Re: Animists and common magic

From: bethexton_at_...
Date: Thu, 11 Mar 2004 14:06:44 -0000

wrote:
> wrote:
> > A practitioner can improve his common magic charms with HPs, but
> he
> > cant improve Tradition or Practise Charms.
> >
> > Doesnt that sound rather strange? (please ignore the fact of
> whether
> > he should be using common charms, just assume he is).
>
>
> Any want to venture an opinion on this, why some spirits are locked
> and common ones aren't. Is it a game mechanic to limit Animists? or
> an oversight of some sort? or a reflection of the way spirits are
> seen to work?

I'm sure part of it is for rules consistency (common magic can be bought up in all forms). But there is some gloranthan sense to it too.

Common magic charms are your link to an inner world spirit. By getting and wearing the charm, you take on part of Brother Turtle's "hard skin" nature. You don't have Brother Turtle captured in a charm, rather the charm makes a link between you that let's you share some of his nature. You can learn to improve this new part of you with focus and effort. If you lose the charm you lose that bit of yourself, but so long as you have it, you can improve it the same as you can any of your more inate abilities. Whether that improvement in narrative terms is that you learn more of how to make your skin hard, or instead of how to strengthen your link to Brother Turtle so that you share his nature more strongly doesn't much matter from a rules point of view.

Tradition and Practice charms represent an other world spirit. It is in the charm. It is its own being, and you can't do anything to change it. It is bound to your own spirit, so that it acts almost like part of you, but it is always its own being.

So both types of charms give you magic coming from a spirit, and act automatically, but one type represents an actual spirit, the other represents your bond to a spirit, or understanding of its nature.

Yah, a little shaky, but I think it makes some sort of sense.

>
> Spending HPs on a common spirit charm isnt a very productive
> exercise, and I dont see a great advantage out of it. I suppose it
> is simply an itch I need to scratch.

If you have them as active abilities (if you have concentrated your magic on animism (or on common magic with the self-rock teaching), it could be pretty useful, depending on the charm. You might very well want to buy up a healing charm, for example. Even in the case of nonactive  use you might buy it up somewhat if it seemed like a good magical defense ("stop wind" if you are expecting to fight a lot of storm folk), or an augment that you might use widely (say "talk to ancestor" for a puma person, who's practice spirits are all ancestors).

I agree thought that most heroes won't buy up most common magic abilities.

--Bryan