Emotions fuel magic right?

[Moriden]

Someone mentioned in another thread that in the dresdenverse emotions are essentially pure magic, or magic fuel if you would. this brought up something i thought about a long time ago when reading one of the earlier books. Pain can be used to power magic right? harry dose it a few times "channeling all his pain and rage" so how would you represent a magician with a syndrome like fibromyalgia, who is essentially in constant near crippling pain?

It seems like he would have a rather powerful wellspring of power to draw on, but i imagine it would be somewhat "tainted" drawing so much power from his own continual pain, and likely hatred.

[KOFFEYKID]

The way I look at it would be consequences, we already know you can take a mental consequence to represent the fact that you are loosing your cool and high on anger.

[Moriden]

that seems to "one shotish" to represent something that would always be there. for example if you said." play your in pain you can take that as a consequence to fuel your magic" once you've done that it cant be used again untill the consequence heals. but the pain would still thematically be there.

The more i think about it, the more i want to say to try and make it some form of sponsored magic. I would give you a boost for any magic that could be boosted by pain, but would also flavor your magic in the same way...

[paul_Harkonen]

You could take it as an aspect.  Take a compel basically any time you do something, you'll have a huge pool of fate points, and could invoke it for almost anything (if your GM let you, of course).

[Biff Dyskolos]

I think there are three ways to handle this,

• Take an aspect for your "emotion" and invoke it
• Take a mental consequence (2/4/6/8) for the emotion to boost your power
• Tag an existing consequence

[arentol]

Harry has a "Not so subtle, still quick to anger" aspect. He can invoke "Still quick to anger" to increase the power of his offensive spells. However, the GM can also invoke it to cause Harry to lose control and do more damage than he wants to do... Of course Harry can chose to lose a fate point to avoid this, and in the context of the books I think Harry does this fairly often.

I think all wizards can use anger to fuel spell damage, but if they don't have the aspect inherently like Harry then the aspect has to be placed on them by someone else (massive taunting, torturing a loved one, etc.). Same with pain and other such strong negative emotions. Although they can probably also bring it up themselves with a consequence like biff describes.

On the other hand, Love, peace, and such emotions can probably be used for more positive magic, like healing magic.

BTW, the "Not so subtle" part can be invoked by the GM when Harry tries to do more subtle things, like veils, to decrease his chance of success or the potency of the veil after it succeeds.

[KOFFEYKID]

Can you tag aspects put on you by consequences? That seems like trying to game the system to me. First of all you would probably get the consequence by reducing a mental stress hit from spell casting, so you would get a benefit from it already, and then to tag it again (possibly for free?) to get another +2 boost... I dont know about that.

[Biff Dyskolos]

Can you tag aspects put on you by consequences? That seems like trying to game the system to me. First of all you would probably get the consequence by reducing a mental stress hit from spell casting, so you would get a benefit from it already, and then to tag it again (possibly for free?) to get another +2 boost... I dont know about that.

You would have to justify the tag of the consequence just like when you invoke an aspect. If you took a severe "Splitting Headache" consequence from spell casting, I don't see how that could be justified as an emotional boost to you magic. I you took a severe "Smacked down by Dr. Evil" aspect from a previous conflict then, ya, you could totally justify that as you're angry and looking for payback.

[Rel Fexive]

I've been wondering this myself somewhat, but I've not read all the magic rules yet so I don't know if it gets a mention or not.  Looks like the answer is "not"...

For starters, personally I find the "my character has debilitating condition X so he can always draw on it for power!" idea is silly.  If it's one of the character's aspects, expect to be compelled all the damn time to the point of uselessness.  But anyway...

Consequences are one obvious route.  You get hurt, scared, embarrassed or whatever and you can tag the consequence by saying "I draw on my fear for power" or any of the other ways Harry does it in the books.

Aspects placed by manoeuvres - sorry, manouvers - are the other clear method.  Someone intimidates you, provokes you, smacks you literally or metaphorically across the face, hits you with the Lara Mega-Lust Bomb #1, whatever it is to put an aspect on you to their advantage and bam, you draw on the way that makes you feel to boost your magic.  Another fine Harry trick.

Last option is to, I guess, place an aspect on yourself somehow.  Since I can't imagine how or what you'd roll to make yourself angry or scared, and just saying "I'm angry now" and calling that an aspect is too easy, you could, say... make like a non-rolled declaration and spend a Fate Point to place "ANGRY!" on yourself.  You get a (sort of) free tag (provided no one spots that you're angry and uses the free one first...) and you can boost your magic with it.

[Moriden]

Some very good ideas here , but my original question was how would you represent drawing power from persistent and constant pain, not a form of pain that is temporary.

The Aspect Idea could work, but that only comes up when you have fate pionts to spend. and/or your st feels like invoking you're "in horrible pain" aspect to give you fate points. certainly a viable solution but might not appeal to some players due to its more hit and miss aplications for something that thematically should more or less be "always on".

The Consequence Idea is if i understand it right, when you want to channel extra power you take a consequence and use the consequences numerical rating as a buff? like you would do with thaumaturgical spells or a death curse? definitely works for those times that harry "channeled all his pain and anger" taking a moderate or severe consequence "nothing left" but that doesn't really work with a pain that is persistent.

The Sponsored Magic idea I've been pondering would be something like kemlerian sponsored magic. it doesn't really come from an outside source, its just a specialized way of casting that taints your magic, and [in the form of debt compels] slowly changes the way your magic expresses and you think. in this case the fact that your always in pain would likely deaden your empathy to others at least a little, and channeling pain as the primary power behind your magic is definitely going to leave a lasting impression on your soul and mind, just like using any other form of sponsored magic or lawbreaking magic dose. Due to the fact that you have to inherently believe in the action and way that your using magic. you would have to accept that the crippling pain that your in is the source of much of your power and that pain is the source of strength. I can see a lot of ways that that would mess someone up mentally.

[Moriden]

For starters, personally I find the "my character has debilitating condition X so he can always draw on it for power!" idea is silly.  If it's one of the character's aspects, expect to be compelled all the damn time to the point of uselessness.  But anyway...

These conditions by there nature are crippling yes. at least one of your aspects should reflect that you have it regardless of how else its expressed. and the fact that your in near crippling amounts of pain should heavily impact your character. there's also the simple balancing factor that when/if your charecter ever finds a way to reduce or remove the pain[ and what sane person wouldn't be trying to ] all that extra power disappears.

I just got an idea while writeing that actually. we could potentially combine the mechanics of lawbreaking and sponsored magic in some ways. Use the debt compels from sponsored to represent the gradual shifts in behavior and the actions your now willing to do, that you previously thought you never would, and every x times you pull on the "pain magic" one of your aspects has to change to reflect that so much of your self image/source of power is wrapped up in pain.

[Biff Dyskolos]

Some very good ideas here , but my original question was how would you represent drawing power from persistent and constant pain, not a form of pain that is temporary.

The only way to get a persistent bonus is through a stunt.

Stunts exist to provide guaranteed situational benefits.

[arentol]

Some very good ideas here , but my original question was how would you represent drawing power from persistent and constant pain, not a form of pain that is temporary.

The Aspect Idea could work, but that only comes up when you have fate pionts to spend. and/or your st feels like invoking you're "in horrible pain" aspect to give you fate points. certainly a viable solution but might not appeal to some players due to its more hit and miss aplications for something that thematically should more or less be "always on".

Ahh, missed part of your original post, sorry.

I think I would allow only new, or temporarily greatly increased, pain to be invoked to power sorcery. So most of the time the constant pain can't be invoked because it is just part of the background pain of the persons life. They are "used" to it. So the only time they can invoke it is if the pain itself is invoked by something else, either an action of their own, or by taking physical stress. Once that happens they can invoke the pain aspect to power spells.

I don't know if all that makes sense, but I understand it.

[Moriden]

I don't know if all that makes sense, but I understand it. Wink

So your saying that only emotions/pain above the norm should be able to fuel magic? Meaning that even if my base level of x emotion is two to three times that of a normal persons i still cant "tap into" it anymore then the normal person can. That makes a certain amount of sense. i would use christine? harrys brothers love interest to argue against it though. she is described in the early books as "to full of emotion" and that is why shes so prized as a chew toy, because her greater depth of emotion makes her energy "more potent" and possibly means theirs more of it.

The only way to get a persistent bonus is through a stunt

Didn't mean to say or imply otherwise. My preferred method as of the moment is to use some variant of sponsored magic which would definitely mean you'd have to pay for it. I'm just looking for other peoples ideas, and to bounce mine against the wall in such a way as to get other peoples feedback on them.

My current idea is something like -5 refresh though and that seems prohibitively expensive to me.

[KOFFEYKID]

Ok, how about this, lets give you a stunt called

Constant Pain [+1]
Your character is in constant, sometimes overwhelming pain. Take a -1 Penalty to any use of the Athletics skill. Add +1 to your refresh adjustment.

And another stunt called

Use the Pain
Whenever you are in pain, you may add +1 to any mental discipline rolls.