Willpower

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Revision as of 15:49, 27 June 2011

Willpower Points are somewhat disinct from the Will attribute, and are used to perform great feats of self-discipline and self-control.

Willpower Points are regained very slowly, and most charactes have very few of them. The amount is always derived from the Will attribute. This article is about Advantages giving more Willpower Points, and how they can be spent.

Amount of Willpower Points

There are four types of characters. Normal characters, characters with the Iron Will Advantage, characters with the more powerful Advantage Will of Steel, and characters with the Religious Fervor Advantage (which needs a better name).

Normal characters have 1 Willpower Point for each 2 points of the Will attribute beyond 2. Thus a character with a Will of 3 or 4 has 1 Willpower Point, a character with a Will of 5 or 6 has 2 Willpower Points, a character with a Will of 9 has 4 Willpower Points, and a character with a Wil of 2 or less has none.

Characters regain half their Willpower (round up) every 2 Weeks, except normal characters instead regain all their Willpower every Moon.

Characters with Iron Will get 1 Willpower Point per point of Will over 1. Characters with Will of Stee get 2 Willpower Points per point of Will.

Characters with Religious Fervor gets Willpower as normal, except they also get a similar amount derived from Faith. Thus a character with Will 5 and Faith 7 would get 2 Willpower Points from Will and 3 Willpower Points from Faith.

Note that all three Advantages have prerequisites that are unlikely to be a hindrance.

Willpower Advantages

This tabl shows the choices available, with regards to Willpower Point Advantages.

Examples of purchase and calculation

Harold and Bethi each have a Will of 6. Harold's player purchases the Iron Will Advantage, costing 10 aDvantage Points, so Harold has 5 Willpower Points, and regains 3 of them every 2 Weeks (but can have a maximum of 5 at any time). Bethi's player does not purchase any Advantages pertinent to Willpower Points, so her character has 2 Willpower Points and regains them all every Moon.

Notice how Harald benefits from the rounding?

Brother Nicolas has a Faith of 7 and a Will of 7. With Religious Fervor, costing 5 DPs, he gets 3 WP from Will and a further 3 WP from Faith (without it he'd only have gotten the 3 from Will). He also gets to regain 3 WP per 2 Weeks (without R. Fervor he'd have 3 WP and regain 3 WP per Moon).

Contemplate the alternative: Iron Will. It cost a bit more (10 DP instead of 5 DP), and likewise gives Brother Nicolas 6 WP, and the same regain, but he's no longer making use of his high Faith (in this regard; Faith has - of course - other effects in Sagatafl), and there are also some uses of Willpower Points that Religious Fervor permits that cannot be made with Iron Will. Not many, but a few, and often attractive to a religious character concept.

Uses of Willpower

Examples of uses of Willpower

Advice

Note carefully what Willpower cannot do. Unlike in certain other RPG systems, Willpower Points are not Luck Points that can save the character's ass from a bad dice roll. They can only do that which heroically willpower plausible can do.

That said, spend 'em if your character has them. There's little point in your character having a heroic willpower if the surrounding world doesn't get to observe it. Unless you (and/or your character) chooses to hoard the WPs to spend them on tactically critical situations. That's legal.

Please note

Please note that some WP usages require one or either of the Advantages; characters without, those that are "normal", cannot make use of those usages a all.

Religious Fervor is also a special case, and sometimes its usages depends on what the character's religion (or the sub-sect or denomination of the religion that the character actually adheres to) considers to be right and wrong.

Mini-FAQ

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The world

A section mainly for the GM, or worldbuilder, about the world impact of the phenomenon, e.g. an Item Creation Power, or an attribute or other stat that may sometimes be starkly high or low relative to the Human average.

World impact

Talk about the effect on the world that this phenomenon would realistically have (taking into account such facts of human nature as greed, ambition and sexual impulses).

The Ärth setting

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Design Notes

Talk briefly about what the purpose of the mechanic is. Omit this section if it is extrmely obvious to the target audience. Willpower Points are simply one more way in which characters can be cool. In the end it was decided that everyone had to have Willpower Points, in order to avoid a phenomenon shaped like nothing that exists in the real world, but normal characters have so few WPs that it won't make much difference. Characters with Iron Will, and even more so Will of Steel, will still stand out, which is the intent.

Quick mini-glossary

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See also

Flaws
Will