Re: Spirit Combat; Arkat/Humakt; Night

From: Nick Brooke <Nick_Brooke_at_compuserve.com>
Date: Tue, 17 Mar 1998 16:51:38 -0500



Richard comments:

> I've been reading the Dragon Pass rules and it seems to me that the
> original thinking behind spirit combat was that it was pretty much
> the same as normal combat but on the spirit level.

You mean, in the DP wargame you rolled 1D6 and looked up the answer on a CRT for both forms of combat? I think you are over-extrapolating...

> With RQ2/3 this seemed to get lost. In particular spirit combat:
> a) got boring (or maybe I should say "remained" boring)

Spirit Combat "remained" boring when RQ was first published???

> b) got deadly (even beyond resurrection)

Nonsense. This was removed in RQ3, where spirit combat is explicitly an attack vs. Magic Points and not vs. POW. Most spirits would much rather possess a body whose spirit's been suppressed than annihilate the prior occupant, even if they knew how to do that. A possessed body can have the possessing spirit flushed out by a competent priest, shaman or sorcerer, and Bob's yer uncle. Don't confuse rule systems. Especially, don't try to claim that RQ3 made Spirit Combat *more* deadly than RQ2 (where the division between MP and POW hadn't yet been formalised, leading to all kinds of oddities and interpretations).

> c) got personal (no shared attacks or defenses)

I can see *you* aren't friends with any shamans, priests or sorcerers! (Wise man, incidentally).

> I never ever liked spirit combat in RQ2.

Me neither. (But I don't lie about it either). One of the RuneGlitch articles back in '81 or so suggested allowing all spirits to take damage from magic, the way Wraiths do in RQ3 -- thus you could Disrupt or Bladesharp a ghost to death. If you prefer Pendragon to RQ, you could speed things up by using Pendragon-style "opposed POW rolls" rather than the clunky Resistance Table: the odds are similar, and much quicker to resolve. But I agree that RQ's spirit combat rules and shamanism rules are rather slim, esp. for any significant involvement  (i.e. if you have a PC shaman, you'll have to make stuff more interesting or everyone will pack in and go home).



Simon writes, dropping into Officialdom:

> Unfortunatley, the Humath-Arkat > HumaArkat > Humakt theory is not
> supported by Greg, and so cannot be considered to be canon until
> such time as he is persuaded of it. Or until he comes up with an
> even cooler theory of his own.

Given that you agree this is a "cool theory", how many years are you prepared to wait for an "even cooler theory" before you start using it? I'd adopt what we have, until something better comes along. After all, where is "Humath" in print?



Sergio asks:

> If the dark at night is elemental darkness, where does it came from?
Hell.

> And where does it go in daylight?

Hell.

::::
Nick
::::


Powered by hypermail