Wizard Vows

[Ts_]

Ugh, thinking about this for a while, pricing Vows correctly is very messy.

First of all, I'd look at two broad aspects of a Vow:
Is it completely within your control or can outside forces make you break the Vow? Compare "Always try to help the poor" with "Always help the poor". You will break the latter at some point if the universe is against you. (This is related to how Secret works against you. It's not just about keeping your mouth shut, but the universe trying to uncover your secret on a roll of 6 or less on a 3d6.)

Then consider the effect of the Vow while you adhere to it:
That's some disadvantage. Vow ("Never speak") is essentially Cannot Speak (Mute). Vow ("Pray for 2 hours / day"), is somewhat like Extra Sleep 2 hours / day.

Then consider what happens when you break the Vow (willingly or not). This is some new disad that lasts for a certain period. The Basic Set and Vows from the Chi-based power modifier or for Clerics seems to assume something like a 1 month quest to restore your Vow. But it could range from a day of misfortune to permanently losing all your Magery.

Factor in how easy it is to break the Vow. "Never speak" is trivial to circumvent in an emergency, so are various forms of Pacifism or weapon restrictions. (Just grab a better weapon and put on non-textile armor.) If you have fastened your entire life (say, this gives -1 to ST and -1 to FP, as you need some effect of this Vow), there is little reason to suddenly give it up. The ST won't come back any time soon, the FP might be back on the next day. More extreme cases might require you to rebuild your life (and character sheet), in which case you could have just as well bought off the disadvantage.

Then comes the pricing:
A Vow that you can willingly keep forever is worth at most as much as the disadvantage it gives you while you keep it. It might be worth significantly less if you can break it easily and the penalty is light. Half of the disad value for something easily breakable seems appropriate for the month of recovery.

A Vow that the universe can make you break is worth the above plus a fraction of the disadvantage you gain when you break the Vow.

That's really the best guideline I can come up with.

So, for the examples in this thread:
Not using certain weapons / armor is maybe a quirk each for a low ST mage. It's also easy enough to break in an emergency. (Use a spear with staff skill or shoot a crossbow from default with lots of aiming and Luck or wear heavy armor when meeting the assassin at night.) Consequences are presumably loss of Magic Powers for the typical duration of a few weeks.
From this, I'd say it's a Quirk (Wizards don't like metal weapons & armor) [-1].

If you permanently lose Magery or suddenly die or have to retire, it still would be only [-2] (the full value of these equipment restrictions) because it's entirely within your choice to not use these weapons. This assumes that if someone puts you into chainmail while unconscious, that this doesn't count as breaking the Vow.

If even touching such weapons or being forcefully put into armor gives you severe penalties, the Vow becomes a more severe disad. Say, metallic armor destroys your Magery (but only if you wear it) and this is a well-known weakness of wizards and someone can force you to put on armor ... Then if you break this Vow you acquire the 50 point Disad equivalent to losing your Magery and Spells permanently. However, to make you break this Vow you would have to be at the mercy of someone else, so at that point people could just as well kill you ... So maybe only 10% of the gained disads apply, giving you a [-2 + -5] Vow.

As a comparison, a Secret on average shows up in 10% of the game sessions, and you can try to prevent its revelation and nobody has to subdue you just to make your secret public. The Secret is worth 50% of the disads that permanently replace it. So something that probably shows up just as often but is much harder to work against you should be worth a lot less. That's why I chose 10% of the new disad.

With this in mind, some of the Vows in the Basic Set seem badly priced ... The "no edged weapons" [-10] is just crazy. Yes, it's the most important class of weapons (in TL3), but many fighters can live just fine with spears or hammers or using blunt sword-like things if necessary. Well, the GM could always screw you by only dropping +5 swords in the loot or using encounters that are immune to anything but cutting damage, but that would be weird.

On the other hand, the Vow ("Never Speak") [-10] seems to be reasonable compared to Cannot Speak ("Mute") [-25].

Regards
Ts