blood magic in ED4

Discussion on game mastering Earthdawn. May contain spoilers; caution is recommended!
Slimcreeper
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Re: blood magic in ED4

Postby Slimcreeper » Sat May 30, 2015 8:38 pm

I have never seen 'pushing' used in game, perhaps because of a lack of awareness. I'd thought of changing to something where a player could use karma, but would take strain equal to whatever the karma die rolled, even if it exploded. Of course, that was never used either, so I can't tell you how it would have worked ...

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EDChronicler
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Re: blood magic in ED4

Postby EDChronicler » Wed Jun 03, 2015 5:17 am

I was educated on "pushing" a while back when I tried to incorporate it into a "thread item" and found out there was an official version.

I suspect the right answer is: More than 1 path to the same destination. The big issue with that is "Having a balanced path" when you get the destination.

freid78
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Re: blood magic in ED4

Postby freid78 » Mon Jun 22, 2015 6:42 pm

Gosh, i realize with this thread that most my players are metaphysical explorers... The +3 / +7 option was used pretty often in my games. Perhaps i've put them into alot of difficult situation ? But it wasn't always used in desparate situations. For example, i had a cavalrymen questor of Garlen that was a heal whore (just an expression) and pushed the team to use blood magic just because he could heal them fast. In another game, magical items were somekind of an issue to thread and since they didn't want to loose time, in a non-combat situation, most of them push a +3 for the test. After that, any talents that were not in combat (like forge weapon) was being pushed for a +3. On rare occasion, i've seen the +7. Those type were not exclusively reserved to desparate situations, but most were.

I would love something with blood magic that enable to power extended period over a talent or spell. I've experimented with a 1blood magic point for extending the wood skin talent (the player had a great roll) over a year and a day. It was cool because not only he was stuck with a permanent minus 1 recovery test, but he wasn't able to upgrade the rank of his talent. So the trade off was cool. Using blood magic on a partically good Disguise Self roll was also interesting, mainly because if the illusion failed half way, he was still stuck with the blood magic spent.

Finally, about blood sacrifice, i've had a pretty cool game where the adepts were playing against Vestrial... a deadly game where the playing chips were years of their lives. The grand prize was of course tempting, but playing with your own years was a risky buisness. After like an hour of play, all 3 players were out of playing chips. 2 of them decided to sacrifice themselves to give all their karma to the thief, so that he could steal some chips to stay alive. A bold move, stealing from Vestrial himself. He end up alive, a bit older, but wearing the Thief Crown :P A pretty amazing story.

Edit : I've just remembered a long forgotten story about blood sacrifce. It was like 15years ago. A team of circle 4 adepts were negociating with a Dragon over a mission (they were tired of being puppets) when another dragon came to claim the lair of the first one. It was an epic battle were the first dragon (the quest giver) was suppose to win, but terrible rolls or excellent roll by the other one made it through... The second dragon, barely alive, killed the first one. On that tragic event, the team (that were like crying babies hidden in a corner) decided to take a shot at the heavily wounded dragon. It turned ugly fast for them (even a dying dragon is a match for circle 4 n00bs :P). So the weaponsmith decided to sacrifice himself, doing a massive amount of damage where we could see fireworks from the hit. The dragon fell, the swordmaster who survived the hit was poisonned and was going to die the next round. A dramatic moment where the players say goodbye to both heroes... until the dragon got back on his feet couple rounds later. He was on regen :P You should have seen the faces!! The warrior them mysteriously won initiative, and just where the dragon was hit from the dying act, a missing scale made him attack the spot on a called shot. Just enough damage to down him once again. After that, they took no chance. Hack - slash - destroy! Just like a zombie movie, always double tap! Anyhow, the good times...


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