modifying the rules

[xerxes]

So, I've been thinking of starting a campaign at some point in the future. I ran a brief one about 7 years ago and that was my main experience with In Nomine.

But, I'm thinking of changing some rules.

The books indicate that one must the Sorcery Attunement to practice sorcery. One must have 6 forces for such an Attunement to be attached to the individual. And, having 6 forces is also the requirement for being able to perform songs. But, Songs are so much better than sorcery. It does not seem to make sense to give the Sorcery Attunement to a human when they could simply be taught a variety of Songs.

[side note: I am assuming that any Attunement can only be attached to a being of 6 or more forces even though I did not see that specified in any book.]

However, I do like the idea of having sorcery in the game-world. So, I'm thinking of changing the rules such that an Attunement can be attached to a human of only 5 forces. The Attunement would be the only way that a 5-forcer could intentionally control their Essence.

Does that seem like a game-breaking change?

[ehrbar]

Yes, canonically a human needs to have six Forces to gain an attunement (CPG p.23) or to become a sorcerer (CPG p.32).

No, it won't break anything in particular to let 5 Force humans become sorcerers. They'll have enough trouble actually managing rituals with their low characteristic scores anyway.

Do note that sorcery's classification as an attunement is, well, not exactly correct, mechanically. It probably should have been classed an advantage, since attunements can only be granted by Superiors (CPG p.23), while sorcery can be obtained through an initiation ritual (CPG p.46) or from a demon with the Infernal Pact attunement (CPG p.28).

[Bayesmeant]

It depends on your goal here.

If it's "5 Force humans can practice sorcery, now humans everywhere are learning it en masse", well that would certainly break the world if it really happened. As an apocalypse to avert, cool. But a world with loads of sorcerers all around... that would be a *very* different world.

If that's not the point and you want to keep sorcery rare... well, you probably *do* want your sorcerers to be at least a little awesome. And that is usually gonna mean giving them more than 5 forces. Or maybe long term practice of sorcery inherently gets people more likely to get a 6th force?

Now if you are planning for sorcerers to be rare, and sorcerers to be cool, and just sorta questioning "why would they do *this* thing instead of learning Songs? Well, I'd personally just buff sorcery and what it can do.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by xerxes

But, Songs are so much better than sorcery. It does not seem to make sense to give the Sorcery Attunement to a human when they could simply be taught a variety of Songs.

Consider the motive of someone who's granting a human Sorcery. They're a demon, and they are not interested in making humans capable of competing with celestials. They're interested in motivating the sorcerer to do things that suit the demon, and making it harder for the sorcerer to back out and return to a normal life.

[thorr-kan]

Note that some Ethereals, some Domains, and some Word-bound can grant attunements as well. That argues against an attunement for Sorcery being any different.

[ehrbar]

Originally Posted by thorr-kan

Note that some Ethereals, some Domains, and some Word-bound can grant attunements as well. That argues against an attunement for Sorcery being any different.

Greater gods (EPG p.82) are functionally Ethereal "Superiors" (complete with being unstatted). Intrusive Domain (EPG p.108) goes ahead and explicitly qualifies its effect as "giving them the functional equivalent of an attunement." rather than a real attunement, and you already need both that rare domain feature and an expenditure of power (5 CP) by the domain's master.

And, well. the only case of a Word-bound being able to grant an attunement I can recall is Hatiphas being able to grant Infernal Pact.

So we've got a CPG rules errata ("Only Word-bound celestials can grant attunements")/subsequent GMG parenthetical rule exception (p.11's "they can only come from a Superior (or a Word-bound celestial; see p. 26)") that exists to enable the granting of the Infernal pact attunement, which attunement itself then violates the rule (since having a Word isn't a prerequisite for Infernal Pact, whose function is to enable the user to grant the Sorcery attunement).

It's all a pretty ugly bit of post-hoc patching around the fact that the original IN core rules didn't have any category named "advantages", so when Sorcery originally was written up in the second supplement (The Marches), it was called an attunement (see also that The Marches said human "Sorcerer characters may purchase Discord to gain additional character points", because IN didn't originally have disadvantages, either).

The much cleaner approach is:

1) Make Sorcery an advantage. (Having this advantage is then Hatiphas's Word-granted power.)

2) Delete Infernal Pact.

3) Modify the Sorcerous Initiation ritual, have it grant the advantage.

Sorcerous Initiation (CPG p.46) is already a ritual in the "Special" category of rituals that can explicitly be performed by non-sorcerers. Modify the Sorcerous Initiation ritual itself to be based on a sorcerous skill, rather than the weird ad hoc Will roll, and be able to target someone other than the performer -- I suggest just stealing the mechanics directly from Symphonic Awakening above, except maybe making it a Focus/2 ritual.

Then just have demons that initiate sorcerers know the ritual, have a bunch of points in the underlying sorcerous skill, and actually perform the ritual. And oh, hey, ethereals that initiate sorcerers can do the same thing, instead of us needing a bit in Infernal Pact about there maybe being an ethereal version of the attunement.

[xerxes]

Originally Posted by ehrbar

Greater gods (EPG p.82) are functionally Ethereal "Superiors" (complete with being unstatted). Intrusive Domain (EPG p.108) goes ahead and explicitly qualifies its effect as "giving them the functional equivalent of an attunement." rather than a real attunement, and you already need both that rare domain feature and an expenditure of power (5 CP) by the domain's master.

And, well. the only case of a Word-bound being able to grant an attunement I can recall is Hatiphas being able to grant Infernal Pact.

So we've got a CPG rules errata ("Only Word-bound celestials can grant attunements")/subsequent GMG parenthetical rule exception (p.11's "they can only come from a Superior (or a Word-bound celestial; see p. 26)") that exists to enable the granting of the Infernal pact attunement, which attunement itself then violates the rule (since having a Word isn't a prerequisite for Infernal Pact, whose function is to enable the user to grant the Sorcery attunement).

It's all a pretty ugly bit of post-hoc patching around the fact that the original IN core rules didn't have any category named "advantages", so when Sorcery originally was written up in the second supplement (The Marches), it was called an attunement (see also that The Marches said human "Sorcerer characters may purchase Discord to gain additional character points", because IN didn't originally have disadvantages, either).

The much cleaner approach is:

1) Make Sorcery an advantage. (Having this advantage is then Hatiphas's Word-granted power.)

2) Delete Infernal Pact.

3) Modify the Sorcerous Initiation ritual, have it grant the advantage.

Sorcerous Initiation (CPG p.46) is already a ritual in the "Special" category of rituals that can explicitly be performed by non-sorcerers. Modify the Sorcerous Initiation ritual itself to be based on a sorcerous skill, rather than the weird ad hoc Will roll, and be able to target someone other than the performer -- I suggest just stealing the mechanics directly from Symphonic Awakening above, except maybe making it a Focus/2 ritual.

Then just have demons that initiate sorcerers know the ritual, have a bunch of points in the underlying sorcerous skill, and actually perform the ritual. And oh, hey, ethereals that initiate sorcerers can do the same thing, instead of us needing a bit in Infernal Pact about there maybe being an ethereal version of the attunement.

Seems like a good idea. Do you think the advantage should also cost 10 points?

[ehrbar]

Originally Posted by xerxes

Seems like a good idea. Do you think the advantage should also cost 10 points?

Point costs in In Nomine are pretty arbitrary, so my general advice is to leave them alone until they cause trouble, and then freely modify them to get rid of the trouble.