You bet Dan, this is one of the worst.
>Alex in response to my "defense" of O:
>Not sure what you're getting at. I didn't say "You can't give Onslaught
>HW stats"; I said, he doesn't correspond to my conception of a
>Humakti Heroquester in particular, or a Hero in general.
>I guess that my point was that Onslaught is a very obvious char to play in
>Hero Wars. And as the main idea behind Hero Wars is to play Heroes, it
>makes some sence that the most obvious HW chars would be the most common
>Gloranthan Heros. It's kind of a lame argument, but it shouldn't be
>entirely discarded. At least in Playtest, Hero Wars tended to push people
>into very Onslaught-ish dependance on a single ability, which you then
would
>round out with followers. On one level, O is just a canny PC who put all
of
>his points into close combat. This may be a rules artefact (like all that
>RQ2 blade venom) but it's going to be a common one.
I agree, however Onslaught has a wide range of skills at high mastery, or at least I've always "seen" him that way. He's Quick, Strong, Fast Thinking, Enduring etc as well as the obvious ones. This in part is why he moves so fast, attacks so ferociously and so relentlessly etc. This is always considered when I describe him. If anything HW, using the augment system, describes him very well indeed.
>If your objection is that you can't be a hero without followers, then you
>are right, but that doesn't necesserily make him invalid within the
context
>of glorantha, just "notahero".
Onslaught gains followers, then they die. In HW he is the equivalent of the player who gets his team offed all the time. He finds it harder and harder to replace them. In the community sense, Onslaught is not appreciated at all.
>If not, then what is it that keeps him from being a HeroQuester or Hero?
He is a top line Humakti heroquester. EXPLANTION:
HUMAKTI HEROQUESTERS In my view, the Humakti reach the apogee of their cult when they go "solo", for Humakt himself was solo for most of his greatest feats. It is my belief, having played Humakti and studied all the Humakt material and talked extensively with Greg on the subject for years now, that the only way to become a great Humakti hero is to be a wanderer.
The HW rules back this up. To become a hero you effectively have to offer something more than your god, or there will not be enough reason to worship you after you apotheosis and you will fade. Given the singular form of Humakt worship and the ties that bind them to huscarl or guard work and their inability to be very fertile, this means often abandoning the few people and contacts that keep you human, keep you social. The great HQers of Humakt like Makla Mann were wanderers, some crossing the whole continent. Likewise Humakt did this to find his sword and in many other feats, only part of his time was he with his kin.
I believe that Humakti reach a point where the community is actually restricitive to their mythical growth, that staying tied to the clan or tribe actually cripples their route to greatness. Therefore I think a tiny percentage move on and become something more. In effect they strive to master the affinities of Humakt and then heroform him or part of him to become a living weapon, his sword on the material plane. They seek death and deal death and are no longer social creatures, but something more.
Also, the Humakti secret is a mystical one. His understanding of death shows a method, like Shargash and his destruction, of becoming one with the One. This mystical journey is NOT even remotely obvious to most cult members, it comes as a higher truth, and like most mystics, they fail to reach this truth.
The mystical journey for the Humakti is therefore one of great austerity, he cuts himself off from all that was once his and takes a road that will remove comfort and support. Truly they're very aloneness is an austerity.
To me, Onslaught is on this mystical journey. Just because I haven't written about it, doesn't mean its not in my mind when I think about him. Please remember the death of Onslaught in "The Terrible tale of Sir Death" before you pass judgement on my views of a Humakti hero.
>As I see it, his life is essentially one long heroquest to become the
Sword of
>Humakt.
Dan hits the mark spot on here. But beyond the Sword comes the Hero, the Sword who does something MORE, like Indrodar, like Makla Mann, like Hia Swordsman.
>He is attempting to incarnate the moment of Death.
Exactly.
>As a psychotic Loner, he doesn't have any real cult or community to back
him up, so >he is not nearly as powerful a hero as, say, Argrath.
Agreed.
>But he is still a hero.
Yes, and head to head in his specialty, I think her would be very hard to find a match for. As I said, Argrath SHOULD lose against him in one on one combat. The reason why this pisses people off when I say it, is due to gameworld stasis. Because there have been no new heroes written about for eons, then arguing that a character created by anyone could kill or defeat an Argrath or Harrek in some way, is tantamount to blasphemy to some folk.
>Beat-Pot Alewin is not a typical heroquester or hero, but I havn't seen
>anyone argue that his multiple masteries in "shag the hell out of JarEel"
>isn't enough to qualify him as a hero.
Correct. In fact, Alex complains that I don't have enough mythic depth to the Onslaught character, but I've written far more words about him in one story than appears on Jar-eel in any offical literature. Where is Jar-eels mythic depth? Where do we know how she grabbed all her powers and on what heroquests did she partake? If one looks at it objectively, she seems rather bland and thin as written.
The problem we have here is that there has been few efforts to clarify what a hero is, and what qualifies one for the status. The HW rules say you need a tripple mastery and a couple of doubles to qualify but this is "mundane" and not what Alex and others see as being appropriate.
Right now, I'm about to run my 33rd session of the Gwandor sage (shown on Wesley Quadros' site) in which I'm attempting to have a player play Argrath Dragonfriend all the way through the HW. Fortunately for me the player is not a Glorantha reader so he doesn't know whats coming but what I've found is that his character becomes less and less capable at combat when compared to his peers as the game goes on. More and more he spends his plot points on leadership skills and mundane things like "manage kingdom" etc. Every time they get into a fight, his Humakti follwers take the brunt.
Now this is something I've seen with the HW system. The player states constantly that he needs so many skills to do what needs to be done that there is little time for bumping up his close combat skill. Bear in mind that I am also very easy with plot points but by 1622 this Argrath could probably be beaten a holmgang by a Clan champion.
Read the saga to see the progression. If anyone else has similar experiences in playtest, please share them.
Martin Laurie
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