Dodging a Curse

[DeepShadow of FoS]

One of my epic PC's has received Borrowed Time (the watch from VRGttSF) as an ancestral legacy, and has invoked the watch to protect some of his assistants. IMC, Borrowed Time requires both an "owner" and a "borrower" to work properly. A borrower states a specific goal and invokes the watch's powers, and it offers extra protection until the goal is accomplished. These bonus abilities are all matched by drawbacks to the owner--the person from whom time is being borrowed.

Now, the powers of the watch can make it hard to die, but it is possible, and if you die before your goal is accomplished, you become a revenant, determined to see the goal to its end. That's the big curse of it all, and the PC has sought to avoid it by specifying an end to the oathbound period:

"I now wish each of you to take this watch and swear upon it that you will support me in bringing all aid and assistance necessary..., death being the only bar to achieving our joint purpose. Does each of you so swear?"

So, phrased this way, those affected by the watch would get all the benefits without the hint of a drawback hovering over them. Should this be allowed? Is there a way to keep the feeling of the curse while still rewarding the player's cleverness?

[Nathan of the FoS]

Why am I not surprised?...

As the PC in question, my opinion should be taken with many grains of salt. I worded the oath in that way because I (and my PC) were afraid of exactly the scenario DS is describing (I didn't know what the curse of Borrowed Time would be, but apparently I guessed successfully ). To complicate matters, at least part of the thing they were sworn to do is (almost) impossible--they were sworn to return a group of children to their mother and render aid and assistance to a group of people in severe distress. The second has been achieved, in large part; the first founders on the fact that the children in question are dead, and were dead when the oath was made.

So that makes all kinds of strange things possible--is the oath valid at all? Is only the second part binding? Must extraordinary lengths be taken to restore the children to life?

BTW, I guess leaving those guys to mind the fort was a bad idea, huh?

EDIT: I misremembered the oath--there was nothing in it about the children, so the possible impossible-oath problem is abated. The problem of interpreting the curse under these conditions remains, of course.

[ScS of the Fraternity]

Funny thing about borrowing money; sometimes you're allowed to borrow more and more, until your debt grows out of control. Pretty soon you're living in a cardboard box.

For example, if an oathbound PC falls to -10 HP, i would bring him back to 0. Though he lives and breathes, he feels different. The DM keeps track of every incident of this. The watch has forclosed on the debt, and seized the property - namely the player's soul.

When the goal is up, he dies, just as he would originaly have, but now is cursed to rise as a vile undead creature.
One idea is for the player to become a Temporal Wight (see the Wotc website).
He must now collect a number of innocent lives equal to the number of lives he borrowed from the watch. To be very nasty, you could have had the debt compounded with intrest.

[LouisVendredi]

Even though the children part of the oath apparently never happened, I'd like to comment.

My first thought was that the oath wasn't specifically to bring the children back <I>alive</I>. It could just have easily been fulfilled by exhuming them and presenting their rotting corpses to their mother.

Just an evil thought.

[Rotipher of the FoS]

Or, less-gruesomely, helping the children's ghosts see their mother one last time to say goodbye. (Not everthing Gothic has to be horrible... )

[LouisVendredi]

You're no fun.

[DeepShadow of FoS]

BTW, I guess leaving those guys to mind the fort was a bad idea, huh?

Not necessarily. I've wanted to discuss this issue for a while, and your actions merely reminded me of the need to make a decision. That's one disadvantage of moving the game here; whenever I want to discuss something, I run the risk of tipping my hand and/or giving people the wrong impression.

The watch has forclosed on the debt, and seized the property - namely the player's soul.

You've got the right idea, except that the oathbound isn't borrowing from the watch. He's borrowing from the watch's owner--Peregrine, in this case. At any rate, I've already got a Bad Thing planned out in case of death. The question is whether Peregrine's followers can avoid it by careful wording of their oaths.

So here are my arguments in favor of letting him avoid the Bad Stuff:

--I like to reward player cleverness. He anticipated this problem with a minimum of warning, and composed a simple and elegant solution.

--The other drawbacks aren't affected. He still suffers all the damage inflicted on the oathbound, and has other penalties commensurate to their bonuses. To top it all, as the oath is phrased, it replaces "death plus Bad Stuff" with just "death," which arguably is bad enough.

and my arguments against avoiding the Bad Stuff:

--Player cleverness has its limits. I'd never allow a PC casting wish to say, "I wish for a new warhorse...with four saddlebags full of uncut diamonds...grazing in the inner courtyard of my new 16,000,000 square foot castle...in view of my dragon-golems perched on the ninth spire, just above the chapel...where Alustriel waits for me to come and marry her...and rule in her stead...." Ignoring for the moment anything that's outside the purview of a wish, the biggest problem is that it's several wishes strung together. By the same token, I could rule that the watch is only interested in the primary oath. By allowing Peregrine to add "or die trying," I'm opening myself up to other "or's."

--The Bad Stuff was intended to be the watch's real curse. Sure, Peregrine takes damage whenever an oathbound is hurt, but that's partially a matter of spin; phrase it as "Peregrine is allowed to spread his epic-level HP count to wherever it's needed, as a free action across any distance," and it really doesn't sound so bad. The Bad Stuff was the thing that makes Borrowed Time really fit in a gothic setting, IMO because it makes people cautious of rash oaths. If one makes an oath that can't be fulfilled (as these marines almost did) then--sooner or later--one is doomed.

[Darkknight]

ON the real side, I bounced this off my gypsy wife. Wording and curses in their society are a game most times. Any real curse is left wide open to be inturpretted by those who would dare cross that line or accept the deal.

Personal preference comes into play. Mull over the words, if you see cleverness and a really good play on words, let people escape them or receive the mild punishment that their words allowed for. If not, eat them alive.