Shamanism/Spirit magic.

[afnord]

I'm running a fantasy Europe campaign and trying to find some good rules for shamanistic/spirit magic.

If someone could point out the best books or pyramid articles for shamanism I would be very grateful...3rd edition books included (I almost have them all..even War against the Cthorr)

I know I'll be digging around in Gurps Voodoo and Spirits and even Deadlands but any tips are welcome.

[Gef]

I like the effect-shaping path magic in Thaumatology, pretty much what it was designed for. The energy accumulation variant originally from Castle Falkenstein works great in its native system, using cards instead of dice, but I don't care for it as much in GURPS.

In my fantasy campaign, I use standard system for secular wizards, path magic for clergy. The differences? Standard system is tactical, spells cast quickly and locally usually by individuals. Path magic is strategic, slower but with long ranges, long durations, and huge areas possible for groups. Tip: Make sure you understand the ritual Fetish, and the process of Summon Spirit, Bind Spirit, and Fetish used to make items that can lock rituals for indefinite duration. Also, spirits are very important to the system, so make sure you have a collection of pre-gen spirits ready to be summoned.

[Refplace]

Depends on the power level and setting.
GURPS Voodoo and GURPS Spirits are pretty much must haves.
GURPS DF 5 Allies can give you good animal spirits anf the elemental lens for various spirits as well.
GURPS DF 9 Summoners has a Shaman class 250 point template. Decent amount of info there as well.
GURPS Thaumatology has Spiritual Distortion and Mediated magic plus Spirit Vessels and other stuff. It gives you a lot of the traits from Voodoo Fourth Edition makeovers.
GURPS Powers has a section on Shamans with powers.

And Finally dont skip on GURPS Social Engineering. It doesn't focus on Spirits but as negotiation is a key part (for that matter so is Public Speaking) in most Traditions it has some useful stuff.

So Powers or magic based and of magic which system?
Book/Path is probably the best fit but light on content and support. I have used some RPM support to help it along and Pyramid 3/66 is useful for that.
The new Incanters book is likely a good fit too, though you'll want to change some Paths. Spell Slots for simple bargains, Scripts for fetishes.
And improvised for Ceremonies.

[Gef]

>Depends on the power level and setting.

Refplace is right. The more you can tell us of the set-up, the better advice you'll get.

The "effect-shaping path/book magic system" is the same as what appeared in GURPS Voodoo and GURPS Spirits for 3e. It's a dumb name, but a good system; call it "spirit magic" if you like.

Voodoo assumed high-point characters, but I've used it with sub-100 starting characters and it scales. I'd say it's purer at the lower levels, actually. The system has a built-in hassles for the would-be magic user; a 40-point advantage lets you buy off most of the hassle. The system calls for lots of penalties when you make a spell better, off-set by lots of bonuses. With a modest skill of say 10, you can still do lots of useful things reliably because of these bonuses. The system encourages you to do most of your rituals during down-time, but you can set them up for conditional activation during an adventure.

There's a lot of subtlety to it, and several GM-determined parameters. Again, the main one is what spirits are out there for a shaman to work with, and what they know.

The process isn't explained; you have to read through all the rituals and think about their implications to get this:

1) Consecrate your sanctum; this'll take while. Without consecrated ritual space, you can't do this kind of magic (though you can perform a hasty, temporary consecration if you must work a ritual on the fly).

2) Think of or research a spirit to summon. Ultimately, this is the trickiest part, the first time you do it. Hopefully, whoever taught you to be a shaman included some guidance on this.

3) Cast Ward. By "cast" I mean perform the ritual.

4) Cast Summon Spirit so that the spirit appears within the Ward, unable to express its displeasure in any painful way. Start with a weak spirit.

5) Cast Bind Spirit. This gives you services.

6) Use all but one of the services to pump the spirit for information, especially True Names of other spirits. This step is crucial (along with good note-taking).

7) Using the last service, cast Fetish. This is the first step to making a magic item.

A fetish allows you to use the special abilities of the spirit trapped in it. For this to make sense, the GM has to come up with lots of spirits, together with what abilities they have, how difficult they are to summon and bind, and how much their abilities can be used. This is the art. Imagine a hellhound spirit with fiery breath, Innate Burning Attack 4d with Jet and Costs 2 FP, and the spirit has typically 12 FP. A shaman with a hellhoud trapped in a fetish could use that Flame Jet six times in a row. If the GM didn't set that fatigue cost, then the fetish could be used continuously forever. All depends on the power level you want.

Even if the spirit has no special abilities, the fetish can still be used to extend the duration of other rituals indefinitely, like a spell-lock from Shadowrun. For some rituals, this effectively means you made a permanent magic item that works all the time. For others, it means you perform a ritual today and trigger it later when you need it. This is kind of broken, there's no reason the weakest spirit can't sustain the most potent ritual. I think that's ripe for a house rule.

Basically, a shaman wants as many of these fetishes as he can get. The GM essentially controls the power of shamans generally by deciding on the characteristics of spirits in his game world. Lots of weak spirits, all of whom can reveal the True Names of other weak spirits, and shamans easily get all the fetishes they want. If there are lots of different kinds of these weak spirits, each with useful special abilities that cost no fatigue, then you are definitely in a high fantasy game, because the fetishes not only prolong the effects of other rituals, they provide magical powers that no ritual duplicates.

And Refplace is right, there's not much product support for the spirits used in spirit magic.

[The Colonel]

I've been meditating on this myself for a while ... it's often seemed that the range of things attributable to shamanism is so wide that in fact you might do just as well using it as a hat that you stick on pretty much anything you like with a "granted by ally" modifier for those provided by spirit allies or gadget for those which work from a fetish.
Points costs can be reduced by various disadvantages inflicted by the spirits - including taboos, disciplines of faith and compulsive behaviour resulting from possession. Remember, shamen are meant to be wierd.
If you can find it, some of the early gen Runequest material has a lot on playing shamen - shamanism is huge in Glorantha (and thus pretty big in the rules generally). One of the editions has a hilarious scene set in a market done from the shaman's perspective (with all the various spirits she is interacting with) and from the rest of the party's perspective (to whom she appears to be saying more or less random things).
But Gef's approach looks pretty cool...

[afnord]

Power level varies but the characters are around 250 points total with points from disads included.

Mages use a word based magic system converted from Ars Magica

Faeries and faerie blooded character have access to advantage based powers

Divine casters use a modified standard spell list from Gurps Magic. Power investure and a roll on the reaction table if God can be bothered to answer and grant them a miracle, where better reaction means God picks up the fatigue tab.

Diabolists make a deal with demons in exchange for powers and Demonologists are mages that can boost their magic by making that old Faustian deal.

Witches and wise women will mostly use skill based magic which I read in a article waaaayyyy back when in Pyramid. Based on the premise you can get magical effects from simple skills like midwife to soothe pain or calm animals and give them simple commands with animal handling.

Then I'm harvesting Chinese Elemental mastery if somebody shows up from the far east :)

So what I'm looking for is mostly ritual spirit magic and ideas to deal with spirits and cajole them into doing stuff. I'll probably harvest the ideas for my own system so I'm mostly looking for books or ideas that I've overlooked or forgotten. Many of my books I haven't opened in years :)
Must admit I don't have the same time as I had when I was a teenager :/

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by afnord

Power level varies but the characters are around 250 points total with points from disads included.


So what I'm looking for is mostly ritual spirit magic and ideas to deal with spirits and cajole them into doing stuff. I'll probably harvest the ideas for my own system so I'm mostly looking for books or ideas that I've overlooked or forgotten. Many of my books I haven't opened in years :)
Must admit I don't have the same time as I had when I was a teenager :/

I think Effect Shaping magic is a good bet then. Require a friendly spirit of the appropriate type and power level to cast the spell. Compensate for the extra difficulty by granting a bonus if you want.

If you like that idea I might be able to refine it in a few days.