No. When you are rolling to increase your skill, any roll higher
than 100 results in an increase. Therefore, if you have a skill bonus =
of
+13 and a skill of 95+, an increase roll of 88-00 will result in an
increase regardless of your skill. In this manner, skills can rise well
above 100%. But only if your skill bonus is positive.=20
>Sorcery, however, seems to require tons of magic points to be of any
use, and casting time besides. =20
Sorcery is the weakest kind of magic for combat. It has other
uses. I have written up some new sorcery rules, but even under them,
sorcerers are still fairly weak in direct combat, and intentionally so.
Sorcerers need far more MPs than other types of magicians, and they =
need
to be supported by a cultural mileau. One sorcerer is fairly easy meat
for a half-dozen armed men. However, a sorcerer plus a pair of
bodyguards is quite a different story, and he can probably hold off a
dozen or more enemies.=20
Metcalfe
>The Jraktal myth is associated with Fonrit as Jraktal is not =
recognized
by the Doraddi in their mythos. =20
Perhaps it would be more fair to say that the Doraddi don't bother to distinguish between Jraktal, Ompalam, Gark, Thed, and most other chaos gods & goddesses, lumping them all together under the heading of Vovisibor -- filth-which-walks. There are some exceptions to this practice, such as Seseine.=20
>The Artmal maimed by the Wicked Storm Gods belongs IMO to Zamokil =
where
we know of two such gods: Sikkanos (who >was beaten up by Pamalt later)
and Keraun (who later repented).
The Wicked Storm Gods & the Trolls are confabulated together by
the western Doraddi. The trolls brought storms & bad weather with them,
and Sikkanos unsuccessfully tried to side with the invaders. Then, =
after
their invasion was halted, he tried to emulate them. I don't think that
the Artmal of Zamokil was maimed by the Storm Gods because there was no
particular storm invasion of that region that I know about. Perhaps he
was crippled by the Forest Gods?
Panu Pasanen
> BTW, do the Char-Un people resemble Mongolian nomads in any way?
The Char-Un herd cattle and ride horses and are probably more like Huns than Mongols, though the difference may not appear very large to us centuries later. Genghis Khan's Mongols were militarily more sophisticated than any Gloranthan army has ever been.=20
Stephen Martin on Umathela
>My understanding of the area is that this is not the case -- some
Malkioni might have settled here within 100 years before=20
>God Learner domination, but my understanding of the Orlanthi is that
they were brought here _by_ the God Learners.
This is also my belief. Note, however, that Umathela was never
all that "dominated" by the God Learners for some reason, as witness =
the
fact that it was not destroyed at the end of the Second Age. Fonrit was
much more heavily hit, and Fonrit, in fact, had more God Learner
influence. Certainly the Six-Leggers came originally from Fonrit, and
they started out as God Learners, or at least as mock-God Learners.=20
Simon Bray=20
>I think that the antipathy between Umathela and Fonrit would hamper =
the
existence of imported religions.=20
There isn't really such an antipathy. How can there be? There is
no such thing as "Umathela" or "Fonrit" as a political entity and there
has never been. The closest approach there has been to such a thing was
after the Vadeli "liberated" Umathela, and economically controlled most
coastal towns for a few years. But the largest human political
organization in Umathela is maybe a hundred miles in its greatest
diameter, and Fonrit is nearly as bad. Worse, really, because not only
is Fonrit split politically, but the sub-units that make up the
Fonritian subcontinent have significant cultural differences. Hence, =
any
hatred between Umathela & Fonrit is more like "the humans of Kadian
Forest hate Tortrica and all it stands for". It's like the Balkans or
Southeast Asia -- is there anyone who hates _everyone_ in one of those
messed-up places? Most everyone can pick their own choices for heroes
and villains out of the background noise. And it's the same with
Umathela & Fonrit.=20
Swiss Pikemen: the Swiss formed into squares which were quite different
than the linear tactics of the Greeks. Typical sizes of a square would
be 50x50 or 30x70 -- a 50x50 square had a 50-meter front and 25-meter
depth, while the 30x70 was about 35 meters in both directions. =
Typically
a large Swiss force would array into 3 squares, not forming a line.=20
The Swiss could beat cavalry (but could only force battle upon cavalry when they ambushed them in mountain passes), but missile-armed troops and heavy infantry were serious problems for them. In one early battle, when an Italian force used a combination of crossbowmen & dismounted knights, the Swiss had to retreat. In 1444, the French used the threat of cavalry charges to halt the Swiss advance (they had to stop to form defensive formations), and then showered the immobile squares with crossbow bolts. They killed them all.=20
In the late 1500s, Maurice of Nassau refined pike tactics.
Instead of squares, he returned to the ancient linear fashion, and =
Dutch
pikemen organized along Maurice's system stood only 5 deep with a front
of 50 men, interspersed between arquebusiers. The shallow line required
rigid drill on the part of the soldiers -- far more rigid than what the
Swiss had practiced. In fact, to quote Archer Jones, "Maurice took over
the drill and even the words of command from the Roman legion and, for
the first time since ancienet days, created a drilled infantry in =
linear
array." He also innovated with the concept of regular pay, to keep his
soldiers disciplined & loyal. Of course, the line had vulnerable =
flanks,
which the square lacked.=20
The Swiss did attack cavalry, but only in places that they could ambush the enemy horse. At first, the Swiss interspersed halberds & firearms in their columns, but these were later on dispensed with. It was realized that the halberds actually _weakened_ the columns, though apparently a few halberds were kept in the center of the square even until the end of Swiss supremacy.=20
I believe that the Sun Dome templars, who fight on flat ground
(unlike the Swiss squares, which were developed in very rough terrain),
and who fight almost exclusively against cavalry, use a linear =
formation
with extremely long pikes. Superficially it would look very much like a
Macedonian Phalanx. I further believe that they use columns of 10 men.=20
>With the exception of the Rhino riders, the nomads of Prax would
normally be considered light cavalry. =20
Tactically, any mounted soldier who does not use missile weapons
is "heavy cavalry". Some are tougher than other, but tactically they
function similarly -- they must close to melee range to be effective. =
In
any case, I would consider many of the Bison, High Llama, and even =
Sable
tribe to be heavy cavalry by any reasonable definition.=20
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