Epidermomancer Charge Acquisition

[reptile2k1]

I am having this sick idea…

Does running a 6 inch nail through one of your testicles qualify for a significant or even a major charge?

Assuming the testicle in question is rendered useless in the course…

[Halloween]

I won’t give a charge, remember that the epidermomancer is hurting himself to strenghten it not to mutilate himself

[M121]

I’d say yeah but he’d have to have insaine pain tolerance as he would have to caurize the wound quickly or he’d pass out causing someone else to help him or call 911 violating his taboo.

So you have fun with that;).

[reptile2k1]

@ Halloween: The rules for epidermomancers clearly say that they have to mutilate themselves in order to gain major charges!

[reptile2k1]

@ M121: So in case he gets it done without tripping over his taboo, would you grant a significant or a major charge?

[Abdul Caffeine]

Considering that this is an invitation to severe blood loss, blood poisoning and other such nastiness, and even if the character can survive it they’ll be impaired for life, I’d award a major charge. It’s roughly on the level of taking out one’s eye, and that carries a major charge.

IMHO, epideromancy is one of the schools in which it’s easiest to get a major charge. Like Mechanomancy, it runs off self-sacrifice, and so each character has the potential to get far more major charges than, say, a Cliomancer. It comes at a cost, but it can be done.

[M121]

@reptile2k1 I’d probably give a major charge because although technicly he’d still have one functioning, he’d have destroyed one.

[reptile2k1]

Hehehe

So now I have to talk my GM into allowing this…

“If the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail!”

[M121]

@reptile2k1 I’d recommend possibly destroying both just to make absolutly sure you’ll get that charge.

And have some sort of fire nearby or you’ll have some nasty fluids coming out. Oh and friends who won’t help you.

[reptile2k1]

I would never go as far as to sacrifice both… Just can’t do it.

I totally agree on the pain issue, but am not sure about the blood loss thing. I mean: the penis basically is one big chunk of blood vessels… But the testes?

I am going to ask my ex-girlfriend who – as of now – is an MD… She should be able to clarify that with her anatomical knowledge.

As a side note: I once read a book on the torture exerted by the Nazis on the inmates of concentration camps. In one case they smashed a man’s testicles with a hammer. He survived to tell his story. And now consider that he did not get any medical treatment at all… No nails, but pretty close I would say.

[M121]

Actually I think your right. But there will be some intense pain.

On another side note in one book they described a man who had been castraded with terms similar to this “bleeding like a woman, or like a man who had his balls cut off.”

[URNOVI]

Personally, I’d only give a significant charge for it. Yes it is **technically** permenant damage, but major charge damage should be a serious issue. It shouldn’t just *hurt*, it should dramatically alter the way you live your life. Similarly I wouldn’t give a major charge for cutting off fingers, because you can get by just as well on 9 as 10.

I’d also note that the **real** clincher is this line…

“I would never go as far as to sacrifice both… Just can’t do it.”

Then dammit you don’t **deserve** a major charge. If you wouldn’t go that little step further, then you aren’t dedicated enough, strong enough, stone-cold-crazy enough to actually pull off a major charge.

[reptile2k1]

Hmm… But IIRC cutting out a single eye counts for a major charge as well, so I would assume a single testicle would suffice…

And a man that sacrifices a testicle voluntarily already is a freak, not to mention the way it is done…

[URNOVI]

The way of it doesn’t matter, and the difference between an eye and a testicle is simple. Losing an eye (a) seriously affects your depth perception and (b) has some serious mythic resonances. By comparison you can function perfectly normally with one testicle.

Yes a man that sacrifices a testicle voluntarily is a freak, but so is a man who obsessively hordes books he never reads, that doesn’t mean that bibliomancers should be able to claim major charges from getting hold of the only extant copy of the book that their flatmate wrote but couldn’t get published because it was rubbish.

Getting a major charge should take, well… balls. Anything that involves half hearted copping out should not give you a major charge.

[Shawn]

Now, the clincher question…

When the fleshworker in question is contemplating this as a way to get a major charge, do you tell him how much he has to sacrifice first? I like not telling him. Make him wonder. Then, if he only gets a sig. at first, make him smash the other one (if he can make the stress tests…)

Hm. I see a dangerous possibility for someone to get rules lawyery with this. If I need to loose a hand to get a major charge, what if I chop off the fingers first one at a time? Do I get five significant and then a major?

Me personally, I’d hit ’em with more violence and self checks, and hopefully they wouldn’t take this route in the first place.

[carsten]

hi reptile,
I’m afraid I agree with urnovi. losing a hand or an eye is serious handicap. lsoing only one testicle does not prevent you from fathering a child, although it might become a little more difficult (first try might not suffice 😉 ) And as I already said – for you it should be at least a NINE INCH NAIL (TM) 😉
Maybe we shoult talk about your charge acqusition in person…

cheers,
carsten

[reptile2k1]

@cars: If you bring the hammer, I will have some nails handy!

😉

[URNOVI]

On Five fingers then a hand…

Here I’d apply the law of diminishing returns. Losing a finger doesn’t change your life, so you only get a sig. Each subsequent finger you cut off changes your life no more than the last, so you still only get a sig. When you cut off the rest of the hand, you’ve already messed that hand up so much that its loss doesn’t affect you, so you still only get a sig.

[Shawn]

@urnovi: Ahhh… nice. Good thought. It makes the explination reasonable, and still keeps charge acquisition the way I like it – primal and painful. I see charge building for fleshworkers to be disturbingly deliberate for minor and sig charges – the careful and thoughtful cutting; and wild and thoughtless for the major charge – the crazed hacking of limbs.