats as Water.
Mind: Use stats as Air.
Body: Use stats as Earth.
Soul: Use stats as Man.

Would you try to work out any correspondance between these and the suites of the tarot (eg. wands/air, cups/water, swords/fire, pentacles/earth)?
TheHappyAnarchist
I second the suits as spirits and such.

Combat - Fire - Swords
Manipulation - Air - Wands/staves
Illusion - Water - Cups
Health - Earth - Coins
Detection - Man - Minor Arcana Card Numbers.
They interpret and influence the major components of the other suits, telling you what they mean.
ElFenrir
Ahh, thanks for the input.

As for the Death and Devil abilities, again, I was basing it off of some of the research I did, and i'm not the expert I wish I was. Some of these might be a LITTLE off, but then again, there are a few of the Totem bonuses and penalties i find strange. Still, tho, i appreciate the input and sort of see where you are coming from. The Devil one in particular was done for some flavor, and balance(it's pretty powerful).

I do think I will tweak the minuses tho. As i said, part of me is still 3e and forgets you have to BUY your mentor spirit(I was one who when converting my shaman was like 'what??'). Think of this as version 0.99 of the Tarot tradition. biggrin.gif

I do REALLY like the idea of swords/cups/etc being the spirits!! And i think that will be tied in. Thanx for that! I'll just type them up a little later today, along with some tweaking of the negatives to all the Spirits.

And i wouldn't mind being in touch with the Tarot expert. Might help me finish tweaking them up a bit.

Glad it's at least worth the attempt, though.
Apathy
QUOTE (ElFenrir)
Ahh, thanks for the input.

As for the Death and Devil abilities, again, I was basing it off of some of the research I did, and i'm not the expert I wish I was. Some of these might be a LITTLE off, but then again, there are a few of the Totem bonuses and penalties i find strange. Still, tho, i appreciate the input and sort of see where you are coming from. The Devil one in particular was done for some flavor, and balance(it's pretty powerful).

Just my personal opinion, but I think Hanged Man is also a little strong, and Wheel of Fortune a little weak. (On the Wheel of Fortune, does anybody have any ideas on how it might have a minor positive effect on Edge without being overpowering?)

QUOTE (ElFenrir)
I do REALLY like the idea of swords/cups/etc being the spirits!! And i think that will be tied in. Thanx for that! I'll just type them up a little later today, along with some tweaking of the negatives to all the Spirits.

Perhaps summoning a force 4 spirit of cups would look like the illustration on the 4 of cups card (albeit with stats like a force 4 water elemental). Attacks could be delivered with the cup/stave/sword/bag of coins, and great forms could manifest as pages (force 1-3)/knights (4-6)/queens (7-9)/kings(10+) of their suite?
Ophis
This is definatly developing in an interesting direction, I'm currently toying with the idea of playing a tarot user at some point.

The spirit type/spell type thing is 4th ed standard rules, I'm tying in the correspondences of the suits. There is some discussion as to whether wands or swords are fire, I go with wands as wand is the opposing suit to cups (definatly water). I'm with Crowley on this.

I recommend that you hunt down books one and two of alan moore's promethea series as these cover the tarot suits and the major arcana well, in a fun form to read. I am as yet not a tarot expert but I am working on it (at the mo reading crowley's book of thoth)
I will try to keep adding my opinion as we go on.


Hey jestercat, I'd be interested in talking to your friend about tarot stuff, always looking to expand my knowledge.
ElFenrir
Hell, Crowley's Thoth tarot could almost be a whole nother tradition by itself. But Crowley's writings had inspired me to do yet ANOTHER tradition...but more on that later...wink.gif
ogbendog
FOr fool, you could say that any torot magician without a Mentor sprit get's Fool for free.

And he might send dreams and such as other mentor spitrits do, it's just that they are never helpful.
PlatonicPimp
I am doing something similar in my game, but to the party technomancer. She is a changeling with a third eye, and works in a sideshow as a false medium, using here technomancer abilities to hack up some info taht "She couldn't possibly know" in order to bolster her show.

As of last week all her sprites have started to take tarot symbology. Data and courier sprites appear as the suite of swords. Fault sprites are wands. Machine sprites are pentacles and that last type of sprite (I can't recall at the moment) are cups. The number corresponds to the rating. The minor arcana are converted into 11-14, while the major arcana will be any higher rating sprites, or great form sprites, or whatever. She's not cool enough yet for me to worry about it.

When she gets her first submersion level, I plan on hitting her with the info sortiliage Echo (Which I've converted from 3rd ed.) Imagine her shock when her "False" predictions come true....
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