The price of power...

[Tyrant]

After some time away from the Hero system, I'm slowly easing my way back into it. First with Dark Champions, and soon, with Fantasy Hero.

Now, I'm toying with running a swords and socery style game in a setting inspired by Frank Frazetta's Death Dealer novels, written by James Silke or the Kane the Swordsman novels by Karl Edward Wagner.

In either case, magic tends to be harsh, primal and costly. Often requiring bloodletting and suffering as a price to draw on said arcane power. I'm trying to figure out a way to translate that in Hero system terms. Any suggestions would be helpful.

I figure magic will require an increased END cost for spells, along with a skill roll and backlash if it fails. Probably requiring the concentrate limitation as well. But none of these things brings the flavour of "pain in return for power" that I'm going for.

Can anyone think of a way to perhaps convey the power gained by ritual sacrifice? I know a long time time ago it was simply considered an expendable focus, but somehow, that doesn't really capture what I'm after either.

Maybe if there's a way to take BODY from someone and turn that into END to fuel the spells?

Anyway, normally, in a setting like this, magic would just be for flavour anyway and I wouldn't need to come up with the rules for it. But there's a good chance one of my players will want to play a sorcerer, and since it's going to be a dark game anyway, I don't have a problem with letting him do it. But I need to get the groundwork for how magic is going to work down pat first. If any of you have flipped through the Conan RPG from Mongoose publishing, you have an idea of what I'm going for. But since I've begun to rekindle my love affair with HERO, I just don't want to use the D20 system.

Thanks.

[L. Marcus]

Oooo . . .

Right off the top of my head -- BODY is worth three points per step, while END is a ½ point per step. Just say that one BODY is worth six END, and convert the cost of spells from one to the other . . . ?

Am I far off wrong there?

[Charles]

There's always Thanomancy from killer Shrike's Site.

http://www.killershrike.com/fantasyh...anomancy.shtml

Also, the magic system in the Valdorian Age book has some similarities to what you're trying here, though it's not exact. Basically you bargain with extradimensional beings for favors, doing dark tasks in exchange for their gifts, and possibly losing your soul in the process.

[Diamond Spear]

If the “pain and suffering” can be drawn from someone/something other than the caster by killing them simply add ”Requires a blood sacrifice” as a limitation to the spells with the value of the limitation set by how hard it is to find a sacrifice. If animals can be used it is probably a -1/2 limitation, if it has to be humans than probably at least a -1. Also if the “sacrifice” simply has to involve bloodletting and not necessarily death than the limitations should probably be -1/4 and -1/2 respectively.

[phookz]

Another option would be an END reserve with limitations on the REC that require a sacrifice. The sacrifice could be implemented as a Drain. I would look at some way to have the reserve lose END over time even if it is not used - not sure how you do it, there might even be something in place for this, but I don't have my books in front of me.

With this mechanic perhaps it is possible to drain BOD from someone without killing them. This allows for the chilling prospect of people being kept alive and used as batteries. For more powerful spells, I would require a full sacrifice where the sacrificial person must die, not just lose some BOD.

[incrdbil]

Yeah--allow many magic spells to be fueled by sacrifice--give out free, or very cheap (1pt per 10 active) independent power reserves to those who use sacrificial magic, that only can recover end in sacrificial rites. Let all spells use such reserves instead of personal end for free. These reserves have huge Recovery rates, but the -2 limitation (only recharged through blood sacrifice).

Or, you can just create a flat cost for such reserves, and assign huge upper endurance storage limits, and a recovery factor, and let the characters purchase this 'sacrificial rites' knowledge for whatever price you deem fitting for the campaign.

Evil has an easy time, good is harder, and ultimately, you can do evil things easier by slapping a x10 end modifier on a big spell to help make it cheap, then just sacrificing lots of innocents. You could use your own BOD in a pinch I suppose. Set it so the recovery is fueled at an equal rate to active points in body sacrificed. 1 Body =4 end, 10 Body=40 end, and 20 Body (taking a normal all the way to zero) provides an amazing 80 end.

[Tyrant]

Hmmm, not bad. not bad at all.
Thanks guys.

I've got some food for thought...

[Lord Liaden]

Hmm... a poster once asked how to model a magic system where the energy that powered magic spells could be increased over time with no upper limit, but only through the application of certain rituals; however, casting spells would drain the reserve of energy until the proper rituals could be performed again. What I came up with may or may not suit what you're looking for, so I'll just pass it on here:

Try buying an END Reserve for spells with no Recovery at all, and take the "Never Recovers" Limitation from Charges for it (-2). That means that when END is used to power spells, those END points are "permanently" gone.

Assign a certain number of Experience Points to ritual activities designed to restore the reserve of power (sacrifices, prayers, meditation, acquiring materials, etc.), perhaps requiring a Skill Roll to perform successfully. Use that Experience as Character Points solely to buy more END for the reserve. Since those Character Points are directly increasing the size of the Reserve, it can continue to grow as long as the character keeps feeding it points, but will shrink again when he expends END for his spells; thus the size of the Reserve can grow or shrink freely.

There are several potential benefits to this approach over the standard END Reserve or a Mana stat. The Reserve can be increased indefinitely provided a spell caster has the time and resources to perform the necessary rituals, allowing him to "save up" for a really major spell casting. The GM can set the amount of Experience gained from each performance of a ritual, and the difficulty of said ritual, to govern how easily a character can regain END. Restrictive conditions on the rituals make it easy for the GM to put a character in a position where he can't recharge his Reserve, requiring him to husband his END use. If bloodletting is to be an essential part of spellcasting, perhaps the BODY lost to the character or whoever he sacrifices could be translated into the equivalent Character Points, i.e. two CP per one BODY.

Note that with the Never Recovers Limitation, the ratio of END to Character Points would be 30/1, which IMO is a pretty fair tradeoff for some difficulty in increasing the END Reserve.

Hope that's of some use.

[PhilFleischmann]

A lot of good ideas here

Right off the top of my head -- BODY is worth three points per step, while END is a ½ point per step. Just say that one BODY is worth six END, and convert the cost of spells from one to the other . . . ?

I may be misunderstanding you here, but BODY is two points, not three.

But speaking of that, in the FHG2 (currently on sale!) there's a Black Magic section with some spells that cause the permanent loss of BODY (or other characteristics) each time the spell is cast. This limitation is bought as a variant of Independent, which is a bit of a stretch, but it was Steven S. Long himself who did it. So you can, too.

[Tyrant]

One thing I've been toying with is having all sorcerers built with Drain that affects BODY and can somehow transfer the points drained to the sorcerer as END. But I'm not sure how to implement it.

I keep thinking that Drain might be linked to another power, but I can't quite work it out...

Any suggestions?

[Killer Shrike]

Some one else already linked to my Thanomancy Magic System; an example of a TRANSFER from BODY to an END Reserve is provided therein.

[The Monster]

Here's a thought: how about using a warped version of Side Effect? Drain BODY, always occurs - that way the life force taken by the spell is in direct proportion to the effect. Now modify the "side effect" so that it can be directed with a skill/stat roll: it affects the caster unless he can make the roll, in which case, it affects someone next to him.
This would obviously reduce the value of the Side Effect modifier, by as much as half. But it would add the nasty and dangerous side of magic. It would also make sorcerers stand out - when they start chanting, everyone runs away from them!

[Markdoc]

I actually did this for a while in my FH game - spells got an extra limitation "requires mana" which meant that instead of END spells used BOD - with the note that you could use "just released" BOD or else your own.

Evil spellcasters simply used sacrifices - slash and cast

Good spellcasters either took the hit directly or used meditation (Aid) to boost their BOD Scores before casting or Heal to repair themselves after casting (though that's a slow process, since magical healing also costs mana ....)

Bad Ass wizards simply used transfer to suck the mana out of their enemies and then converted it directly into spells.

Mages of all sorts used a lot of spells with the "trigger" advantage so they could prepare spell sin advance when it was safer and let the spell rip with a gesture or a command word when needed.

Th system did a lot of the things that I wanted - it made mages - even mages on your side - a bit scary, since everyone knew they got their magic from life-force and everyone looked at mages a bit sideways.

It made magic something that required a good deal of forethought and preparation (like in Fantasy novels) and made combat magery relatively unappealing - although a mage could unleash some righteous whoopass, if he had time to prepare, he couldn't count on being able to do it all the time (also like in Fantasy novels) - so he needed backup in the form of rough men with pointy bits of metal. It also gave rise to some dramatic situations where a PC would open a vein for the team's mage to power that spell-we-absolutely-have-to-have-right-now.

However, while I loved the flavour, in the end, it worked fine for NPCs, but I found it restricted magic just a little too much for PC mages who always wanted to be able to cast lots of spells. These days I use a similar system but using LTE *or* BOD. Since you can't release LTE very easily you can still use sacrifices to power spells via BOD, but a caster's own spellcasting uses LTE - he only starts to suffer injury (BOD) if he has used up all his END. That lets a caster recover faster from spellcasting and cast spells on the fly much more safely.

cheers, Mark