--------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sauramud's Advice Column for Young Wizardlings Issue 6 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Once again, culled from the pages of the _Wizard Weekly News_ comes the latest installment of Saruamud the wizard's advice column. But first, a word or two from Sauramud himself: --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dear Readers, It has recently come to my attention that some overly-liberal activists have begun a 'Save the Orcs' campaign in response to recent alleged depletions in the Orcish population due to over-slaughtering by adventurers eager to gain experience. On behalf of the the Wizard's guild I would like to say HOGWASH! PIFFLE! There are NO FEWER Orcs today than there were twenty years ago. The guild keeps _very close_ watch on Orcish demographiques because they are one of our main sources for experimental subjects and I can tell you that there is NO CRISIS. We always end up trapping FAR MORE Orcs than we need every year. The world has enough problems without these ill-begotten groups trying to save these parasites from harvesting! Nuff said, on to this issue's questions... ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dear Sauramud! I have a rather unusual problem! (I think)! Me and my group were on a nice little adventure here the other day, where we suddenly encountered a group of other adventurers. Naturally, we attacked. To sum it up, they sliced us in pieces. They had 60 attacks/round, lots of strange spells I've never even heard of, and they could run at least 200 yds/round. For some reason they spared me (I'd been hiding behind a small shrubbery the whole time). After they had taken all our gold and magic items, they left, but one of them said to me: "Next time, use GURPS or another 1 round/second system". And then he laughed. Evilly. I would now like to know: Where can I buy a GURPS? What is it? Some sort of super speed potion? What should I do to prevent this from happening again? The Frustrated Dear Frustrated, GURPS is more a movement than a system; vile but seductive in its seeming simplicity. Whilst followers of this movement gain great speed and other advantages, they are all saddled with disadvantages and quirks that one may utilize if he discovers them. Followers of this movement tend to be as slow witted as they are fast moving, fr'instance. If you hear of any more activities by this group you may want to appeal to Monty Haul - deity of overabundant treasure and magic items. A word of caution here; any appeals to this deity cause one to turn into a Munchkin, Maximizer and Rules Rapist. This is not necessarily bad as nobody in _any_ system is more powerful than a true Munchkin, sixty attacks notwithstanding. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dear Sauramud: I have this ongoing argument with the party thief, Mog. Mog says that it is not fair that he has to train to climb walls, and all I have to do is alakazam! and I "spider-climb" with no chance of falling at all. He also says he hates the fact that I can make his lock-picking obsolete with my nifty "Knock" spell, his Hear Noise with my "Clairaudience" spell, and Hide in Shadows with "Invisibility". Not to mention he is out classed when all I need to do to get a rich man's purse is "Charm Person" him, no need for messy Pick Pocketing. He says it is folks like us mages that ruin the thieving business. What should I tell him? signed, No Honor Among Thieves Dear NHAT, I can understand his point. This is a touchy situation that must be handled quickly in a mature and sensitive fashion. If I was in your situation I would sit the thief down, poke him in the eye and say, "Of course I'm better than _you_ are ya wiener! Neener neener! Mages are BETTER than EVERYONE! Why else do you suppose everybody with a HIGH INTELLIGENCE decides to BECOME ONE? We're GREAT! Can you do THIS? (Barroomph! goes a nearby copse of trees, victim of a fireball.) or THIS? (Kapow! a flock of songbirds explode in a bolt of lightning.)" The thief might argue at this point that he is more environmentally friendly than is a mage. To a certain extent this is true. Cede to him that point and then short-sheet his bedroll that night. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dear Sauramud, Well ya see I've got this embarrassing problem, and I was wondering what you could suggest. My problem is I'm a cleric. The great god of my world, Mr.-DM-Sir, outlawed clerics, in favor of these oh-so-exclusive specialty priests. I tried to become one of these Specs (their nickname), but they had all these silly requirements like a good constitution, great strength, quick hands, and the ability to appeal to the masses. I mean for heavens sake, I'm a goddamn cleric! (Ooops maybe that's part of the problem ...) I walk around in armor, have good hit points, worry about shedding no blood while busting the orcs head to smithereens with my mace, heal on demand, and scare the shit out of undead. Now Mr.-DM-Sir wants me to actually PREACH and act RELIGIOUS! For God's sake, enough is enough! Anyway, I tried to cope by pretending to be a mage. For instance I told the party that my Cause Light Wounds spell was actually a real short range magic missile. I told them my Light spell was actually a stationary solitary Dancing Lights spell. I also told them my Command spell was a limited power Sleep spell. Anyway now the party thinks I'm a lousy mage, and thinks I was stupid to waste such a high wisdom. They're convinced I couldn't cast my way out of a paper bag. (They're right, clerics can't get Teleport spells.) Anyway, how do I extricate myself? Joe Schmo the Cleric PS I'm tired of carrying around these 47 'optional' complete handbooks and telling them all they're spell books. How 'optional' are they if my DM forces me to read them for 4 hours each day? Dear Cleric, Of all the other classes I hold the clerics in about the highest esteem (outside of my own of course). I tend to think of them as wimpy mages that foam a bit at the mouth and preach too much. I wouldn't worry too much about trying to extricate yourself from this little problem. I don't think your party would know the difference between a mage and a cleric anyway. Heck, anybody who doesn't question a wizard decked out in smelly metal armour and lugging about a holy symbol and mace hasn't the reasoning to outwit a bowl of green slime. "Oops, somebody slap the fighter - he's forgetting to breathe again." As to acting religious and preaching, I would remind the powers that be that adventuring clerics make _lousy_ preachers! Since most of their experiences revolve around smashed in heads and dangling entrails they tend to use those a lot to illustrate points in their sermons and it turns most decent citizens into raging mobs of pitchfork wielding fury! As to those books; ALL books are optional. Either you read them or you don't. I recommend the former. Seeing as you are carrying around forty seven of them anyway, you might as well add one more to your collection; Magely Ways by yers truly. This clever handbook will instruct even the most rank neophyte on how to act like a seasoned veteran mage in only ONE reading - complete with colour illustrations and cross-referenced index! This book is a compendium of many years worth of my columns to the Wizard Weekly News and includes such skills as; * Using your fighter as a shield * The art of cringing * Fun with polymorph * Poking the monk in the eye If you haven't ordered your copy of this book yet then watch for the ads in the next W.W.N. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dear Sauramud, Coming as I do from a small village, getting together an adventuring party was not easy. Why my master ever decided to build his wizardly tower in this gods-forsaken backwater is beyond me (though why the thieve's guild has a chapter here is perhaps a bigger mystery - what do they hope to do, shake down some farmers for a dozen eggs?) As you can guess, the choice of companions to raid the local dungeon was not great, so when I put this bunch together a few alignment troubles were to be expected. Unfortunately, a "few" problems is putting it mildly. While the fighter is a goody-goody lawful type with hopes to one day become a Paladin, I'm sure the thief is a card-carrying Chaotic Evil type. The priest is more Neutral than anything, but still finds fault with every action everyone makes - I mean, one little magic missile into a nearby cow in a field and he spazzes out. Sure he's a priest of some tree-hugging nature deity or something (I never pay attention to that drek) but is that any reason to threaten a magicer with burning his spell books? In your long adventuring career I'm sure you encountered party alignment conflicts like this before. What can I do to make them less of a distraction on my quest for magical power? Sign me, Alignment Anarchy Dear A.A., Some people are a little anal retentive when it comes to this whole alignment thing. I've always considered an alignment to be more of a guideline than a fixed rule - especially when it gets in the way of a little clean fun. Heck, what's nuking a couple of cows or peasants now and then? There's always plenty more where that one came from. I think what your tree-hugging cleric needs is a good night out where he can get seriously drunk and laid. I wouldn't worry too much about the thief. Don't ever let him prepare dinner, protect your belongings with some a few nasty magical traps and quietly report him to the authorities of every town you pass through so that he's too busy watching his back and doesn't have time to think of nasty things he can do to you. I have found that this works well for monks too. The budding paladin would be my first concern. Paladins can be an awfully stuffy lot and tend to frown on every imagined iniquity they spot in their companions. I had the fortune of travelling for many years with a paladin who didn't have the brains to realize that he was supposed to be Lawful Good. While he did most of the things that a paladin is required to do he did so in ways that I don't think they considered when they wrote the book on paladins. He was so pissed off when he found out that he was expected to give away ninety percent of his money (even when the rest of us tended to short change his share because of this) that he took to delivering it to the needy with a slingshot. You've never seen a feeding frenzy until you watch large group of starving urchins fight over a gold coin! ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dear Wise and Noble Sauramud, What to do? I am a young mage travelling with a half-elven triple-classed dolt with a large attitude problem. For instance, upon meeting, he introduced himself as "I cannot tell you my real name, but my friends call me Titan." He is impossible to travel with or get along with, as every small slight against him is taken as a personal insult, and he'll spend days or weeks to exact his revenge. Meanwhile, the rest of the party just comes along for the ride. So you may wonder why we travel with him....well, we had been in the company of an almost identical character, who fortunately died on one adventure. This "Titan" took his place. They must be twins or something, because I can't tell them apart. And I have the feeling if we were to desert Titan or kill him off, we would end up with another identical "Titan v3.0" for our efforts. What can we do? The Men behind the Titan Dear Men (etc), This is a common complaint. Most of these letters start off with, "Dear Sauramud, We have this real loser in our party and no matter how many times we kill him he always comes back with a new revision number..." None of these mysterious strangers of questionable genetic background ever comes with a name, just a one or two syllable alias such as 'Bear', 'Titan' or 'Strider'. Don't be fooled by appearances, these foul creatures are _not_ human, they are the ill-spawned offspring of the evil deity Clonius. If you kill one of these things off there are just a million more like them ready to step into its shoes; "Greetings, I have no name but you may call me Zulu XXIX - say, did you just break wind in _my_ direction? Fiend! Prepare to defend yourself..." I would like to say the the solution to this problem is to simply kill this thing and the entire gene pool that spawned it, but no such simple solution exists. There's a better way though. Don't kill it, humiliate it! C'mon, if it takes offense at small things then give it _real_ things to be offended about. When it's not looking slap a 'Kick Me' sticker on it's back. Lace its healing potions with oil of ipecac... "Tch tch. These potions won't do you much good if you can't hold them down." The next time you are passing through a small town anonymously enter it into the local pig wrestling contest. Pay a hobbit to introduce himself to this 'Titan' as a long-lost half brother and love-child of their common father. The one thing that ones like this 'Titan' want is to be taken seriously and if you don't do that then, if you're lucky, they will wander off to sulk. Good luck. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Well that's all for this installment folks. As always, send _your_ questions for Sauramud to [m m caleese] at [csr.uvic.ca.] "Sauramud's Advice Column" is written by David Braun ([David Braun] at [panam.wimsey.bc.ca]) and Michael McAleese ([m m calees] at [csr.uvic.ca]), A.K.A. "Those Dudes". Contributors of "letters to Sauramud" were: <[L P R 100] at [PSUVM.PSU.EDU]> [e--i--g] at [ecn.purdue.edu] (Eric C Garrison) [b--d] at [colonial.eecs.umich.edu] (Eric Boyd) Niels Ull Jacobsen <[n--l] at [diku.dk]> -- * [m m calees] at [csr.uvic.ca] (Michael McAleese) : I speak only for me... * "Man can believe the impossible, but never the improbable." - Oscar Wilde