Christian Magic

[mythusmage]

If you can find a copy I recommend Ken Rolston's Charlemagne's Paladins. While an AD&D 2e book, and set in the time of Charlemagne, it still has a lot of useful information concerning the way people lived, and in what they believed.

An important thing to note is that even by the 13th century the typical Christian priest's grasp of theology etc. was not very firm. Often they were poorly educated, and had little more understanding of the Bible than the members of their congregations. Much of what in the way of pagan practices snuck into Christianity did so via rural clergy.

Where non-Christians are concerned ... Pagans and the like follow the deceptions of Satan. Jews and Moslems have the right idea, but they get the details wrong. Note that to the Christian philosophers of the time Islam was a Christian heresy. Note too that in either case the non-believer is not evil in any sense of the word, he is merely wrong. He can be corrected, but he has to want to change.

And since you are setting your campaign in the 13th century you really should consider the Mongols. Europe was spared thanks to dynastic squabbles among them, but for a time was wide open to invasion and conquest. They could be treated as the Scrouge of God, demons from hell, or historically. How you treat them will affect the shape of your world.

Last, but certainly not least, let me add my recommendation of David Chart's Medieval Player's Handbook (Green Ronin). You can order a copy through their site. One warning though, party composition is more like that in a typical game of Ars Magica, with clergy and saints taking the role of wizards, and the other classes their companions.

Hope this helps

 

[mythusmage]

I'm interested in what we, today, understand as magic, not what people called it at the time.

That makes a big difference. In which case you would have magic that is of God, and magic that is not of God. It comes down to the source. If the Wither comes of God, then it is an act of good. If the Heal Major Wounds comes not of God, then it is an act of evil.

So it's not entirely a matter of one's intentions, but more of whom one calls upon. Though intention does play a role, in that one is more apt to call upon Satan if one intends to see harm come of one's actions than God.

Take, for example, a Wither. One could Wither an arrogant man's arm to teach him humility. Or one could use Heal Major Wounds to restore a dying tyrant to health, and thus allow his reign to continue.

So it all comes down to a matter of what you mean to do with your magic, and thus who you call upon to bring the magic to pass.

Hope this helps.

 

[mythusmage]

Apparently this is called apotropaic magic and it thought to account for about 80% of all pre-Renaissance magic.

In Mythus this is known as Apotropaism. The school of wards, abjuration, and binding. The first level equivalent magics are Abram's Safekeep, Iron Nails, No Surprise, Protection From Blindness, Protection From Fire, and Safe Passage.

On Ærth divine magic is not granted by a diety, but is learned by studying the appropriate texts. However, the practitioner must have permission to use what he learns. He does this by adopting an ethos, a pantheon, and a deity of the appropriate ethos from that pantheon. In this sense an ethos acts much like a D&D domain, but with broader application. In your case you'll want to change this so the effect depends upon petitioning the appropriate source successfully.

 

[Qlippoth]

Yes, and if you can locate some of the ancient Babylonian and Sumerian mythology, as well as other mythologies of the near east and India which predate the Hebrew mythology, you can locate many of the central aspects and stories of the judeo-christian mythos, which is really nifty. You can even see echoes of it in other traditions, like Greek mythology. In that case, it's mostly in the creation myths, which were handed down to the Greeks from the same Babylonian-descended tradition, just through different channels so they were adapted differently.

If you can find it (got mine from a good used bookstore), try Myths From Mesopotamia: Creation, The Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others, translated by Stephanie Dalley (Oxford Press). I've been reading the Bible & Greek/Roman myth since second grade, and reading this collection REALLY draws themes together.

 

[Umbran]

I'm going to make an oddball suggestion that many might find odd...

Just use psionics, and change the flavortext.

Fantasy author Katherine Kurtz did a reasonable amount of research into old Christian rituals, and applied that to much of her fiction. Try The Temple and the Stone, or any of the Deryni books - in those books many of those who perform magic are highly religious, and the rituals and castings show it. And there's strong hinting at divine backing of magic. But, if one steps back a bit, it looks a lot like what D&D gamers would call psionics.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

Right, your really long post was difficult for me to respond to, in terms purely of my low level Forum Fu, but here's my attempt.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr. Strangemonkey
Healing - very effective but unpredictable in that it often carries with it unintended effects like revealing past crimes of the healed or granting unusual powers. "Wow! I have new leg that looks and acts utterly unlike my old leg or the other leg I've always had!"

Any thoughts on how to deal with this mechanically? I am using BRP from Runequest so there are hit locations.

Response: I'm not terribly familiar with BRP. Hit locations would probably help. There should be, for coolness's not necessarily accuracy's sake, some sort of very recognizable consequence of many forms of Christian healing. Might give a penalty to certain checks having to do with disguise for instance, might even grant you a reputation bonus. The thing I would do, however, would be to incorporate a save mechanic basic on some sort of alignment and reputation accounting system. Recall that many Medieval thinkers believed that healing magic worked specifically to reinforce the glory of God so reputation is a good mechanic/bonus. The actual healing might be fairly standard and reliable, but, based on your alignment, there should be additional benefits you might accrue based on the save. And it should not be linear, instead, a character with a really huge level of sin should actually be healed in a truly spectacular fashion to highlight the mercy of God, mind you it would carry with it nasty penalties to former behavior, where a character who was mostly good but guilty of some hidden nastiness would recieve a healing that would make that nastiness public through some odd disability.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr. Strangemonkey
Conversion - see above, but not actually so much limited by what you can do with it - there are a surprising number of stories where St.s do things like convert dragons only to find that God doesn't want them around - as that there are a limited number of circumstances in which to convert, conversion doesn't always solve your problems - check out the record on inter-church poisonings, and the process is very very very arduous. To my mind this would be the coolest part of Christian magic, more or less like coincedental magic in Mage where you have to carefully construct subtle but very very very far reaching effects. This covers both the evil noble who becomes repentant scenario, and the evil place that is suddenly redeemed into something really cool.

I have a bit of a problem here. Doesn't magic just make a creature receptive to conversion by removing demonic influences, cleansing its soul, calming it, etc.? Isn't the actual conversion still an act of free will?

Response: You are very right, I speak not of conversion of the will, but of the spirit. As a result it would apply to all entities with an genius, animus, or anima (please forgive if my grammar here is terrbily off). So, the conversion of the noble would represent not a forced change of his mind, but a divine transformation of the sin that burdens his soul. Exactly the same action as would occur when a mystic cleanses a pagan temple and makes it a Christian church. The people chose the conversion, the priest made it happen.

A good practical theological analogy would be the sacraments as outward signs of inward grace, but a more accurate reference would be the idea that God chooses you for justification and gives you the power to convert, your only role in the action of conversion is to choose whether or not to accept, or even oppose, God's will.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr. Strangemonkey
Authority - might be the most effective of the various forms of magic in this domain, with the unusual limitation that the use of this authority would be limited to Christian means under many circumstances. Sure you can rebuke the demon and stop him from doing just about anything, but unless you have the seal of Solomon there's not a whole lot else you can do with it. Further, you might survive the raid by the scourge of God, but he's called that for a reason.
Wonder - the Christian version of illusion, where you don't actually create comprehensible images of false things so much as incomprehensible visions of true things. Rather than creating an image of a fearsome troll you instill an image of your opponents' fear itself into their heads. This is likely to be a lot of the magic as well.

I rolled these two together because it seems like they could be done using the same mechanic. Does this make sense?

Mechanically it might, save for the fact that the Authority is an action that occurs between two individuals the wonder is an external sign manifested by one individual that the other must respond to. The Authority magic derives from the intrinsic relationship God has with one actor and the power of that actor as one favored by or serving God. The Wonder magic derives power from the relationship between God and the world, the only role of the mystic is to present the wonder to the object of its message.

More or less the difference between illusion and enchantment, so similar effects mechanically but very different means. The other thing to keep in mind is that in the 'literature' 'wonder workers' have very different standards of behavior and excellence than men of authority. The one works off of inspiration, and thus can actually be fairly far from the grace of God but is always close to the presence, and the other works of duty and propriety, and can thus be no more present to God then you and me but is firmly situated within His Grace.

This might be a good time to bring up the fact that there should be two different sources of Christian mysticism within the mystic. The medieval church had a very clear and sophisiticated idea of charisma, and this should be reflected in the magic. When people began arguing that Dominic of Sora, a medieval reformer, was holy his opponents, in the field of reformation, argued that he only had charisma as a result of his office and not his personal relationship to God. Both forms of charisma/power, that of the office and that of the person, were important and real but they had very different characters and standards of behavior.

In D20 I might go so far as to reflect this through two basic classes, or even a split within 'divine' magic analgous to that of the Arcane/Divine split in basic DnD. So that Paladins would have personal charisma/power and Caveliers that of the office.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr. Strangemonkey
Cursing - probably pretty good, but, in general, when Christian's curse they do so in the context of tremendous sacrafice or actually loosing. There should be some great counter-attack mechanics here.

Knowledge - Christian magic should not do divination at all save for granted visions, but it should be very good at letting you figure out or deduce things, particularly in defensive situations. Christian adventure mystics are incredibly good at intuition and knowing things. Hermits who have knowledge that has otherwise passed beyond reckoning on the one hand and the Bishop who shows people the way out on the other.

Blessings - Pretty good, though a lot of the benefit should depend on the people being blessed. Both the army that suddenly has Saint's fighting for them and the mystic who ends up having to reprimand those who took the mission with impure motive.

Transformation/Creation - this is likely to be the meat and drink, literally, of highly proficient Christian wonder workers. The issue is that it's going to be really indirect and mostly very altruistic. The, "Oh Thank-you Father, we would never have found that pot of gold under the chimney without your wisdom" scenario.

This all makes sense and will be adopted.

Response: Thanks!

Quote:
Spiritual duels: One system for this would cover authority and counter-magic, but I could also see it doing almost everything else as well. What it needs to do, however, is give Christian mystics an exciting way of dealing out the peaceful damage. A huge part of the Christian mystic genre are people who end combat through exciting but non-combatitive means. Right now I'm thinking of a bishop who visited England and got the Saxons to turn back by getting a village together to sing verses.

I will be using a variant of Chaosium's one on one spirit combats. But the example you offer is more like a calming effect created by a lot of people assisting the primary petitioner.

Response: I'll get to the example in a second, but I don't mean a spell like calming effect, I mean a good and true spiritual beating that precludes, or precedes, a physical one.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr. Strangemonkey
Power Points: I like the idea of a system like Conan's where you have a limited pool of constant power and the ability to beef up that power for a limited period of time through other actions, see Sacrafice above but also through long term and difficult performance, good actions one's own part, and the quality/timing of the spell's use.

I agree that this seems like the logical way to run magic and place limits on the use of abilities but the idea seems so phenomenally anti-Christian, I'm still searching for an alternative.

Response: In terms of the Anti-Christian element, here's my reasoning: a power point system where you have some innate ability that you can supplement through exterior actions/circumstances works in that it reflects the tendency of Christian mystic stories to emphasize both the excellence of the individual and that you can't actually benefit from that excellence in any great way without involving some participation from outside elements. There may be a great and holy bishop and he might be able to cure diseases, but there is no way you are stopping the plague without several great masses and processions.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr. Strangemonkey
Mystical Association: For all that Christian mystics spend much of their time fighting the supernatural, one of their big appeals is that they bring the supernatural out of the woodwork in everyway not just as antagonists. I might do something like allow an Elf in the party, but only on condition that he obey, or appear to obey, the CM's code of honor while present. Or maybe even a weird summoning mechanic.

I see what you mean here: I would be inclined to go with the elf model and simply have passive use of perception skills if they reach a very high level. A skill might be useable passively only at -10 or -15; thus, one would need +11 or +16 in the skill in order for it to go off passively and notice the lurking demons.

Response: I like this mechanic a lot, but what I also refer to is the role of Satan in the life of St. Anthony the Great, far earlier than the time period in question but incredibly influential for that time period, where St. Antony fights demons and devils and Satan himself all the time and both sees and sees through them, as above, but there is also an episode where Satan just shows up and begins talking to him. It's very cool Satan has the tone of a dedicated opponent comisserating with a worthy adversary.

Satan basicly says, "Man St. Antony if people start becoming as awesome as you are there are going to be Monks all over the desert [conversion magic] and I'm going to be left with nothing to do."

To which St. Antony responds, "Well, if you weren't such a pathetic jerk this wouldn't be a problem for you."

You don't get the impression this sort of personal attention is shared by everyone and there are plenty of other tales where both evil and good things show up just to talk over and above the plot.

And that little bit is important not only for demonstrating how the supernatural just shows up, but also exactly how a passive, utterly good, and intellectual character can be a superheroic badass.

Quote:
Congregations: Need very elegant rules for congregations and how they work to expand the scope and effectiveness of simple effects. This could easily work with a power point system.

Or just the "assist" mechanic with a high threshold like 20; this is especially sensible when one deals with the phenomenon of rulers assigning masses of clergy to all pray for the same important thing.

Response: Assist mechanic sure, but also a power point boost for specific spells and, in DnD terms, loads of free metamagic feats and levels depending on the quality of the congregation. It's not that you have seperate bless spell for holy crusading armies, it's that you have a bless spell and a holy crusading army.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr. Strangemonkey
Behavior: Natch, but also the magic itself should follow a code of behaviour independent of the user. Not the normal DnD 'the deity doesn't want you to have that spell' catch but something more immutable and on a spell by spell/miracle by miracle basis. So that the catch comes on the level of effect not decision. You target the wrong thing mistakenly and rather than simply not go off the power does something totally different and telling like throwing roses rather than pure smiting.

Like so many of your suggestions, this is superb and is being stolen immediately!

Response: Hurray!

Though the more I think about it the more I think there should be some sort of Dharma mechanic, where based on your behavior in accordance with a code of behavior and responsibilities specific to your character you gain certain general benefits which should have an impact on the magic. So that a Christian mystic who is a really good Christian mystic would get a bonus for being that in addition to the moral limitations implicit in his magic. Other forms of mystics get similar bonuses, but, perhaps the most impressive, unique component of Christian magic is that it gets to manipulate those bonuses directly where other magics get other advantages such as manipulating the world more directly or involving less moral and material restrictions.

 

[WayneLigon]

I'd go with scrapping the spell system, definately.

Make all Christian magic into Feats with prerequsites (perhaps a Faith mechanic) of some kind. That gives a priest perhaps one or two spell-like abilities, such as True Sight, or Laying On Hands, etc.

Make a lot of it tied in with objects and places. Holy wells. Stones. Bones of saints.

Ascetics sometimes demonstrate some special abilities like flight, bilocation (being in two places at once), foresight (almost always they're mad at that point, though; foreknowledge is usually a big no-no), immunity to arrows, and other powers. They might have one, maybe at most two powers like this.

They might demonstrate Prophecy, though sometimes the telling of prophecy is more like pronouncing a Doom upon someone, like when Saint Columba says 'And Aid, thus irregularly ordained, shall return as a dog to his vomit, and be again a bloody murderer, until at length, pierced in the neck with a spear, he shall fall from a tree into the water and be drowned.'


It's also said of Columba

The venerable man, when singing in the church with the brethren, raised his voice so wonderfully that it was sometimes heard four furlongs off, that is five hundred paces, and sometimes eight furlongs, that is one thousand paces. But what is stranger still: to those who were with him in the church, his voice did not seem louder than that of others; and yet at the same time persons more than a mile away heard it so distinctly that they could mark each syllable of the verses he was singing, for his voice sounded the same whether far or near. It is however admitted, that this wonderful character in the voice of the blessed man was but rarely observable, and even then it could never happen without the aid of the Holy Ghost.

Or, Padre Pio from the 20th century:

While praying before a cross, he received the stigmata on 20 September 1918, the first priest ever to be so blessed. As word spread, especially after American soldiers brought home stories of Padre Pio following WWII, the priest himself became a point of pilgrimage for both the pious and the curious. He would hear confessions by the hour, reportedly able to read the consciences of those who held back. Reportedly able to bilocate, levitate, and heal by touch.

Or the strange things that happened to Agnes of Montepulciano...

• Her birth was announced by flying lights surrounding her family's house.
• As a child, while walking through a field, she was attacked by a large murder of crows; she announced that they were devils, trying to keep her away from the land; years later, it was the site of her convent.
• She was known to levitate up to two feet in the air while praying.
• She received Communion from an angel, and had visions of the Virgin Mary.
• She held the infant Jesus in one of these visions; when she woke from her trance she found she was holding the small gold crucifix the Christ child had worn.
• On the day she was chosen abbess as a teenager, small white crosses showered softly onto her and the congregation.
• She could feed the convent with a handful of bread, once she'd prayed over it.
• Where she knelt to pray, violets, lilies and roses would suddenly bloom.
• While being treated for her terminal illness, she brought a drowned child back from the dead.
• At the site of her treatment, a spring welled up that did not help her health, but healed many other people.

Then... then you get someone like Christina Mirabilis....

Born to a peasant family, orphaned as a child, and raised by two older sisters. At age 21, she experienced a severe seizure of what may have been epilepsy. It was so severe as to be cateleptic, and she was thought to have died. During her funeral Mass, she suddenly recovered, and levitated to the roof of the church. Ordered down by the priest, she landed on the altar and stated that she had been to hell, purgatory, and heaven, and had been returned to earth with a ministry to pray for souls in purgatory.

Her life from that point became a series of strange incidents cataloged by a Thomas de Cantimpré, Dominican professor of theology at Louvain who was a contemporary recorded his information by interviewin witnesses, and by Cardinal Jacques de Vitny who knew her personally. She exhibited both unusual traits and abilities. For example, she could not stand the odor of other people because she could smell the sin in them, and would climb trees or buildings, hide in ovens or cupboards, or simply levitate to avoid contact. She lived in a way that was considered poverty even in the 13th century, sleeping on rocks, wearing rags, begging, and eating what came to hand. She would roll in fire or handle it without harm, stand in freezing water in the winter for hours, spend long periods in tombs, or allow herself to be dragged under water by a mill wheel, though she never sustained injury. Given to ecstasies during which she led the souls of the recently dead to purgatory, and those in purgatory to paradise.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

Great stuff Wayne!

I totally skipped over the personal transformation, enhancement, and resistance bits, not to mention the tendency towards levitation in high medieval saints.

 

[ptolemy18]

Sidetracking things into a discussion of God's gender is absolutely off-limits, folks. Please don't do that.

I kinda think the whole subject & title of this thread screams "Controversy!!!" (Heck, that's why I read it...)

For myself, I'd like to join several other people in recommending the Green Ronin MEDIEVAL PLAYER'S MANUAL. It's made by one of the people who worked on ARS MAGICA, so it's very similar to that, but without the whole idea of wizard guilds (though it'd be fairly easy to add them back in). My one reservation is that it might be more "real history" than you expect... for instance, while there are lots of new pseudo-realistic classes and prestige classes, there are no new monsters (except one new template), and no new spells, and there is tons and tons of material about England in the 11th century. :/

Jason

 

[ptolemy18]

Sidetracking things into a discussion of God's gender is absolutely off-limits, folks. Please don't do that.

Piratecat, if you don't mind me asking -- well, feel free to erase this post, but I really like this site and I'm not trying to be a pain in the ass -- what exactly are Enworld's rules for what's "off-limits"? Are they written down somewhere that I can get to, or just in the thing you sign to get your account?

Obviously I know the point is to prevent threads from turning into huge flamewars about sensitive real-world subjects... but to take an example, the MEDIEVAL PLAYER'S MANUAL actually does have a paragraph or two about whether god was considered male or female in Medieval Europe... and some RPGs get into stuff like this... so.... I guess it's just up to the admins' judgment?

(Waits for resounding "YES")

Jason