Re: poems; magic; losing

From: David Dunham <david_at_...>
Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2000 08:13:05 -0800


Bryan Thexton asked

> First, regarding poets. The game manual does indicate
> a couple of skills important to poets, but not in a
> way that makes it easy to determine who your "best
> poet" is when the game asks you who speaks on a given
> supject to the clan (or in some other situations, I
> suppose). In my current game there is no question
> that our clan leader is also our best poet, so it
> isn't a stressful situation. In a previous game, I
> suspected that our best poet was our trickster, so I
> was *really* reluctant use poetry for anything overly
> diplomatic. Does anyone have a safe way of figuring
> out who your best poet is? And while I'm at it, are
> there any hints on active ways to use a good poet,
> other than just waiting for clan moots?

Poetry is the average of Custom and Leadership (and this is where those fine gradations of skills *might* make a difference due to rounding).

But there's really no shame for a Trickster to compose a poem. (At least not in general.) Tricksters really may have the best skills in situations, and be the best man or woman for the job.

There's no "Compose a poem" button, but lots of situations will have this as an option.

> On to magic. Periodically you get a major magic
> bonus, from a succesful heroquest or other event (my
> latest: my lankhor my lawspeaker composed the epic of
> his life on his deathbed, and after we spread it
> around the clans we gained 20(!) magic points).
> Obviously it is useful if you will be heroquesting
> soon, but often that is not a good option. You can
> try and hold onto it, but it tends to leak away.

One "leakage" is its automatic use in small rituals, which are turned into bonuses, or as battle magic within an illustrated situation.

And another Bryan reminds me that it is possible to lose in non-apocalyptic fashion, as the starving remnants of your clan packs up and leaves. (There's no explicit warning for this, but at least the signs should have been pretty obvious for a while.)

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