>It is "a" way, not "the only" way. Of course, most of the other ways are,
>as
>you noted, common magic religions, like Lanbril and Donander, so you'll get
>a bit more specific "Common Magic" (Thievery or Music, in those two
>examples) rather than "anything you can imagine".
The explanation raises more questions. Concentration in, say, Animism, doesn't have anything to do with the religion in question. That is, if I concentrate, it doesn't limit me to the religion in any way, AFAICT. Yes, shamans and devotees have to give up other magic, but it was my understanding that a concentrated animist Spirititst or Practitioner, could still learn other animist magic outside of their religion.
So, the implication that concentrating on a common magic religion would limit your magical options seems contradictory to that. So, do I misunderstand concetration as a whole, or is it that I've misinterpreted your words on common magic religions above?
>Note that not all comman
>magic religions allow this! There might be other variants on Self-Rock in,
>say, the far East or West, or Pameltela...
Allow what? Allow someone to concentrate in common magic? Or allow Self-Rock individuals to learn their magic? By variants on Self-Rock, are you refering to other ways to concetrate in common magic?
Part of the confusion seems to stem from the fact that in other areas of magic, there's no philosopy to which you "concentrate". That is, in Animism you concentrate to animism. For common magic, you learn Self-rock, and this allows one to concentrate in common magic. Basically, the other forms of magic don't seem to have a similar philosophy that has to be aquired first.
Again, this could just be that I don't understand how Concentration works in general. If, indeed, when concentrating you are limited to the religion to which you currently belong, then that would clear things up a lot (If I've missed that in the book then I apollogize for the hullabaloo). But if it works the way that I think it does, then there's still a lot of questions.
I'm still confused about common magic religions and how they work, actually. I don't remember that we ever cleared any of that up. Can a person take a common magic religion keyword as part of their common magic? Or is it a separate keyword? If you take one as a separate keyword, then does it count as a "Specialized Religion Keyword"? If not limited in this way, how many common magic keywords can a character have?
Part of the problem that I have with this is that so few of the common magic religions are defined (as opposed to how many are presented) that you'd have to do a lot of work to create the keywords for them if someone declared themselves a member? Or do those without enumeration fail to provide more than just the common magic abilities themselves (this is what I've always thought to be the case)? Why have I never seen a sample character with a common magic religion listed?
Is my confusion clear? That is, do you see where I'm confused? I'm afraid in not being clear here that I won't get answers that address my concens.
Thanks for taking the time to answer,
Mike
Powered by hypermail