> I must say I'm not compleatly happy about the Heroquest take on magic. All
> too commonly the feats (and spells) are named after quite normal skills
> the individual should have anyhow.
And, given the way the system works, there is often no functional difference between having a skill and having it as magic.
> And the implications (discussed here) that a man would be useless doing
> pottery, for instanse, because he doesn't have access to things like
> "color glaze". For crying out loud what about actual learned skill and
> craft? Most people are initiates and not devotees anyway, so the magic
> only gives a (puny) bonus to their skills.
Which is the way I see it. There's absolutely no way to say that someone without women's magic can't care for a child. Certainly the magic helps. We've discussed before that the implication is that crop yields and such only approach our world's levels because of the magic. But this is often ritual, not the feats we see in the books, (at least that's the implication I see). The most important aspect of the magic for many of these things seems to involve the ritual role these people can play, not just the listed feats.
> The Yinkini cult writeup is a typically unsatisfying one. Many, if not
> most, of the "feats" sound like things the cultist should be able to do
> anyway. More like mundane skills than magic. And most Yinkini _are_
> devotees, apprently.
Yes they are. But it is true that things like Move Without Sound cause problems in HQ rules. (Since that will almost always face active resistance, it is functionally indistinguishable from buying an ability called "Move Without Sound". Both cost 1 point to raise, but the magical version has all the opening costs of buying the affinity and such.)
But that's more a rules gripe than a digest discussion, no?
LC
End of Glorantha Digest, Vol 11, Issue 219
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