>He can if he discorporates,
As can anybody else who discorporates. Under RQ2 a standard priest could discorporate, whereas shamans couldn't by default.
>or uses totemic magic to take out
>the spirit. Example: ancestor worshipers have the Free Ghost spell.
As can Humakti, or Lhankor Mhytes when facing Thanatar Head ghosts.
>> 2) If the shaman wins a spirit combat, bringing a spirit's
>>MPs to 0, he can bind it into his fetch or a magic item, whether
>>he's corporate or not. He doesn't even need a Control spell.
However, he needs all the MP the fetch just spent to overcome the spirit to contain its MP, or those of the couple of other useful spirits held there.
While certainly versatile wrt. spirits held, the fetch is useless as a permanent storage for spirits, unless the shaman wants to spend most of his time discorporated hunting for all the escapees.
>>I tend to play that only a sapient or extremely desperate spirit
>>will attack a shaman when there are so many weak prey souls in the
>>flock. Does the wolf attack the shepherd or his dog when all he
>>wants are sheep?
> Again, when discorporated, a shaman can _initiate_ combat,
>and doesn't have to wait for the spirit to come after him.
And again, discorporation is not the natural state of even shamans in the league of Blueface. In order to discorporate the shaman has to perform a lengthy ritual. An intelligent spirit would disturb the shaman during this ritual, keeping him on the mundane plane, e.g. by igniting the ritual components...
Once the shaman has discorporated, he has lost most of his extra oomph versus the spirit, because the MP of his fetch aren't available to him any longer, be it for spell-casting or as defense against the spirit's counterattacks. Most potent spirits outsize a discorporated shaman by at least 1d6 worth of POW.
> When not discorporate, he has more spirits available to him
>than the sorcerer. Here's why: assume our sorcerer and shaman are of
>comparable skill -- both have about the same number of magic items,
>too.
If you include the POW given to the fetch (upon creation, at least), yes.
>A higher percentage of the sorcerer's items will be spell
>matrices (far more useful to a sorcerer than a shaman). So the shaman
>will have more spirit-bindings.
The sorcerer will have quite a number of POW-spirit bindings if he is regularly involved in spell-casting. Other bindings would be rarer, true, but definitely all would be full, because the sorcerer will use a dominate whenever he uses a spirit. The shaman will release his bound spirits after two or three tasks, or he will encounter more hostile spirits.
>Even if the two magicians have equal
>numbers of spirit-bindings, the shaman _also_ has the spirits in his
>fetch.
Which are either low-POW, or must be released as soon as the fetch has to donate MP lost in spirit combat.
>He almost certain has more, so he can more easily afford to
>loose some otherworld creature to attack an annoying spirit. Even if
>that spirit won't attack the shaman directly.
A sorcerer specialising in bound ghosts will have a quite versatile attack force even against spirits. A low power Multispelled Dominate on the bound ghosts (while still in their bindings) will give him full control over his minions. Effectively, you get a one man spirit army attacking equal to a shaman.
> NOTE: I'm not saying that a shaman is superior to the
>sorcerer, only that a shaman is superior when dealing with spirits.
Not sufficiently so. He still has to discorporate to achieve anything the sorcerer cannot, and loses most of his benefits when discorporated. Species maximum POW doesn't change for shamans, so only their fetch's POW can grow out of any sensible range.
When it comes to exorcism, the picture gets ludicrous - here you have the body of the possessed victim, there you have the inanimate body of the shaman, who gets beating after beating if the possessing spirit has a POW of 4d6 or greater. Why not have a scene similar to that in the first of the Conan movies, where the spirit master performs the exorcism of a disease spirit while remaining inside his body?
The RQ3 shaman is about as dull as the RQ2 shaman.
What I want is a totemic ability to challenge spirits, a spirit combat system that is interesting, and a spirit (dream) plane which is not a decker's paradise closed to all other players, but rather a Cthulhu-Dreamland-like approach with the shaman the only party member with creative dreaming abilities...
>>What about magical protection against spirit attacks (provided from
>>outside sources, that is): will this be a sufficient reason for a
>>spirit to break off its attack when the protection makes all attacks
>>futile?
> It's pretty rare for a spirit to both have +10 MPs over its
>target, and also to have a real weak chance to overcome that same
>target. I suppose a big Spirit Block could do it.
Suppose a target beaten down to say 12 MP but a two-point spirit block up and the 22 MP spirit having lost 3 MP. What now? Will the spirit hover around, waiting for the spell to fade out?
> If it's "sufficient reason" for the spirit to break off
>probably depends on the spirit itself. I would rule that if the
>spirit had +10 MPs over the player, but -10 or more offensively
>(because of Spirit Screen or whatever), then the spirit could choose
>to break off if it wanted.
What if the spirit has only +9 MPs?
>A human can't break off, of course,
>because the spirit can always catch him and resume. But if two
>spirits were in combat, and each had a +/- 10 differential, I would
>play that _either_ spirit could choose to break off.
So a spirit combat, once initiated, will always be fought to one opponent losing out big?
Why?
>>I say that a sorcerer entering the ruins of a foreign culture
>>_should be_ better able to fend off haunting spirits than a shaman
>>entering the ruins of a foreign culture, simply because the
>>sorcerer is less preoccupied with cultural taboos and superstitions
>>wrt these entities.
> And _I_ say phooey. The shaman is still better off (if only
>in dealing with spirits), because he can apply the lore he knows
>about the spirits he normally deals with to help him understand the
>new unfamiliar ones.
If he approaches them scientifically, yes. Only the greatest shamans of any culture ought to be able to do so.
> Look, just because a man is an expert on North American
>wildlife and ecology isn't going to _hamper_ him on a trip to Africa.
>[...] I'm not talking about a pedant
>here, either -- I hereby submit that a Sioux Indian from 1700 would
>be _better_ able to survive in wild Africa than an armchair ecologist
>of the 1990s such as myself. Even though he is riddled by "cultural
>taboos and superstitions".
However, that same Sioux Indian may have succumbed to the jungle food a few days earlier. An African plains hunter will freeze to death in the mountains as easily as a modern urbanite, and an experienced yukon paddler will get lost between the Polynesian islands in no time short. A bear shaman would be lost against piranha spirits.
> The exact same situation holds for a shaman and a sorcerer.
>The shaman might not have seen a pain elemental before visiting the
>Machine Ruins, but he'll be able to figure out how to deal with it
>sooner than the sorcerer, with his rote spells and stratospheric
>logic.
The sorcerer will send his hounds (e.g. ghosts) against the spirit. The corporate shaman will watch the spirit possess or pummel his companions while desperately trying to discorporate while that same companion keeps interrupting his ritual.
And MGF-wise the rest of the party sits by and devours the chips discussing the latest TV-show while the shaman's player and the referee slug out an endless and pointless dice match (especially if both sides use spirit screen or similar measures...)
Horned God shamans (i.e. shamans with no specialist tradition) might be as versatile with other spirits, because they rely on brute force rather than specialist knowledge. Most of the other shamanic traditions rely on the knowledge of weaknesses and special preferences of the spirits they usually encounter. When these shamans have to face entirely foreign spirits, their best tricks (a parallel of the hero's knowledge of the vulnerable spot on the dragon) won't work, and they have no resort but brute force or faithful allies.
When it comes to brute force, a squad of dominated bound ghosts is superior to a discorporate shaman on his own...
End of Glorantha Digest V3 #185
WWW material at http://hops.wharton.upenn.edu/~loren/rolegame.html
Powered by hypermail