The Powers Of Poppins

And for today, it’s another question:

I’m trying to come up with a sort of “magical housewife” NPC, i.e. a character who manages a fairly large estate while the head of the household is out adventuring, using magic to safeguard the peace and prosperity of the place.

Leaving aside the use of Sanctum or Leadership (since they’re a caretaker, rather than the person in charge of the estate), I’m curious what sort of supernatural/spellcasting abilities would be appropriate. So far I’ve come up with Rune Magic/hearthcrafting (which I believe includes hedge magic), certain skills (mostly various Profession skills, along with some Knowledge, Perform, and Craft) that use either Stunts or Immunities to go beyond what’s typically possible, and a selection of buff/healing/defensive spells (including things like heroes’ feast, craft magic tattoo, restoration, etc.).

What would you add to that list, or otherwise look to expand upon for such a character?

-Alzrius

Well, there are a number of possibilities there. I’m going to assume that the caretaker is relatively low level, rather than being at the point where they simply – for example – relocate the household into a pocket dimension of their own design. Some of these possibilities will involve things like Sanctum or Leadership, but only in rather limited ways. You’ve already mentioned Rune Magic (Hearthcrafting), so here’s some of the more exotic stuff:

The Neutral Zone (2 CP).

• Melding, Specialized and Corrupted / only to provide culturally-appropriate greetings, food, and lodgings for visitors to your household and to avoid social errors when hosting such visitors (2 CP)
• Touchy foreigners, prohibitions against certain foods, being unwilling to eat with members of the opposite sex, being mortally offended unless all rooms are appropriate color-coded, will start a war if their hosts don’t always adhere to using their (lengthy) proper titles? That sort of thing is not a problem for a host or hostess with this ability. Admittedly you’ll mostly want this sort of ability if you host a lot of diplomatic events, so most people can get along without it.

Warden Of The Innocent (3 CP):

• Occult Sense/Children: The user is automatically aware of the current activities, location, and condition of all children and teenagers who need watching in a considerable radius. Specialized / only applies to those youngsters on or nearby the house, estate, school, or manor (3 CP).
• This is pretty powerful for an Occult Sense – capable of keeping track of dozens or hundreds of targets over a considerable area – but in d20 terms it isn’t a terribly useful field of information. Even if you’re running Hogwarts or an enormous harem or something… kids may be troublesome, but it generally isn’t adventurer-level troublesome. It’s nanny-level troublesome. Ergo this is relatively cheap. On the other hand, it’s probably something that pretty much every parent in the world has wished that they had at some point.

Wisdom Of The Ancestors (6 CP).

• Lore (Household). You know the recipes, the spices, the herbal remedies, how to nourish the soil, how to farm, how to mend roofs, how to build stoves, houses, and greenhouses, how to crossbreed plants, how to deliver babies, and a thousand other things. Specialized for Increased Effect / only applies to household activities, but can be rolled even when an appropriate Craft, Heal, or Profession check would otherwise be required (6 CP).
• This is useful simply because it’s universal. You need to preserve meat, graft fruit trees, make bricks, fix plumbing, deliver babies, counsel upset children, treat a broken leg, build a house, make clothes, or any of a thousand other things? Well, you know what to do, generally with a fair degree of competence.

Rites Of The Fey (3 CP):

• Leadership with Exotic Followers, Specialized and Corrupted / only to have the services of a swarm of classical household spirit/small animals/minor fey, who do laundry, mend various things, harvest fruit, and otherwise handle minor manorial tasks (3 CP). Leadership normally calls for the user to be fourth level before they can start getting followers, but these “followers” have no measurable CR or real game effect at all, so you can reasonably rule that CR limitations do not apply.
• From fey-related blessings to Disney Princesses, a house full of friendly animals, or brownies, or various other minor spirits that perform tasks, is a pretty classic way of glossing over all the hard, dirty, and almost endlessly repetitive work that goes into maintaining a household or manor without modern technology or a swarm of servants.
• You could also take this as a privilege, or in any of several other ways at a similar cost. It’s not like it actually matters much.

Seignior (8-14 CP):

• Innate Enchantment: Specialized and Corrupted / only works in and around place where the user has resided for some time, requires a selection of minor foci – one per function – set up around the place. 18,500 GP effective value (19 CP base, Net 6 CP).
• Action Hero/Crafting, Specialized and Corrupted / only to pay the costs of Innate Enchantment (2 CP).
• Obviously you could use this to get a lot of things – and you can still put in another 6 CP worth of Innate Enchantment, thus getting things up to 36,500 GP in total. Personally, I would probably start off with Ward Major III (Manor-Sized, Cheap, 11,375 GP value, three minor powers).This alone would be invaluable – and it still leaves 7125 to 25,125 GP for a selection of city-type magics. Those are mostly priced in the Industrial Wrights and Magic articles, starting HERE .
• These 8-14 CP can provide some serious, if fairly subtle, power. Even the minor abilities of a Ward Major can be exceptionally convenient – Industry? Longevity? Military Skills? Daily crops? Excluding undead? Supernatural health? Good weather despite some horrible location? Being forgotten by all outsiders? Sign me up now please! Throw some stationary city magic from the Industrial Wights And Magic series (Starts HERE) such as City Stores (Free supplies every day, 8225 GP), a Perpetual Fountain (Endless water, 250 GP), a Composting Chute (Waste disposal or sanitation, 250 GP), a Cleansing Fountain (Cleaning and minor mending, 62.5 GP), and Endless Skein (Endless supplies of fiber, 250 GP), an Eternal Flame Brazier (Free safe lighting, 3000 GP), a Bone Vault (Law enforcement, 6500 GP), and Dark Rampart (Prevents undead spawning, 6500 GP) and you have a well-protected core for an affluent settlement. Perhaps there is a good reason for that dragon, dark lord, or noxious witch to abduct the beautiful princess and keep her imprisoned in their lair, stronghold, or tower.
• Alternatively, if you’re looking for Adventurer support… A Marvelous Tattoo Parlor (Again, from the Industrial Wights And Magic series) costs 24,000 GP. That’s a lot – but if the game master lets you either work with someone else with this talent or lets you be REALLY cheesy and use the Investment rules like Granny does, and equip part of your household… you can grant some important benefits.
• A high level manager may just go in for Granny’s Money Management perk or Occult Skill (Dream Binding) (3 CP + Skill Points) – allowing them to simply dream needed equipment into being for a while. It can be awfully convenient to be able to simply dream up some plow-beasts and plows when you need them and have them disappear again before the tax assessor comes around.

Priestess Of Húsvættir (8 CP):

• Shaping (Specialized and Corrupted / only for Hedge Magic (2 CP).
• 1d6 (4) Mana with Spell Enhancement, Specialized and Corrupted / only for spell enhancement, only with Shaped Hedge Magic (2 CP)
• Rite of Chi with +4 Bonus Uses, Specialized and Corrupted / only to restore the Spell Enhancement pool above, user must whistle or sing and bustle around doing household chores, caring for children, cooking, and so on to make it work (4 CP).
• This 8 CP package is good for a good deal of Hedge Magic every day, although it lacks the item-crafting function of taking that ability directly. Still, for problems ranging from broken teeth to hungry kids this is an instant solution – as well as being extremely flexible since few or no household tasks call for high level spells. It’s not so overpowered as Lady Holder, but that’s often a good thing. Being worth close to 40,000 GP can make you quite a target.

Heir Of Privilege (3 CP):

• Privilege (Grant of Land, 3 CP): Thanks to an ancestral bequest or some such, the user need not pay taxes on their home (up to a modest manor) and enjoys a sufficient income in goods and services for a family to live comfortably.
• This one is pretty obvious. Taxes, rents, and basic income usually aren’t a big thing in d20 anyway though, so it would probably be fair to count this as Specialized (Has no significant game effect) and only charge 1 CP for it. When was the last time that a character in your game worried about property taxes on their house?

A variation on Amulet Crafter or Favor Of Prometheus would work quite nicely (See: https://ruscumag.wordpress.com/2021/05/28/character-defining-feats/ ). Either of these abilities is only 6 CP. While the Amulet Crafter is basically another form of relatively minor primitive magic, it works well for roaming tribes and tribal settings where having a shamanistic family member is very convenient. Favor Of Prometheus would need some minor tweaks to apply to a particular household rather than a campsite, but that’s mostly in the special effects and the wording of the limitations. They would work best for a higher-level character though.

Mystic Architecture (4-12 CP).

• While this is a potentially very powerful discipline for fixed locations – see Castle Hieronymus and Caercrwydryn – it’s also mostly for higher level characters since you’ll need a decently high skill total to make it work effectively. I’d leave this one for later.

Favored Of Hestia (8 CP):

• Enormous Favors (Local Household God or Goddess), Specialized for Increased Effect (Need not be repaid) and Corrupted for Reduced Cost / only for things related to the household, only in and about the household (8 CP).
• This is pretty limited with respect to the world at large – but putting direct divine intervention on tap is about as big a household trump card as you can get. Need a kid resurrected, or the estate saved from a citywide fire, or a tidal wave blocked, or an army to bypass you? Why not? After all, Odysseus wound up with Athena perching in the rafters of his house and personally sniping his enemies. Getting a minor miracle that keeps your house from burning down is pretty small next to that.

Kitchen Ritualist (6 CP):

• Ritual Magic, Specialized and Corrupted / Fairly minor Household and Protective Rituals only (2 CP)
• Skill Specialty (Performing Ritual Magic with whatever skill is relevant, 1 CP).
• Skill Emphasis (Skill used for Ritual Magic), Specialized and Corrupted for Increased Effect (only for performing fairly minor household and protective rituals) (+6 Total, 3 CP).
• With a total base bonus of +(9 + Relevant Attribute Modifier) for minor household rituals, a Kitchen Ritualist can be expected to keep pests away, ensure good harvests, fix leaky roofs, keep wild animals under control and greatly reduce monster attacks, ensure easy childbirth, fix infertility and birth defects, ensure that the farm animals do well, cure common diseases, and a thousand other things. After all, a kitchen ritualist isn’t doing the kind of rituals that call for dragon fangs, a demonic chorus, and rare incense. Their rituals tend to call for a chicken leg, a snoozing puppy, and a cup of soup. And the puppy can have the soup afterwards.

Witchcraft (Varies).

• Really, this is full of possibilities for low-powered household magic. Minor healing, instantly getting work done, persuading awkward guests to go away, brewing antitoxins, improving the weather, chasing away ghosts, blessing the area with prosperity, divining where the lost sheep have wandered off to… there is pretty much no end of applications. Witchcraft, after all, is not really a primary power base. It’s a way to supplement a non-spellcasters abilities in a hundred useful ways. It is no surprise that it can augment a homesteaders abilities just as effectively – or even more effectively given the low level of mundane abilities it will be boosting.

The Lesser Paths (Varies)

• Almost everything on this list would work – Skill Magic, Lay Priest, Wood Witch, use of Charms and Talismans, Spirit Allies, and more are all only 6 CP each. Admittedly, none of those are very powerful by the standards of adventurers, but villagers don’t generally need adventurer-level powers. If they want to go up to 12 CP… Houngan Conjurer or Basic Shamanism (via buying a Companion with the Spirit Fetch template from Eclipse II or here) are both good. Obol Maker or Mastery is probably the most versatile package in this range, but only works if the game master allows Obols in the first place. (Obols present a drastic price break on versatile one-shot magic, almost on the level of “purchasing” spells using a Supply Pouch. This is mostly because – as the rules stand – making or buying potions (the standard one-shot usable by anyone item) is far too expensive for what you get unless you go in for a bunch of specialized boosters to make them worthwhile. Thus, even if you find some you’re generally better off just selling them to help pay for something worthwhile. Ergo, Obols. Whether or not they work in any particular game is up to the game master though).
• I probably wouldn’t be using Skill Stunts, although they’re certainly a possible route. They tend to call for very high skill levels. Those are common enough among adventurers, but are rare among lower-level types.

Martha Stewart Living (10 CP):

• Executive, Specialized and Corrupted / only for directing manorial workers (2 CP).
• Assistance, Specialized and Corrupted / only for manorial tasks (2 CP).
• Immunity to the time normally required to accomplish skill-based tasks (Common, Minor, Major, Specialized and Corrupted / only for manorial tasks, 2 CP). This doesn’t actually negate the time required for performing household tasks, but does vastly reduce it, allowing the user to work on multiple projects at a time or to extend Assistance to many workers. As a natural law immunity this requires special permission from the game master, but I can’t see any real reason not to allow this one…
• Luck, Specialized in Skills (Roll twice and take the best result), Corrupted / only for manorial tasks (4 CP).
• This package is more or less mundane, but still turns the user into one of those horrifying people who somehow take charge, seem to be good at everything, are unnaturally efficient, and make everyone that they’re assisting – often several people at once – seem like fumbling idiots. Wherever they are WILL be terrifyingly well-run however. It also combines ridiculously well with Wisdom Of The Ancestors (above) and Serenity (below).

The Gossip Network (4 CP):

• Deep Sleep with Cosmic Awareness, Specialized and Corrupted / only to become aware of things that may affect the household.
• With this ability – whether it represents prophetic dreams or simply associating with the local gossips and informers – the user will always be aware of things that might affect their household. They will know when the tax assessors are coming, when to have the boys be too sick to be taken for the army, when to have the prettier girls out gathering berries in the woods, when a raiding party will be showing up, when a great storm is coming… Forewarned is forearmed, and few things are more useful for normal people than having time to prepare. This goes very well with Kitchen Ritualist.

Pedant (3 CP).

• Leadership, Specialized for Reduced Cost / may only recruit youngsters of level one or below, it requires at least three months (and usually longer) per level to promote them, any promoted to level three or above will automatically graduate and leave class, these are students, not minions (3 CP).
• D20 has a general problem with generational succession. In reality, people pass on their skills, their knowledge, and their techniques through teaching younger people. When one engineer, or ruler, or painter passes on… their students and apprentices can usually carry on quite creditably. In d20, however, those things are tied to level. The next generation needs to get some levels SOMEWHERE or things are going to fall apart. With this ability – possibly further upgraded to allow it to operate at lower levels – you can at least train the kids up to a reasonably acceptable standard. Admittedly, this is another application of Leadership, and the user will want to be level six (or, say, level three and be paying the extra 3 CP to specialize it for double effect) to take full advantage of it – but it isn’t one that will tend to dominate events in a campaign.

Beacon Of Life (6 CP):

• Returning with Improved (Group) Blessing, Specialized and Corrupted / only applies within the household and only against natural perils (6 CP). No one in your care ever suffers a serious accident, major illness, or similar problem. They may chop down trees, live in the midst of a plague-stricken area, and be spared from natural disasters without peril.
• This is stretching the rules more than a bit – but, of course, it is another fix for problems that generally don’t appear in d20 games save as the backdrop for a specific adventure. In life, accidents happen. In d20… rolling that Profession (Lumberjack) check doesn’t generally involve any peril at all, even if it does in real life. D20 runs more towards “Died fighting a dragon” than “A tree he was cutting down fell on him”.

A Knack With Animals (3 CP):

• Inherent Spell (Bestow Curse) with +2 Bonus Uses, Specialized and Corrupted / only to “curse” animals with domestication, animal must be reasonably restrained for at least ten minutes (3 CP). This is pulling Bestow Curse from a specialized spell list to get it at level three, but with those limits that is a fairly minor bit of cheese.
• Another incredibly convenient power for someone on a farm or manor but generally unimportant in d20 terms. Of course, it can be applied to normally wild animals almost as readily – so if you want to domesticate a tiger, or a hippopotamus, or an alligator, or anything else that isn’t normally trainable… then this is the power for you. A Corrupted, rather than Specialized version could also be used to curse people to think of themselves as property, and to tend to obey orders, and so on, making the user an unusually effective slaver – but that’s generally not a household task.

Graceful Aging (1 CP):

• Timeless Body, Specialized / requires a regular regimen of baths, beauty treatments, exercise, and herbal treatments (1 CP).
• This one actually has some basis in reality. While, even with modern medicine, wealth and influence doesn’t do all that much to extend life – quite a few rich celebrities die young regardless – back in the preindustrial era unrelenting work, poor food, lack of rest, pregnancies, lack of effective medical care, and injuries often made commoners wear down a lot faster than aristocrats did. In d20, of course, PC’s practically never die of old age unless the player was taking “venerable” to get attribute bonuses while somehow evading the usual penalties.

Serenity (3 CP):

• Presence (Aura of Serenity), Specialized for Reduced Cost and Corrupted for Increased Effect (covers the entire house or manor – wherever the user has left his or her mark on the place – but only works where the user has been in charge for some time and has ordered the area to their liking, 3 CP). As the usual first-level side effect all members of the household or manorial staff gain a +2 Morale bonus to household-related rolls.
• Again, this isn’t a major power – but a calm, happy, and smoothly-operating household where the kids are polite and cooperative, the servants aren’t having a private war behind the scenes, where no one is spitting in your soup, and it’s a pleasure to live there is something that much of the world can only dream of.

Feng Shui (3 CP):

• Mystic Artist / Housekeeping, Specialized for Reduced Cost / takes a long time to set up, so the effect is fixed until the user undertakes another round of household organization or prepares for a feast or undertakes some spring cleaning or some such (3 CP).
• OK, this is basically a form of immobile, if fundamentally temporary, art – so it remains in effect until the user opts to spend time changing it or the housekeeping is seriously upset. Unfortunately, this still relies on having a decently high skill level to accomplish much, so it’s really only useful to fairly accomplished users.

Sanctum (Perhaps via a temporary relic creation ability like Houngan Conjurer, above) is entirely appropriate really – a caretaker who commands special powers within the area that he or she is attuned to (whether or not it actually belongs to them) is very classic – and there’s nothing preventing two or more people from claiming the same area as a sanctum. Still, the request was to avoid that, so I’ll simply note the possibility.

Papers And Paychecks (0 CP).

• If your caretaker happens to help run the bureaucracy of a kingdom or some such they may find Craft (Policy) useful. Honestly it’s completely irrelevant to most games, but sinking a few skill points into it might be useful sometime.

Finally we have…

The Devotions Of Celestial Mercy (18 CP):

• The Devotions: 6d6 (21) Mana with Reality Editing, Specialized and Corrupted/can only be used for a set of specific reality edits, below (12 CP). The greater the level of the edit used, the larger the area and/or the more dramatically supernatural the effect:
  • Blessing: A blessed child is effectively under the care of a skill 15 Healer at all times until adulthood. If less than one year of age, the child may reroll it’s lowest attribute, although this will never result in lowering it. More powerful blessings may either apply to greater groups or result in low-grade magical assistance (User’s Cha Mod) times before adulthood – a but of direct healing, or protection from a house fire, or some such.
  • Escape: Threatened women, children, and other noncombatants can be offered a chance to take refuge in ways ranging from a passing driver being willing to give them a ride on through room being found on an evacuation train – and up to a giant turtle-island coming by to offer a them a lift.
  • Guardian: The Devotions can allow a willing individual to place himself or herself between an area – whether that is a humble temple where the villagers are hiding on the low end or a city-state on the high end – and an attacking force. While he or she bars the way and withstands the onslaught, no member of the attacking force may reach the guarded area or harm it’s people.
    Nativity: The celestial powers can grant children to those who wish for them – in ways ranging from simply granting easy conception and pregnancy to a couple who have been having trouble through opportunities for adoptions and on to outright supernatural events, such as a child (and likely future hero) emerging from a peach.
  • Panacea: A Healing spell gains the capacity to remove one or more additional conditions, such as Crippled (lost limbs, damaged organs, birth defects, and similar), Negative Levels, Attribute Drain and Damage, Petrification, Mind Control, and similar problems (see: Break Enchantment). In general, expanding a Heal spell to do a couple of those is a minor edit, expanding a Cure Light Wounds spell to remove a bunch of conditions is more Grandiose.
    • Yes, Regeneration is in the SRD as an independent level seven spell. – making it harder to restore a limb than to raise someone who’s been dead for a week. It’s a legacy spell anyway of course, given that d20 normally hasn’t GOT any rules for long-term crippling injuries. Worse, you can just take Monstrous Regeneration from Magic of Faerun – a spell which turns everything but fire and acid damage to nonlethal damage, heals nonlethal damage at 4/round, and allows the user to regrow limbs (even if the short base duration hinders this) – at level five. Evidently Regeneration is not so big a trick after all, which is why it’s relatively easy to add.
  • Serenity: The Celestial Hand can calm the turbulent powers of nature in ways ranging from calming a flooding stream on up through ending droughts, stopping avalanches, calming a mighty storm, or stilling an erupting volcano. Secondary problems – fires, collapsed buildings, injuries, and so on – will remain, and must be dealt with normally.
  • Sustenance: For the next seven days the common folk and creatures of an area will be able to find – with effort – enough to eat and drink, and sufficient shelter and warmth to survive, despite any famine or food shortage, water shortage, sweltering heat, or arctic cold.
• Rite of Chi with +8 Bonus Uses, Specialized and Corrupted/only usable to restore Mana for The Devotions Of Celestial Mercy, above. (6 CP).
• Exactly how powerful are The Devotions Of Celestial Mercy? Well… this is Reality Editing, and so it depends on how well any particular edit fits into the setting and the storyline. Secondarily, of course, d20 is generally a game of heroic fantasy; the characters are usually expected to fix whatever problem they’re presented with. In those terms… why did the oncoming horde choose a route full of chokepoints where a small group could hold them back for lengthy periods anyway? Especially knowing that bands of high-level adventurers are notorious for stunts like that?
• The Devotions Of Celestial Mercy allows the game master to present the characters with some overwhelming problem – whereupon the players can invoke a Devotion to cut it down to something they can deal with. So you have stilled the volcanic eruption? There are still injuries, fires, people lost down the crevices that opened up, avalanche victims to be rescued, and the bunch of bad guys who will move in to loot the place. But those are problems that a small group can deal with. They generally can’t deal with thirty square miles of territory being blasted by a pyroclastic cloud short of trying for a major miracle.
• The Devotions appeared once before, but they seemed worth adding here.

And I hope that helps!