RE: Re: HQ Beginner - Character Generation questions

From: Mike Holmes <mike_c_holmes_at_...>
Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2007 16:13:05 -0500

>From: "Roderick Robertson " <rjremr_at_...>
>
>All puma people are *animists*. I don't have the source material at
>hand (man I hate to be away from my library!)

I'm assuming that's something like an Orlanthi all, yes? Their shapechanging abilities are not, in fact, animist, but examples of "natural magic" according to the article you cited. As such, I suppose a Puma Person who accidentally got switched with an Orlanthi child at birth or somesuch might develop with the Orlanthi homeland, but with, essentially, a "Puma People" species package that included his natural ability to shapechange. Classic PC stuff.

More generally...

>If you don't include a rank, then *I* would figure the characdter is
>at the lowest level of worship.

I believe that the clarification that you and/or Greg gave me previously is that, in fact, the "Religion Keyword" portion of the Homeland Keyword is equivalent to the first level of worship. That is, since you get it by mentioning the Homeland, that, yes, automatically you get the associated religion keyword, which is the first level of worship of that specialized religion.

Which does include some minor magical abilities. Blessings recieved in worship for Lay Worshippers in Wizardry, Tradition Charms for Spiritists in Animism, Divine Intervention for Communal Worshippers of a Theism Pantheon, etc.

So, in addition to "everyone" having magic from Common Magic, they all have magic from their "free" specialized religion, too. It's just sorta indirect magic in most cases.

Note that, in fact, Common Magic is not automatically allowed for characters who have a specialization, and according to RAW, the narrator has to specifically allow it. I believe most do, but you could disallow it by the rules based on this if you want to limit magic.

At first it seemed to me that the specialized religion keyword was a modular attachment to the homeland, but later discussions seemed to indicate that homeland was nigh synonymous with the relgion worshipped in the homeland. Put another way, Heortlings are all Orlanthi, and any Dragon-newts that live in Sartar are better defined with a dragonnewt homeland keyword that indicates their religion. Ducks are either Heortling Orlanthi, or they are not Heortling.

But I think there's room for PCs to get away with such.

>And also remember that concentrating is not for everyone - probably
>75%+ of all gloranthans are not concentrated. And if you're not
>concentrated, you can use different magical systems without penalty!

In theory. The problem with this is that, in practice, the only place that this occurs according to previous discussions is in terms of various forms of common magic. That is, you've said that it's rare to non-existent to impossible to have characters who are, say, both an Adept and a Practitioner. Under these circumstances there is very little reason that a player might decide not to concentrate his magic. So he can't take "Firemaking Charm" because he's concentrated in Theism? He just takes "Firemaking Feat" common magic instead.

>If it's a natural magical ability, then it is unaffected by Concentration.

This is strong incentive to assume that any listed ability is natural magic. Not only because of the concentration issue, but because natural magic can be used "actively" unlike unconcentrated common magic. Rather this is just one more reason to concentrate if you're going to take common magic, to avoid the "passive" magic problem.

Mike



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