How do Sex/Gender-based Abilities Work?

[goto124]

I was reading a Pokemon comic on the move Attract. An excerpt from the image description:

"Now, we could probably discuss for hours on end about how the move Attract really function, but my take on it is that it's a psychological move, and not just dousing the opponent with pheromones. This psychic link is what makes it difficult for the opponent to attack during its infatuated state, and why it could easily backfire if it's also holding a Destiny Knot (which never happens because no one uses those). Cryogonal would have no understanding of the two gender roles due to a lack of its own, and so, it has no clue how to manipulate either."

It made me think. In most media, love potions (or Attract spells, or such) merely attract the opposite sex, without considering for things such as non-heterosexuality. Sometimes, love potions attract those of compatible sexual orientation, which has its own problems since sexual orientation isn't so neat.

If it's pheromones, it's easier to justify attraction spells attracting only those of the opposite sex (and presumably, those of compatible species). Still... what do we make of asexuals? How does sexual orientation work?

Should these be worried over in context of a tabletop game?

[AMFV]

Well it depends on how your love potion works. It's important to note that different drugs affect different people in different ways. Some people have different reactions to different drugs, or even to different hormones. So that's not necessarily going to work the same way, psychological state plays into these things, physical attributes. A love potion is really something that's a lot more complex than one would think. Now a love potion could result in somebody doing something they wouldn't ordinarily, with some one they wouldn't ordinarily, but they might not treat everybody the same.

[goto124]

But love potions are magic! Magic is supposed to be more reliable than RL science!

Because magic!

[AMFV]

But love potions are magic! Magic is supposed to be more reliable than RL science!

Because magic!

If you're worried about how reality interacts with things, then potions are going to affect different people differently. If you're saying "because magic" then there's no issue.

[goto124]

To be honest, I'm more looking for inspiration for different ways to work attraction spells outside the norms.

What are the various ways such spells/potions/etc have been used? Any system, any game, random ideas. Anything.

[Steampunkette]

Run down the list based on what kinda potion it is.

Love potion? Romantic, Fraternal, Platonic. Any of those three work based on the romantic orientation of the target, independent of the sexual orientation.

Then you can poke at their sexual attitudes/activity. A Celibate Priest might want to have sex with someone, but not do it because vows, regardless of how much he -wants- to.

There's lots of layers.

[Segev]

Generally, love potions come up in "because magic" contexts. As such, they work how the rules of that particular setting and that particular love potion/spell/whatever says they do.

If they only attract the opposite sex, and they make no distinction regarding the orientation of the one they enfatuate, then they do exactly that: they make the gay man fall for the girl, even though he isn't attracted to any other women; they make the lesbian woman fall for the boy, even though she's into no other guys.

If they only attract people to whom the potion-user is attracted, then they will cause guys to fall for the gay man and girls to fall for the gay woman, regardless of the normal orientation of said individuals doing the "falling."

If they affect libido, then the potion overrides normal preference. If they do not, then it might be a romantic love that stops at the bedroom. Or a platonic love. Or even sibling-like, but that's getting unusual for "love potions."

If they affect people based on THEIR orientation, then the love potion the gay man used on his crush may do nothing until his (straight, it turns out) crush sees the girl for whom he instantly falls (thanks to the potion). Much to the potion-user's disappointment. If they only affect opposite sex, this same thing could happen! ...even if the crush was, himself, normally gay. (Which would be an ironic way to deal with it in a plot, actually: gay character is insecure about confessing to crush, uses love potion, potion causes crush to become infatuated with opposite-sex character, when it turns out that before falling in love at first sight, the crush had been considering asking the potion-user out!)

While this is usually ignored or glossed over in most stories involving them, they have a lot of rape-like connotations to them, as well, and are something that, if taken even remotely seriously, have horrifying implications, whether they violate sexual orientation or not. At their most tame, they're charm-like effects which make people think of you as their best friend and potential romantic interest if the charm-user is even slightly skilled at directing things that way (or it's in the target's personality). In comedic examples, the potion is usually accidentally applied, and people are aware of what's happened (or not) and nobody's trying to exploit it; it's dealt with as an annoyance, like a friend who got drunk (even if accidentally) and is behaving foolishly because of it.

But...yeah, since they're fictional, how they work is entirely defined by the rules of that fiction.

[AMFV]

Run down the list based on what kinda potion it is.

Love potion? Romantic, Fraternal, Platonic. Any of those three work based on the romantic orientation of the target, independent of the sexual orientation.

Then you can poke at their sexual attitudes/activity. A Celibate Priest might want to have sex with someone, but not do it because vows, regardless of how much he -wants- to.

There's lots of layers.

It's also possible that some of those things can be altered chemically. The same way as a medication can make a human being who wasn't previously psychotic, psychotic. Of course, then you have to deal with exactly how much of human motivation is chemical, and that's a hugely complex and thorny issue. Certainly there are drugs that have sufficient effect to make people do things that are completely out of character for them, if there are drugs in our present world that can do that, then certainly magic should be able to accomplish it.

Of course then you'd have to deal with the fallout afterwards. A person who kills somebody or does something else they think morally reprehensible under the influence of drugs is likely to be very distraught over it. Certainly that is so unethical as to be about the most evil thing I would assume.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

If this came up in a roleplaying game I'd probably advocate just categorizing people into falling for men, women, both or nobody (which is not the same as asexuality, more like aromanticallity, which from here on is a word). If genderless characters come up I'd probably decide anyone can fall for those or something, under the "close enough" principle. It skips a LOT of steps, and it's kind of insulting if you think about it that someones gender is more important in the falling in love process than anything else about them (like say them being an evil mastermind). But it'd still be my preferred soolution.

Why? Because I wouldn't get started on the evil side in all of use when someone tried to use smite evil on the paladin. You need some abstraction.

The only real alternative is let it work on everybody, like the "gay bomb" America was at some point developing (which was just supposed to make people really horny, not gay, but the expectation was that enemy soldiers would immediately start humping each other, rather than say find a village for some rapey rapey time).

[wumpus]

My first thought when I saw this thread was "badly?" (after reading about 20 pages of gender based stat games).

Best answer: follow the rule of cool. What works for the plot works best. In general, overriding the player's control of the characters desires and actions are not good things.

Personal ideas on how it "should" work: [assuming 3.x rules]
character drinks potion and then sees someone: roll a DC will check to avoid falling in love (can fail intentionally).
add target's charisma bonus to DC
subtract x if "wrong" gender for character
subtract y if inappropriate species/race (although a brief look through the monster manual implies that this is pretty low for humans with just about anything)
add +/- z if there is a history between characters ("romantic tension" could be +20 at least)

Then, there is the question of how many "tries" the potion gets. As many as it takes in 1d6 rounds (if slipped in a bar, eventually it should proc)? 1d6 rounds plus a cummultive +1 per try? Only 1 try, but must be the "right" gender? (I think this was how it worked in AD&D 1e. You didn't really want to see how 1e players handled gender-bending).

Basically, the idea should be that Roy
wouldn't save vs. Celia
would need a good roll to save vs. Miko (for at least awhile after meeting her)
would need a 1 to fail vs. Thog.

Of course your not-so-friendly alchemist could have add *additional* powers, either to crank up the effectiveness across genders/species or perhaps change gender preferences (possibly merely a one time exemption).

[Segev]

Of course your not-so-friendly alchemist could have add *additional* powers, either to crank up the effectiveness across genders/species or perhaps change gender preferences (possibly merely a one time exemption).

Bestow curse to transform you into the sex most attractive to the one by whom the potion also causes you to be charmed? May not kick off, but just to be "sure..."

[Talakeal]

But love potions are magic! Magic is supposed to be more reliable than RL science!

Because magic!

I cant tell you how wrong that idea sounds to me.

[AMFV]

I cant tell you how wrong that idea sounds to me.

Well I think Magic should have it's own science, which should be completely different from how real science operates. I like unique magic rules.

[Segev]

Well I think Magic should have it's own science, which should be completely different from how real science operates. I like unique magic rules.

I am going to be pedantic here for a moment; please forgive me.

I believe what you mean is that you want magic to have its own laws, which may be different from the laws on which known physics/chemistry/biology/etc. operate.

Science is a process for studying something and improving one's understanding. Anything that operates based on laws can be scientifically studied and, eventually, understood. In fact, in many high fantasy settings (e.g. D&D 3.5e's default assumptions), magic IS scientifically studied and exploited; it's how wizards work.

In all honesty, science can be applied to law, as well. As in, legal codes of nations. You can, if you don't have the instruction manual, experiment to discover what the laws are by trial and error (often involving a great many trials when you make errors). You can also scientifically study the unwritten laws of a society.

Unless magic is literally not knowable, operates inconsistently and without determinable laws, it can be a subject of scientific study. "Science" would include magic if magic were studiable and useful to exploit.

[AMFV]

I am going to be pedantic here for a moment; please forgive me.

I believe what you mean is that you want magic to have its own laws, which may be different from the laws on which known physics/chemistry/biology/etc. operate.

Science is a process for studying something and improving one's understanding. Anything that operates based on laws can be scientifically studied and, eventually, understood. In fact, in many high fantasy settings (e.g. D&D 3.5e's default assumptions), magic IS scientifically studied and exploited; it's how wizards work.

In all honesty, science can be applied to law, as well. As in, legal codes of nations. You can, if you don't have the instruction manual, experiment to discover what the laws are by trial and error (often involving a great many trials when you make errors). You can also scientifically study the unwritten laws of a society.

Unless magic is literally not knowable, operates inconsistently and without determinable laws, it can be a subject of scientific study. "Science" would include magic if magic were studiable and useful to exploit.

Eh, I'm a fan of common use in language. Since the point is to communicate and you understood my message, that's really the key point.

Perhaps I would be better served by saying: "I like settings in which magic operates in a method similar but different to the ways in which we understand the sciences to operate in our world", to be far "laws" is equally imprecise in this case, because laws can also refer to matters of legality, or restrictions that responded with punishment. Since that usage of law is more common it is more likely if I say "the laws of magic" that somebody will assume that I am referring to restrictions placed on the usage of magic by governments or other bodies that regulate magic. Which is why I chose the verbage I did, although again it would have been possible to be more precise, but only by making my sentence far more awkward, and formal, which isn't really the best way to communicate on an informal internet forum.

[Segev]

Like I said, I was being pedantic. In this particular case, I think it worthwhile pedantry, because the colloquial use is actively conducive to confusion and miscommunication about important concepts. In particular, leading to the generation of or exacerbating existing severe misconceptions on what "science" is.

Sorry if I seemed argumentative; it just was something I needed to get on a soap box about. You can have it back for laundry purposes now that I'm done with it.

[Frozen_Feet]

Let's go over how alcohol, the most venerable date rape drug love potion works:

Chiefly, ethanol is an analgetic. It relaxes muscles and slows down neural processes, dulling all senses and making all sorts of deliberate action, such as moving or rational thinking, that much harder.

To compensate, the brain releases a mixture of hormones to counter this effect. Among these is testosterone, which is a pretty funny psychoactive substance in its own right. Chiefly, testosterone strenghtens impulses, so if you wanted something, now you want it more. It also makes you think of yourself less. More specifically, it will make you think less of long term consequences which could happen to you. (This is chiefly why men are overpresented in high paying jobs, highly dangerous jobs, jail and accidental deaths.) The added effect is that you are now more likely to act on your impulses.

Ethanol also strengtens dopamine production. Dopamine is part of the system which allows for long term learning, strenghtening neural connections with positive associations. In practice, this means that if you are drinking while having fun, your brain will come to think drinking is fun.

So to recap: alcohol

1) makes you want things more
2) makes you more likely to pursue those things
3) makes you less able to pursue those thinga
4) if it works out, makes you think it was all thanks to alcohol.

Notably, alcohol doesn't create impulses and it doesn't, itself, cause satisfaction. In order for alcohol to make you want sex more, you need to already want sex on some level. Ditto for fun. If you're not already having it, alcohol just makes you numb.

Anyways, the above are why an old adage advices to never trust a person unless you've seen them drunk. They're also why I don't voluntarily get drunk. Make of that what you will.

[JoeJ]

Unless magic is literally not knowable, operates inconsistently and without determinable laws, it can be a subject of scientific study. "Science" would include magic if magic were studiable and useful to exploit.

If the rules are based on meaning, however, scientific investigation won't get you very far toward discovering them. Semiotics would be a much better approach to a rule set in which, for example,, you can't substitute dog poop for guano as a component for a particular spell, but you can substitute a drawing of a bat done in red or purple ink.

[Segev]

Anyways, the above are why an old adage advices to never trust a person unless you've seen them drunk.

I'd never heard that one before. I don't like being around people if I can tell they're drunk; the behaviors that I associate with that state are unpleasant for me to witness. I also never drink; the most alcohol I've had is a dose of Nyquil, which I take when I have a miserable flu or horrific cold, and that happens less than once a year. (I take maybe 3-4 doses over the course of a typical one, mostly at night when trying to sleep despite the body aches and fever-breakings.)

So...I have no idea what kind of drunk I'd be. I am not sure I'd like myself, drunk.

[AMFV]

Like I said, I was being pedantic. In this particular case, I think it worthwhile pedantry, because the colloquial use is actively conducive to confusion and miscommunication about important concepts. In particular, leading to the generation of or exacerbating existing severe misconceptions on what "science" is.

Sorry if I seemed argumentative; it just was something I needed to get on a soap box about. You can have it back for laundry purposes now that I'm done with it.

I don't mind, and I enjoy pedantry as much as the next person. Probably why my response was thoroughly pedantic goes.

Let's go over how alcohol, the most venerable date rape drug love potion works:

Chiefly, ethanol is an analgetic. It relaxes muscles and slows down neural processes, dulling all senses and making all sorts of deliberate action, such as moving or rational thinking, that much harder.

To compensate, the brain releases a mixture of hormones to counter this effect. Among these is testosterone, which is a pretty funny psychoactive substance in its own right. Chiefly, testosterone strenghtens impulses, so if you wanted something, now you want it more. It also makes you think of yourself less. More specifically, it will make you think less of long term consequences which could happen to you. (This is chiefly why men are overpresented in high paying jobs, highly dangerous jobs, jail and accidental deaths.) The added effect is that you are now more likely to act on your impulses.

Ethanol also strengtens dopamine production. Dopamine is part of the system which allows for long term learning, strenghtening neural connections with positive associations. In practice, this means that if you are drinking while having fun, your brain will come to think drinking is fun.

So to recap: alcohol

1) makes you want things more
2) makes you more likely to pursue those things
3) makes you less able to pursue those thinga
4) if it works out, makes you think it was all thanks to alcohol.

Notably, alcohol doesn't create impulses and it doesn't, itself, cause satisfaction. In order for alcohol to make you want sex more, you need to already want sex on some level. Ditto for fun. If you're not already having it, alcohol just makes you numb.

Anyways, the above are why an old adage advices to never trust a person unless you've seen them drunk. They're also why I don't voluntarily get drunk. Make of that what you will.

I'm not sure if that's necessarily true. There's a lot of pop psychology mixed in there, and it would be very difficult to prove that alcohol can't add impulses that weren't present. Certainly there are other drugs that DO have that sort of effect, depending on how they interact with the brain

[Madbox]

Truth be told, I always assumed that love potions overruled all normal standards of what the drinker found attractive. Which is to say, a heterosexual could fall in love with someone of the same gender, or someone who is strictly gay might fall in love with the opposite gender. I think of love potions as working more in terms of brain chemistry than pheromones, where it is like a drug that actively alters brain functions. There might be odd psychological effects due to their normal standards being overwritten, especially since it is a pretty fundamental part of who they are. Not to mention a large amount of distress if a change in orientation is forced upon them.

[Elderand]

I actually wrote a book where a young witch tries to use a love potion on someone that due to sexual/romantic orientation would have never considered getting with the witch normaly. End result is the potion backfiring on her.

[Talakeal]

I actually wrote a book where a young witch tries to use a love potion on someone that due to sexual/romantic orientation would have never considered getting with the witch normaly. End result is the potion backfiring on her.

What does a backfire mean in this context? Details man!

[Geddy2112]

In pathfinder/ 3.5, a fair amount of attraction effects can force characters to perform acts outside their normal sexual desires, but doing so makes the effects easier to resist.

Unnatural lust, the pathfinder spell, compels a target to kiss or caress a target. If the person would not normally be attracted to the target(wrong gender, vow of celibacy, asexual, any multitude of reasons), they get a bonus to the save to resist it.

[Elderand]

What does a backfire mean in this context? Details man!

In this particular case the love potion is the romantic equivalent of the luck potion from Harry Potter. It doesn't make people fall in love, it nudges fate to create the perfect romantic scenarios. Basicly turn life into a romance movie. Nudging is fine but trying to force fate to do something that was never going to happen result in the backfire that now the witch has a classic curse upon her. Find her true love before the next solstice or end up as good as dead; a coma caused by sudden departure of the Soul. Soulmates can't be easily separated so her true love' soul serves as an anchor point for her own.

[Segev]

In this particular case the love potion is the romantic equivalent of the luck potion from Harry Potter. It doesn't make people fall in love, it nudges fate to create the perfect romantic scenarios. Basicly turn life into a romance movie. Nudging is fine but trying to force fate to do something that was never going to happen result in the backfire that now the witch has a classic curse upon her. Find her true love before the next solstice or end up as good as dead; a coma caused by sudden departure of the Soul. Soulmates can't be easily separated so her true love' soul serves as an anchor point for her own.

Aw, from the first part of this, I was thinking the backfire was just how awfully awkward it would be to always find yourself in "romantic" or "romance-inducing" situations with somebody you absolutely are not attracted to. To leave sexual orientation out of this, imagine it's your parent.

I mean, that's the kind of nightmare curse I was picturing, here: the witch and her crush are in all these situations, and the crush is more and more disgusted, disturbed, and UNHAPPY TO SEE HER each time, because of how unpleasantly awkward and out-right gross-out (s)he finds the situation.

Making it go to "she's gonna die" ... makes it less interesting to me, for some reason. I can see reasons/excuses for it in-story, but I'm not sure it makes the story more interesting.


So did SHE drink the potion, or slip it to her crush? Does it matter which one drinks it in this case?

[Elderand]

Aw, from the first part of this, I was thinking the backfire was just how awfully awkward it would be to always find yourself in "romantic" or "romance-inducing" situations with somebody you absolutely are not attracted to. To leave sexual orientation out of this, imagine it's your parent.

I mean, that's the kind of nightmare curse I was picturing, here: the witch and her crush are in all these situations, and the crush is more and more disgusted, disturbed, and UNHAPPY TO SEE HER each time, because of how unpleasantly awkward and out-right gross-out (s)he finds the situation.

Making it go to "she's gonna die" ... makes it less interesting to me, for some reason. I can see reasons/excuses for it in-story, but I'm not sure it makes the story more interesting.

The potion is a tiny part of the story actually, it's just there to provide some reason for the witch to stay with the wrong person because of misinterpretation of who her true love actually is. The curse of the potion is a metaphor for all the excuses people give to stay in bad relationship.

So did SHE drink the potion, or slip it to her crush? Does it matter which one drinks it in this case?

Slip it to her crush. And yes, it does matter. The way magic work in story is that potions and charms are way to enact long lasting powerful spells. It serve to stabilize a witch power. Really powerful witches can do magic on the fly but even then it's very small stuff. Catch a witch unprepared and she's easy picking. A prepared witch is dangerous.

[Segev]

An interesting twist on the love potion concept, one which would make it a FAR more powerful item, would be that it actually twists fate such that the next person the drinker sees is somebody for whom they WOULD fall head over heels, and have a truly happy life with, if they met. And lets the drinker get a taste of it in premonitory emotions (but not any real visions-of-future-events).

It might have a reputation for just making you "fall in love with the first person you see," but it doesn't; it shows you The One. (Or at least, A One, if you believe there are multiple such people in the world.) And lets you know it's her/him.

Misguided types who hope to use it for creepy purposes (with good intentions or bad) will find all sorts of contrived coincidences ensuring that the one to whom they slip it does NOT look at them before seeing The One (unless, luckily, they really ARE The One).


It has the nice twist here that it really isn't doing anything actually creepy. It isn't a compulsion, but a divination and a fate-manipulation. There really is something there; it just helps you FIND it.

[Frozen_Feet]

I'm not sure if that's necessarily true. There's a lot of pop psychology mixed in there, and it would be very difficult to prove that alcohol can't add impulses that weren't present.

If it sounds like pop psych, that's a rare case of pop psych being right about something; every piece of trivia in my post was a reference to some article in Tiede or Tieteen kuvalehti.

You're also looking at it the wrong way around. There is no proof for alcohol creating impulses. Ethanol flatout can't do it because as said, it's analgetic. It does practically the opposite. Dopamine or testosterone could do it, but recent research suggest they don't; they only strenghten existing impulses.

So in order to say alcohol creates impulses, you have to posit some so far unknown mechanism and find proof for it. Not the other way around.

[AMFV]

If it sounds like pop psych, that's a rare case of pop psych being right about something; every piece of trivia in my post was a reference to some article in Tiede or Tieteen kuvalehti.

You're also looking at it the wrong way around. There is no proof for alcohol creating impulses. Ethanol flatout can't do it because as said, it's analgetic. It does practically the opposite. Dopamine or testosterone could do it, but recent research suggest they don't; they only strenghten existing impulses.

So in order to say alcohol creates impulses, you have to posit some so far unknown mechanism and find proof for it. Not the other way around.

If you make a claim that they don't, you have to be able to prove that just as well. It's the claim that requires proof in science. Not the absence of a claim. I've not claimed ANYTHING, not a thing, only that there wasn't enough evidence to prove that alcohol does not cause impulses that weren't present. How would you even study that? That would virtually impossible to prove in any real way, short of a very complicated study involving MRIs, which would very likely be a difficult study even in that case. What exactly constitutes creation of impulses? That's far too complex a topic to be able to rule out something, no matter how you think it may or may not operate.

Yes, one might be able to make an argument for that, but it's not likely to be backed up by good science, there is both bad and good science. To argue such a thing would require some way of knowing concretely which impulses were already present in the brain.