The Salem Witches' Institute

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The Salem Witches' Institute

Welcome!

When registering, please create a name for your character and input that as a username. Spaces are allowed. Relations to canon characters are not. If you are unsure, read this first: http://theswi.forumotion.com/t61-creating-a-character-at-swi

Also, please keep in mind that this forum is a FREE ads based forum. All graphics/ads found under the title and forum buttons ARE NOT part of the SWI forum and will redirect you away from this page.

Thanks!

The Salem Witches' Institute

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The Salem Witches' Institute

Welcome to the Salem Witches' Institute, the premiere American school of magic located within the World of Harry Potter. An original role play for creative minds.

SWI is officially open. Registration is ongoing for all incoming 1st Years.
Current Role Play Date: 14 October, 2011. Day: Friday. Time: 9:00 AM. Weather: Mid 50's with a slight breeze from the east.
Orientation is set up in the Atrium. Please visit to participate.

2 posters

    Student Training

    Wednesday Douglas
    Wednesday Douglas
    Professor
    Professor


    Posts : 68
    Join date : 2011-04-22
    Character Age : 37
    Location : Salem Witches' Institute

    Student Training  Empty Student Training

    Post  Wednesday Douglas Tue Jul 05, 2011 5:00 pm

    Spells we will be learning:

    Leg locker curse: Locks the legs of the victim together. If the victim tries to move, they will fall over.

    Incantation: Locomotor Mortis

    This is a FIRST YEAR spell. All students who have mastered Colloportus SUCCESSFULLY on their FIRST ATTEMPT or have attempted magic outside of charms class over the weekend and have been SUCCESSFUL beyond this spell can produce this charm without rolling.

    Spell success for all for all rolls 50+.


    Conjure sparks charm: Releases a jet of fiery sparks that causes a person or thing to release whatever he/she/it is holding. Greatly impedes concentration of the victim. Can also be used as a signaling device.

    Incantation: Relashio

    This is a FIRST YEAR spell. All students who have mastered Colloportus SUCCESSFULLY on their FIRST ATTEMPT or have attempted magic outside of charms class over the weekend and have been SUCCESSFUL beyond this spell can produce this charm without rolling.

    Spell success for all for all rolls 50+.


    Silencing charm: Causes something or someone to be silent, unable to talk. An older victim can still use nonverbal spells.

    Incantation: Silencio

    This is a SECOND YEAR spell. All students who have mastered Colloportus AND Alohamora on their FIRST ATTEMPT or have attempted magic outside of charms class over the weekend and have been SUCCESSFUL beyond this spell can produce this charm without rolling.

    Spell success for all for all rolls 75+.


    Tongue lock hex: Causes a person's tongue to stick to his or her mouth's roof. The victim can talk somewhat but words are garbled. Spell casting by incantation by the victim becomes impossible.

    Incantation: Langlock

    This is a SECOND YEAR spell. All students who have mastered Colloportus AND Alohamora on their FIRST ATTEMPT or have attempted magic outside of charms class over the weekend and have been SUCCESSFUL beyond this spell can produce this charm without rolling.

    Spell success for all for all rolls 75+.


    Impeding spell: Stops or slows a living thing. The victim will find their movements going in slow motion—or stopped all together, as if they were trying to move through heavy glue.

    Incantation: Impedimenta

    This is a FOURTH YEAR spell. All students MUST roll when using this spell. Those who have mastered year one spells may add a D10 mod. Those who have mastered year one and two spells may add a D20 mod.

    Spell success for all for all rolls 85+.


    Shield charm: Creates a magical shield to deflect minor to moderate spells and jinxes cast by others. This will not protect against powerful spells cast by adults. The spells of an attacker may only be lessened in strength. Be warned: the protego will collapse when the caster does another spell. It must be renewed each time.

    Incantation: Protego

    This is a FOURTH YEAR spell. All students MUST roll when using this spell. Those who have mastered year one spells may add a D10 mod. Those who have mastered year one and two spells may add a D20 mod.

    Spell success for all for all rolls 85+.


    Disarming spell: Disarm an opponent of their wand; if powerful enough, can knock a person off their feet.

    Incantation: Expelliarmus

    This is a FOURTH YEAR spell. All students MUST roll when using this spell. Those who have mastered year one spells may add a D10 mod. Those who have mastered year one and two spells may add a D20 mod.

    Spell success for all for all rolls 85+.


    Blurring Hex: Obscures the sight of the victim, making everything blurry; though the victim can see light and vague shapes, they would be considered legally blind.

    Incantation: Obscuro

    This is a SEVENTH YEAR spell. All students MUST roll when using this spell. NO MODIFIERS ARE ALLOWED.

    Spell success for all for all rolls 90+.
    GM Emma
    GM Emma
    The Institute GM
    The Institute GM


    Posts : 78
    Join date : 2011-05-27
    Location : Salem Witches' Institute

    Student Training  Empty Dueling the Easy Way

    Post  GM Emma Wed Jul 06, 2011 11:34 am

    Okay, listen up your primitive screwheads: this is where stuff gets real.

    There are two parts to dueling—-or using spells, charms and hexes, for that matter. The first is determining if you produced the effect; the second is determining if you hit your target with the effect.

    Let’s break it down:

    Effects Phase.

    This always comes first. You always check for effects if you have never produced the said effect, or if you are unskilled in producing the effect. There are several ways of getting proficient, however. One way is to “nail” the effect right off the bat—-in game terms this means getting two or three 90+s on an effects roll, or rolling a 100 at least once. Once you’ve nailed the effect, there’s really little need to roll for effect again-—the only time you might (and I stress might) would be for an effect that might have a variable strength, and you want a “gauge” of how powerful it might be.

    A good example of this would be the 4th Year spell Expelliarmus. Most of the time this spell is used to knock a wand from a target’s hand, but if one really gets behind the effect, you could knock a person not only off their feet, but several meters backwards. If you have “nailed” the effect you wouldn’t need to roll it, but you could roll the effect with the intention of making it a lot more powerful.

    So, not rolling the Expelliarmus effect would mean you stand a good chance of knocking the wand out of your target’s hand (depending upon the success of your Hit Phase); rolling and getting 74 or less means you’ll still knock the wand out of their hand; rolling 74 to 89 means you’ll knock that wand from their hand and push their hand back-—or, if they’re a student, probably knock them off their feet; 90 to 94 means you’ll knock an adult off their feet; 95 to 99 means knocking anyone back a couple of meters, and 100 means one would probably send their target flying.

    The other way to nail the effect it practice. Now here is the tricky part: practice means performing the effect against something or someone. Standing in the middle of the room and shouting “Silencio!” as you flick your wand at something invisible does jack Shit, kiddies. What, you’re making the air before you be unable to speak? Neat trick. Let me know how that works when a real person hands you your ass….

    No, unfortunately, getting an effect to work means getting it to work against something else. Yes, some effects like Relashio that don’t require a target, but that’s one of the exceptions to the rule with what Professor Douglas is showing you. If you go off and start doing Protego all by your lonesome, you can roll a half dozen 100s in a row and you still won’t nail it! In the instance where you need a target for your effect to work, no targets = no successes. Grab someone and practice! And while this means you might get hurt-—no one said magic was easy, right?

    What is the rule of thumb for nailing these effects? It’s a matter of getting successes over the course of attempts when you practice. As such:

    1st Year Spell/Charm/Hex: Out of 5 attempts, you have 3 successes
    2nd Year Spell/Charm/Hex: Out of 5 attempts, you have 3 successes
    3rd Year Spell/Charm/Hex: Out of 6 attempts, you have 4 successes
    4th Year Spell/Charm/Hex: Out of 6 attempts, you have 5 successes
    5th Year Spell/Charm/Hex: Out of 8 attempts, you have 6 successes
    6th Year Spell/Charm/Hex: Out of 9 attempts, you have 7 successes
    7th Year Spell/Charm/Hex: Out of 10 attempts, you have 8 successes

    The number of listed attempts are your base attempts; that means you get the stated target number during the course of those attempts. Since trying to make something work can become tiring and frustrating, for every attempt beyond your base attempts, the target number goes up by 5. (Example: 1st Year Spell Locomotor Mortis requires an Effects Roll of 50+ to work. If you try all 5 base attempts and you still haven’t nailed the effect, you can try it again and again, but the difficulty for your effect becomes greater, so a 6th attempt is at 55+, a 7th is at 60+, 8th 65+ and so on.)

    Some people will get modifiers because they have actually practiced their spells/charms/hexes and are getting a good understanding of how magic works. (Yes, this is true even when just starting out. The more you try, the better you get.) These modifiers are added to you basic D100 roll and help you succeed.

    Two last things to keep in mind: Rolling a 100 is a Critical Success, and not only do you nail the effect, but this roll counts as an additional success for any spell you are attempting within the year level for the effect you were rolling. Using the above example, if you roll a 100 on Locomotor Mortis, you’ve not only nailed it, you’ve gained an innate understanding of this 1st Year spell, and this allows you to apply a success to your practice of the 1st Year spell Relashio. And if you are rolling a modify die and happen to roll a Critical Success on it at the same time you roll a Critical Success on your D100… stop what you’re doing and tell someone! This is a 1 in 2000 odds roll, and very, very nice things will happen.

    Rolling a 1 is a Critical Failure, otherwise known as a Botch, and should this happen something bad usually happens. If you’re trying to produce sparks the tip of your wand will probably catch fire; if you’re trying to silence another person you’ve probably frozen their vocal cords for the better part of a day, and afterwards they’ll sound like they’re sucking down helium for a day or two. A Botch is really bad with some attack spells; you’ll likely break someone’s leg trying Locomotor Mortis, or someone’s wrist/arm doing Expelliarmus. When you roll a Botch stop and tell someone—because we all love misery! Oh, and you automatically loose a success on your “nail it” rolls. True failure totally sucks.

    That’s it for Effects. Now that you know this, let us talk about the act of hitting someone….

    Attack/Defense Phase, AKA Hit Phase.

    First off, to be clear: if you are dueling and you can’t get your effect to work, and you’re dueling against someone who knows what they hell they’re doing, you’re likely gonna feel the pain. Maybe. Why is this? Because even if you do produce an effect, you still gotta hit something.

    This, in its base form, is very simple: you and your opponent roll, applying modifiers if necessary, and highest roll wins. There you have it. Normally we might roll to see who actually goes first, but for the most part you’ll know who you are up against, and the type of effect you are going for automatically indicates if you are attacking, defending or pulling off an effect.

    In simple terms, if both people are attacking, they go at nearly the same time and the person with the highest attack roll hits their target. If one person is attacking and the other is defending—and an effect can be considered a defense—then it’s assumed one person is shooting while they other is holding their ground. If both people are defending, then they’re going to stand there looking at each other like gits, wondering whose turn it was to pull the trigger.

    Attacks are easy: point and shoot. Most adults don’t have to roll for effects because, well, they’re adults, so they have a good mix of attack and defense spells down and most of the time they’ll just point at you and fire off… something. They might not even have to say what it is, since by the time you are an adult doing non-vocal spells/charms/hexes becomes secondary nature. Again, if you are both attacking (and you can go more than one-on-one, kiddies; there is ass kicking in numbers, you know), then high roll wins. And then you watch what happens to the person who was hit….

    Defense is trickier. You will only have a few defensive spells in your bag of tricks—2, in fact—but if you stand in the middle of a room and square off against an experienced Death Eater, here’s hoping your family has an outfit picked out for your funeral because you’ll need it. Do you know what you call a student who stands in the middle of the Tower Commons daring a Death Eater to take them on? A corpse.

    There is more to defense than standing still and letting someone hammer on you. The dueling stage is one thing: there you’ll likely be going up against people with skills similar to your own. But Death Eaters? Uh, huh. Most of them will have a fancy bag of tricks at their disposal, and the majority of those tricks will blow through your Protego shield like it was made of wet tissue.

    But you know what else constitutes defense? Hiding behind solid things. Running. Zigzagging. Staying in motion. And if you manage to hit someone with an effect that will shut them up or slow them up, that helps as well.

    In short, if you defend—hell, even if you attack—doing it from behind things helps a lot. How much? Lets see:

    Hiding behind a sofa/loveseat/big comfy chair D10 modifier
    Running away D10 modifier
    Evading (zigzagging, running side-to-side) D20 modifier
    Hiding behind a low wall D20 modifier
    Hiding behind a big, thick wall corner D30 modifier

    The harder you are to hit, the more likely it is you won’t be hit. Let your opponent stand in the middle of the room and be the target while you use cover, ‘cause if you’re 11 and this is your first time personally dealing with Death Eaters (and if it isn’t, then you shouldn’t be here, Mary Sue Granger-Wesley), then plan on being the focus of an epic ass beating unless (a) your family name is Potter, (b) you own the Elder Wand, (c) all of the above. However, if your answer is (d), None of the Above, then your only hope is you’re squaring off against a Death Eater who is a complete dipshit. Fortunately, they’re easy to spot: look for the chocolate smudges on their fingertips—

    And in case you wondered what those effects do for your chances of staying alive and/or hitting your target, gander upon these modifiers that you can add to your attack/defense roll starting the turn after the effect hits your opponent:

    Locomotor Mortis D10 modifier
    Relashio D10 modifier
    Silencio D10 modifier
    Langlock D20 modifier
    Impedimenta D20 modifier
    Obscuro D30 modifier

    Expelliarmus Opponent loses wand/is knocked on their ass immediately; they can’t attack
    Protego Effects roll 85 to 89, +5 modifier
    Effects roll 90 to 94, D10 modifier
    Effects roll 95 to 99, D20 modifier
    Critical Success, you stop ALL attacks, you lucky person!


    And modifiers are stackable, meaning you can add more than one onto your defense roll. So, if you hit someone with Silencio, then dive behind a big sofa, you get D10 + D10 for a defense modifier.

    Now, lets make this clear: if you are stacking these defense modifiers onto your roll, this doesn’t mean it makes it easier for you to hit someone—it only means it makes it harder for your opponent to hit you. If you are both attacking, but you are hiding behind a low wall and you pop up to throw Expelliarmus at someone, your attack roll is based entirely upon your D100 roll, not off D100 + D20. You have to beat their D100 roll; they have to beat your D100 + D20.

    And since some people might have attack modifiers (and you know who you are), when you are filling out your dice rolls in your posts, you might want to label them like this:

    ["D100"] [/roll]

    Attack mod
    ["Dxx"]1[/roll] (“xx” is the die number)

    Each defense mod (cover, evasion, spell effects)
    ["Dxx"]1[/roll] (“xx” is the die number)

    This was there won’t be any questions about what is what.


    So, you got that? Everyone ready to be a hero?

    Don’t be. It’s not for everyone.

    Take care.

      Current date/time is Fri Mar 29, 2024 2:42 am