5th & 6th: How do you build a blessing/curse without independent?

[Hadmar von Wieser]

Let It Rain Frogs! Curse one river delta (up to 2000 km) to be covered with slippery amphibians
CHANGE ENVIRONMENT: -3 to all DEX Rolls or Fall down (5), Area Effect Cone x 1.000.000 (+6), Continuous (+1), 1 Continuing charge: 1 year (+1), Sticky (+½), Difficult to dispel x 4 (+1), Personal Immunity (+¼)
Extra Time (1 day, -3½), OAF: The Staff of Seth (-1), Incantations: The Verdant Curses of Cothuggua (-¼), Gestures: Find an island in the stream, squat, and start croaking (-¼), Concentration (0 DCV, totally unaware, -½)
Reasonably common way to turn the power off: Kill the mage (wherever he is after 1 year) (search for someone all frogs avoid) or break the staff (wherever he is after 1 year).

(As you can see each spell is a whole adventure with a plot for some heroes - although they first have to find out how to break the curse.)

[Alcamtar]

As mentioned, a continuing charge is a good way to represent a very long term effect. 100 years on the time chart should be synonymous with "forever" in most campaigns - at some point the time scale ceases to be meaningful and shouldn't cost anything.

 

if you want to burn permanent CP like you would with Indepedent, you could use a single nonrecoverable charge (-4). That way the points are gone permanently, and if you want to cast it again you have to invest more CP.

 

Independent also makes the power entirely disconnected from the PC, so you no longer have any ability to control it or turn it off. You could simulate that with Persistent, so it doesn't end when the caster goes to sleep, and Uncontrolled, so you can't turn it off. A continuing charge is automatically Uncontrolled, but you have to define a way to turn it off just like defining a way to reverse a Transform. Could be a remove curse spell or something else.

 

So: one nonrecoverable charge continuing 100 years (-1.25), Persistent (+0.25)

 

Instead of buying CP, you might make it very difficult to recover the charge. For example, a curse that is only usable once a year, or requires the tears of a baby dragon to recover a charge (which I'd put at -2).

[Lucius]

A Tiresome Curse: (Total: 109 Active Cost, 12 Real Cost) Drain REC 2d6+1 (standard effect: 7 points), Alternate Combat Value (uses OMCV against DMCV; +1/4), Delayed Return Rate (points return at the rate of 5 per 5 Years; +3 1/2) (109 Active Points); Extra Time (1 Hour, -3), 1 Charge (-2), One Use At A Time (-1), Concentration (0 DCV; Character is totally unaware of nearby events; -3/4), Gestures (Requires both hands; -1/2), IIF Expendable (Easy to obtain new Focus; Part of victim or depiction of victim; -1/4), Costs Endurance (Only Costs END to Activate; -1/4), Restrainable (Only by means other than Grabs and Entangles; -1/4), Incantations (-1/4) (Real Cost: 12)

 

Lucius Alexander

 

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[Christopher R Taylor]

Damage Over Time, Drain, and Transform are the easiest and more logical ways to make curse-type effects.