Forced Susceptibilities

[eepjr24]

I am designing a punishment meted out by the sun-priests of my world. In essence, here is what happens:

 

Priests specially prepare the victim (ritualistic spell), who must be bound or otherwise unable to escape. The final step involves annointing the victim with an oil or ointment. The result of this ceremony is that the victim is now suscepitble to sunlight. "You shall never see the face of the sun again without knowing the weight of your sins".

 

Depending upon the degree of the offense, the person is let go at some point during the night in an open area, or they are staked out to burn with the rising sun.

 

I am looking for a few options on the spell itself. It is almost certainly a transform. The options I want are basically varying the degree of the susceptibility (1d6/min, 3d6/hour, etc), the method of reversing the transform (remove the ointment, dispell of > AP than the transform, bath in the fountains of the sun god in the holy city, etc), and some of the SFX of the actual damage (runes burned into the skin if they escape before dead, etc).

 

Anyone have something like this I could look at? Opinions? Comments?

 

- Ernie

[Monolith]

They are all just Transformation spells. The difference between the three is that one gives a 1d6 Susceptability and the other two give more. But really it is just simple spell built the same way three times with slightly different results. Depending on how you do magic you could even purchase this spell as a multipower with 3 slots having each attack with a slightly different effect.

[dugfromthearth]

At sunset the victim is placed on a stone altar with their hands and feet tied to stone pillars. The victim is on their back, their feet pointed east (so they are "facing" the rising sun).

 

A concoction of alcohol is poured over them and set alight. It burns very quickly and cold, but it burns off all of their hair so that their skin is clean. Oil is then poured on them and scraped off with a strigil to remove the ash and any dirt.

 

A scared brush made of white and gold eagle feathers (from the bald and golden eagles) is used to paint on symbols in a thick black paste consisting mainly of tree sap. Symbols are painted on the face, chest, etc. Over most of the body.

 

As the sunlight fades torches on the pillar are set alight. The victim is warmed by the torches except under the paste which is chilled, and as the night wears on beings to feel like ice.

 

At midnight the victim is released. The pasted is left upon them. It marks them as a heretic, but if left on will protect them from the sun. It will of course dry and flake off over time.

 

When the paste is removed those patches become extremely sensitive to the sun and a few minutes exposure will make them red and sunburned, re-drawing the symbols upon the flesh.

 

The cure for it is to have the symbols re-painted at midnight with a different mixture which heals the condition. Note that usually this means the symbols must be sunburnt to be visible.

 

 

 

Note: Greeks and Romans bathed with oil and strigils to scrape themselves clean. They did not set themselves on fire to burn off their hair, but they did use lamps to singe off unwanted hair from armpits and the like (the women mostly according to paintings)

[DrFurious]

Re: Forced Susceptibilities

 

Originally posted by eepjr24

I am looking for a few options on the spell itself. It is almost certainly a transform.

 

Not necessarily. Since all you want to do is to damage the opponent, a simple attack power with advantages could work. You could build a continious uncontrolled attack to affect the target, limited to only in direct sunlight. The requirement to stop the uncontrolled attack can be the various ways of removing the curse.

 

!DrFURIOUS!

[Dust Raven]

I would agree. This spell seems to be just a rather eleborate method of causing damage, something that Transform shouldn't duplicate.

 

An 1-3d6 EB, Uncontrolled, NND (out of direct sunlight), Does BODY, 0 END, Persistant. Limitations appropriate to the ritual that curses the victim (Extra Time, Concentration, Focus, Incantation, Gestures, ect...).

[eepjr24]

Uncontrolled

 

I should have checked last night, don't have my book in front of he, but I thought once an uncontrolled attack stopped, it did not start again? There are some victims of this who are actually living underground who have been caught in sunlight before for brief periods and have the sigils and scars to prove it. The other problem with an EB is that armor does not really defend against this very well in some cases. The way the EB is written if you have a 4 ED forcefield, you take no body from the attack at all even standing naked in full sunlight. Since many of those being marked are mages who are not sun priests or even outcast sun priests this is a likely occurance. Otherwise, the EB sounds good.

 

Suggestions on how to work around that? Or any other ideas? Right now it still seems like transform is my best bet.

[Agent Chains]

EB Works Best I Think

 

I think you missed one of the advantages that Dust Raven put on the attack. NND (out of sunlight). That means that there is no defense except something that blocks the sunlight. So, no armor or force field would protect the victim unless it completely blocked sunlight as well (which would probably make seeing a bit difficult without burning out the eyes). So, as Dust Raven's curse is built, the victim would constantly be under attack. Just the earth or buildings or really thick blankets or whatever could act as armor to block that attack.

[Doc Democracy]

I think that transform is probably overused and would support the EB solution. If the uncontrolled is a problem then simply add the triggered advantage which would restart the uncontrolled attack every time the victim entered sunlight.

 

Essentially the power is a GM fiat thing anyway - it's nice to point it out but the points aren't going to make any real difference to whether you use it or not!

[eepjr24]

EB?

 

Not trying to get away from the EB, I just did not think it would do what I needed. I actually dislike transform, becuause it is hard to gauge how much body you need to affect all humans consistently (Standard Effect: 4d6? 8d6?), and is more designed to change than to damage. The EB will do quite well with the listed advantages. I will look at triggered. I realize that the power will be on NPC's, but I prefer to have all powers mapped out for my own sake to see how other things (suppress, constant darkness fields, etc) would affect it. YMMV, but it works for me. heh

 

- Ernie

[Dust Raven]

Since any Uncontrolled Power must have a "reasonably common" method of turning it off, so would the one I have presented above. In this case, the cursed must go through an anti-curse ritual. If the GM doesn't rule that that's common enough, you could add other "rare" optinos such as "cursed must remain without sin for one year" or "cursed repents his sins".

 

Trigger wouldn't be necessary though. The NND only make the power not do damage while the victim is out of direct sunlight. It doesn't make it stop working. It continues to work until the conditions to turn it off (above) have been met.

[PhilFleischmann]

I agree that Transform is not necessarily the way to go. Two main reasons: the power isn't supposed to depend on how much body the target has; and there is no convenient way to measure how much damage should be done by the Major Transform: 3d6N/hour? 1d6K/6 hours? More? Less?

 

The method that I would use (which I've mentioned many times before in various contexts) is to use an adjustment power. In this case, Drain. It requires one to accept the idea that removing a power is similar to adding a disad. I would count Vulnerabilities and Susceptibilities as "Defense Disads" which would therefore receive half the effect from Adjustment powers.

 

So how big a disad is this Susceptibility to sunlight? Assuming it's 15 points, you'd need around 9d6 of effect (average roll 31.5, halved for "defenses"). Of course, you could always buy fewer dice and apply the Drain multiple times, it would just take a little longer. Add advantages for slower fade rate, and you're ready to go. Make it less expensive with your favorite limitations (Increased END, Expendable Focus, Concentration, Extra Time, Only works if the sun god is truly offended by the target's sins; are a few that come to mind). If you happen to roll low, and only get 10 pips of effect (after halving), then the Susc is only 10 points - a slightly less severe punishment. The god of luck pleaded with the sun god to show a little mercy.

 

I use this method frequently. Use Drain to bestow a Disad instead of removing a power. In this case, Drain should not be considered automatically cumulative. Likewise, you could use an Aid (or Succor) to remove or ameliorate a disad instead of increasing a power.

 

I've always found this construct to be well balanced, but I guess it's too radical a concept for some people. Oh, well. I'll keep suggesting it, because I believe, from experience, that it works.