More Errata(?) for Sorceror

[Piers]

So, having just gotten the books, and plunged straight through them, I have a couple of questions.  These aren't so much queries about how the rules work--reading through the back archives pretty much solved that, though I'm sure things will change when I finally manage to corral people into playing--as nitpicky points about the text:

1) A couple of demons (Greblit in Sorceror and Sword (p. 54), Lukos in Sorceror's Soul (p. 87)) have the Craft ability, which doesn't appear elsewhere in the rules.  I'm assuming that this is a holdover from previous versions and corresponds to an appropriate Cover/Past.  Am I right?  I'm sure someone else noticed this, and has mentioned it elsewhere, I just can't find it.

2) The rules for turning yourself into a Lich (p. 62) seem to have inadvertantly reversed the relationship between Stats and the Token.  As it stands,  Stamina and Will rolled against Token, and victories adding to the Stat, Token victories subtracting from the score.  This means that for the best chance of success you want to use a Token with a power of 1.  Anything more than that decreases your chances of success and potentially weakens you.  Logically, it should be the opposite way around with a more powerful token increasing your undead power and the chance that it will work.  

More substantive questions when I actually manage to play.

Piers

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Piers,

A couple of demons (Greblit in Sorceror and Sword (p. 54), Lukos in Sorceror's Soul (p. 87)) have the Craft ability, which doesn't appear elsewhere in the rules. I'm assuming that this is a holdover from previous versions and corresponds to an appropriate Cover/Past. Am I right? I'm sure someone else noticed this, and has mentioned it elsewhere, I just can't find it.

Your assumption is correct. That's going up on the Errata page - you're the first to have noticed it, I think.

The rules for turning yourself into a Lich (p. 62) seem to have inadvertantly reversed the relationship between Stats and the Token. As it stands, Stamina and Will rolled against Token, and victories adding to the Stat, Token victories subtracting from the score. This means that for the best chance of success you want to use a Token with a power of 1. Anything more than that decreases your chances of success and potentially weakens you. Logically, it should be the opposite way around with a more powerful token increasing your undead power and the chance that it will work.

Remember that the Token's Power is based on the victim's Humanity, and that the "victim" in this case is the sorcerer who's becoming an Undead. My thinking, therefore, was that lower Humanity would mean a more powerful lich. In other words, if you carry out the process at Humanity 1, you're better off (in terms of your lich-itude) than if you carry it out at Humanity 5.

Best,
Ron

[Piers]

Remember that the Token's Power is based on the victim's Humanity, and that the "victim" in this case is the sorcerer who's becoming an Undead. My thinking, therefore, was that lower Humanity would mean a more powerful lich. In other words, if you carry out the process at Humanity 1, you're better off (in terms of your lich-itude) than if you carry it out at Humanity 5.

Okay, that makes sense.  The reason I was confused is the section continues with the assertion that:

It's value of the character's Humanity may certainly be increased, depending on other sacrifices and traded victories from a wide variety of other possible rolls.

which implies that it is beneficial to increase the power of the Token--which it isn't.  Now, I read that as "increase the value of the token for the purposes of turning into a lich" whereas, of course the Token could be subsequently be used for the purpose of other activities.  If a character did want to use Necromantic tokens to aid in the turning into a Lich process, then he/she would make another token, with the victories added onto the Stamina/Will rolls.

Thinking it over, I'm actually tempted to use my own original interpretation for two reasons:

i) From a pure odds point of view the contest of between a one or two die Humanity and whatever stats seems like too much of a good thing for those crazed guys who ordinarily want to do this kind of thing.  

ii) Much more importantly, I actually like the implications of a high Humanity being beneficial for turning yourself into a Lich.  The morality implicit in most interpretations of Necromancy, as you point out, is that it derives its power from the blasphemous transgression of whatever Humanity represents (except in the strange inverted ancestor worship version).  Thus with every other Necromantic proceedure the higher the humanity of the victim the more power coopted by the ritual.  

If transforming yourself into a Lich is an act of transgression, then surely it is more transgressive if you have higher humanity.  (Insert appropriate caveats about just how humanity works in Sorceror from recent threads here.)  In other words, the choice of becoming a lich when you have everything to live for represents a far greater sacrifice at, say, humanity 6, than it does to a teetering on the edge of the abyss low humanity character.  At humanity 1, turning yourself into a Lich is starting to look like a good idea, because you are a brink of falling into an undead state already.  Indeed, you have so little life energy left that there isn't very much left to sacrifice.  

Anyways, your reasoning makes a good deal of sense, I just like the idea of screwing over characters who want to be liches, and privileging those who have every reason not to make such an insane choice.  

Besides, it creates a nice anti-dynamic: this way the crazed necromantic token preparation for becoming a lich, which drives your humanity down, makes the process harder and harder.  Otherwise, it seems much too easy no matter what your humanity.  Set up the ritual, sacrifice people to prepare tokens, taking humanity rolls until your humanity hits 1.  Perform ritual.  Presto-chango.  All done.

Just my thoughts.

Piers

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Piers,

I think you're confusing the Token's initial Power with its increased Power, later. The idea is to increase its Power by the sacrifices, etc, after you've made your lich-ifying rolls. It's extremely valuable to have a powerful Token, after that set of rolls is over. You're really confusing me, anyway, by talking about other Tokens ... yes, some other Token might be used to increase the Stamina and Will values for the rolls, but that doesn't seem to have anything to do with your initial questions. Your new reading of the text makes no sense to me at all.

Here we go. Balxor the Evil has Stamina 4 and Will 5, and decides to become a lich. He has Humanity of 1. He kills himself; the Token has a Power of 1. He rolls Stamina vs. 1, and Will vs. 1; let's say he succeeds, getting two victories each time (to be simple). OK, that means that our lich now has Stamina 6 and Will 7. Cool.

Oh yeah - but a Token 1 is piddly! Let's ramp it up by sacrificing a bunch of slaves at the same time, and so forth. Ah! Much bigger now.

The logic in the second half of your post makes a lot more sense to me, although we have separate conclusions. I am not especially inclined to agree with you about:

I just like the idea of screwing over characters who want to be liches, and privileging those who have every reason not to make such an insane choice.

... because screwing characters who want to be liches isn't what I'm after. It's not about encouraging them to do so either. As for it seeming "too easy," just remember that in Sorcerer, a strong dice advantage is often more effective, but it's not automatically so.

Best,
Ron

[Piers]

Keeping in mind that I had to choose to argue about a rule that is almost certain to be in the "Top Ten Sorceror Rules that you are least likely ever use in Actual Play":

I think we are more or less on the same wave-length, except for the fact that I'm not expressing myself clearly enough.  Blame my confused syntax.  

I get the difference between the Token as used for the ritual and the advantage of a strong token for later on.  I thought I made that clear in my second post.  All I'm saying is that while the passage makes sense in that manner, it is a bit confusing as written, not that the distinction you make doesn't make sense.

Otherwise, for my purposes, if and when I run the game, I'll switch things round because it works for me.

As for the rest:

The logic in the second half of your post makes a lot more sense to me, although we have separate conclusions. I am not especially inclined to agree with you about:

I just like the idea of screwing over characters who want to be liches, and privileging those who have every reason not to make such an insane choice.

... because screwing characters who want to be liches isn't what I'm after. It's not about encouraging them to do so either.

You're right, "screwing over" is perhaps the wrong way to put it.   I just think that it is thematically interesting that the more a character wants that undead power as opposed to valuing whatever else the Humanity mechanic is directed to in a given setting, the less powerful it will make him/her.

And I am probably being far too casual about simply running Humanity all the way down to just above empty simply in order to conduct a ritual.  From a story point of view, Humanity is just as important to the character after turning himself into a Lich.  The premise of the game is still the same, as is the possibility of redemption.  All that's happened is that the character has answered the question "What would you do for power" with "Well, for one thing, I'd turn myself into one of the undead."  Not to mention the fact that performing the ritual with 1 Humanity risks dropping the character over the edge with the Humanity roll that results from the ritual.

As for it seeming "too easy," just remember that in Sorcerer, a strong dice advantage is often more effective, but it's not automatically so.

Of course. I just have the annoying habit, like many gamers, of assuming that a (say) 90% gamble or an overwhelming dice advantage is more or less a sure thing--because we make these sorts of rolls all the time, and continually risk characters lives upon them.  Roleplaying games seem to teach that good odds is the best you can get.

Sorceror is a good antidote to that, because one of the significant things about the Sorceror mechanic is how large the standard deviation of the rolling system is.  Thinking about it, I'd forgotten the effect of Total Victories.  Without them, having a 1 or 2 Humanity just about ensures survival because (at worst) the character will lose one or two points from each of Stamina and Will, and should thus be able to judge immediately whether or not he or she can survive the attempt (Stamina and Will > 2 = all systems go).  With them there is still a significant element of danger.  

Anyway, question answered.

Piers