Ghoul Diet and Food Spells

[Celjabba]

Originally Posted by bmattos

Soo my questions:
1-The Restricted Diet (Human Flesh) restriction, implies that I can only eat human flesh, or I can use spices and seasons?

Sure, you can use spice and seasoning.

The vampire Spike in Buffy the Vampire Slayer season his blood with herbs ("burba weed. Stir it in with the blood. Makes it all hot 'n spicy"), or eat it with weetabix for example.

Originally Posted by bmattos

2- Kind of easy that but just to be sure… Create Food “Produces edible food” can create human flesh? Can I specify what is the food I want?

If I was the GM, You would need a specific "ghoul-edition" of create food, not the "generic" one, but assuming it is the case, sure.

As an aside, the Ghoul version of Seek Food can have useful adventuring uses !

Originally Posted by bmattos

3 – without the people seeing me killing and taking…let’s say a human leg and cooking and giving it to them eat, how can they know that I cook a human flesh meal? Since I create the meat with magic… the taste gives it away?

Possibly. "Create Food" meal are usually bland so there would be a penalty to discovery if you conjure food from thin air.
Also, appearance and seasoning play a lot into food recognition, and a skilled cook can play with this to fool people, even if they know the taste.

[RedMattis]

Originally Posted by Celjabba

As an aside, the Ghoul version of Seek Food can have useful adventuring uses !

It would find (inanimate) non-rotten human corpses I assume? I guess that is sometimes useful.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Celjabba

...

If I was the GM, You would need a specific "ghoul-edition" of create food, not the "generic" one, but assuming it is the case, sure.

As an aside, the Ghoul version of Seek Food can have useful adventuring uses !
...

I would probably just say that the spell creates whatever is edible for the caster. So if you're allergic to shellfish, then you can't create it with that spell.
I'm a diet controlled diabetic, so couldn't create sugary candy.
But human flesh is technically edible to us, so I could create some for a ghoul companion.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by RedMattis

It would find (inanimate) non-rotten human corpses I assume? I guess that is sometimes useful.

Does seek food for a normal human caster only find corpses? I would have assumed it would detect things like living chickens.

[The Colonel]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Does seek food for a normal human caster only find corpses? I would have assumed it would detect things like living chickens.

Would it also detect tofu as well? Depending on the setting ghouls are depicted eating a variety of things - in some, they must subsist on human flesh, in others they can eat meat of any kind but prefer humans. Some prefer their meat "well aged", others fresh. I think their Middle Eastern prototypes were cursed to hunger for all kinds of filthy and unclean things.

Possibly the results of detect food could be subject to a margin of success test? The better the success, the more appetising the food to the caster? (Which even amongst humans could lead to substantial values dissonance, bearing in mind cultural taboos and personal tastes).

Originally Posted by Gold & Appel Inc

Most of the players I've known don't just delight in shattering taboos, they drag them out back and do things I can't print here to them. Just give them some sort of personal loyalty to the anthrophage and roll with it if you want that sort of game, it's literally the entire premise of a three-season Netflix Sitcom.

It's certainly do-able, and a lot of parties would happily accept a vampire PC, and that is merely a different kind of anthropophagous predator. You need a slightly darker campaign, but it's do-able, as you say. Other examples would include that nice Doctor Lecter, a magician who powers some or all of his magic by cannibalism (it's a thing in some traditions), someone who follows the sort of tradition whereby you eat powerful opponents by way of a compliment (IIRC this used to be a thing somewhere in the South Pacific) or, for a Delta Green style Vietnam era game, a Tcho-Tcho auxiliary attached to a Green Beret team.

[benz72]

Originally Posted by Varyon

a typical mage might not be able to make anything better than squirrel-on-a-stick or whatever, while one who is also a master chef can (re)create incredible dishes with the wave of a hand.

Artist (Illusion) (rightly) determines the quality of the result of the spell. I don't think it is a stretch to claim that Cooking is essentially the same as Artist (Culinary) and would be an appropriate skill check to determine the quality of the spell's product.

[Gold & Appel Inc]

Originally Posted by benz72

Artist (Illusion) (rightly) determines the quality of the result of the spell. I don't think it is a stretch to claim that Cooking is essentially the same as Artist (Culinary) and would be an appropriate skill check to determine the quality of the spell's product.

Nitpick: While I could see Cooking used for this particular purpose, I would not use it as a sub for Artist (Culinary) in general, which I use for a pleasing visual presentation of food (eg: exquisitely-arranged bento, cake decorating, advertising displays, plating a meal in a five-star restaurant or all those Instagram food photos that are popular now... one of my exes improved considerably at that last one over the course of a few years, while the actual taste and nutrition of food she made remained exactly the same)

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Gold & Appel Inc

N one of my exes improved considerably at that last one over the course of a few years, while the actual taste and nutrition of food she made remained exactly the same)

Just to complicate matters, Cooking is probably unrelated to nutrition. If it was it would have to be a TL Skill at TLs after a valid concept of nutrition had been invented. :)

Nutrition is probably the domain of Professional Skill: Dietician.

[AlexanderHowl]

People had pretty much figured out which combinations of foods resulted in fewer diseases long before the discovery of essential nutrients. Heck, most animals do quite fine in the wild, so there seems to be a natural tendency for animals to find foods with substances that they lack appealing. Where modern technology comes in is providing the essential nutrients when people eat limited diets.

[Celjabba]

Originally Posted by Gold & Appel Inc

Nitpick: While I could see Cooking used for this particular purpose, I would not use it as a sub for Artist (Culinary) in general, which I use for a pleasing visual presentation of food (eg: exquisitely-arranged bento, cake decorating, advertising displays, plating a meal in a five-star restaurant or all those Instagram food photos that are popular now... one of my exes improved considerably at that last one over the course of a few years, while the actual taste and nutrition of food she made remained exactly the same)

Cooking is the skill of being a chef – A successful skill roll allows you to prepare a pleasing meal.

I think 'pleasing' here can cover taste, appearance and nutritive quality, no need for a separate artist or dietician roll.

A speciality of artist for food photography certainly exist : most advertising food picture are 'cheated' and the meal would actually be inedible or unpalatable.

And dietician is a valid professional skill (or physician specialty, in some case), but that's unrelated to food preparation.