Love Potion / Tabletop Games

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• 7th Sea: "Godiva's Tears", a powerful aphrodisiac used to lower a victim's inhibitions (and gives said victims a penalty towards resisting any Seduction attempts). Likewise, master practitioners of sorte magic can strengthen or even create Passion strands between two targets out of the blue, albeit temporary.
• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • 3.5 has a love potion that essentially functioned as a Charm Person spell, complete with limited duration. It should be noted that the Philter of Love actually has two effects. The Charm Person effect was stronger, but wore off after a relatively short period of time. The infatuation effect? Not so much.
  • For D&D 5th edition, the philter of love has the dubious honor of being the only item removed from Adventurers League (as of season 10), as opposed to not having been available from the start, after a player used it to seduce a campaign boss and steal his hoard of magic items.
• GURPS Technomancer doesn't shy away from the moral implications, outright calling the Elixir of Love (along with the Elixirs of Lechery and Drunkenness) a "date-rape potion."
• Rifts: Faerie food may work like this, depending on which food it is. Beefcake, for instance, will cause a love-at-first-sight effect towards men by any woman who eats it. Their version of Eros also has his arrows: Gold as the classic Love Arrow, Pink Affection Arrows, (target feels generously amorous and will confess their feelings to anyone they're already in love with), and lead Anti-Love Arrows.
• Scion: One of the signature characters is Donnie Rhodes, Scion of Aphrodite. Like Aphrodite's other son, Cupid, he has Eros and Anteros, the arrows of love and hatred; unlike Cupid, these take the form of two gold-plated Berettas. At one point in the fiction, he threatens to hit a fellow Scion with Eros and leave the guy wanting him until the end of time, spurning his advances all the while.
• The World of Darkness:
  • Genius: The Transgression: Players can create mind control devices; using them sexually is the second highest level of Transgression alongside rape or serial murder.
  • Mage: The Awakening: Mages sufficiently powerful with Mind magic can force someone to fall in love (or lust) with someone else (not necessarily the mage). If potent enough, it can completely overide a person's natural inclinations or sexuality (for example, forcing a heterosexual homophobe to fall in love with a man). It's noted that many mages would consider the use of this spell to be akin to rape. A lot of the high-level mage powers raise difficult moral questions, and a lot of them have a lot of Power Perversion Potential. Life can be used to rewire someone's biology for similar purposes, time-loops are easily exploited for seduction, and using Fate to tie someone's destiny to someone else's forcibly isn't even a high-level power.
  • Vampire: The Masquerade and Vampire: The Requiem: The blood bond, or vinculum, has similar effects to a love potion. A human or vampire who's made to drink another vampire's blood three times becomes bound to them for a long time; as long as the bond is in effect, they can't bring a hand to harm them, even if they hate their guts. Needless to say, most vampires do not want to get caught in one of these.
  • Werewolf: The Apocalypse: All werecreatures have the "Animal Magnetism" ability that allows the player to awaken primal lust in their target. The original purpose of this power was to make babies, since unlike Vampires, the only way shapeshifters can increase their numbers is through old-fashioned sexual reproduction. However, seduction as a means to other ends is not unheard of. More than one player has noted that this power is basically magic rape, and later editions changed it so that it won't work if the target is of an Incompatible Orientation, spoken for and strictly monogamous, or would not otherwise want to have sex with the player. But even these rules do nothing but create a "Not If They Enjoyed It" Rationalization, meaning it's still one of the dirtier tricks in the werecreatures' arsenal.

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