My character isn’t auditioning for disney’s next star wars movie, so I’ll be avoiding acting like a jedi, Protagonist, instead I’ll be arranging “maybe magic maybe mundane” coincidences. 
And there are two ways to lead, from the front or from the back, if you have theurgy than you have book learning as your personal strength, unlike the paragons of charisma or battle who would benefit infinitely more from leading from the front.
@Protagonist, you’re right that most of the choices I’ve written in so far are very flashy – but I think stsword’s right, and that shouldn’t be the only possible strategy for magic use. In the last update I added non-flashy options for using Theurgy against the guards in the agora (if you try to kidnap the Telone’s family). There’s no reason we can’t have more of that.
@stsword, any specific suggestions of plausibly mundane Theurgic options for some of the heat-of-combat scenarios, like fighting Alastors or de Merre guards? (I recognize that I’ve not yet precisely described the parameters of Theurgy, but you can probably extrapolate pretty well from the existing options).
@Mara, alas, there’s only one type of magic in this world, and it’s intellectual. Deeply unfair to the charismatic, I agree. On the other hand, the intellectuals won’t get the chance to start their own religion.
@Havenstone
I’m enjoying the heck out of your demo! Damn, your writing and this world you conjured up is crazy good. I personally don’t have any ideas or questions for you right now but I did come across a few small things I wanted to bring to your atttention. (See below) Keep working your magic. This game is definitely a keeper in my book.
“What’s gone wrong?” For the moment, you resisted the urge to kiss the grief from her (*Breden was male in this runthrough) eyes. You’d never seen Breden at a loss before; it was more unnerving than you would have expected.
You wait for Breden to suggest someone; but though he looks troubled, she (*Breden was male in this runthrough) remains silent. You continue, “We don’t have the time to go after them now. But as soon as we know that we can make it through the winter, we’ll start hunting traitors in earnest.”
“Rebellious and froward *(should this be forward? Or is froward part of their language) girl!” After chewing on his cheeks for a long minute, your father finally growls, "Ismene de Galis. Cousin of your mother’s.
Thanks piggley - appreciate the pronoun catches, and the general encouragement. “Froward” is an archaism meaning unruly. The sort of thing your father would say…
Well of course there are two ways to do magic in a subtle manner, do magic that no one can notice, or do magic that can have another explanation.
Say I make a spot on the floor slippery through theurgy, whose to say that I didn’t prepare that in advance? If I make arrows hit the vulnerable places on a target, whose to say the archer just didn’t get lucky?
Now, theurgy seems to be a blood powered force magic, dealing with manipulation of matter and energy so far, and of course this is going to be limited by the native’s understanding of matter and energy. I figure there will be no destroying cities by magically making nukes in this game.
Something that isn’t clear to me is the possibility of making permanent alterations.
Even with those limitations, we could deepen shadows and muffle sound to enhance stealth, make people sick by manipulating their stomach contents, add a coating to weapons, make arrows and other projectiles strike true, make floors slippery, perform ventriloquism, and make melee attacks miss off the top of my head.
If we can make permanent alterations, or at least alterations that last a while, the PC could go all science hero with their transformation abilities, making explosives, accelerants, paralytics, poisons, drugs, irritants, and other chemical concoctions for example. Limited to of course what chemicals are known, but with the nature of theurgy chemistry might be pretty advanced.
@Havenstone Ooooh $-) I could create my own religion? Like lenin or Hitler I could create a sith religion Everyone hail lord Mara . Also my second attribute is intelligence , why player couldn´t mixture their main skills. Like a charismatic leader i could give psychotropic musrooms to my followers to erase this minds and brainwashing them in a north korea way. i got 2 of intelligence maybe i cant use magic , but i could use chemical products and medicine. Give drugs to your followers is typical in sects and tribal religions.
North Korea is renowned for many things, but keeping everyone on mushrooms all the time is decidedly not one of them. Nor is Hitler known for starting the veneration of Darth Vader.
As for mixing your skills, well, you’re only really skilled in the one thing with the stats as they are. All a 1 means is that you aren’t terrible in that stat, it doesn’t mean that you can do cool things with it.
@Golgot lol you take all things literally dont you? North Korea uses drugs to brainwashing people in their “rehabilitation” centers , since beginning it was accused in the United nations like 20 times. Also the cult to hitler in Nazi regime is patently, he believe that he was a new mesiah from germany and mixture many techniques of two cults . Catolicism and Druidic and ocultism practices. Nazi regime send people to found the sacred grial and other stuff than show Hitler imperium would be legendary.
George Lucas main inspiration from empire was Nazi regime, uniforms the senatorial building based in the dreamed new senatorial parliament he was proyected like large building in world… resistance . Even in the first cuts of film without any special effect he put 2 WW planes battles with nazis as imperials … So all have a conmon nexus
I do hope we’ll get the chance to increase a skill soon, my character, while focusing on education, isn’t as charismatic as I’d like.
Combat I’m not so worried about becaus with theurgy I figure it wouldn’t be too difficult to induce comas with a little internal temperature change.
If theurgy can make permanent changes, improving equipment is something I’d like to do. I figure making swords that cut through metal like butter would be too blatant, making weapons that are stronger, lighter, sharper, etc, than average imperial fair would be nice.
@stsword I don’t think Havenstone planned for these things. The way you’re making it sound overpowered (but that’s what magic is against the mundane). I’m guessing -> trade-offs or something else undesirable. Because, who wouldn’t want to go 21st century on these medieval peasants? Well, there is the state religion of MaraJade… But nothing’s for Combat heavy characters! Well, the empire does need it’s own Art of War.
“Nothing for combat heavy characters”: well, there’ll be the chance to win rather than run away in multiple major engagements. It’ll be a while before you have any hope of winning a big clash (as opposed to a small fight) with Theurgy alone - you simply don’t have enough blood.
Also, inducing comas or similar with Theurgy would require a specialized understanding of the workings of the human body that requires more study (i.e. Int higher than 2). Thanks for the suggestions, stsword.
Skill increases will be possible early in game 2.
"lol you take all things literally dont you? "
In my defense, I was being facetious with the Darth Vader thing. I’m well aware of Hitler’s twisting of religion with ‘Positive Christianity’ and others of its ilk as well as his move to place himself at the center of the heart of the German people.
“North Korea uses drugs to brainwashing people in their “rehabilitation” centers , since beginning it was accused in the United nations like 20 times.”
North Korea’s not too renowned for anything of the sort. I can’t say that such things haven’t happened before, they probably have, but there’s really not much economy to the use of it on a large scale. The populace has traditionally been kept in line with a combination of fear and the vigor of the personality cult, no need to throw in drugs on top of that when their top reeducation plants are more along the lines of labor camps in which they don’t bother assigning too high of a priority on life.
Instead, most drug complaints regarding North Korea stem from them having diplomats and others sneak massive amounts of drugs to sell in other countries to boost the personal cash of the country’s leader.
Oh my god another long argument against Mara. Just submit!
Dusk, it doesn’t look to me like being overpowered is really an issue, from what I can tell the intention is to give people the chance to win using their preferred method most of the time, this isn’t dnd with quadratic wizards linear warriors and social characters feeling useless.
In a hypothetical combat situation for example, a high combat character can go all Rambo winning the day, a high social character can lead his forces to a stunning victory, and a high education character so far can use theurgy, I’d like the option to just outwit or trick our opponents sometimes too though.
So really it doesn’t matter how out there the special affects of theurgy are as long as someone with the equivalent score in fighting or charisma could also win, whether it’s disarming them telekinetically or turning their stomach contents into greek fire.
I think theurgy should be relatively weaker magic. Like Gandalf type spells as opposed to Harry Potter.
@stsword I know. I was actually thinking of it in terms of, “Haha! No force in this world may oppose me! For I have in my fingertips the power to control and warp the laws of physics and (sub-)/atomic interactions! (What?)”
Just a thought, if you chose to kill the nobles in Chapter three after stopping Kalt/Kala’s reaction should reflect that you have in fact done what they wanted to do.
I’m not even going to attach anyone’s name that’s to hard but I’d like to make a point about the strength of theurgy just from your encounter with Chirex all be it no one is launching fireballs with one or two blood vials she lifted you and her self and then effectively launched her self to safety I’m assuming she levitated her self a fair distance away and this was all done with what seemed like relative ease considering she was still able to banter while doing it so this would seem to mean that theurgy is really a relative thing dependent on the persons own abilities I may be wrong but it seems that theurgy has the potential to make you near indomitable because the limits seem to only be what your mind and blood limit can handle since it deal seemingly with all matter leaving endless possibilities for choice in use
I noticed when I last played the demo that there was an option to buy a no weakness item. I haven’t seen that before, and was wondering how I can get it.
Yeah, Fallen, but that blood limit is a serious one, it takes a month or two to recover from donating blood, although I’m sure that one use of theurgy doesn’t use that much blood repeated use of it certainly will drain that much or more.
Dusk, I have no idea what you’re freaking talking about. If you’ve played a theurgist run, you’d have noticed that it’s about the manipulation of energy and matter, so why are you complaining about me pointing out what energy and matter manipulation would do?
Especially since I’ve been asking for theurgy applications that are subtle enough to not give away your hand, or to create a utility belt. I’m suggesting theurgy is too powerful by suggesting it could be use to duplicate the arcane forces of money and science?
And did you fail to realize that the limit on a force magic is how much force you have available? For all we know the only thing stopping a theurgist from moving tectonic plates or summoning hurricanes is how much blood they can get their hands on, just like the only thing stopping a mage in GURPS from going “A god am I” is getting their hands on a nuclear reactor.