By Garry Handelman.
This is a new category of Schticks available only to those who possess magic schticks. They each cost 5 experience points, and assist in the use of Magic Schticks in some fashion. They exist to flesh out and specify magicians. If you prefer the general rules in the basic book, don't use them.
Fetishes are things that you do that help you do your magic. All magicians have powders, incantations, etc., but each fetish schtick you select must be attached to a specific magic schtick your character uses. These schticks can take any form -- they can be special powders, wands, rods or rings, or even a particularly special or powerful incantation; anything you like. Fetishes can be stolen by bad guy wizards, and the PCs can steal bad guy wizards' fetishes, but you can't keep them between sessions, and all characters get them back at the beggining of each session. They are protected, in the long run, by an auspice similar to that which protects signature weapons. If you can tie your fetishes in to your melodramatic hooks, good.
Example: Timmy has Preparations (a kind of fetish, see below) for the lightning effect of his blast schtick. They take the form of little origami cranes, which burn up when he uses them. Jueding Shelun nabs them and uses them to shoot a bigger, nastier lightning bolt at Timmy. That sucked, but Timmy will have them again next session. In this case, that's easy, he makes more. In other cases, the GM will have to be a bit more contrived.
If your fetish is an incantation, any magician who hears it can use it against you for that session (the GM may require a Per roll for them to hear it correctly), but they can't stop you without gagging you or something. Physical fetishes can of course be taken. When your enemies use a fetish against you that can only be used a certain number of times, they consume your "points" when they use them. If your fetish requires some action to use, like a rune that must be written, you must be able to perform that action to use it.
"I have a little something special for you, Jueding Shelun!"
You know spells dedicated against, or have mystical objects dedicated against, minions of a certain faction, which you must pick when you take this schtick. You get +1 to your Sorcery action value when opposing the actions of (this includes magic parrying), or when casting hostile spells on, minions of that faction. Demons you summon yourself do not count as Lotus minions for purpose of you summoning and controlling them. You may not take this schtick more than once for the same faction or for more than one faction. You must somehow excuse this by in-game experience or melodramatic hooks.
You have a fetish which will provide you with three magic points per session which can only be used a) for desperate efforts or b) to provide magic point requirements of one effect (or special effect) of one magic schtick of your choice. These points do not increase your magic attribute, sorcery skill etc. Magic points spent from preperations do not cause your magic attribute or sorcery skill to drop (that being the point). You can buy this multiple times to get more than three points of preperations for one effect, or to get preperations for multiple effects. Preparations for Fertility effects only provide 1 magic point per session instead of three.
Example: Timmy has spent a schtick on preperations for the Lightning effect of his blast schtick. When he makes desperate efforts with lightning, he doesn't have to spend his magic points, he can use his preparations instead.
Example: The most common use of preperations it for the Invocation effect of the Summoning schtick. With preperations, you can summon spirits without reducing your precious magic total.
The GM picks a specific supernatural creature. You can probably have some input and influence on his decision. You have a fetish (again, it can an object, a phrase, whatever) that forces that creature to obey you, without you needing to resort to the dominate effect, or whoever is using the fetish. You have credit for having dominated that creature for purposes of summoning it. You have to get GM permission to take this.
Design a stunt that you might do with an effect of your blast schtick (or possibly a movement effect or something). This can be as simple as "hitting two guys at once", or as complicated as "hitting a guy, and knocking him flying a long distance into an object or other guy". Don't be too specific, or you won't be able to use the bonus very often. You can cancel 2 points of stunt penalties when doing specifically that stunt you chose (hitting three guys would not work for hitting two, or vice versa). If you wish to describe the schtick in colorful game terms instead of game mechanics, you may (GMs should reward characters who think up something inventive with a more broadly applicable bonus). You can spend multiple schticks on Superior Spell to get multiple, different superior spells, or to decrease the penalty more if it is greater than 2. Superior Spell can never reduce a stunt penalty to less than 0.
Last modified: June 7, 1996; please send comments to durrell@innocence.com.