I’m trying to come up with a recipe for a Cloak of Disguise similar to that of Michael in Howl’s Moving Castle for my Witch character to be able to craft/enchant using her Thaumaturgy. For the Playbook I’m using when creating items/magical effects it requires the info:
What You’ll Need
How Long It’ll Take
How Long It Will Last
Restrictions And Limitations
Obviously she’ll need a cloak but I’m wondering if/leaning toward it needing to be a special material. She has a connection to The Shroud (think The Veil from Dragon Age kind of) as a Spirit there has helped her establish her link to The Source so that she can use magic at a high level, but she owes them a debt. They’ve taken her eye and sent a “Shade” into the game’s plain to function as her familiar, Malphas, and to keep tabs on her. I’m thinking she’ll need locks of hair from people no longer “using” their faces [aka corpses] or people that expressly give her permission as materials/components for the Enchantment?
Do you guys have any ideas? Suggestions?
Doppelganger blood to soak the cloak in would be a cool requirement. If you don’t want to have that much gore then you could just say she has to wrap it around the body of a dying Doppelganger so it can soak up the magic it uses. If you want to make it more emotional of a choice, make the Doppelganger be someone she’s known and cared about for a while.
Scott Selvidge I like where you’re going. Maybe make it a Doppelganger Hide Cloak, so the magic is already there.
I think you should be able to use the hair of living people just as well. It is pretty tricky to get a lock of someone’s hair, so if they pull it off they deserve to be able to transform into that person, IMO.
Depends on the tone right? You could say that the material cost is twenty or fifty masterwork portraits and have your party embark on a series of catburglaries to those homes of the noble and elite, or maybe even just require a mirror that has been hung in a public place for more than a hundred years be sacrificed in the casting. Maybe it costs the maker their own face, not necessarily in a gristley way, but that they can wear any other face upon the donning of the cloak except their own.
i love the idea that the spirits have given her a guardian/chaperone, and took her eye in exchange for help. This shows the Player is willing to make fictional sacrifices.
Since they’ll give up their own eye, they might now be too phased by clipping hair from corpses, or killing a doppleganger for its blood or hide. While i like those ideas generally, i’m thinking of other ways to make a requirement that leaves lots of room for further adventure.
Perhaps the cloak needs to attune to the people it will trick. The user would need to do some social engineering to get the cloak near the person/people and trigger the attunement, before she is disguised.
You want to convince the guards to the empress’ chamber that you are her advisor? You’ll need to get some artifact that’s personal to them. Or perhaps walk by them and let the cloak smell em. Figure out some thematic attunement, and see how it gets the Witch into trouble.
Maybe the cloak is actually a cloaker sent by the same things that took her eye? It usually just stays in its hidden “cloak” form on her unless it is feeding. It will transform her into any humanoid it has fed upon if she can Parley successfully with it. On 7-9 it will ask her for things, like her own blood (1d4), another victim to feed on, or something else. Depending on the tone of your game, “feeding” could be non-lethal or lethal.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/qAlp2HsokKh24u61ooWKi43J7Y8_0KgN11EKnYlZBsH9lMOpwf-hi3VJsoG8dmVAnoDg-RPG7HAFpJ-oVur_QQ2Ho1OiUFUwnuU=s0