Moral Powers

[dataweaver]

Does anyone use these kinds of powers? Or is this an outdated concept? If you use it, have you done anything novel with it? I've considered the possibility of having the Power Talents gain the same sort of reaction bonus that regular Talents provide — but also an equal reaction penalty to those aligned with the polar opposite power. And it isn't necessarily just a matter of powers: I've considered the possibility of allowing something like Trading Fatigue For Skill to apply to any act that aligns with your moral power; that is, if you're attempting a task that normally wouldn't benefit from your Good Talent because it's not tied to any of your Good Abilities, but it's still definitely an act of goodness, you can still get your Good bonus by spending a FP. Or should that just be covered by Higher Purpose?

Have you considered any axes other than Good vs. Evil and Order vs. Chaos? I could see a Star Wars style “powers of the Force” where Light Side vs. Dark Side is treated as a pair of Moral Talents. Or maybe variations on Good (for instance) that don't quite align with each other, but are united in that they all oppose Evil. Or several kinds of goodness vs. several kinds of evil, maybe?

Thoughts?

[ericthered]

When I play Monster Hunters (and monster hunters is my go to easy to run game) I occasionally get players who play as Crusaders, who absolutely use Holy Powers.

The Psi Wars Project does a LOT with a variant of moral powers based mostly on psychology, under the name of Communion. Its a variation on the force.

I haven't messed with it much outside of those two concepts.

[dataweaver]

All of those strike me more as Divine Powers than Moral Powers, though I'll admit that the line between the two can be very fuzzy; and in the case of Communion, there's also overlap with Psi Powers.

[whswhs]

I would suggest Freedom and Coercion, and Truth and The Lie (as Zoroastrianism has it).

Other ideas:

You might take a note from Nietzsche and oppose Apollo and Dionysus, the principles of dispassionate reason and blind passion.

You might go with the Japanese opposition of Giri (obligation) and Ninjoo (human feeling).

Perhaps something might be done with the opposition of Law and Justice: following the rules as they have been agreed upon, or setting the rules aside to do what's right.

I'd also note the DC superheroes Hawk and Dove, who seem to have been embodiments of opposed moral principles.

[dataweaver]

Thinking about it some more, the Holy and Unholy powers in Dungeon Fantasy are kind of like this; and I could see swapping them out for full-on Moral Powers of an appropriate persuasion (Good and/or Order replacing Holy, and Evil and/or Chaos replacing Unholy).

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by dataweaver

All of those strike me more as Divine Powers than Moral Powers, though I'll admit that the line between the two can be very fuzzy; and in the case of Communion, there's also overlap with Psi Powers.

I mean, if you receive power from a force that has opinions on how people act, that's pretty much a god with low personification. "God" can have a lot of different interpretations. Even if its a force that those who know the most about explicitly argue is not a god, its pretty much divine.



Communion feels closer to moral than divine than anything else I can think of, even including D&D clerics of generic alignments. The paths draw their power from living your life in a specific pattern: that feels pretty "moral" to me.

Originally Posted by dataweaver

Thinking about it some more, the Holy and Unholy powers in Dungeon Fantasy are kind of like this; and I could see swapping them out for full-on Moral Powers of an appropriate persuasion (Good and/or Order replacing Holy, and Evil and/or Chaos replacing Unholy).

So the only time I think I've played with "Moral" powers is D&D. And that was mostly because we wanted clerics but didn't want to either use their pretend religion or mess around with a real one.



I suspect most "moral" powers originated as "divine" powers with a low personification of the power for one reason or another.

[David Johnston2]

I have a version of Law versus Chaos, where Law is about healing, repairing, preserving and stabilizing, while Chaos is about damaging, transmuting and destabilizing. Law powers can lower mana and enable technology while Chaos powers do the reverse.

[khorboth]

I haven't used it recently, but I've got a Dragonlance writeup with a few powers like this. In Dragonlance, good and evil are tangible things, so powers based on these concepts make sense. We can detect and use both good and evil as a substance.

Other worlds may not have that kind of thing, but some do.

[kirbwarrior]

I've had plenty of settings with characters using morality as basis for powers (the Pact limitation that is mechanically what Moral is), but I've rarely had "Moral Powers" for a setting, if that makes sense. Actually, checking Powers I realize I was talking about Divine. Wow, I have never used the -5% for opposing anti-power. I probably won't ever use Moral exactly as written just because of my disdain of anti-powers.

The main place I know I've used it was for Magic: The Gathering powers; Red, Green, White, and Blue each have philosophies you abide by to learn their magic. It's not so much "you must follow these rules to learn this magic" but more "you're already following these rules and you get to have magic". Black works differently (inherently Black is against self-imposed rules) so Black's magic is both easier and harder to learn. Of course, Black might get pact-based magic anyway from a demon... I did have the opposing anti-power here and at a higher cost because two-fifths of magic is your anti-power, not one.

I've been tinkering with an idea where Moral powers are even higher than any 'gods' and thus would further have Cosmic built into them. I just haven't come up with a list that I like.

[Arith Winterfell]

I think part of the reason Moral Powers get used a little less (compared to Divine or Law vs. Chaos) is that good and evil can (at times) be vague or even contradictory at times. Not that other things like Law or Chaos aren't possibly vague too. But by using more than just Good vs. Evil dichotomy like adding Law vs. Chaos or Law vs. Justice expands and refines the meaning and category of Good vs. Evil.