Message no. 1

From:	Helge Diernaes <ecocide@***.econ.cbs.dk>
Subject:	Still a good handwave for a bothersome player
Date:	Fri, 15 Dec 1995 20:42:17 +0100 (MET)

On Tue, 12 Dec 1995, Gurth wrote:
> Sebastian Vilstrup said on 11 Dec 95...
>
> > In the Rifts game by palladium, they have a character class called 'borgs
> > which, ofcourse, is a cyborg. They are, if i remember correctly, very
> > resistant to magic, due to their lack physical body/aura thingy. This
> > goes for both beneficial and harmful spells. It makes sense though.
>
> Though I've never playe Rifts, I'd say it makes sense within the game's
> background. In Shadowrun, the background says that such borgs can be hurt
> by magic just as easily as the next person (or car or whatever).
> Not that this should stop anyone from making a house rule saying that the
> heavily-cybered should be more difficult to kill with magic.

I can easily understand the FASA wish for making magical healing harder
for cybered beings due to the anti-tank complex. That it to sammieplayers
seem sucky is also quite sensible, as it do seem weird that healing with
mana is difficult for a 0.4 essesce girl, but being hurt with a mana bolt
is just as easy as for anyone else.

While I hold with Gurth in that anyone shold make the house rules that
suits them, I'll advance one point in favor of the going FASA rule. It
might have been proposed before, though :)

If an individuals mana is virginial (sp?), it is in most "natural" and in
accord with nature, as nature goes...
Healing is herefore quite simple, as the mana available for the magi
trying to heal the wounded is quite pure - may still be hard healing due
to the intesity of the "natural" rifts in the mana, but still, the magi's
efforts is likely to be succesful because the high correlation between
his/her grip on "pure" mana and the present mana of the wounded.

A manabolt hitting this same person will cruise right into nice pure mana
and make nasty flaws in it, IOW make target squeal.

Now, lets take our 0.4 girl. She has been hurt badly, and her magi sister
tries to heal her. And what is the magi presented with? Precious little
"pure" mana, damn difficult to grasp for a person who usually operates
with (hopefully) low background counts. Which makes the magi's effort to
"knit" the wounded mana together much more difficult, simply because its
much harder to 1. distinquish the wounded mana from the permanently
polluted ditto, and 2. presumably much more difficult to make the healing
stick in the polluted environment.

A mana bolt hitting madam sammie will cruise into the polluted mana and
disrupt it even more than before. It is not - in my opinion - a question
of disrupting pure mana, its more like disrupting the current mana even
more than before.

Let me come with a - perhaps misleading - metaphor:

Asume that we have 2 paintings, one whole and one mistreated, with nice
holes and flaws.
Which one will be easiest to destry? Ofcourse depends upon the method of
choice, but likely they will be equally difficult - or easy.
Which one will be easiest to repair?
That is my point.

Just my, perhaps outdated, opinion.

See ya,

--
Silhouette

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" ?"
Myself, 1195
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Helge Diernaes
ecocide@***.econ.cbs.dk