Power Taboos continued

Ok, it's later. So, I was watching the Clone Wars cartoons and thinking about the Sith/Jedi division. The Sith favor passion and believe that the best way to use the Force is through emotion, while the Jedi prefer to keep their cool and remain free from attachments. So the Sith use the Dark side to gain power more quickly, but then they always seem to pay a price for it. Some Star Wars games use Dark Side Points to represent the accumulation of corruption. If a character gains too many, they fall to the Dark side. I never really liked this because it feels too much like hit points in D&D, but instead of "I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm dead", it's "I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm evil". I want to see more of a slippery slope.

For the "Source" sample power set that I wrote up, I divided the Source into two sides: Astral and Cthonic. The Astral Source can only be accessed in a calm and peaceful state of mind, which prohibits using it with the character's Passions or any emotional Talents (like being a berserker or something). Calling upon the Cthonic Source can be done with Passions, but when you do so, you gain an emotional or psychological Drawback (such as "vengeful", "jealous", "paranoid", etc.). These Drawbacks don't apply when calling on the Cthonic Source, but they do hinder accessing the Astral Source. "Falling" is what happens when you accumulate so many penalties that you can no longer access the Astral Source. The Cthonic Source is a faster route to power because you can use it with large bonuses ("free" Drama Points from the character's Passions), but as you draw upon the Cthonic Source, you become more and more hateful and fearful until finally you lose access to the Astral Source. So, turning to the "Dark Side" is a faster route to power, but the power you achieve leaves you more limited in what you can do. If you just want to be an evil jerk, then it won't matter so much. But if you try to turn to the dark side with good intentions (like Anakin trying to save his wife's life), you'll end up being the kind of person who won't pursue those good intentions (like Anakin becoming so angry and paranoid that he killed his wife in a jealous rage). It's sort of a Catch-22: the Dark side can give you the power to do good things, but once you have achieved that power you will no longer be the kind of person who wants to use that power for good.

The Passions can also be used to tie other types of powers to the setting. For example, a classic fantasy paladin or cleric who gains power from a deity but must maintain a strict code of conduct. Their powers may be limited by their adherence to the code or you can take things a step further and require that they define their passions in terms of their deity. Paladins are usually presented as being much more focused and zealous than clerics, so that could be a distinguishing feature. Both are required to follow their deity's code of conduct, but the Paladin must go a step further and have all their Passions defined in terms of their deity. The cleric of a god of justice may have a Noble Passion of "Let Justice be done" and then Rage and Fear Passions unique to himself. But the Paladin would have a Rage Passion of "Injustice must be punished" or "My wrath undoes the wicked" and a Noble Passion of "Let Justice be done though the Heavens fall!" and a Fear Passion of "None". Passions are fairly useful and powerful resources, so giving one of them up is a notable sacrifice that really sets the paladin apart from the priests.

This idea of using Passions and mental Drawbacks can also be applied to powers that are described as leading to a degradation of the user's humanity. There are numerous examples of this in games and fiction. In some (non-Transhumanist) cyberpunk, characters who get a lot of cybernetic parts in their bodies worry about whether or not the cyberdocs will eventually take out the soul and replace it with a computer chip. In some horror stories (particularly those inspired by Lovecraft), acquiring knowledge of "things man was not meant to know" can lead to madness and loss of one's morality and humanity. In "sword & sorcery" fiction, magic is often depicted as one of those things that corrupts men and turns them into inhuman sorcerers.

In the early stages, this could be represented by adding phobias and quirks in the form of Drawbacks. When the character starts to feel crippled by too many Drawbacks, they could "compile" their Drawbacks into a new Passion. For example, a Lovecraftian sorcerer who has accumulated several psychological quirks such as phobias of right angles, furry things, or the dark, could get rid of those phobias by compiling them all into a new Fear Passion like "Aspects of the Hounds of Tindalos". For very severe cases, such as S&S fiction where sorcerers develop inhuman mentalities, they could actually lose their Passions completely as they gain in their magical knowledge. The order in which they lose them could be a character defining trait as well. A sorcerer with more curiosity than sense will probably lose Fear first, while one with ambition and lust for power at any cost will probably lose Noble first, for example. Once they've lost all their Passions, they are cold and inhuman like the reptilian sorcerers of the ancient Snakemen civilization that always seems to be hiding somewhere in the jungles of these S&S worlds.