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[COURT OF SWORDS // E64 Q&A] Four PCs and a Baby

RollPlay®: Court of Swords
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#102

Hello. Apprentice Dream Druid Benih, here.
My question is for the gods of heaven…
Do you hire 9th level druidic interns to cast Reincarnate? I have never manually performed reincarnation personally, but I graduated top of my class for Theoretical Spiritual Economy.
My last internship fell through - literally through a hole left by a gold bug person - and I need to stay ‘in service’ to pay for my sister’s schooling with the Grand College of Lore.
But of course, you know all about her, right? Always going against family tradition but a kind girl, that one.

(But fo real, Adam. What have you done with the spell ‘Reincarnate’? You would at least change the ‘recalls its former life and experiences. it retains the capabilities it had in its original form’ part.

Is that spell unavailable to mortals? If it isnt, I would assume it is something almost akin to resetting the ‘spawn point’ of the soul to be the child the spell creates so that you can control exactly where that soul is when it returns.

3 Likes
#103

Indeed, that spell also came to my mind multiple times but i just left it hanging for after 5 more years, when it is going to be used :stuck_out_tongue:

1 Like
#104

The reincarnation by fountain has been described as a separation of the two parts of the soul that make a person. There’s one part that is all memories and one part that is the sum of Karma and Dharma. They’re called hun and po, but I forgot which is which.
The memory/personality part gets reset, the karmic part stays and is used to determine the quality on reincarnation, as is ‘they did well, proceed to next stage’, ‘let them try that again’ or ‘dayum we better start over’.

The reincarnation by spell seems more like a sideways reincarnation, like Utrix’s respawn experiment, where the reset step is skipped.

I am 100% not sure about any of this.

1 Like
#105

Hey @AdamKoebel
I was thinking
Orcish fury says that once per short rest you can add a WEAPON die to your attack ability.
You talked about that Max can choose the psyonic die if he wants. But does that count as a weapon die? I thought you gave him that ability connected to Berg’s rage and that makes me think that it’s not part of the weapons damage.

#106

[spoiler] I really like how berg is incorporating different aspects into himself, he has the arm from Agni (a gift from gods who didn’t join hevan), he receives power from Tulpa ( a gift from an otherworldly being) and he has his own talent ( a gift from the mundane world). Now all he needs is a gift from heaven and a gift from the Mara and his set will be complete, and maybe he will become something more than himself. [/spoiler]

9 Likes
#107

The psychic damage comes from his hammer.

#108

Hi Adam,
I don’t know if you guys decided to change it or I’m just remembering it wrong, but I remember the item Kalimat got that gave him jump was a ring described as having little boot-prints around the band.
It doesn’t really matter that much, but I just wanted to point it out in case in the future you find a pair of magic boots and Kalimat doesn’t take them because he thinks he already has boots and wouldn’t be able to wear them both.

4 Likes
#109

I believe the Psychic comes from the boon he got from the crystal creature.

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#110

The psychic damage, like the necrotic damage before it, was originally part of the boon awarded to Berg by Tulpa in the crystalline prison. It originally worked upon him entering rage, and on Week 59 you can see that the psychic damage works even when he isn’t using Tulpa’s Conduit, as it works with a normal quarterstaff.

3 Likes
#111

I stand corrected :slight_smile:

#112
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#113

yep! I think Zeke referred to it as boots and I got caught up in that. it’s a ring of jumping not boots of springing and striding

#114

Hey Adam, I don’t know if someo ne already brought this up, but…

Since Vortex’s soul went from a genasi to human, does that mean her soul got downgraded on her path to enlightenment??

#115

I think that her race either has been or will be corrected. Adam asked for a timestamp and it has been provided way up there in this topic!

#116

from what i remember genasi are a “purer” race in comparisson to humans. So it was an upgrade.

#117

She was a Genasi in her past life also, so she actually didn’t move much karma wise, besides being reborn as a peasant (Indicating a slight drop, but Azure could have been born in similar circumstances , since we don’t really know her past.). Had she been born a human however, like the original comment asked, it would have been a definite and not insignificant downgrade.

#118

The cycle considers rich and poor equal, noble and peasant the same when it comes to karma. One might in fact consider a rich man’s life a punishment or test, as it is easiest to become attached to life when one has things to be attached to.

6 Likes
#119

So here is another thought I had that maybe Adam can shed a little light on. We all know that Berg stole the shield from the dwarf, and everyone came to the conclusion that there would be consequences for that. But then I remembered something important about morality and good vs evil in the CoS universe- everything is tied to whether or not you are following fate. Adam once said that if your fate was to buy two loaves of bread and give one to a beggar, you would be equally evil if you kept both loaves for yourself, gave both away, or did not buy the bread. In all three cases you were defying your destiny. So if Berg were destined to obtain the shield, and the dwarf were destined to lose some of his stock, is that an evil act? Would it be seen as crime in the CoS society, and rewarded after death, or would it be let go if it can be proven to be inline with fate?

[WARNING: GAME DESIGN TALK BELOW]
Further thought led me to realize that in a way, it was Berg’s fate to obtain the shield because it was one of his pre-set goals. And that led me to this- could the goals system tie closer to karma for the characters? As we all know, players and characters are distinct entities, so not all of the goals need to be in the character’s best interest. If you wanted, you could even consider only giving each player one goal for their own character and then having a goal set by each other player. Such a mechanic would be similar to highlighting stats in AW. As with your newest rule tweak, working towards the goal is partial credit. This would tie more tightly to the cosmology of CoS while also further investing the players in each other’s characters. [spoiler]And, of course, you can keep track of when they fail to pursue those goals as karmic build-up if you so please.[/spoiler]

1 Like
#120

I don’t think Berg will suffer any cosmic or karmic consequences from the theft (and I’m pretty sure many folks are on the same page), but rather legal and personal consequences. i.e., reprisals from the dwarves, arrest by the guards, and/or potential re-enslavement for his crime. He may well have been following his fate, but that doesn’t mean the people around him will appreciate the fact.

#121

But that’s the sticking point. We come at the situation from the perspective of people living in a non-fatalist society and our assumptions color the interpretation of events. If their society is structured around fate, punishing someone for doing something they were fated to do would be wrong (blasphemous even). In fact, the idea of punishing someone for carrying out their fate was adjudicated here in the US, and it did not pass judicial muster because it would be an easy get-out-of-jail free card for anyone. That is primarily because we live in a society where free will is tantamount and secondarily because even if fate does exist, we lack a mechanism to verify someone’s fate. In the CoS society, going with the flow of the Fountain is most important and mechanisms to verify fate do exist, so in theory the legal structure ought to be completely different.
edit: accidentally typed the wrong word and didn’t read the post until after posting.

3 Likes