Demon: the Fallen's most annoying rule and what to do about it.

[Mercurial]

"Increased Abilities are represented as an intuitive grasp of the concepts and theories involved in the relevant body of knowledge. A thrall with an increased Medicine Ability doesn't suddenly gain extra knowledge she didn't have before. Instead she has a deeper insight into the concepts and methods involved that improves her capabilities in turn."

I don't really like this rule found in Damned and Deceived. I think that selling your soul for knowledge is extremely in line with the spirit of the Faustian bargain, and trying to reduce it to mere intuition severely downplays what the Pact is all about. Instead, the moment a Demon touches the soul of a Thrall and enhances him, I think it is like he is touching and awakening GOD HIM/HERSELF and giving the mortal a taste of the omniscience of the Almighty that lives within each human.

[SetiteFriend]

I think it was more of a way to justify how a prehistorical demon could teach someone about Arabic literature despite not knowing or having any connection to it.

[Mercurial]

Sure, but given how the power behind this enhancement is a small shard of God, a being who is by nature omniscient, is it really necessary? Simply emphasize how you are awakening the divinity within a mortal when you enhance them.

[Aleph]

Agreed. If a warlock it's willing to sell his soul for arcane knowlege, he may as well gain it instead of just becomming better at researching it. Learning to how to fish it's good and all, but the people making these sorts of bargain typically want some immediate results. Just give me some fish already :P

And, as said, you're accessing the God-shard of someone and that explicitly allows to do stuff that normaly a Demon wouldn't be able to do.

One thing that needs to be said, however: The "dicepool", the "trait", doesn't represent *just* knowledge in game. Having Occult 5 it's not "knowing about X legend" at all, but rather a general grasp of all sorts of legend and trivia, combined with a keen to know the fake from the true when investigating. Someone with Occult 5 doesn't know everything there's to know,because no human mind can fill that many books inside (also, that's why you roll), but probably can at least (if the result ain't great) know where to find the information.
Accademics 5 wouldn't be "knowing Arabic literature", but perhaps a Master on "Literature" combined with a general intuition about the accademical scene, and we would roll to see if you know enough about the Arabic kind, when this matters

*So, I think that you would need both "knowledge" and "insigth" poured onto you to trully represent an increase in a Knowledge. One or the other sounds a bit shallow to me.

If he just wants "lowercase" knowledge instead of Knowledge, that perhaps could be represented by gaining the Library background from Mage instead? - just it's an "internal" one, rather than having books. I think we can gloss over the method, as said. Maybe the Demon is using the God-shard to access a "library of babel" of sorts and pour the correct tomes onto the target (altering the target's mind so he wouldn't forget), or something like that.

[Reasor]

I read it as the recipient mortal having epiphanies and breakthroughs that feel, subjectively, like they're coming from within. That's just what I imagine downloading information directing into a brain would feel like.