GURPS Dark Sun Conversion

[Jürgen Hubert]

Originally Posted by Crakkerjakk

Why can the Preservers use defiler stuff? Shouldn't that be an alternate ability? Did preservers have to suck juice from their surroundings? I thought they powered all their spells with their own energy? Why can't defilers chose to suck energy slowly like Perservers, eliminating the nuisance effect of the reaction penalty.

Canonically, all arcane magic on Athas (with the exception of that "sun magic" that Sadira from the novel uses) draws energy from plants. It's just that preservers do so very slowly and carefully, not taking more than they need and allowing the plants to recover quickly (possibly even using subtle magics or mundane means to boost the health of the plant in other ways to make up for it). They literally "preserve" the plants they drain the energy from.

As described, defiling has a lot of similarities with drug addiction - they get a "rush" as they drain the energy of plants. Preservers know how to defile - they know how to drain energy from plants, after all - but they have carefully trained themselves to restrain from sucking all the energy out of them. This requires a lot of focus and willpower - and once you are used to the rush of energy of defiling, it becomes harder and harder to maintain. Defilers possibly can become defilers again (there is even a sorcerer king who managed that), but this requires very long periods of being "cold turkey" before they regain the balance needed. They can't switch between defiling and preserving at will any more.

I allowed that option for preservers because I wanted to offer them temptation - but I didn't want to make it cost any additional points for them because I didn't want to punish preservers who remain "virtuous" by charging points for an option they will never use.