daedalron wrote: ↑Mon Feb 04, 2019 8:33 am
But why would Vestrial, the Passion of deceit and lies, force her questors to honor their words about a trade ? I don't see how the "Once engaged, the questor must make the purchase or fall into severe disfavor of [their Passion]" apply to a Vestrial questor.
Several possibilities here, and I would like to see an official errata or comment upon this topic, and how they would choose to word any errata to make more sense of Questors other than Exemplors of Chorrolis using it. But I have come up with several possibilities.
I ought to say something about my personal philosophy with rules...
If I am looking for ways that the Rules as Written don't make sense, I am always able to find many examples, and lots of theories about how they could be "improved". However if I see something that does not initially seem to make in-game sense, if I think about how it might make sense, I can almost always find several reasonable explanations as well. I almost always find it much simpler to spend my efforts trying to imagine ways in which the rules make sense, than to spend them trying to imagine how they don't make sense and good balanced ways in which they can be fixed.
That having been said, here are some of the possibilities for why the RaW make sense without any changes at all, and how they might make even better sense with the absolute minimum of editing to the rules (substituting some or all of the instances of the named passion Chorrolis with "their Passion"). These are just examples of possible reasons, I am sure many other exist. Some of them rely upon weird magic, but ... My goal is to find a solution that I like with the absolute minimum of changes to the RaW. This is why would tend to go with solution (b) or (c) below. I don't really like solution (a), but the others are reasonable and remove the fewest of the restrictions on the Devotion.
(a) First, lets assume no edits to the text whatsoever. Chorrolis' name is still hardcoded into the text everywhere.
Vestrial (for whatever reason, probably involving the amount of effort and magic that would need to be spent) did not bother to make a new Devotion called "Let's make a Swindle", Instead the Passion chose to piggyback upon Chorrolis' efforts. Vestrial has granted her Questors the ability to make a direct appeal to the passion Chorrolis. Chorrolis, for reasons of his own, treats these appeals exactly as he would invocations of the Devotion by his own Questors. Judging the fairness of the deal offered, etc. If the deal does not meet Chorrolis' (not Vestrial's) standards, the Devotion fails. If Chorrolis determines that a Questor (even a Questor of Vestrial) is abusing the power, Chorrolis can take it away.
The other canidates replace one, most, or all of the references to Chorrolis with "their Passion". At the very minimum the very first reference "The questor calls upon Chorrolis to inspire the target with a desire to..." would have Questors of Vestrial calling upon Vestral instead of Chorrolis.
(b) and (c)
Vestrial (for whatever reason, probably involving the amount of effort and magic that would need to be spent) did not bother to make a new Devotion called "Let's make a Swindle", Instead the Passion chose to piggyback upon Chorrolis' efforts. Lets assume that Devotions do not require the personal attention of the Passion involved, but they have been automated. Thus the magic of the Devotion itself is an expert system that makes judgements upon topics such as "suicidal", "ruinous", "practical value", "sentimental value", etc. The magic of the Devotion was written by Chorrolis and imposes those same values upon all instances of the Devotion, no matter the Passion of the Questor involved. Vestrail can't modify this without going to the effort of making her own Devotion (and she instead put her efforts into "Vestrial’s Tongue"). Questors of Vestrial can do nefarious things with the power, but need to work within the restrictions that Chorrolis has imposed.
"Once engaged, the questor must make the purchase or fall into severe disfavor with Chorrolis."
(b) Vestrail does not care if her Questors abuse the Devotion or fail to live up to deals made with the Devotion, but Chorrolis most definitely does. Abusing this power, or failing to live up to a deal forced with this power, puts you straight at the top of Chorrolis' shit list. This goes beyond merely being an agent and Exemplar of a Mad rival. This is a direct affront to the Passion, who is going to make a direct response to the Questor.
"Once engaged, the questor must make the purchase or fall into severe disfavor with their Passion."
(c) failing to make the purchase puts a Questor of Vestrail in sever disfavor with Vestrail. Vestrail is a Mad Passion and as thus is not rational about some things. She gave you a Devotion. It is a Holy Devotion. It does not matter that Chorrolis wrote the Devotion, she gave it to you, and you are not using it as designed. This makes her angry with you. This attitude is insane, but so is she. It's your fault for following a Mad Passion, now how are you going to make it up to her.
Note that none of these possible solutions really remove any of the restrictions on the devotion. The only difference is which Passion is mad at you. Once again there are many more possibilities, but I honestly think the best solution is to think about ways the rules might be right, and come up with something workable that makes the fewest changes to the rules. And which of these solutions I ended up going with would depend upon if there is an Errata on this power and exactly what the errata changes.