[3ED/4ED] New Blood Magic

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Tattered Rags
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Re: [3ED/4ED] New Blood Magic

Post by Tattered Rags » Sun Jan 08, 2017 2:56 am

I like the flavor of having the True Name, but I'm not going to fight on that point. Your Earthdawn, etc., and all that.

Not everyone would accept a Blood Oath to "do my best." Some don't care that you tried really, really hard. They want it done, and they expect it done. Others, yeah, more lenient.

Still, what is my best? If I take a day off to help the King of Throal find a magic sword, did I do my best? If I don't spend every waking moment devoted to accomplishing the task, then couldn't I have done better? An Oath may be more Rules-Lawyery than the King of Munchkins, so what happens here?

As for the "intentional harm" and so forth, that's pretty good. I think it's smart.
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Lys
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Re: [3ED/4ED] New Blood Magic

Post by Lys » Sun Jan 08, 2017 3:01 am

The way i would rule it is that if you think you're trying your best, then you are. This would mean that you would have to trust the person you're swearing the Blood Promise with to have some reasonable interpretation of what trying your best means. If there isn't that little amount of trust, then yeah you might insist that they swear to get it done, not to merely try to do so.

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The Undying
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Re: [3ED/4ED] New Blood Magic

Post by The Undying » Sun Jan 08, 2017 6:58 am

Lys wrote:Also i was not being sarcastic about the ProTip. There is no reason why a smart person would ever swear to accomplish a task. Not when they can instead swear to do their best to do so. Blood Wounds suck, being permanently branded an Oathbraker sucks worse, so in the face of incurring such potential harm, why wouldn't you want to make sure that it's impossible to break the oath accidentally? If you only swear to try your best, then the oath can only be broken intentionally by slacking off or being negligent, circumstances beyond your control cannot break it. Moreover the person you're swearing it to is likely to accept it, since the threat of accidental oathbreaking doesn't make you any less likely to accomplish the task, you did promise to try your best.
No offense, but it seems odd that you want to try to make a custom Oath of Vengeance to lock an Adept into something, but at the same time, you support the idea that a Blood Promise should just be about TRYING, not ACCOMPLISHING. These things seems very much opposed. "BY MY LIFE, I SWEAR THAT I WILL *whispers* try to *returns to scream* KILL THE MAN THAT SLEW MY BROTHER!!!!!!!!" Not very epic...

Anyways, this really seems like a "you do you" kind of thing. If you're not being sarcastic that people should to their best to not lock themselves into true commitments via Oaths, it sounds like you have a different vision for what Blood Oaths should be used for. Which is fine. For me, I just can't agree with that perspective. At work, if I give my team a task, after negotiations on level of effort, the agreement is DELIVERY, not TRY TO DELIVER. In Earthdawn, I'm pretty sure that if someone swore to TRY REALLY HARD, the other person would go "woah woah woah, stop the oath - you what? You're swearing to TRY??!"

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The Undying
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Re: [3ED/4ED] New Blood Magic

Post by The Undying » Sun Jan 08, 2017 7:15 am

Lys wrote:Remember in Earthdawn people are generally aware of how the mechanics of magic work, which means they are able to optimize around them in-character. Similarly when my character Stormbreaker swore the Oath of Group Peace, she specifically said that she would not "intentionally take action to" or "knowingly allow" harm to befall her group. The qualifiers of "intentionally" and "knowingly" are there so she can only break the Oath if she means to break it, not just because it's plain common sense to do so, but also because she will simply not swear an Oath that can be broken by circumstances outside her control. Nor does she expect anyone else to do so.
I think you're getting a bit too wrapped around the axle on this. Blood Oaths are magic, they're not modern day rule of law legal contracts. "I shall take no action." If someone is acting under compulsion, are THEY performing the action? I would say no. Reagrdless, if I knew the standard was "I shall take no action" and someone tried to say "I shall take no intentional action," again, I'd stop the oath process immediately and ask what the deuce was going on. But, as I said, I think we just have a fundamental difference in how we think Blood Oaths should work.

And, speaking of which, contracts TOTALLY exist in Earthdawn. Not every little thing requires an Oath. I'd expect that no merchant could ever carry more than three or four clients if they needed a Blood Promise every time they swore to deliver goods or services...

Lys
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Re: [3ED/4ED] New Blood Magic

Post by Lys » Sun Jan 08, 2017 5:55 pm

The Undying wrote:No offense, but it seems odd that you want to try to make a custom Oath of Vengeance to lock an Adept into something, but at the same time, you support the idea that a Blood Promise should just be about TRYING, not ACCOMPLISHING. These things seems very much opposed. "BY MY LIFE, I SWEAR THAT I WILL *whispers* try to *returns to scream* KILL THE MAN THAT SLEW MY BROTHER!!!!!!!!" Not very epic...

Anyways, this really seems like a "you do you" kind of thing. If you're not being sarcastic that people should to their best to not lock themselves into true commitments via Oaths, it sounds like you have a different vision for what Blood Oaths should be used for. Which is fine. For me, I just can't agree with that perspective. At work, if I give my team a task, after negotiations on level of effort, the agreement is DELIVERY, not TRY TO DELIVER. In Earthdawn, I'm pretty sure that if someone swore to TRY REALLY HARD, the other person would go "woah woah woah, stop the oath - you what? You're swearing to TRY??!"
When you're in the middle of angrily swearing vengeance, you probably don't have the presence of mind to carefully word your oath. Anyway it's not contradictory at all, Blood Promise has a time limit of one year, Blood Vengeance has no time limit, so as long as you keep striving for revenge you haven't broken the oath. The "try to" qualifier is already there and you don't have to say it, since you already only fail when you give up.

I have a question. At work if you team runs late because a bunch of them got sick, do you immediately fire them and permanently brand them jobbreakers, making it impossible for them to ever find work again? Or do you simply reprimand them and tell them that they need to plan better around possible set-backs? In most agreements involving reasonable people it's already implied that both parties are going to put forth reasonable effort, because people know that the world is unpredictable and there's always a chance of failure. Blood Promises however are insensitive to that qualifier, which makes me doubt that anybody who is not an idiot would ever swear them.

One difference between our perspectives seem to be that you don't see "trying" as a true commitment, whereas I think the only difference between "promise to try" and "promise to do" is insurance against extenuating circumstances. In real life contracts, people always promise to do because pretty much all of them already have force majeure stipulations baked in to one extent or another. A Blood Oath doesn't unless you word it correctly, and i think it's completely realistic that people would seek to do so for the exact same reasons they do in real life contracts.
The Undying wrote:I think you're getting a bit too wrapped around the axle on this. Blood Oaths are magic, they're not modern day rule of law legal contracts. "I shall take no action." If someone is acting under compulsion, are THEY performing the action? I would say no. Reagrdless, if I knew the standard was "I shall take no action" and someone tried to say "I shall take no intentional action," again, I'd stop the oath process immediately and ask what the deuce was going on. But, as I said, I think we just have a fundamental difference in how we think Blood Oaths should work. And, speaking of which, contracts TOTALLY exist in Earthdawn. Not every little thing requires an Oath. I'd expect that no merchant could ever carry more than three or four clients if they needed a Blood Promise every time they swore to deliver goods or services...
What i'm arguing is that the standard would rapidly become, "I shall take no intentional action", because when the stakes are so high people want to be sure they don't take the fall for things that were not their own fault. Remember that Blood Promises and Blood Peace require two parties, and both of them stand to benefit equally from the improved wording. And yes i realise that contracts exist, there's even a magical artefact called the Hambrel's Contract which is like half-way between a normal contract and a Blood Oath. You generally only take Blood Oaths on serious matters because they are literally fuelled by your life-force. Which is precisely why i think people would normally be really, really careful with what they swear. If normal legal contracts, which have comparatively low stakes, are so carefully and painstakingly worded, then i can only imagine that the same would be true of Blood Oaths.

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The Undying
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Re: [3ED/4ED] New Blood Magic

Post by The Undying » Sun Jan 08, 2017 10:28 pm

If your table is enjoying your Earthdawn, more power to you. Play Earthdawn the way that feels right to you and your play group. :)

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