How do I make a body jump spell?

[Ace]

I was reading Anne Rice's Tale of the Body Thief and it got me thinking

Since aging cannot be reversed (Sorcerers can speed up entropy not reverse it) after a while many Sorcerers will have worn out their body.

I was thinking they could kidnap a healthy young body and put their soul into it.

The only thing is I am at a loss as to how exactly to make the spell .

I figure it would require Conquer at 3, Summon at 3 (to get the soul out) and Imprison at 3 to bind the souls and your skills and magic in place. Anything else needed?

Lets say you have the spell, you cast it and needn't worry about the aging as long as it doesn't kill you with strain or if you pass out so what? You will wake up in the new body. Thus you can use the whole Spell Pool to cast

Afterwords they could use a spell with vision and sculpture to change the new shell into semblance of the old one, agian the body might be 14 so you can stand the aging  and maybe the old one into the new.

What say you folks?

[Bob Richter]

I was thinking they could kidnap a healthy young body and put their soul into it.

What say you folks?

Sounds good.

I think your spell ought to do it, though I'm no expert.

[Jake Norwood]

Speak up, ya'll...this is fascinating. We've been brewing up a way to handle this lately. I'm curious what kind of checks/balances would practically be put on the thing--not in terms of game mechanics, neccessarily, but in terms of "why don't more folks do this?"

Jake

[Valamir]

Brainstorming off of the top of my head...

What if swapping bodies was like a bone marrow transplant in that you had to find a suitable donor.  You can't simply swap bodies with any one, you have to find a good match.

This provides obvious adventure hooks as the matching victim can then easily be either a PC or someone the PC wants to save.

Course you could do something sick and twisted and require that it actually has to be a linear decendent to work.  Then you'd have motivated wizards coming out of hiding to sow a few wild oats...than coming back in a few years to collect their future vessel...

[Ace]

Speak up, ya'll...this is fascinating. We've been brewing up a way to handle this lately. I'm curious what kind of checks/balances would practically be put on the thing--not in terms of game mechanics, neccessarily, but in terms of "why don't more folks do this?"

Jake

Well first, Sorcerers are pretty rare. Lets say you have a medium sized country. There might be 60 Sorcerers in the whole land.

Of those how mnay know those three Vagaries at 3?

Lets say 1/3

Ok there 20 Sorcerers who could do that, that doesn't mean that they would do it.

The thing is,  it is murder, more or less. Like a lot of TROS it all comes down to SA's <yes I get it now :) >

If the Sorcerer has concience SA, thats a non idea for him mostly. Now when an otherwise moral sorcerer falls to evil like that, its a great story in the making

There is also  faith. The act of body stealing is the ultimate hearesy against every faith on Weyerth and would you want to face the consequeces afterword instead of going peacefully to the after life?.

Having a faith SA renders the act pretty unthinkable.

Also where are you going to get an appropriate body without raising a fuss?

I suppose you could buy a slave if that is legal where you are. If slavery is illegal,  kidnapping is pretty difficult to get away with in a village of 300 where "everybody knows your name"

This means, take the body-- work the spell---move. Not very pleasant

But a concienceless  Sorcerer could grab a new body every twenty years or so and live forever.

Its just most Sorcerers, despite the power they wield, are no different morally than the average citizen of Wyerth.

No of the five or six in a country evil enough to do it, they may not even think of it.

If they do, 50 Body thieves on Mainlund doesn't seem unmangeable to me.

[Furious D]

Speak up, ya'll...this is fascinating. We've been brewing up a way to handle this lately. I'm curious what kind of checks/balances would practically be put on the thing--not in terms of game mechanics, neccessarily, but in terms of "why don't more folks do this?"

Jake

Almost certainly I would require a massive SA sacrifice (similar to summoning demons).  Also, require that the new host also be Gifted as well (that is, if you wish to use magic in the new body), which would severely cut down on potential victims.  Just say that the ability to use magic is partly physiological.

Additionally, the target really has to be allowed a WP save.  Maybe have both the caster and target roll against the CTN (caster rolls Art + # casting successes dice versus target WP plus Art if applicable).  If the spell succeeded, but the target wins the opposed test, the caster's personality transfered, but is forever trapped inside the host with no control of the body (just an observer forever, unless Banished by another mage, as per a spirit).  If the target wins the test by 3 or more successes, the mage's spirit is dispersed into nothingness.

And failure in casting the spell should result in death for the caster (your soul flies out and is dispersed or something).

This really should be hard, and should have lots of potential perils and pitfalls to discourage it's use.

[Brian Leybourne]

Speak up, ya'll...this is fascinating. We've been brewing up a way to handle this lately. I'm curious what kind of checks/balances would practically be put on the thing--not in terms of game mechanics, neccessarily, but in terms of "why don't more folks do this?"

Jake

Who says they don't. How old was the sorceror in the chapter text at the start of chapter 6? Something like 10,000 years old from memory. You can't tell me *he's* still on his original body... (even allowing for natural age stopping spells, and careful casting, in ten thousand years he would have picked up enough aging to screw him, surely.

Here's my take on it anyway:

Summoning 2 (Spirit 2 - to summon the soul out of the body)
Conquer 3 (Implant 3 - to put your own soul in the body)
Imprisonment 3 (Magic 3 - to "lock" your soul into the body and make it permanent).

Thus: Lets say spell of many/ritual:

T3 (a person)
R1 (touch them)
V0 (souls have no volume)
D0 (instant, made permanent through Imprisonment)
L 3 (3+1+1-2)

So CTN is 7, it takes 7 hours to cast, who cares about aging, and it costs three SP permanently because of Imprisonment/Magic 3. Pretty cheap, although the SP loss is nasty, but then again you have many many years in your new body to build up the SA's to rebuild your SP.

I quite like the idea of requiring the new body to be gifted actually. Also note that I would allow the mage to keep his mental attributes, but the physical ones would be determined by the new body, shuffling around his various pools etc. And it would be a gamble - I wouldn't tell the player what the physical stats were of the body, other than "he looks prtetty strong" or "he gets sick easily".

Note that the same spell could be made temporary by dropping the Imprisonment, and adding a duration effect, allowing you to control someone's body for a period of time. After the end of the effect, you would return to your own body and their soul would (presumably) find theirs again.

Just my 2c.

Brian.

[Ace]

Speak up, ya'll...this is fascinating. We've been brewing up a way to handle this lately. I'm curious what kind of checks/balances would practically be put on the thing--not in terms of game mechanics, neccessarily, but in terms of "why don't more folks do this?"

Jake

Who says they don't. How old was the sorceror in the chapter text at the start of chapter 6? Something like 10,000 years old from memory. You can't tell me *he's* still on his original body... (even allowing for natural age stopping spells, and careful casting, in ten thousand years he would have picked up enough aging to screw him, surely.

Here's my take on it anyway:

Summoning 2 (Spirit 2 - to summon the soul out of the body)
Conquer 3 (Implant 3 - to put your own soul in the body)
Imprisonment 3 (Magic 3 - to "lock" your soul into the body and make it permanent).

Thus: Lets say spell of many/ritual:

T3 (a person)
R1 (touch them)
V0 (souls have no volume)
D0 (instant, made permanent through Imprisonment)
L 3 (3+1+1-2)

So CTN is 7, it takes 7 hours to cast, who cares about aging, and it costs three SP permanently because of Imprisonment/Magic 3. Pretty cheap, although the SP loss is nasty, but then again you have many many years in your new body to build up the SA's to rebuild your SP.

Note that the same spell could be made temporary by dropping the Imprisonment, and adding a duration effect, allowing you to control someone's body for a period of time. After the end of the effect, you would return to your own body and their soul would (presumably) find theirs again.

Just my 2c.

Brian.

Thats pretty good although couldn't that be a spell of 3?

You know body stealing is one of the least annoying things a Sorcerer could do in game, all it does is give them a new lease on life. Big Deal...

It beats the various "Slam a rock at lightspeed and kill a city" or "explode the king" tricks that are out there.

Shoot, a Sorcerer could body shift a friend if he liked.

Imagine a story of love involving A good Sorcerer trying to talk his dying wife into allowing him to steal her a new form.
He won't do it without permission out of love for her but she won't allow it out of faith.

[Brian Leybourne]

Thats pretty go0d although couldn't that be a spell of 3?

Yep, no reason why not, except for flavour - I don't really like the idea that it only takes 70 minutes to cast a spell like this :-) Far cooler to imagine a lengthly ritual with the new body tied up in the middle of a ritual circle with candles and evil chanting etc.

You know body stealing is one of the least annoying things a Sorcerer could do in game, all it does is give them a new lease on life. Big Deal...

It beats the various "Slam a rock at lightspeed and kill a city" or "explode the king" tricks that are out there.

Very true.. hell, there's not a lot that a sorceror (even a newbie one) CAN'T do in this game. Seneschals beware...

Brian.

[Furious D]

Alternately, as far as balance, require that the caster succeed in the knockout test from aging in order for the spell to actually work (say if they lose consciousness during the transfer, their soul gets lost).  Require an SA and SP sacrifice, and then give the target a chance to save with their willpower and any applicable SA.  The first rule gives the target a better chance to save by forcing the caster to devote more dice to ward off the immediate (but not the long term) side-effects of aging.

And again, something nasty happens to the caster in the case of failure or successful save by the target

[Brian Leybourne]

Alternately, as far as balance, require that the caster succeed in the knockout test from aging in order for the spell to actually work (say if they lose consciousness during the transfer, their soul gets lost).  Require an SA and SP sacrifice, and then give the target a chance to save with their willpower and any applicable SA.  The first rule gives the target a better chance to save by forcing the caster to devote more dice to ward off the immediate (but not the long term) side-effects of aging.

And again, something nasty happens to the caster in the case of failure or successful save by the target

The problem with that is justification. Other than the fact that you don't want your players to be swapping bodies, what's the IN-GAME/IN-SYSTEM justification for having to spend SA's. I just showed you how it can be done without doing that. The WP check by the target is justifiable I guess, but I can just avoid that by making them quite happy to go through with the process (Control 3) or wipe their mind first so they can't resist (Repress 3) neither add any CTN or difficulty because I have already paid for Conquor/Implant 3.

What I'm saying is that you have to accept the magic system (or not) but as a whole - IMO you can't go around arbitrarily adding costs and extra difficulties here and there because you're not personally happy with the spell they came up with. That's unfair. If you don't like it, don't let your players be sorcerors.

Brian.

[Ace]

Alternately, as far as balance, require that the caster succeed in the knockout test from aging in order for the spell to actually work (say if they lose consciousness during the transfer, their soul gets lost).  Require an SA and SP sacrifice, and then give the target a chance to save with their willpower and any applicable SA.  The first rule gives the target a better chance to save by forcing the caster to devote more dice to ward off the immediate (but not the long term) side-effects of aging.

And again, something nasty happens to the caster in the case of failure or successful save by the target

The problem with that is justification. Other than the fact that you don't want your players to be swapping bodies, what's the IN-GAME/IN-SYSTEM justification for having to spend SA's. I just showed you how it can be done without doing that. The WP check by the target is justifiable I guess, but I can just avoid that by making them quite happy to go through with the process (Control 3) or wipe their mind first so they can't resist (Repress 3) neither add any CTN or difficulty because I have already paid for Conquor/Implant 3.

What I'm saying is that you have to accept the magic system (or not) but as a whole - IMO you can't go around arbitrarily adding costs and extra difficulties here and there because you're not personally happy with the spell they came up with. That's unfair. If you don't like it, don't let your players be sorcerors.

Brian.

Thank you for saying that. I couldn't have put it better.

[DaR]

Speak up, ya'll...this is fascinating. We've been brewing up a way to handle this lately. I'm curious what kind of checks/balances would practically be put on the thing--not in terms of game mechanics, neccessarily, but in terms of "why don't more folks do this?"

I think the big one would probably be: what happens if the spell fails, or you manage to knock yourself out while casting?

I can't imagine the results of magic going awry when trying to rip out two souls, discard one, and put the other back in the wrong body would be pretty.  At best you'd probably kill your target.  A horrible slow lingering death or an unholy fusion of both souls are the worst cases I can think of, but I'm sure other people have a more gruesome imagination than I.

Risk of failure aside, I can see a wealth of possibilities on why it doesn't work, or doesn't work well enough to make it worthwhile:

[*] Magic only works for those who have the right "genetics" (or whatever it is that seperates the Gifted from the normals).  That means you'd have to find a target to transfer into who had the Gift, which is not exactly trivial.  Add on to it that they'll need to be young enough to make it worthwhile and unskilled enough that they can't stop you, and it may just not be something the average sorcerer can expect to pull off.  Why bother extending your life, if you have to devote most of your extended time to finding the next target for your body-swapping rituals?
[*] Every person's body is different.  All your brain chemicals have changed, all your muscle memories and reflexes are gone, and the basic body controls all "work differently".   In the new body you might be as helpless as a newborn, having to spend years relearning the things you spent a lifetime taking for granted.  What mage is going to want to take  years relearning how to feed and clothe himself, to walk, etc?  Or trust someone to take care of him until he masters the new body enough that he can use Sculpture to fix it to his liking?  
[*] Moving bodies damages your connection to magic.  The ritual might require using Imprison on the equivilent of a Master level spell to 'seal' your soul into the new body and thus costs three SP dice permanently.  Do this enough times and you won't be able to master the magics necessary to do it again.
[*] On a similar note, your soul might have an innate attachment to your body, so such a spell wouldn't be Instantaneous/Permanent, but would have to be Constant or even Maintained.  You could transfer yourself, but in a matter of weeks, or even days, you'll be snapped back to your real body.  And what happens if it's dead?  Or maybe you can keep recasting the same ritual, month after month, to keep your attachment to your new body.  Of course, odds are, eventually you'll blow the casting spell anyhow, but even if you don't, repeatedly casting such spells is going to decrease the amount of time until you need to find another host again.
[/list:u]

Now those are just some ideas for the technical reasons why it might not be feasible.  There's also other possible factors, like social ones.  

I could easily see an form of ritual like this as the sort of thing that incites witchhunts by normals, fearing having their souls ripped out for some faceless uber-sorcerer to extend his or her life.  The mere hint that some person is using, or even learning, such magics would be enough to bring them a world of trouble.  Perhaps even from fellow sorcerers, who fear that widespread usages of such magics will bring further unwanted attention to sorcerers in general.

At an organized level, none of the major religions is keen on magic, and magic that involves stealing the souls of others is going to be at the top of the list of no-nos.  There might be religious orders devoted to finding those who practice such dark arts, either through direct investigation, or through simple intelligence gathering ('every 15 years, a member of one of these suspect bloodlines disappears without a trace under similar suspicious circumstances').

On a more personal level, how many sorcerers would actually be willing to perform such a ritual, even if they could?  Not all sorcerers are completely power-hungry amoral types, and I'd even dare to say that the large majority probably are not.  Swapping your soul into someone's body at the expense of their soul isn't the sort of act that goes down easy on most people's conscience.  

-DaR

--
Dan Root

[Lance D. Allen]

Okay, here's how I would do it..

Anything like this should not be possible to be done in a couple hours.. It just ain't right. So I'd add some steps onto it..

First off, the body must be prepared. The mind must be wiped, unless you want all of that body's memories co-residing with your own.. which would make you quite a bit different than you are. If you do not wipe their mind first, the personality of the result would be somewhere between you and them. Best to wipe them entirely.

Now, it can be argued that this can be done during the spell at no extra cost, and that would be true.. But there would be added risk. What if you fail to wipe their mind due to them succeeding on a WP roll? Then you've got to deal with all of those memories, experiences, feelings... You wouldn't be you, anymore. Best to do it beforehand.

Oh, a brief aside.. Control 3 could be used to make them happy to do it, so says Brian.. I'd never go for that in my game. No matter what artificial emotions are invoked, at the very core of a person, they will resist their soul being sucked from their body. They still get a WP roll to resist, assuming they've still got WP... which is why you wipe them first. If they resist, do it again, and again, until you succeed... It's only a few months of age, and you're not long for this body anyway.

So, once the mind has been wiped, then you begin the transferral spell. Vagaries used: Conquer (Implant) 3, Vision (gotta see the spirits to interact with 'em, boyos) 1-3 (doesn't really matter, if you've got it.. I dunno what level is needed to see spirits, though) Summoning (Spirits) 2, and Imprisonment (spirits, magic{wouldn't it suck to leave YOUR magic behind in the old body?}) 3.

Clean Slate

Spell of One
CTN = 7 (casting time: 7 seconds)
T) 3 R) 1 V) 0 D) 0 L) 3
Vagary: Conquer3
Effect: Repress3
Instantaneous(permanent)

The target gets a chance to resist the effects of this spell by rolling WP/CTN of the spell. If the successes on the WP roll equal or exceed the caster's successes, then the spell has failed it's effect.


Transferral

Spell of Many
CTN = 8 (casting time: 8 hours)
T) 3 R) 1 V) 0 D) 0 L) 4 (3+1+1+1-2)
Vagaries: Conquer3, Vision3, Summoning2, Imprisonment3
Effects: Implant3, Clairvoyance(?)3, Spirits2, Spirits2, Magic3
Instantaneous(permanent)

If the target was not wiped prior to the Transferral spell, then they get a WP roll to resist the effects of the spell. If they were wiped, then the spell cannot be resisted.


That's how I'd do it..

<m> God forbid my players ever find this forum...

[Furious D]

The problem with that is justification. Other than the fact that you don't want your players to be swapping bodies, what's the IN-GAME/IN-SYSTEM justification for having to spend SA's. I just showed you how it can be done without doing that. The WP check by the target is justifiable I guess, but I can just avoid that by making them quite happy to go through with the process (Control 3) or wipe their mind first so they can't resist (Repress 3) neither add any CTN or difficulty because I have already paid for Conquor/Implant 3.

The WP check is not only justifiable, it's also required by the rules, already.  See the section on resisting magic effects.

SA penalties are already in place for demon summoning and imprisonment.  You don't think that flinging your very soul about is a comparable drain on one's character?  (call it spiritual leakage,  leaving behind some of your essence, or say it requires demonic intervention to be permanently sealed, whatever)  It's not an entirely unfounded mechanic.

What I'm saying is that you have to accept the magic system (or not) but as a whole - IMO you can't go around arbitrarily adding costs and extra difficulties here and there because you're not personally happy with the spell they came up with. That's unfair. If you don't like it, don't let your players be sorcerors.

That's the Seneschal's job.  And please don't start insinuating because I want to put somewhat of a leash on potentially unbalancing game effects (and my players will only see me get so anal with these kind of "balance breaking" effects) that I "don't like" the magic system and thus shouldn't let my players be sorcerors.  That's just insulting.  Whether you would do it differently if you were seneschal is another matter, but in case you missed it, the rules specifically state that additional difficulty is at the seneschal's discretion.  I'm just telling you what my discretion would be.  Jake was asking for checks and balances, and I was throwing out examples.  Truth be told, out of all the ideas I was throwing out, the only one I really think would be necessary is requiring the target to be Gifted and including death in case of spell failure.  Not only does it seriously limit possible victims, but a Gifted target has a better chance of resisting (example spells often allow SP and/or Art in addition to WP in resistance checks)