>From: "Mark Galeotti" <mark_at_...>
>Some people regard such open-ended guidelines as a cop-put, others (myself
>included) see them as liberating.
I quite agree that they're liberating. I wouldn't have it any other way. But it's irrellevant to the argument. Yes, I agree that these rules don't prevent you from using any magic ability on multiple targets. But there are other rules that do...
>But the rules certainly do not prevent this putative Vingan from taking her
>chums into the treetops.
I think they do. The rules in question are the ones that speak to improv modifiers. That rule says that if an ability is not appropriate for a use, that a penalty can be put on it, or it's use can be dissallowed entirely by declaring it an automatic defeat. So, just as you can't use your fists to fight a person on a far hilltop, the narrator similarly has it as part of his purview to limit the use of magic at range or against multiple opponents.
There is no federal law in the United States that prevents anyone from murdering anyone else. But there are state laws that do serve to penalize murderers in every state. The fact that the federal government seems to permit murder doesn't mean that it's permitted. The rule in question simply does not pertain to the overall limitation, but how to limit when not otherwise limited.
The authority of the narrator to decide what is appropriate to use in what situations is perhaps the narrator's most important duty in Hero Quest play, IMO. This should not be abdicated because there is a general rule on magic that if taken at face value implies that all magic can be used at range because it doesn't say that there are types that cannot be so used.
Now, all that said, I'm beyond liberal in my interpretations here (I'm the guy who let's people use Oratory against Swordswinging). I'd probably allow it with the right explanation. But if a feat is emulating your god, and not some D&D fly spell that you can cast on somebody, I'd say that this in-game description is more than good enough for me to rule that a feat can't be "cast" on somebody else. It just doesn't seem to fit the explanation that the text and other information has given me to understand on how feats work (though I could be vastly mistaken in this). So given what I know, and my authority as narrator to use that information to make for a more interesting game by limiting ability usage, I would in this case make that limit.
I'm not saying that everyone should so limit the ability. I'm saying that the decision-making process should not be, "Hey, look, this one rule here doesn't limit it, so it must be possible" when in fact there are rules that allow it to be limited with proper consideration.
Mike
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