afro-slav said:If one had Opportunistic sacrifice and did a Defensive blast wouldn't they get back the ( some or more ) PP just spent?
René said:afro-slav said:If one had Opportunistic sacrifice and did a Defensive blast wouldn't they get back the ( some or more ) PP just spent?
It's your game, so see this as good-intented advice: DB is a sort of emergency action, when your scholar is surrounded by overwhelming opponents. It is not very "poetic" to use DB as a cheap possibilty to "refuel" his Power Points pool - it looks to me as a kind of D&D powergaming.
There was a discussion abouth this topic on this forum a few weeks ago; maybe you want to look at it.
René said:It's your game, so see this as good-intented advice: DB is a sort of emergency action, when your scholar is surrounded by overwhelming opponents. It is not very "poetic" to use DB as a cheap possibilty to "refuel" his Power Points pool - it looks to me as a kind of D&D powergaming.quote]
I don't know; I can see it as poetic, but then again, I primarily view Scholar Sorcerers as evil (or at the very least, potentially so), weak and invariably surrounded by goons. The goons whittle down opponents wjile the scorcerer looks pittiful and meek and when the damaged and fatigued heroes are just about to pounce, arcane energies rip the souls away of two of the sorcerer's foes. He fuels up only to turn the remaining heroes into his personal were-servants.
...it's just a scary poem.
lol
Sutek said:Okay. I looked it up, and looked it up good. (lol)
Answer is "yes".
Reason why is in the text. Now I'll admit up front that this is my interpretation of things, but I think it's pretty sound.
First off, Opportunistic Sacrifice functions by granting the "benfits of the Ritual Sacrifice feat any time" and enemy is slain by the sorcerer. The "normal" parameter even lists what would nbormally have to be the case to gain those benefits: a helpless victime and a coup de grace attempt. Normally you have to do that, but if you have OppSacrifice, you do not. The benefits (1PP per 4HP eliminated) are gained no matter how they die, as you invoke the name of your dark gods in that instant, not needing to ritualistic drive a dagger into your victim's heart.
Now, the "up side" to the mere mortals out there is that the target must be slain]/i]. In a coup de grace, the victim makes a FORT save or dies, regardless of remaining HP (and in the case of a Ritual Sacrifice they make that save at -2). That instandtly drops them to -10HP, where I assume a Fat Point could be spent to make a Left For Dead check, but that's probably a whole other debate right there. -10HP is dead, slain, so with a Defensive Blast or any other attack type that might "slay" opponents, they have to end up slain, dead, to gain the benefits of the Sacrifice, and that means -10HP. If the blast merely reduces them to -1 or -4 or -9 HP, the Opportunistic Sacrifice wouldn't work by the strictest interpretation of what it is to be "slain" in the Conan RPG.
See, what OppSacrifice lets you bypass is the need to make a coup de grace on your victim; that necessity is waived. However, they still must be dead, totally, by any other means ("whether by magic, melee or ranged attacks." -pg115) in order to suck up their life as PP afterwards.
Does that sound right?
Sutek said:The DB is intended to be a "finishing move" it's supposed to kill everything within 10 feet and is there to represent the stories well in addition to providing Sorcerers thier "kick in the teeth" move. Somone trying to do it every turn would be pushing the limit of what is reasonable, not to mention the fact that they'd be sucking up Corruption like crazy.
René said:Well, this seems to get a question of ideology. For me DB isn't intented to be a "finishing move" including easy refueling of PPs, but a desperate last resort-device that robs the scholar of all his PPs (IMHO indicated in AE p.185: "all the sorcerer's pp are expended." Yes I know, there is nothing in the rules about not-refueling via Opportunistic Sacrifice, but here it comes to ideology again - you view it as a legitime method, I see it as powergaming a la D&D).
Turim said:Sutek: I hope I don't come across as too argumentative here, but I strongly doubt the intention of the rule that limits number of free actions in a round is to give the DM a way to arbitrarily deny free action player abilities. And according to the rules, there is no chance of gaining any Corruption just by using defensive blast and Opportunistic Sacrifice.