Hi.

Just got The Riddle of Steel. Loved it. Need to wrap my brain around the tactics in battle, but ate up the sorcery system. Nummy! Have some questions:

1) Read the intro fiction to the Sorcery chapter. Realizing that the narrator is one of The Nine, I still wonder: is it possible to invent an age-resisting potion, a la Ars Magica? In this case, it would add successes to any aging rolls made during a certain time-period (month? Year?), with the caveat that if any aging occurs due to magic-use, the potion becomes useless. Would that be unbalancing, seeing as aging is the big restraint? Probably should be difficult to acquire... Still, it is a standard fantasy trope about the wizard in his tower who has lived a few thousand years.

2) Read on an old thread about embedding spells about a player whose character embedded Spite on a guard who was working for an Inquisition. When the guard entered his compound...BOOOOM!!! Is that legal? Should there be some penalties, at least to any Conscience SA levels? I tend to think so, otherwise a lot more p*ssed-off Gifted would be turning people into walking time-bombs. (Just had a flashback to that movie Impostor with Gary Sinise. Ugh!)

Don't be too surprised to see me asking a lot of questions about magic; it's always been my favorite part in any game!

1) Aging potion: My guess is that Jake will give the default answer... It's your game now, do what you want. If you think it's cool, share it with the rest of us so we can use it too, if we want to. My personal call on it would be that it might be possible, but it's a matter of what you want in your game. Whole threads have been spawned and died about what is possible with the TRoS sorcery system, from world destruction (most of us agree that a neophyte sorcerer could destroy the world, in theory) to ceasing to age entirely. As a seneschal (assuming you will be) it's really up to you to allow or disallow what you want.

2) BOOOM: Legal? Yup. A drop in conscience? Maybe. I'd say it depends on the character's definition of right and wrong, or if they even have a conscience SA. One of the good things (in my opinion) is that the game does encourage heroic roleplaying, but it doesn't require the characters to be good.

Wolfen wrote: One of the good things (in my opinion) is that the game does encourage heroic roleplaying, but it doesn't require the characters to be good.

Hello,

One thing people tend to miss on first reading is that although real aging can't be reversed, the effects of aging can be overcome through magic. Want to be young, vibrant, healthy, and nubile, but you're effectively 62 years old? No problem. Set up some spells to give you all these features, and there you are, the classic wizard who ages into dust if the spells are broken. But you're too spiff a wizard to let that happen to you, right?

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: One thing people tend to miss on first reading is that although real aging can't be reversed, the effects of aging can be overcome through magic. Want to be young, vibrant, healthy, and nubile, but you're effectively 62 years old? No problem. Set up some spells to give you all these features, and there you are, the classic wizard who ages into dust if the spells are broken.

Hi Stephen,

I read it a little differently - sure, the actual attribute are lowered, and it's all those lowered scores which are used for the final "Urk!" death, but magic can also provide, for lack of a better word, "fake" scores - which are indeed used for performance.

So I don't see magical disguise of aging to be "cosmetic," or rather, it's capable of performance-enhancing cosmetics. The Movement, Summoning, and Shaping Vagaries seem quite capable of such things.

But that's my reading of the rules, which admittedly are a tad vague on this score.

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: I read it a little differently - sure, the actual attribute are lowered, and it's all those lowered scores which are used for the final "Urk!" death, but magic can also provide, for lack of a better word, "fake" scores - which are indeed used for performance. So I don't see magical disguise of aging to be "cosmetic," or rather, it's capable of performance-enhancing cosmetics. The Movement, Summoning, and Shaping Vagaries seem quite capable of such things.

Hi Stephen,

Seems that plenty of SA's would be helpful, though - a passion for Yon Fair Princess, or a Drive to be the tourney champion, or hell, anything that simply requires one to be vibrant and active, in circumstances that are so adverse that magic means seem called for.

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: Seems that plenty of SA's would be helpful, though - a passion for Yon Fair Princess, or a Drive to be the tourney champion, or hell, anything that simply requires one to be vibrant and active, in circumstances that are so adverse that magic means seem called for.

Hi Stephen,

Been here before, haven't we? I anticipated this response. My reading of the SA's I mentioned is clearly different from yours; I don't see them as end-runs, and I do see in-game limits on their applications. Maybe you could stretch a little in order to see where I'm coming from, instead of caricaturing what I'm saying into something stupid.

Best,
Ron

Can I just interject that a cunning sorcerer-type will notice that the rules say that magic cannot make anything younger, but they don't say anything about preventing aging in the first place (and thus staying at the same age for ever).

Tricky to do? Probably, but it should be easy enough to come up with a spell that will halt natural aging for X months, and cost less than X months aging to cast (or possibly/probably) be free to cast with clever use of SA's ala Ron E's comments in this thread and others.

And yeah, what Ron said. Besides, even if I'm losing attributes through aging, I can still be buying those attributes back up through SA expendature as experience.

Hmm.. spells to halt aging... lets see. Clearly it's possible (from the short story at the start of chapter 6 if nothing else, assuming the sorcerer concerned isn't really an ageless Fey)

Well, the rules say that "Maturing" is not reversable, this is to prevent making someone get younger by a month, a year or a decade. However, I don't see why the reverse of aging a month/year/decade couldn't instead be to prevent (natural) aging by that amount.

So: T0 (self), R0 (self), T2 (your body), D0 (instantaneous with lasting effect), L1 (Growth 3, -2 for formulisation).

Overall: TN3, spell prevents (natural only) aging for 1 decade per success rolled. Hows that?

Finally, on top of all that, you could instead use the special rules in OBAM to live quite easily and comfortably for (this is from memory) around 520 years if you're a sorcerer prepared to make a few sacrifices. Of course, you'll have to wait until March to read about that... :-)

Brian.

BrianL wrote: Can I just interject that a cunning sorcerer-type will notice that the rules say that magic cannot make anything younger, but they don't say anything about preventing aging in the first place (and thus staying at the same age for ever).

Finally, on top of all that, you could instead use the special rules in OBAM to live quite easily and comfortably for (this is from memory) around 520 years if you're a sorcerer prepared to make a few sacrifices. Of course, you'll have to wait until March to read about that... :-)

Spooky Fanboy wrote:

BrianL wrote: Can I just interject that a cunning sorcerer-type will notice that the rules say that magic cannot make anything younger, but they don't say anything about preventing aging in the first place (and thus staying at the same age for ever).

And it's exactly this that I was aiming for. Although some sort of potion of some sort that might aid in adding successes to magical aging rolls would also be interesting, particularly if the means of making it were ethically dubious...(fey blood, esence of demon, etc.)

Spooky Fanboy wrote: What is this OBAM you speak of? Tell me, for I shall wither and perish most piteously from the lack of this knowledge....

Spooky Fanboy wrote: Although some sort of potion of some sort that might aid in adding successes to magical aging rolls would also be interesting, particularly if the means of making it were ethically dubious...(fey blood, esence of demon, etc.)

Ron Edwards wrote: My reading of the SA's I mentioned is clearly different from yours; I don't see them as end-runs, and I do see in-game limits on their applications. Maybe you could stretch a little in order to see where I'm coming from, instead of caricaturing what I'm saying into something stupid.

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.

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.

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.