I'm surely missing something in my v5.5 edition of COC, but it seems that some magical actions cost points of POW. As I understand it POW is a base Characteristic, and I see no way to restore the expended POW to a character. Surely it 'heals' over some period of time, but I sure can't find it.
Insight would be appreciated.
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No, you aren't missing anything. When the sacrifice calls for an expended Magic Point, that comes back over 24 hours until all return. A sacrificed POW is gone for good, but see the little side box "How Sorcerers Get That Way." It isn't a gentler, kinder, rules set.Originally Posted by Akmatov
There is a sure way to get POW back. It's called rolling up a new character. Magical crafting is very costly in call of cthulhu, so keep hold of your neat toys and don't be wasteful. If you wanted nice magic, this probably isn't the right game. Sorry.
There is a sidebar that says a few ways to increase POW and several published scenarios give ways to gain POW for certain specific events, but pow loss is meant to be a serious investment, while magic point loss is your renewable magical energy reserves.
I may be mistaken, but I think that The Eye of Light and Darkness is the only spell that specifically states that the POW expenditure is permanent. My interpretation up until this point has been that spending POW is temporary unless the spell specifically states that the expenditure is permanent.
Had a quick look and the wording in the spells is pretty all over the place regarding use of POW ("sacrifice", "invest", "costs", "lost", "leeches", etc.)
Mostly they use sacrifice (as with Elder Sign and Eye of Light and Darkness). In any case I'd say that POW is generally gone forever.
The only distinction I might make is whether the POW is lost if the spell fails. I'd generally say that you lose the POW even if you fail unless the spell says "invest". That's pretty specific though, and I'd just play it by ear rather than look at the wording of the spell.
There is one method that hasn't been mentioned for gaining POW, "Dread curse of Azathoth". Wouldn't recommended that spell for PCs though.
Last edited by MrBlueSky; 18th August 2012 at 04:13 AM. Reason: formatting
All of my rules sets except Dark Ages are packed up to go to club tomorrow, however, in that volume, which tracks the others I think, lost POW is permanently lost unless stated otherwise. It really is that bleak.
This reminds me of one of my favourite quotes in the Players say the funniest things thread:
I seem to remember that early editions of CoC had temporary and permanent POW being used to cast spells but am 99.9% sure that by 5.5e if a description specifically says that the caster spends POW then it's the characteristic that's sacrificed and is lost permanently. That's certainly the case in 5.6e (all I have to hand at the moment).
Why not visit (and, for the love of Dagon, comment on) my SOYS campaign journal: Nightmares in Norfolk - they're actually exploring the Lodge now and we've only been playing for a year!
From all I've seen in 6e, POW expenditure is permanent unless stated otherwise in the spell description.
Thx for all the helpful replies, that unfortunately confirm what I seemed to be reading.
It just seems oddly unlikely that a sorcerer who has attained a high level can only use his knowledge at the cost of being reduced to a drooling incompetent.
Given that 1 POW can be lost to create a one-time amulet or lots more to do other things, I'm thinking of some sort of house rule that makes the POW loss temporary, but quite painful. Two ideas:
1. Use the Magic Point model and have POW recharge over some period of time, maybe 1 POW regained per week, or longer.
2. Tweak up an artifact or spell the steals and stores POW points from a sacrifice similar to Magic Points.
3. Mix in a SAN loss of some sort as well.
Surely I'm not the first to try to 'improve' this aspect of the rules. Any ideas on what others have done?
It certainly doesn't seem unlikely to me that a powerful sorceror is completely insane. That doesn't mean he's a drooling incompetent, though. Far from it. Virtually all cultists have zero sanity. If you're running them as if they're all drooling incompetents then they're not much of a challenge to a group of investigators.
As for your two (three?) ideas, not all spells require the sacrificing of POW. Some only need magic points and magic points already recharge over 24 hours. Artifacts to drain/store POW certainly appear in a number of scenarios, and most spell already incur a loss of sanity points.
Investigators aren't meant to become high level sorcerors - the costs of casting powerful spells (and even some suboptimal spells) are deliberately prohibitive to stop this from happening. I'm not seeing that changing this aspect of the rules is something that needs to be improved. In fact, if you start allowing POW to recover so that investigators can repeatedly cast these powerful spells then this has the potential to change the game significantly (and not, in my opinion, for the better).
Why not visit (and, for the love of Dagon, comment on) my SOYS campaign journal: Nightmares in Norfolk - they're actually exploring the Lodge now and we've only been playing for a year!
First, sorcerers gather their powers over years of study. So they can loose some to make enchanted objects and regain them through the various methods listed in "How Sorcerers Get That Way" (p. 101 of the 6th ed rulebook). Secondly, (SPOILER from Shadows of Yog-Sothoth)
Spoiler:
The Mythos corrupts and destroys; this is reflected in the nature of the rules and the game. The permanent loss of characteristics is but one aspect of it. The investigators, being (comparatively) good and decent, will be ground down by it over time even as they struggle against it. On the other hand, the sorcerers and villains, being less morally grounded, have other tools at their disposal. I seem to recall in some of the BRP-driven sets, like the AH edition of Runequest, there were spells like Tap, that allowed a distinctly wicked character to steal a characteristic point, like POW from another character (presumably an NPC) willingly or unwillingly. There are probably also similar rumbling around in the Cthulhu spells. The players, on the other hand, have to continue to husband the strength of their distinctly fragile characters.
If I'm understanding the rules correctly, loss of POW equals loss of willpower, not loss of sanity. So a sorceror who invests POW sooner or later becomes a person without a will (my 'drooling incompetent'), not a person who is insane; although, it seems to me that a loss of SAN would make great sense.
A good statement of the difficulties of being a relitively morally decent PC. I wouldn't want to overpower the PC, just tweak the possibilities to widen the choices a bit. Any permission of using POW recovery should include a loss of SAN and, as a means of implimenting a loss of morality, perhaps have the Keeper make a decision regarding the morality of the PCs use of a spell and then assigning some degree of Mythos Knowledge (which I think can be seen, maybe, as a marker of the character's increasing corruption.
For example, a character has somehow come upon the spell for creating a Time Gate, which he then casts at some great cost of one sort or another, but which after some sort of recovery leaves him fully competent. However, he then uses the Gate solely as a means of conducting historical research in his academic field - sort of chuthloid temporal archaeology. Since the use of the Gate is 'moral', the Keeper only assigns a low additional knowledge of the Mythos and a low loss of SAN.
I know I'm quite the newbie at this, just intrigued by a minor expansion in possibilities. Certainly an dabbling in magic should be fraught with great danger of loss of sanity and morality as such dabbling would/might weaken the PCs foundations of reality.
I guess I'm wanting to narrow a bit the gap between seasoned PCs and NPCs who started out as normal people. As a matter of survival, some ability in magic might provide an Investigator with a bit more longevity; although, I'd suspect some of the older members of 'Club Cthulhu' might be quite odd people. I might add that I'm not sure 0 SAN would necessicarily result in admission to an assylum if lose of SAN is understood as lose of a conventional understanding of reality. Certainly the understanding of reality of the highest level mathmatitians and physicists is very different from that of most people. Couldn't there be an experienced Investigatior with an exceptionally strong mind and/or morality capable of functioning in spite of having seen so much that his SAN is 0 and his Mythos knowledge fairly extensive? I would expect such a person to have some odd and interesting coping methods, but perhaps still be functional - between assignments from the Patriarch/Cardinal/Lama/Imam he lives a stict aestetic life of material denial in a remote monestary focusing on prayer and meditation, or whatever.
But as PhoneCallOfCthulhu wrote, such sorcerer could "just" use some of the methods described on p.101 in the 6th ed. rule-book in order to get back some Power, enabling him to remain un-drooling.
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