Dragon 90 & the Incantatrix

[Elaer]

Hello all,

I recently came across an excellent site at www.candlekeep.com, a resource for the forgotten realms. I also found there the Forgotten Realms FAQ, and a reference to the original Incantatrix in Dragon 90. A little more surfing lead me to a reference of an Eric Boyd article in Polyhedron, but little else. Now I have been playing an elven wizard with that Prestige Class for some time, and have always had difficulty pinning down what her role was (I played her as an extra-planar expert who has mastered strange secrets from outer realms). However, if anyone here could fill me in on Ed Greenwood’s original vision and what Eric Boyd developed, I could hopefully go to my DM with some flavor material. I’m not interested in special abilities or new powers, just some Realms history.

Thanks

 

[Tewligan]

Hello all,

I recently came across an excellent site at www.candlekeep.com, a resource for the forgotten realms. I also found there the Forgotten Realms FAQ, and a reference to the original Incantatrix in Dragon 90. A little more surfing lead me to a reference of an Eric Boyd article in Polyhedron, but little else. Now I have been playing an elven wizard with that Prestige Class for some time, and have always had difficulty pinning down what her role was (I played her as an extra-planar expert who has mastered strange secrets from outer realms). However, if anyone here could fill me in on Ed Greenwood’s original vision and what Eric Boyd developed, I could hopefully go to my DM with some flavor material. I’m not interested in special abilities or new powers, just some Realms history.

Thanks

In the original article the incantatrix was an NPC class that was always female, and her main gimmick was that she could steal spells from the minds of other spellcasters to use for herself. She had her own spell list - just a smaller version of the magic-user list, with a couple of new spells. I think that one of her spells was what she used to steal spells, rather than an innate ability. This is from memory, since I'm at work right now, but I'll see if I can find my copy of #90 this weekend to check if she had any other gimmicks.

 

[edbonny]

[BHowever, if anyone here could fill me in on Ed Greenwood’s original vision and what Eric Boyd developed, I could hopefully go to my DM with some flavor material. I’m not interested in special abilities or new powers, just some Realms history.

Thanks [/B]

The incantatrix as appeared in Dragon 90 was not the anti-planar class that you see in the FRCS. Her powers lay in thwarting spellcasters especially by using their own magic against them. She had spells that were weak on combat but could deflect a foe's magic and deprive an enemy spellcaster of his spells. The penultimate spell in her repetoire allowed her to pluck a spell from her opponent's mind and cast it herself (if I remember correctly the spell plucked was random and thus was not one of her choosing - one wonders how many "lucky" incantatrices plucked such potent spells as detect magic and the like?)... Most incantatrices were female but there was mention in the article of male versions (who had their own title similar to the incantatrix). I believe they were good aligned. More on this when I dig up that article (I still remember reading the incantatrix for the first time way back in the 80s when I was still just a teen! Thanks for asking. Good stuff...)

 

[Elaer]

Thank you both for the info. It looks like I homed in on the correct things in the prestige class to focus on (my Incantatrix is very opposed to outsiders being on Faerun, and specializes in counterspells). Is there anything else that you can tell me?

 

[Skarp Hedin]

There's a bunch of stuff on incantatrixes (and even incantatars!) in the 2nd Edition FR supplement, Cult of the Dragon.

I don't remember it too well offhand.. I think they were the magic-leecher types mentioned earlier, rather than the counterspeller anti-planar types they apparently became.