User:Cedric/Witch's Cauldron of Everything: Great Classes for Female Players
From D&D Wiki
"Women are equal. We can agree on that. And where we can't agree, we have fantasy role-playing games to work out who's better. HAHaha!!" -- Volo.
There isn't much for men to read here. You may move along. Surely there are barbaric acts of swordplay or magical brutality waiting for you, yes? Let things be different for awhile, so that you can learn rather than teach once in awhile...
The original classes were made by men and focussed on things men knew. These classes are made with knowledge that has been passed down from generations of dwarven, elven and human women giving birth, experimenting with magic and fey magic, of dreams and starlight, that no man should test. What does a man know about how the moon and the stars affect the rhythms of life? Men won't bother, generally, there's some achievment waiting that they reach for, so the women can congregate here and gather their power amidst themselves, undistracted. Men don't know how their thoughts and judgements impair women, so much that the smallest twitch of an eyebrow might throw a women's subtle energies away into the wind. You must guard against this and stick to yourselves as you once did when the children were born.
- Neo-Warrior/STR(DEX). Equal fighter as any man, not by strength of sword but by perfect timing-- offering more critical hits. More +HIT, rather than +DAM.
- Herbalist/PTY-WIS(PER). Cures through the divine forces within the tree of life (Yggrisil?), not by the gods, as a cleric.
- Witch/INT(CON). Can knock out some HP by her biting wit alone. Wizards have the world; witches have the womb -- the source of life.
- Dreamer-Stargazer/DEX. Doesn't need to fight at all. Much like a cleric. Instead of critical strikes like a rogue, gets to identify the stats of objects encountered, through querying the Weave. This data comes from staying light-weight to get the overflow from the Weave, where the data "drops" into their awareness when the moment comes to query it. This need to stay available to the Weave makes them vulnerable to attack. Manifests tools and loot from the Weave ("dreaming"), rather than from theft.
- Vixen/CHR. Bard-like class for females.
The womb reflects the deep connections to the universe, mostly through life on Oerth and relationships with children. But the organ also connects to the Weave. In theory, all women are part of the mystery of the feywild and only pretend to be part of the world. Men must connect through their minds. A few sorcerers know how to do it, for example, creating chaos (generally) which the women have to clean up. When they aren't available the giants have to clean it up. Commoners see it as actions, but these actions are precision acts that fix the Weave or re-arrange it for some other purpose.
The Weave allows female players access into the realm that male players don't see. Through subtle energetic cues, they can follow the gossimer threads of intent into a side-dimension that keeps them in tune with the Weave. Women can have two ways of seeing and relating to the world: the standard one (tonal) and the feywild one (the nagual).
In any case, these allow a different kind of power then their male counterparts, through the trust of children and the spirit/yin side of All-That-Is, rather than the god side (or the all-mother side of "(M)amman". Because of this, they can use the archimedean solids for symbolizing the state of their character. These should be color-coded so that every face of the same shape is the same color. Since archimedean solids have different sizes of their faces, each face can represent a different probability or multiplier for other effects. Even neo-warriors might use this to see what their actions for the day so, and chill out more on days/rolls that are disfavored.
This also makes them connected and in some ways superior to the strength of men, because men are born there. At some point, they can't betray this without betraying themselves. This is limited to the same race, generally, as the women of their own race hold the power of their differing origins and the First Mother that bore their race into the World.
As for the connection that all women of all races are connected, this is a piece of arcana you will have to discover in the world. Some say that this connection relates to dragons, some say to giants and their origins, others to Life itself. These mysteries and disagreements drive much of the subtle dynamics between women in the game-world.
In the total sphere of all-that-is, the next level of interest for female players should (or can) be the elements themselves. They can have an alignment vector from the elements that shows their affinity of the element and how much power it will confer. It is entirely possible that the elements are connected to all female classes, it's just that herbalist (and possibly witches) use it directly.
See individual pages for more info on each class.
Women notes (men, return to your own battles):
- You can gather yourselves in a circle to protect the subtle membranes of your intent from outside forces. Four or more is ideal as one can guard each corner of the four directions, the four Winds, as determined by their strengths. You need only sit together with a shared intent to form the membrane of power around you. When done corrfectly, you should be able to feel any forces coming around you. Despite this, higher level men or women can sometimes sneak past these wards, so stay aware and develop your powers (XP) for the sake of your kind and kin.
- Women acting together can create a form of Life in the Weave.
- OEarth: By laying on your backs, heads together from the four directions, you may experiment with reaching upwards with your intent towards the sky to explore the reflections from the Weave which you may sense from the sky. You become the womb.
- Air: Another way is to sit among each other and listen for the Winds.
- Sun: Yet another is to stand back to back and watch the movements in each direction and what the light element is telling you through your perception.
- Water: requires the eyes to be closed and to use your feelings. This requires a kinship with each other so that you can work together in the other realm -- inner Weave. Your positions relative to each other matter not, though it is good to know the approximate location, geographically, so taht you can hone your senses and locale together. When the eyes are closed, there is no space, there is only the Weave and it has dimensions that are apart from the space you move in the world. Feeling sets and unites the intent, so you must bounce your intent amidst each otehr until you can synchronize. Women working together can create objects that will appear in the world somewhere, much like the dreamer/stargazer class. Accessing the outer-weave through the water element may be too hazardous and experimental. It may require the ingestion of mushrooms or the some other ally/spirit. Women may need to develop this, but ultimately it may require becoming one with the Weave rather than the weaver.
- Each method corresponds to one of the elements of alchemy. These are the seeds of the ideas to offer you, freely, the male essence that will allow you to grow nearly anything you want. The Weave becomes your command, yet you must obey the Weave. It is a back-and-forth process and cycle of reach-test-respond-adapt. As a Man, I can only tell you that these are the best knowledge that has been accumulated over the aeons of Time from the edge of Soul. Things like being sure than the inner Weave is kept seprate from teh outer one by the simple use of the eyelids to denote which side you are focussing upon.
- Women, do consider how the Weave related to the immersive, consensual world-building and experience within the game of D&D. If you have a female D&D, hoprefully she is using the powers of the womb to hold the imaginal space that every player can access from their imagination. If it is a male, the DM is probably using the connection from their mother to weave the story and build the shared space. You can use these and experiment for your character to develop skills and to enhance the game. You may also find where animosity is built when boundaries are crossed within the weave of your plane, adverse emotional reactions that you can't explain, because someone's using the Weave for their own balance, healthy or pathological, one may not be able to say.
- The Shou race (Native or Oriental to you) may give you special reflections of things and feedback on experiments so that you need not rely on your subtle imagination and intent alone. Also, the Aryan and Elven women, Valkyries may have unique insights or powers that can be used together to enhance, amplify, the Creation-buiding process of the Weave.
- The use of mind-altering drugs, such as mushrooms, various plants, herbal preprations that involve cooking the herb and denature it, and other substances are generally for the Weave (or the organism connected to the ingestant) to influence you, rather than the other direction, so far as I know. Handle with care. Among these, mushrooms are probably some of the most powerful for re-weaving you into harmony, which is why the Shou use them for medicine when there is a problem. Technically, such techniques are not "herbal", as a mushroom is not an herb. Women may have to develop the nomenclature for this arena to clarify and categorize the space properly.
- Advanced techniques involve the use of sexual energy in partnership with a male. Nothing more will be said about it, yet it is here for the explorer to know about.
DM notes:
- On the connections that link women: Consider the original cells that become a feotus. Do they have a race? Is there a racial identity? Is it a protoplasm that is identical to a reptile/dragons in the Egg? What drives these forces to produce? Does the species drive it from within? Is it from outside the womb, yet connected form the Weave or some other force?
AL Notes:
- If the Weave drives reproduction, this suggest that the Mystery is trying to tell a story. What story is it trying to tell the game-world? Will it tell this story from the forces and tensions of civilization or the will the feywild bear the message more clearly? Perhaps, it will tell the story through our real-world plane.
WotC Notes:
- You really should get in contact so that the feywild can become more natural with the D&D world and women's influence can arise in the game in unique ways that no man has thought.
- tonal and nagual come from the Toltec lineage of don Juan Matus and the American Indian shamanism. Dismissed by academia, but used here to exploit the ambiguity of whether it was real and authentic or fake and a hoax. Through such ambiguity, the thread of possibility turn into reality.
