Miko (oracle)
Deities: Spirit World of Kaidan (animal, demon, divine, ghost, nature)
Mystery: Spirit
Curse: Haunted
Bonus Spells: Death Watch, Spiritual Hammer, Remove Curse, Dismissal, Break Enchantment, Planar Ally, Resurrection, Greater Planar Ally, True Resurrection.
Revelations: Find Spirit, Hide Spirit, Awaken Memory, Fade Memory, Bind Spirit, Unbind Spirit, Speak with Spirit, Protection from Spirit, Purge Spirit, and final revelation: Bind Memory.
Find Spirit: when a miko desires to contact a known spirit, an available spirit, or a reincarnated spirit she uses this ritual to locate them. When the recently dead reincarnate to a new body, this ritual identifies into whom the spirit has gone.
Hide Spirit: once a spirit is located, this ritual protects the spirit from being found by others, including other miko. At first level and every four levels thereafter, the miko adds a -2 penalty against the DC check to find a spirit. For each four levels of miko doing a search gains +2 bonus to overcome the DC check.
Awaken Memory: this ritual helps a reincarnated spirit gain a bonus and/or a secondary attempt at dominating the host body it now resides. A 10% bonus is added to memory retention.
Fade Memory: this ritual helps prevent a reincarnated spirit from dominating its new host body, also granting a 10% penalty to memory.
Bind Spirit: this ritual is primarily used to bind spirits to objects for the creation of a spiritual focus or creating spiritually arcane devices. A spirit that is bound to an object is by no means trapped. The spirit is free to move about in the spirit world, the binding device on the other hand provides a focal point for the spirit to make a connection into the material world. A spirit can provide an arcane link to a device granting it spiritual powers, like magical enchantments. A spirit can be found to an item in order to prevent it from accessing the material world through a different location, by binding it to an item which is further placed in a protection.
Unbind Spirit: severs the link the keeps a spirit bound to an object.
Speak with Spirit: usually the first revelation taken by a miko, as it is necessary in order to successfully contact and communicate with a spiritual being.
Protection from Spirit: creates a circle of protection to prevent spirits from contacting or attacking a specific person, location or object.
Purge Spirit: removes a dominating spirit from controlling another being. Combined with Fade Memory this ritual can be used to free someone being dominated by a reincarnated spirit, an undead spirit, curse or special attack by certain monsters.
Bind Memory: a powerful ritual aiding a reincarnating spirit to be more successful at dominating a host body. This ritual grants the reincarnating spirit a bonus of 40 + miko's level + charisma modifier to his own dominaton attempt and as a bonus to retain memories.
Death and Reincarnation Mechanic in Kaidan:
In Kaidan, death is final and irrevocable. Spells such as Raise Dead, Resurrection and True Resurrection have an effect in the reincarnation process, but cannot restore a dead person back to life. When a person dies his spirit becomes a reincarnated spirit and goes into a temporary purgatory, for up to seven days while funerary and burial rites are performed. After which the reincarnated spirit moves to another living person's body in an attempt at dominating it and continuing on.
If the reincarnation attempt succeeds, the PC generates a new PC in a new random class as appropriate to social caste availability, at half the levels attained in the previous life. Depending on how successful the reincarnation domination attempt determines how many levels of the previous life is remains with the new life. At best its 100% of a previous class levels plus the new character class at half the levels in a multi-classed condition spread across multiple lifetimes. If a reincarnation attempt fails, the host spirit retains control and the reincarnated spirit becomes passively bound to the new body without any control and must remain until that host body dies, and the spirit is free to attempt a new reincarnation domination attempt on a new host body.
At the moment of reincarnation and domination of a new host body, the dead PC rolls a d20 + 10 + PC levels + bonus based on 1 for 5 points of karma achieved in the previous life as a check to see if it dominates the new host body.
A score of 0 - 49 and the host spirit retains control of the host body, while the reincarnating spirit is relegated to a passive role bound to the same body without control of any kind until that body dies and the spirit is once again free to attempt to dominate a new body in reincarnation.
50 - 59%, the reincarnating spirit succeeds in dominating the new host body, but loses five levels of its previous life.
60 - 69%, the reincarnating spirit retains all but four levels.
70 - 79%, the reincarnating spirit retains all but three levels.
80 - 89%, the reincarnating spirit retains all but two levels
90 - 99%, ther reincarnating spirit retains all but one level.
100% or more, the reincarnating spirit retains all of its previous life levels.
A Raise Dead spell cast at the moment of death or during the burial/funerary rites apply a 10% bonus to reincarnation domination attempts.
A Resurrection spell cast at moment of death or during the burial/funerary rites apply a 25% bonus to reincarnation domination attempts.
A True Resurrection spell cast at moment of death or during the burial/funerary rites apply a 50% + miko levels + charisma modifier as a bonus to reincarnation domination attempts.
In the end, reincarnation is an invasive attempt at the spiritual takeover of an existing living sentient being - such is the dark nature of Kaidan's cosmology.
GP
Oh and forgot to add, Karma in Kaidan:
Karma measures the amount of beneficial or non-beneficial acts performed by a given PC/NPC in Kaidan.
Gain +1 karma: an act that benefits a single innocent individual
Gain +2 karma: an act that benefits a family or village.
Gain +3 karma: an act that benefits a city, region or organization
Gain +4 karma: a major act that benefits an entire province or most everyone.
Acts the force the opposite of a benefit to each type, as a reciprocating negative karma accrued. (ie: an act that brings harm or disadvantage to single innocent individual results in -1 karma.)
Accrual of both positive and negative karma cancel each other out. The remainder in karma determines its useful outcome.
100 positive points of karma result in reincarnation to the next caste above the current one.
100 negative points of karma result in reincarnation to the next caste downward from the current level.
Anything less than 100 karma points sends reincarnated spirits to the same caste as in previous life.
Under ideal conditions, all players begin playing in Kaidan as members of the Commoner Caste.
Castes and other planar levels, from top to bottom: nobility, samurai, commoners, animal, Eta/tainted caste, and the Yomi Underworld/Hell realm
GP
That wouldn't be far off from where it is now. All of the Miko's powers and spells relate to spirits, spirit bound objects and the reincarnation process of Kaidan. Though the class hints at contacting the various types of greater spirits, that's more flavor than crunch. To say that it is the ujigama (ancestral spirits) that provide the divine power source instead, does not take away from the Miko as she currently sits. So certainly worth considering.
As an aside, in many class descriptions using the feminine gender for a given described character is politically correct. In the case of Kaidan, the Miko is always female in gender, no matter what race takes the class. So my use of "she" and "her" is not meant to be "PC", but literal instead.
GP
GP, once again, you have my attention. Looks neat!
Now, at the risk of being a wart: You done with the samurai? When's the next release?
GP, once again, you have my attention. Looks neat!
Now, at the risk of being a wart: You done with the samurai? When's the next release?
Got to add in my samurai and miko to the document, do my final rewriting, send it off to the editor, make final corrections then get it published. So getting close, but still a week or so away.
GP
Good for you!
and for us...