From: Geoff Gunner (eosgg@raesp-farn.mod.uk)
Date: Tue 05 Oct 1993 - 15:14:24 EET
to Eric Johnson-DeBaufre, on your lumbering Uroxi.
The rules work fine for combat that lasts one round or more. Remember, the 'attack' is not a single attack but the effects of a number of feints, lunges, etc. When you translate this to a situation where the combatants are only in striking distance for a split-second, then the rules are no longer valid. Instead trust your judgement. You could say that in dodging out of the way of the spear left him too far away from the Zebra, so no return blow. Or, you could be kind and have allowed him his strike. Depends how you saw the situation. Incidentally, the movement-SR relationship is way, way out - they bear little relation to reality.
re: the meta-cult, which one changes worship of aspects through one's life. Seems to me that some sort of ceremony would arise in which (say at the cost of one POW to your former god and one to the new) you could trade in old divine spells for new. Otherwise, people would't sacrifice to the earlier stages, saving up for later on in life. Better for the deities to get the POW now and repay later (divine hire-purchase !)
re: spirits -
Does an earthworm have POW ? Do microbes ? Of Course ! (but problems - you have a cold and cross your family's 'Warding'. Immediately every cold germ in your body takes 3D3's worth of diruption. Take that, sniffly nose !) So on the spirit plane you'll have a goodly thickness of tiny spirits below you from the soil. And when High King Elf knobbled Mostal, did every rock die ? So you may well have a sort of spiritual awareness of the soil under you. And think about how people refer to a land a 'she' or whatever - it's alive, so would probably exist on the spirit plane. Cosmic ! :-)
And in a previous letter I mentioned using physical skills on the spirit plane. This is because I want to send players into there and not have them torn apart by the first bunny rabbit which has been around and so has 60% in relevant spirit skills, as opposed to their piffling 5%. And I don't want to use POW as that then makes the whole idea of spirit combat a featureless stodge. RQ2 related skills to POW anyway, so I'm only extending that a teensy bit ...
The idea of 'outer' and 'inner` spirit planes completely escapes me - why not just regionalise the SP, like terrain has places where bad dudes hang out ? Why give them a whole place of their own ? And if you say that they're migrating away from the shallow end, where's their target ? The God plane ?
And re: Colin Watson's comment 'what happens if you break an object with a spirit in into pieces - does each pebble have a spirit ?' If I break you into pieces, does your hand have a spirit ? Your nose ? No. Slow change is okay, but fast change frees the spirit from it's attachment. I agree, not every inanimate thing has to have a spirit, but an awful lot of cultures early on in our history did think so. So if my Telmori believes that the little pebble he sat on earlier has a spirit and my Sorcerer thinks it doesn't, who's right ?
Geoff. (with you in spirit ...)
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