modelling spells and blessings, grimoire errors.

From: bethexton_at_...
Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 19:45:08 -0000

>
> Good point, and one that could be easily inserted into spell
names. Maybe
> "our" (as you point out later) could vary from blessing to
blessing. "Bless
> our village's crops" will help anyone who lives in the village
(and ;
> "Bless our champion's sword" would work on the sword of the Humakti
who has
> sworn herself to the Lord (polluting her spiritually, too, but
probably not
> hurting the liturgist). I imagine that this is one reason why mixed
> worldview communities don't much exist -- blessing fields
already "treated"
> with a feat probably does no good and annoys the daimons.

I was just skimming through the sorcery section of the base rules, looking for info about transcribing spells (see thoughts below), when I happened to notice is that one of the benefits of joining a congregations is that you "may benefit from the blessing of the saint." (HW:rig, page 189) This does imply that non-members couldn't benefit at all......although I still think I'd be inclined to play it as I outlined, where it depended on the nature of the blessing (after all, you can bless crops and they aren't venerating the saint!).
>
> And here's a difference between liturgy and sorcery -- the
liturgist only
> knows the final formula; the wizard understands the proofs and
techniques
> needed to construct it.

<great example snipped>

another parrellel: a specefic blessing tells you exactly how to calculate the area of a circle (pi*r^2). A general blessing tells you how to estimate the area of anything by drawing squares of a known size in it and adding them up. With enough power that can be essentiall as effective as a precise formula, but in most applications it won't give you as precise a result.


Grimoire Error:
Relating back to the concept of the oldest grimoires being the most accurate, I would say that *most* wizards know how to "repeat the proof," but don't necessarily _understand_ it fully. Hence, they may not realize where a copying error has weakened their version.

A couple of fun ideas occur to me based on this. You know how some orders, and many player wizards/sorcerors, will accumulate spells from other sources? Perhaps some of those will actually be flawed.

For example, you might be able to learn the "resist cold" spell, but either it would have additional conditions attached to it (resist cold of night, but it won't help during the day---you got most of the proof, but a couple addenda and corrallories were left off), or it has a penalty of some sort to use (you always cast it at a -3 modifier--you have the whole thing but one line is mis-copied so the logic has a flaw in it).

Further, perhaps when you copy a grimoire a roll would be in order (augmented no doubt by caligraphy and concentration and similar skills). On a marginal success you can use it just fine (you know what it is _supposed to say_), but to anyone else it is a corrupted copy, with some sort of penalty. On a marginal failure even you get penalties if trying to cast directly from it (your talisman for spells you know would be correct, but you copied the formula wrong and have the error stuck in your head now). Anything worse and the copied grimoire doesn't work (or some parts of it don't). On a critical failure it might even be dangerous! ("Let's see, soak all my clothes in oil, then summon the essence of fire.....")

Well, hopefully we'll eventually get a "Book of the West" which will, amongst othere things, tell us more about things like transcribing grimoires and researching brand new, or even modified, spells.

Regards;

Bryan

Powered by hypermail