Some thoughts on the initiate/devotee thing.

From: Alex Ferguson <abf_at_...>
Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 22:34:51 GMT

One thing that occurs to me is: need we worry about it that much? It may be that BA tilts the balance somewhat, but the impression I had been under was that Issaries intended to focus their material much more at the "big hero arc" stuff, rather than the infamous "stick-picker campaign". So one could argue that taking devotion to be the norm, and dealing with initiates as an afterthought, is a fairly viable approach after all.

But that's no real ultimate answer, since some people will want to run clan-level games anyway. There seems to be a broad consensus that there _should_ be a difference in how the two statuses play, though a decided split as to whether the proposed mechanism for doing so makes sense, or follows from that premise.

Personnally, I think that there are certain conceptual problems: It implies that somehow initiates are (relatively) good at flexible or interpretative use of magic, and that devotees are (relatively) good at set forms, which seems backwards. I can see why Simon would be tempted to reverse the two, though I don't think I like the details of his idea.

It introduces the notion of using an Affinity "directly", as opposed to using a Feat. These seems an unnecessary complication: isn't this essentially the same in effect as saying an initiate has exactly one feat per affinity, and isn't allowed to learn more? (Other an by, or en route to, becoming a devotee.)

OTOH, it certainly does establish a large operative difference between the the statuses. And, at the risk of engendering predictable howls of protest at the line of reasoning, it does have a certain "Gloranthan verisimilitude" from the sources, and indeed from That Other Game. Initiates aren't able to do much with their magic directly, other than using it to assist their mundane skills (Bladesharp is dead: long live Swordhelp); devotees are both able to do the above, moreso (multiple augmentations) but are also able to use their magic directly (Rune magic, non-aug. Feats).

So by and large I think I like the general idea, but I think it could be expressed better. Rather than implying that initiates improvise, and devotees don't have to, I think it would be more cleanly expressed as a difference in breadth of effect.

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