Spirit Magic
This is a catch-all term for the sort of ritual magic which is
practiced by a variety of different people on Hârn. It uses
the same basic rules as the Ritual Magic/Initiation system first
described in GURPS Voodoo, and is independent of Mana levels and
Magery and that sort of thing. All human cultures have some
form of ritual magic, and a few points in Ritual Magic is quite common
among tribal shamans and village wise-women and so on; in fact, most
organized religions probably also feature some aspects of Ritual
Magic, so priests will also have some such abilities. Most of these
people are not Initiates at all, but quite a lot are, mostly First or
Second level, but some Third level Initiates and a rare few Fourth
level Initiates are also dotted around the landscape (higher levels
of Initiation should be vanishingly rare; they are not well suited
to a "low-magic" type of campaign). The combination of Initiation
and Magery is not extremely common, but neither is it unheard of;
there seems in fact to be some correlation. The vast majority of
people with knowledge of ritual/spirit magic also know a bit of
herblore etc., as is well suited to a "wise woman" or shaman.
Extra rules on Paths and Rituals will eventually turn up here; for
now, the only change I've settled on from the standard rules in
Voodoo is that I use the same cost progression for Rituals as for
Maneuvers, just to keep things a bit more consistent.
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Last modified: Mon Mar 3 12:55:23 MET 1997