Re: Initiates using feats.

From: David Weihe <blerg2_at_...>
Date: Sun, 8 Aug 2004 20:30:23 -0700 (PDT)


Jane Williams <janewilliams20_at_...> wrote:
> I have generated an initiate of Vinga, who has concentrated her
> magic. She gets all three Affinities at 17, and can improvise feats
> from them at -5, so can use the feats at 12.
>
> If I either put them in her 100 words, or "buy" them with a HP in
> play, she can learn stand-alone feats from any other sub-cult of
> Vinga, or of Orlanth (and possibly of other cults too, but that's a
> tangent).
>
> And those stand-alone feats, she'll get at 13. Not 12. By default,
> she can use the magic of any other subcult more effectively than the
> one she's an initiate of. If she was unconcentrated, and improvising
> at -10, it would be even worse.

After going to all the trouble that is subsumed in "paying a HP", yes, you get a slightly higher rating than those that just come to her effortlessly. Until she puts some effort into her Vingan affinities (buys them up from the minimum by blood, toil, tears, and sweat, as subsumed in the game mechanic of paying an HP), at which point she can get "her" magic effortlessly at a higher rating than the foreign magics that she is spending actual effort (some of the 100 words, or HP) to learn.

In short, the problem is that you forgot that the PC doesn't just pay a couple HPs, because they don't exist, except as a game mechanic to combine various sorts of effort. This is one of the standard problems with the HP mechanic, and could be solved by requiring one to describe the efforts one makes, and the Narrator assigning HP values to them, much as we are supposed to do with APs in Extended Contests, and then telling the player when she/he has done enough to warrant the increase.  This would probably over-complicate the HP mechanic, of course, and lead to all sorts of conflicts between those Narrators that think one HP is one cock to Aesclepios vs. those that think it should take a holocaust of bulls, strict fasting, and vows to never say "it" or hear it without great pain, and challenging passersby to combat to the death unless they bring you a shrubbery.                          




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