|
1 person marked this as a favorite.
|
I know this is outside the scope of most games but it came up recently and got me thinking how would magic interact with an unborn baby.
Is it depending on type (sorcer vs cleric vs wizard), level (cantrips vs 9th level spells), form (school of magic evocation vs enchantment)?
Will it do nothing (the child is part of the mother and thus not affected by her use of power or will the flow of magic through it effect changes (benificial or harmful)?
Personall I'm leaning towards a mixture of various factors if the power is inherent (sorcerer, arcanist) the usage of spells wont do anything as its a natural part of the mother and so is the child. If its from a neutral or good deity it also probably wont harm them as the being in question will ensure its granted miracle doesn't affect the unborn child (or if it does will be in a good way e.g. higher con to be healthier).
On the other hand if its from an evil deity or a wizard channeling outside sources the child wont have an inherent protection against the alien and/or harmful power passing through it in which case it can be changed. Whether being born a devil/demon planetouched or some other effect. The extent of the changes depending on how powerful the spell is and what its meant to achieve. That is cantrips or enchantment type spells aren't likely to do much but higher level spells or transformative ones will.
Anyway I'm just curious what others think and please don't say "its up to the GM" I know its up to the gm I just want to see how others would react on average IF they were the gm and this came up in their game. Afterall there are a lot of magic using NPC's and I'm sure some of them get pregnant from time to time.
As the plot requires, of course.
On average, I'd say no. There's nothing that indicates that just being exposed to magic affects the child in any way in the average case.
Though, perhaps, it's a good explanation for why magical Bloodlines persist through so many generations after the blood has become diluted...the mother "infects" the child with magic through using it.
However, it could make for a pretty good plotline on occasion.
"The child was born evil, infused with Negative Energy from the time it was conceived. It came into this world a Dhampir...but has become something much more terrible." as something just off the top of my head that makes for a solid BBEG background.
As Rynjin says, it's as the plot dictates.
That said, there's actually a mechanic that you can use to illustrate "does nothing" is likely the correct answer. When a monster uses the swallow whole ability, spells cast from the outside do not apply to the swallowed creature. No, it doesn't specifically say that but if a player tried to say... use cure light wounds on the swallowing creature in order to try to heal their buddy in its belly, I'd have to say "no".
Things inside other things are shielded by those other things.
I'd say that certain magical effects are likely to cause miscarriages or other detrimental effects, especially those relating to negative energy, poison, disease or chemical changes in the body. Depending on the extent of the spell, transmutation effects might as well. I'd tack on a concentration check and then a random effects table not dissimilar to the ones used to determine the appearance of tieflings and aasimar to reflect less dangerous changes caused by transmutation spells.
Effects that cause fast healing would, in my opinion, would cause premature labor but produce an otherwise healthy child. Cure spells and restoration spells could do a lot to save a fetus after the mother has experienced significant trauma but would need to be applied within a certain window.
Regardless, expectant mothers should take maternity leave from adventuring.
What does a shape shifted or transformed person give birth to? A human baby? Fine, a shape shifted druid who looks like a bear MIGHT give birth to a human but what does a wizard in elemental form give birth to? What about undead form? Gaseous form?
Liam Warner wrote: I know this is outside the scope of most games but it came up recently and got me thinking how would magic interact with an unborn baby.
Is it depending on type (sorcer vs cleric vs wizard), level (cantrips vs 9th level spells), form (school of magic evocation vs enchantment)?
Will it do nothing (the child is part of the mother and thus not affected by her use of power or will the flow of magic through it effect changes (benificial or harmful)?
Personall I'm leaning towards a mixture of various factors if the power is inherent (sorcerer, arcanist) the usage of spells wont do anything as its a natural part of the mother and so is the child. If its from a neutral or good deity it also probably wont harm them as the being in question will ensure its granted miracle doesn't affect the unborn child (or if it does will be in a good way e.g. higher con to be healthier).
On the other hand if its from an evil deity or a wizard channeling outside sources the child wont have an inherent protection against the alien and/or harmful power passing through it in which case it can be changed. Whether being born a devil/demon planetouched or some other effect. The extent of the changes depending on how powerful the spell is and what its meant to achieve. That is cantrips or enchantment type spells aren't likely to do much but higher level spells or transformative ones will.
Anyway I'm just curious what others think and please don't say "its up to the GM" I know its up to the gm I just want to see how others would react on average IF they were the gm and this came up in their game. Afterall there are a lot of magic using NPC's and I'm sure some of them get pregnant from time to time.
There aren't rules for pregnancy, so you probably want to stick with realism. Too bad we're talking about magic :D
Picture a pregnant woman, in real life, getting scorched by fire. Is the baby affected? Not unless the mother's health is severely affected, and even then, possibly not. So I would think a pregnant woman hit by an evil cleric's Channel Negative Energy won't lose the baby. Maybe there's a risk if she drops into negative hit points, though.
There's no real-life equivalent for Baleful Polymorph. However, I think it's reasonable to say that if a pregnant wizard casts Teleport and takes the maximum number of friends with her, she's not going to leave the baby behind. So I would figure if she was targeted by Baleful Polymorph, the baby polymorphs with her, and if the effect is broken, the baby returns to normal too.
I would also expect nasty spells like Bestow Curse (used to inflict a Con penalty) will not affect the baby unless the pregnant woman's life is in serious danger (eg if her Con drops below 3, or she lost so many hit points she's now falling unconscious, or was struck by a disease or poison).
There are some weird situations that could come up. Suppose King Bob I's queen, Alice I, is pregnant. However, she is petrified and "lost".
King Bob I remarries and gives birth to one or more children who continue the dynasty.
Three hundred years later, someone finds and unpetrifies Alice I. She eventually gives birth to Charles I. Charles turns out to be ambitious, and technically outranks the entire royal family. Perhaps he can prove his birth. You now have a succession crisis the likes of which probably haven't been seen before. Bob XI might have to step down! Or maybe Charles I decides he doesn't want to be king. Maybe Charles doesn't even know his heritage (but to be plot-relevant, someone else does). A villain might consider Charles I a useful dupe to put on the throne.
cmastah wrote: What does a shape shifted or transformed person give birth to? A human baby? Fine, a shape shifted druid who looks like a bear MIGHT give birth to a human but what does a wizard in elemental form give birth to? What about undead form? Gaseous form? It's probably best to leave that kind of shape shifting out of the equation. But if you must:
The effect probably transfers to the baby until the effect ends. So a woman shaped against her will into a lemur probably gives birth to a lemur shaped baby. Whenever the effect ends on the baby, you have a human baby. Needless to say, this gets awkward if she was instead turned into a duck!
A wizard in elemental form? Sounds like the wizard wanted to be in that form. They should consider ending the spell. If the wizard was in fire elemental form, she could literally cook the baby before it takes its first breath. (What is the Concentration DC to cast Protection From Fire while giving birth? If the Drizzt books are any guide, the Concentration DC of giving birth is pretty significant; one matron actually weaponized the pain by inflicting it on another matron.)
Undead form? If it's willing, presumably the baby is undead until the duration ends. If it's unwilling, I'm thinking the baby is permanently (un)dead.
Gaseous form? Assuming willing, presumably you get a coherent gas cloud that can't move (it's not like the baby has any idea what's going on). Again, these are contrived scenarios. Any responsible wizard would try to give birth in her natural form in a healthy environment.
Well the catch is a high level adventuring wizard may not get a choice, even if they stop adventuring for the full 9 months she may well be attacked by an old enemy taking advantage of her vulnerability.
@Anguish and Kimera757
A better analogy would be an expectant mother in real life taking drugs or alchohol its in her system and because the babies linked it gets affected as well. In this case magic is in their system and while its harmless to them is it harmless to the baby? My take as I said is if its a natural part of their system e.g. arcanists then the baby inherits that same protection unless its deliberately targeted but if its not something that's normally there e.g. wizards or divine casters it can have an effect.
@Rynjin
It could explain that, personally I tend to run planetouched as being noticeable for a thousand generations (same with dragons). Still I think there was a bit on outside influences affecting a baby in one adventure path. Admitedly he was also half demon but I think the father threw something extra in there to ensure maximum suffering.
Not Planetouched (which are explicitly able to pop up generations down the line at random as a "throwback" to a previous ancestor. A lot like Yu Yu Hakusho, really), but Sorcerer Bloodlines (which may overlap sometimes, but not always).
Pathfinder Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber
Probably where some of those Sorcerer bloodlines come from.
Liam Warner wrote: Well the catch is a high level adventuring wizard may not get a choice, even if they stop adventuring for the full 9 months she may well be attacked by an old enemy taking advantage of her vulnerability.
@Anguish and Kimera757
A better analogy would be an expectant mother in real life taking drugs or alchohol its in her system and because the babies linked it gets affected as well. In this case magic is in their system and while its harmless to them is it harmless to the baby? My take as I said is if its a natural part of their system e.g. arcanists then the baby inherits that same protection unless its deliberately targeted but if its not something that's normally there e.g. wizards or divine casters it can have an effect.
I can picture that, but alcohol and even drugs only affect the baby if taken in large doses. Nobody should recommend that (the only way to discover the lower acceptable alcohol limit is horrible experimentation that would violate human rights) but a woman having a very occasional alcoholic drink is not going to endanger the child.
So IMO it takes a lot of magic to harm the child, and this might not happen at all if the magic is not actually harmful (eg a wizard casting Polymorph Self on herself while pregnant).
As for the woman being attacked, unless the attacker is clairvoyant, they're not going to know when she's going to give birth. The woman herself probably won't know. (It would take some potent divinations to figure that out, and in a fantasy society people still might have to guess the gender of their offspring.) Even if she's getting attacked while pregnant, I would think the attackers are trying to kill her and aren't all that interested in a nonthreatening unborn baby. (Sheesh, villains. Wait and kidnap the child!)
Liam Warner wrote: A better analogy would be an expectant mother in real life taking drugs or alchohol its in her system and because the babies linked it gets affected as well. In this case magic is in their system and while its harmless to them is it harmless to the baby? My take as I said is if its a natural part of their system e.g. arcanists then the baby inherits that same protection unless its deliberately targeted but if its not something that's normally there e.g. wizards or divine casters it can have an effect. But we're not talking about real life, where magic doesn't exist. We're talking about in an RPG, where it does, and has rules as to how it works.
It comes back to... it's up to the DM. RAW, magic doesn't do anything* to an unborn child.
*To be fair, if a pregnant sorcerer used dimension door I'd let the unborn child go along with her, for free. Similarly if she got nailed by flesh to stone and then fixed later, I'd let the baby ride along in the same way. While it may seem I'm contradicting myself, I'm not, because I'm the DM.
Ah but how MUCH magic is a large dose? A cantrip, a third level spell, a 6th level spell?
I'm not talking about giving birth specficially (although that would be fairly easy to take advantage of if you have someone watching her) I'm referring to the whole 9 (give or take time to find out) months when if I were pregant I'd be tryinng to avoid adventuring/fighting etc.
@Anguish
It depends a bit on how nasty a gm you want to be but I agree things like teleport etc would take the child along with the mother but if the mother is drawing in large amounts of magical energy to power that teleport is it having an effect on the child inside her?
@Rynjin
I see.
Part of my view may refer back to the old 1st ed when using magic harmed the wizard (premature aging, risk of death etc) and its probably shaped me to the opinion sorcerers use their own internal power at no risk (to them or their child) but wizards and other beings who draw their power from an outside source which can damage them and in the case of a pregnant one the child inside. Its just with magic damage can mean anything from actual hp/con/etc damage to growing fur or even gaining a +2 to every stat.
This is from a novel rather than from any game rulebook, but you might find The Bifrost Guardians series by Mickey Zucker Reichert of interest. Particularly the book By Chaos Cursed.
In that book of the series, one of the characters (who happens to be a spell caster) is pregnant. The following is a quote from the book:
"Instinctively, she clutched the tiny aura to her, felt the edges of its life energy blur into her own. She could not separate the two. Any spell she threw would sap its life force as well as hers, and once emptied of chaos, the child would die."
Admittedly, spell casting in the book is different from in the game, but this is the only information on the subject that I have ever come across.
Kimera757 wrote: A wizard in elemental form? Sounds like the wizard wanted to be in that form. They should consider ending the spell. If the wizard was in fire elemental form, she could literally cook the baby before it takes its first breath. (What is the Concentration DC to cast Protection From Fire while giving birth? If the Drizzt books are any guide, the Concentration DC of giving birth is pretty significant; one matron actually weaponized the pain by inflicting it on another matron.)
Undead form? If it's willing, presumably the baby is undead until the duration ends. If it's unwilling, I'm thinking the baby is permanently (un)dead.
Gaseous form? Assuming willing, presumably you get a coherent gas cloud that can't move (it's not like the baby has any idea what's going on). Again, these are contrived scenarios. Any responsible wizard would try to give birth in her natural form in a healthy environment.
Heheh, I remember reading that book, it was an odd idea (I heard that WotC(TSR?) usually had a thing about their spells having to be accurate to the rulebooks (which is why originally the panther was supposed to be neither male nor female), which has me wondering if they were fine with this or if he managed to 'get away with it' :P), alternatively she probably has a really low concentration bonus and just rolled really well ;)
Any 'RESPONSIBLE' wizard would give birth in natural form, I've actually had caster characters that were so far removed from 'responsible' they would've tried giving birth in the form of a swarm :P
Another thought, would a mind-controlled character give birth to a mind-controlled baby? If so, that would be great for keeping your child from being a nuisance, provided they come born with the common language (they don't need to actually speak it, several creatures that can't speak have a language for just such a thing) :P
Baldur's gate II ToB briefly touched on this, I realize it's not pathfinder and that it may have been meant to be specific to the forgotten realms campaign setting, but I've taken the liberty of finding an excerpt from the time that the safety of an unborn child of an adventurer is called into question. I won't spoil who it is that's pregnant or who the father is for those who haven't played the game, but here's the quote:
"While the babe still dwells within me, it will draw its strength from me. The healing magics that restore my health will restore the health of the unborn child in my womb - even resurrecting it to life, if that should be necessary."
Again, it's not pathfinder but It's how I'd rule things; namely that spells that target and affect the mother also affect the unborn child. Which could be good or bad depending on the spell obviously. At least with this ruling any spell that heals wounds or reverses a spell with a negative effect would simultaneously work on the unborn child.
Not that that's any excuse to go gallivanting off to fight a dragon with a great sword when your heavily pregnant mind you. I'm not even sure how a dragon would respond to that sight.
I don't really want to have to worry about baby saves.
It depends on how one visualizes a spell. For example, something like Ray of Enfeeblement: Is the negative energy flowing from the world around her, concentrating at the tip of her finger and forming the ray, or is she chanelling the negative energy through her body? In the event that the energy is gathering inside her, it could complicate the baby, but on the other hand, if the magic and negative energy is coming from within her, I imagine the baby is unaffected since it's like drowning a fish: The baby is growing and developing in this environment, magic is literally in it's blood, and so it won't suffer since it's a part of itself.
I'd treat the baby like a parasite for things like dimension dooring and such, it just rides along for free.
The baby is defended by the mother's body, so any targeted direct spells won't affect it, unless say, we're Disintegrating the mother, or using a force effect targeting the baby bump, but at that point, the DM is clearly targetting the baby so it's kind of pointless to ask how it would work since it'll work however they want it too.
And now I await "called shot to the baby" coming up in a game. : (
blahpers wrote: And now I await "called shot to the baby" coming up in a game. : ( Hmmm that raises the question of how one of your PC's wound up pregnant in the first place.
Liam Warner wrote: blahpers wrote: And now I await "called shot to the baby" coming up in a game. : ( Hmmm that raises the question of how one of your PC's wound up pregnant in the first place. Well you see son, when a mommy adventurer and a gigolo hook up in the back room of the tavern...
I've seen two instances of pregnancies having complications in our games.
The first was a druid, where wild shaping had a small but increasing chance of a mishap. It worked wonders, as she almost never used wildshape, until a time where a friend died. She won the battle, failed her 'pregnancy roll', and ended up giving birth in Tiger-form, resulting in a child with some sort of natural lycantrophy.
In the other, some years ago, I had a pregnancy affect the spell casting of the character, in a manner similar to primal magic events. Small stuff at first, including the child casting some protective magic on the mother, growing to larger effects later on. Although it wasn't planned at first, they grew so concerned about what was happening, that the campaign ended up revolving around that child with immense magical power.
There are some traits that are fluffed out; ie, your mother was healed with a powerful Channel Positive by a cleric while she was carrying you and you become a natural conductor for positive energy as a result. Nothing saying you can't fluff out anything you feel is appropriate; that's what traits are for, mainly. Traits, Sorc bloodlines, and templates are really the only things that mechanize this sort of thing. For example, how do you think Half-Dragons come into existence? Dragons and Humans would be rather... incompatible... until the Dragon shapeshifts. That's sort of an "indirect" consequence of using magic; two species interacting sexually that wouldn't otherwise be able. There is a "poison/disease" bloodline that represents a child carried while the mother was under the effect of a magical poison or disease. Use what mechanics you can, and fill in the rest with fluff.
Well, in fantasy literature, the child ends up with magical or psionic abilities, or with a natural SR, resistance, or immunities to certain magic.
I think "as the plot dictates" is the best response on how to handle it in your games.
The Magical Lineage trait seems to address this question.
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens Subscriber
My pregnant Magus was recently polymorphed into a songbird for a few rounds before getting it dispelled, so this actually came up in one of our discussions. I'm unsure what effect, if any, it would will have when her child is born and I make him into a character.
This also happens to be one of the many conflicting backstories my Dhampir tells when people ask him where he's from - his mother was killed and resurrected while still pregnant, causing him to be born half-alive, half-dead.
(He has absolutely no idea what his true origin story is, and he loves storytelling, so he makes up lots of possible tales and believes them all.)
|
1 person marked this as a favorite.
|
Rynjin wrote: Liam Warner wrote: blahpers wrote: And now I await "called shot to the baby" coming up in a game. : ( Hmmm that raises the question of how one of your PC's wound up pregnant in the first place. Well you see son, when a mommy adventurer and a gigolo hook up in the back room of the tavern... Given how some players roll, I'm not entirely sure which of the two in your example is the PC.
Having just come out of reading the first book of the Moontide Quartet, I like the idea that if a parent who has extremely powerful magic (i.e. is a very high-level sorcerer, wizard, or what-have-you) is siring a child on another, then there is a high chance that some degree of their power can/will be imprinted (with the chance of it happening lessening as the power of the parent decreases), possibly on the mother as well as the child (so a non-magical mother can spontaneously develop magical abilities just by carrying the child of a mage-father - a known phenomenon in the book).
But beyond that, for the sake of keeping things simple (the KISS principle at work), I see no reason to mechanically differentiate between parent and child until after the moment of birth.
In Ravenloft(3e), there was a race called the Caliban, who were people that were mutated by magic while still in their mother's womb. The actual source of magic could be whatever, but I think it leaned more towards negative energy or curse-magic.
Really, it's all fantasy, so the effects can be whatever the plot requires, as mentioned above.
Recent threads in General Discussion
|
