>From: Light Castle <light_castle_at_...>
>>I believe the intention is that common magic is very specific and very
>>low-level.
>I quite agree that is the intention. But the game doesn't really do
>anything to support that.
Yes it does.
It does the same thing that it does to support the idea that homelands all include a language. No, there's no hard mechanic that says you have to have a language for a homeland, but by example, it shows you this. The game has examples of common magic abilities not only in the various CM religions and such, but also in the section on common magic itself. Basically the book tells us by example, what makes sense for common magic, just as it shows us by example, for instance, what the appropriate breadth of an ability is.
And there is a rule. Just like the breadth rule indicates that if an ability is too broad that the narrator can call it a keyword or somesuch, the narrator is free to say that any ability that the player selects is just not suitable. That includes things like taking CM abilities that are out of range.
> ...But the Bison people, just to start at the beginning have these common
>magics: "Healing" (Yup, that's it. "Healing". If it wasn't for the p81
>thing about minor magical healing being the top end of common magic...)
Well, sounds like a good religion to be in, then, if you want healing. That is, just because most common magic seems not to allow healing at full scale, doesn't mean that all common magic does not. If the player wants to have some abilities that are exceptions to the rule about the scale of CM abilities, I have no problem with that. Basically the idea is to simply show that the abilities in question are generally of a humbler nature. Actually that's not even quite it, as I'll explain below.
>And if that wasn't enough, they also have access to... "Big Healing".
Which, if you wanted to, you could rule as saying that "healing" was only for minor things. You can't simply ignore all context with abilities and go by the wording alone.
>Then there's "Destroy Chaos" and "Destroy Godling".
Again, remember that most of these abilities are being thought of as something that will augment normally. Meaning that interpreting the "active" version of these as big flashes of light that vaporize your opponent is just wrong. You still do what you'd manually do to destroy the godling or chaos or whatever, it just becomes the augmentor in this case. But I wouldn't allow it to be used at range, for instance.
>I, too, have insisted common magic be fairly limited in how much it can do.
>It's a choice I've made that fits well with the feel of the world. But I
>could probably make a pretty nasty set of common magics (all which start at
>the common magic keyword level) for a concentrated user.
If the narrator let you, sure. But it wouldn't fit in Glorantha, or with the examples of common magic. I'd disallow it in my game, for instance. Or, rather, I'd work with the player to find more of a common magic style of solution.
Because consider the nature of the sources. Feats are emulations of the gods. Common Magic Feats are emulations of daimones who live with the people of Glorantha. Interestingly, charms from the different otherworlds are not so different in powers delivered, because either way the power level of the spirits in question is likely low (you don't typically bind majestic spirits and on up). But that just means that most charms seem to be like common magic in type.
But you can't argue that it's more powerful to be a Concentrated CM user vs the power of unleashing fetishes. Really, all in all, the HQ system is pretty well balanced in terms of power.
Which is interesting because none of this really has anything to do at all with whether or not HQ is a "storytelling" system or not (which is what started this whole thing). I'll explain this in another post.
Mike
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