Verbs Vs. Verbs

[Orion]

I would appreciate it if you all could refrain from using the "m" words in this thread. There should be no reason at all to use the word "mundane," and frankly we probably don't need to worry about "magic" overmuch either. What I want to do is jettison that aspect of the conversation and look at what we want our supernatural heroes to be doing. So: let's assume that you're a wizardy wizard who wizards. Or a shaman, a sorcerer, a soulshaper, a dragonchild, a demonbinder or whatever. Here's the question:

• Would you rather "forge a sword out of fire" or "enchant a sword with fire."?
• Would you rather "conjure a planar portal in the air" or "build a planar portal with your hands"?
• Would you rather "cast a healing spell" or "distill the essence of healing herbs"
• Would you rather "summon" a djinn or "contact" a djinn?
  
  I'm legitimately interested in the range of reactions here, they aren't rhetorical questions. That said, I am also trying to to collect ideas and examples for the first half of these. Feel free to post some of your own.

[Avoraciopoctules]

Here's the question:

• Would you rather "forge a sword out of fire" or "enchant a sword with fire."?
• Would you rather "conjure a planar portal in the air" or "build a planar portal with your hands"?
• Would you rather "cast a healing spell" or "distill the essence of healing herbs"
• Would you rather "summon" a djinn or "contact" a djinn?

[Kaelik]

Forge, Conjure, Cast, and both Contact and Summon, but they should be different things. (Summon means minion, Contact means service, Summon is way cooler than finding and convincing something, and contact is pretty much identically as cool as calling, because both of those are equally as arbitrary magic sounding while still referencing real stuffs, and both of them are way better than hiring someone, even if all you really did was force a demon to teleport to you, and then hire him.)

Also, while Forge is almost always better than enchant, enchanting is almost always better than anything that isn't forging. I'd rather forge a ring, sword, armor, ect. But I'd rather enchant a robe than weave it. Also as evidence, conjure over build. Forge sounds magic, even if it isn't, and everything else sucks.

[Avoraciopoctules]

Would you rather Drink the blood of a dragon or Bind draconic essence to your chakras?
Would you rather Dispel an astral construct or Unravel its mana threads with your mystic kung fu?

[sabs]

Why do all these have to be or? Why can't you have both depending on your archtypes?

So the Wizard Enchants a sword with fire.
A Dwarven Smith forges the sword out of lava from a volcano.
An Elemtalist creates the sword out of fire.
An Oriental smith forges the blade, imbuing it fire in it with his will with every fold of the sword.

A Necromancer raises the dead.
A Summoner summons demons.
A Cleric uses his faith to heal.
An Alchemist brews a cure from herbs with healing properties.
A Wizard casts a healing spell using the blood of an Angel.

If I'm a Wizard.. I want to Dispel the magical bonds holding the Astral Construct together. if Im a Kung Fu Master.. I want to unravel it's mana threads.

Which verb you use is going to depend more on who is doing the action.

[shadzar]

So: let's assume that you're a wizardy wizard who wizards.

Here's the question:

1. Would you rather "forge a sword out of fire" or "enchant a sword with fire."?
2. Would you rather "conjure a planar portal in the air" or "build a planar portal with your hands"?
3. Would you rather "cast a healing spell" or "distill the essence of healing herbs"
4. Would you rather "summon" a djinn or "contact" a djinn?

I'm legitimately interested in the range of reactions here, they aren't rhetorical questions. That said, I am also trying to to collect ideas and examples for the first half of these. Feel free to post some of your own.

1. enchant a sword. fire, potion, etc doesnt matter how it is all enchanting a sword with the given premise
when not enchanting but just making, i would forge a sword in a forge
when making an enchanted sword out of nothing, not forging one then enchanting it, i would prefer "conjure an enchanted sword" or something like that.

2. conjure X out of thin air.

3. both? spell would be cast, but using herbs would be herbalism.

4. summon would be if bringing it forth to my location (or attempting to do so). contact would be.. well making contact with it, but not either moving from their location to communicate with the other.

[Grek]

1. Neither. "Enchanting" is not a good verb to use because it lacks details. How the fuck do you enchant something? Nobody at the table knows. But forging a sword out of regular old fireplace flames is also unacceptable. My prefered answer for the question of "How do you make a flaming sword?" would be something like, "Petrify a flame using venom of a basilisk. Optionally, do things to the fire to make it burn extra hot to get an extra hot blade. Forge the petrified flame into a sword. Be sure to use protection as not to burn yourself."

2. Conjuring a planar portal in the air is a higher level power than building a planar portal into some architecture.

3. I prefer healing herbs to healing spell, but mythologically speaking, minor healing is handwaved away and Big Important Healing is done via a magic item that doesn't get consumed in the process - touching unicorn horns to the wound, being annointed with the Holy Grail, drinking the Elixir of Life, visiting a Saint, that sort of thing. So, I could see a system where you cast a spell/apply some herbs/say a prayer in order to prevent a wound from getting worse (via infection, tearing it, whatever) and where exceptional healing is done with a magic item that never runs out but can only help one person at a time and possibly has some stipulations as to who can benefit from it.

4. Summoning a djinn is a higher level power than cotacting it. If you can summonm a djinn, then that djinn is your bitch and when you call it comes running. Contacting a djinn means you go out and find a djinn and get it to help. Possibly, there is a pact involved and you become the djinn's bitch. Or maybe there is not bitch in the relationship and you and the djinn are having a one-wish-stand.

5. Binding draconic essence to your chakras is retarded and no heros do that in myth. But they also don't ever drink the dragon's blood either. Monster blood seems like it should be something you use to coat things. Possibly yourself, if you want to go all Nibelungenlied.

6. The fuck is an astral construct?

[rasmuswagner]

Here's the question:

• Would you rather "forge a sword out of fire" or "enchant a sword with fire."?
• Would you rather "conjure a planar portal in the air" or "build a planar portal with your hands"?
• Would you rather "cast a healing spell" or "distill the essence of healing herbs"
• Would you rather "summon" a djinn or "contact" a djinn?

Forging a blade out of fire sounds like something from a myth. "Enchanting a blade" is something that happens in WoW.

Building a portal. As said by others, tactical timescale portals are a much higher level effect than building a portal. In fact, in D&D, it's far beyond the point of everything already being completely retarded (level 12 or so).

Healing is a special case. For the adventurer who takes swords and deathrays to the face on a daily basis, healing needs to just fucking happen all the damn time. since it has to happen, it cannot retain any actual mystique, and it just needs to be over and done with PDQ, without some Real Roleplayer fucktard spending half an hour to describe his dirty patchouli poultice.

summoning a djinn is a long-winded way to create certain magic effects or battlefield control. Contacting one is a cool negotiation scene, but it had better result in demands that other players need to help satisfy, and it had better produce more important effects than "conjure +1 turnip".

[Mask_De_H]

• Holy
• shit,
• who
• cares?

It's contingent on what kind of character you're playing and the method the "m" word works in your particular world. If I'm playing Persona or something, I want to throw monster hearts and tarot cards together in a blender and get a sword, or shoot myself in the head to create a portal or bring forth a djinn. If it's a heartbreaker, how I want to control my SFX depends on if I'm a wizard, a katanamancer, or a Steve.

[ishy]

Building a portal. As said by others, tactical timescale portals are a much higher level effect than building a portal. In fact, in D&D, it's far beyond the point of everything already being completely retarded (level 12 or so).

Why do you assume conjuring is faster than building?

[zeruslord]

Forging a sword is much more metal than enchanting one, but it should have eldritch runes on it or something if it's going to be magic. For major weapons, blind/ancient/badger smiths, dragon blood, starmetal, etc. are a hard requirement. Having a sword made out of actual fire is reserved for jedi and the like.

for PC party travel, I'd rather conjure a small short-term portal, but if you're launching a planar invasion you better build that shit.

healing spells are better in standard D&D assumptions. healing herbs work better when having any magic at all is really impressive.

With djinn, anything you're doing is going to have the trappings of magic - there's going to be a pentacle, and incense and chanting and whatnot, and the genie appears in a burst of smoke. Contact and Summon seem like fundamentally different operations, though. Contact only lets you get information, possibly without the genie ever being physically present, while summoning means you force it into your circle and then make a bargain.

Drinking straight dragon blood is evil and/or barbaric, probably both. Also it just doesn't seem like the best way of getting dragon-power into you. Heart-eating is cool, using tiny amounts of dragon blood in potions is cool, coating things in dragon blood or quenching blades in it is cool. I'm not really into the whole chakra-binding thing, but that might just be because I don't know enough about the actual mythology

Dispelling is a word for guys in pointy hats and funny robes, whereas unraveling mana threads is for shao-lin monks. Neither of them are acceptable verbs for viking berserkers.

[Grek]

Sundering an enchantment sounds more fighter-y like. You hit the spell with your sword and it stops working.

[hogarth]

In a game, the way you word the rules should be consistent in order to avoid unnecessary confusion. That's bad for people who love synonyms, but tough bananas.

The least confusing type of verb to use is one that doesn't already have a generic meaning in ordinary conversation. So "enchanting" a sword is a very poor way to phrase things compared to "spellforging" or "elemental-binding" a sword (feel free to substitute your own favourite bullshit, made-up compound word instead, of course). And yes, those words are horrible and clunky, but at least you don't have lame D&D arguments where "enchant" or "enchanter" means one thing in one place and another thing in another place.