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Blood sacrifice is by RAW a relatively severe Wisdom penalty by its nature, so you can do that but you're accepting a weaker grasp on your soul. I have a Guardian PC who used to go straight to blood sacrifice but is now trying to triage his wisdom loss, so it's only for special occasions. Plus he's Obsessed with Sacrifice so the wisdom decline was on greased skids- but he still wants to find ways to do and observe sacrifices. I like this character.
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Jun 20, 2019 14:28
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See, I don’t buy blood sacrifice as being a wisdom drain unless you’re doing it to humans. There’s plenty of people who are perfectly well adjusted who work in butcher shops and abattoirs. And plenty of people who grew up in the country and raised their own chickens to sacrifice for dinner. Really, it just means the Mage is even better at using the whole animal. I’d be more okay with the “all killing is hubris including” animals if it were more explicit and even eating meat was a problem for 8-10, but it’s a little inconsistent and feels like a little hold over still from 1e. Not to mention that hubris is where arguments happen the most because still kinda close to morality of yesteryear and everyone has an opinion. Also, page space would go on forever if it was well laid out and that’s not necessary. I think my real point is for this section, just do what’s best for the story at your table. Really looking forward to Signs of Sorcery when it goes PoD.
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Jun 20, 2019 15:01
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I personally appreciate things like blood sacrifice that explicitly disconnect the Wisdom of an act from the morality of it. Both because the Silver Ladder's position of 'Wisdom is a chain' is super cool, and because it creates more wizardly dilemmas. It's like how taking someone's soul, even a willingly donated soul for a transplant, threatens wisdom: some things are metaphysically 'unclean' and it's important for mages to have to deal with the fact that Wisdom is not morality. It's a broad approximation, but, it fails in detail at dramatic points. Also if Wisdom really were 'the proper way to be a mage' then the game explicitly thinks casting magic is morally bad, and that's just pointless and annoying IMO.
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Jun 20, 2019 15:30
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bewilderment posted:There is absolutely no way under the current rules that any mage is seriously going to take up an Obligation for the piddly one mana per week it gives; while the newbie Thyrsus just takes a day off to scour Dexterity for three mana and then magic it back up, and the Eleventh Question legacy member just does their morning sudoku for 2-5 mana. The real reason for doing that is that in any moment you can use magic to break the Obligation and use it as a superpowered Yantra. Like, you take a vow of Pacifism and blast someone with the best lightning you ever produced.
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Jun 20, 2019 15:58
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Joe Slowboat posted:I personally appreciate things like blood sacrifice that explicitly disconnect the Wisdom of an act from the morality of it. Both because the Silver Ladder's position of 'Wisdom is a chain' is super cool, and because it creates more wizardly dilemmas. It's like how taking someone's soul, even a willingly donated soul for a transplant, threatens wisdom: some things are metaphysically 'unclean' and it's important for mages to have to deal with the fact that Wisdom is not morality. It's a broad approximation, but, it fails in detail at dramatic points. I can definitely see some use to your appreciation of it. It makes for good moments, like when one of the players in my game was newer and caused a firearm to go off. It was supposed to be a distraction, but it was holstered and injured the person carrying it. It worked as a distraction, but there was wanton destruction caused by magic and as a fairly new mage and mundane person before that, it made sense to risk wisdom over it. Or the first one that came up at the table, was when one player repeatedly used shifting sands to replay scenes so as to not embarrass himself. It eventually caught up with him and in a particularly flippant use it was appropriate for the character to realize that maybe this wasn't the most valuable use of magic. They still use the spell regularly, but they always have a good reason to do so now. That may not have been good in another circumstance or even another scene, but it definitely was a good defining moment for the character. I also like that 2e made it less static. 1e's static situation of you do x, you roll for hubris, made for some very frustrating arguments that tended to end up with both the ST and player (in my experience) left less than satisfied. So, these days in 2e, let's say your mage is working as a veterinarian and you regularly have to deal with ending the lives of sick animals. That puts that mage in a different place when it comes to ritual sacrifice in that respect than someone who has cages full of rats in a basement who uses them as an easy source of mana. I like that it's easier for me to give different characters different results because they were able to "... judge the value of when, where, why, and how to use magic." At least in a way that was appropriate in that moment. I will agree that there are some things that are metaphysically unclean, and they really do provide the most dramatic moments. The players at my table learned that they'd risk wisdom to create soul stones, and have sworn off even the idea of it, coming up with other ways to do things. It's the greatest strength of Wisdom for me, is that it makes players think twice about their use of magic (at least in many situations), and then other times, it's just what needed to be done. I really do like when it comes up and makes a dramatic and tense scene have additional weight. Those are the ones that have been talked about a lot since.
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Jun 20, 2019 16:36
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Wisdom’s a really clumsy way to represent dark or unclean magic. If something’s dangerous or cursed or something it should actually endanger or curse you. In particular, punishing soul stone creation with Wisdom loss is awful. They’re already obviously huge liabilities! If you then explicitly signpost that making or using them is wrongheaded on a metaphysical level then you’re just ensuring they never get used and so that an entire avenue of drama is cut out of the game, or at least rendered effectively NPC only.
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Jun 20, 2019 20:42
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Ferrinus posted:Wisdom’s a really clumsy way to represent dark or unclean magic. If something’s dangerous or cursed or something it should actually endanger or curse you. Wisdom isn't really a good magic/bad magic axis. Wisdom models your strength of self that enables you to control your own magic. If you mutilate your soul by sawing off bits of it and placing it in soul stones, you lose a little bit of the ability to control your magic or contain paradoxes. Sometimes evil deeds - esp cruel ones performed by magic are also self-mutilating. Making soul stones isn't prohibited by mage law and it isn't considered left-handed. It's not bargaining with the Abyss and it doesn't hurt anyone but yourself. Also, the benefits are so great (seriously demesnes are easily the best merit in the game), that a lot of mages go for it.
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Jun 20, 2019 20:59
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Mage really wants both a way to track players' spiral into self-justifying madness that comes with ultimate cosmic power, but also a way to implement the Lie pushing back against Mages trying to do Mage things. The biggest problem, which exacerbates other problems that are both more subjective and more specific, is that RAW, Wisdom is how you model both of those things. This inevitably creates situations where Wisdom reads as a moral command to make nice with the Lie, even when the game tries to tell you that it isn't. And that really sucks even if you want your Mage game to strongly emphasize the corrupting influence of power, because it implies that "Hubris" and "trying to overturn the status quo" are the same thing -- in a setting where the God-Concepts of Fascism rule the universe. Similarly, it doesn't actually help to say that the Silver Ladder rolls their eyes at Wisdom -- because now you've basically made them into Bane from The Dark Knight Rises. "We're against oppression, but the logical consequence of actually living our ideology is you turn into a solipsistic disaster elemental." I think the intention with respect to Wisdom was to create a system where "personal enlightenment" and "fighting for a good cause" are in tension, which makes a lot of sense because that's exactly how Mage pitches itself. But unfortunately, the actual implementation of Wisdom is both extremely binary (it either represents moral truths or it's bullshit, there isn't really a middle ground) and makes you look like an rear end in a top hat no matter which way you interpret it; the Wise are quislings and cowards, but Hubris is for psychopaths who don't care who they hurt. Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 21:08 on Jun 20, 2019 |
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Jun 20, 2019 21:05
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In conclusion, morality meters as such should be removed from every game line but especially Mage, and Integrity-style traits should be more like Cover or Harmony -- firmly amoral consequences that your character has to manage and live with according to what they are and what kind of story the game is about. They're games about playing monsters; you don't need to mechanically punish the player for doing things that they then step back from and go "wow, that was hosed up" and have to live with themselves, and you definitely don't need the end point of that process to be "turn over your character sheet." I think some of the impetus behind those mechanics has to have been fear of murder-hobo campaigns, but you don't avoid those by slapping people on the hand when they reach for it, you avoid it by having an adult conversation about tone and what kind of game you want to play. Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 21:10 on Jun 20, 2019 |
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Jun 20, 2019 21:07
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Maybe the third world of darkness will not be organically based in vampire for once. (It probably will be since sexy draculas sell)
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Jun 20, 2019 21:10
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Octavo posted:Wisdom isn't really a good magic/bad magic axis. Wisdom models your strength of self that enables you to control your own magic. The metaphysical damage creating a soul stone does to you is already modeled by the soul stone rules - it reduces your maximum Gnosis, creates a funnel through which bad actors can sap you of magic powers, and so on. If it also, by its nature, makes your magic more chaotic and less precise then you should get +1 die to paradox rolls per two soul stones rounded up or something. That making a stone is a Wisdom risk in the same way that blowing someone up is different, and a much worse way to model something I don’t think is the case in the first place. Also, I disagree with Tuxedo Catfish but in the opposite direction: Mage should have a Wisdom scale, and your Wisdom should have mechanical effects relating to causing dangerous magical externalities, but that Wisdom scale SHOULD be extremely similar if not identical to Humanity. That is to say, all risks to Wisdom should revolve around endangering or outright harming other people (explicitly including vampires, sapient spirits, rmoahals, whatever) and not care about specific contextless acts of magic.
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Jun 20, 2019 21:19
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Here's how I would fix it: make it so that rabidly pursuing your Obsessions increases Wisdom. Now you've created an integrity stat that incentivizes you to put your personal curiosity and pursuit of divine truth ahead of the common good, which gives you more resistance to Paradox because you're playing on the Lie's terms and emulating its creators, while actively loving with the Lie and resisting the Exarchs increases your vulnerability to backlash. To add to that, both extremes should have negative consequences (and negative connotations); high Wisdom, instead of making you some kind of saint, just means you've disappeared up your own rear end, while low Wisdom means you're overextending yourself and losing touch with the source of your power. You might also want to name it something other than Wisdom.
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Jun 20, 2019 21:22
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Ferrinus posted:Also, I disagree with Tuxedo Catfish but in the opposite direction: Mage should have a Wisdom scale, and your Wisdom should have mechanical effects relating to causing dangerous magical externalities, but that Wisdom scale SHOULD be extremely similar if not identical to Humanity. That is to say, all risks to Wisdom should revolve around endangering or outright harming other people (explicitly including vampires, sapient spirits, rmoahals, whatever) and not care about specific contextless acts of magic. I prefer to handle morality in a purely narrative fashion (probably because I don't entirely trust games to get it right out of the box, and would rather make it something that my players and I wrangle with than something baked into the rules) but I would still mostly be on board with this. Definitely more so than the current implementation.
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Jun 20, 2019 21:25
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:I prefer to handle morality in a purely narrative fashion (probably because I don't entirely trust games to get it right out of the box, and would rather make it something that my players and I wrangle with than something baked into the rules) but I would still mostly be on board with this. Definitely more so than the current implementation. I wouldn’t call this Morality exactly, since desensitization to violence and the cultivated ability to ignore or even cause others’ pain isn’t strictly the same as evil, and is arguably necessary for a certain kind of revolutionary, but you’d definitely only want such a thing if you want the difference beating up or killing someone in pursuit of your cause is important to foreground. And, of course, measuring that with a single meter is always going to be a bit clumsy. My other idea is to take a page out of VtM5E’s book and also the implications but not the implementation of Integrity from the 2E core. That is to say: Wisdom is your depleting-with-strain, regenerating-with-time mental health bar, so situated to make sure there’s an attrition mechanic for social or psychic threats that isn’t your spend-these-for-drama willpower points. So, low Wisdom still makes your magic more dangerous and random, but you lose Wisdom if you get embarrassed in public or just barely shake off enemy mind control, and regain it if you get a chance to center yourself or relax. A mage’s spells would become visibly more frantic or ruled by subconscious urges as that mage lost their cool, to the point of casting themselves in response to unspoken desires or fears. (This would also be fun to do with Humanity - the more flustered a vampire is the more likely they are to hiss at you like a cat or forget to pretend to breathe - but you’d then want to do a little more with Blood Potency and Touchstones to track the more long term and permanent degeneration vampirism brings.)
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Jun 20, 2019 21:41
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Mage integrity being close or identical to human integrity is also good for cosmology / theme reasons.
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Jun 20, 2019 21:49
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I find it weird how human-oriented it is. Like the fandom doesn't mention it at all. It's all over the books, but no one mentions it so I figure I'm seeing something that isn't there.
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Jun 20, 2019 22:06
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Ferrinus posted:Wisdom is your depleting-with-strain, regenerating-with-time mental health bar, so situated to make sure there’s an attrition mechanic for social or psychic threats that isn’t your spend-these-for-drama willpower points. That would be an interesting mechanic to it. Especially if there were a regular mechanical +/- to it. I would be interested in that as a thing for mages. It would be a reason for Wisdom to come up more often, and it would be a better gauge for how a Mage copes with deciding how to use magic.
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Jun 20, 2019 22:20
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I think Atrocity from Danae Macabre is still the best humanity rules they've come up with. You could use the basic concept with wisdom
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Jun 20, 2019 23:15
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Captain Monkey posted:Has it been mentioned that the mages in charge of Doisstep, in addition to being 'the fireball mages' are also 'the mages that spawned the tremere and super hate vampires as a whole'? tbf none of the merlins like draculas even the nephandi tend to merk you on general principles
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Jun 20, 2019 23:18
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Wisdom is an amalgam of restraints, morals and rules that make the mage human despite their Obsession and prevents them from having their mind consumed by the Supernal. It's not the necessary the measure if you're selfish or selfless, there are plenty of high-Wisdom Seers after all. It's pretty much a barrier that shields you from terrible, blinding light and by acts of Hubris you're chipping parts of it away. Let's consider an Acanthus whose obsession is avenging injustice. For the Obsession, it doesn't really matter what crime she punishes and how. Her morals tell her that murderers and child molesters deserve a heavier retribution than petty thieves or unfaithful spouses. But this is an arbitrary distinction when the Supernal symbols come into view. Injustice is injustice, no matter how small and harmless. Punishment is punishment, no matter how harsh. As she applies heavier punishments and her Wisdom goes down, she comprehends the distinction between a hardened Reaper and a guy who stole some change from the vending machine less and less. If it goes to zero, she could put a killing curse on a child who cheated in a board game and wouldn't bat an eye; what's more, she would be unhappy if she didn't. That's why creating a soul stone is an act of hubris. It's not that it's heinous, it's an equivalent of performing an appendectomy on yourself while being conscious. If you're able to do that, there are not many things that you won't do. And this is bad, because restraints, no matter how arbitrary, are the only thing that prevents your mind from being taken over by the Supernal.
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Jun 20, 2019 23:25
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Gantolandon posted:The real reason for doing that is that in any moment you can use magic to break the Obligation and use it as a superpowered Yantra. Like, you take a vow of Pacifism and blast someone with the best lightning you ever produced. This is cool for a Vow of Pacifism, but is someone really gonna take a Vow Poverty for a while just to... what, suddenly cast the new Endless Bounty spell really well? Vow of Indulgence in order to... ???
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Jun 20, 2019 23:45
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bewilderment posted:This is cool for a Vow of Pacifism, but is someone really gonna take a Vow Poverty for a while just to... what, suddenly cast the new Endless Bounty spell really well? Vow of Indulgence in order to... ??? This book did also introduce super gold for crafting, and lugging out to be able t9 call forth your own gluttony goetia as a weapon and diet aid seems Mage.
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Jun 20, 2019 23:49
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nofather posted:I find it weird how human-oriented it is. Like the fandom doesn't mention it at all. It's all over the books, but no one mentions it so I figure I'm seeing something that isn't there. Humanity is a very metaphysically specific thing in Chronicles, and in particular the human soul is a unique mystical organ. Supernal magic is only accessible via the soul (to the point that being soulless actually drains your Gnosis over time until you stop being a mage for a while, a unique interaction between soul and splat mechanics afaik). So, the battle for Supernal freedom from tyranny is very much tied to humanity; humanity are the targets and the game pieces in the Ascension War - the Pentacle's very much a humanist revolutionary movement in theory. On the other hand, the Astral Realms book has a major section dedicated to the nonhuman- the Anima Mundi. It also has plot hooks for the possibility of an Awakened Elephant, presumably with a soul unique to elephant-kind.
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Jun 20, 2019 23:50
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Joe Slowboat posted:On the other hand, the Astral Realms book has a major section dedicated to the nonhuman- the Anima Mundi. It also has plot hooks for the possibility of an Awakened Elephant, presumably with a soul unique to elephant-kind. 
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Jun 20, 2019 23:58
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To this I say, Hell Yes.
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Jun 21, 2019 00:12
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Gantolandon posted:Wisdom is an amalgam of restraints, morals and rules that make the mage human despite their Obsession and prevents them from having their mind consumed by the Supernal. It's not the necessary the measure if you're selfish or selfless, there are plenty of high-Wisdom Seers after all. It's pretty much a barrier that shields you from terrible, blinding light and by acts of Hubris you're chipping parts of it away. Okay there is obviously no connection between your prose fiction and your actual explanation. You can’t jump from someone increasingly ceasing to care about phenomenal distinctions between manifestations of the same supernal principle and generally lacking restraints. It doesn’t even follow that soul stone creation is a crazily unrestrained thing to do, or that having the stomach to do difficult things in pursuit of some future gain is representative of a lack of restraint or erodes your restraint. Just like the old canards for why making a zombie was a Wisdom sin back in 1e, the apologism amounts to: it’s icky, and anyone who did it would probably be pretty weird.
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Jun 21, 2019 00:52
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I'm OK with soul stone creation being a 'sin'. I justify it under the fact that it's not actually a sin, it's just that you're literally chipping off a bit of your own soul and if your unlucky then it takes with it a bit of your ability to safely process actual Wisdom sins.
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Jun 21, 2019 01:00
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Then each stone should give you a cumulative penalty to future degeneration rolls!!! What my group did, actually, was make soul stones reduce your maximum Wisdom rather than your maximum Gnosis.
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Jun 21, 2019 01:09
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That would be more interesting if anyone ever went above Wisdom 7. But it’s a very rare day that I’ve run into anyone even wanting more than toying with the idea of Wisdom 8. That would hold more influence if there were potential modifiers to paradox rolls or the like due to your wisdom. Then you could safely do it once or twice (because great benefits), and just never get the biggest useful modifier anymore. I may think long about adding this to my game because it might also encourage them to go even bigger with their spell casting.
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Jun 21, 2019 01:23
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Jhet posted:That would be more interesting if anyone ever went above Wisdom 7. But it’s a very rare day that I’ve run into anyone even wanting more than toying with the idea of Wisdom 8. I should add that we also used a 1-5 Wisdom scale and also had soul stones subtract escalating amounts from your maximum Mana; -1, then -2, then -3 and so on. For the default scale I’d make each stone reduce your Wisdom max by 2.
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Jun 21, 2019 01:36
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Good to know. We’re at the point where I feel the need to make spell casting even more interesting because they’re going bigger and bigger. This way they can push it further and it makes me wonder if they’ll push Wisdom into exhausted levels in that case. They have access to a hallow that’s big enough and are all hitting gnosis high enough where -mana won’t matter much, but it might when they can’t avoid the conflict they’re building up to in epic ways. So far they avoid it, but that also means there will be more actors available on the other team when it goes down.
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Jun 21, 2019 02:12
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Ferrinus posted:Then each stone should give you a cumulative penalty to future degeneration rolls!!! Nah, you chip it off from the least-damaged part each time. It's like clipping your toenails, clipping one off doesn't make the others any weaker regardless of whether or not you were dumb and accidentally tore off a bit of skin.
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Jun 21, 2019 02:16
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Sometimes you're fighting to save the collective soul of humanity from the tyrant gods of reality, other times you're bartering with a giant racoon in order to find a magical elephant.
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Jun 21, 2019 03:04
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cptn_dr posted:Sometimes you're fighting to save the collective soul of humanity from the tyrant gods of reality, other times you're bartering with a giant racoon in order to find a magical elephant. One time my players helped an Obrimos make anime real.
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Jun 21, 2019 03:10
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Joe Slowboat posted:One time my players helped an Obrimos make anime real. Is that considered Hubris?
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Jun 21, 2019 04:25
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Omnicrom posted:Is that considered Hubris? In this case? It was a Wisdom sin for everyone involved and an automatic Wisdom loss for the NPC. On the other hand, I consider it a morally defensible, if metaphysically fraught, action. (An angel died to make anime real)
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Jun 21, 2019 04:35
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If they didn't have to rip off angel wings until there was only one left you missed a trick.
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Jun 21, 2019 04:47
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nofather posted:I find it weird how human-oriented it is. Like the fandom doesn't mention it at all. It's all over the books, but no one mentions it so I figure I'm seeing something that isn't there. When the Exarchs conquered the Supernal gods, that act anthropomorphized the universe and switched the primary dynamic of the universe from predator/prey to something more like human dominance hierarchies. No one knows if that’s why wisdom works the way it does, but the Silver Ladder seem fairly certain.
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Jun 21, 2019 05:32
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Relevant Tangent posted:If they didn't have to rip off angel wings until there was only one left you missed a trick. The primary symbolic register being made real was magical girl shows, so I wasn't thinking of that. Good point though.
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Jun 21, 2019 06:12
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bewilderment posted:Nah, you chip it off from the least-damaged part each time. It's like clipping your toenails, clipping one off doesn't make the others any weaker regardless of whether or not you were dumb and accidentally tore off a bit of skin. I don't buy it. Messing around with you soul directly may or may not impact your Wisdom, but it shouldn't impact your Wisdom in the same random and potentially-temporary way that hexing someone with bad luck because they cut you off in traffic does, because it's just not dangerous to you or the world in a remotely homologous way. And, if you assume from first principles that it actually is and try to backsolve for why you get this nonsense.
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Jun 21, 2019 06:17
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