Sentient Sacrifice - Helpful?

[Beast In The Garden]

There are all of those Conan stories that talk about how the mage needs that virgin to help out his spells.

There is always that lady that eats children to reverse the process of aging.

could sacrifice help you?

Any joe schmoe +1D

Willing Sacrifice +2D

Related or beloved Sacrifice, Relationship required? +3D?

For each one...? >8D (I SACRIFICE a dozing willing virgins)

i'm looking at the Conan RPG for help, i want to run a conan-ish game...but not conan....i want my own towns/history. IT IS THE FUN PART. So basically just sword and sorcery feel.

[luke]

Man, we used to have sweet blood sacrifice rules for Orc Rituals of Blood. I wonder where they went?

[zabieru]

I totally don't remember powering spells with virgins being a common trope in the Howard Conan. I think it's more common in the apocryphal Conan than in the real stuff.

I'd look at burning this as a spell or spells of its own rather than as a weird tacked-on set of rules for using a sacrifice to power X other spell. It'd be some kind of Tax or Destroy deal I'd imagine, you'd prolly need to bend the rules to make it fit, but I know it's possible to do vampiric deals like taxing a victim's Forte to feed the caster's, so all you'd need to do if you wanted to fake it a bit would be slap a Majoris or two on that and make up an exchange rate (I'd say 1D Forte per month unless you want quite a number of immortal sorcerors running around, in which case 1D per year or even five years). You could probably do a more rigorous burn than that, but I'm not the Abstractions man.

[Trismegistus]

It seems like there are two different things going on with this idea. There is the spell that gets a boost from draining life force, giving bonus dice on the roll. Then there are the ones that require the blood to function in the first place (reversing aging).

I'd do the former as a linked test of some kind (Rituals-wise anyone?). The latter should get its own full-burn spell, since it's a discrete effect.

[Lyarie]

I'd do the former as a linked test of some kind (Rituals-wise anyone?).

I'm with Trismegistus on this one. This falls under linked tests. I could have all the vigins daughters I desired as willing sacrifices, but it wouldn't matter if I didn't know how to perform the ritual. And rituals-wise would also let me perform other appropriate rituals. Blood sacrifices won't always be applicable.

[Suicide King]

Aw, c'mon guys. Heretic Priests need those blood sacrifices to fuel their faith in dead Gods. I'd rule that with enough sacrifices a character with Faith in Dead Gods can bend the "faith only works on followers" rule.

[Suicide King]

And... way to miss the subject of the thread :P

Flat out letting sorcerers sacrifice people to power their magic is out I think. Designing spells to require sacrifices is a cool idea though...

Imagine if the player sorcerer finds a spell that has a low obstacle (and so is possible for him to learn and to cast), but it has that low obstacle because the magic is powered by sacrifice.

Then throw in a situation where that spell could be really useful... and watch the sorcerer player squirm. Just imagine the poor sorcerer going "c'mon guys, it's for the good of all, peasants are like rabbits anyway. The farmer can get another daughter and this way he will still have his farm to feed his three other children."

So requiring a sentient sacrifice for a spell might make it -1 Ob during distillation.
A very specific sacrifice (a virgin born under a full moon, etc.) might be -2 Ob. A big sacrifice might also be -2 Ob (a dozen people or so).
A huge sacrifice might be worth -4 Ob (a few villages).

[Kublai]

On a side note, Obstacles are never reduced in BW. Instead, bonus dice are given.

[Suicide King]

Except if you can do it in distillation! Make it something similar to lengthening the casting time - requiring sacrifices to cast the spell reduces the obstacle when designing the spell.

Note that there's a huge difference between learning an obstacle 5 spell and an obstacle 3 spell. You will likely die from trying to learn the obstacle 5 spell (tax 10 anyone?). Ob 3 is manageable.

[Kublai]

Ah, of course. I missed that distillation aspect of your post. Duh, me!

[Lyarie]

I still think that a ritual-wise would be a cool way to add bonus dice to certain spells. The rituals would vary in obstacle depending on the complexity and type. Test ritual-wise to do the ritual. If you fail, you get +1Ob for every success below the set ritual obstacle, and if you succeed you get +1D for every success above the ritual obstacle. Then do your spell with the adjustment.

If you think that's too simple, you could allow a ritual-wise test linked to any spell the requires a ritual (set when the spell was designed). If they don't want to make the test, they don't win or lose, because it's already part of the spell. If they make the test, they risk a penalty, but can gain an advantage.

I don't know if that made sense to people other than me, especially since I'm even more fuzzy on spell rules than other rules, but I will blame it on being sleepy.

[Suicide King]

Well, faith does have a skill that does exactly that. I wouldn't mind a player making a linked test for sorcery with rituals-wise (and I think the sorcery rules only explicitly forbid FoRKing).

However, letting it be +1D pr success over would be crazy. If you get over the obstacle you get +1D, if you fail you get +1 Ob. Nothing more, nothing less, I'd say.
It should take time though... a lot of time. Maybe 1 hour pr. obstacle of the spell?

[Lyarie]

Well, faith does have a skill that does exactly that. I wouldn't mind a player making a linked test for sorcery with rituals-wise (and I think the sorcery rules only explicitly forbid FoRKing).

However, letting it be +1D pr success over would be crazy. If you get over the obstacle you get +1D, if you fail you get +1 Ob. Nothing more, nothing less, I'd say.
It should take time though... a lot of time. Maybe 1 hour pr. obstacle of the spell?

Hmm... You're right about the obs and bonus dice. I think it would be very dependant on the type of ritual. Sacrifice is going to be a pretty big deal and would take a long time, but drawing a magic circle would be less time consuming. I think it would be very subjective and at GM discretion. Perhaps discussions with spellcasting players before game to determine obstacles and times and whatnot. If you cannot agree, then just let it drop since it's an optional rule. Just make sure you peer review any changes like that with your group. Even the non-casters.