Essence
From Sagataflwiki
Essence is, crudely put, an amount of inflict-permanent-magic-on-the-setting coupons that each character has, and which he may be able to spend. Essence is very often abreviated as ES.
- Essence is calculated from some a character's attributes.
- Essence is a personal ressource. It's your character's to spend (if he has a way to spend it, and if he knows what he wants to spend it on); nobody can magically force him to spend it.
- Essence is not renewable. The character is born with a certain amount and never gets more. The character also can't reclaim or regain Essence once he has spent it.
- It should therefore be spent wisely.
- (But isn't always)
- It should therefore be spent wisely.
- Essence is meant to be spent. There's no reason for a character to choose to retain more than a small faraction of his Essence, once he has found something attractive - in his eyes - to spend it on.
- Not all characters can spend Essence.
- In theory, all characters can learn the Endowing skill, which is one way to Enchant permanent magical. items; in practice, for many charaters the time and Skill Points (SPs) required to learn Endowing to a safely usable skill level is prohibitive.
- Almost all characters can get into Satanic Rites, to earn Satanic Brownie Points which can then be used to channel Essence into item creation. It's a pretty bad idea to get into Satanism, though, because bluntly, it involves interaction (on some level) with Satan, and he's a nasty NPC.
- Some characters are born with one out of several kinds of Powers that can be used to create permanent magical items.
- Some permanent magics that are not item-related cost Essence, such as Enhancing animals, turning Enhanced animals into Familiars, or giving spells a Duration of Permanent.
- In some cases, Essence can be spent to drastically boost the power of magic, without this magic being permanent.
- Essence is an in-world phenomenon that characters can and should talk about; it's not a metagame phenomenon.
- Some characters say "show me what you've spent your Essence on, and I'll know who and what you are". It's that important. (Or to put it another way, what your character spends his Essence on is what is important to him.)
- Essence can be lost due to spellcasting or Endowing Fumbles, or other disasters, and also to the Death Touch of a Wraith or Wraith Lord. This is why many characters choose to retain a small fraction of their Essence, instead of spending it all the way down to 0.1 ES, the minimum amount required to remain alive.
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Deriving Essence
The formula for calculating how much Essence a character is born with is
- Psyche attribute squared
- Faith attribute squared
- Will attribute squared
- Constituition attribute squared
- The four above values added together
- Divide the total by 12
- Round down to the nearest 0.1
This means that an average person, with 3 in Psyche, Faith, Will and Constitution, will have 3.0 Essence.
Please note that there are some Advantages that affect the above formula in some way, by making the character's Psyche or Faith count as a higher value for the purpose of calculating Essence, or by giving the character a so-called Marked amount of extra Essence, one that is Ear-Marked for a specific usage (such as Artificing or Domain Magic) and cannot be used for other purposes.
Example, Deriving Essence I
Kuurtus the Bleak has a Constitution of 2, a Psyche of 7, a Faith of 3 and a Will of 6. Try performing the calculation above. If you arrive at any result other than 8.1 ES, you've done it wrong.
Example, Deriving Essence II
Martina of the Lakes has a Constitution of 4, a Psyche of 4, a Faith of 8 and a Will of 6, and an expensive Advantage that makes her Faith count as 2 points higher for the purpose of calculating her Essence.
- Constitution of 4, squared, gives 16.
- Psyche of 4, squared, also gives 16.
- Faith of 8, plus 2, squared, gives 100.
- Will of 6, squared, gives 36.
- The sum of the above four values is 168. Divide by 12 and we get 14.0
- With no decimals at all, there's no need to round down to the nearest 0.1 ES, so she has 14 full points to spend; that's an impressive amount, but far from unprecedented.
Example, Deriving Essence III
Jürgen of the Nimble Hands has a Constitution of 4, a Will of 5, a Psyche of 5 and a Faith of 4, but he also has an Advantage that gives him a Marked Essence Reserve that can only be spent on Charm-Making, with this Reserve being equal to half of his regular amount of Essence, rounded down to the nearest 0.1.
- We calculate his normal amount of Essence to be 6.8 (6.8333 rounded down).
- We calculate 50% of 6.8 ES to be 3.4 ES.
Any time Jürgen used his Charm-Making Power to make a Charm, he should spend Essence from his (Ear-)Marked Reserve first, because his regular amount of Essence can be used for anything, so he should spend from that only when he has to, i.e. when he wants to do something costing Essence that isn't Charm-Making.
If Jürgen wants to make only Charms, which is likely although not a given, he has a total of 10.2 ES to spend on it.
Things to spend Essence on
Rendering items permanently magical
This section refers to generic magical items, usually but not always man-portable. Rendering large objects or groups of objects, such as ships, standing stones or stone circles, permanently magical, is possible with some of the below methods.
Endowing
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Imbuing
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Royal Imbue
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Heroic Imbue
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Religious item creation
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Bless Item
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Lunar Empower
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Satanic Rites
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Charm-Making
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Amulet-Making
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Artificing
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Rune-Carving
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Tree Magic
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Domain Magic
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Ocean Magic
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Water Magic
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Stone Magic
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Animal Enhancement
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Familiars
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Undead Minions
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Elemental Companions
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Making spells permanent
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Element Control
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Raise Dead
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General rules
For most purposes, Essence is accounted for in increments of 0.1, that is something can cost 1.6 or 1.7 Essence, but never 1.63 or 0.89. Sometimes there may be formulae involved in calculating the cost of a magical procedure, for instance the creation of a Battle Item Enchantment, in such cases do not round until the final value for the specific procedure (often one Enchantment, out of several that may be put into an item) and then round this value up to the nearest 0.1. Thus 3.55 Essence becomes 3.6 ES.
A character cannot be magically compelled to spend any amount of Essence against his will, although Flaws may drive a character to do so against the will of the player controlling the character (please note that this is a psychological effect, not a magical one). This only happens in extreme cases, though.
Micro-Essence
For some purposes, such as rendering spells permanent, especially Element Control spells, or Laying a dead person to Final Rest, 0.1 Essence would be too expensive. There may also be Essence cost discounts on such procedures, for various reasons.
For such situations, the character may choose to convert 0.1 Essence into 100 points of Micro-Essence, abreviated mES. This mES remains with the character until spent, and cannot be converted back into regular Essence. Also, no character may have more than 100 mES at any one time, but mES costs larger than 100 can be paid by with a combination of mES and regular Essence. For instance, to pay 210 mES, the character would pay 10 mES and 0.2 ES
Calculations are sometimes performed on mES costs, due to discount rules or discount options. In such situations, round the final value of each procedure (each spell to be rendered permanent, e.g.) up to the nearest whole number, and be sure to perform the calculation on the total amount of mES, not just the amount paid for with mES. As an example, if a price of 210 mES is subject to a 50% mES cost discount, then the result is 105 mES, not 205 mES.
Note that most discounts are rather smaller than that, although with some stacking one can sometimes get close to a 50% discount, or even surpass it.
Virtual Essence (vES)
Advice
Essence is a precious ressource, and empowers the character to increase his own power, or set a lasting mark on the world, or both. Your character should think carefully about how best to spend it.
Increasing one's personal power is a perfectly legitimate thing to spend Essence on, but some characters instead go for whimsical or fanciful uses, or even waste some or most of their Essence on downright frivolous things.
Some ways to optimize
If you want to "game" the system, look into raising your lowest of the four Essence-affecting attributes. If you've made a character suited to some kind of magic, he will likely already have a very high Psyche or Faith (Psyche for wizard-style magic, Faith for religious magic), and Will may also be high.
For instance, you might have started building a character suited for wizard-style magic with a very high Psyche and a high Will, but look at how cheap it is to raise Faith and/or Constitition from 3 to 4. If your character is Human, it costs a total of 10 aDvantage Points (DPs), and gains you a little over 1.0 more Essence (the exact amount depends on rounding). If you can't afford 10 DPs, consider raising just one of Con or Faith.
Also, the more specific your character's item-creating inborn Power is, the more attractive it is to buy an (Ear-)Marked Reserve for it. If ypou're primarily interested in Endowing, you're out of luck, though. There's no Marked Reserve available for Endowing, exactly because it is so extremely flexible a skill, so raise your character's Psyche some more, and consider taking one of the Psyche-relevant Essence traits.
Likewise, if your character is mostly about Blessing Items via Divine magic, there's no (Ear-)Marked Reserve you can choose, so instead raise Faith, take one of the Essence traits that gives you more Faith-based Essence, and look into how much it costs to raise your Psyche, Will and/or Constitution.
Please note
If a character has multiple Essence amounts, such as regular Essence, micro-Essence and an (Ear-)Marked Reserve, then he can freely spend from several of them on any given project, as long as he doesn't violate the Ear-Mark on a Marked Reserve, e.g. by spending Essence Market for Amulet-Making on Rune-Carving. The idea is not to hold the character back due to inflexibility of the rules.
Also note, and this is important, that characters cannot pool their Essence, except in those very few cases when the rules says that they can. Each individual project, such as each of the Enchantments that make up a magic item, must be paid for by a single character. This serves to make large effects rare, e.g. expensive Enchantments, or large-scale Domain Magic.
