> >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.
I don't think he made that claim because of the Shapechanging ability. As I understood him, his intention was to differentiate between someone being a spiritist/practictioner/shaman, and someone being a member of one of the magic systems. I'm not sure this distinction works, though. As far as I can see, being a member of any animist religion autmatically means you're *at least* a spiritist. Right?
> >If you don't include a rank, then *I* would figure the characdter is
> >at the lowest level of worship.
> [...]
> 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.
*That* was my main question. Of course I'm aware of this not being any kind of "strict" rule, merely "how it usually works out". I wanted to know if I'm going totally against what's commonly done when allowing players to not specify any magic and then still have the common magic kw as well as the basic level of their homeland specialized magic kw.
It does strike me as a bit unfair / unbalanced though, that a player who wants their char to differ from the usual in regards to their magic has to specify that difference. This is unfair in that in effect, the player still gets just one specialized magic kw, but now they suddenly had to include it. Am I thinking too much in terms of numbers, gains, and benefits here?
> >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.
That's actually an issue I had with the magic system when I read the chapters a while ago. There's no real reason in the game *mechanics* to one system over the other, is there? You can always fill the gaps in your abilities with common magic from one place or the other. It might require an extra session if you want to do it in-game, but then you can always pay the 2 hp and just buy any ability if you can provide a halfway decent explanation. And that's easy, given you never know ALL of the character's background at a given point in the game, so you can always come up with that distant relative or whatever.
> >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.
What do you mean by "passive" magic? And yes, it is very tempting to treat all listed magic abilities as natural magic. I'm just worried if that's not a tad too powerful? Isn't it a situation that regularily comes up in chargen? Someone narrates/lists an ability that's clearly beyond the mundane skills. How have you people coped with that?
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