Discussion: The Concept of Obtaining Evil Powers & their Drawbacks

[Gruftzwerg]

Hello folks. While having participated in this discussion (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?609173-Is-this-allowed-per-ruleshttp://) about the LA for some evil 3.0 templates, this thought has emerged for me.

The Concept of Obtaining Evil Powers:
Imho getting Evil Powers is always depicted as going the "shortcut" when trying to obtain more power. You go the fast and easy way. But this comes at a heavy price. Drawbacks with the range from lil handicaps till selling your soul for eternity. And often the abilities are front loaded, while the high tax paid never changes. Which means you get a power spike when you get it, while suffering forever for it.

Imho undead are a good example. Being undead brings some nice benefits. But also some drawbacks and some that are not even listed on the stats block.

Characters that are specialized in "good" abilities & spells (e.g. turn/rebuke/command undead, specific spells/abilities against undead like smite...). Always in the fear that some lower lvl cleric will annoy you to death.

Like being unable to socially interact with at least 95% of the population without other resources (change appearance and make sure no one notices your disguise).

Some have sunlight problems and are reduced to basically to half a day activity on average compared to a regular creature which can be active for 2/3 of a day.

Others have contact abilities that causes problems with any kind of physical interaction with others (like, no sex..^^).




What are your thoughts on this?
And where do you see good examples of this in 3.5?

[the_tick_rules]

Maybe use the intelligent items system as a base? It has rules for the stronger the item the stronger it tries to control you, that seems a good place to start.

[liquidformat]

Maybe use the intelligent items system as a base? It has rules for the stronger the item the stronger it tries to control you, that seems a good place to start.

Honestly just expanding the taint rules would be a pretty good way to go. At this point the taint system is either purely stinky cheese or used for grit when making a darker campaign. It is primarily a negative at this point with no positive, if you created bonuses to go along with taint it would work well as a corrupting force that eventually turns you into a mad slaughtering machine npc.

[Psyren]

If you're looking for examples of this, Taint is a pretty good one. You can get a lot of power but become quite icky and even risk going insane.

[JeenLeen]

As general thoughts, I think the biggest difficulty is that taint/corruption/whatever systems tend to fall into one of two camps.
A) the drawbacks are so bad that no optimized character would dare use the powers
B) the drawbacks are easily enough negated or avoided that an optimized character can use the powers with minimal risk
I say 'optimized' since we're assuming gaining power and utility as a PC is a goal. If it's for cool RP and narrative drama, then the question gets murkier. Also 'optimized' assumes enough system mastery to be able to judge whether the risk is worth the reward and to find ways to mitigate or eliminate drawbacks.

I feel like D&D's Taint from Heroes of Horror is a mix, in that it's (to a large degree, albeit not completely) luck how bad a drawback you get. It could be easily avoided and well worth it, or crippling, depending on what you roll and what your PC's class and focus is. I feel like it's in the A camp due to the random chance involved, although not terribly so.

Becoming a Necropolitan is mostly in the B camp. Yeah, you're undead and that has some drawbacks, but it's easy to boost Turn resistance and almost all the drawbacks are avoidable. Social drawbacks are minor enough, and you can always just get a Hat of Disguise and look mortal.

I've never seen it done well. (Not to say I haven't seen it done in ways that I'd fine fun to play, but I've never seen it done in a way that mechanically satisfactory, nor have I or my friends been able to think up a system when we've dabbled in homebrew.) I think the best I've seen was fan-made based on Riddle of Steel.

[Gruftzwerg]

I know taint, but haven't looked deeper into it. I'll guess that will come onto my ToDo list..^^

What else comes to your mind? I'm just curious atm, and have not plans for it. I'm just looking for good examples.

[Segev]

The big problem that this faces in a game is that it's either going to just be balanced with non-evil powers (and thus the "costs" need to be mostly cosmetic), or it's going to be too strong to balance a game with, no matter the drawbacks, because it's a problem until the drawbacks overcome it.

Imagine there was a class that let you cast wish every round as a level 1 feature, but will turn your character into a "merged consciousness with the all-mind" or somesuch after three sessions. By whatever terminology necessary, there's no escaping that fate. It's a huge drawback: your character is only viable for three sessions! It's not even a question of whether he'll survive; he won't! But using the powers in the meantime crushes the game for the whole time you're playing it.

This is the issue with "shortcut to power, but at a cost." The very tropes being played off of have the cost delayed long enough that the overpowering might of the choice can either threaten or save the heroes, before the villain is overwhelmed by his own hubristic bargain or the Lancer or Old Mentor who saved the day pays the Ultimate Sacrifice for the power he borrowed to pull it off.

For it to work, I think it needs to be a slow burn that gives more power the more cost you accrue. The first dipping of the toe is nearly free, just...exposing yourself to the taint. But it's also a minor power. Something that might not be unbalanced as a freebie, anyway.

As the corruption-prone character progresses into the tainted power, he gets stronger abilities, but using them comes with immediate commensurate costs. The power may require him to sacrifice a certain amount of blood, measured in constitution points. From a sentient creature. Which may not need to be him. But now he has to have that sacrifice on hand to use this power, and the costs are...obvious.

Or maybe it makes him dependent on drinking the blood of the innocent, lest he wither up. Using the power starts giving him penalties he can mitigate by drinking said blood. At first, maybe they only appear when he uses the power. Later, he becomes depenedent on blood to not be withered even if he doesn't use it.

These drawbacks that accumulate have costs, in RP and in resources and time, to deal with. And guide the character towards villainy in the process.