Emergency magic

From: Benedict Adamson <badamson_at_...>
Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2002 15:12:34 +0000


simon_hibbs2 wrote:
...
> HW only seems to me (unless I'm missing something) to have a few
> fairly limited resources of this kind [single shot emergency magic].
...
> I suppose Hero
> Points are a resource too, but that's it. I'd very much like to
> have situations in which a character is grievously injured, and
> the priestess of Deezola goes into a trance, pouring much of her
> magical essence into healing him at the cost of exhausting herself
> for the foreseeable future.
>
> Now perhaps Hero Points will assume this role, I haven't run the
> game for long enough to realy get a feel for that.
...

HPs do play the role, but you have to be more inventive with the rules.

  1. If it is a dire situation, it must be an extended contest.
  2. In your example, you could model the action as an attempt to transfer APs.
  3. 'exhausting for the foreseeable future' means putting her out of action: a level of defeat, so that could be modelled by attempting to transfer enough APs to send her to Major Defeat.
  4. Spending the HP will probably be necessary to ensure success, because the resistance (= the number of APs transferred) will be high.
  5. If you are lucky, or desperate, you could hope for a critical (or a success bumped to a critical using an HP) on the AP transfer, giving him the APs for free. Being free, the transfer would not send the Deezolan to Defeat, so she has the option of bidding enough to kill her if she had a non-critical.

Powered by hypermail