Phalanx Rituals

From: Nick Brooke (D&T CAS) <"Nick>
Date: 28 Mar 96 08:11:40 EST


Ah, well, there is some interest in the Granite Phalanx out there after all. OK, I'll go a bit further. Dave Cake thought that

> describing the training of the cult as 'rituals' is silly

If you consider the ritual/indoctrination role of much modern military drill, you may see what I mean. Learning to march and wheel in step does NOT do much to increase the combat effectiveness of a military unit: as far as I'm aware only one battle has ever been fought across a parade-ground. But ritual parade-ground drill does have a great psychological value, by conditioning soldiers to react immediately to orders without questioning whether they make sense. (I'll apologise now for oversimplifying to save band-width, if any experts want to disagree with me, but I think you know what I'm on about here).

So that EVEN IF the spirit magics and rune spells of the Granite Phalanx could work perfectly well for someone who broke from his formation in the phalanx, there would be extremely good reasons for the cult to train people *not* to do this, almost to *threaten* them into staying in place through the prospect of their magics failing.

In the long run, it seems easier to say "they can't move from position," rather than encourage rules abuse by those people (unlike Dave Cake) who might not be able to control the effects of profligate, unrestricted, unreasonable interpretations of magical phenomena in their campaigns.

Besides, the magical interpretation has one great advantage over "Two Handed Spear With Shield" skill (Cults of Prax; Sun County). The hoplite phalanx is essentially a group formation, but the old skill write-up was for use by *individuals*, not taking the special nature of the shield-wall (protect your neighbour, receive support from the man behind you) into account at all. The spells have the considerable virtue of simulating this in a fairly simple way.



Nick

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