From: | Mark Kalvin <Sahtori@***.COM> |
---|---|
Subject: | Re: Nature Spirit Attacks (the home team advantage) |
Date: | Mon, 20 Mar 1995 12:45:54 -0500 |
> I was looking through the stats for Nature Spirits, and it seems to me that
> only very few of them can actually attack someone. None of them have any
> form of attack. A couple have Powers which can do damage, such as EMP, but
> none of them can bash you over the head with a steel pipe or anything like
> that. This makes them rather less useful when compared to elementals in my
> view.
feanor@**********.UNI-BREMEN.DE (Jani Fikouras) wrote the following:
>Yes, but the "on the fly summoning" of spirits does give them an advantage
>over elementals. I mean mages have to devote a "slot" to keep an elemental
>in their service - so it would be logical that they wont waist this "slot"
>(I am refering to the charisma limit) by summoning a low level elemental.
>OTOH this means that they'll get fewer successes in their test ergo fewer
>services. This means that a mage will be most reluctant in using that one
>sevice his force 10 elemental ows him, whereas a shaman can easily summon
>a force 2 say spirit on the fly getting loads of successes they can use
>without a second thought. Now combine this with nifty powers like accident,
>alienation, and my personal favourite confusion and you get some pretty
>usefull spirits :)
It seems that only people who play Shamans and Hermetics know and care about
this stuff:-).
In order to defend the home-team advantage, I have to say that just as one
can and must think creatively about Nature Spirits, one must also think that
way about elementals. Yes, it is true that the charisma limit does leave
Hermetics without the ability to have spirits on tap quickly and cheaply
(something that leaves my character seething with jealousy:-)) but elemental
services, even from weak elementals are extremely useful: Low-level
elementals can be summoned with minimal drain to maintain spells, to aid
study, or to provide dice for some other magical task and, as you pointed
out, the weaker the spirit, the more services you can demand of it. Also,
when you first enter the game as a Mage, if you are properly introduced to
the rules and concepts of the game, you will immediatly see that you should
probably not choose to stumble around the game as the only elf in the world
with a charisma of one. :-)
I think that the people who designed the game showed a lot of wisdom in their
storytelling when they decided to create the break, the wall, that exists
between the powers and characteristics of Mages and Shamans: for the purposes
of storytelling, it is much easier to imagine mages being involved in the
pure, Western European, "I-make-the-world-do-what-I-want-it-to" kind of power
that elementals demonstrate-do what you can for me, anything, anytime,
anywhere. Whereas shamans are set up to coorperate with the forces of nature,
with their immediate environments. Nature spirits display really wonderful
powers that I sometimes wish my Hermetic Initiate character could replicate
(hmm....spell research :-)) but it really seems fitting, appropriate to the
implied mindset, for a mage to be able to do something like summoning a
watcher to identify the person giving orders in an enemy group and then
ordering a fire elemental to follow the watcher and cause that person great
discomfort_without regard to whether or not I am standing on land and the
person waving and shouting is standing in a boat on a lake where I can't see
him.
Pax et dominus, etc.
Mark Kalvin (Sahtori@***.com).