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The Dresden Files => DFRPG => Topic started by: zenten on August 05, 2011, 02:21:40 PM
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So if someone has Outsider sponsored magic, would they be violating the seventh law for the lawbreaker power everytime they cast a spell? For this please just assume that such a character *can* get the lawbreaker power.
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They would have very-most-likely at least one Lawbreaker for even getting that type of magic, but using that Sponsored Magic would add more, I'd say. I can't see how you would practice Outsider magic without reaching beyond the Outer Gates.
Also, YS244:
Furthermore, the
Outside’s intentions are so dark, so dire, that the
Seventh Law is the only one on the books that
isn’t conditioned upon casting a spell. Even doing
research on the Outside and its inhabitants is
verboten, let alone actually pulling power from
there.
The Gates are never fully closed. It’s through
the tiniest of cracks that the darkest of things
enter our world (like He Who Walks Behind,
OW76). And when someone does pull power
from there—forging a bond with a malevolent
Outsider—one of those cracks widens, just a
touch. The human race is lucky that few have
ever managed such an effort for long, thanks to
the efforts of the White Council and particularly
zealous enforcement of the Seventh Law.
In your game: Actually drawing down power
from beyond the Outer Gates, with full intention
and knowledge about what that means, is a
pretty villainous thing to do. Even if you aren’t
fully apprised of what you’re doing, this is the
kind of ink-black magic that will stain your soul
right quick.
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Yeah, I'd say that every time they take advantage of the sponsored magic benefits that'd count as another instance of Lawbreaking. Those aspects would get twisted up nice and quick.
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The problem is, if you have him take another Lawbreaker every time he uses it, why would he take the sponsored magic in the first place? That's just 4 points of dead weight and he is going to run out of refresh before long.
Depending on the campaign, I would probably not even make him take 1 lawbreaker, if it is a very dark campaign, or 1 if it is a moderate campaign and I would probably say "would you like to think of another character", if he wanted to play someone like that in a goody-two-shoes campaign.
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Well, I'm thinking of this for an NPC, but things like refresh and aspects will matter.
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Oh, you have a PC who wants to do that? You might point him to less utterly toxic types of sponsored magic, like Kemmlerian Necromancy or Genocidomancy.
He could wait to take it until he has enough refresh left to pay for the two Lawbreaker stunts as well as the Sponsored Magic.
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For each one (1) Law, you max out after using it three (3) times. Then it costs -2 and gives +2, it will never get a higher bonus, or require more Refresh. And the fact that his Aspects change do not really matter up until they face this bastard NPC, it might even make him more interesting, as they can't rely with certainty on the information derived earlier :)
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My bad, I thought that OP was the one who was talking about the character in question being a PC.
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I've got a PC with Outsider Sponsored Magic. She uses her Seventh Lawbreaker bonus for everything.
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The NPC is going to be a sympathetic character that used sponsored magic once to kill her husband's killer. She got the magic from the big bad NPC. The PCs aren't big on killing people and are scared of the Wardens, so I want to see how they deal with her.
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The NPC is going to be a sympathetic character that used sponsored magic once to kill her husband's killer. She got the magic from the big bad NPC. The PCs aren't big on killing people and are scared of the Wardens, so I want to see how they deal with her.
That's a lot of killing in such a short post. Trying to figure out if the players want to kill a woman for killing her husband's killer? Kill me now.
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That's a lot of killing in such a short post. Trying to figure out if the players want to kill a woman for killing her husband's killer? Kill me now.
You kill me. :D
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It's always going to depend on the game's tone, but if they have sponsored magic then debt is a great way of twisting the character even if you don't want to play with lawbreaker.
If you do want to play with the lawbreaker power though, as someone already pointed out, the max lawbreaker you can get for one law is +2, and though the aspects should be twisted they don't have to be all about lawbreaking. So "Suzy Homemaker" should not become "Dark Servant of the Outer Gates", but rather something in between the two (I was having a hard time trying to combine the two ;D ). It's quite feasible to have a character who isn't quite off the deep end under those circumstances.
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So "Suzy Homemaker" should not become "Dark Servant of the Outer Gates", but rather something in between the two (I was having a hard time trying to combine the two ;D ).
'Play house all day, serve the Master all night'
...
...that came out differently than I intended, but you get the picture...
(Also, the Outer Gates are what BLOCK Outsiders from the mortal world, and even the Nevernever. Serving the Outer Gates would be more in line with the Venators' calling)
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(Also, the Outer Gates are what BLOCK Outsiders from the mortal world, and even the Nevernever. Serving the Outer Gates would be more in line with the Venators' calling)
I'm aware. Was just having a hard time coming up with aspects and then stopped caring about the details.
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A thing just popped up in my mind... Should Sponsored Magic (Outsider) cost more than 4 Refresh? I know that it requires Lawbreaker as well, which is a mixed blessing, but the creature in question would also have far more trouble to collect any debt, plus it can be used to lower the Toughness/Recovery powers of practically anyone/-thing, as energy from 'Outside' have never really been quite that common in our universe...
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I would think that any benefit might be balanced by the downsides. I mean that's a pretty harsh agenda, and sponsor compels would tend to be pretty nasty.
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Well, I'll grant you that the compels might be nasty, but I guess it also depends on whether you allow it to 'bypass' the Toughness powers of just about everything or not.
What kind of compels do you envision? One that I could see coming up several times, if not often, would be for the PC to 'spread the wealth', leaving Outsider-related writings around here and there. Particularly hard on White Council mages, if they manage to skim it by accident :p
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I'm not planning on having it lower the effectiveness of toughness/recovery powers in my game. I mean, Hellfire doesn't do that for Angelic stuff, right?
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True, but whatever is Outside is against everything inside. It is the antithesis of this universe, so logically it should have the desire to destroy everything within it. That leads me to think that its energies could and should give it the power to lower/bypass Toughness powers.
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I saw a really great quote here on the boards somewhere about outsiders not wanting to destroy our world, but their nature is antithetical to our existance it was something like
"They are as oceans warming themselves with a candle"
I dont think its fair to say that they want to destroy us...they just do with their existance in our world.
In the game I am co-running beneath the city of New Orleans is the creature Mordite...in our game it is the source of the mordite used by others in the novels, and keeping him bound is the number one job of the Mayor of NO. The ritual that binds the creature is done each year...On Fat Tuesday...unknown to the partiers at mardis gras they are not just tired from the good time they are having...but all have them have contributed a minor physical or mental consequence to the ritual to keep it bound.
The one goal the creature wants is its freedom, so the sorcerers with sponcored magic that we run into are there to cause chaos in an attempt to find the creatures location and free it. The current idea between me and my co ST is that the creature just wants to leave....our world is as deadly to him as he is to us but he is trapped here by the gates.
Wow this turned into a very long post for me to say that the motivations of the outsiders can be very diffrent and probably unfathomable to us on the inside. We see a sorcereer being compelled to kill and we think they want to destroy us...in fact they are doing scientific research on souls and the murders are the equivalent of drawing blood from their perspective.
We dont know, maybe for one outside it would be the catch for anything inside for another it wouldn't.
On a related note has anyone in your games toyed with the idea of a "good outsider" still harmfull to our existance but using its minions in our world to fight the minions of the others
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True, but whatever is Outside is against everything inside. It is the antithesis of this universe, so logically it should have the desire to destroy everything within it. That leads me to think that its energies could and should give it the power to lower/bypass Toughness powers.
All are equal before God Demon Sultan Azathoth.