Wizards and Pregnancy

[Lerytha]

NB: This is not a negative reaction to any roleplay in which this was an issue today. It is merely to clarify something I feel I need clarified, so I can continue to act the way my character acts, knowing it is ICly justified (just as people being horrified is equally ICly justified)

Should pregnant wizards (female only) use magic at all?

Ever since my character was pregnant, she has steered clear of the obviously altering spells, like: water breathing (never know what affect breathing water might have on the wee babies), polymorphing, change sex, trollish vigour, and other major altering spells.

Basically, with all the spells I use as my character, I try and think what affect it will have on the babies. I do not get involved in combat (that's an obvious one), but I admit I still use stone skin spells, teleportation spells, and other things like that. I admit, were my wizard less adept at teleportation spells I would not, but she's very good at them.

So, I was wondering what the opinions of the MUD base were. Not IC (I think people can disagree more IC, but OOC, rules-wise, we can pretty much agree).

Do you think pregnancy = no magic?
Do you think pregnancy = some magic?
Do you think all magic is absorbed by the children and so any spell is alright?

Largely, my pregnancy's almost over, but I'm sure this thread would be useful to other pregnant wizards (female).

Thanks in advance! And let me re-iterate, this is not knocking anyone IC, just OOC curiosity.

~Ol

[Oghma]

I've always thought that the mud supported the idea that the strain and energy of magic use is dangerous for pregnant mothers, just as adventuring is dangerous for non wizard mothers. I think honestly, the only time I could see the magic used would be as a last line of self defense. My opinion is that moderation of everything is important, or the results can very.

[Horace]

Strictly from a rules stand point, no harm would come to the child. It'd be a lot like an ettin that casted magic - it wouldn't effect one of the heads horribly, they're one creature. Same would go for conjoined twins.

But it's awesome to encourage an IC perspective to spell casting over what we as players know to be the case ooc.

Although /anything/ can go wrong if the purpose is to further a story. And if that happens I vote for the George and Kuato mishap adventure a la Total Recall. Open your mind!

You'd be a lot more likely to mess up your child because of the constant vomiting than from self cast magic (stictly by the rules).

[Maybel]

Should pregnant wizards (female only) use magic at all?

I would think pregnant MALE wizards shouldn't use magic at all either!!

[Nedylene]

Personally I find any altering spells (stone skin, dragonskin, barkskin, water breathing, polymorph.. err.. you get it), Any offensive spells and any teleportation spells should NOT be used while pregnant.

That said.. Things like fly, comprehend languages, armor, shield, etc I don' have a problem with. But, when you use magic you channel the weave. The weave has an effect on your body which means it has effect on your babie's body. Magic, ANY magic.. can potentially harm an unborn child. In many of the books they do hint at magic users "vacationing" taking leave etc while with child.

[Horace]

I think the main point is where do you begin to try to read into fantastical situations to make your own house rules, and when to just look at the rules and give a hard answer from that.

To me it sounds like the consensus on this game is that magic is likely to harm the child, much like being a drunk during pregnancy. More than likely the baby will be fine and just a little underweight, but there's still a real chance of fetal alcohol syndrome. So is magic more or less dangerous than alcohol? Strenuous exercise? Weightlessness?

There isn't a set answer. But from strictly an ooc core rules stand point, there would be no harm done to the child unless the caster dabbles in wild magic, or casts in a wild magic area.

If there is a house rule, I think there should be a sticky post for all house rules.

EDIT: And by house rule, I don't mean any difference in mechanics...that'd be a ton. But major stuff like your child exploding if you cast magic.

[Harroghty]

I agree with Horace:

(1) Taking an in-character approach to this issue is good.
(2) I think it merits some kind of policy from the administration.

Objectively, I have not ever seen a rule regarding this issue (because, I believe, it is mostly a "house rule" issue). Subjectively, accounts can vary wildly. I personally would add spells such as stone skin to the list of "obviously altering spells". Someone else may disagree (as Ol apparently does) and that is fine but the I think it would be beneficial if the administration set some ground rules either from a consensus or to become one.

Cheers.

[Nedylene]

I just have a question for those woman who use transport spells while pregnant.. To use a transport spell what happens to your body? What of the stories of wizards who teleported and half of them got stuck through a wall? Those who astral walked and found themselves stuck in a plane or a place between planes?

[Lerytha]

I think its a question also, of how skilled the wizard is? If a wizard is skilled enough to know their teleport spell never backfires, is it safe? If it is an OOC ruling that teleporting is completely, always unpredictable, then that obviously needs to be taken into account with an IC perspective.

(I have since ammended my views of stone skin, so have added that to the already-compiled list of spells my character shouldn't cast).

Does the discussion above agree that all transmutation is bad (pretty much), that battle spells are alright (but what pregnant woman goes into battle?), and that teleporting/transport spells are still debatable? Personally, I would be willing to go with a consensus here. If most people think teleportation is too dangerous, then in a sense, that forms (IC) "accepted" belief... i.e, people all say teleportation is dangerous when carrying a child, so most wizards abide by it, even if it isn't strictly true.

Maybe the imms don't need to do an official ruling, but the discussion here could form the views of anyone else considering pregnancy and magic.

All input has been really helpful so far!

~Ol

[Horace]

In my eyes teleportation is no more dangerous to the child than it is for the mother.

Teleportation is always dangerous without it being Greater Teleport (or in FK terms reasonably high teleport skill). Teleport is one of the few spells in the game that can go terribly wrong without it being wild magic.

The great thing about component magic or sorcerer magic is that you know the out come of your spell before you cast it. You can't screw it up bad enough that you wind up harming yourself (which includes your baby). It's not unlike someone shooting a bow, you can be terrible and string slap yourself a few times, but you aren't going screw up in such a fantastic way that the arrow somehow gets turned around and stabs into you. It's formula magic, not wild magic.

Only times it will go wrong in a way that it will do hp damage (with exception of spells like teleport that have a chance of failure), is if you're in a wild magic zone/casting wild magic or are experimenting with new formulas for your formula magic.

Strictly from a mechanical sense, the only way casting a spell can harm you (which includes your child) is if the result of casting the spell does HP damage.

Obviously this is a roleplaying game, and I /love/ that people take into account reasonable concerns IC without looking at the known results out of character. I'm just giving a strictly out of character answer, based on the core mechanics of DnD.

IC the concern of teleport and being stuck half in a mountain/wall/anything, should be as big of a deterrent without child as it is with child. Because in both cases you're pretty much DRT.

[Isaldur]

Horace, I've never seen any information in any book of any edition about these "core rules" involving pregnancy. The lack of writing involving about it does not necessarily mean that it is safe for the character to go around casting spells willy-nilly while pregnant. It just means whoever wrote the rules did not expect something like this to happen in their games, which is why there are always blurbs in the beginning of these books explaining the importance of House Rules to help fill in any gaps or change whatever the Dungeon Master (In this case the Admins) would like.

Either way, I know before my absence casting spells while pregnant was just as dangerous as getting into a belly-bumping contest with a mountain Ram. If that policy/house rule has changed I do not know, but I would think either way it should be clarified when applying for a pregnancy.

[Nedylene]

I think alot of the times we forgot what these spells are that we are actually using. We hide behind the code because the code cannot fail.. But lets break it down a bit.

Pass Plant: You move your body through plant life which has a metabolism that varies per species and per seasons. Depending on what you step into, what you step out of and what time of the year you are in your body acclimates to the plant life. A perfectly healthy person will likely not sense it, but what effect would this have on an unborn?

Shadow Walk: This I have to paste... In the region of shadow, you move at a rate of 50 miles per hour, moving normally on the borders of the Plane of Shadow but much more rapidly relative to the Material Plane. Thus, you can use this spell to travel rapidly by stepping onto the Plane of Shadow, moving the desired distance, and then stepping back onto the Material Plane. .. You're plane hopping baby and into the plane of shadow. Ever really sat and THOUGHT about that? I don't care how skilled you are at the spell.. skill means you can step into the plane of shadow quite readily.. But do you know what lives in the plane of shadow?

Astral Walk : Same as Shadow walk except stepping through the Astral Plane

Teleport: We all know what teleport is. This one can go haywire and FK Does NOT have "Teleport without Fail" Which is a completely seperate spell. There is ALWAYS a chance of failing with this spell and this spell can really wonk you up if you fail.

Tree Stride : See above with pass plant

Gate : This may be the only teleport type spell that does actually put your body in physical harm.. BUT .. it does use an extreme amount of your personal energy. This is a tough spell to cast and is draining.

Which transport spells am I missing? Feel like I am missing one

[Lerytha]

Summon? That actually stuns you to summon someone though, so an immediate and obvious no with a pregnancy.

Word of recall? Not sure about that one.

[Horace]

Horace, I've never seen any information in any book of any edition about these "core rules" involving pregnancy.

You're right, it doesn't. But what the core rules do show us is how damage is done to a PC...which is represented by hit points. If a spell doesn't result in HP damage or attribute/skill adjustments your body is exactly the same as it was previously after the spell wears off, which means it couldn't have harmed the child.

Other entities that could be considered two beings in one body are unharmed by casting magic. Though in a wild magic zone I could see an ettin turning his neighbor into a ducks head, it wouldn't happen with formulaic spells in a normal magic area. This is probably the best evidence in the core rules to show that magic works...but outside of that, if there isn't a specific rule against how something works, with special contingencies, then it works normally. This is where house rules would come in.

I'm not attempting to be argumentative, I sincerely like the fact it's being looked into so much. From what I gathered the topic was an ooc look at the rules of dnd and how it'd affect a pregnant spell caster. I'm simply stating that there is no written difference between a pregnant caster and a nonpregnant caster, which means there is no difference. Just like there is no stated adjustments between the physiological differences in male and female casters, regardless of what spell you're casting, even though we could come up with examples...since there is no stated rule adjustment between the two, the canon answer would be that there is no difference mechanically.

Awesome thread, I'm enjoying reading it.

[Maybel]

Okay put it into IRL... if you were prego... and there was a POSSIBILITY of your child being harmed in any way by teleporting... what would you do? I don't think there should be any IMM ruling it's all up to you and how much you value your unborn child's life, there is no need to look through books, or fine some ruling in books because it is purely based on your characters decision...

Word of Recall i am not sure how that spell works actually, i know supplicate recall would be the safest thing to use seeing as your using your Gods favor to guide you safe passage back home

Anything that would drain your energy = bad for the baby

[Nedylene]

My disclaimer is that I have never been pregnant. Ever.

That said, I have three nephews and two more on the way and I have been active in every single one of those pregnancies. It is TOUGH on a girl's body and on a girl's hormones. I have had a friend miscarry due to stress once. Normal, plain ol.. stress. If stress can do that, what does magic do? The body's system is fragile, a woman's even more so. Many many woman are on bedrest the last month or two of their carrying time. Being pregnant on FK is a very restricting roleplay. It is fully disclosed when you apply and when you are approved. It is not meant to be easy and it is challenging which is why many choose to forgo that part when rpin a relationship on the mud. Some people thrive on it... Hell (and don't take this the wrong way) Go look at Danica. She has been pregnant many times over and she does an exceptional job at the rp. She also rps the restrictions well and the further along in her pregnancy the less she does.. Just like someone in real life. (sorry for using you as an example, you're just a good one) In fact I would like to hear her opinion on this thread, I bet you if anyone remembers the original restrictions under the old rule it would be her.

[Lerytha]

Conversely, my mum has had seven children (six of whom survived) and my grandmother had fourteen children (twelve of whom survived). My mum was attending courses in university up till the very day she had me. She was still travelling to and from work whilst pregnant with others of my family. She would come in exhausted and start tea, etc, etc.

My grandmother was an absolute trooper, refusing to by mollycoddled or anything. And I mean, by the time you have your fourteenth baby, I'm sure you could teach a midwife a thing or two (or fourteen!).

Then you have the old-fashioned tales of women in Africa going to work in the fields, giving birth, then standing right back up and carrying on.

I will freely admit that my roleplaying of being pregnant has been coloured by my own personal experiences of pregnancy. I know Danica roleplays her pregnancies very well, but I sort of get a bit nervous when by that implication, it means that anyone who doesn't roleplay a pregnancy exactly in that was, is roleplaying badly? If that wasn't your intention, I fully apologise. I'm not offended either, just worried that it comes across as someone who is playing a pregnant woman not having thought about the consequences, or the possibilities.

Basically, I try to translate what I know of women who have been pregnant (so, my mother and my grandmother), into FK. The equivalent to my mum carrying on her education even when at full term, and still raising the other three children she had at that time, and working... in FK, the equivalent is probably a wizard still casting a few spells.

And again: my mother said on the occasional party, she would have the odd glass of wine whilst carrying me and my brother and sisters. Nowdays, most women are (quite understandably) very, very wary about that. But a calculated decision was made there, about one or two glasses of wine in a party, and a choice was made.

How does this link to wizards and FK?

Well, it struck me that we all have our own impressions of pregnancy. I've always seen women just get on with it. Not that I object to women taking extra care, lying down, resting, because some women cope with it like that (most women?). So all my experiences of pregnancy were sort of boiled together and added into one RP. I decided my character would be more "no, I'm still doing that", "who says that's wrong?" because (for good or ill) that's the sort of character she is.

That means she's been criticised for sticking her little finger into a glass of port and licking it. Which is taking teetotal pregnancy to an extreme, I feel.

So, just to assure people, the OOC basis for a character's decisions (i.e, the research I did before I applied) can still lead to different ideas about pregnancy.

So, the question that could be asked, is: if you're so confident in your RP being right, why ask a question like this?

Simple: because if it is RPed by an imm that something I do would lose a baby because of magic, there is a high chance my character (being a long-standing, intelligent mage) would know about it. And if she knows about it, she wouldn't do it, because she's a mother and doesn't want her children to die. But if there isn't anything, then she can quite confidently say, "No, there is no danger here. This is what I am doing."

Just to finish, after this rambling, rather generic look at pregnancy, it is becoming apparent that most people agree with transport/transmutation spells being bad.

Would the idea that transport/transmutation spells being bad, but all others being good?

PS: Also, magic doesn't strain you. It does with certain spells, yes. But generally, a wizard of any skill would find it no more straining to cast an identification spell than a non-wizard would to lift a block of cheese (in terms of effort, not concentration). And that leads me to the point again, of different women acting differently during pregnancy. Some women think a certain level of strain is good for you (my great-grandmother apparently used to say to my grandmother, that you need to keep working, or the baby gets lazy! Incorrect biologically, I know, but so many healthy children does sort of mean working during pregnancy isn't dangerous). Others think you need constant rest. There should be some flexibility between one view of pregnancy, and another.

Thanks for all your contributions so far.

~Ol

[Nedylene]

It is relitive but I would debate on magic causing strain. Many of the FR books do show mages tiring after using alot of magic. Work and magic are two different things. A pregnant FM works hard during her pregnancy but doesn't use magic in the medium. I honestly would like someone who remembers the old rule to speak up. Would like to hear Waukeen's opinion too.

And no I did not mean that everyone had to RP a certain way and they if you don't you are rping wrong. She just gives a good example =)

[Horace]

The problem with FR fiction is that the people writing the books are writers...they know as much about the way magic works in FR as we do about epanalepsis and interrogative adverbs. They're great books and very often used in the metaplot of Forgotten Realms in the gaming books, but using them to prove a mechanical instance is hard because then you'd have to know all cases of which a pregnant character in any FR fiction ever cast a spell, and any time it didn't end in disaster or the character wasn't concerned is a strike against it. And proving negatives is really difficult, in most cases impossible.

Saying out loud what is literally happening during the spell can make it sound more dangerous than it is. If I say step by step exactly what my cell phone does to complete a phone call, it can sound sci fi impressive...it doesn't make my cell phone particularly powerful or deadly. Remember magic is /magic/, and for someone who is adept in the arcane it is no more dangerous for the caster than a kid playing with a slingshot.

When it comes down to it, very few spells are written to cause physical or mental strain - and hardly any spells have a % chance for catastrophic failure. After all spells are cast, the body is exactly the same as it was to begin with (besides Wish). I don't see any reason to believe this aspect would change because of pregnancy.

Admittedly this topic is looking further into the metaverse of dungeons and dragons than the authors intended - and I think that's cool and it inspires people to really begin to think about the FR world as a living breathing place. But if you go too far into the arcane portion of things, then it's arguable to go to far into the divine portion of things and how/if divine healing would work on the unborn (it totally would!).

Basically what it comes down to is either needing a house rule or just a gentleman's agreement with those who play pregnant PC's. House Rule benefiting all who are interested in playing pregnant PC's, and gentleman's agreement benefiting everyone by not involving more red tape house rules with new pregnant pc players being told what is expected of them.

I don't care either way, since it doesn't effect me - but I /love/ talking about how stuff would work that the authors never intended to be looked into.

[Brodnur]

This topic raises an intriguing notion, I think. If, say, mother-to-be, that happens to be a wizard of whatever school, were to deliberately cast body altering spells to attempt to create either a new, better form of life, or to simply alter the baby so as to further her own life goals. I mean, genetics aside, which haven't even been invented yet in FK, the possiblities are endless as to the RP aspect.