From: "Henry Oliver III" To: gurpsnet-l@io.com Subject: Re: Wanted: Complex Spirit Combat Date: Wed, 05 Dec 2001 17:47:10 -0800 G. Fleming wrote: ### Who-o-o-oa, Nellie! I'd like to see a copy too. Been reading Spirits the last two days BECAUSE of this thread. ### Oh! I'm glad to see someone else is interested. ### I'd definitely use Will as a lone stat, charging as per any other stat, but not adding points to make up for it. This is what I intend to do in a Spirit Magic game... ### Agreed. I just worry that it'll become a slippery slope... divorce Will and IQ; next thing you know, you've seperated IQ into logic, knowledge, wit and you're playing FUDGE. I like to tinker with the system (heck, my group is up to 15 house rules now), but I worry about this kind of thing. It feels a bit radical. Anyway, I got off on a tangent there. As for spirit combat, I figure there are two ways to do it: (1) treat spirits as normal combatants without weapons/armor who just happen to be on a different plane, or (2) make the whole thing some kind of magical/ psionic/ metaphysical struggle, like two telepaths battling against each other. Right now, I'm looking at a fusion of the two--it could be used to achieve the level of complexity I'm looking for without sacrificing the novelty of it all. #1 seems to be supported by the fact that spirits have move stats and ST (not just fatigue). Also, so long as spirits arn't insubstantial towards each other, there's no reason (based on the root ads and disads of Spirit Form) why they couldn't strike each other physically. But #2 is appealing to me as well; after all, if I totally go with #1, I just make the spirit plane another combat zone without weapons/armor. Boring. Right now, I think I'd like to keep move and initiative as it is for regular combat, and replace ST with Will for damage purposes. Blocking could be allowed as half your ST score and dodge would be normal; damage could be applied towards HT as normal with some options to use fatigue to perform certain actions (e.g. the ability to expend one point to give yourself 1 DR for a turn, expend 2 points to raise your Will 1 point for a turn, expend 5 points to regain a point of HT instantly, etc.). The attack 'skill' could be (the average of DX, Will and ST) + 1. Of course, this is just some idle thought... I do think it'd at least make spirit combat more interesting (though you'd probably need an additional character sheet for the extra/changed info). Excuse the grammar and structure, it's 47 deg. F in my computer room right now. -- Henry J. Oliver III, UberGeek http://www.geocities.com/ubergeek00/ "Give a man fire and he will be warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he will be warm for the rest of his life."