Alright, I want to make an NPC for the game I’m running. He is going to be a sorcerer, but I want him specifically to use rhyming magic. I thought this could be accomplished by letting him use poetry as a linked test with sorcery. My big question is: should I give him a trait that lets him do that? Since linked tests are kind of open to interpretation and also carry a negative consequence for failure, I sort of feel like a trait shouldn’t be necessary. I think if I wanted to let him FORK poetry with sorcery instead that would require a trait. Does that all sound reasonable? Also, if I were to let him use poetry as a linked test with sorcery, what should the poetry ob. be? I’m thinking maybe it should be tied into how many actions the spell takes, because the longer the spell the longer the verse of poetry.
I’d recommend starting it out as a character trait, if he plays the trait, eventually a trait vote might turn it into a C-O or Dt one. I like the idea that you could also penalize him if he doesn’t rhyme when casting.
For ForKing Poetry, maybe rather than rhyming he has to speak in Iambic pentameter, or the 5, 7, 5 character structure of haiku.
a fine fate for me,
defying Nature’s physics:
casting fireballs
Couldn’t you just call Sorcery “Rhyming” and be done with it? There’d be no mechanical difference, it’d be all color in how you describe the casting.
But if not, then I might recommend Poetry being an enforced Linked Test to each spell. If the player actually created a couplet each time he tested, I’d grant a +1 Advantage die to the Poetry test. In fact, +1D (up to 3) to the link test for each couplet generated right there and then.
Maybe you could create an expensive die-trait that let you FORK Poetry and Sing into Sorcery and also gives you am affiliation with the “Circle of Lyrical Enchanters”, so it can justify buying the trait. Or make a C-O trait called Rhyming Sorcery that lets you retest Poetry when you link test it for Sorcery.
Stay cool 