Magic birth control
Feb. 2nd, 2018 04:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI started reading the GURPS Magical Items book.
It has some useful or interesting stuff, but it has some casual idiocy too.
Like, the cloak of gender change exists, but it mentions use by spies, and apparently cannot imagine trans people even for a sentence. The idea of gender presentation change as inherently deceptive is very annoying. The book is from 1999 but still.
And then there's the amulet of birth control. It says it is useful to harlots. And the amulet of fertility is much more sought after.
This seems to me both rude and contrary to much of human experience. I mean granted there is a fertility industry and people in need of such help, but there's really regular use of non magical birth control, so I rather suspect that one is the world changer.
Except it's priced at $25K. Not america dollars, a gurps dollar is a loaf of bread, not that they specified the size of the loaf. I'm tempted to tie it to ration size for an average human. But. twenty five thousand of those is a lot.
There's a spell in the fourth edition called Strike Barren. The name is alarming but it's basically birth control, as it is 'permanent' but reversible with a Remove Curse or Restoration spell. ... Remove Curse requires spells from at least 15 colleges, but it can fix anything. Restoration is only half a dozen spells into the Healing college, with some body control prereqs bringing the number up by five, but it is a bit easier. So, reversible, ish. But Strike Barren is a Body Control and Necromantic spell, not a healing one, and Necromantic spells are often illegal. Making magical birth control illegal is ... a thing. A plot thing. An odd assumption. But putting it in those colleges rather assumes it'll be done against ill and without consent, so, ew.
A wand to cast it costs 200 fatigue and an amulet equivalent costs 800 fatigue. Enchantment's suggested cost is $33 per fatigue point. So that's even more expensive as an always on yet removable magic item. But to just cast the thing costs five. There's no suggested cost for getting a spell cast on you iirc but the equivalent cost for quick and dirty enchantment is $5.
I'm thinking a lot of people would get a lifetime of birth control for $5.
Even if getting it reversed cost $15 and took a month to work.
... the 'one try' notation is worrying, granted, but then you'd have to go for a full Remove Curse. $20 and an hour. And still a chance of failure.
... alchemical fertility potions are $6K a time, but reliably work, as far as I can see regardless of curse.
... $5 for no accidents followed by $6000 per baby seems a bit wonky. reminds me of beta colony...
But my actual point before wandering off into math was, someone set these rules and wrote these descriptions and made a land with these constraints, and that someone wasn't thinking like I would at all. Their obvious is a weird sort of obvious. Especially since it seems difficult to argue that making contraceptives this difficult is a game balance issue.
I mean for the 200 energy for a stick that casts Strike Barren you could also get an Alter Body made permanent, which is fancier than Alter Gender by one set of descriptions but not another, and which can always change every detail of your appearance and give you horns and hooves and simple body structures if you feel like it. One of these changes is not like the other. Why is reversible fertility control more expensive than revising your appearance at a species level?
For less than 800 fatigue you can make a sword that bursts into flames on command. Without costing the user fatigue even. Just whoosh, sword on fire. Your average adventurer is going to use that a tad bit more often than a magic condom, and to rather greater immediate survival impact. Why is the magic condom more expensive?
Someone built the system and the system is weird.
... but so is spending very much time on the internet complaining about it.
It has some useful or interesting stuff, but it has some casual idiocy too.
Like, the cloak of gender change exists, but it mentions use by spies, and apparently cannot imagine trans people even for a sentence. The idea of gender presentation change as inherently deceptive is very annoying. The book is from 1999 but still.
And then there's the amulet of birth control. It says it is useful to harlots. And the amulet of fertility is much more sought after.
This seems to me both rude and contrary to much of human experience. I mean granted there is a fertility industry and people in need of such help, but there's really regular use of non magical birth control, so I rather suspect that one is the world changer.
Except it's priced at $25K. Not america dollars, a gurps dollar is a loaf of bread, not that they specified the size of the loaf. I'm tempted to tie it to ration size for an average human. But. twenty five thousand of those is a lot.
There's a spell in the fourth edition called Strike Barren. The name is alarming but it's basically birth control, as it is 'permanent' but reversible with a Remove Curse or Restoration spell. ... Remove Curse requires spells from at least 15 colleges, but it can fix anything. Restoration is only half a dozen spells into the Healing college, with some body control prereqs bringing the number up by five, but it is a bit easier. So, reversible, ish. But Strike Barren is a Body Control and Necromantic spell, not a healing one, and Necromantic spells are often illegal. Making magical birth control illegal is ... a thing. A plot thing. An odd assumption. But putting it in those colleges rather assumes it'll be done against ill and without consent, so, ew.
A wand to cast it costs 200 fatigue and an amulet equivalent costs 800 fatigue. Enchantment's suggested cost is $33 per fatigue point. So that's even more expensive as an always on yet removable magic item. But to just cast the thing costs five. There's no suggested cost for getting a spell cast on you iirc but the equivalent cost for quick and dirty enchantment is $5.
I'm thinking a lot of people would get a lifetime of birth control for $5.
Even if getting it reversed cost $15 and took a month to work.
... the 'one try' notation is worrying, granted, but then you'd have to go for a full Remove Curse. $20 and an hour. And still a chance of failure.
... alchemical fertility potions are $6K a time, but reliably work, as far as I can see regardless of curse.
... $5 for no accidents followed by $6000 per baby seems a bit wonky. reminds me of beta colony...
But my actual point before wandering off into math was, someone set these rules and wrote these descriptions and made a land with these constraints, and that someone wasn't thinking like I would at all. Their obvious is a weird sort of obvious. Especially since it seems difficult to argue that making contraceptives this difficult is a game balance issue.
I mean for the 200 energy for a stick that casts Strike Barren you could also get an Alter Body made permanent, which is fancier than Alter Gender by one set of descriptions but not another, and which can always change every detail of your appearance and give you horns and hooves and simple body structures if you feel like it. One of these changes is not like the other. Why is reversible fertility control more expensive than revising your appearance at a species level?
For less than 800 fatigue you can make a sword that bursts into flames on command. Without costing the user fatigue even. Just whoosh, sword on fire. Your average adventurer is going to use that a tad bit more often than a magic condom, and to rather greater immediate survival impact. Why is the magic condom more expensive?
Someone built the system and the system is weird.
... but so is spending very much time on the internet complaining about it.
no subject
Date: 2018-02-02 06:14 pm (UTC)I dunno -- maybe it will help future game system designers pay attention to actual human behavior?
A clever piece of thoughtful analysis is never wasted.
{rf}
no subject
Date: 2018-02-09 11:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-02-09 06:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-02-09 11:08 pm (UTC)