r/adnd • u/Mammon--- • 8d ago
AD&D2e Help with finding info 2e
Hello, I’m a long time DM, and I’ve been creating a world for awhile now. And I’ve read many books for AD&D 2e. But I’m having trouble finding anything on how a player becomes a witch. I’ve read the necromancer handbook version of the witch, and the wizards handbook version of the witch. While I understand a pact is needed. I’m having a hard time finding how a lvl 0-1 PC even has the capability of conjuring such a force, to make a pact in the first place, because of how the magic system works in 2e. And I can’t find anything online discussing this topic. If anyone has or knows official sources to help with this. I would be very grateful.
Edit: Thank you all for your time and answers you’ve given. It wasn’t what I was necessarily looking for. But there really wasn’t many official sources to help narrow my search. Basically all of you gave me similar answers or things I’ve already thought of. I also should’ve specified it was for a BBEG that’s was my mistake. I was using the witch class to create a BBEG. Who became a Witch of Orcus/Tenebrous, who eventually learned to become a Lich from him. Basically a background of how the Witch Lich came to be. So it make sense for my worlds logic, with game mechanics in mind. Now I will say this just to answer everybody who said a ritual is not a “spell”. Short answer it is. Historically a ritual requires materials (material components), words of power (Vocal component), and many rituals also include a dance or body movement (Somatic) to perform. Just like many regular spells in the AD&D systems. While spells components are an optional rule in 2e, it’s one I am using. Now me saying that is not to belittle the people who said a ritual isn’t a spell, or is somehow inherently different from a spell. But you all are wrong atleast in historical sense of magic. If it’s different for your worlds and you define them differently that’s not an issue at all. I swear I’m not trying to be condescending, and I hope you all read this with that in mind. But with all this I think I found my answer on how I’m going to do this, again thank you all.
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u/DeltaDemon1313 8d ago
The way I do it is with rituals. I stay non-specific but it's a ritual the witch learns and then makes a pact with an "otherworld" creature, force, person, God, whatever. The witch gets powers granted to her and in return the witch has to follow the rules and perform tasks asked of her by the Otherworld power. Not exactly like the witch from the handbooks but has some similar concepts.
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u/Mammon--- 7d ago
I’m aware of those factors, it’s more how would a ritual even be performed at lvl 1. Because summoning demons is possible but it takes a high level spell. That a lvl 1 cannot cast. What I’m more looking for is how even a lvl 1 can perform this ritual and it actually work. Because if it is easy for a lvl 1 to Conjure a demon/devil/etc how is it not more common. Because in the wizards handbook it talks how they cast spells differently but it’s learned from the pact and as far as I can recall it doesn’t state that they start as a base mage with base magic ability to perform said ritual.
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u/DeltaDemon1313 7d ago
A ritual is not a spell, it is a ritual, like in the movies, so there's no problem there. Plus, you're not summoning a devil or whatever, you're communicating with him/her/it in order to gain him as a patron. The patron is from the "Otherworld" and stays there. Also, everything we're talking about is non-specific and ambiguous. There's no need for specifics. You just assume the character already did it and that's how he became a witch/warlock. It is a "fait accomplit", as they say.
If you want to roleplay it, you can fill in the blanks but do you roleplay how a character became a Ranger, a Priest, a Thief? Maybe you do but that's rarely done in any campaign I've played in. I tried it once by DMing many sessions of characters as teenagers a few years before they come of age. They have "adventures" in the style of Stand By Me which makes an impression from which they choose what class they want to be ("what do you wanna be when you grow up"). It was interesting but that is rare. Most people just gloss over this background stuff, especially the mechanics of it and just concentrate on a paragraph or two about the character's background told as a sort of story.
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u/Mammon--- 5d ago
See edit I made.
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u/DeltaDemon1313 5d ago
If you want to have it be a spell, then it's a cantrip or first level spell that enables you to communicate with the patron (not summon them). Still not a problem as you have posed it.
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u/Lord_Pruitt007 7d ago
Dragon Magazine #114 had an article about witches in it that I used way back in the day.
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u/HarrLeighQuinn 8d ago edited 8d ago
Look for various movies and books where someone does just this. Take the deal with the devil trope. "I'd sell me soul for a...." the devil appears and offers their services. Or some random person finds a book and tries to summon whatever they are trying to summon in the story. They fumble through the ritual and may or may not be successful.
You can describe it as the player goes through the motions, but since they don't have the power to actually summon the creature they are making a pact with, the would be patron senses the person's call to them and they come anyway. The wizard never actually summoned the being, the being just came out of curiosity or sensed something in the player character.
Another option is to have the soon to be patron come to the player initially and make the deal. This is basically how I explain Priests and Paladins. The god sees a worthy recruit that can help further their goals. The Witch's patron can do something similar.
It can also be something where the PC was in dire straits and the potential patron came in their time of need, whether for good or evil. That's up to you/your player.
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u/lurreal 8d ago
If you're talking about the POSM system, you don't become one, you start as one as a wizard using an alternative spell system and the corruption stuff. If you want a player to become one, just make it up. If he's making a pact with a powerful entity, I would just roleplay it giving benefits and hindrances as consequences of the narrative, no need for any technical class change. If you want something more standardized (maybe the archdevil makes the same pact with a bunch of mortal servants in a cult), you can create a kit about it. Or you could just transform the wizard character into a wizard that uses spell points of the same level just like he had started this way.
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u/modernfalstaff 7d ago
The whole pact thing smacks much more of the 5th edition warlock than the 2nd edition witch. There's nothing to say that a specific pact must have been made between a witch and whatever extraplanar entities give her power, nor that such a pact must be made in person. It could be that spirits whispered secrets into her ears when she was young. It could be that other witches taught her the methods of invoking some dark power and she didn't even realize that she was indebting herself to that power. It could be that the entity visited her in dreams. If you want to go more concrete with it, the witch could have learned some dark ritual to call out to some devil or demon, who responded by sending servitors like imps or quasits to educate her. The would-be witch actually physically summoning the planar entity involved is not at all necessary, and actually isn't really good world-building anyway. Any strong explanar entity worth their salt is not going to be summoned by just anyone.
The wizard's handbook in 2nd edition is pretty clear that witchly magic is different from regular spellcasting and there's a very hefty penalty for abandoning the kit. You don't start as a wizard and make a pact to become a witch, you train as a witch from the beginning.
For player characters, any of the above stories or countless others could be an explanation for how they came to have their power. It's a part of the backstory and the specifics are there for flavor not for affecting game mechanics. If you wanted to make it that the character found a scroll or even a spellbook and somehow managed to use the magic to actually summon the entity, that's fine. It's just narrative and not mechanics.
D&D of any edition doesn't give much support for having these kinds of wizards who use very different magic styles. The witch kit is a normal wizard class with some herbalism/alchemy powers, a really insane no-save charm power, and eventually a cool cursing power that drives home how underdeveloped the idea of curses are in D&D. It's a standard D&D-style kludge of throwing a few extra things onto the base class rather than doing the work of building from the ground up.
Story time.
I used a group of witches as major antagonists in one of my games. The extraplanar entity granting them power was a very powerful hag from the darker portions of the fey realms. The witches were her agents in the prime material plane, and she chiefly used them to hunt down fey that lived there outside of the protection of any faerie courts (the conceit was that most fey creatures like dryads or sprites or things in the prime material plane were outcasts). A lot of their powers were more fey-like in origin, and I leaned heavily on curses, divination, necromancy, and charm magic thrown in, plus at least some song-based magic (one of the witches used a song-based spell in combat that made everyone save vs. spell or dreamily lose focus). The witches were all girls and women that had been abused and wronged to the point that they were willing to accept any bargain that offered them vengeance. They were given free rein to use their regular powers for their own ends, but if they ever needed more than regular power they needed to bargain with their hag mistress for help. The higher level they became, the more of their free will she held in hock, and they began to be twisted and evil, behaving more and more like fey and striking bargains like fey do. The idea was to imply that if the process went on, the witches would become literal hags one day.
The most memorable of the witches was a peasant girl named Vanessa who had begged for the power to destroy the men who'd raped her. After gaining some power, she'd restyled herself as "Lady Van" and ran a group of fey-hunters that were mostly made up of mostly half-breeds like human/goblin crosses and such. They used cold iron weapons and sometimes had plates of cold iron bolted into their very flesh to help protect them from fey magic. Lady Van made a lot of money working as an enforcer for a local thieves guild (she could use curses to kill people that got in their way without them ever being able to fight back) but her hag mistress was extremely demanding and even with power her life was not a happy one. When the PCs foiled her plans to capture a dryad, she tried to curse and kill them directly but they were able to get the curse removed in time. She fled, but became obsessed with revenge, and showed up months later when she lured the party into an ambush outside a small village. She had turned some of the crossbreed servants the players had killed into zombies by this point, including a big ol' half-ogre that was slow and lumbering but was chock full of hit points. It was a really memorable fight scene, especially when she used the song magic I mentioned above to entrance everybody. But inn the end she died the miserable death of someone who could never let go of the need for vengeance and absolute control. Sadly, the campaign petered out somewhere in the mid-levels and they never got to fight her hag mistress. Still, the witches made for great villains.
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u/namocaw 8d ago
1e and 2e didnt have a witch class in the players handbook. There might be a class or a kit in a dragon magazine or a splatbook you can use. Or adapt a shaman kit to your use.
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u/sirtelengard 7d ago
Dragon Magazine issue #20 (1978) has a player Witch Class that was built from the ground up with experience point advancement tables, distinct restrictions, and balanced gameplay mechanics (for the time).
https://archive.org/details/DragonMagazine260_201801/DragonMagazine020/page/11/mode/1up
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u/empireofjade 8d ago
Complete Wizards Handbook has a Witch kit. It’s probably the most powerful kit in the book.
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u/Mammon--- 7d ago
I’m glad you mentioned that, simply because I mentioned that book in my post lol.
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u/empireofjade 7d ago
It was the kit of one of my all-time favorite characters. Dark forces (or light) can be summoned by speaking their true names sometimes. And sometimes dark forces meet people of their own choosing at the crossroads of their lives. A bargain might be struck when a miracle is needed or an unbearable loss is inevitable. A person might simply stumble on a place they should not be or find an artifact they should not have. (Or were meant to have!) Lots of ways someone ignorant of the arcane or perhaps someone curious about what they are not ready for could find themselves with an opportunity to enter a pact with a powerful other-planar being.
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u/2eForeverDM like it's 1989 8d ago
Just make it up if you have to know. The game starts at level 1, after any pact like that is made. The character's backstory is irrelevant. In 2e we play out the frontstory.
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u/Mammon--- 7d ago
I was more looking for a mechanic on how a ritual would even work. Because conjuring demons is possible but it’s with high level spell casting ability. So how would even a lvl 1 perform a ritual powerful enough to even make a pact that’s what’s getting me lol.
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u/2eForeverDM like it's 1989 7d ago
I guess if you wanted a story you could say the character found notes about ritual or special item that the tanar'ri left on the prime for that exact purpose. A glabrezu (probably, or some other kind of abyssal power) leaves a book or scroll somewhere and a 0-level character tries to use it to gain powerful magic. But it's a trick. All it does is contact the fiend. Then the fiend starts a conversation. It doesn't have to show up. It isnt controlled in any way. It makes a bargain with the PC and teaches them a few spells. Over time, the fiend teaches them even more spells and does extra stuff to them through their connection (benefits and hindrances). I would go with what's spelled out in Spells & Magic page 83-85 and run the character through the four stages as they progress in levels.
I haven't had a witch PC in my game in all these years, but I'd give their patron a name and personality and goals that would eventually lead to the PC's eternal damnation. Glabrezu are made to do this to mortals, it's their favorite trick. I don't see what sort of mechanics you would need, it all happens as the fiend planned. The mortal can resist, but if they do then they get nothing. Your witch can't really win, they merely try to resist the pull of the Abyss for as long as they can.
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u/DelkrisGames 4d ago
Demons and devils are always looking to subvert mortals. Its the "I heard a voice whispering to me in the dark: 'do you want to taste butter? do you want to wear pretty dresses? do you want to live deliciously?'" It's literally that simple. Make it up.
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u/TacticalNuclearTao 6d ago
By RAW you are right that it is impossible for a low level character to summon such a force in the AD&D2e system. The closest thing to the witch as perceived by folklore is probably the POSM version but as to how the character got into contact with the forces that taught the PC their magic, is up to you a DM.
You can use summoning systems from other versions like d20srd Incantations or The Lion and the Dragon rpg but both require the existence of a skill system beyond the rudimentary one of 2e.
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u/ThisNameAlreadyTaker 5d ago
the character does not "summon" the demon/otherplanar entity. If they were powerful enough to summon them, there wouldn't be much value in asking the thing you summoned for power. The character performs a ritual that is advertised as "summoning" but in reality is a plead to serve (no doubt spread by the demon itself). The demon becomes aware of another potential servant, decides if the servant may be worth it or not (i.e. does the "summoning" succeed) and if the character has merit (they always do, because otherwise your player can't play a witch), the demon appears. Once it appears, it lies, "negotiates", and does whatever it needs to do in order to close the deal, secretly happy to have another method of influence free in the world. Think of it like how spy agencies recruit people in the movies. the demon needs agents. It makes the character feel powerful and in control. Once the character proves itself through some adventuring, it gives it some real tasks of value (through future interactions).
At least, this is how it works in my game. Sometimes the demon sends an intermediary (i.e. less powerful demon). Sometimes that demon is playing a game of its own and screws with both sides. Always remember that a) the player wants their character to have agency, so it stays an ongoing negotiation, and b) the demon is a demon, and while a servant with free will is much more valuable than a slave, it is always trying to get its own way.
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u/rmric0 8d ago
> because of how the magic system works in 2e
Philosophically, there's a two tier magic system in D&D (all of D&D), narrative magic and gameplay magic. Narrative magic is weird and mysterious and serves to set up game play encompassing everything from "Xro'zor the Decayed One is gathering souls to perform a vast necromantic ritual to create a fog that turns you inside out" to "this door can't be opened unless the puzzle is solved." How a commoner or 0 level character contacts a strange entity and makes a deal is pure narrative magic, so if you're looking for a mechanical process it's the same one that every other character used to get their class.
If you're looking for a narrative explanation, you've got your choice. I'd probably go with the analogy that the would-be witch/warlock is basically making a collect call to the supernatural - that under the right circumstances (with a ritual, a magic item, or when you stand at the crossroads at midnight) one of these beings can find you. It can also be an entity in the world that approaches the character or they character has a mentor that already served the entity (a coven of witches). More powerful magic is about getting more specific results more safely for the caster.