Re: Practice spirits have how many abilities?

From: bethexton_at_...
Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2004 21:00:23 -0000

wrote:
> There has been a lot of posting on this and I'm getting a bit
> confused. Can someone tell me what page in the Heroquest rules
that
> says that when you release a spirit you ADD its rating to the
> relevant skill. I thought that was an old Hero Wars thing that had
> been debunked by the auto augment, or AP battery rules. The other
> cool thing I thought you got was maybe the chance to use a spirits
> ability as an active ability, if you didn't have that skill.
>
> What have I got right an what have I got wrong?

Rob;

I don't have the main rule book here, but looking at the on-line index the practioner rules start on page 136, and the rules for releasing a practice spirit are on page 137.

The summary on fetishes are:
- they can have multiple abilities.
- the practioner gains teh benefit of an always on augment from their ability, as if they were charms.
- with a contest of his relationship with the practice spirit (versus a target 14 for friendly spirits), the practioner can release the spirit, so that it can do one of the following:

• loan an ability to the practioner.
• give AP equal to one of its abilities to the practioner, to use in a contest relevant to that ability.
  • add its ability rating in an ability to the practioners rating (with a special proviso that this does not add to the practioner's AP).

One thing that may keep this from being too abusive is tight interpretation of that last point. That the ability has to be exactly the same....if you have sword and shield, and the spirit has berserk combat, you can't add the berserk combat to your sword and shield, as they aren't the same ability. You can gain the spirits berserk combat ability, then either use it directly or use it as an augment.

Of course, that just makes it harder to abuse this, not impossible. A hero might even develop an unlikely skill just because it matches a skill one of his spirits has.

--Bryan