Warlock Ability Suggestion: Minor Hex

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TheCacklackian
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Warlock Ability Suggestion: Minor Hex

Post by TheCacklackian »

IC Description: Sorcerers are able to utilize a soul-link and an occult object known as a 'poppet' to inflict pain upon a victim.
OOC Description: While linked to a soul and at a nether well, a warlock can utilize their link and a poppet to inflict a variety of painful malaise upon their victim. Each use greatly reduces the duration of the soul link, consumes soul shreds, and causes damage to the poppet.

Usage
There are several commands you can use upon the poppet each doing different things:
Stab poppet: By driving a needle into the poppet you inflict a sharp pain upon your victim, dealing damage to their energy, as well as secondary penalties based upon the location
Head: By stabbing the head of the poppet, you drain sanity as well as energy.
Heart: By stabbing the heart of the poppet, you drain morale as well as energy.
Stomach: By stabbing the stomach of the poppet, you force your victim to vomit, causing nutritional loss in addition to energy damage.
Limbs: By stabbing the arm, leg, hand, or foot of the poppet, you inflict a 'phantom' fracture which decreases in severity over time, as well as energy loss.
light poppet: By lighting the poppet on fire, your victim is wreathed in burning pain, taking energy drain for every tick the poppet is on fire. This greatly damages, and can even destroy the poppet
strike poppet: By bludgeoning the poppet with a blunt object, you can inflict stagger and potentially the chance to knock your victim prone.


Prerequisite Abilities: Soul Detection


These are not meant to be lethal effects, but instead a way to utilize a link, as well as a potentially offering another ability to consume soul shreds. Poppets should be fairly easy to break, acting as a consumable curse focus, with the potential for further uses later on with more abilities. Perhaps a fairly intense cooldown to stop blatant abuse of the potential nasty effects of this ability?
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Lexx416
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Re: Warlock Ability Suggestion: Minor Hex

Post by Lexx416 »

The only thing I don't really like about this is there's no chance at tracing this back to someone if they are sufficiently savvy to how the game works. I think if there was a chance for this to reveal some detail about the character performing it, I'd feel more okay with it. But from past experiences on other games, giving people ways to entirely anonymously antagonize people in a way that actually impacts their gameplay generally leads to bad feelings OOCly, because of an inability to retaliate. It tends to just become very one sided.
"You hear the Woses, the Wild Men of the Woods... Remnants of an older time they be, living few and secretly, wild and wary as beasts."
TheCacklackian
Posts: 47
Joined: Sat Jan 25, 2020 3:59 am

Re: Warlock Ability Suggestion: Minor Hex

Post by TheCacklackian »

I'm open to suggestions that wouldn't blatantly give away the exact identity of the caster. I think the requirement of a nether well narrows down exactly /where/ this can come from by quite a bit. From there you get a decent tracker and I think it could lead to some great roleplay.

I don't want it to be a situation in which the ability is never used because everyone instantly knows who dunit.

Bear in mind blood would still be a limiting factor, as sdetect casts slowly drain the vials and the intent is that the use of the poppet terminates the link.
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Lexx416
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Re: Warlock Ability Suggestion: Minor Hex

Post by Lexx416 »

TheCacklackian wrote: Mon Jan 23, 2023 9:31 am I'm open to suggestions that wouldn't blatantly give away the exact identity of the caster. I think the requirement of a nether well narrows down exactly /where/ this can come from by quite a bit. From there you get a decent tracker and I think it could lead to some great roleplay.

I don't want it to be a situation in which the ability is never used because everyone instantly knows who dunit.

Bear in mind blood would still be a limiting factor, as sdetect casts slowly drain the vials and the intent is that the use of the poppet terminates the link.
It narrows it down to people who know where Nether Wells are, and unless it locks the Sorcerer into a bit of a fair bit of RT so that they can't immediately flee after the spell is cast, I'm not really sure that anyone with tracking less than 400 or 500 would reasonably be able to track down someone doing this (I have a little over 200 tracking on one character, and it takes 7 seconds per usage of the Track command, which is down from the base of 10 or 11). I don't like things that enable anonymous antagonism that can't be defended against, because it means that there's an entire group of people who can do things without any recourse - that exact thing is why people have called for the town boards no longer anonymous, because people (not infrequently) use them to antagonize or be disruptive without any recourse or consequences.

I would say if someone wants to be a spooky sorcerer that antagonizes people, they should be willing to accept the consequences of their actions, just as we would expect a warrior attacking people or a rogue stealing from people to have to deal with the consequences of their actions (and both of those specific instances have means of the antagonist caught, I don't know of a way to do either of those things with total and complete anonymity).
"You hear the Woses, the Wild Men of the Woods... Remnants of an older time they be, living few and secretly, wild and wary as beasts."
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