From: Colin Watson (watson@csd.abdn.ac.uk)
Date: Mon 24 Oct 1994 - 20:50:22 EET
This is just My Opinion. I consider CON to be a major aspect of
ghoul spirits for two reasons:
1/ It's their appetite. It seems to me that CON gives the ability/need
to respire. Not necessarily breathing but in some way gaining sustenance
from the environment. In the case of ghouls: they must eat.
2/ It's part of their magical nature. Ghoul poison is based on CON.
I think the potency of poison is dependant on the ghoul's spirit, not
on the physical makeup of the corpse it posesses.
And apart from this, I don't like the idea that ghoul spirits only have INT. :-)
There is, of course, a good case for saying ghoul spirits have DEX & STR too. After all, why should these characteristics be dependent on the corpse they posess? In fact, as evidence of this, consider that ghouls usually have a better-than-human STR (4D6 as opposed to 3D6); a ghoul will often have greater STR than the corpse it posesses.
Oh, I have reservations too - I'm not completely convinced myself, yet.
> We take the point of view that creatures indigenous to the
> mundane plane require all of their characteristics to do anything, this
> includes wandering about aimlessly ;)
Fair point. So you're saying a corpse has STR DEX & CON, but it just can't use them? Therefore some (bizarre, clueless) sorcerer would only have to Create Familiar INT and POW to make a corpse "complete"?
> Is it possible for a body (dead) which has been taken over by a ghoul
> spirit, and thus has no STR or DEX, to be able to move about? According to
> your point of view it isn't, the rules say otherwise.
This is an argument in favour of Ghoul spirits having STR & DEX. Like I said above, Ghouls have 4D6 STR whereas most humans have only 3D6. This suggests to me that the STR is an aspect of the ghoul (spirit) rather than the corpse.
> Delecti the Sorcerer[...] created an enchantment allowing objects to be used
> as a recepticle for the spirits of intelligent creatures that touched it.
Ok, I realise this device is just meant to illustrate your point, but there are a coupla things which I'll take issue with: I don't like the idea of an enchantment which can hold an arbitrary spirit - you can't bind an Sylph in a Gnome-Binding-Enchantment; you shouldn't be able to bind a Dragon in a Man-Binding-Enchantment...
> One crucial condition was that if an intelligent creature touched the
> enchanted object while it contained another spirit, then the spirits
> exchanged places.
... and similar for bodies. I don't think a Man-spirit should be able to inhabit a Dragon-body any more than I think a Salamander could inhabit water.
Having said that, lets assume Delecti uses some fell Chaos-magic which allows him to cheat; he creates this plate which allows him to swap spirits from body to body willy-nilly.
[after various swapping takes place...]
> Does the spirit of Tomas have enough strength to keep the dragon upright?
[and later...]
> Using your suggestions Colin, this Duck would have a SIZ of 5, a STR
> of 70 and a CON of 35. How would you explain this anomoly? In our opinion
> this is extremely unrealistic.
Unrealistic compared to what?
Perhaps you are unwilling to accept creatures with disproportionate SIZ compared to STR & CON? But such creatures can exist (without even swapping spirits:). A Dragon can be Tapped down to STR 1. A dwarf can, conceivably, have SIZ 2 and STR 40+ (if a sufficiently large Strength spell is cast). In a magical world all these things are possible.
It doesn't seem at all unreasonable to me that a human posessed by the spirit of a Giant would become unnaturally strong. In fact it seems so patently obvious I don't know why I hadn't thought of it before.
> It was obvious during the discussion that their are a lot of
> contradictions which can arise if one was to take the point of view of
> either argument but we feel that our view is the more suitable in the
> majority of cases.
___
CW.
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