Bad uses of Spiritual Attribuites

[sirogit]

Been theorizing of the biggest things that you want to avoid in setting Spiritual Attribuites... Keep in mind this is all subjective.

1. Passion for Material Goods.
This hits me as as counter to the point of what SA's accomplish, that there's more to a person than his stuff. Players have obvious reasons for wanting Material goods in of themselves, but there's usually less incentive to care about other people.(It's explicitly not allowed in the book, but you see it sometimes.)

2. Drive to be the Best Blank(Usually swordsman)
This is probably the most commonly chosen SA-as-combat-buff, I could understand it if it only applied in trying to get into good swordsman schools... but I don't think it would be taken for that... I don't see the point of SA's just to increase dice pool, I mean, you could just increase the profiencies....

[Valamir]

The key alot of times to "potentially abusive" SAs is to take a step back and analyse what's really being asked for.

1) alot of times an SA may just be poorly worded and a little Q&A might help get to the root of it.  Asking the player specifically what kind of situations he's expecting to be able to use the bonus dice for is a good place to start.  Often times a seemingly abusive SA is just poorly written short hand for what the player is really after.  On the other hand, if the answer is "anytime I have a sword in my hand" then clearly...no.

2) A good way to deal with questionable SAs instead of just banning them is to make sure they are interpreted accurately.  For example, I don't know that I'd have a problem with "Drive to be the best swordsman" as an SA.  But it certainly wouldn't apply everytime he drew his sword.  First, one doesn't get acclaim as a swordsman for fighting Gols (as an example), it would need to be a man on man fight.  Second, a fight against a half dozen peasants in the middle of the woods with no witnesses isn't going to count.  How is anyone going to know?

No an SA like this one can be pretty good.  If interpreted a certain way.  A need to seek the acclaim and recognition of others, to continually match yourself against better and better opponents until you gain a reputation for being the best...and then to suffer the hassle of every young bladeslinger for miles wanting to test you.  Seems the stuff that many a western are made of.

The only SAs that I would automatically just disallow are those that do not have any connection to anything outside of the character himself.  In fact, if it not already, that should be a rule in the book.

Faith is tied to religion, something much larger than the character and invoking passionate opinions.

A Drive involves something to accomplish sure.  But it also involves people who are going to be effected (good or ill) by the accomplishment and people who are going to stand between.

Conscience is probably the weakest of the SAs, but it still involves other people.  As a cultureal judge of right and wrong there is always opportunity to present people who need help, especially when doing so leads to greater trouble.

Luck is about the only SA that is really self contained, but it has a pretty unique status and use.  In fact, IIIRC Brian doesn't even treat it as an SA at all (or at least mused about such).


I think as long as an SA has clear connections with other people and the GM and player are clear in communicating 1) what it can be used for, and 2) the types of things that will earn new dice, that there are few SAs that can't be made to work.

[sirogit]

You bring up alot of good points I didn't consider. To seem less short-sighted that I seem to now in my original post, let me say that the conclusions that I drew were from my considerations:

In play, the best thing mechanicly for the sucess of the character and the best way to address the themes of your character are by playing to the spirtual attribuites. You could describe this as Gamism serving Narrativism or simulationism. Now, there's ways you can apply this to character creation: By choosing an SA that you can address aggressively with your character, the SA goes up quicker. Same for desiging a character that has extremely intergal SA's that just HAVE to be addressed.

But there's certain descsions wherein the 'best' SA for character's success is not the best SA in terms of dramatic value, such as going for bland-basicly ability SAs, or SAs that will be more commonly brought up, or SAs that are basicly the same and wouldn't be in conflict.

So, I was trying to pinpoint the sort of SAs that wouldn't serve a very good narrative function but would be picked for the advantages they give a character... Perhaps I'm wrong, and any SAs picked for the purpose of character ability above any other function is loaded to not serve narrative and be dysfunctional, while the exact same SA choosen with the narrative function first in mind will be functionial because of the details worked out. It looks like a good possibility now.

Pehaps a more focused way of looking at this would be, what are bad intentions for SAs? To me, a bad intention would be that the SA never conflict with the character's other motivations, whether they're SA related or not. Personally I think it would be good if the system had an inherent reward for that sort of thing, though I guess it would be easy to house rule: Actions that cause one SA to raise while another SA drops give an additionial point of SA on the raised one, or some points of inspiration, or both.

[Stephen]

Well, Luck is by definition a "selfish" pure self-benefitting SA, so there is room for such things.  But I would probably apply the following informal guidelines.

Conscience -- This has to be about choosing to uphold the "right" course of action, whatever the character thinks that is, when that is the harder course of action to follow, and when the outcome of that action is in itself highly significant.  You can gain the benefit of Conscience to defend an underdog in combat, for example, but I wouldn't let a player invoke Conscience to help him burgle a safe because "I'll give most of it to the poor, yeah!".

Drive -- I'd specify that a Drive has to be for a tangible, definable goal that can theoretically be firmly accomplished.  A Drive "Gain all the material goods I can" is no good because it has no logical "finish point"; you can always get more stuff.  A Drive to "become the best swordsman in the world" does have at least a theoretical means of verification -- beat the best swordsman or be acclaimed as the best swordsman, and your Drive is accomplished.

Destiny -- Likewise, a Destiny has to be for something that can be tangibly stated to have happened.  A Destiny for a sorcerer to "Live forever" is no good because there's no way to declare it "fulfilled", as it were.

Faith -- By definition this has to be in something larger than yourself in some way, so there shouldn't be much problem with this; I'd also say that it should be in something perceived to be essentially independent of the character -- i.e. the person with Faith doesn't think of his Faith as subjective ideals or principles (then they would be Conscience), but as objective FACTS in which he simply happens to correctly believe.

Passion -- I'd specify that Passions have to be focused on a person or organization, not a goal (that's Drive) nor a possession (that's the Greed Flaw).  You can't feel love, hate, or loyalty to a thing; those are emotions for other people.

[Ingenious]

Having read the last post and the topic of greed, this is where I state this: A character with the greed flaw can/should take a passion of Greed as an SA.  Greed by definition is the excessive desire to aquire what one does not need, especially with money.
Some can take this a step further and say that they 'love' money. And on page 10: 'Passion entails a specific love, hate, or loyalty--to a single person or entity--that occupies your character's actions constantly.'
I do have Greed as a Passion, and it will work just fine in any case in which the flaw of Greed is involved... the flaw is a means of role-playing the greed.. the SA is a means to boost the character's efforts in obtaining the target of his greed. But then this begs the question: where does that particular SA get involved at? Let's say the objective of my greed is money. So when I am breaking into a house in order to steal any money I might find, would the SA be applied? Or if I am picking a lock on the front door of a building to raid it of its monetary holdings? The obvious case where it would be applied is with a bank... breaking into it, picking the locks, and then the safe and such. Another obvious application is in pick-pocketing. Also, in gambling... where a level-headed person might decide to cash out while he is ahead of the game.. but a greedy person would stay in it until he won the entire pot.
Next point on passions.. the hatred for the law.
In any dealings with the law or law enforcement personel.. a character gets bonus dice from this SA. While this may be generalized to a certain extent on my behalf, it is useful for such things as knocking out a guard, or killing him outright. Therefore if a person were to have this SA tied into someone with the bloodlust flaw.. they would be looking at role-playing their flaw, and gaining dice in the process.
Furthermore, a bloodlust SA would boost this situation for the character even further by giving him extra dice in his efforts to kill an adversary rather than incapacitate him.

In either case of greed or bloodlust, a character would roll WP if they want to resist the urge to kill or steal, if the character resists these urges.. the SA logically should not be applied... as hopefully the character will roleplay the WP roll.
Rage might also be able to be tied into a passion SA via the explanation of this flaw in its major form on page 49. 'The major version of Rage forces the character to immediately and violently act out against the source of frustration.' The SA only adds to the level of violence that the character's rage emanates. Should someone wish to resist killing or acting out this rage, roll WP like the other examples.

All in all, SA's of passion that are tied to flaws like these help the player roll-play his character, reward him for it, and serve as an indicator of the intensity that the flaw has over the character's actions.

I see nothing wrong with my SA's being generalized.. as that is what I am trying to do. I want to be able to use SA's as possible to show the intensity of my character's flaws, and to be able to show that in the game through the use of SA's and hopefully by doing so.. succeeding in whatever endeavor my character is involved in while SA's are being fired.
Then again, I guess I am using my SA's to gain certain advantages.. but they are going to be used alot . Due to greed and bloodlust my character will constantly be seeking money.. spending it.. and killing anyone that gets in his way.
However, I do see the point in where if a character has no reason for having it other than the players wants him to have it.. I would not allow it.. as the case with being the best swordsman. I would only allow those bonus dice in combats with equal skill or greater skill than the player's character.

-Ingenious

[Half-Baked]

I like Stephen's description of of the various types of Spiritual Attributes. The only thing I would disagree with is that Passion's cannot be a possession. I think as long as it is a passion directed at a specific possession then that is fine. A land or building might be an example. Someone might love their home, called Ivy Hollow lets say, and do almost anything to protect it. It can be extended to other possessions, a particular piece of jewelry with sentimental value. Gold or diamonds would also be applicable. They would do anything to acquire gold, but could never spend it without losing SA's. Makes it an interesting passion then.

Ingenious, there are a couple of problems with defining Greed as a passion. Your definition of greed is quite narrow. Eating more than one needs is greedy. I can see how you could see it as a passion though. Making it a Love of Money means the person will be both greedy and miserly. They won't give up what they love. Using gambling as an example, they might get to use their passion when betting to gain more money or use it when resisting betting to keep their money. The flaws go a step further and make the character gamble whether or not they want to make or keep their money.

The second problem is that if they have both the Flaw and a SA, whenever they try and resist the Flaw they will automatically lose a SA point. I'm not sure of the page number in the rulebook, but it is part of the SA's. Seems enough of a motivation without giving them the benefit of taking it as a flaw.

[Andrew Mure]

I suppose one thing that could be viewed as a 'bad' use of SAs is a character who invests heavily in luck and very little towards other more defining SAs. I don't currently have the book (damn game store for being out of stock) so I am not aware of any rule that would make a player aiming for a hard character think twice about dumping as many SAs as possible into luck. There may be such a rule, if there isn't should there be?

[Lance D. Allen]

There is none, and nor should there be.

Why? Because all SAs cap at 5. And while 5 dice can be a great thing.. you only get to use luck dice once.. And if luck is the only SA you raise, then you suffer the following limitations, by dint of how the advancement rules work:

No Proficiency will ever be raised beyond 5.
No attribute higher than 3 will be able to be raised.
Sorcerous Vagaries will not be allowed to be raised at all without a teacher.
No new gifts will be able to be bought, nor will any flaws be able to be bought off.

So! If all a given player wants to worry about as far as SAs go is Luck, then they're penalizing themselves quite nicely without having to resort to any rules saying that they must invest in other SAs.

[Pyske]

Nice topic, sirogit.  Like you, I've been contemplating the similar topic of what SAs I would find unsatisfying or uninspiring if I were to receive them from a player.

Let's take a look at a couple more examples that I find a bit iffy.  First, I agree that concepts like "Faith:  in himself", while they can tell us a lot about a character (overconfident, etc.) are prone to become cure-alls that fire in every difficult circumstance.  So when should such an SA fire?  My first thought is that this SA might fire when trying to recover from a failure: faith is only required when raw skill alone has already failed.

Similarly, SAs that are very similar to each other can be a way of double-dipping multiple rewards from the same action.  On the other hand, they can point to a subtle difference the player wants to make.  If one has Faith in someone's goodness, and a Drive to redeem them, how do these interact?  When does one rely on motivation, and when on pure faith?

I'm mostly just trying to psychoanalyze myself and figure out what bothers me about different styles of picking SAs, and what my motives are in restircting them.

. . . . . . . -- Eric

[Judd]

I think the great thing about SA's is that they can be used to reflect different styles of play.

Want to play gamist D&D with TROS system?  

As Jim Delrosso mused to me:

Drive - Kill things take their stuff.
Passion - Love - Killings things and taking their stuff
Destiny - To have all of the greatest stuff
etc. etc.

These might not be right for you or your game but it is neat how flexible SA's are, how they can aid in the playing of many different games.

I'm trying to figure out a way to say what kind of SA's i'd want, say in a player pre-game chargen hand-out, that would illustrate what kind of game I'd want to run, show flavor and such.

[Pyske]

I'm trying to figure out a way to say what kind of SA's i'd want, say in a player pre-game chargen hand-out, that would illustrate what kind of game I'd want to run, show flavor and such.

Thanks for putting that more clearly and concisely than I did; that's exactly what I was trying to get at.

And, hey, since you're here, I hope you won't mind if I ask a related question about your game:  Have you figured out how you plan to use Vordon's Faith and Destiny passions?  Have you felt the need to clarify a divide between them, or not?

. . . . . . . -- Eric

edit:  oops, Destiny, not Drive

[Judd]

Thanks for putting that more clearly and concisely than I did; that's exactly what I was trying to get at.

Thanks for posting what you posted so I could think what I was thinking so clearly and concisely.

I PMed you the answer to your questions.  Any more questions, just head on over to my Riddle of Midnight thread.

[Ingenious]

Okay, so this brings up a new dilemma for some.. how often would you allow SA's to fire in a game? Certainly in almost every situation would be pointless for the purpose of SA's. I like to use them as a motivation to role-play, where as a player I am usually not adept. If I had incentive to perform a certain action, I would do it.. as it helps with the story of my character, what makes him tick etc, as well as rewards me for role-playing whatever situation it was. Greed for example, in my character that is a serious villain(first time to play one).. will be fun and enjoyable to watch his SA's fire because he is passionate about being a villain, with the covert assassinating of nobles and stealing their gold and such. In the character's mind, the nobles owe him a father. (Think of that spanish dude from The Princess Bride: 'Bring back my father you sonofabitch!!!')... Except he takes it further because he is seriously passionate about this.. he does not stop at the point of getting revenge against the man that killed his family.. Therefore, bloodlust as a flaw I can not take, as I already have Greed.. but I certainly can have bloodlust against nobles. And therefore whenever I am in combat, that SA will not fire unless my opponent is a member of the nobility. So while it is generalized to the point of including all nobility, it is also specific in that it is only against nobles. This seems like a good enough compromise to me so that my SA's are not firing all of the time.
If the flaw is resisted via a roll of WP, then of course the SA will not be used. Whether or not the book states that an SA point is lost is up in the air, I can not find it.. I looked in the index to find anything related to SA's and even spirit points. I would like to know where you found it though.


Let's take my love of smoking as an example though. It is a flaw(obviously), and I am passionate about its effects. However, I do resist the urge alot as I know through experience that too much of a good thing in too short of a time results in a bad thing. With smoking in my case, too much of it during the course of a day makes me overdose and therefore I get sick.  Does this mean that when I resist my passion for smoking that I would lose SA dice from resisting it? IMO no, due to the fact that I will go on later to use it again.(though this flaw IS addiction, I had an SA with a previous character that involved the addiction flaw)
We have been over that point before when someone mentioned penalties imposed on SA's awhile ago. I brought up this same exact point. SA's can be actively used, or actively restrained(a WP roll). This emphasises waiting for the best opportune moment to use it. This also rings true for my bloodlust, as I will not be using that in every situation concerning nobility(if I succeed at a WP roll, though I don't have the flaw I would run it that way). I would rather wait to kill the noble at the least point of risk, i.e. no witnesses.. at night when the noble is asleep and incapable of defense.. or use some poisoned substance. Unless I fail the WP roll, in which case I attack and the SA kicks in as a resultant indicator of the level of intensity of my 'no mercy' feelings for them.
quoting the book on page 47 about Greed:
"Any time you are offered money, power, whatever your obsession desires roll WP. The TN varies on the amount of risk involved and the amount of reward involved. This holds true both for offers of money and wealth *out in the open*, be it your friend's bag or a dragon's lair."
So if I succeed at the WP roll when my friend is awake and in the middle of the town square... the TN will be lower because it is easier to resist when there is the risk of being caught and people being witnesses. It will not be so easy to resist(higher TN) when there is lowered risk involved, i.e. my friend is asleep and he's alone in his room at the Inn.
So it all comes down to this: fail the WP roll and I use the SA, succeed at it and I wait until the next time to try and use it. Holding off on an SA is not the same as completely ignoring it. I am using these things in accordance with the rules for the flaw. As for the bloodlust, the TN for resisting the urge to kill as a major flaw would be 12. Now, I know I only have greed as my one major flaw, but I at least have the mechanics for resisting my urge to kill... and therefore rules for resisting my SA's.

Sorry in advance for the confusion this post will bring.
-Ingenious

[sirogit]

I would agree that the model of Spiritual Attribuites is extremely versatile, and I can see limitless uses for it. I plan to use it in a conspiracy game focused on the world being flexible with perspective, where every time you take an action on the behalf of the beleif in something, it becomes a bigger part of reality.

However, I think that alot comes into the use as designed for Spiritual Attribuites(Jake could tell me if I'm way off the mark.) I just finished watching Citizen Kane. In it, you could ask what were the motivations that drove him to build an empire... Was it the need for love or for the obsession for the obsess? They're strongly entwined alot of the time. But the fact that his real drive comes from his need for love makes a much stronger story.

I'm not sure if it's so much that it's a sympathic motivation as it is a meaningfull one.  I can see how Spiritual Attribuites could factor very powerfully in any story of the heroic nature of TROS, if they're -heroic-, as seems to be the intention of SAs by their written limits.

A person overcoming adversity for the protection of someone he loves? for the destruction of someone he hates? To uphld his vigilant loyalty? That I can really buy into. The chips are down, but that cruciel element to him plays into the story, you hear theme music, and the protoganist gets things done. That I can buy into. Greatly. But what dramatic moments arise out of taking a Spiritual Attribuite about collecting meaningless obsess? So the chips are down on our villian, when he catchs the eye of how many jewels are on the kings crown and puts more of his soul into his kick so he can grab it and pawn it.  

The role of determination as power in heroic literature always hits me as driving an important point: Meaningless, selfish desires triumph when no one cares about anything enough to stop it. It's not that lechery can turn it's user into an otherwise average squire invincaple fighter. A story that relied strongly on such a premise would hit me as beieng horribly shallow and boring.

So, Ingenious, I would really like to hear about how your campaign goes, paticularly if it results in themes that you enjoyed exploring, and what are those themes?

[Ingenious]

Let me first state this: Excuse me for rambling below.


Well, as far as the session goes I talked with my GM tonight.. and it seems that he wanted to clarify some things with me.. He asked me if I wanted to be an antagonist or a protagonist... to which I chose to be a protagonist in the group, but still villainous. My character is a scumbag, a murderous.. greedy, and downright nasty individual. He's an assassin for crying out loud. I just wanted to have him be good at the things he cared about the most... killing, and greed. Though my GM is not as supportive with the character as I would have liked... I'd at least like to have SA's for greed and his love for killing at least nobles(ties into the character's background and all).

One can also think of SA's as adrenaline. How pumped up does my character get in certain situations? What sets him off like that? In the real world, adrenaline is the stuff that legends are made of. I have heard stories and seen video of really young people lifting cars by themselves high enough to allow whomever to get out from underneath.. Like this one story where this kid's father was working on the car, and it was up on jacks... the car fell off, pinning the dad.. the kid ran in after his dad was screaming in agony.. and the kid ended up lifting the damned car just enough for the dad to get out. (Think of sitting under a car without tires, on jacks.. and one whole side of jacks collapsed, but the others didnt)

So in terms of physics, weight and balance and shit I guess it was not the *whole* car, as the fulcrum for this equation were the jacks that remained stable and hooked to the car... and the laws of weight and balance dictate that the father away you are from the center of gravity, the smaller the weight/force is that is needed to create the same moment than say a larger weight or force applied to a location closer to the C.G. So the kid did not have 'super strength' of lifting a 2000 lb car..
Think of a force of 20 lbs acting on a point 10 inches from the C.G. That's a moment of 200 inch pounds(or is that pound inches?) Now then.. what is the amount of force required to equal this same moment at an arm of 5 inches from the C.G.? 40 pounds.

Anyways back to my true point.. went off on a tangent there...
The kid was jacked-up with adrenaline at the moment to be able to lift far more than he could have otherwise. Long story short... the kid's SA's were firing.
I'll leave it be like that, and wont stress things such as what effects adrenaline has on the body.. and if it makes it easier to perform tasks, etc etc...

The TRUE point to my thinking is this: SA's are broad and expansive.. they can cover ANY manner of things. It just depends on how you look at it.

-Ingenious