Commanding the Beasts

Cost: 10m Target: Template:Animals

Glittering streamers from the sorcerer's anima wrap around target animals, carrying sorceries of peace, obedience and understanding. This spell affects only normal animals of Intelligence 1. It can affect a number of animals equal to (caster's Essence x 2), all within 20 yards of the caster. It does not affect Wyld-tainted or otherwise supernatural creatures.

For the rest of the scene, the affected animals obey the sorcerer's commands. The magic enables them able to understand complex commands. Spellbound animals have a control rating of 0 (see Exalted, p. 154) and they never spend Willpower to resist the sorcerer's commands. If the sorcerer successfully uses social combat to build Intimacies, the animals remain tame and obedient for the sorcerer even after the spell ends, but at this point, they are simply tamed animals without any supernatural understanding of the sorcerer's commands. Anyone training the tamed animals gains a +1 bonus to the Survival roll to do so; the sorcerer himself gains a +3 bonus.

When other characters interact with the spellbound animals, the difficulty to do so increases by an amount equal to the caster's Essence. The animals become testy around other people and are not interested in doing what anyone else wants. Charms and sorcery, however, work normally on spellbound animals.

Commanding the Beasts can be used in war. If the sorcerer increases its shaping time to long ticks, the spell can affect a unit of animals equal in Magnitude to her Essence. She may choose to aid her allies, reducing the control rating of their animals by a number equal to her permanent Essence. Alternatively, she may hinder the enemy by increasing the control rating of their animals by a number equal to her permanent Essence (to a maximum of 6). Doing so can severely disrupt cavalry and other forces that rely on animals.