Re: Questions on Affinities / Feats

From: Sarah Newton <sarah.newton_at_...>
Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000 09:15:53 -0000


Hi Harry!

> Is it honestly just a case of looking at the feat / affinity,
thinking of a plausible use for it and going for it ? If so, has anyone done a list of cool uses for affinities or feats ?  

> I hope I'm making sense here and not just asking a stupid
question...

Certainly not! If you've been reading this list for any length of time you'll be aware you've just touched on one of HW's Big Issues!

Having played RQ for close on 20 years, I must admit to freaking out big time when I first realised just what this Affinities and Feats business actually means. However, having played upwards of 10 looong sessions with the HW rules, I do assure you they're actually very playable and IMHO a vast improvement on the previous, more formulaic approach.

It's just a different mindset; IMHO the only drawback might be a newcomer's relative unfamiliarity with "Gloranthan Reality" (Sarah ducks any barrages coming her way...!<g>). The way I did it was to draw on the old RQ battle magic to give my (very) beginning initiatelevel  players/PCs some idea of the scale of the magic they were using. Although they've been using the improvised feat rules to cast this stuff, they've continued to visualise it as a type of (relatively fixed effect) Battle Magic - with a qualitative leap in scale when they attempt to improvise larger-magnitude Feats (in our game parlance, "Rune Magic"). This was more due to changing our campaign from RQ to HW and a desire to keep similar terminology/Gloranthan reality than from any problem with the HW rules. I myself started out rather frustrated and disappointed with the Affinities/Feats system, but after a couple of months play it's actually really growing on me - especially the "unlimited potential" of (much) higher-level theistic magic use.

Having said that, I would like to echo Mikko's suggestion that we start compiling a list / folder of "sample" uses of Affinities and Feats. Praps we can use the e-groups file function and stick some stuff up? I know I could knock something up pretty quickly - and it would be good to see what others have done.

Grins, and best regards,

Sarah

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