>This was a point of some confusion for me as, in the Wizardry chapter,
>we are introduced to a kewl and malevolent form of Wizardry and then
>*POOF*... There it went. Nothing else.
>
>It is my understanding, from talking with others on the subject, that
>there is no published explanation that goes much further towards bringing
>Sorcery into HQ. So, I'm asking here for house rules or GM interpretations.
>Any help/advice/house rules that you can give would be of mondo help to me.
>
>First, does Sorcery differ mechanically from Wizardry and, if so, how?
It doesn't, the difference is purely in social acceptablity. Wizards are members of the monotheistic churches, sorcerers aren't. This means that a wizard is expected to comply with church rulings on acceptable practices whereas a sorcerer is only restricted by the power of other people to stop him.
>Second, what is Tapping, beyond what is listed in the brief mention in HQ?
That's basically it, the sorcerer extracts magic energy from other living creatures. It reduces their magic abilities while increasing the sorcerer's. If their magical abilities are reduced to zero they die.
>And, third, how do you handle Tapping in your games? What mechanics do
>you use? Do you treat Tapping as a Skill or a Magical Ability? What
>effects do you adjudicate on the thing or person being tapped? How do you
>arrive at your results?
Looking back at Hero Wars, there are an elaborate set of rules for tapping all sorts of abilities and maintaining a tapping pool, presumably dropped from HQ because of either space or complexity.
On the principle of keeping uncommon things simple, I would treat tapping as a magical ability where the tapping sorcerer declares how many points they wish to tap from the target and run a contest with their ability to tap against the target's magic keyword. Complete victory reduces the targets magic keyword by the points chosen and increases the sorcerers. Major victory by half, minor by a quarter. All are restricted by the actual value of the target's keyword. Ties and minor victories/defeats have no effect while defeats mean the sorcerer loses all (complete), half (major) or quarter (minor) of the points from their magic keyword.
If the sorcerer is later killed then the target may (narrator's discretion) recover the lost ability.
This may sound harsh but it means only powerful sorcerers will attempt to tap people or magical creatures. I would also tend to find reasons for information or rumours of tapping to reach the local authorities. That will often bring an inquisitor with a bunch of church knights and wizards round to visit.
>I know this is a lot of questions, but I've seriously run into a wall
>here. Currently, I am working on a couple of conversion docs and it would
>be really great to know exactly how others use Tapping as my attempts
>to emulate what is written in HQ are not meeting with much success.
>
>Thanks in advance for any advice, opinions or house rules that you can
>provide.
-- Donald Oddy http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/
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