Sacrifice, Damaging yourself to prevent damage to you. Options

[Karoline]

So, I was looking through blood magic and particularly sacrifice earlier to see if there was any ability to sacrifice yourself in order to gain some kind of an edge (And possibly create a 'good' blood mage). The book said that you could sacrifice yourself, but the only thing sacrifice does is reduce drain. So the book allows you to deal damage to yourself in order to reduce how much damage you take. Seems entirely pointless to me.

I did however notice at the end of the description it said that 'sacrifice opens up several more advanced metamagics' but the book only lists a single other blood metamagic. Is there more in some other book, are there perhaps plans to release more stuff for the twisted paths, or is that sort of a push to come up with unique metamagics that make use of sacrifice?

I could imagine converting the drain reduction into a force improvement and extra casting dice or pure hits not bound by spell force would be a cool use of self sacrificing. Any other ideas out there?

Edit: I did realize there might be some potential for this to be useful because you could heal sacrifice damage to yourself but not drain damage.

[Method]

Digital Grimoire has rules for Blood Fetishes: +4 to drain for a single box of physical damage (at some time prior to the casting) makes casting higher force spells slightly less dangerous. Thats similar to your idea, albeit on a smaller scale and in a round about way.

[Starmage21]

So, I was looking through blood magic and particularly sacrifice earlier to see if there was any ability to sacrifice yourself in order to gain some kind of an edge (And possibly create a 'good' blood mage). The book said that you could sacrifice yourself, but the only thing sacrifice does is reduce drain. So the book allows you to deal damage to yourself in order to reduce how much damage you take. Seems entirely pointless to me.

I did however notice at the end of the description it said that 'sacrifice opens up several more advanced metamagics' but the book only lists a single other blood metamagic. Is there more in some other book, are there perhaps plans to release more stuff for the twisted paths, or is that sort of a push to come up with unique metamagics that make use of sacrifice?

I could imagine converting the drain reduction into a force improvement and extra casting dice or pure hits not bound by spell force would be a cool use of self sacrificing. Any other ideas out there?

Edit: I did realize there might be some potential for this to be useful because you could heal sacrifice damage to yourself but not drain damage.

If youre using the sacrificing metamagic to sacrifice yourself, and you've got the regeneration power, youre basically trading 2 complex actions for the ability to regenerate your drain

Pass 1: cut yourself like an emo
Pass 2: cast spell, drain free; but still penalized from a wound
end of round: regenerate damage

[Method]

Pass 1: cut yourself like an emo

Do you loose Agility and Reaction for wearing your little sisters jeans down around your thighs?
Visibility modifiers for your dyed-black bangs in your face, perhaps?

[Neowulf]

No, but every time you do it you must make a willpower + charisma test with a threshold of the number of enemies around you, to resist the urge to recite your dark poems to an audience paying so much attention to you.

[Method]

Artisan (Dark Poetry): 1 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[Ancient History]

I keep hoping to do something more interesting with blood magic. Maybe in an e-book. Anyone want a monograph on self-mutilation for magical power?

[Method]

Like chopping off fingers to gain initiation grades? Sound fun.

[Draco18s]

Like chopping off fingers to gain initiation grades? Sound fun.

I think it takes a whole hand.
(See: Geas quality, Street Magic)

[Method]

I think it takes a whole hand.
(See: Geas quality, Street Magic)

Maybe I'm missing the reference here... I don't see anything about cutting off hands.

[Ancient History]

I'm going to guess he meant the Sacrifice ordeal, p. 52, Street Magic.

[Method]

Yep, there it is... so what did you have in mind AH?

[Draco18s]

I'm going to guess he meant the Sacrifice ordeal, p. 52, Street Magic.

Whoops, yes, that's the one I was thinking of.

[Tyro]

I keep hoping to do something more interesting with blood magic. Maybe in an e-book. Anyone want a monograph on self-mutilation for magical power?

I would love that. Cannibalize is awesome, and it would be nice to have blood spirits that didn't break the game in PC hands.

[Mongoose]

I don't see why you'd need the Regeneration power to be a self-cutting mage. Conventional and / or magical healing could work just as well, no? Its not like you have to cut yourself to ribbons- just enough to avoid penalties for stun (2 boxes physical plus 2 stun = less penalties than 4 stun) or getting knocked cold from massive drain. Could also be handy if you have levels of pain tolerance; in that case, you can effectively use double the pain tolerance for drain, by loading up both tracks with damage, instead of just the stun track. Pain tolerance would help avoid the casting penalties, too.

[Karoline]

I keep hoping to do something more interesting with blood magic. Maybe in an e-book. Anyone want a monograph on self-mutilation for magical power?

I think a book like that would be great. Get into more info about blood magic (And likely Aztec), toxic magic (And perhaps rules for mutantions), and the various other 'darker' sides of shadowrunning. Might also include orgenleggers and the various other darker organizations.

Don't forget the Shidam(sp), shadow spirits, and other assorted baddies. In the mean time, I think I might make up a few things of my own and see how they look.

[LurkerOutThere]

Karoline is likely asking this for my gain so I will guoilt free hijack. Where are the rules for blood spirits? Also what abilities does a Great Form Blood Spirit gain? My home game PC's are going to be tangling with one of the big players from Ghost Cartels, "The Diplomat" and the way they've been raring for a fight I figure it's time to pull out the big guns and put the fear of the old gods back into them.

[Karoline]

p 139-140 talk about blood spirits.

Has the normal bonuses for being invoked (Invoking metamagic), also gets Energy Drain (Essence), Fear, Natural Weapon (DV = F Physical Damage). Using the essence drain adds a point of force to the spirit.

In and of themselves they aren't that scary, but if you summon a middling force spirit of say 3 or so, and give it maybe half a dozen humans to feed on, it rockets up to F27.

[Tyro]

p 139-140 talk about blood spirits.

Has the normal bonuses for being invoked (Invoking metamagic), also gets Energy Drain (Essence), Fear, Natural Weapon (DV = F Physical Damage). Using the essence drain adds a point of force to the spirit.

In and of themselves they aren't that scary, but if you summon a middling force spirit of say 3 or so, and give it maybe half a dozen humans to feed on, it rockets up to F27.

And this is why PC blood mages are unplayable by RAW (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)

[Wiggles Von Beer...]

And this is why PC blood mages are unplayable by RAW (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)

Just don't summon them. I played a blood mage PC who focused on casting, and it worked out okay.

[Muspellsheimr]

p. 140 Invoking Blood Spirits
 e fourth paragrap. under this header should read:
“Aside from the abilities normally conferred by Invoking
(see. p.57), blood spirits also automatically gain the following
powers (see p. 99 and pp. 288-289, SR4): Energy Drain
(Essence), Fear, and Natural Weapon (DV = Force Physical
damage, AP 0).  ey also acquire a variant of the weakness
Evanescence (p.148) which depletes them both on the physical
and astral planes.
Essence drained by blood spirits is treated as a Force modi
 er, at a ratio of 1:1. Force can be raised in this manner to a
maximum modi ed value equal to 1.5 times the spirit’s Force
when initially summoned.”

Edit: Wrong Quote.

[Ancient History]

And this is why PC blood mages are unplayable by RAW (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)

Bloodzilla was a problem. Didn't we errata that?

I do have some...notes...on further expansions of blood magic, but I don't want to reveal them just yet in case I get the opportunity to print them. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

I will say I always have been in favor of PCs gaining some access to blood magic, which is part of the reason I pushed blood fetishes in Digital Grimoire.

[Karoline]

Ah, thanks for that Muspellsheimr. I've never looked at the blood spirits, but heard someone say they were outrageously powerful, so figured that was why.

Given the extra metamagic needed, and the fact that you can't gain the great form power of the spirit, and of course the sacrifices that you need, they don't really seem all that powerful. Pumping a F6 up to a F9 is great and all, but it doesn't seem all that impressive compared to the cost. Well, maybe it is fairly impressive, but it doesn't seem so 'all powerful' like I've heard.

[Tyro]

clarifying quote

That'll teach me to do my research *sheepish*

[AngelisStorm]

Pumping a F6 up to a F9 is great and all, but it doesn't seem all that impressive compared to the cost. Well, maybe it is fairly impressive, but it doesn't seem so 'all powerful' like I've heard.

One thing that crossed my mind was the "SATAN!!!" thread we had a week or two ago. It was the thread about Invoking a Force 18 spirit. We didn't look at F10 spirits in that thread, however if it's possible to invoke one (which I'm assuming it is, though very hard), and it was a Blood spirit, then it could raise itself up to F15. And that's getting pretty close to "SATAN!!!" Or perhaps, in this case, it's getting close to "We are Legion."