Taint Basics

"Taint" is just a general term for some imbalance or progressive problem a character faces. It can come in many different forms and it's up to the Gamemaster which, if any, forms of taint exist in the campaign setting. No matter what type of taint waits to poison characters, all types share certain features:
*Taint serves to weaken and penalize characters who succumb to it. Because it weakens character, it serves as a threat which characters will be encouraged to avoid and if they are exposed to it, an obstacle to overcome.
*Taint is progressive. It is not something which will destroy a character in a single round of combat, a minute, an hour, or even a day. Taint erodes a character slowly, over the course of many sessions. In small amounts, it might be a nuisance, almost an afterthought. But as it mounts, slowly and inevitably, it consumes the character.
*Taint is more easily gained than lost. Characters who expose themselves to taint may begin to suffer from it after only a few moments, but it can take hours or even days or weeks of work to treat it and cleanse a character of taint.
*Taint is a consequence, not a punishment. It's a feature of a campaign that helps evoke an atmosphere by providing a sense of danger that permeates certain, forbidden aspects of the world. Not all taint may be easily avoided, and some may be rather ubiquitous in a setting, but it is something characters face because of the choices the players make.
==What Taint Can Represent==
Taint can be anything from a derangement of the mind to a corruption of the soul to an affliction of the body. Examples include:
*Corruption
*Fear
*Illness, especially serious, chronic illness
*Madness
*Mutation
*Poison
==Taint Dice==
In d20 Advanced, Taint is represented by a Dice Pool. As you become more and more tainted, you add more dice to the pool. However, unlike other Dice Pools, you do not lose dice from the pool after you resolve a check with the pool. And unlike other Dice Pools, you resolve a check using the lowest result in the pool, which can be significantly lower than your other results. Thus having many Taint Dice can drastically reduce your odds of succeeding on a check
==Acquiring Taint==
Once you’ve decided on the cause of a particular kind of Taint, you need to decide how it is aquired. What sorts of choices can a character make that will risk them becoming Tainted, or how frequently will they be exposed to Taint?
===Taint as a Consequence===
Doing something that causes Taint may lead to a possibility of acquiring a Taint Die. The best mechanic for this is a skill check (usually using a resistance): if the check succeeds, the character acquires no taint; if it fails the character acquires 1 (or more) taint die. The type of resistance (and the difficulty class) depends on the type of taint, and often the cause:
*Fortitude checks are best suited to biological Taint affecting the character's body and health.
*Will checks are better for taint that's moral, psychological, or spiritual in nature, and can also be suited for biological Taint caused by willful actions (such as the psychic feedback from a device causing biological taint).
*Other skills and resistances are generally less-suited for taint.
The Difficulty Class of the check is based on the cause of the Taint. Did the character commit a minor infraction or a terrible, mortal, sin? Was it a small dose of mutagenic energy or a massive one? Was the action disturbing or sanity-shattering? As a general guideline, the DC for a taint check should be 10 + half the campaign's power level on average, giving most characters a fair chance of success.
TAINT DC	TAINT DC
DC 	Situation
10 	Passing exposure to Taint. A nominal dose of mutagenic radiation.
15 	Mild exposure to Taint. A cold but not necessarily evil moral choice, such as abandoning a child in danger because it would be too risky for you to save him.
20 	Moderate exposure to Taint. Stumble upon the scene of a gruesome murder.
25 	Severe exposure to Taint. Total submersion for several minutes in a lake of mutagenic ooze.
30 	Extreme exposure to Taint. Witness the sanity-shattering arrival of a horror of cosmic proportions.
Another good way for characters to acquire taint is through extra effort normally covered by spending Hero Dice. Some or all of the uses of Extra Effort, particularly those involving FX, may cause taint. So, for example, rather than spend a hero die to perform an FX stunt or enhance an FX, you may instead voluntarily incur taint. Players have a choice of spending a hero die or gaining a taint die. This keeps hero dice useful, but gives the edge to those willing to suffer taint.
===Taint as a Disease===
Alternatively, Taint may represent a slow, steady deterioration, inexorably weakening a Tainted character. The character who contracts it may not do anything to worsen their Taint after contracting it, but they must constantly struggle against it. In this form, a Tainted character must check to see if they become more tainted on a regular basis. For example, a terrible disease may be represented this way; after initially contracting a particular disease, a character must make a Fortitude check every day to avoid gaining more Taint Dice.
==Effects of Taint==
So what do taint dice do once you've acquired them? Generally, taint imposes some sort of disadvantage (or, again, there would be no reason to avoid it). Taint may also provide some benefit, although it's usually outweighed by the drawbacks.
===Drawbacks===
The most common effect of taint is the imposition of ill-effects called drawbacks. These drawbacks may include things normally considered Complications, like personality quirks, unusual appearance, addictions, and so forth.
It's up to the GM whether or not characters have to acquire Taint-related drawbacks immediately, or if they can "defer" some taint and not acquire a drawback until their Taint reaches a certain total. A good guideline is to allow the player to choose, but to require a drawback when taint reaches a total of 5 dice and to require the drawback to have a value equal to the unallocated Taint dice. So, the longer you put off acquiring a Taint-related drawback, the worse it becomes, going from a minor (1-die) drawback to a very major (5-dice) drawback.
Gamemasters can also create particular structures for Taint-related drawbacks, such as a "pyramid" structure, where the first drawback can be as little as 1 Die, but each successive drawback must be worth 1 Die more. So the second Taint drawback must be 2 Dice, then 3 Dice, and so forth. The time between acquiring drawbacks increases, but so does their severity.
The GM also decides what kinds of drawbacks are appropriate and may allow players to choose them, or impose them directly. Certain kinds of drawbacks suit particular kinds of taint, as shown in the Examples of Taint section.
===Ability Loss===
A particular drawback of Taint may be loss of Abilities. For example, a character may lose a point of Charisma (or some other ability) for every Taint Die acquired. This loss affects the character normally, and if a score is debilitated, the effects become more severe. This effect is best for taint representing a kind of disease or other slow erosion of the character's physical or mental health.
===Benefits===
Taint may also have some beneficial side-effects, although the drawbacks should generally outweigh them. The most common benefit, apart from the benefits encouraging characters to risk Taint in the first place, is to make Taint dice a prerequisite for acquiring certain traits.
For example, if you want to make magic a "forbidden power" if your campaign (perhaps including some other troublesome FX like Mind Control and Summon), you can decide a character must have a certain level of moral or psychological taint before being able to invest character points in magical FX. This makes all sorcerers tainted by their arts, whatever their original intentions for learning magic might have been.
This kind of "taint prerequisite" is an effective tool for controlling access to certain traits and creating the right feel for certain kinds of settings, particularly those where power (or certain kinds of power) comes at a price.
===Taint Limits===
The Gamemaster should decide if there's a limit to how much Taint you can accumulate and, if so, what it is and what happens when you reach the limit.
The effects of Taint may create an inherent limit. For example, if each Taint die results in the loss of a point of Constitution, then characters die when their Constitution scores drop below -5, so they can't have more taint than their Constitution score, plus 6. On the other hand, some Taint effects don't have built-in limits. Theoretically, a character could continue accumulating Taint-related drawbacks indefinitely, for example.
It can be useful to set a maximum Taint limit for two reasons. The first is to keep Taint undesirable and give players reasons to avoid it. The other is to provide some dramatic tension as characters draw closer to an ultimate effect of accumulating Taint.
Whatever the exact effect of reaching the Taint limit, the game system effect is the character is taken out of the player's hands, becoming a non-player character. This can be due to permanent insanity, irredeemable corruption, total physical (or psychological) transformation, or even death.
Where to set the Taint limit depends on how soon you want characters to get there, but a limit of between 10 and 20 Taint dice is a good guideline. A lower limit (around 10 dice) is best for settings where any Taint is a serious concern and Tainted characters often hover close to the limit. A higher limit is better for those campaigns where Taint is a problem, but rarely gets so out of hand that a character succumbs to it completely.
==Eliminating Taint==
Once you have Taint, can you get rid of it and, if so, how? Generally, getting rid of Taint should be possible, but difficult, and it should again be a choice made by players to do what's necessary to rid their characters of their Taint.
The process of eliminating taint should be difficult enough for Taint to remain a significant risk. If it were easy to get rid of, everyone would do it. Some possible means of eliminating Taint include the following.
* Abstinence: The character must abstain from some activity to get rid of the Taint, usually whatever caused the Taint in the first place. For example, if using certain FX causes Taint, then the character has to abstain from using those FX for a time (which may be an inconvenience). A minimum of a week per Taint die is recommended, although it could be longer.
* Penance: The character has to take some action to address the cause of the Taint in order to get rid of it. For example, Taint caused by wrongdoing might require the character redress those wrongs and seek forgiveness to remove the Taint, while Taint reflecting a character out of tune with his nature might require actions more in tune with the character's true self to eliminate the problem.
* Treatment: There is some treatment able to remove Taint. Generally, it should be time-consuming, difficult, expensive, or all three. Physical Taint might be treatable using medicine, and characters could remove psychological Taint through therapy. The GM should decide the course of treatment, any check(s) required, and how much Taint each treatment removes.
Category:Rulebook
Category:Action
Category:Taint