[PnP] New Spells 1 of 3

[Choinski, Burton]

  1) Turn Undead: Spell will force the undead (Dead, Ghosts, Vampires,
     etc.) away from caster and its affect area.  It creates a force
     of living energy around the caster to overwhelm the dead.  Those
     affected will leave the affect area.

     Range     - (EL+1)x2" (Radius)
     Duration  - EL+1 phases
     BMC       - 1
     Alignment - Shamanic or Law

     Notes: After finishing the Priesthood spells I do realize now there
     are some spells related to this.  However, not everyone uses Priests
     and not everyone can FIND a Priest in some areas.  This alternative
     gives wizards the ability to do the same thing.  To balance it against
     the Priestly spells one could add a basic chance of failure based
     on EL since Priest's are mainly trained for it.  Because the Priests
     do use a form of spell like this it may be skipped but it does give
     a basic alternative.  


That's more a problem with the core rules.  Given how important the gods are
to the world, Priests should have been a part of the core rule books, along
with the creation rules.  For v2 this oversight can be corrected.

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  2) Energy Web [or Spider Web]

     Notes: I know astral web is there.  But that's a BMC 4 spell
       and it does more than one target.  This one just does a
       single target.  It also is 1 BMC less.  The optional rule can
       be expanded for another roll like Will or Dex and a variable
       to that like Will x2.  I use basic strength as a outline.


Because Astral web DOES exist I would think this is better of being an
actual web of sticky strands, and make it more of a Kotothi spell.

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  3) Deafness

     Notes: Blindness is great but it only does one target.  Imagine a
       caster being attacked by a small force led by a leader who shouts
       orders.  If those attackers are suddenly deaf they become confused.
       The leader would be useless and his troops would become single
       individuals rather than a distinct unit.


Silence does the same thing, though it's side effects are pretty harsh.
Deafness is more of an annoyance than a hinderance (hearing is not a
targeting sense for most races).
I would change the chaos spell to "Deadly Silence" due to it's effects and
make a Sidhe/Elder spell of Silence that just eliminates all sound within
the volume (by quelling the air spirits so that sound does not travel).  

  4) Sensory Powers


All of these spells are nice fluff, but unless the mechanics are overhauled
such that sensory tests become important I don't see them ever chosen or
even used.  Any player I have encountered, unless he is a real hairy
roleplayer will turn up his nose at these spells in favor of more practical
ones.

  5) Animal Powers 
     This family has the following member spells:
     Alignment: Shamanic

     Note: Slay the Tame, WildNess and Music could be put into
       this family group.  


Slay the tame makes no sense for this - these powers seem to imply dealing
with animals, not whacking them. :}, and is properly shamanic.  Wildness
does fit.
   A) Animal Sight

     Notes: This spell is useful for example if you cast it on a Hawk
     flying over a valley.  As he soars you can see the valley and
     see if your being followed or of other forces in the area.  The
     caster has NO control over the animal just can see through it.


Good one.  Fits the shaman mythos.

     B) Animal Disruption
        This spell is like Abandon but for Animals only.  It allows ALL
     animals in the effected radius area to suddenly go berserk or crazy.
     They will immediately react and flee the area in some fashion.  This
     affects ALL animal life in the area from the lowest Ant to the biggest
     of animals like Bear.


Problem is, it's not like abandon at all.  Having some sort of "go apeshit"
spell just to cause confusion seems kind of weak in a shaman point of view.
I would think a more useful variant would be something like "Animal Guard",
which calls any animal within the range to the caster's defense.  This could
be abstracted with the creation of some sort of "swarm" rules (which needs
to be added to P&Pv2) in which the aggregate "creature" is a swarm of birds,
rabbits, etc with some total "Hit points" to disperse and OCV+DCV total
based on the EL of the spell.  Being a swarm there are no "deadly hits"
allowed on it (no vital point)  Likewise the damage done on successful hits.
Even the AV can be upped as the spell gets higher (increased number of
entities in the swarm means your damage is eliminating a smaller percentage
at a time, perhaps even inflicting no significant impact.)  Obviously some
sort of "recharge" time is required after the spell is used (in days), or an
area you have to move (100x range) in order to be able to recast the spell.

     B) Animal Speed
        This spell increases the speed of a animal in a given range


This should be like friendly currents in that it can also SLOW a creature's
speed.

     E) Animal Talk
        This spell allows the caster to learn information from a animal.
     It is not the same as talking to the animal but the informatino gained
     is more generic.  The main use of this spell is to learn if a specific
     target was seen by the animal and how long ago it was seen.  The
     success chance is helped by the Intellect of the animal.  Per Int
     point the animal has the success chance is decreased by 5%.  Spell
     has no duration but if the spell succeeds the caster learns if the
     target was seen.  If the target was seen a mental image is projected
     to the caster by the animal of how long ago through use of the sun
     and moon.  Since animals do not judge time they can only determine
     passage of time by how the sun & moon move across the sky.  Thus if
     the animal projects the sun being at 3 o'clock and the current sun is
     straight up the time the target was seen was 3 hours prior.  The max
     time this works is 12 hours since above that the animal can't project
     a valid time.  The Caster must know the target to be tracked.  
I would chuck the percent roll and fixed result in favor of a fixed chance
based on EL and a table that details the quality of information gained based
on the INT of the creature.  An INT 1 creature may be able to respond at
best a reply of "I sensed thing like that here", with perhaps a one or two
day time frame (one day, two day, many day).  At int 6 you have human level
responses.  At Int 5 you get the low-grade moron human level responses, but
certainly more than you would get with a dog or something. 

     F) Animal Summoning


Would need to be refined a bit to differ from "Animal Guards", if that idea
is used.  Otherwise something like this is useful for the Shamanic arts.

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  6) Camouflage
     This spell acts like a Chameleon and will hide the person in the
  terrain he is in.  It does not act like an illusion but simply distorts
  the terrain and phyiscal appearance of the person TO those who are seeing.


I would say that anything that starts to distort the terrain starts to bring
it into the realm of wizardry.  Simply saying that the person takes on
color/texture of the terrain will mesh with the spell name and purpose.
This differs from elf invisibility since in that case the forest is actively
helping the elves (branches bend slightly to cover exposed portions, or the
canopy alters so that light dappling makes it harder to see the target, the
ground absorbs the noise of movement, etc.



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