RE: Babeester Gor & Mor

From: Sandy Petersen <SPetersen_at_ensemblestudios.com>
Date: Fri, 31 Oct 1997 15:01:10 -0600


WHY BABEESTER GOR'S SPELLS AREN'T ALL-POWERFUL. Great Parry: attack twice, use missile weapons, or rely on magic and you've bypassed it. For that matter any shield with AP stronger than your attack is as good as a Great Parry.

Slash: is one woman with an 8d6 Axe attack as useful as 5 Truesworded Humakti?  

Axe Trance: if she's at 90% skill anyway, how often does she miss? And her axe doesn't impale. A parry is just as good as ever (though Dodge does lose some utility).

Her powers are all good ones, don't get me wrong, but they're very specialized, very single-person oriented. A single boosted Mindblast and your Female Death Machine is out of action.

Take a warrior with 5 points of Rune Magic:

Babeester Gor: Slash 2, Great Parry
Storm Khan: Berserk, Shield 4

The Berserk attacks twice a round since he can't parry anyway (which pretty much cancels out the Great Parry), and gets +8 armor, which cancels out the 2 points of Slash. I'd bet on him in any fair fight. And of course the Babeester Gor warrior has to undergo some incredibly severe lifestyle restrictions. They ought to be powerful, for all they give up (this has been pointed out). Finally, they have one restriction which makes most PCs unable to join their cult - they're females-only. The majority of PCs are male, let's face it. In addition, the majority of warrior-type cults are chauvinistic. Really, the only mainstream non-sexist warrior cults I can think of off-hand are Humakt & Seven Mothers. Sure there are Storm Bull & Orlanth women, but they are very definitely a minority, and an unusual. Hence, a female warrior needs a fairly kick-ass cult to make up for this and Babeester Gor provides it. Even a Storm Bull will think twice before taking on an Axe Maiden.

        The Babeester Gor cult is very focused on the Single Killer type of action - the Superhero, if you will. Their raison d'etre is the Quest, not the Battle. If you need to avenge your mother's rape murder, send Babeester Gor. If you need to wipe out the outlaw Dunbrooke clan, she's the wrong person for the job.

Frederick asks
>I suppose the Malkioni doesn't use the Theyalan calendar

	The Malkioni _do_ use the Theyalan calendar. It's quite
widespread. 	It was popularized in the First Age, and then again in
the Second. They add Saints' Days and all manner of western trivia to it, but it's basically the same calendar - five seasons of 8 weeks each, 7-day weeks, and a 2-week Sacred Time.

        This doesn't mean that the names of the days, the weeks, or the seasons have anything to do with the elements.

Sandy


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