Yet more queries about mystic sh*t

[Valamir]

Thats a true point Stephen.  But any GM that couldn't figure out how to use that to an advantage shouldn't be a GM playing with such players.

For instance, take "Destiny to Live Forever".  That's fine.  

Your 25 years old, you cast a spell that could make you age 12 months, you want to add your Destiny SA into the aging resistance...
Nope, says I as a GM.  People live from 25 years old to 26 years old all the time.  There's no threat to ending your life prematurely at 26...so Destiny is not being called upon.

In fact, I'd say until you hit an age where the natural aging rules have reduced your attributes to the point where you're on the verge of death anyway that that Destiny wouldn't apply.  NOW, if you age a year you're running a definite risk of dieing...NOW the dice will kick in.

In other words...yeah, you'll live for ever...with the body and mind of a 257 year man...have fun.

Same for resisting injury...wouldn't keep the person from getting the crap kicked out of him.  It would just help keep him from actually dieing...so he'd still wind up bleeding painfully on the ground.  He just wouldn't necessarily DIE.  Imagine how much that will suck when he's taken prisoner and spends the next 4 centuries in a dungeon...or gets captured by the local vivesectionist...yup...you've been skinned alive and had several organs removed...it sucks that you have to live forever like that doesn't it.

Any player that wants to get that obviously abusive with his SAs deserves to get the full smack down treatment.  In otherwords...the same type of crap you'd have to deal with in ANY game that you let stupid little munchkin types play.  Munchkin them back...or better yet...just don't play with them.

Hell, if I had a player who used SAs like that and I was forced to GM for them, my villain would have a destiny to "Live longer" than him.  Cheese cuts both ways.  Best to just avoid playing with such people.

[Spooky Fanboy]

Wow! glad to see I sparked a serious discussion!

Okay, so no one has any disagreement with embedding Spite into someone, wiping their memories, and turning them into a timebomb. I shudder, but I don't see it happening too often.

Devouring heart of another's familiar, draining life force of Fey, etc. to temporarily defeat aging process, etc. : Well, all I want, really is something to halt advances in aging, magical or otherwise. Still sounds doable to everyone, with reservations.

The question is, what if a "Dying Earth"- type sorcerer, one who actually has drives like "Must live forever" and has lechery, addictions, etc as minor flaws, steps into the TROS milleiu? Someone whose Epicurian tendencies have gotten the best of them (not that they've put up a struggle, or anything) Could the system handle someone like that? If it can, it certainly would stretch the notion of "hero" to unheard of lengths...

Note that this is a tangent from the whole SA's contributing to longevity rolls. What f the character really is a moral and ethical slug, with only the passion of his pursuit as a redeeming factor.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Hi Stephen, no blood, no foul, as I often say. I like to think our TROS exchanges illuminate all the issues about SA's for everyone, regardless of any particular person's particular decisions about what to do with them.

Spooky-fanboy-person, I think the Dying Earth style sorcerer is a fine model for TROS, because nothing about SA's is necessarily "spiritual" in the positive sense of the word. I delight in making TROS NPCs who reek of self-indulgence.

Philosophy: There's nothing I can't say to anyone and have them take it, which is why I'm so jolly.*

- Passion: hates the very guts and soul and essence of Calumbro, Master of Catastrophe
- Passion: the purest love for for the nubile, ripe, sweet, and altogether too virtuous Shannallandra, daughter of Calumbro, who dotes on her loving father
- Drive: to discover the source of mystic energy from the Perhaps-Nonexistent Dimension of Hoom
- Destiny: to be the sorcerer supreme (let me add the very stern proviso that nothing about Destinies says that they are guaranteed to be realized; in fact, I'm assuming a whole squad of rivals with the same Destiny)
- Luck (he's gonna need it)

Lechery, greed, and a couple of other choice Flaws seem called for as well.

Just imagine this fellow delivering phrases of sincere self-abasement toward his lady-love, as beads of sweat ooze down his forehead, then brutalizing whole populations of interdimensional slaves to achieve enough power to assassinate her father covertly. Ewww!

Best,
Ron

* I stole this from the novel "Magus Rex" by Jack Lovejoy.