The Black Company (aka Rawr, the Lady)

[ColonelHardisson]

The actual act of being "Taken" does not impart any abilities from what I'm reading. Taken isn't a template its a binding ritual... its horrid, its cruel, it does nothing for the individual being Taken, all it does is give the Taker some control over you.

I do not think Taken should be a template. There should be a ritual The Taking... and its effects would be level dependent, the level difference between the Caster and the person Taken as well as the level of the Taker being concidered in the mecahnics.


The Taken (old and new) are just casters of varying power, whom someone of more power wanted to control.

From my reading of it, it seems the "Taking" makes the wizard "Taken" even tougher to kill than wizards normally are. The Lady's newer "Taken" lost power when she was in an anti-magic field, as I recall.

So it seems like a template to me.

 

[Limper]

The loss of power was part of the control mechanism... I dont think being "Taken" at some point had anything to do with how hard they were to kill. There are quite a few references to the fact that sorcerer's of the caliber of the Taken never pass up an opportunity to enhance their power, or to prepare for any inevitability through contingency magics... the difficulty in killing them is because they are driven (which plays into their insanity's) to leave nothing to chance when it come to personal safety

I know this is mentioned a few times by Lady in the Glittering Stone books.

Also the New Taken losing power was not because "she" was in an anti-magic field but because they go to close to it themselves while trying to kill assassinate her. She did have contingencies set such that the new taken lost power if she died or lost power herself... so its not a template but a control method.

 

[jgbrowning]

outside de box (in a bigger one)

She did have contingencies set such that the new taken lost power if she died or lost power herself... so its not a template but a control method.

it could be BOTH ya know..

joe b.

 

[Limper]

Could be... true. But for conversion purposes I dont think its at all necessary or advantageous to make a template for it.

The angle of this I see that could be a template, would be that the Taken and a lot of the Big powers of the books also have a curse or deficiency....

Since Cook has magnitudes of skill... it would appear that one could take some curse in order to move up a magnitude. This would only be a good idead if you didn't have the native talent to make it in on your own.

Howler is a great example of this as is SoulCatcher (she however is more of an example of someone who could get there anyway and did it to geet even more power (but she still fell short of Lady). Limper and Shifter seemed to have the drive and skill NOT to burden themselves with something like shrinking and being in terrible scream causing pain all the time.

 

[ColonelHardisson]

I think for conversion purposes, a template for the Taken is necessary - people will howl if there isn't one. Then there will be any number of them cooked up anyway. I think it would be best for at least one Taken template to come out of this effort, if only because so many BC fans will be here and ready to critique it.

I think this is an illustration of how subjective interpretations of a book can be - the Taken seemed (and still seem) to be a natural for a template. I wonder how many others also got that feeling?

 

[drothgery]

I think for conversion purposes, a template for the Taken is necessary - people will howl if there isn't one. Then there will be any number of them cooked up anyway. I think it would be best for at least one Taken template to come out of this effort, if only because so many BC fans will be here and ready to critique it.

I think this is an illustration of how subjective interpretations of a book can be - the Taken seemed (and still seem) to be a natural for a template. I wonder how many others also got that feeling?

I don't necessarily think that Taken should be a template, so much as I think all Black Company universe spellcasters should have a template, with each 'level' of the template added things that made characters progressively harder to kill, and adding slow aging and Timeless Body somewhere along the line.

 

[Bendris Noulg]

If going the Template Route, I'd suggesting making it resultive of a True Ritual (per Relics & Rituals). The occurances and references documented in the books seem to point in that direction.

 

[Khorod]

I agree with a ritual, and I think the template should be +0 or +1 at most. The template balances out some benefits: possibly immune to compulsions not of the Taker, etc, with things like forced Chaotic alignment, and automatically failing all saving throws to compulsion spells from the Taker.

Well, maybe not chaotic- but all of the taken were mad, though many seemed lawful until they turned around and did completely psychotic things.

I am of the impression that one of the magical abilities/spells/etc. that most spellcasters pursued was longevity and survival oriented. One-eye and Goblin were able to extend their lives, Goblin to well past a century, One-eye probably close to two.

Lady simply froze herself in time, being a supreme master of the longevity trick, and able to maintain it somewhat with even a modicum of power.

But most of the older Taken carried the trick into what looks a little like a Lich state- they were not undead, so much as their physical forms were being carried more by their will and magic than by any biological needs. So Soulcatcher could be beheaded, Limper could be killed every which way, etc.

So I think the template people are thinking of is not having been Taken, but having the BC version of the Lich template, possibly led to by a prestige class that takes one through longevity, into immunities, and up into a quasi-undead state. And considering how much power mortal spellcasters must spend on defense, that's how much freed up power a lich-like archmage can free up.

 

[Limper]

We must never confuse Chaos with insanity, many insanities are VERY lawful in nature.

 

[ColonelHardisson]

Just a couple of thoughts on the project:

Having shepherded the Middle Earth d20 conversion site into being (link in my sig), I can tell you that trying to duke it out over what is the "one way to rule them all" will bog the project down. The way to do it, in my opinion, is to accept that there will be as many interpretations of the source material as there are readers. Then, encourage everyone to post their interpretations.

Another way to give the project some momentum, I feel, would be for someone to start posting hard stats for their conversion interpretations. Even if they're not perfect, post 'em. This is the place to get 'em critiqued and have the bugs shaken out.