Favorite Character Build

[Gumby Bush]

My preferences lie in the direction of the manipulative, sneaky, and magical--pick at least two.

I like to have a wide array of options and to be non-gear-dependent, so my characters tend towards broad, often magically augmented, ability rather than depth in any particular area.

[oneofmanynameless]

Originally Posted by CeeDub

Also (hedge) witches, for which oneofmanynameless' list will be extremely useful in the future.

=) I'm glad someone will get use out of it. It's the product of a lot of work and experience trying to create a very good "magic" or "witchy" feeling with powers instead of skill based magic systems. Obviously using the complete list can be hundreds of CP in powers. A budget version would loose a lot of abilities. The most important ones to keep, imo, are:
- TK (I like making my TK accomplished by manipulating plants, using either environmental (plants) or animation and plants only, but that's just one option. Affects insubstantial is specifically on there so you can "bind" spirits. If you can power stunt for abilities on default you could buy an affects insubstantial binding attack to lay a binding on a spirit that doesn't require you to concentrate!)
- Illumination
- Terror (the real use for this is like, "Hey look. I'm really important. Listen to me!" in social situations or, "Cower! You've offended a witch!" in potential combat scenarios.)
- Familiar
- Wild talent or modular points for rituals (wild talent is cheaper on a budget)
- detect magic or medium or something, a way to sense magic and figure out what's going on with curses and stuff.
- Oracle or empathy or Clairsentience or something, some way to use magic to figure out what is going on out there in the world.
- stunting resources for getting tricky (mostly with TK)
- Cunning Folk talent.

[AlexanderHowl]

Modular Abilities tend to be cheaper in my experience. For example, Modular Abilities 8 (Slotted Cosmic Powers; Magical, -10%; Preperation Required, 1 hour, -50%; Trait-Limited, Magical Skills Only, -20%) [10]. It takes an hour of preparation before you can allocate the points but you have the magical skill until you reallocate the points. Of course, Wild Talent is cheaper when it comes to abilities.

[oneofmanynameless]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Modular Abilities tend to be cheaper in my experience. For example, Modular Abilities 8 (Slotted Cosmic Powers; Magical, -10%; Preperation Required, 1 hour, -50%; Trait-Limited, Magical Skills Only, -20%) [10]. It takes an hour of preparation before you can allocate the points but you have the magical skill until you reallocate the points. Of course, Wild Talent is cheaper when it comes to abilities.

Ah. Yes. I'm assuming that this is for a game that does not use skill based magic systems such as GURPS Magic or Ritual Path Magic. If you do use those systems than there are much cheaper ways to create solidly "witchy" characters than my list of powers.

If you want modular abilities to work as "ritual magic" for a witch then it usually needs physical, mental, and (depending on if summoning spirits can be done) social. Even with substantial limitations it tends to be much more expensive then Wild Talent (Ability use). You do benefit from the extra expense as it allows far more regular use of rituals to solve problems. But if you're using additive modifiers, are on a budget, and are trying to do everything with powers, then Wild Talent is cheaper for the occasional ritual (I think.)

Obviously there are versions of modular points that could be very cheap, such as ones that have very few points. But those are correspondingly very limited in what you can do with them. Then you get into a sort of apples and oranges comparison of, "Any power perk I want with a few minutes examining my grimoire" vs. "once per session I can do a 10 minute ritual to do some cool magical power I don't have (with 30+ cp worth of levels if in question!)"