Augury, Lesser

Augury is a common spell used by Sorcerers to gain limited information about the future. This is the basic form of divination, gaining simple information about whether some event will turn out as desired.

Description

Augury is a spell used by many Sorcerers following the Divination Path to determine the auspiciousness of planned actions. Most commoners believe all Sorcerers can see the future, but only those with the powers of Divination can really gain that insight.

The use of the Augury spell allows the caster to gain a vision of whether a proposed course of action was successful or not. A failed roll gives a false vision—a lie.

The Lesser form of this spell is used to gain visions of the results of actions taken within the coming day (24 hours), and for smaller, more immediate results. An example use of Lesser Augury is to determine if an attack on a Sorcerer’s tower would be successful, or if the battle the next morning will be won.

The Greater form of the Augury spell is a Second Magnitude spell, and is for actions that take longer, or would affect a larger area or group of people. This might be whether the king should go to war with the neighboring kingdom, for example.

All Augury spells involve the use of some form of sacrifice. For Lesser Augury, this is a small animal, such as a lamb or a few toads. For Greater Augury, it would require the ritual sacrifice of a living human being. In addition, the spell always requires the use of the caster’s own blood to bind the future with the present.

Stats

Magnitude: First.
Arcane Cost: 2 AP.
Difficulty: Hard (-1).
Range: 5 miles.
Duration: 30 min.
Damage: 1d3 lifeblood.
Grimoire: Most Sorcerers who follow the Divination path will have this spell.

Casting Requirements & Process

The casting requirements for a Lesser Augury are:

• Obvious Technique. The caster must chant or sing, calling on the gods for a vision from them. (5)
• Blood. The caster suffers an additional damage of 1d3 lifeblood when the spell is cast. This is in addition to the AP cost. This is to bind the caster with the magic, and future with the present. (4)
• Ritual Sacrifice. An animal such as a lamb or 1d6 frogs must be sacrificed prior to casting the spell. (3)
• Distracted. You are slow to react for d6L rounds after using the power (penalty dice on all rolls during this period). The visions produced by any Divination spell are very powerful and have a strong hold on the mind of the caster. This leaves them distracted and vulnerable for a short period after the casting ends. (2)

Variations

The exact form of the spell is wide open to the caster. This may include sacrificing the animal(s) and sorting through its guts with a stick or burning the remains and inhaling the smoke. Feel free to go crazy here.

Design Notes

Divinations spells are tricky to write up. They are commonly found in fantasy movies and novels, but how do you actually game them with any reliability—without railroading? Still, these spells are useful in helping a story progress as well as giving players some information about what lies ahead.

For the Augury spell, I keep coming back to the concept of priests sorting through the chicken guts to tell the King if he will have a son, or if the war on the neighboring kingdom will succeed or fail. That is the mindset I am using here—basic yes/no visions, not a fully detailed crystal ball-like scrying spell.

With that in mind, I split the spell into two different levels, with a Lesser Augury for very short term, local questions and a Greater Augury for bigger, larger scale ones.

I also dialed the spell magnitude down to a First Magnitude spell for Lesser Augury and Second Magnitude for Greater Augury. The Mythic+ edition of BoL lists visions of across a city of within a lifetime as being Second Magnitude, and visions of distant lands and the ancient past as being Third Magnitude. It also lists visions of close or recent happenings as First Magnitude.

Because of the lesser amount of information being provided in an Augury spell vs. fallen Scrying, I felt comfortable listing Lesser Augury as a First Magnitude Spell and Greater Augury as Second—even if the question asked might involve something that ends up involving a distant land.

For the spell writeup itself, I wanted to keep the writeup as simple as possible, rules-wise. This is in keeping with the tone of rules-lite of BoL. You can always go crazy with how much detail you want to put in the rules about any spell, but I prefer to keep this as simple as possible and let the players and GM work it out at the table.

The writeup I do add is more for color than anything else. You can obviously use or discard all of it to fit your needs. One thing I really did want in the spell requirements is that of a sacrifice. Yes, this is a Second Magnitude requirement, but I thought it fit naturally here. Another requirement I feel should be included is the need for the caster to spill some of his own blood. This just gives the spell a dark feel, and fits great with the swords & sorcery tone.

The cost of the spell is calculated as follows:

• The base cost for a First Magnitude spell is 5 AP, with a 2 AP minimum.
• The target we are going for is the 2 AP cost. So, we pick some spell requirements to offset the 5 AP initial cost.
• Ritual Sacrifice. An animal such as a lamb or 1d6 frogs must be sacrificed prior to casting the spell. This is a base First Magnitude requirement. Cost is 5 AP.
• Obvious Technique. The caster must chant or sing, calling on the gods for a vision from them. This was another obvious requirement. Cost is reduced by 1 to 4 AP.
• Blood. The caster suffers an additional damage of 1d3 lifeblood when the spell is cast. This is in addition to the AP cost. I love this requirement, and think it helps make the cost very real to the player. Cost is reduced by 1 to 3 AP.
• Distracted. You are slow to react for d6L rounds after using the power (penalty dice on all rolls during this period). I thought this was a good compliment to the spell, with the idea being that the Sorcerer had to “bring themselves back to the real world” or something like that. Cost is reduced by 1 for a final cost of 2 AP.

Marc