Sacrifice as a Means of Obtaining Power in Fiction

[Minuteman37]

I'm wanting to device a Magic system where every ability gained demands a steep somewhat related sacrifice on the part of the practitioner.

Examples of sacrifices and potential boons received in exchange are all welcome. Especially if they draw from mythology.

I'm wanting to apply this system to a medieval setting, where Magic is Serious Business (TM), and while useful is rare and dark.

[Daigoro]

Have you checked out GURPS Thaumatology? There's a decent 5-page section on using sacrifices for magic in different ways.

[Minuteman37]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

Have you checked out GURPS Thaumatology? There's a decent 5-page section on using sacrifices for magic in different ways.

I don't mean sacrifices like fuel for your car. I have somthing far more substantial in mind.

If one is to see the future, they must give up the present. Cut out your eyes.

If one is to shape the flame, they must first be shaped by it. Burn off your hands.

[Anaraxes]

Then magic is fueled by character points (CP), not by FP. And the way you get CP is of course either to save them up, or else take on new Disadvantages, like Blind or One Hand.

I suspect no player will choose to burn off their hands in order to cast Shape Fire once. "Seeing the future" once might be a little tempting in properly exigent circumstances -- but only a little, especially if the world is such that the visions aren't necessarily true or the world admits the deceptive precog kind of games. You say magic is "useful", but so are hands. So magic will have to be _really_ useful in order to give them up.

As a pact (not necessarily Pact) for gaining power in a relatively permanent and reusable sense, the Disads would supply CP to build magical abilities. That's just the normal character build process.

[Tomsdad]

I agree about PC's being unlikely to blind themsles to cast a spell in most settings.

However the Blinding might not need to be a sacrifice by the caster, just a sacrifice made by someone. So someone else's eyes might do and that might also fit certain grim settings. So some PCs might prefer a more self sacrificing choice?

(especially if they then have an option to restore themselves at the baddies expense later on)

[weby]

One game mechanical way to do it would be to allow for rituals that inflict disadvantages to the PC and then give related advantages with the same point value.

As others have said though, not many people would be willing to do such.

[Rolando]

Something you should define first is how mythological/folkloric/fairy-tale-like you want your magic system.

For a hardcore mythic/folk/fairy magic you better don't allow player characters to be mages (may have magic advantages or powers, maybe) but magic is dark and mysterious and also powerful, so mages do terrible things to themselves or others to achieve great power.

For a mythological/folklore/fairy-tale-like flavored game the sacrifice should not be as hardcore for the limited spells the typical fantasy game uses. for example: burning the hands for shape fire means a single point of damage is enough to cast the spell at the usual fatigue cost; maybe not even a point of damage, but need fire and a second or two to feel the heat and pain.

Using character points for powerful spells may be a good idea, but try to convert temporary fatigue and find out the cost of a "one use spell casting fatigue point" first (less than 1 character point I hope) and see how many fatigue-for-spell-casting-only a character point gives you.

You may also do a "known spells list" and for each one device a sacrifice. There you will have all the flavor and balance needed but will take time and effort. You may even have different versions of each spell with a steeper sacrifice cost for each "level" (use some other word, "level" sounds too much like other games) of the spell. Like feel burning pain to shape a torch sized fire, 1 point of burn damage to shape a big fire (5 Yds radius or less), crippling a hand in burn damage to shape a bigger fire.

You may make the list even if using other system like those mentioned above.

[Minuteman37]

I don't know about a PCs reluctance to sacrifice for power.

In a 90% mundane TL3 game, with TL2 medicine becouse you know _medieval_. Healing for 30 points would be pretty valuable, perhaps taking hemophilia for those points isn't so bad as it seems at first glance.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Minuteman37

Healing for 30 points would be pretty valuable, perhaps taking hemophilia for those points isn't so bad as it seems at first glance.

To heal someone once, you permanently get Hemophilia? Yeah, seems like a bad deal. What about the second time someone gets injured? Does the Hemophilia go away on its own? If so, how long does it hang around? If the acquired Disads are permanent, what does the healer look like after, oh, the third battle after which he heals several people in the party, thus invoking the power, oh, a dozen times?

If you mean buying the Healing advantage for a one-time 30 CP, so that you can always heal people repeatedly in the future, then that sounds like standard magic-as-powers, with easy access for gaining new abilities in play by taking on Disads. (That is, if you can just commit to the sacrifice at any time, out in the field -- no in-game searching out of masters, years of study in the greybeard tower, etc.) You'd get more takers there. Do you plan to establish a specific list of required Disads that must be taken to buy each magic ability, based on theme? Or does will any source of CP do? (Starting points, earned XP, etc?)

[Minuteman37]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

To heal someone once, you permanently get Hemophilia? Yeah, seems like a bad deal. What about the second time someone gets injured? Does the Hemophilia go away on its own? If so, how long does it hang around? If the acquired Disads are permanent, what does the healer look like after, oh, the third battle after which he heals several people in the party, thus invoking the power, oh, a dozen times?

If you mean buying the Healing advantage for a one-time 30 CP, so that you can always heal people repeatedly in the future, then that sounds like standard magic-as-powers, with easy access for gaining new abilities in play by taking on Disads. (That is, if you can just commit to the sacrifice at any time, out in the field -- no in-game searching out of masters, years of study in the greybeard tower, etc.) You'd get more takers there. Do you plan to establish a specific list of required Disads that must be taken to buy each magic ability, based on theme? Or does will any source of CP do? (Starting points, earned XP, etc?)

The later, Hemophilia gives 30 points while the Healing Advantage takes 30 points, and Yes I'm wanting to thematically link them.