From: Colin Watson (watson@computing-science.aberdeen.ac.uk)
Date: Wed 01 Dec 1993 - 20:37:45 EET
This is an interesting point. If we accept that the Gods have no concept of mortal Time (which seems fundemental to the nature of Gloranthan Dieties) then divinations like the one above cannot be answered simply. If I ask Orlanth "Where is Olaf Redspear now?" he cannot give a useful answer because he has no concept of "now". Depending on how smart/helpful/polite you think a god can be he might do one of the following: A/ Core Dump and tell you all the places Olaf ever was and ever will be.
(This is far too much info to be digested by any mortal; hence useless) B/ Tell you one place at random where Olaf has been or will be.
(Not likely to be the place he is *now*). C/ Say nothing because the question is too general in the God's view.
(As far as Gods are concerned "is", "was" and "will be" all mean the same thing. The tense is meaningless.) D/ Tell you what was wrong with the question and give helpful hints about
how to formulate a more sensible (in the God's view) request.
I think Divination as described in the rules is a gross abstraction of the complex process of communing with one's god. For ease of gameplay it's useful to formulate simple questions like "Where is Olaf Redspear now?", but (IMHO) in actuality that's not the type of request a wiley priest would make of his diety. A priest would add a lot of contextual information to help the god narrow the search of his extensive knowledge. A current description of Olaf helps a lot, as would a best-guess of who he is likely to be with, or better still a guess at where he might be. The god can then match this information against what he knows about Olaf's history and hopefully pin down a definite location. The less the priest himself knows about Olaf "recently" then the less productive his divination about Olaf will be. Divinations are not guaranteed.
And, of course, if Olaf recurrantly gets himself into similar situations (eg. if he is habitually kidnapped for ransom by trolls) then this makes Divination all the more tricky: the priest has to be certain that he and his god are referring to the same incident. The priest might unwittingly get a vision of a future kidnapping...
I suppose speculative cults might make guesses about the future and check them out by Divination but this would be very hit-or-miss indeed.
I'm a firm believer in the idea that the Gods only know what their worshippers tell them (through prayer) or about things affecting their domain (including the use spells derived from their domain). If Olaf didn't pray regularly to Orlanth then Orlanth won't know much about him. However, Orlanth would know about every time Olaf had cast a Fly spell or been struck by lightning.
You're right, of course (but flying is not really mountaineering in my book:).
The problem with many of the spells you mentioned is the limited duration.
Once in a while a spell or two might be useful, but they run out after a short
while (unless you gross-out with Extension) and you have to rely on traditional
methods once more.
(Sorcerers are in the best position to give long duration spells, but I'd
hope they would have more sense than to go galavanting up mountains.)
I can imagine Armoring & Strengthening enchantements would be sought after
for rope & pitons. This could make equipment closer to modern standards.
[Expensive on POW though.]
___
CW.
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