Would sacrificing fertility be a good cost for summoning magic?

[Mr.nyalathotep]

In my story's world, witchcraft is a respected institution, with the most powerful practitioners being at the top echelons of society. Due to this, society traces its lineage through matrilineal lines. A witch has the power to summon a familiar by using her body as a conduit between the mortal and ethereal plane. These powerful spirits are forever linked with their master, and used in a number of ways, such as magical batteries and amplifiers, repositories, or for battle. They also give one a depper and more intuitive sense of magic, allowing them to understand and perform spells that were difficult or impossible for them before.

Familiars are created through an advanced, complex spell that requires various actions and takes the form of a year long ritual. It begins with a spell that infuses the witch with ethereal energies which gestates into a spirit. Over the year, the witch performs multiple steps to mold and shape the familiar into the form she wishes it to be. The ritual culminates with a ceremony in which the daemon is birthed into the world.

When creating a magic system, I was taught that there always had to be a cost, to keep the magic interesting. I am looking for a drawback to explain why every witch does not go through the process. One that I was considering was that the witch must have never given birth before the ritual, and that the process renders her infertile afterwards, ensuring that they will never have a lineage. For this reason, familiars are rare in this world. Is this a good cost for magic, or should it be added to? And what are the steps that should be taken for the ritual to work? And how would this affect society in general?

[VoxRationis]

As a conceptual idea in a setting, potentially. Depending on both the society and the individual, it would either be a tremendous cost, almost too horrific to contemplate, or utterly irrelevant and possibly beneficial. Most cultures traditionally tend to put a lot of emphasis on having children and the continuation of the family, but that's obviously not universal.
As a game mechanic, it is a meaningless cost. Do not include it in one of your games unless a), there is a significant cost in addition to infertility, or b) you're playing Pendragon or a similar game where one is expected to play a family line, and not just a single character.

[JeenLeen]

When creating a magic system, I was taught that there always had to be a cost, to keep the magic interesting.

As a game mechanic, it is a meaningless cost. Do not include it in one of your games unless a), there is a significant cost in addition to infertility, or b) you're playing Pendragon or a similar game where one is expected to play a family line, and not just a single character.

Agreeing for the most part with the sentiment here. While magic having a real cost is beneficial to a cool system -- though not necessarily required (D&D's Vancian casting has the cost just being resources) -- if you want it to be a choice that impacts the player, the cost should have a real impact. "Real Impact" can differ player to player, but I think it's best done when it has some mechanical impact. At least for a system that many folk will play, having it so you can't just ignore the cost is good.

However, if your intention is for most/all PCs to be spellcasters, then the cost having a societal or personal cost but no real mechanical cost is okay. For example, casting Sorcery in the Exalted setting (at least 2nd edition) has certain costs associated with it, personal sacrifices or ordeals the spellcaster has to undergo.* But I get the idea most of these are largely ignored or taken as part of the character's backstory and personality, so they have little or no impact on a given game.

So it sorta comes to fairness. If magic is really powerful and you want it to have a cost to make it balanced (more or less) with non-casters, then it should be mechanical. But if everyone is a spellcaster, then no need for a mechanical thing.

*I realized this is a bad example, at first glance, since not all Exalts are Sorcerers. But Sorcery isn't really better than the default magical power (Charms), so sorcerers are pretty equal to non-sorcerers. The mechanical 'cost' is the opportunity cost of not having spent points on Charms.

EDIT: most systems I have seen that try to do a mechanical drawback to being a caster fail pretty miserably. Either you get something like 3.5 where the drawbacks become null and spellcasters rock OR the penalties are so severe that nobody plays a caster.
One system that does it decent, or so I think, is Riddle of Steel. I never really understood the casting rules to know how good casting it, but it looks really good. BUT to be a caster means, at char-gen, you set one of your things to casting that could otherwise be used for something different. I can't really explain it well without going into the full system mechanics, but this is one system that seems to do the "opportunity cost" mechanical cost well.
I've also heard good things about Warhammer (Fantasy or the futuristic version). Not sure if it's actually good or not, and there's a chance casting a spell auto-kills you and maybe your party. Basically, being a caster has a social stigma AND chance of bad stuff happening. Usually 'chance of bad stuff happening' winds up not mattering or is so crippling playing a caster is foolish, but maybe this system does it well.

I think Riddle of Steel is probably the better source of inspiration, based on what you're going for.

[Max_Killjoy]

From a character, or narrative/storytelling perspective, this could be interesting.

From a "game balance" perspective, it's minimal.

How much either, both, or neither matters is up to the individual gaming group.

[PiperThePaladin]

VoxRationis and JeenLeen are spot-on with the mechanics vs. world-building cost of this. While I like the way your familiars are working, I think you can come up with a better price to pay. When dealing with female characters, fertility (and sex) are often a kind of go-to plot lever. Like how “Lord Antagonist killed my parents” is such a default plot lever for protagonists. But when your character is a woman, her problem should be related to woman-things! Like babies!

Take Black Widow’s back story from the Marvel movies. She’s the only woman on the team, and her tragic backstory is that she was trained as a spy at this brutal organization, and to graduate…she was sterilized. Her brutal graduation rite-of-passage could have been killing her best friend, it could have been assassinating the leader of a peaceful nation to make room for a dictator, it could have been staying awake through a surgery that cut her head open and put a chip in her brain. Nope. Sterilized.

Aside from the mechanical element of cost that previous posters have mentioned, in the society that you have outlined, I think infertility wouldn’t be a great deterrent even from a worldbuilding standpoint. Just have the kids you want to have before you do this ritual. A lot of people have their tubes tied when they’re done having children for pure convenience. If this is something for upper-echelon witches, it’s probably taken them 10-15 years to get there anyway, plenty of time to have as many kiddos as you want. (I missed the bit about not being able to have kids before the ritual). Plus, adoption is a thing.

Off the top of my head, here are some other deterrents that could be cool, with varying degrees of severity.

You can’t use magic in any way other than through your familiar once you have one
You completely lose one of your five senses, and you don’t get to pick which one
You lose a body part, and you don’t get to pick which one
Water or sunlight becomes incredibly toxic to you
It takes 15 years off your life

This setting sounds cool! I really like matriarchal magic societies, I think they're super cool :)

[JeenLeen]

I thought I'd comment on some of these to show how I'd categorize them as fair, not a real negative, or make it essentially not worth using. Again, from a character perspective. Adding words in indigo



Off the top of my head, here are some other deterrents that could be cool, with varying degrees of severity.

You can’t use magic in any way other than through your familiar once you have one Seems the most balanced thing. Gaining a familiar is a boon with a bane, and this sounds easy to balance. I really like this.
You completely lose one of your five senses, and you don’t get to pick which one Too bad to risk: essentially unusable if the player doesn't get to choose. Maybe okay if IC it is random but the player gets to choose. Also, losing hearing means the other PCs get annoyed having to try to communicate nonverbally.
You lose a body part, and you don’t get to pick which one As above.
Water or sunlight becomes incredibly toxic to you As above. A lesser version, of gaining some mundane thing you are very weak to, might work, but essentially is either null (you avoid that) or means you die (someone finds out about it & uses it on you)
It takes 15 years off your life while a big deal IC, irrelevant mechanically


Note that you could combine this with the infertility thing. If you go with "can only cast through your familiar", that could be the mechanical cost of having a familiar, while the infertility is a setting thing.

[Max_Killjoy]

VoxRationis and JeenLeen are spot-on with the mechanics vs. world-building cost of this. While I like the way your familiars are working, I think you can come up with a better price to pay. When dealing with female characters, fertility (and sex) are often a kind of go-to plot lever. Like how “Lord Antagonist killed my parents” is such a default plot lever for protagonists. But when your character is a woman, her problem should be related to woman-things! Like babies!

Take Black Widow’s back story from the Marvel movies. She’s the only woman on the team, and her tragic backstory is that she was trained as a spy at this brutal organization, and to graduate…she was sterilized. Her brutal graduation rite-of-passage could have been killing her best friend, it could have been assassinating the leader of a peaceful nation to make room for a dictator, it could have been staying awake through a surgery that cut her head open and put a chip in her brain. Nope. Sterilized.

Aside from the mechanical element of cost that previous posters have mentioned, in the society that you have outlined, I think infertility wouldn’t be a great deterrent even from a worldbuilding standpoint. Just have the kids you want to have before you do this ritual. A lot of people have their tubes tied when they’re done having children for pure convenience. If this is something for upper-echelon witches, it’s probably taken them 10-15 years to get there anyway, plenty of time to have as many kiddos as you want. Plus, adoption is a thing.

Off the top of my head, here are some other deterrents that could be cool, with varying degrees of severity.

You can’t use magic in any way other than through your familiar once you have one
You completely lose one of your five senses, and you don’t get to pick which one
You lose a body part, and you don’t get to pick which one
Water or sunlight becomes incredibly toxic to you
It takes 15 years off your life

This setting sounds cool! I really like matriarchal magic societies, I think they're super cool :)

Posting from work, so I got distracted and missed the "women" part in the OP, just saw fertility as the price for magic -- I was thinking more The Witcher where it affects both sexes equally.

As you point out, the whole "the core of a woman is her ability to be a mother, and so it's a terrible price to pay if she has to sacrifice that or has it taken away" thing is such a tired cliche at this point. As another example, the primary protagonist of Judith Tarr's Lord of The Two Lands is a woman whose magic came at the price of her ability to have children, and while it's a good read, that always struck me as a bit off.

In many settings, it would be quite a sacrifice for men to have to give up the ability to father children in order to obtain magical power.

[Mr.nyalathotep]

You can’t use magic in any way other than through your familiar once you have one
You completely lose one of your five senses, and you don’t get to pick which one
You lose a body part, and you don’t get to pick which one
Water or sunlight becomes incredibly toxic to you
It takes 15 years off your life



what do you mean by "cant use magic in any way other than through your familiar"?

[PiperThePaladin]

what do you mean by "cant use magic in any way other than through your familiar"?

Well, the specifics are up to you! But presumably, there are ways to perform magic other than through a familiar. You mentioned that only some witches go through the ritual that grants them a familiar. The witches that choose not to presumably use magic in some other way. It sounds like witches are only women, so there may be some kinds of magic that both genders can use. If this is a D&D type of world, maybe a familiar grants you access to upper level wizard spells, but you become unable to use clerical, druidic, warlock or sorcerer magic. It would effectively disable caster multi classing.

Or whatever the magic system in your world looks like. What I'm saying is, the familiar grants you access to powerful magic but forces you to specialize to the detriment of other kinds of magic. And if your familiar is killed or otherwise disappears somehow, you're stuck with no magic of any kind, forever.

[PiperThePaladin]

In many settings, it would be quite a sacrifice for men to have to give up the ability to father children in order to obtain magical power.

Yes! I think it would be really interesting to see more stories that had infertility as part of male character's backstory.

[Grim Portent]

I think a more immediately impactful sacrifice would be a major bodypart sacrificed to serve as the flesh form of the familiar.

Losing the ability to have children is only impactful if the person cares about their lineage in the first place, losing an arm or eyes is more instantly noticeable and significant day to day. If nothing else you can just buy/adopt a kid to be your heir, happened in real life after all.

If only women can normally be magic wielders it also opens up the possibility of allowing non-casters, both men and women, who donate their flesh to a witch to create a familiar with being considered it's master and gaining magical powers as long as it lives and the creator lives, which then allows for witches to command the loyalty of warlocks by being the source of their gifted magic. Presumably such an act would be highly taboo though.

[flyinglemur]

This definitely doesn't seem like a big deal for player characters unless infertility is highly stigmatized. However, this could be interesting for world-building and npcs. In real life eunuchs were often employed by governments and monarchs because it was believed that without a family they wouldn't have anyone to be loyal to, besides the king. A similar principle could apply here, especially given the power of a familiar. Witches with familiars could act as bodyguards or advisors to queens. Noble families could also use this as means to prevent internal conflicts. The oldest daughter is the heir and the younger daughters are sterilized preventing them from establishing any competing family lines, and as a bonus the younger daughters could be used as guards or assassins if the setting has cloak and dagger conflicts.

[Saintheart]

When creating a magic system, I was taught that there always had to be a cost, to keep the magic interesting. I am looking for a drawback to explain why every witch does not go through the process. One that I was considering was that the witch must have never given birth before the ritual, and that the process renders her infertile afterwards, ensuring that they will never have a lineage. For this reason, familiars are rare in this world. Is this a good cost for magic, or should it be added to? And what are the steps that should be taken for the ritual to work? And how would this affect society in general?

This is Orson Scott Card's old dictum, with a hint of Sanderson's Second Law.

The reason they say this is because it's one of the few ways to draw real drama and conflict from what amounts to a rule of the universe in fantasy settings. Without it, magic really doesn't form that distinctive a part of the world - it's just wallpaper like the rules of physics in a modern-world thriller novel, it doesn't actually add anything to the setting as such. Magic only becomes interesting in dramatic or fictional settings when it becomes a cost-benefit analysis: is what you can do with it worth it, compared to what you give up to get it or use it? And that, in turn, allows authors to use that brutal equation to tell us something about the characters: if a character is willing to give up the ability to have a child in return for Phenomenal Cosmic Power, it tells us something about what that character values, or how they rank the priority of their values (Present over Future; Power over Legacy; Self over Offspring, perhaps...)

Even more interesting is not to make this rule - infertility for power - an absolute, but given grades. The first step on the ladder of power is achieved by cutting your likelihood of being able to conceive by about 20%. Okay, fair odds, that's about the odds of Russian Roulette, I can live with that. But the power it gives you is just not quite ... enough, for most. So the second step on the ladder of power grants you more, but the odds of going barren are 40%. Third step, 80%. Fourth step, you'll never have a son. Fifth step, you'll never have a daughter.

Or if you want to twist the knife harder, raise the witch's odds of having a deformed child (and tie it to an unbreakable societal more that demands the witch take care of that child) as their progression of power increases. This is a particularly interesting dilemma to put on a character because it doesn't just remove the possibility of ever having a kid, it invokes the possibility that if you do decide to have a kid, there are good odds you're going to wind up bringing someone into the world with massive drawbacks when they had zero choice in the matter. In short, you're increasing the odds of doing damage to an innocent person in order to gain power ... albeit you could also avoid that damage at all if you deny yourself having children at all, which is really what the demons want ... because they hate you, like all humankind, which is why they 'gifted' humanity with this compact to begin with.

Render the magic as costing the person's soul - by which I mean their moral compass or their morality as opposed to the target of a Trap the Soul spell - rather than their crude physicality, and the characters who make the choice become a lot more interesting.

This idea is not the same as setting up worldbuilding for a RPG. Even in worldbuilding terms, inventing a cost for the magic (which doesn't affect the PCs) is just part of the wallpaper unless it's going to directly affect them or an ally that they really need. And PCs generally are not the same as protagonists of fictional novels, in the sense that it'll be a rare campaign where you can twist events or the narrative of the adventure such that a player's infertility has a direct impact on the story, mainly because there's no real agency to be had here. It's binary: either they gave up having kids in order to play a witch character, or they didn't. So they're either spat on in every town they come into or they're not.

[KatteLars]

Yes! I think it would be really interesting to see more stories that had infertility as part of male character's backstory.

As mentioned by Max_killjoy it is a major theme in the Witcher series, where the fact that he cannot have children is a major driving force for the plot :) (without too much of a spoiler, he ends up kind of adopting a very special girl)