For My Next Trick!

Question: One of the effects of the Mighty Curse spell is listed as 'unwanted transformations' - what do you mean by that? Is it just an alternative to Transform Person? Or is it more like, for example, Aengus' wife, who turns into a swan and back at certain times of the year?

A good question, and we're glad you brought it up!

Mighty Curse is not an alternative to Transform Person. It's the same level, but it costs less, doesn't allow the victim to turn back with their own powers, and can be used on gods, so it would be pretty insane if they did the same thing. There would be no point in ever buying Transform Person when you could get all its benefits in another spell at the same XP cost. Storytellers, don't let people do that. It's pretty clear gaming of the system.

But "unwanted transformations" doesn't have a lot of explanation with it, so the confusion is understandable, for which we apologize. It's vague partly on purpose, in order to give players and Storytellers more leeway for creativity when smiting miscreants with their magical displeasure, but it should still be a unique part of the curse, not a simple duplication of a different spell. Caer Ibormeith's swan curse is a great example of using the transformation clause of Mighty Curse right; it does involve transformation, but does it in a way that doesn't step on other powers' toes and is mythically and powerfully resonant as a curse, not to mention being power-level appropriate. Mighty Curse's transformation powers can be used a lot of ways; perhaps it causes the afflicted to randomly transform into things, or transform into them temporarily but at bad moments, or to transform at preset times but not permanently, or to transform only partially. The key is that the Storyteller make sure that the power is resonant and cool, but that it also allows the victim more leeway and does different things than Transform Person does.

John and I have talked about writing a system for how to handle Mighty Curse transformations, but frankly, the idea of writing an entire system for a small facet of a single spell makes us tired. Storytellers should feel free to follow their gut on this one; if the user is doing something cool and curse-worthy, let them go for it, but if they're just using it so they don't have to buy Transform Person, tell them no dice. Simple.

Oddly enough, nobody's ever bothered to use Mighty Curse for transformations in our games. Terminus used it constantly, but always to shut down others' purviews or levy penalties to their rolls, while Vala, who was the one who actually made a practice of going around turning misbehaving people into birds, just did so with Transform Person.