Selling your soul, for a price

[Lloyd Dupont]

I'm working on a setting with a strong supernatural influence. Main supernatural faction being angels, demons, faes and Vanir? (Norse like gods).

Anyway they are all after some versions of buying / capturing mortal souls and also, nurturing "powerful souls" and, ideally lore wise, indirectly or directly promoting conflicts (for soul development and harvest, you see, and also to make them all fundamentally assholes)

Now I wonder, in game term, without "XP by killing" (which is definitely not my cup of tea, nor D100 character development philosophy), how does one define a strong soul? (No POW development roll here, the only way are some prohibitive and slow magic perks).

It might seem a little pointless to try to justify some lore/ philosophy with game mechanics... But a good game mechanics can be a powerful player drive. I strongly believe that XP by killing is what encourage murder hobo, conversely olden d&d days of XP by gold found was a strong drive for exploration  and now I wonder how the voidlings farm the mortals and encourage them, and ideally this farming has conflict in it...

An idea I just had, musing that topic, perhaps they need to learn a soul capture (on kill) perk for their patron, and use it a lot to gain extra perks?

But hey, other ideas welcome!! 🙂

[SDLeary]

Pendragon route? Personality Traits along with a list of "Virtues" that the various factions look for?

Perhaps the sum of such virtues are a measure of soul, at least as regards the faction that values such virtues. Others see the sum as powerful, but of the wrong flavor (or color if we use "auras") and perhaps do naughty things to such a being rather than courting them to their camp?

That's off the top.

SDLeary

Edited March 10, 2023 by SDLeary

[Lloyd Dupont]

Hey you gave me an idea.... player will start with a small number of perk (like up to.. say 3?) and the maximum number of perks is INT (+some bonus..) and some perk have level that are tried to skill percentage. So sum it all up make for a nice power level gauge! Nice thing too, about that animals have few perks, and magical beast have a lot. 

So all of that to say sum of perk level is a good gauge for power... I don't need to be too specific... but it give some guidelines on mortal prestige when talking to supernatural entities and, keeping the soul harvest power idea, it give an idea what to count.... now just have to think what kind of favor I want to grant.... extra years of life is a good one! mmmm.... and also mortal and voidling seeds... it's a lore crafting item to create stuff out of the void...

Edited March 10, 2023 by Lloyd Dupont