What about artifacts?

[zediekiel]

HI, I'm new here at the forge and am just getting into sorcerer.  II would like everyone to keep in mind that I am a complete and total noob with experience pertaining only to thesorcerer apprentice version and no other sources whatsoever.  Furthermore, I am new to the better part of the rpg world altogether so I have a not so pertinent question for a campaign I was thinking of starting.

I know that th basi premise behind Sorcerer is that the charadcters are ordinary humans and all powers they use stem from the demons that they summon and bind.  However, I was wondering if magical artifacts or tools might be used as well. 

They wouldn't realy be magic of course, just that they would have special properties atteted to them like a pair of spectcles that give you or your demon +1 will (I know this sounds kind of DnDish but wellll..)

The basic premise behind these iteams would be that they had demons bound into them instead of into a person, sometimes activating said object releases the demon inside (ex. genie in a lamp)

I got the idea of powerful objects with demons inside from Johnathan Sttroud and the Bartimaeus books.  Is that copyright infringiment or non-essential advertising here?

Regardless, I look forward to hearing comments back on this.

Best, Zediekiel

[jburneko]

Zediekiel,

Hello.

Ron's made it pretty clear that the apprentice version of sorcerer is available as a historical curiosity ONLY.  It doesn't really reflect the game in its current state at all.  That said here are a few ways you can do "artifacts."

In the core book there are Object Demons.  Demons which are objects.  They are still summoned and bound to a Sorcerer.  They key idea is that they are still *characters* with motivation agenda and independent action.  They can even move around in that spooky "behind your back" way.  I just had a great scene in a Sorcerer & Sword game where the player was trying to attack one person his demon sword was trying to attack someone else.  Very interesting stuff.

Another way you can do it is with a bit of clever color on an Inconspicuous demon.  Inconspicuous demons are inconspicuous because you can't really notice them *until they take action*.  So it's perfectly reasonable to say the reason it doesn't get noticed is because it looks like an object.  The genie in a lamp might work like this.  It looks like a lamp until the genie comes out and does something.

A third way is a Contain.  Contain is a ritual Sorcerers can do to limit the mobility of a demon.  If the contain is defined as an object then bam, there's a demon in the object.  This would be another spin on the genie in the lamp.  The lamp is a Contain holding the genie demon.

The Supplement Sorcerer & Sword gives a couple more ways to do nifty things with objects.

One way is called a Necromantic Token.  Basically when you do Necromancy you take the Humanity score of whatever it is your killed and transfer it into a Necormantic Token.  Those dice can then be used as bonus dice on any roll that that thematically invokes the original death.  It's kind of a subtle thing and hard to describe.  This is the closest you'd get to +1 will or whatever.

So you have a lot of flexibility with regard to objects and demons.

Jesse

[zediekiel]

Thanks Jess, glad for the input.  The idea that I had was that there was a sort of secret underground war between sorcerer factions in a metropolis Newyork/sanfrancisco setting (clched in sorcerer I know).  Everyonce in a while the PC's will be forced to go do "missions" for their faction (killing someone, earning mony/ objects, spying etc) all for the benefit of the group.  The factions would have bases where they archive information and artifacts so on some special missions (or at th behest of a PC who has completed enough missions) the PC could be loaned certain objects to help them.  It also throughs in an interesting element if the PC's are instructed to steal or retrive an arifact from one of the other factions.

Hope to hear back on this.

P.S. I was thinking about the factions being hidden libraries each specializing in their own brand of summoning and subject matter.  I,e, mythical heroes and monsters from the theology library, manifestations of consiousness from the psychology library and childrens book characters turned demon from the childrens library (can you imagine a tigger demon *shudder*)