House rule modification for Wyters

[JRE]

As mentioned in the Bless Pregnancy thread, I was unhappy with the wyter rules, but I had not articulated it. But I think I have a workable system that although it makes wyters more powerful and active than in the rules, it also fits with the sources and the setting. As I am working a lot with sorcery users, I have also added some flavor for wyters in sorcerous areas. That also means the wyter “manager” may not be a runepriest or runelord, especially in areas with less cultic emphasis, so I call it “wyter link” rather than High Priest.

The idea is to have abandoned or lost wyters that persist after the loss of their community, and that can be relinked and reinstated by recreating the community. It is also intended to make old communities, whether it is a military regiment or a village that has persisted for a thousand years, stronger that new ones, to highlight the strong tendency to recreate an old community rather than make a new one, because if you can access the old wyter it will be much stronger than a brand new wyter.

Wyters are community spirits. As such they are linked to people and not to a place, even if it may well reside in a location and not have moved in centuries. That separates them from Spirit loci. If the people move, they can take the wyter with them. However, the wyter can survive without people with their own stats. Finding an orphan wyter and linking to it is usually preferrable to making up a new wyter.

Wyters over the fourth level in the table (1000-3000 people) are functionally demigods and reside in the hero plane most of the time. That makes them very powerful but distant, requiring specific contact and manifesting usually only in Holy Days and major celebrations. They are not normally available as discorporate spirits, except when ordered by the wyter link. That distance makes many people support their local quarter or clan wyter rather than the whole city or tribe wyter.

Initial POW, INT and CHA depend on the source of the spirit that becomes the wyter. If one person, it is their stats what form the basis of it. If a sacrifice or a cult spirit, that is the starting point. CHA increases by 2 pts each increase in size and decreases by 2 each decrease. It can also increase and decrease by fame and events, like a character. A wyter can act with its own initiative independent of its wyter link, if aware of a need, but that usually requires the wyter to be physically present. People who are part of a wyter’s community may ask for its intercession by rolling a POW roll in a percentile, but without actual POW loss. Special circumstances (proximity to the housing object, importance of the person to the wyter or their link) may increase the chance by x2 or x3.

Maximum POW is the same as in the rules, but the wyter, if it has a cultic allegiance, can sacrifice Permanent POW to get RP, though they only refresh RP once a year, in their own holy day. It can also use matrixes embedded on their physical form, and it can learn and use sorcery and spirit magic, within the limits of its INT. It can also spend POW to enchant its holding object or animal, but it cannot enchant other objects or people. Sorcerous wyters usually spend their POW to empower matrixes with the spells they know. As usual maximum RP are linked to CHA. Some wyters may even get shamanic powers, but they never can grow a fetch.

The linked person may not have an ally spirit or a fetch, as the wyter takes that same spiritual space. They communicate in the same way, and they can use any spell known by each other, and share RPs and MPs.

In addition to its personal power, the wyter also has a Community POW pool, with a maximum value the same as the table, and used in the same way as described in the rules. The wyter only can use the Community pool as directed by the linked person, never on its own initiative. The special multicast effect can only used on spells cast using the community pool, not by using the wyter’s RP. A sorcerous wyter can also use its community pool to increase the targets of a sorcerous spell, with the same ratio, 1 POW every five targets. The Community pool is during the wyter’s holy day, depending on the wyter, and must be refilled afterwards.

The wyters gain personal POW by POW gain rolls. They get a 5% chance every high holy day, and each five POW or fraction of POW sacrificed over the maximum by the community.

Wyters also receive MPs in community celebrations and events, and can hold the excess MPs, up to double its POW, for one week, and higher amounts for one day. They can only receive POW during the wyter’s holy day or in a special ceremony officiated by the wyter link and the donors. Without a link a wyter cannot receive or use Community POW, but it can still act with its own abilities, limited by its own perception and mobility.

Many wyters, especially old ones, have their holy day in the Sacred Time, because they have forgotten or lost any memory of the past. The remaining Community Pool will be used up in strengthening the community in some way, but also may go to the general Sacred Time ceremonies.

[davecake]

I think wyters are spirits that are magically linked to a community. Before they are linked to the community they are a different form of spirit. If they lose the link, they revert to what they were before (though weaker without the community support).

Wyters probably gain new powers from community heroquests and great rituals. 

[AlexS]

On 6/15/2023 at 6:22 PM, JRE said:

Wyters over the fourth level in the table (1000-3000 people) are functionally demigods and reside in the hero plane most of the time. That makes them very powerful but distant, requiring specific contact and manifesting usually only in Holy Days and major celebrations. They are not normally available as discorporate spirits, except when ordered by the wyter link. That distance makes many people support their local quarter or clan wyter rather than the whole city or tribe wyter.

I really like the idea of a kind of 'Wyter gradient', where their accessibility (i.e. how easy it is to communicate directly with them and call on their aid in times of need) is inversely correlated with their level of power.

That allows the wyter of a small warband or city block/insula to function as a kind of allied spirit for the leader (warband captain or neighbourhood boss) and participate directly in RQG encounters, while at the other end of the gradient you can only engage with a wyter with City God status like Wilms (or beyond that an actual deity like Pavis, Glamour or the Patron Goddess of an Esrolian city) through Cult-based worship.

However, at this upper end of the scale I think their intervention is likely to be mostly via granting Rune Magic, and getting the wyter to manifest should not be simply 'when ordered by the wyter link' but should be a really big deal, something that is costly/risky for both the wyter and their community and only done at times of dire need. Argrath's warlock units are hacking the wyter mechanic to get wyters with levels of power that would not normally be able to manifest directly to intervene routinely on the battlefield – if this kind of manifestation is easily available from the wyters of large communities then doesn't Argrath's innovation lose its shock value?

Where I think there is most room for experimentation and creativity is around the middle of the gradient (beginning with what the RQG rulebook calls the 'Shrine, Village, or Company' level of 101–250 worshippers and 5D6+6 POW). This is where I can see real value for a system that, as you put it, 'makes wyters more powerful and active than in the rules'. They can exercise more direct agency, which may involve not just protecting the community but also nudging it to serve their own long-term agenda (Andrew Logan Montgomery's 'Company of the Dragon' illustrates this really well).

This kind of medium-sized wyter can also do fun gameplay-enhancing stuff like teaching secret skills, most obviously if it is a functional one like the presiding spirit of a crafting guild, but potentially also if they are the wyter of a military regiment that fights in a unique way. For example, people have pointed out on another thread that pike and shield tactics are quite widely known, so maybe the Sun Domers' edge actually comes not from these tactics per se but from phalanx-boosting skills and/or magic to which they have access via their specifically Yelmalion unit wyters?

Not sure if it's directly relevant, but in thinking about wyters for something I'm writing with a couple of co-authors I also decided that we probably needed a new lore skill, Community Lore, to represent wyter-based knowledge. This covers familiarity both with the history/origin myths of the wyter (and awareness of the kinds of secret knowledge it can impart to the initiated) and with the more practical aspects of community membership. This is most relevant when the community is a mobile or wide-ranging one like a guild or regiment, not when it is one that's identified with a particular territory like a clan or tribe (Customs and Homeland Lore have this covered for clans and tribes). Our suggestion is that if you know the Community Lore for your own redsmithing guild, Humakti Battalion or Heartland Corps regiment you can use the insights this gives to augment the effectiveness of attempts to influence members of a similar community (rolling against this skill but applying a penalty if they have patron deities that are different from your own community's or come from a more distant region). That's an example of the kind of gameplay-enhancing (or maybe just gameplay-complicating?) mechanic you can derive from thinking about wyters and how they relate to communities of different kinds.