Bless Crops/Wizards POW/Praying for Spells

From: N. Smith (ns10005@hermes.cam.ac.uk)
Date: Thu 18 Aug 1994 - 17:12:06 EEST


Hello people, another ramble:-

klaus, X-RQ-ID: 5722

'But my point was that this is the only way to do it. Due to the
death of Genert, Bless Crops spells are (is?) a must for farming in Genertela. You need an unrealistic number of acolytes to get the fields blessed by personal spells."

Let's quantify this. Quoting in full from RuneQuest Cities (and who am I to doubt their facts):-

'Based on medieval and Renaissance yields, it takes 12,000-20,000
square maters of farmed land to feed one person. Usually one-third of the farming land was left fallow each season, so five square kilometers of farm land supported 80-130 people.'

Since 5 sq. km. = 1.93 sq. miles = 1235 acres you need between 9.5 and 15.4 acres of cultivated and fallow land to feed one person! With an area of effect of one acre for each spell (see previous posting), Bless Crops will have little impact on society as a whole and certainly should not be seen as a must.

Also, from the spell description, Bless Crops will only '...guarantee a minimum return of an average year's harvest the following fall.' Since Genert is dead, the average year's harvest is low and you are thus only guaranteed a minimum of a low yield. Perhaps it is only used on cash crops {hazia? :-) } with small acreages, vegetable gardens and herb gardens.

Perhaps Ernaldans cast all their Bless spells on CA herb gardens, in return for Resurrections - none of either left for your players, problem solved! :-).

Sandy, X-RQ-ID: 5727

        "Admittedly, POW gain is not as important to wizards as it is to priests and shamans."

Why not? Where else does the POW for the creation of sorcery matrices come from? Or do they all have either

  1. Few spells, or 2) Little Free INT?

Praying to Regain Spells
If a priest were to 'pray-away' all but 1 of his magic points to regain the use of a spell, he would then remain in the Temple for the rest of the day - doing chores, teaching the faithful, whatever - until he had regained most of his magic points. It's a rough town out there! I have an idea of why they have to pray, but it has little basis on published sources and thus may be considered a tad heretical for the Daily :-



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