Connor Langenderfer I don’t see why not. Rules as written allow all kinds of things to mitigate HP loss and I think Corruption or potential Corruption fits that model.
The corruption mechanism is a kind of sanity mechanism, really, only with some player choice built into it. You can use it for all sorts of things. In my public beta "Deds bok" ('Book of Ded') in 2011, which had a lot of what was to become Whitehack in it, I used it as a damage system :).
My two cents here is to make the corruption/HP exchange rare, as in "I've found this ancient drug that lets me do this, but I only have 5 doses," or "When the planets align on a midwinter's eve, you can ..." I would avoid a situation where using corruption instead of HP was a standard thing to do, so that all magic users run around with scaly skin and three eyes, and none of them live past the age of 50 unless they stay at home and work in the milk delivery business. It's not that I don't like mutants---I do!---but I think that for corruption to remain cool it needs to stand out. When you see someone with visible corruption, you should be scared and know that this dude did something rare and powerful, visited some secret dangerous place or made a deal with the forces of chaos. You shouldn't just go "oh, it's a wizard who ran out of HP---happened to me last week."
I was going to do something similar in my game. I was thinking of allowing casters to optionally gain Corruption instead of HP. The corruption gained would be tied to the type of spells being cast/the miracle wording.
A necromancer would become grotesque, may begin to rot, or become cold and unearthly.
A pyromancer may display burned and blackened skin, and become hot tempered.
My players are pretty big on role-playing, so they wouldn't likely choose those options, unless really desperate.
I wonder if you could potentially balance the two, maybe Wise characters can lessen the HP cost by instead taking some level of corruption?
ReplyDeleteOne corruption to cost them all... I dig this, too. Chaos/total possession by demon/symbiote, whatever. Push a bargain too far, and miracles run out
ReplyDeleteConnor Langenderfer I don’t see why not. Rules as written allow all kinds of things to mitigate HP loss and I think Corruption or potential Corruption fits that model.
ReplyDeleteConnor Langenderfer That's how I would do it.
ReplyDeleteThe corruption mechanism is a kind of sanity mechanism, really, only with some player choice built into it. You can use it for all sorts of things. In my public beta "Deds bok" ('Book of Ded') in 2011, which had a lot of what was to become Whitehack in it, I used it as a damage system :).
ReplyDeleteMy two cents here is to make the corruption/HP exchange rare, as in "I've found this ancient drug that lets me do this, but I only have 5 doses," or "When the planets align on a midwinter's eve, you can ..." I would avoid a situation where using corruption instead of HP was a standard thing to do, so that all magic users run around with scaly skin and three eyes, and none of them live past the age of 50 unless they stay at home and work in the milk delivery business. It's not that I don't like mutants---I do!---but I think that for corruption to remain cool it needs to stand out. When you see someone with visible corruption, you should be scared and know that this dude did something rare and powerful, visited some secret dangerous place or made a deal with the forces of chaos. You shouldn't just go "oh, it's a wizard who ran out of HP---happened to me last week."
Midwinter Mutant Milk-Delivery Mages 2: Electric Booga-Moooo!
ReplyDeleteI was going to do something similar in my game. I was thinking of allowing casters to optionally gain Corruption instead of HP. The corruption gained would be tied to the type of spells being cast/the miracle wording.
ReplyDeleteA necromancer would become grotesque, may begin to rot, or become cold and unearthly.
A pyromancer may display burned and blackened skin, and become hot tempered.
My players are pretty big on role-playing, so they wouldn't likely choose those options, unless really desperate.