>Jonas
>
>>it seems to me as if magic is
>>a lot more low-key in HW than it ever was in RQ. The _amount_ of magic
>>going around has increased, but the average _power_ of it has decreased.
>
>Admittedly our playtest rules didn't necessarily reflect the final
>product, but I'd say it was both more common *and* more powerful
>(since it's in a sense open-ended). After all, a significant
>percentage of player heroes will now have ranged killing magic.
They will? I'm not really arguing against you here, I'm just curious about your interpretations.
Here's what I've deduced from the published rules:
Few cults have what I'd call ranged attack magic. Among heortlings, only Hedkoranth has a lot of it. The others that can be interpreted this way are also warrior cults (except Rufelza for the lunars), and their devotees are likely to have better physical fighting abilities anyway.
Nothing in the rules implies that beaning someone with a Thunderstone is in any way more effective than putting an arrow through them. I would personally say that elemental attacks (Lightning Sword?) ignore armor, as of course do the less physical ones (Shout of Pain), but I haven't found anything that says magical attacks get any kind of edge to compare with weapon ranks either.
So this kind of magic is more of a tactical option: if you're facing someone who's really tough physically, you can switch to magic and see what their resistance to that is like.
Moving on to augmentations, if you compare them to Bladesharp and such, HW effects are obviously a lot less reliable: you have to make a die roll, _and_ defeat a resistance. They're also less deadly, at least the ones who give bonuses. On the up side, you can use them as often as you like. No magic point bookkeeping, hurray!
Anyway, I assume that as long as you get no worse than a marginal defeat, you can try over and over again until you get it right. This makes having time for preparations even more important than in RQ. It means that e.g. soldiers gearing up for a pitched battle will have much better augmentations working for them than adventurers who get ambushed on the road...
So what's my point? Your common HW initiate or beginner devotee will have access to more different _kinds_ of magic then their RQ counterparts, they will have more options available, but they won't be as effective at what they do.
Comparing experienced devotees to rune masters is harder. I don't really know which level of competence in HW I would consider equivalent to a RQ lord or priest. I do know that it's much harder to become really good at magic in HW. Just consider: if you start a hero out with all of his best abilities as magical affinities, you still need to spend 168 hero points on them before you can learn the cult's secret. That's about 50 gaming sessions, assuming you blow every last point on magic.
So, alternative interpretations anyone? I'm open to any ideas that give me more powerful magic without obviously twisting the rules. :-)
P.S. About enhancements that give edges. They're a _lot_ more efficient than bonuses, but among the theist keywords I've only found two feats that would seem to do this, both protective in nature. Armor of Woad is of course balanced by the fact that you can't combine it with normal armor (or clothes, no matter what the cover artist thinks). Unbreakable Shield seems to me like the primary reason to fear Babeester Gor devotees...
Jonas Schiott
History of Ideas and Science
Goteborg University
http://www.hum.gu.se/~idejs
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