That's a good point. In practice, yup, lots of priestly positions will have a lot to do with politics and other nonsense, and priests aren't necessarily the figures for which religious virtues are the most important -- RLs, where they exist as a distinct status, and RL-like figures otherwise, would find them moreso, and prospective Heroes much more so still. You can't substitute a favour with your father-in-law for a virtue roll on the Hero Plan.
> It also leads to an unhealthily powergaming attitude to
> traits as well. 'Like all the other Orlanthi in the party, I am extremely
> Generous, Just, Proud and so on. We're all trying to be WindLords
That's a fair point too. If it gets too bad, one would just have to make up spurious differences between them, such as having different traits or interpretatons thereof associated with different sub-cultures, or if it comes down to it, shooting one of the bastards and making his player roll up a Mastakos cultist, at gunpoint if needs be.
> [Greg] suggested that Illuminates would be able to have 'impossible' trait
> pairs. I'm not really sure what mechanics you could use for it, though.
I'm hazy about previous discussion on this, but I think I may have suggested simply allowing traits to add up to more (and perhaps also less) than 20 (or have values other than 20+/0), by allowing gains and losses of each separately. That I also suggested a similar mechanism for Dragonewts who had "mastered" a particular trait-pair either illustrates some deep aspect of the mystical truth inherent in Glorantha, or demonstrates a crass lack of originality on my part. And no, that's not an invitation to take a vote on it!
Jose Ramos says many sensible things about the importance of traits on the HP, group quests, trait threshold mechanisms, which I nodded along to heartily.
> Maybe I see it inversely to other digester, it is not that you get
> a +3 to Courage if you succeed, but you need a Courage of 20+ (and
> luck) to succeed.
That's pretty much how I see it too, though the discussion so far has perhaps glossed over this part. However, I certainly think HQs can also increase Traits, and more to the point, cause the ones integral to the Quest to become so welded to ones being as to make them effectively impossible to decrease again. (Or that decreasing the trait would undo, or require explictly undoing, the benefits of the Quest, or some such.)
> If Merciful is low in your clan, you surely do not reenact [the HoG],
> but you reenact "The Quartering of Vadrus", where you check your Cruel.
> And in this way the Clan Virtues go on.
I like this idea a lot, and it's surely another plank supporting the idea of War Clans, Peace Clans, and other religious variations.
> My idea, which I see is not widespread, is that a well known myth, or
> a well prepared one, will succeed always in simple cases, and will
> become harder the more complex it becomes.
Seems fairly non-controversial to me: quests for rune magic, divine gifts, initiation, and worship _are_ almost always successful; it's an open question as to how "deep" you can go before it becomes a given amount harder, of course. For lesser myths, they may not be well-established enought to do any of the above reliably...
> If a certain enemy is better that you (Beat you in the myth, Elmal vs
> Zorak Zoran), he will always be better than you, no matter if you are
> a young boy at initiation or Harvast Ironfist with your 250% Spear.
I think this is true as a general tendancy, though not as a fixed rule. There _are_, according to repute, some ZZ with no fire powers, and Spark God cultists with 'em, due to Surprise Victories in HQ, which weren't necessarily the result of wildly extraploative questing (I think). But as a general expectation, Harvast Ironfist can expect to find Kovol Leadtooth, with 300% Maul, and plenty of Crush, to boot. See the Principle of Equivalence, with in this case, the proverbial bullet.
Bon soir,
Alex.
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