Blood-Fueled Magic/Powers

[Merrick]

I've got a player in my Victorian Era game who is playing a half-ish vampire/dhamphire/daywalker, whatever you wanna call her, and she is wanting to pick up magic and Blood Magic with her internal blood reserves as the fuel for the spells.

 

Building it as a multipower with Charges is fairly obvious to me, and I know of the Recoverable Charges rule, but here's where it gets hinky: As long as she can feed, she should technically still be able to power her spells.

 

e.g. She just used the last of her internal blood reserve to cast XYZ spell at an enemy, but the fight is nowhere near over! What's she to do? Well, she runs over, noms on one of her opponents and BAM, she's back in the fight.

 

Recoverable charges, far as I can tell, requires you to be out of combat, but that doesn't make sense for this power. She needs to be able to refuel it IN combat. Long as she can get to fresh blood, she can work her Blood Magic.

 

I already have her a "bite" attack built which does a Body drain to simulate drinking blood, so my non-rule solution was just to make it however many dice of drain she does, she gets back in her blood pool, but I thought there was probably a better, rule-backed way to do this.

 

Any suggestions?

 

Thanks in advance!!

 

- Merrick

[NuSoardGraphite]

Re: Blood-Fueled Magic/Powers

 

Forget about Recoverable Charges. They work well for such a power construct, but what works even better is an Endurance Reserve that has 0 Recovery. However the character has an Aid power that adds directly to her Endurance Reserve that activates only after a successful bite in combat (i.e. she drinks some blood). If Transfer still existed in the system, I would suggest that (transfer Body to Endurance reserve)

 

Call the Endurance Reserve a "Blood Pool" and you are good to go. Just make sure all the powers in the Multipower cost "blood". Add the Cost Endurance limitation where appropriate.

[Ravor]

Re: Blood-Fueled Magic/Powers

 

Question, what happens to the character in general when she runs out of blood?

[Greywind]

Re: Blood-Fueled Magic/Powers

 

Then she dies...

[Ravor]

Re: Blood-Fueled Magic/Powers

 

Seems to me then that the Blood Magic should be low Endurance with the Side Effect of taking damage then.

 

 

"Biting people" should then be linked to a healing power with reduced cool-down time, seems to fit with my vision of how vampire feeding works.

[Merrick]

Re: Blood-Fueled Magic/Powers

 

Question' date=' what happens to the character in general when she runs out of blood?[/quote']

 

It's not quite as fast as "she dies." She has the Dependance complication for her need to drink blood, and if she doesn't feed she takes 1d6 damage which she can't heal back and a bunch of penalties until she feeds again. If empties her blood pool, then the consequences would be similar to her Complication until she feeds. Ala White Wolf she might go into a crazed feeding frenzy, but I don't have her written up as such.

 

Thanks for all the replies so far! Giving me things to think on.

[Greywind]

Re: Blood-Fueled Magic/Powers

 

Eddie: Hey, let's beat it, man. I don't like it up here.

Nic: What are ya, scared of heights?

Eddie: I don't know. After what happened to Johnny Gobs...

Nic: Hey, look, man. Johnny Gobs got ripped and took a walk off a roof, all right? No big loss.

Eddie: No man... that ain't what I heard at all. I heard that the Bat got him.

Nic: The Bat? Aw man, give me a break, will ya?

Eddie: Five stories straight down. There wasn't no blood in the body.

Nic: No ****. It was all over the pavement.

[Christopher]

Re: Blood-Fueled Magic/Powers

 

Forget about Recoverable Charges. They work well for such a power construct' date=' but what works even better is an Endurance Reserve that has 0 Recovery. However the character has an Aid power that adds directly to her Endurance Reserve that activates only after a successful bite in combat (i.e. she drinks some blood). If Transfer still existed in the system, I would suggest that (transfer Body to Endurance reserve)[/quote']

I would agree with the Endurance Reserve. Extremely.

But with one change:

Don't buy a Aid or Heal END. Buy it a gigantic recovery (up to enough to totally charge it in one Turn), limited severely.: "Onyl When drinking Blood" and whatever limitation applies to her while drinking blood like Concentration.

 

The Rules explicitly allow the GM to "pro-rate" the recovery. If she has 60 REC, 6 SPD and only one Full Phase to Suck blood that would be 10 END.

[Doc Democracy]

Re: Blood-Fueled Magic/Powers

 

See, I like the mechanical ideas behind the zero recovery END reserve and the pro-rated recovery for that reserve, but there is nothing in them that even begin to link it to the amount of blood/life drained. NuSoard is right, the transfer power was ideal for this as there was a direct link between the BODY drained and the power gained.

 

If I was to pro-rate the recovery it would be linked to how much damage I did with the bite attack rather than the time taken, however, I would also make drinking to drain blood more difficult in combat than drinking simply to do damage...

 

 

Doc

[薔薇語]

Re: Blood-Fueled Magic/Powers

 

Another way to simulate this, if you want, is with a side effect. I was writing up a anime-ish martial artist that channeled his personal life energy into various abilities. Each time he did so, he would have a side effect go off. The side effect was always written as a drain vs body. Now, although I liked this method for that specific character - it is a slightly different special effect and thus has other challenges.

 

Reason I liked the above method:

It was clean. I didn't have any secondary powers to worry about. Everything was inclusive in the one power. I was running it through a bunch of powers in an MP, so I was able to place the lim on the MP itself and thus lower the cost of it, too.

 

Fairly cost effective. I never think a drain vs body as a minor side effect. I listed it at least a a moderate and normally major side effect. Thus it helped to discount the powers quite a bit.

 

Temporary. Drains are by their nature temporary. You can define how long it takes to recover with just a little adjusting. And since I was doing generic lifeforce, I didn't have to appeal to any concerns about drinking blood, etc.

 

Obviousness of effect. The more extravagant the build (end reserve, etc), the less connected with it the player becomes. A drain vs body side effect has obvious repercussions for the player to see. It is much easier to make the emotional connection to what is happening that way. I think this would work to increase the role play nature of the character.

 

Things to consider for you character if you adopt this method. Because it is a side effect, you have lots of free room to decide exactly how the 'drain' works. Having a drain that says "effect lasts until they feed again" may be too abusive as a power, but not as a side effect lim. This means you can avoid some of the complication of having a secondary "restoration through consumption" power. But if you want to have such a thing, it is easy to do so as a drain/aid link that removes the victims body and applies it to your own. This means that the character isn't using the ability to suck blood to fuel their powers, but to fuel their lifeforce. Thus it stays mechanically more true to the special effect.

 

Bad thing is that, unless you have the drains do a static damage, the character can very easily over do it and hurt themselves very badly (oops, just drained 6 body!). It also means that the characters can be much more easily killed by random NPCs.

 

Anyway, that is my 2 cents on the subject.

 

La Rose.

[Christopher]

Re: Blood-Fueled Magic/Powers

 

Bad thing is that' date=' unless you have the drains do a static damage, the character can very easily over do it and hurt themselves very badly (oops, just drained 6 body!). It also means that the characters can be much more easily killed by random NPCs.[/quote']

Another downside (wich may not be a problem depending on the concept) would be that this method still costs personal Endruance. Charges and Endurance Reserves would not.

 

Also keep in mind that this is for a Vampire that can't use her own blood - she has to use the Blood she Drunk.

 

 

But that reminds me of an alternative form of the Increased Endurance Cost Limitation I thought about for a Anime style game: Cost Long Term Endurance

 

Long Term Endurance can be found in 6E, on 6E2 132. In the Basis LTE is hard to loose (usually only long term activity), it is a "cap" on the Endurance you can have (40 END but only 20 LTE left means at top 20 END), it recovers slowly (REC every 5 hours), but it can be affected by adjustment powers (Heal, Aid, Drain) that target END simply by defining it to work against LTE isntead of normal END.

6E Effects for Low Temperature uses the LTE Rules for the Endurance loss.

[薔薇語]

Re: Blood-Fueled Magic/Powers

 

Good catch, Christopher. I hadn't thought of those two points. My method, unless the power is bought to be no-end (or already is natively), it will also cost end. The solution is to just buy 'no end' on the power if that is an issue in the first place. And to the second issue of "who's" blood, I must have overlooked that she couldn't tap her own. I just read it as using blood. It strikes me that since vampires are always taking blood, that they don't have any that is truly theirs. But if that is a distinction this player and GM want, then my method is not good. It most certainly demands that the PC be using their own lifeforce. If they aren't, then a END Reserve is probably the best way to go.

 

La Rose.

[Xavier Onassiss]

Re: Blood-Fueled Magic/Powers

 

I'd also recommend checking out the rules for Sanguinary Magic from D3 Adventures' Kamaranthin setting for more ideas on this topic.

[Ice9]

Re: Blood-Fueled Magic/Powers

 

The problem I have with using End Reserves for this type of thing is that in many case, you end up paying points for a limitation. For example, the "massive REC" build above could end up more costly than just making the powers 0-END.

 

Potential Ideas:

1) Build it with an END Reserve, set it up to work how you'd like, then just house-rule the END Reserve to be cheap/free

2) Recoverable Charges, and also a "limitation buyoff" power, Linked to Feeding

3) Just decide how it works, decide what that's worth as a limitation, and make it an ad-hoc Limited Power

[薔薇語]

Re: Blood-Fueled Magic/Powers

 

I just had another idea come to mind. Why not buy the power with charges like you normally would. This way the power is self contained to describe what the character can do at the time.

 

Then you could buy additional charges (namely clips) as a naked advantage that can apply to the powers she has. The naked advantage would have the requirement of sucking blood, etc. And if it is set as clips, then she isn't increasing the number of spells she can cast before recharge, rather just getting a recharge. For example, if she has the ability to cast 2 more of the 10 she had originally and switches clips, she losses those two but gains the ten. Thus, she will never go over her 10 max (amount her body can hold), but has a way of getting back up to it.

 

This was a quick thought, so it would need a bit of tweaking in the built, and some GM hand waving, but it is a potential idea.

 

La Rose.

[Christopher]

Re: Blood-Fueled Magic/Powers

 

The problem I have with using End Reserves for this type of thing is that in many case' date=' you end up paying points for a limitation. For example, the "massive REC" build above could end up more costly than just making the powers 0-END.[/quote']

Of course it can become costly as a limitation.

After all endurance Reserve is a more detailed Version of 0 END or Charges Advantage.

[BhelliomRahl]

Re: Blood-Fueled Magic/Powers

 

The Transfer power would of been very useful here but it can be replicated relatively easily in 6th by Linking Aid to Drain.

 

I would build a vampire's blood drinking as:

 

Blood Pool: Endurance Reserve (50 END, 0 REC) - 13 Real Points

Bite: Killing Attack - HTH 1d6 (15AP); No STR bonus (-1/2), No Knockback (-1/2) - 8 Real Points

Blood Drain: Drain BODY 1d6, Reduced Endurance (0 END), Heals as Body (+2) (35AP); No Range (-1/2), Only if Bite Does Body (-1/2), Linked (Bite; -1/4) - 15 Real Points

Blood Consumption: Aid Blood Pool 1d6, Points Gained Equal Drained (0), Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2), Points Do Not Fade (+2) (21AP); Only to Aid Self (-1), Linked (Blood Drain; -1/2) - 8 Real Points

 

Its only a rough idea but it works. Might want to make the Aid fade to represent a Vampires need to contantly feed. (the +2 Does not Fade would roughly Fade a 5pts per month but I do not think endurance would last that long) Blood Drain could be made continous to represent the vampire feeding for a time.

 

Although I like Christopher's idea of Endurance pool with a limited form of REC, only when feeding.

[psyber624]

Re: Blood-Fueled Magic/Powers

 

Personally i like the End reserve concept alot better than charges, because unless you are buying really high amounts of charges (OP didnt state what level of charge was bought) buying a charge power with an easy to modify way to get charges back, (esp as stated where she could do it IN combat) is really an advantage, and not a limitation for game balance purposes. You could always of course just buy the power to 0 end and state that the special effect of the power is that its fueled by the blood your drinking during combat and not worry about all that.

 

Honestly, now that I think about it, if I was going to do a vampire like that, i might just base it off of normal end, and then put a minor limitation on her REC such as "Can only take recoveries by feeding" or "Only after feeding this turn". You could still allow her to take her post segment 12 recoveries as normal, but the requirements of a in-turn recovery seem to fit fairly nicely, with only a few modifications, into needing to feed, and this way, as a vampire, everything she wanted to do (including her Vampire levels of strength or movement) would burn blood.

[Christopher]

Re: Blood-Fueled Magic/Powers

 

Personally i like the End reserve concept alot better than charges' date=' because unless you are buying really high amounts of charges (OP didnt state what level of charge was bought) buying a charge power with an easy to modify way to get charges back, (esp as stated where she could do it IN combat) is really an advantage, and not a limitation for game balance purposes. You could always of course just buy the power to 0 end and state that the special effect of the power is that its fueled by the blood your drinking during combat and not worry about all that.[/quote']

I also tend towards simple builds, in favor of "simualting something into the last fringe case".

The End Reserve is already a rather extreme thing for me.

 

Honestly' date=' now that I think about it, if I was going to do a vampire like that, i might just base it off of normal end, and then put a minor limitation on her REC such as "Can only take recoveries by feeding" or "Only after feeding this turn". You could still allow her to take her post segment 12 recoveries as normal, but the requirements of a in-turn recovery seem to fit fairly nicely, with only a few modifications, into needing to feed, and this way, as a vampire, everything she wanted to do (including her Vampire levels of strength or movement) would burn blood.[/quote']

So you basically take away the characters ability to take Recoveries? (as opposed to the free post segment 12 one).

[psyber624]

Re: Blood-Fueled Magic/Powers

 

I guess it would depend on the genre you are simulating. In one of the Vampire LARP's i played in ages ago (based on white wolf i believe) ANYTHING a vampire did that used any energy required blood.

 

Of course im still just getting back into the game, and some of my rules knowledge is fuzzy still, but the idea was if you modified the recovery rules to allow "feeding" while taking a recovery (which would require an unresisting target) then this would be another way to simulate it.

 

I guess I should clarify, one of the things i always loved about the Hero system was the ability to simulate any kind of effect you wanted to generate. It does mean that some of my "constructs" used to get rather clunky (something im working to remedy now that im trying to get back into it).

 

Alot would depend on whether this is a Vampire campaign, or a Vampire as a type of super in a supers campaign. (Modifications to rules like the recovery one would have less tendancy to cause balance issues if all PC's got the same benefit/penalty i think)