> I don't quite understand the Affinities / Feats system.
[...]
> Affinities strike me as logical. Taking Odayla as an example, with the
Hunt affinity, a player who is chasing after another person could say
"Chasing prey is part of a hunters job, 'Odayla, aid me in my time of need,
grant me a burst of speed to catch the bastard'" and use his Hunt affinity
to augment his Running skill as per the rules. It's not exactly hunting,
but the situation is related, so his Hunting Affinity can be applied
(similar to the rock lifting example in the rules book).
Correct. Affinities are "what the god is known for" - Hunting, Fighting, Flying, whatever. If you can convince your narrator that the affinity fits, then he may agree totally, or apply improv mods ("Well, Joe the Odayla Initiate is trailing the Lunar officer through the streets of downtown Boldhome, that's a kind of hunting, so..." "Yeah, but Odayla is a forest kinda guy, so you have a -10 to your Hunt affinity")
> Are all affinities simply used to augment other abilities ?
No - you have to have an ability to augment in the first place. Normal humans don't have a Fly ability, so Vangath's Flight affinity allows them to really, truely fly, not just jump really far or fall more slowly.
>Surely there's more scope than that for affinities. Can the (and I'm
stretching and guessing because I don't have my rules at work) Mahome
worshipper say "I'm >using my fire affinity to light the camp fire" <zot>
"Campfire's burning, campfire's burning..."
Yes. Almost any Fire affinity would allow this. Sometimes there may be resistance to the ability - "Okay, but it's raining buckets and the firewood is all wet, the resistance is 10w."
> What about feats ? How would you use, say, Humakt's Truesword Feat ? Is
that just used as an augmentation to your Swordfighting skill ? If so, then
that's pretty naff. The Truesword Runespell gives you double chance to hit
which is a very specific effect, but we're not playing RQ here...
Feats are emulations of specific things the gos did in the past.
There are several orders of magnatude difference between the abilities of Gods and those of Heroes. The ability rating of the affinity is the measure of how strong the link is between the human and the god. Think of it as a pipeline - a 17 is a tiny little pipe, a 10w2 is a huge pipe. The more "pressure" in the pipe, the more chance that the pipe will rupture (the bigger the augment, the more chance that the characetr will fail against the resistance and suffer consequences).
So yes, when Humakt uses "Truesword Stroke" he hits cleanly and squarely every time. But Joe Humakti doesn't have Humakt's level of power, so he just gets a little bonus to his normal Close Combat ability.
> Some feats are obvious, some are quite cryptic. The rules seem quite
vague on the topic and I really don't know how I'd use feats in a game.
They sound really, really cool and I love the concept, but...
>
> Is it honestly just a case of looking at the feat / affinity, thinking of
a plausible use for it and going for it ?
Yes.
>If so, has anyone done a list of cool uses for affinities or feats ?
Nils and I have said several times that the website is willing and ready to have people submit descriptions of feats, but no-one has taken us up yet...
> I hope I'm making sense here and not just asking a stupid question...
Not at all. The transition between RQ and HW is sharp.
Roderick
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