You'd think that any demons who did know this would be trying to use it lots and lots to build up their reserves, right? That and it can give you spells too, which I tend to forget under the munchkin assumption that I will have unlimited wealth and willing teachers to buy tutelage of existing spells from so only the permanent PPE matters...
I'm sorta wondering about cumulative use too. Say for example you have bad luck and always roll the minimum 10% of PPE theft and 5 spells, and then you beat the odds and Resurrect them despite the -20%.
If they originally had 10 spells and 100 PPE, they'll come back with 5 spells and 90 PPE. If you repeat the ritual on them, do you steal their remaining 5 spells?
The PPE is a tougher question since it's non-static: do you steal 10% of their new current amount (9/90) or of their initial amount or of their original amount (another 10% of 100 = 10)
Plus should that -20% be cumulative so they'll be -40% the next time? That has the benefit of limiting how much spells/PPE you can get from a target, but has the downside of making HOD the perfect way to make an enemy progressively non-resurrectable, whereas a fixed -20% would mean some super-god could always bring them back.
I'm sort of at a loss as to how you go about learning Demon Magic too... pg 177 does say:
- only known to demons, dark gods, Blood Mages, Soulmancers, evil Wizards and other practitioners steeped in dark and nefarious arts
Even if you took "evil wizards" to refer to the Palladium RPG's OCC, there's probably a decent amount of them who are evil, what with all of them for some reason knowing a ritual involving the drinking of human blood to learn spells...
Plus "other practitioners" is incredibly flexible-sounding, I'd certainly think it would apply to many-a-Shifter.
Soul Harvesters seem like prime candidates to learn this. They can already steal PPE+spells using their OCC ability but they have limited storage space for that, so I think they would love to have HOD.
We're also told "The Splugorth" know this magic, though I'm not exactly sure which members of them. The AIs? High Lords? The witches?
In terms of starting spells / spells from level-up it's not entirely clear what OCCs might be able to select these....
"as do Demon Priests, Demon High Priests" sounds like both these OCCs can learn them, even though looking at DB10, pg 29 and pg 30 only list fixed spells known at specific levels... no optional selections. The verbs used as "taught" + "acquire" though... so would this mean the DPs and DHPs only have guaranteed (guideline?) minimums and they can be taught other spells too, just like LLWs / Shifters?
It's weird since usually Priests seem more like Mystics where they can't be taught spells.
