>I was wondering if anyone can help me with how certain magical
>abilities are supposed to work in HeroQuest?
>
>In the HeroQuest book p144 Yu-Kargzant has a spirit called Gallop
>Through Sky with a strength of 10 to 1w2. What does anyone think
>this might do as an active ability? It reads as though you can fly
>on your horse but that would be a pretty amazing ability (especially
>for people who are horse archers!) as most enemies couldn't do much
>to you as you gallop around in the air shooting a bow at them - they
>would have to be able to fly themselves, have stronger bows or
>ranged magic. Is 10 to 1w2 powerful enough to do this? It also seems
>better than the specific flying feats of some of the Orlanth
>subcults which don't seem to be able to lift much weight and
>certainly not a horse. I also note that it says 'Sky' not 'Air'. Now
>as I understand it the Sky is above the Air so is it actually
>something to do with the Sky dome (again this sounds pretty amazing).
I would interpret that as meaning the spirit can Gallop Through Sky and carry a person with it. The spirit will have the appearance of a horse. Mind you I wouldn't trust myself to a spirit of 10 without some big augments - it's an awful long way down. As for firing bows or using ranged magic the first question is how do you see the target? So basically it's a very useful spirit for evading an enemy or chasing an enemy with a similar spirit. Anything more is going to require other magic so yes a clever PC may find a powerful combination but that's PCs for you.
>Also in Orlanth is Dead p31 Benyafil's Birds can make gliding leaps
>up to 100 yards long or 20 yards up. They are only initiates of
>Tholm so I guess they have no active abilities (not that Tholm seems
>to have this as a feat anyway). So how do they do this? It written
>down as though it is a mundane ability as 13w but even jumping up
>your height in the HeroQuest book (p275) has a difficulty of 10w2 so
>they aren't going to succeed very often when they try to jump up 20
>yards! Frankly it sounds like magic but as it isn't a feat and it
>isn't a power of their guardian entity how do they do it?
The obvious approach is to use "leap" as the active ability. It's then strongly augmented by Rinliddi magic. That would require enormously powerful magic to augment up to useful levels. I doubt it comes from Tholm who in any case has different affinities in OiD and ILH1. I'm not sure anyone really worked out the details at the time so we need to do some after the event rationalisation.
Given that they have what's described as "half wings" I'd guess the wings are a magic item which gives a trained wearer the described ability.
-- Donald Oddy http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/
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