>Now, I'm prepared to completely reverse my view if Power spirits 'in the wild'
>habitually donate their MP to passers-by; or Intellect spirits occasionally
>latch-on to individuals increasing their INT (for some symbiotic reason?).
>Yeah, but how come some of these abilities only manifest when the spirit is
>bound if it's not a function of the binding?
Why should you expect this? Do wild horses naturaly just wall up to passing humans and offer to give them a lift? Can you walk up to a wild mountain goat and milk it wile it just stands there placidly eating grass? Of course not, they have to be captured first and tamed. Just like spirits. Also, just like spirits, each has a particular domesticated role. I fail to see why you think this is unbelievable.
It is presumable a matter of horses for courses. INT spirits are good for storing spells the same way pigeons are usefull for carrying messages. Power spirits are good for yielding spells the same way cows are good for yielding milk. Ever tried to milk a pigeon or train messenger cows?
>Any kind of Binding is pretty unfriendly at least as far as the
>spirit in question is concerned. But I don't see any magician giving up
>this method on grounds of Political Correctness ;)
I don't see binding as being a form of slavery, more a form of domestication. The procedure for controlling a spirit is characterised as a form of combat by the game system, but I think that is simplistic. OTOH, I don't think it worth changing the rules.
Nick sez:
>Some people want the diversity to be reflected in more tangible/mundane ways,
>distinguishing between Troll spirits and Wolf spirits and Flower spirits rather
>than between game constructs with different stats.
How about a 'miscellaneous spirit traits' table. Every time you summon a spirit, you roll on the table to see if it has any secondary traits in addition to it's main function. eg 'Wolf spirit, friendly to telmori' perhaps with a bonus for telmori shamen to deal with such spirits. The Wind Children writeup says they get a +50% bonus to summon/controll sylphs and wind spirits, so there is a good precedent for this.
Another way would be to proliferate new spirit species. Perhaps a Wolf spirit could be used as a spirit-plane tracker hunting down a desired type of spirit, or perhaps it could be despatched to hunt down an enemy and engage it in spirit combat. Imagine a party being attacked at night by a pack of wolf spirits despatched by a hostile telmori shaman.
I say we need more diverse spirits, not just one blobby homogenised generic spirit that can be tought all kinds of tricks. Yech!
If you want to bind a ghost and use it's magic points/cast it's spells, just cast Mindlink on it.
Steven E Barnes asks:
>OK... Suppose a shaman grabs the spirit of a newly-slain human, and
>binds it into his fetch. What kind of spirit is it? What abilities
>can it use?
Sounds like the definition of a ghost, to me.
Simon Hibbs
yfcw29_at_castle.ed.ac.uk
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