So, two parts to this post. All is based on the Maleficia Consumption guidelines, from Realms of Power: The Infernal, pg. 105.
First is a key question - Consumption can affect other people by default, or animals and plants with extra magnitudes. Does this work on people, animals, or plants with Might, if you can Penetrate, or only mundane examples?
Second, especially (but not necessarily only) if the first answer is yes - although it's not addressed directly in the rules, so the RAW answer probably leans no, would you, as a SG, lean towards a character potentially gaining some wonky new capability if they used the base 25 Incantation/Consumption guideline to take a sense or body part related to a power possessed by the other being? For the non-Might human example, if the infernalist were rendered blind and responded by stealing the eyesight from someone with Second Sight, would you have the infernalist gain Second Sight along with restoring their ordinary vision, or would Second Sight simply become defunct due to its possessor no longer being able to see?
I ask because I kind of like the idea of an infernalist who got mutilated and is now trying to transcend human limits to prevent themselves from suffering that way again by stealing various supernatural capacities to replace the normal human body parts and senses of theirs that had been ravaged. But I'm not sure it fits well with the rules and with the general Mythic Europe vibe. All input appreciated!
It seems to me hat this would fall under incantation Diabolrie, to grant yourself false powers. Though Debauchery Diabolrie will allow you to see through another entity. I don't see any rules about the possibility of an incantation Consumption (Diabolrie) type prerequisit system for malefectia, but if it exists I expect it would allow this sort of effect.
Oh, yeah, I know that if your goal is specifically to give yourself powers you'd be better off with Diablerie. This is more of a "other ways to skin a cat" type question, plus just musing over what would happen from stealing limbs and senses from a supernatural being. Especially given that leaving aside the freedom players themselves have for "having fun" reasons, characters don't actually control the stuff they have access to in their lives, and if a character is dealing directly with demons rather than a pre-existing diabolist cult like in this character concept's case then it seems against a demon's self-interest to teach humans Diablerie.
Depends on the demon's relationship with the human. If the human is sufficiently hoodwinked then they can use diabolrie against the demon's rivals, to gain the false Gift to infiltrate magical groups, etc. A demon should never deal directly with anyone who both knows what it is and is not already obedient to it.
That's true, but demons also tend to employ humans because they can do stuff without demons' many predictable failure states due to having virtuous capacity, or their relationship might be limited to a more typical "sell your soul for power" type relationship without the servitude element, so I guess I assumed demons wouldn't give anybody the tools to harm them directly unless they felt like they didn't have any other options. Then again, they're also brazenly prideful in their essential nature, so maybe they just assume their pawns will never be strong enough to threaten them...?
In any case, as far as a particular character is concerned, it's still easier to get Consumption if you have Diablerie than to get Diablerie if you have Consumption, so being stuck with Consumption is still a situation you can end up in quite easily. (And even getting Major Virtues with Diablerie requires a Malefica total of 55, which demands a whole lot more ground-laying work than a level 30 effect to crib off someone else's bod.)
Clearly every art of Malefica was at some point given to a human by a demon, ergo demons do grant humans ability with the art. Giving them ability with the art when they don't have your true name but have the true names of your rivals can, of course, prove far more useful than simply enslaving yourself to a human.
I really like this concept and I would allow it in my game. I would probably make it work something like the Ablation rules for gaining supernatural powers- you gain Might consuming powers only if you have Might, and relevant virtues (and possibly flaws) otherwise.
So gaining Second Sight by stealing the eyes from someone with that virtue makes perfect sense. I would probably allow for effects that either grant the Virtue with the ability at a set level, such as 3 or 4; or, allow it to grant the ability at 0 and to be improved via experience.
I understand the desire for a Diablerie requisite, but I'm not sure I would require it unless it was a Virtue that doesn't translate into a physical body part very well. Like, if you have the False Gift and want to steal someone's Enduring Magic virtue- that doesn't correspond well to a particular body part. I'd be more than happy, though, to offer a Diablerie requisite and require you something from that person
No reason why it can't work on (suitable) targets with Might. Obviously if you try this on an angel, it's not going to end well ... and I'd say neither if you try it on a demon.
Hmm. I'd lean towards no. In part because Incantation/Consumption seems to be about fixing something that no longer works in the Infernalist by stealing something from a victim, rather than about upgrading (which is more in line Debauchery/Consumption). In part because it's a "permanent" effect.
The idea of stealing someone else's better capability is very reasonable per se: I just don't think it fits Incantation Consumption too well, and I don't think allowing it at that level without extra costs is "balanced".
All good points! The sometimes-unfortunate thing about Maleficia is that as written they're actually pretty structure-oriented, far moreso than any Magic tradition. What might be narratively balanced in my intended context, of a lone diabolist who constantly struggles to provide the necessary social context and materials to get decent spell totals (vis and Confidence are always somewhat scarce, albeit less so for diabolists given their available methods for generating both, and performing high-end sacrifices without a support system or a private base of operations is very hard to get away with) and then also not be caught for any obvious diabolic effects themselves after the fact, still is hard to allow, because it could become overpowered when applied to the context of a whole Ceremony-abusing, infrastructurally-established, demon-supported infernal cult. Hm.
I've been playing a solo game as a Diabolist, and it's been an enlightening experience!
The character's totals are quite low and often penalized by the local Aura to a much greater degree than characters who draw their power from other realms.
Performing magic with ritual sacrifice vastly extends the time frame and makes it much more conspicuous, confidence points are a bit difficult to come by if you want to avoid warping and totals are often low if you're on your own.
My character is from the Dark Gnostic tradition from the book, so he doesn't yet have access to anything beyond those powers. This and the absence of a broad tradition of assistants makes his totals pretty abysmal.
He recently failed two Maleificia rolls because of the local magic aura of the place he was casting in, and only avoided Vituperation because of the aura penalty.
@Zaleramancer I appreciate your insight, it's quite relevant to my current considerations! I'm a big weirdo (but aren't all of us who play Ars, haha!) so this is actually for a story I'm writing based on a campaign I was previously in, rather than a new campaign itself. In fact, this part is even for a more original-content spinoff of that story than the story itself! See, in the campaign, there was this NPC diabolist who was the daughter of a noble lord we'd been friends with until he was assassinated by said daughter, and once we unraveled her schemes and revealed the human sacrifices she did to the household servants and local priest, most of the party decided to leave her to the bishop's likely-deadly judgment. But one of my characters, who was a demigod with some very-not-Hermetic effects tied to complicated plot stuff, decided instead to free her and use her to lure out the demons who'd given her her powers so they could be killed, then put a radiating effect on her that made any demons bathed by the emanating light (even in spirit form) assume their true physical forms, on the basis that having their true nature randomly revealed by her would cause demons to perceive her as a threat and turn hostile, and she'd have to spend the rest of her life (or at least the next 19 Years, since that's the effect duration) killing demons to stop them from tempting others into doing what she herself had done, all while the threat of the church catching up to her keeps her on the move instead of laying diabolic roots in a community.
And since I've been writing out the campaign from the demigod's perspective, and I just reached the part of the story involving this resolution, it hit me that the diabolist in question now suddenly has all the qualities of a morally grey protagonist, and I decided to do a spinoff based on her adventures! And I don't actually know what her Tradition had when she was an NPC except for Incantation, Consumption, and Psychomachia, so I guess I could give her Diablerie with the last slot, but it almost feels cheap? Like a story about desperately struggling to not die through alliance, sword skills, and cleverness feels really undercut to me if she can just be like "lol Magic Resistance," and there's no basis to give it to her from the campaign itself at least.
Keep in mind that you can also gain powers with phantasm as well as diabolrie, especially debauchery phantasm, which allows giving supernatural body parts with powers.