Fox Magic: Inari
Today’s short article is a writeup of Inari, patron deity of the kitsune.
A small note first: the previous post has been revised. I reduced the power of the previously-existing racial abilities, and diversified a bit by adding additional minor abilities — the celestial got a bonus to save against charm and fear and a group insight modeled off the elf’s group perception; the wilder got a racial bonus to physical defenses against traps.
The wilder’s ability score bonuses also changed from Cha/Dex to Cha/Int; I’ve been vaccilating over this for a bit, but I’ve come to think the Int bonus suits the folklore better. It also makes them very well suited for the fey warlock and illusionist wizard builds, both of which are also very appropriate for the kitsune of legend. Of course, artful-dodger rogues would have been appropriate too, but so it goes. With their skill bonuses, wilders should still make pretty good rogues.
Now, back on topic.
Categories: Mythic Japan, Original Game Content | Comments (2)
Fox Magic: Kitsune
Kuniyoshi's woodblock print of the legendary kitsune Kuzunoha.
A year or two ago, I wrote a couple of articles for Dragon magazine, back when Paizo was still publishing it as an actual print-on-dead-trees magazine. You won’t find those articles by looking through back issues, because they were never published. Something about Paizo losing the print-on-dead-trees license and Wizards releasing articles as PDFs to subscribers, now.
But this left me with a bunch of 3.5e stuff on my computer for which I had little use, and had in fact more or less forgotten about until I came across it recently while looking for something else entirely.
My loss of a publishing credit is my gain of some blog posts, because I’m going to update at least some of it for fourth edition. Given my inclinations toward Mythic China and Mythic Japan elements in my game, I thought I’d start with my article about kitsune, the shapeshifting foxes of Japanese folklore.
Wikipedia’s article on kitsune (which I wrote large chunks of, back in the day) is pretty good for a compact overview of the folklore. Japanese folklore in general is pretty interesting stuff; if you’re looking to spice up your game, I’d recommend getting your hands on some, reading it, and looking for elements to adapt. But I digress. On to the kitsune. For today’s installment, the basic writeup.
Categories: Myth Direction, Mythic Japan, Original Game Content | Comments (6)
