Revised Spirit

[Dataweaver]

The purpose of this hack is to redefine the Spirit Arcanum to be centered primarily on “spirit” (the nonphysical part of a person that is the seat of emotions and character), with the historical “spirits” definition (an ephemeral entity tied to animist beliefs) being a secondary effect. To do this, I'm importing spells from Mind and Life that involve emotions and instincts into Spirit. The Life and Mind Arcana are unchanged.

This is a placeholder post for the time being; I'll elaborate further when I'm not on duty.

Spells imported from Life
• Speak with Beasts
•• Control Instincts
••• Animal Minion: instead of Patterning Life, this is Weaving Spirit.

More generally, spells that allow you to sense or manipulate animals' mental processes can be done through Spirit, and such spells are at least as easy as their Life counterparts.

Spells imported from Mind
• Know Nature
•• Emotional Urging
•• First Impressions
•••• Terrorize
••••• Amorality

More generally, the spells adapted from Mind are ones that let yo manipulate emotions, virtue, vice, and/or willpower. Thoughts, memories, language, and perceptions are out of bounds.

---

A major motivation behind this hack is to get around the Thyrsus “weakness” of being Ecstatics who have no ready access to peoples' visceral experiences. The other motivation is to give Spirit something to do that doesn't involve animistic entities.

More to come.

[Mrmdubois]

Pretty sure a Thyrsus can invoke visceral experiences pretty handily with Life, and they can do it with Spirit by screwing with the Resonance that people are capable of producing. For instance, if you cursed a person to generate only Happy Essence then they'd not only be stuck in a state of Happy, because of your spell, in order to generate it, but they'd attract and generate spirits of Happiness that would force them to continue providing food.

[Ephsy]

That's hardly a hack.

Thing is, Thyrsus wreak havok to a person's animalistic urges with Life. That's the Ecstatic part - usually centered around themselves. Because it's a term that applies singularly. The Shaman part is Spirit. That's not a bug, that's a feature.

At any rate, gaining personal access to Influences with Spirit (no clue of what practice) falls into that niche too.

Nobody disagrees that certain effects of Mind are possible to be achieved with either Spirit or Life, the lack of their inclusion in the corebook is probably because an editor would balk at copy/pasting effects that have been explored elsewhere in another arcana, but that was explicitly stated that such a case may be made.

IE, you don't need to read a person's aura with mind to notice they're lying when you can perceive the little motes of falsehood around their pattern.

[Dataweaver]

Rather than get bogged down in a debate on whether or not this is a good idea (which has been debated elsewhere rather extensively), I'm going to concentrate on fleshing out the hack before I address any of the critiques. Please stand by.

[Mrmdubois]

Fair enough, wasn't aware you'd caught that one.

[Dataweaver]

I was an early contributor.

[Dataweaver]

Pretty sure a Thyrsus can invoke visceral experiences pretty handily with Life, and they can do it with Spirit by screwing with the Resonance that people are capable of producing. For instance, if you cursed a person to generate only Happy Essence then they'd not only be stuck in a state of Happy, because of your spell, in order to generate it, but they'd attract and generate spirits of Happiness that would force them to continue providing food.

Yeah; but that's tackling it from the perspective of Spirit as primarily “the animism Arcanum”. The intent here is to shift the primary focus from animism to the visceral aspect of the soul. The animism stuff is still there; but it's conceptually derived from the above.

That's hardly a hack.

Thing is, Thyrsus wreak havok to a person's animalistic urges with Life. That's the Ecstatic part - usually centered around themselves. Because it's a term that applies singularly. The Shaman part is Spirit. That's not a bug, that's a feature.

I'm not calling it a bug; I just prefer the line between Life and Spirit to be drawn differently, with instincts, emotions, and behavior falling under Spirit while Life focuses more heavily on biology. Yes, you can manipulate emotions by triggering hormones, so those spells still exist under Life; but they don't come quite as naturally to Life as they do to Spirit.

At any rate, gaining personal access to Influences with Spirit (no clue of what practice) falls into that niche too.

I'm not sure what the Practices would be, either. Appropriating spirit powers (be they Influences or Numina) for yourself strikes me as rather high-level stuff, quite possibly Making.

Nobody disagrees that certain effects of Mind are possible to be achieved with either Spirit or Life, the lack of their inclusion in the corebook is probably because an editor would balk at copy/pasting effects that have been explored elsewhere in another arcana, but that was explicitly stated that such a case may be made.

IE, you don't need to read a person's aura with mind to notice they're lying when you can perceive the little motes of falsehood around their pattern.

True enough. In this respect, consider this thread to be a discussion of what sorts of things Spirit can do that aren't detailed in the core book, rather than as an attack on the way things are done in the core book.

[Mrmdubois]

It's only the animistic part if you specifically consider what I mentioned about spirits latching onto a person you've targeted. First suggestion of "fixing" what kind of Essence they can generate isn't. I don't think it is anyway.

[Dataweaver]

Resonance and Essence are part of the animism paradigm.

[Ephsy]

I'm not sure what the Practices would be, either. Appropriating spirit powers (be they Influences or Numina) for yourself strikes me as rather high-level stuff, quite possibly Making.

I'm thinking that creating Strengthen-like effects is likely an application of Ruling; Manipulate would be an application of Weaving; Control would be an application of Patterning, and Create an application of Making. Mass Create would be the purview of Archmastery.

[Ephsy]

I'm thinking that creating Strengthen-like effects is likely an application of Ruling; Manipulate would be an application of Weaving; Control would be an application of Patterning, and Create an application of Making. Mass Create would be the purview of Archmastery.

Come to think of it? This sounds like an amazing idea for a Legacy.

[Dataweaver]

I'm thinking that creating Strengthen-like effects is likely an application of Ruling; Manipulate would be an application of Weaving; Control would be an application of Patterning, and Create an application of Making. Mass Create would be the purview of Archmastery.

Way overpowered. As is, you got people claiming that Spirit is an uber-Arcanum because you can summon spirits to do your dirty work for you; what you're suggesting effectively cuts out the middleman and bypasses what few restrictions there are to the calling on spirits “loophole”.

[Mrmdubois]

Getting an Influence you could use yourself would probably be a Life+Spirit 4 Patterning effect, Potency for number of times you can use it over the course of Duration it naturally tops out at rank 2 (Similar to a Familiar) but you can pay 2 Reach to bump it up by Potency to a maximum of rank 5. Essence costs are paid with Mana or Essence (I want it to be just mana, but to be fair Influences are normally fueled with Essence).

I figure that works, at double adepthood you could turn yourself into a spirit and morph into any kind of spirit you want (Along with associated Influences, Numina, etc) anyway so this is you staying you but with a new power. I'd say the magic isn't obvious, but using the Influence is subject to Dissonance.

[Ephsy]

Way overpowered. As is, you got people claiming that Spirit is an uber-Arcanum because you can summon spirits to do your dirty work for you; what you're suggesting effectively cuts out the middleman and bypasses what few restrictions there are to the calling on spirits “loophole”.

I mean, the Legacy I have in mind would focus on a single type of influence, chosen upon induction.

[Jakondite]

I mean, the Legacy I have in mind would focus on a single type of influence, chosen upon induction.

Have you seen the Katsinam Suukya? It did this at it's second attainment, and it's a pretty fun legacy