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The Weaver |
| 2020-12-02 |
The Weaver
The Weaver is a spellcaster class we are experimenting with in your beers and dragons campaign.
It is heavily inspired by Fabien Cerutti's novels about the Bâtard de Kosigan. Unlike our campaign, the novels are set in the fourteenth century, around 1340 in a fantasy Europa where France, England, and Burgundy fight. The church keeps a tight eye on spellcasters and on non-human races, and crusading against them if necessary. It is a very inspiring piece of fantasy fiction, but sorry, it has not yet been translated to english :-(
This weaver class is a kind of modified sorcerer. It rests on Wisdom (not Charisma) as spellcasting ability and on Constitution. Casting spells costs weave points. There is one free weave point per level between rests. Casting a spell costs one weave points per spell level. Cantrips cost 0 weave points, or 1 weave point in lieu of a material component.
Extra weave points can be had by converting hit points (1 per round and per level), hit dice (hence they can't get used at the next short rest), exhaustion levels, Strength or Constitution points. Weave point source have thus been listed by order of severity.
At sixth level, weavers gain the opportunity to tap weave points from victim hit points. One could imagine a servant willingly offering some of his blood for his or her master weaver to cast spells with more leeway. One could also think of a weaver touring with rats or chickens and bleeding them for weave points.
There is also a dice roll involved each time a weaver casts a spell (with dedicated critical failure or success effects). Weaving the magical threads is difficult and fortune may be an adversary.
For now, I, as the GM, decide what spell the weaver character in our campaign gets. I have given him "Mage Hand" (can), "Fire Bolt" (can), "Chill Touch" (can), "Light" (can, 1WP instead of the material component), "Entangle" (lvl1), "Magic Missile" (lvl1).
Fabien Cerutti talks about "weaving the source", "weaving the font", I try to select spell that orbit these ideas, and I try as well to describe the spell casting and effectuation with concept of magical threads being put in torsion by the weaver. I have to take the time to draw a list of spells that match a weaver.
The weaver in our group has so far seen only one session, he has used "Light" and "Fire Bolt". We'll see how he fares in second session and third session of our campaign. Anders (that's his name) is a naufraged Norwegian. He met Oswald and Gerald (as well as Rudgers) and they communicate in some kind of lingua germanica. The Saxons have determined there is something magical about him, they treat him with respect, he is special and helpful.
I have received a ton of good advice from the Adventuring Party people. I have to carefully watch how this character fares alone and in the party. It's an experiment, it may well fail, let's have fun.
Here is the current version of the Weaver class we're using:
