A couple of questions about pacts

[The Kings Raven]

So I've been thinking about pacts recently and I have a few questions.

Lets say that Asmodeus buys Bob's relationshop with his wife Mary. What exactly does this feel like from Mary's perspective, how does she interpret suddenly being married to a different person?

Now lets say that Asmodeus buys Alice's relationship with her completely homosexual wife Mary. How does Mary interpret suddenly being married to a Demon in a male Cover? What stops her from asking for a divorce about a day later?

Finally, what if Mary was a powerful Magistos. Would her Mind magic protect her?

[Hyoseph]

I'm nothing resembling a dev but I look at it a lot like Psychic Reprogramming (Assuming from the Mastigos reference I'm dealing with one familiar with high end Mind). This is just how it's always been, supernatural power says so. Regarding the homosexual female being married to a "male" all of a sudden, I imagine it's much the same just that there's a certain level of dissonance that comes up.

The dissonance doesn't really strike me as a mechanics issue, but it does strike me as the source of a great many derangements.

As far as the Mind Magic is concerned, I would rule that as long as the mind magic effect lasted (max a month) she would be protected. Once it lapses, protection lapses, and suddenly this problematic marriage seems a-ok.

Just my $0.02

[Rose Bailey]

To the first Mary, things are as they've always been. She rationalizes the changes made fairly easily, making any adjustments to her memories necessary to accommodate a different husband. She'll attribute memories of Bob to Asmodeus, even where that wouldn't entirely make sense if she described them to a third party.

To the second Mary, things are much the same, except that she'll have a lot more trouble adjusting. She'll remember marrying a man, even if that now seems like an insane mistake. She'll attribute memories of Alice to Asmodeus, even if she now can't understand what she could possibly have been thinking.

The first Mary could easily have serious dissonance being married to Asmodeus as well. Both of them will try to explain it to themselves... but the second Mary has a much more obvious problem to us.

[blackhatmatt]

Splicing yourself into Covers that you're going to have a hard time maintaining, BTW, is going to get said Covers eroded, especially if they push people to investigate you.

[pgolasze13]

not a question regarding pacts but... in the book its stated that the GM no when an angel falls it can quickly dispatch angels to capture the would be demon and reintegrate him, that doesn't bother me. Its also stated that the GM creates the covers for its angels, if that's the case wouldn't the GM just send angels after the demons cover assuming he escaped the first time? Or is it that the act of falling for an angel deletes knowledge of the demons cover from the GM?

[MythicFox]

not a question regarding pacts but... in the book its stated that the GM no when an angel falls it can quickly dispatch angels to capture the would be demon and reintegrate him, that doesn't bother me. Its also stated that the GM creates the covers for its angels, if that's the case wouldn't the GM just send angels after the demons cover assuming he escaped the first time? Or is it that the act of falling for an angel deletes knowledge of the demons cover from the GM?

The book describes demons as somewhat altering and tweaking the Cover they previously had when they Fall. I imagine that altering and tweaking probably makes a lot of difference. Also, the system that sends out the hunter angels isn't necessarily the same one that crafted the Cover. Not all parts of the God Machine seem to talk to each other all the time.

[Ryu]

not a question regarding pacts but... in the book its stated that the GM no when an angel falls it can quickly dispatch angels to capture the would be demon and reintegrate him, that doesn't bother me. Its also stated that the GM creates the covers for its angels, if that's the case wouldn't the GM just send angels after the demons cover assuming he escaped the first time? Or is it that the act of falling for an angel deletes knowledge of the demons cover from the GM?

The fact of falling removes the knowledge of the demons cover from the god machine. IF we use computers as a reference then the GMC is the computer who has a list of all files being part of its software (a list of filenames aka covers over which it knows all the details). The fall of a demon renames the file on the hard drive but not in the list, thus the GMC sees i its list a filename that poitns to a non existing file and knows someone has fallen but it doesn't find out who as it doesn't know the new name (so its missing a few search functions modern PCs now have )

[blackhatmatt]

The other thing, is, it's not the GM has an unlimited supply of hunter angels just hanging around. Sending out hunter angels requires a lot of energy, and the GM has long since realized that having a demon on Earth can be useful. Better not to make a big mess just because an angel Fell.

[Dataweaver]

Going back to Pacts: would it be a valid strategy to offer a Pact with a mortal that is heavily weighted toward benefitting the mortal (possibly even to the point of not including any benefit for the demon at all), and then to threaten to destroy the pact if the mortal doesn’t do exactly what the demon demands of him? It would augment the mortal’s potential usefulness immensely for a really low cost (one point of Willpower on the demon’s part), and the amount of leverage it would give the demon would be directly proportional to how lopsided the deal is in the mortal’s favor: for instance, a demon who agrees to grant the mortal permanent control over a multinational corporation in exachange for, say, taking ownership of the mortal’s pet dog for a day would be in a tremendous position to blackmail the chief of a multinational corporation: sure, I’ll lose your dog when I burn this contract (and not even that, if my day with your pet has already ended); but you’ll lose all of that influence and power that I granted you if you don’t do the following…

[MugaSofer]

Going back to Pacts: would it be a valid strategy to offer a Pact with a mortal that is heavily weighted toward benefitting the mortal (possibly even to the point of not including any benefit for the demon at all), and then to threaten to destroy the pact if the mortal doesn’t do exactly what the demon demands of him? It would augment the mortal’s potential usefulness immensely for a really low cost (one point of Willpower on the demon’s part), and the amount of leverage it would give the demon would be directly proportional to how lopsided the deal is in the mortal’s favor: for instance, a demon who agrees to grant the mortal permanent control over a multinational corporation in exachange for, say, taking ownership of the mortal’s pet dog for a day would be in a tremendous position to blackmail the chief of a multinational corporation: sure, I’ll lose your dog when I burn this contract (and not even that, if my day with your pet has already ended); but you’ll lose all of that influence and power that I granted you if you don’t do the following…

Sounds like you just got Allies or a Retainer (or a Mentor, even?) out of the deal. So arguably, that should be included on your side of the bargain, cost-wise.

On the other hand, you could argue that blackmail involving a Pact is not different to blackmail involving some other supernatural power. In which case I suppose it comes down to whether you allow players to get free merits because they "earned" them IC. (I would declare that they help you for this Chapter, and after that you have to pay XP or it falls apart.)

[Dataweaver]

Sounds like you just got Allies or a Retainer (or a Mentor, even?) out of the deal. So arguably, that should be included on your side of the bargain, cost-wise.

…except that the whole point of the blackmail is that these benefits aren’t part of the contract.

On the other hand, you could argue that blackmail involving a Pact is not different to blackmail involving some other supernatural power. In which case I suppose it comes down to whether you allow players to get free merits because they "earned" them IC. (I would declare that they help you for this Chapter, and after that you have to pay XP or it falls apart.)

Ugh; that reminds me of Hero System’s approach, putting the players’ attention on managing the traits on their character sheet rather than roleplaying in a story.

[The Kings Raven]

And it goes against the GMC rules anyway. If you get hold of a merit without paying exp it's yours, you just don't get the sanctity of merits rules.

[Dataweaver]

Even the “sanctity of merits” section is more metagaming than I want to deal with; but yeah.

[Hyoseph]

I'm generally a fan of allowing merits to be earned for free as well as being paid for with xp. If anything Sanctity of Merits gives motivation to get things like social merits and retainers with xp. It's long been a perception that there's no point in buying the Retainer merit when they can just be kidnapped / killed by a (N)PC and thus cost xp that would have been "better spent" on superpowers. This leads to an "Only spend xp on what you can't lose without dying" mentality which imho is destructive to the game it comes up in.

This way "fixer" and socialite characters can be made and played, their "connections" can be used for plot drama and character motivation, and they can't "have their xp attacked" by murdering their driver.

Back on topic, a question - What happens to the signatories of a Major Pact / Cover during the time their identities are being worn by an Unchained and, equally importantly, afterwards?

Using the Asmodeus example of Bob in the first post, what happens if Asmodeus/Bob goes on a 3 state killing spree (sabotaging the God Machine and its minions in the process, but the media doesn't know that) and then when the Hunters get too close, Asmodeus jumps out and on to the next person. What happens to Bob at that point? Is he back in a body and horrifically screwed? Has Bob been riding around in his own body forced to watch Asmodeus cutting a bloody swath through Wonderland? Or does the body just fall over because Bob was gone a long time ago?

[Stupid Loserman]

Back on topic, a question - What happens to the signatories of a Major Pact / Cover during the time their identities are being worn by an Unchained and, equally importantly, afterwards?

Using the Asmodeus example of Bob in the first post, what happens if Asmodeus/Bob goes on a 3 state killing spree (sabotaging the God Machine and its minions in the process, but the media doesn't know that) and then when the Hunters get too close, Asmodeus jumps out and on to the next person. What happens to Bob at that point? Is he back in a body and horrifically screwed? Has Bob been riding around in his own body forced to watch Asmodeus cutting a bloody swath through Wonderland? Or does the body just fall over because Bob was gone a long time ago?

Do you mean a Greater Cover +3 pact, or a Soul +3 pact? Greater Cover doesn't bodyjack, it just hands you over a precious piece of the person's history and life. Claiming a soul pact annihilates the person and integrates them as Cover — you can swap between Covers as normal, so the body doesn't "fall over," it reconfigures into the new Cover and can be recovered later (heh). But Bob is gone, man. By claiming that pact, you killed him.