The following is a collection of info about Marks, collected from Updates, the Tome, the Legends Mailing List, the designers (Edi Brisan, David Wrobel), the New Rules, Peter Knedlhans’s P7 (target: E.B), Hannes Klapf’s revelation about dices, and more.
Marks in general
Marks are wild cards by nature, and their effects are deliberately left mysterious and shadowy.
By Viewing a character, you can see if he/she has a Mark (the report says: “sense of hidden power around him/her”), what type of Mark it is you can find out by Reading/Scrying him/her.
How to get Marks?
* There is a 1% chance a player gets a Mark at Setup (no extra action at setup).
* Influence a bearer and have him/her Gift Mark S30 it to you – but mind the risks.
* Geas or Charm a bearer and have him/her Gift it.
* Activate an item that gives a Mark.
* Fulfill an Adventure that rewards with a Mark.
* By being very brave [or: stupid?] in battle – if you get above 95% wounds, there is a small chance you’ll get a Mark; this chance increases when you get at 99% wounds and are still alive.
Next to the six generic Marks (see p. 9; Destiny, Power, Evil, Wizardry, Divinity, Glory), described in some detail below, there are six secondary marks (Fate, Wealth, Good, Cruelty, Honor, Battle) about which hardly anything is known; the generic Marks may be transferred with a Bestow Mark order (see below), but the secondary Marks may not be transferred.
Effects of Marks
1) You get higher prestige and influence immediately.
* All Marks supply +3 (Effective) Influence and +2 (Effective) Prestige.
2) At production, you may get your characteristics, attributes or skills increased with 1 point, depending on marks and skills that you have.
* The chances are 5% for Wizardry, Destiny, and Glory, and 10% for Evil, Divinity and Power. Some Marks favour some skills/characteristics a bit extra (point 4).
3) In combat, you’ll see unexplained benefits.
* Marks have variable effects on combat and they are all to increase the attack values/PC etc of the holders. They are not clearly detailed on purpose and they do bring in some randomness that makes predictability a little tough when you have Marks…
* The most dramatic possible increases can be seen by Power and Glory, giving the character the effect of increased personal combat (PC) levels of between 0-10. [One player reported a +2000AF und +100CF as a result of that]
* The chances to increase your Personal Combat during battles are increased by Marks of Power and Glory.
* Some weapons give higher bonusses to bearers of Marks.
4) Things related to the very nature of the Mark. See also p. 9.
* Wizardry increases Spell Research (S11) chances by +50% (i.e. +10 base arcane levels), increased arcane mana recovery of +8 points (some say: 3 to 8 points).
* Destiny has a 5% chance of increasing Base Prestige with +1 each production. It gives a general and substantial diplomacy bonus (some say: ca. 30% added to your INF rating). Mana recovery is also reported for this Mark (3-8 points).
* Glory has an increased chance of increasing PC (1-10 points) in combat above normal chances, plus some other battle bonuses (see point 3).
* Power will cure all wounds at production (but no ressurection and no curing of plague/pox itself, just wounds); will give +3 mana recovery (some say: 3 to 8); will increases spell research chances by 10% (i.e. +2 base arcane levels)(some say: 15%); some positive effects in battle, including a greater chance of increasing PC (1-10 points) in combat (point 3); diplomacy bonusses (+5 levels) against Lycanthrope/Werestatusses. Many players report that the Mark of Power also seems to increase the chance of your Arcane skill going up when casting spells.
* Evil has a negative effect on beauty; the owner has a 80-95% chance of loosing 1 beauty each turn; diplomacy bonusses (+5 levels) towards undead statusses.
* Divinity has a 3% (slim) chance of a dead carrier self-resurrecting himself at production; +6 to +8 Holy Mana recovery; greater chance of Priest skill to go up at production than other skills (cf. point 1); diplomacy bonusses (+ 5 levels) against religious statusses.
* Players report increases in skill rating and attributes (+1) by different Marks during production.
* Players report that having a Good religion and a Mark of Evil, or an Evil religion with a Mark of Good, may result in insanity at every production. Other players never see this happen, so it remains uncertain.
* The non-standard Mark of Cruelty is said to give a small chance that you will torture a prisoner to death…
5) At production, you may get an additional Character Action.
* This extra action is lasting for the rest of your game.
* The chance of getting an extra character action is 5% for Wizardry, Destiny and Glory, and 10% for Evil, Divinity and Power.
* You cannot loose character actions because of Marks [the Mark of Evil was falsely rumoured to cause so with sponsors with a good religion]. If you have no Mark, you cannot gain an extra action.
* A character can NEVER have more than 5 Character Actions in total.
* The chances of gaining an extra Action by marks are NOT additive for more marks. So if you have two Marks you will not double your chance of gaining one extra Action (so chance is never more than 10% at best).
* Note you ONLY can get 1 extra action per character per production! Never 2 or more. If you have more than one mark, the system takes the highest chance they have (5% or 10%), and with that determines the chance of one extra action. So when you have all six marks, you do NOT get 6 dice roles (one for each mark), no, you get ONLY 1 dice role (of 5% or 10%) to determine whether you get one extra action. ONE chance at ONE action.
6) Various strange things may happen when you have a combination of marks.
* Such synergetic effects are generally of a subtle nature and at times may cause what appears to be an increase in random factor range as the players see it.
7) Marks give diplomacy bonusses, depending on the supernatural status of the target (and/or sponsor?).
* Evil needs an Undead Status on the target, Divinity needs a Religious Status on the target (sponsor?), while Destiny is unrestricted (so always gives random positive effects on any influence attempt).
8) A character with Marks who declares another character his Blood Enemy will have all kinds of nasty things happening to that Blood Enemy.
* The damage is only done at the time of declaration of the blood enemy. It (wounds, plague, etc) can be removed normally by the victim and will not return unless he is declared blood enemy again by another characater. So there being a mark involved does NOT manifestly affect things at production. If you give away the mark, the damage was already done, and this loss of mark doesn’t effect things. You could therefor declare a blood enemy and gift the mark and then nex turn declare again with the other character.
* If the other character (Blood Enemy) had corresponding Marks, there will be no effect! So it’s always a good idea to have marks yourself, to neutralize the offensive value of identical Marks on the sponsor when you are the target.
* Effects:
- – Power will give +5% wounds
- – Divinity will cause either Insanity or 20% wounds and Pox
- – Evil will cause either Insanity or Black Death.
- – Wizardry is uncertain (no mana recovery in the declaration month?)
- – Glory will cause a level 8 curse.
- – Destiny is uncertain (no effects ever reported, so perhaps there are none)
* Note that also being Blood Enemies in itself has various effects. The most dramatic effect occurs if your blood enemy, as army commander in his army, is directly opposite to you being army commander (slot 9) in your army: then your Base Tactics will get a boost of about 50% depending on rounding.
In physical combat you will see an increase in your attack values if the blood enemy is on the field and another increase if you directly fight him. These values may not be reflected always in the statistical overviews as they shift in the combat rounds depending on how you are fighting, but they can help to explain to the number crunchers why their hit values are so irregular in a long combat.
Gifting Marks
The S30 order can have very nasty effects on the one giving away his Mark! Not only the transfer may fail, but the giver is nearly always harmed (the intended receiver never gets damage) – the mildest case being a lecture from the angry godhead. A typical example from a turn:
Your action to transfer your Mark of Wizardry to Mr X fails.
You hear a greater voice booming from the universe about you:
‘You are a serious disppointment
who are you to decide what may be done with our gifts?’
At which point you fall on you knees and grasping at the ground ahead
of you, you chant: ‘OH, Great One I am not worthy.’
With a disgusting sigh the world about you responds:
‘As well we have discovered, and you are even less worthy now than before.’
With that the moment is gone and you discover that your essence has been
reduced by a loss of certain attributes:
Strength reduced by 2
Dexterity reduced by 1
Constitution reduced by 2
Beauty reduced by 1
Influence reduced by 1
Base Prestige reduced by 2
Personal Combat (PC) reduced by 2
Skill of Assassin is reduced by 2
Skill of Stealth is reduced by 2
Skill of Summoner is reduced by 1
Insanity overides your being!
Skill and attribute losses are always 1-2 points, and the same with prestige loss; insanity also always follows in these typical cases when things go wrong (1 out of 5??). Moreover, added to point losses and insanity, infection with Poison or Plague also happens (so make sure not to be wounded or in a town before a production when trying this…). Note that things may go wrong when the transfer happens or when it fails. The worst case scenario seems to be that on top of all these things, the transfer not just fails but the Mark is LOST, and you get a negative Mark (like Cruelty) in return (and there is no known way to get rid of such a secondary Mark!).
This article is reproduced with kind permission from “Aayko’s The Legends Corner”.