> I'm a little behind in my reading ...
Me too, sorry for replying to old postings so late.
> If we'd had rune power
> from the start, "Shield 1" would have been called something like
> "Greater Protection", "Shield 2" maybe "Lesser Shield", "Shield 3"
> could be "Shield of Orlanth", and "Shield 4" might be "Shield of
> All Winds". The names are all one-offs I just made up, but it's
> now clear that each spell is different and unique -- only similar
> to us gamer-types, not to Gloranthans (except maybe GLs ...).
Not to be unrespectful of your POV, but one of the points I like the
best in the current RQ magic system is the total absence of the D&Dish
spell hyerarchies like "Cure Small Wounds"-"Cure Medium Wounds"-"Cure
Major Wounds"-"Cure Almost All Wounds"-etc. that pester other game
systems. Making stacking levels different spells is IMHO an artificial
cathegorization of spells which could strip the whole magic stuff of the
arcane feel it should have. As Erik Sieurin pointed out replying to my
previous suggestion about diversifying spell names on a cult (not power
level, as you suggested) basis, flowery spell names themselves are a
poor excuse for this.
In other words, I think the real difference between Shield 1 and Shield
4 is that the caster of Shield 4 is far beyond the caster of Shield 1 in
the path of emulating Orlanth's feats, so he can make his armor more
similar to Orlanth's fabled Turnspear mail (i.e. tougher). It is giving
names to spells that is GLish! All this IMHO, of course.
> Paolo Guccione suggests that learning a spell is a (minor) heroquest.
> I find this appealing, but find no reason to "suppose that you may
> perform the Quest without sacrificing POW". If you don't sac POW,
> your are an observer to the HQ, not a participant, and thus gain
> none of the benefits.
Correct. I suggested that to enhance the importance of "HeroQuesting with a pure heart" even during the ritualised quests used to gain spells, but getting the HQ benefit (a spell in this case) at no cost is probably a Bad Idea, as you pointed out.
http://www.geco.it/~guccione ------------------------------
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