Heya folks!
One of my players play the Shaman from Grim World, and the last session he acquired a “spirit of growth and decay” after the party fought a corrupted version of the spirit.
I’m looking for ideas for the effect the spirit’s release from their totem will have. I imagine it should play on the dual nature of the spirit, life and death, having something grow and flourish or become decaying and dying.
Thoughts?
I’d certainly love to see what the results of a few 6- rolls were 🙂
I’d possibly go with holding 1-decay on 7-9 on growth moves, and hold 1-growth on 7-9 decay moves.
can then spend growth to heal with a touch, or add to growth moves, and spend decay to damage / boost decay moves.. But you can’t have more held growth / decay in total than (primary casting mod) at any one time else you’re out of whack, drawing unwanted attention.
Assuming it’ll operate like other spirits–like a spell, no effect-based roll, and probably one-off–maybe make those two aspects balanced. One thing grows, another decays by the same amount. You can probably leave it mechanically open, beyond that. Growth probably heals, and decay probably deals damage, but they’re effective against anything.
I’d consider a slightly metaphorical approach. Decay isn’t death, right? It’s the death of things we traditionally care about (limbs) as they are consumed by things we don’t (bacteria). Life is the continued propagation of things we care about.
I’d play with the two sides of the coin being trading off one kind of life for another, or the ability to change what people care about, or just focus on the idea of propagation and fecundity (make a chain lightning attack into straight lightning or vice versa; make a popular idea stale while turning an unpopular idea into a viral meme, etc).