thunderstones and woad questions.

From: Bryan Thexton <bethexton_at_...>
Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2000 20:58:58 -0000

I've been buying the HW books in a non-intuitive order (i.e., bought the one with all the rules in it last). I thought that eventually I would understand the mechanics of the enchant thunderstone and armor of woad feats, but I don't.

First of all, "enchant thunderstone".

According to the rules, to permanently enchant something first you defeat it with an appropriate enchant ability, then you defeat it with what you want to enchant into it, then you spend a hero point to lock it in. Then the item gains an ability at 12. I'm not sure this fits thunderstones, as:
1) I thought they were either one use items or something that you temporarily imbued into a stone....are they actually permanently enchanted rocks that you will want to gather up and re-use? 2) This would suggest you could stick a wide variety of magic into thunderstones (assuming you have appropriate affinities). Is thunderstone just a generic word for a magic stone? I always thought they were specifically stones that went flash/boom on impact. 3) If you were trying to make the flash/boom type of thunderstone, what feat exactly would you use to perform the second step of the enchantment? What skill/power does this (especially under Hedkoranth's feats--I don't see anything that looks like a lightning bolt there. Perhaps thunder sling, although that sounds more like the sling rather than the stone used in the sling)

Second, woad. My understanding of woad, from old runequest days, was something that was ritually prepared on holy days, and then was available as a one use item. I presume now you just use the armor of woad feat, possibly with an extended duration. If you don't have actual woad, you presumably suffer an improv penalty depending on what you actually use, and if you don't take time to actually paint your body you would presumably suffer a bigger penalty? Or could you just get painted (maybe even have tattoos?) and then when combat hit use armor of woad as an action to obtain a defensive edge?

Sorry if this has been covered soemwhere already, but I've been reading the list since before the rule book was published and I don't recall this being discussed.

Oh, and if I'm blantantly missing something obvious in the rules, feel free just to reference me back to the rules book, I admit have gotten muddled in my reading.

--Bryan