Witches

[Lord Jub-Jub]

I've recently had some new players introduced to me and we've been trying to figure out what they want to play. They wanted to use magic but for some reason didn't want to play Mage(look, I don't know either, maybe they were intimidated by the size of the book I showed them). I've been thinking about expanding on Witchfinders' Witches for them to play and this is what I've thought up for the character creation so far but I would appreciate feedback and advice so I can fine tune it. I'm not reiterating information from the book, just noting what would be different.

Witch: The Craft
Other thought of names I've considered
Witch: The Casting
Witch: The Coven
Witch : The Conjuring
Witch: The Calling
Witch: The Burning 😉


Witch Template

Vice:
Virtue:

Experiences 0
Size 5
Speed
Defense
Initiative
Armor 0/0
Integrity 7
Health
Willpower
Mana 7
Gnosis 1

Attributes: 5/4/3
Intelligence 1
Wits 1
Resolve 1

Strength 1
Dexterity 1
Stamina 1

Presence 1
Manipulation 1
Composure 1

Skills: 11/7/4


Specialties: 3


Merits: 10
Unseen Sense: Magic (Free)

Spells:
-Gaze Of The Wise (•)

Mysteries: 1 in a mystery other than lore.
Tier 1
Lore 1
Disease
Foretelling
Fortune
Hearth
Passion

Tier 2
Health
Mind
Nature
Shadow
Twilight

Tier 3
Elements
Space
Time
Transmutation

Buying a dot in a Mystery costs 3xp and automatically grants you the spell for that rank.
Gnosis ranks can be bought for 5xp to a maximum of 10.
Once Gnosis reaches rank 5 the witch is subject to Paradox as per Witchfinders. Once Gosis reaches 6 or higher the witches attributes can be raised above the human maximum up to their ranks in Gnosis(I.E a witch with Gnosis 7 can raise strength to 7 but not 8).
The effects of paradox worsen at Gnosis 7 and Gnosis 9, causing 2 points of bashing damage then 3 respectively.
Witches have a sort of unseen sense, they can detect magical creatures and phenomena much like the merit but they are not limited to a single type. They do not have instinctual knowledge of what they are sensing, they only get the feeling.

[Morty]

The thing about Witches in Wtichfinders is that they're written as antagonists in more ways than just the mechanics. They're meant to be something the PCs react to. So what would they be like as PCs? Would they keep the mages' themes of mystery and chasing it, but without the powerful and free-form magic?

[21C Hermit]

Aside from Witches, I also recommend the 1e Second Sight book. It contains organizations who practice magic, and there's much you can grab from there.

[Lord Jub-Jub]

Morty I think it wouldn't be fruitful to just make discount mages. I don't tend to think on themes though, or at least set themes for a particular splat as I just run what I feel works best for the players. One reason I was given by the players was that they wanted to see a witchhunt from the perspective of the witch and Mage isn't great for that in my opinion, plus I don't really like running Mage so it wouldn't be fun for me either. I think I'll have to dust off my occult knowledge I gained from my Wiccan mother and grandmother before I converted to really hit on any particular themes.

So far what I have out of my players is that they want to explore the themes of envy and the cycle of revenge. A witch becomes envious of a mortal and casts a curse, only to set off a chain of events leading to the townsfolk breaking out the torches and the pitchforks. A mortal grows envious and condemns and innocent, the innocent is visited by a demon and taught magic to right the wrong, punishes the mortal and starts the cycle all over again.

Now that I think about it, the theme could be something about cycles. Feed the right wolf and all that jazz. I don't know, these are just the idle thoughts of an insomniac as he tries to sleep at the moment.

[Lord Jub-Jub]

And they sent me this when trying to describe what they wanted, they like describing things in terms of music.

https://www.youtube.com/shared?ci=-Cht_LN2QrI

Mostly I'm focused on the hard numbers at the moment.

[21C Hermit]

A cycle of self-destruction started by envy? Demons teaching magic to mortals? World of Darkness: Inferno might also grab your interests.

[Michael]

One potential idea would be adding the casting times from Mage 2e whilst removing instant casting. That way, your players will have to be much more strategic in their use of magic, and they will probably struggle to take Hunters on in direct combat, plus they can be captured by Hunters.

Thinking back, I think you'd need to modify some of the mysteries to interact with the long casting times; telekinetic attacks aren't much use if you need a three hour warm up period.

[Lord Jub-Jub]

I'm not sure that I have enough spells to start with, as it stands they'll just end up with two 1 dot spells. I'm thinking letting them put three in one mystery, two in another then the free one in lore. Or they can choose to put two points in lore, making it a three, two in another and then one. That would give them six spells with the highest being a three dot.

[Morty]

Morty I think it wouldn't be fruitful to just make discount mages. I don't tend to think on themes though, or at least set themes for a particular splat as I just run what I feel works best for the players. One reason I was given by the players was that they wanted to see a witchhunt from the perspective of the witch and Mage isn't great for that in my opinion, plus I don't really like running Mage so it wouldn't be fun for me either. I think I'll have to dust off my occult knowledge I gained from my Wiccan mother and grandmother before I converted to really hit on any particular themes.

So far what I have out of my players is that they want to explore the themes of envy and the cycle of revenge. A witch becomes envious of a mortal and casts a curse, only to set off a chain of events leading to the townsfolk breaking out the torches and the pitchforks. A mortal grows envious and condemns and innocent, the innocent is visited by a demon and taught magic to right the wrong, punishes the mortal and starts the cycle all over again.

Now that I think about it, the theme could be something about cycles. Feed the right wolf and all that jazz. I don't know, these are just the idle thoughts of an insomniac as he tries to sleep at the moment.

That's entirely fair, and if you want mortal witch-hunters to be a threat, then Mage definitely isn't the right game to run it with. Envy and circle of revenge seems like a solid theme, at least to start with.

I'm not sure if long casting times are a good idea, though. It's not much fun if the players can't actually use their power in most scenes, because they've got no time. It might make sense from a "balance" perspective, but I don't think it makes for good gameplay.

[Michael]

I'm not sure if long casting times are a good idea, though. It's not much fun if the players can't actually use their power in most scenes, because they've got no time. It might make sense from a "balance" perspective, but I don't think it makes for good gameplay.

It depends on your expectations. If you're wanting to sling fireballs and stuff then yeah it's going to be very annoying. But if you set it out ahead of time to your players it's really not an issue. I'm playing in a game at the moment where the magic works something like this, and it works fine. You just have to adjust your expectations, which if they've never played mage they well not have in the first place.

Alternatively you could just use the higher Gnosis casting times. 3 hours is admittedly a long time.

[SunlessNick]

So far what I have out of my players is that they want to explore the themes of envy and the cycle of revenge. A witch becomes envious of a mortal and casts a curse, only to set off a chain of events leading to the townsfolk breaking out the torches and the pitchforks. A mortal grows envious and condemns and innocent, the innocent is visited by a demon and taught magic to right the wrong, punishes the mortal and starts the cycle all over again.

Based on this, I think I second the recommendation of Second Sight. The Merits in Second Sight (and qualities granted by pacts in Inferno) are more discrete and disconnected from one another than the structured Mysteries, which makes it easier to tailor what an individual gets in response to their particular flavour of envy. Gnosis and Source wouldn't be too hard to import into them (second Sight Merits normally work via Willpower).

The other side of jealousy could come into play as well: people want to keep what they have, be it power, wealth, people, or prestige, and can fall into means beyond the pale to do so. Mortals can envy the witch's power, not realising that it's born in the same weakness. Mm, it sounds good.

What about "Covetous" as a subtitle? Evokes coven or covey phonetically, but references the envy theme.

[Vent0]

You could mix and match Thaumaturges and Witches as well - let characters utilize Thaumaturgy rituals pretty freely, and keep their access to Mysteries (from Witchfinders) fairly restrictive. That way they have a few tricks they can call on quickly, but still have a range of magical abilities they can use when they have more time.

[Dataweaver]

Has anyone suggested using the monster templates and Dread Powers from Mortal Remains?

[Lord Jub-Jub]

Has anyone suggested using the monster templates and Dread Powers from Mortal Remains?

I just use that for monsters, it's not on the table for PC use. This is an old topic though, I've already settled on what I want to do with it.

[Octavo]

I've recently had some new players introduced to me and we've been trying to figure out what they want to play. They wanted to use magic but for some reason didn't want to play Mage(look, I don't know either, maybe they were intimidated by the size of the book I showed them). I've been thinking about expanding on Witchfinders' Witches for them to play and this is what I've thought up for the character creation so far but I would appreciate feedback and advice so I can fine tune it. I'm not reiterating information from the book, just noting what would be different.

Witch: The Craft
Other thought of names I've considered
Witch: The Casting
Witch: The Coven
Witch : The Conjuring
Witch: The Calling
Witch: The Burning 😉


Witch Template

Vice:
Virtue:

Experiences 0
Size 5
Speed
Defense
Initiative
Armor 0/0
Integrity 7
Health
Willpower
Mana 7
Gnosis 1

Attributes: 5/4/3
Intelligence 1
Wits 1
Resolve 1

Strength 1
Dexterity 1
Stamina 1

Presence 1
Manipulation 1
Composure 1

Skills: 11/7/4


Specialties: 3


Merits: 10
Unseen Sense: Magic (Free)

Spells:
-Gaze Of The Wise (•)

Mysteries: 1 in a mystery other than lore.
Tier 1
Lore 1
Disease
Foretelling
Fortune
Hearth
Passion

Tier 2
Health
Mind
Nature
Shadow
Twilight

Tier 3
Elements
Space
Time
Transmutation

Buying a dot in a Mystery costs 3xp and automatically grants you the spell for that rank.
Gnosis ranks can be bought for 5xp to a maximum of 10.
Once Gnosis reaches rank 5 the witch is subject to Paradox as per Witchfinders. Once Gosis reaches 6 or higher the witches attributes can be raised above the human maximum up to their ranks in Gnosis(I.E a witch with Gnosis 7 can raise strength to 7 but not 8).
The effects of paradox worsen at Gnosis 7 and Gnosis 9, causing 2 points of bashing damage then 3 respectively.
Witches have a sort of unseen sense, they can detect magical creatures and phenomena much like the merit but they are not limited to a single type. They do not have instinctual knowledge of what they are sensing, they only get the feeling.

I like what you're doing here! I once tried to make Witches playable. It was kind of a dismal failure, but I collected a lot of information from various sources and workshopped a few ideas here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...it?usp=sharing in case you're interested.