Hackmaster: Other Uses of the Flavor Cantrip

[bobquasit]

1. Cast it on a friend who has fallen in battle with animals or monsters that attack by biting. Give your ally the most bitter, awful taste imaginable. With any luck the creatures will leave him/her alone after one taste.

2. Try casting a nasty flavor on yourself or allies before fighting such creatures (warning: the DM may rule that you yourself will also suffer the effects of the flavor in your own mouth. See if you can develop a tolerance for one particular bad taste. Also, if the bad flavor affects you, it should also affect your enemies if you cast it on them. Think of the possibilities!).

3. Give your whole body a pleasant flavor before that big date!

4. Make alcohol taste like water (this is particularly effective combined with a reversed Neutralize Alcohol spell). Instant magical Mickey Finn!

5. Make your boots taste like leaves, grass, stone, or water. That should make it very hard to track you by smell.

6. Make your rations taste bitter or poisonous, to keep pests and wild animals from eating them when you're not watching (keep another Flavor in reserve to give them a good flavor when you're ready to eat them, of course).

7. Flavor non-magical weapons to make them seem magical (assuming that the DM doesn't rule that there's no magical aura associated with the changed taste).

Anyone have any other ideas? There are clearly lots of possibilities.

Comments

[stairflight.livejournal.com]

What do the other players and DM think of your use of this spell?

Also: what is a Cantrip? Is that a way of saying "spell" in Hackmaster?

[bobquasit.livejournal.com]

A cantrip in D&D and Hackmaster is a 0-level spell. Four of them equal one 1st-level spell - in other words, you can choose to memorize four cantrips in the place of a first-level spell.

The players think it's amusing but maybe creepy (my character does slobber, after all), and the DM awarded me some extra experience points for the concept.

[klyfix.livejournal.com]

Why not make water taste like alcohol, and get into a drinking contest? Kind of like in that one Blackadder episode, except this way it would actually work.

[bobquasit.livejournal.com]

What, call for my "incredibly strong ale"? Wouldn't work, I'm afraid; the whole point of drinking in the setting is that each local bar has something they call a "gut-bruiser", and they serve it to you.

I was lucky, and played things right; when they poured the gut-bruiser for our dwarf, it smoked and steamed a bit. I waved my hand over it and asked innocently "Is it hot?".

"No, you idiot, it's not hot!" shouted the bar-ape/bouncer. But the hand wave was the sole component of the "Neutralize Alcohol" cantrip, so my purpose was achieved.

To my annoyance, the dwarf gained honor points through drinking that damned gut-bruiser.