I'm so evil, I even wrote a song about it!

I'm sorry. I lied. But if you really want a song about being evil, then here you go. But maybe I should write a song about being evil...

Now, on to the main point of this topic, which is some expansions and alternatives to It's Witchcraft, with the main point of interest being a utility talent so evil, you could write a song about it.

Equinomicon
Prerequisite: It's Witchcraft
You've learned to exploit forbidden black magicks and bend them to your will. Practice of these dark arts have increased your power significantly, and poses no danger to yourself. Provided that you take the necessary precautions.
In addition to the normal use of It's Witchcraft, you may (optionally) choose to use shadow magic, granting you a +5 bonus to Arcana checks rather than the normal -7 penalty. However, if you roll a natural 1, then you must roll a d6 and activate one of the effects on the table below. Or, you can optionally choose to expend a Magic point to defer rolling such an effect.

1. A random portion of you body becomes corrupted. The corruption will turn your coat gray, your mane and tail black, your eyes will become slitted with red irises and green sclera, and your cutie mark becomes a twisted parody. The corruption is purely cosmetic, until you are corrupted six times. Once you are corrupted six times, the corruption takes over your whole body, and the darkness buried deep within your heart takes over your soul.
2. The darkness buried deep within your heart takes control of you for 1d4 hours, at the end of which you pass out. After you regain consciousness and sanity, you will have a faint memory of the time during which you were corrupted, though it will be as if it were a dream.
3. The target of your spell must pass a DC50 Arcana check or become corrupted. Corrupted objects will turn to twisted parodies of there former selves, radiating evil energy and corrupting their purpose. Corrupted nonsapient creatures will become aggressive and hostile in addition to physical transformation. Sapient creatures will only experience bodily corruption; their mind is left intact.
4. You fall into a trance and are forced to live through traumatizing nightmares. There is no time limit on the trance, and while in the trance, you are completely unresponsive to external stimuli. The only way to break the trance is for an ally to expend a Magic point to free you.
5. A spherical volume with a diameter of 60 feet centered on you is banished to a shadowy void for 3d10 minutes (the GM should roll this amount in secret). The floors, ceilings, and walls will all float in place, but any other object that falls into the void is lost forever. When the time expires, the area will return the the material world, though it will often be rotated, tilted, and translated ever so slightly. Neither the banishment nor the return can cut objects in two besides floors, walls, and ceilings.
6. You are dazed for five seconds. Consider yourself lucky.

Aeromancy
Exactly like Weather-Crafting, but using Arcana instead of Athletics or Acrobatics. Benefits from all the same utility upgrades as Weather-Crafting.

Geomancy
You are able to cultivate rocks and gems, sense vibrations and open spaces (caves) through the ground, shift dirt and stone, and even phase through the ground. The more difficult tasks will require Athletics or Arcana checks, set at the GM's discretion. Manipulating shaped stone or other constructed materials is considerably more difficult. Forged metals are downright impossible. You can affect things from a distance, but you must still have an unbroken line of contact through the ground to do so.

Hydromancy
You are able to manipulate water and similar liquids, causing it to float and controlling its shape and changing its temperature. You can turn water into ice or steam, as well as create bubbles of air for underwater breathing. You must have a valid source of liquid nearby. You cannot extract liquids from living creatures to use. The more difficult tasks will require an Arcana check, set at the GM's discretion.

Pyromancy
You are able to manipulate flames, moving them through the air to strike distant objects, suppressing or extinguishing them, or flaring them up. You are also able to suppress the heat from flames without suppressing the flames themselves. The more difficult tasks will require an Arcana check, set at the GM's discretion. You can only manipulate the fire; you can't create it.

Logomancy
You have a special affinity for the written word, giving you special power over books, letters, etc., allowing you to search through and read them without needing to open them, detect nearby words (signs, books, name tags, etc.), send messages to others, create magical writing (that can either only be read under certain conditions, or that causes some magical effect when read), and even conjure words into thin air. The more difficult tasks will require a History or Arcana check, set at the GM's discretion.

Biomancy
You have power over living things to cure disease, repair organs, heal flesh, and mend bones. Or you can reverse those processes, bolstering disease, destroying organs, tearing flesh, and breaking bones. You cannot, however, create a disease within a healthy individual, only reinforce one that already exists. Due to the complexity of this form of magic, you may only target helpless or willing creatures. The more difficult tasks will require a Heal or Arcana check, set at the GM's discretion.

Verdomancy
You have power over plants to make them grow or shrivel, animate them to a limited degree, and are able to sense through them. The more difficult tasks will require an Arcana check, set at the GM's discretion.

Ferromancy
You are able to manipulate metals, and control electric and magnetic fields. The more difficult tasks will require an Arcana check, set at the GM's discretion.

Chronomancy
You are able to manipulate the flow of time, causing nonliving objects to age or youthen, speeding up or slowing down creatures, or creating zones with different rates of time flow. The more difficult tasks will require an Arcana check, set at the GM's discretion.

Necromancy
You are able to inflict disease on those around you, and drain life in order to heal yourself. The more difficult tasks will require an Arcana check, set at the GM's discretion. You also gain the following two utility talents free.

Animate Dead - 3/Day
Preparation Time: 10 Seconds
You are able to manipulate a dead body like a puppet for five minutes. The corpse cannot speak, nor can you control its facial expressions. Its movements will also be awkward and unsettling.

Raise Dead - Magic
Preparation Time: 1 Hour
Turn a dead body into an autonomous undead servant for 24 hours. The zombie is mindless and unintelligent, and will obey your every command without understanding. The creature is also relatively frail, due to continued wear and tear on top of decomposition.

One concern for some of these is their relative power compared to other utility talents (for example, contrast Logomancy with Spike, Take a Letter). Thing is, all of the above are things that you could probably attempt with It's Witchcraft (with the -7 penalty, of course); these are meant to provide access to a specific branch of "magic" at no penalty without needing to take two utility talents. Also, Failsafe Spell/Awesomeness/This is Whining! for Equinomicon. Derp maybe not so much.

Spoiler:

I don't have much more to say then I really approve of this.

My living legends character played similar roles with It's Witchcraft, prior to the nerf, and used multiple freaky knowledge utilities to specialize. I like specializing Maybe these should essentially remove the -7 penalty for their domain of focus AND give a small reliable utility having to do with the domain.

For example Hydromancy might give you a X/day create water utility. (Creating water would be a lot of fun )

Aeromancy might give X/day create clouds ability, or summon gusts of wind

Pyromancy could create a long lasting flame X/day that you could then manipulate with Witchcraft

Verdomancy, commune with plants, or a quick growth spell

Chronomancy, a small slow spell that creates a 5-foot-in-diameter sphere of 1/2 time centered on a non-living target.

Just some of the ideas that popped into my head. I wouldn't mind a create water utility talent in all honesty, it could be hilarious.

SilentBelle wrote:Just some of the ideas that popped into my head. I wouldn't mind a create water utility talent in all honesty, it could be hilarious.

Ah, that reminds me of one time during a Pathfinder campaign when the main campaign villain was monologuing, but one of the party members got bored and cast Create Water over the villain's head.

And as for my two cents regarding this specialization idea, I also approve.
...Yeah, I don't have much more to say than that. Oh well.

SilentBelle wrote:Maybe these should essentially remove the -7 penalty for their domain of focus AND give a small reliable utility having to do with the domain.

One of the main features of these talents is that they don't require It's Witchcraft as a prerequisite. They're for characters who want to have magical powers within a limited domain without having to drop two talent slots on it.

Now that you mention it, though, I wonder if these other branches of magic shouldn't have upgrade utilities as well, similar to Weather-Crafting, ones that would extend them well beyond the capability of It's Witchcraft.

Greywander wrote:

SilentBelle wrote:Maybe these should essentially remove the -7 penalty for their domain of focus AND give a small reliable utility having to do with the domain.

One of the main features of these talents is that they don't require It's Witchcraft as a prerequisite. They're for characters who want to have magical powers within a limited domain without having to drop two talent slots on it.

Now that you mention it, though, I wonder if these other branches of magic shouldn't have upgrade utilities as well, similar to Weather-Crafting, ones that would extend them well beyond the capability of It's Witchcraft.

In which case, they could be optional pre-requisites to it's witchcraft. For example: Hydromancy allows you to use It's Witchcraft-like effects without penalties, but only when manipulating water. (As well as gaining a nifty create water spell.) Then you could take It's Witchcraft as another talent. This way, your first talent isn't completely overridden as you still can create water and it reminds you of your original magical roots as a character and it also gives you the great option of not choosing to take the It's Witchcraft talent, and just remain specialized in one type of magic. I think that could be quite fun and I could see myself choosing to pursue a freaky knowledge talent to boost a chosen school of magic instead of sinking another talent into having access to all schools of magic via It's Witchcraft.

Personally I dislike the cutting of the power to It's Witchcraft, I'd rather see it become focused and then broadened as opposed to just watered-down to the point where it doesn't make sense to NOT spend 2 utility slots on it if you want to be able to do something reliable useful with it.

That's my two cents anyway.

Ah, I see what you're saying. Restore It's Witchcraft to its original functionality (no -7 penalty), and have it require one of the -mancy talents as a prerequisite. I like that, it's a little more interesting than simply having a weaker version of It's Witchcraft that you get first, then upgrade to full functionality. Each of the -mancy talents should probably have their own extensions, so that you can still specialize. Otherwise, your only option to upgrade would be to get It's Witchcraft, which isn't specializing, it's generalizing.

The thing about a Create Water spell is that, like many of the -mancy talents, Hydromancy requires the element being manipulated to be present (like how I explicitly state that Pyromancy can't create fire). This means that it has the obvious flaw of being useless should that element be missing. This isn't a bug, it's a feature, a deliberate weakness imposed on an otherwise powerful ability, giving you a way to counter it should you find yourself going up against it, and forcing you to find creative ways of accessing that element (busting a water pipe, using canteens, melting a freezer, pulling up ground water, etc.) when you're the one trying to use it. If you can just create water, then that removes the weakness, as you can always just create more water. Even if the amount of water you can make is limited, it still gives you a reserve from which you can draw that can't be taken away from you.

On the one hand, I like the idea of granting an extra or special ability upon obtaining It's Witchcraft based on which of the -mancy(ies) talent(s) you have, but thinking about it a bit more, it occurred to me that if you wanted to specialize, say, become a master Hydromancer, then you shouldn't really be required to pick up It's Witchcraft, which is generalizing rather than specializing, in order to get all the relevant Hydromancy abilities. An alternative would be to give a bonus to It's Witchcraft when using something you have a -mancy for, although again, I don't think this should make you better at it or give you some special edge regarding that particular -mancy compared to someone who didn't get It's Witchcraft. So perhaps all -mancies should get a flat bonus (+5, maybe?), which persists after getting It's Witchcraft. Perhaps Equinomicon could be an alternative to It's Witchcraft, either not requiring a -mancy as a prerequisite, or granting a larger bonus, like +10.

Those -mancy abilities do need more expansion, though. Obvious options are talents that grant flat bonuses, though that's a little boring (though they might not be bad to include). I'm more interested in talents that let you do things, for example, a geomantic ability that lets you move a certain amount of earth without having to roll for it. Most such things would probably be things you could attempt with the relevant -mancy, but these talents would let you do more powerful things without needing to roll (while also limiting it to x/Day or costing a Magic point).

We could have a series of Adept/Expert/Master -mancer that grants (starting with +5 for the base -mancy), +10, +15, and +20 (noncumulative). These should probably also grant some other abilities in addition to a flat bonus, though I'm not sure it they should be more generic or tailored specific to the branch of -mancy. I'm thinking generic, as that way you either aren't required to reach a certain level of training to get a critical spell or aren't rewarded with a crap spell for attaining a certain level of skill. Perhaps something like:
Adept: 1/Day reroll when using that -mancy.
Expert: 1/Day you can roll 3d10 instead of 1d20 when using that -mancy.
Master: 1/Day change nat 1 to nat 20 when using that -mancy.

An alternative to a flat bonus for higher level -mancy talents would be to unlock more general abilities, for example, now you can both freeze and heat water! (Kind of a dumb example, but it gets the point across.) I don't much care for this, as I think it ends up being more limiting by prohibiting through omission (if it isn't explicitly stated that you can do something, then it becomes assumed you can't, because higher levels explicitly allow more actions than lower level ones). Besides, a flat bonus more or less translates into being able to do things that were too difficult before.

As for specific talents to extend each -mancy, I'm going to have to think about that some more.

Ohh sweet.
Aeromancy might be fine as it is: it already has the weathercrafter upgrades.
Similar upgrades might be good for the rest as well: increased range and/or sphere of influence, cast time reduction, bonuses to the arcana rolls that are to be made. If you're worried about the skills themselves being too powerful, try setting a specific limiter on the skills themselves, which is removed with the upgrade. Slightly boring Geomancy example:
standard description:
You can use vibrations to detect caves and hollow spaces, but you cannot determine their composition without a closer look, or detect solid objects (treasure chests, for example).
Upgrade:
Prospector
Your geomancy skill can now tell you all sorts of nifty details about the earth beneath your feet. Soil composition, buried objects, all will be revealed.

Instead of saying "you can't do it unless the skill says you can", with the upgrades adding functionality, it becomes more "you can do it unless the skill says you can't", and the upgrades remove the limiters. Roll bonuses are nice, but I tend to find them boring: it's more fun (for me at least) to come up with interesting ways use the skills you have than to increase the probability that a given plan will work.

Have you considered Luxomancy? Bending the path light to create patches of light or shadow, creating mirrors or minor illusions, firin' yo lazors by using a magical magnifying lens .....