Binding is a pretty permenant thing...

A sorcerer could go his entire life with a single well cared for and bound demon without having to go through the time consuming and dangerous buisness of binding other demons...

But in much of the source material for the game, especialy many Sword and Sorcery stories, demons are oftened summoned or invoked for a single task, then released. In many cases, the actual deal with the demon is cut well ahead of time- sometimes a sorcerer even inherents deals cut by ancestors.

Anyway, to the point. Anyone else toy with this sort of thing? In S&S something similar is covered, but seems to be just about as difficult as a full-out binding.

I was thinking of a fairly flexible pool of 'favors' based perhaps on Lore (the most apropriate score) which would vary like Humanity through play. This could represent a sorcerer's demonic buddies, old minions, demonic relitives, or a big collection of True Names learned from an old Enlightened Master.

In game terms, burn a Favor to invoke a demon who's abilities you may specify... but not its desire, need, or scores. With a simple Lore v Power check, orders may be issued for as long as a scene, with the victories on the check working like a Binding roll to determine how loyal and willing to obey the demon is. Blow it, and the demon runs off to do some terrible things (or worse, pretends to obey).

When a sorcerer runs out of Favors, he starts to accumulate Debt. Dept represents a demon's ability to call in a favor from the sorcerer... refuse, and no demon will give you the time of day without a binding. Helping demons out can grant extra Favors, screwing them over (such as the old bind-and-kill) can cost you favors even as it gains you Humanity.


I've tossed similar topics out before, but his was the first time I had a fairly concrete paradigm for how invocation might work.

Ideas?

1. Others on the list have commented on the high difficulty and cost (in humanity) of bindings, I'm not sure if its good or bad. Probably depends on how many new deamons you want to involve.

2. I didn't see any humanity measure in your suggestion. You'd probably want to incur some burn, or do something where you need to meet its need immedately, once or something. You have the debt thing, but I'm not sure if that couldn't be handled with humanity.

3. In general, I dig the idea. You could apply it to all sorts of deamon-ideas (e.g., ghosts temporarily corraled, American-indian style spirits, etc.).

Hello all,

Sorry I didn't get to this thread before now.

One option that I think a lot of people miss is that you do NOT HAVE TO Bind, Pact, or otherwise formalize the act of simply ordering a demon around.

You could, for instance, Contact and Summon a demon, then simply tell it to go do something and return to you. If you win the Will roll, it has to do it!

The same goes for ANY sorcerer and ANY demon, at any time. If the demon is Bound to someone, it gets the Binding strength (no matter what direction it's in) as a bonus for its Will.

Now, I know this point doesn't address the ancestral-demon thing, like Elric with the Beast Lords, but it does handle quite a bit of the concerns people have raised about short-term service.

Best,
Ron