From: Jim Ogle (Ks. Jim) <jogle@aoc.nrao.edu>
Subject: Re: A SPI Question
X-Gated-By: The Black Marble Wombat@morticia.cnns.unt.edu
X-Gated-From: torg mailing list
Organization: University of North Texas
X-Gatemail-Version: 1.0b
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 19:51:33 GMT

Colin writes:

> Well, I must express some disagreement with the guru  :)

Another one!  Now I know how Baruk Kaah must feel.... 8-)

> > They don't draw P-Energy from anywhere.  When a diety is invoked the
> > diety itself provides the power necessary for the miraculous event
> > (that is why no Faith total is necessary when you invoke a diety, just
> > the Focus total.)
> 
> I assume you mean Direct Invocations.  Invoking a miracle *always*
> requires faith and focus.  And as for Direct Invocations, I have assumed
> sonce I first read it that the comment about only focus being required was
> a misprint, and that in fact only *faith* is required.  After all, without
> the ability to focus 'standard' miracles, the only option open to the
> majority of the faithful is to just pray a whole bunch, based on their
> faith, for a unique one-time result.  That is a direct invocation.

Yes, I meant direct invocations.  The rules say "no faith rating is
necessary when performing an invocation, as the spirit or diety is
providing the spritual energy necessary for the miracle."  (rulesbook,
p127)  Of course, you still have to have Faith (otherwise the diety
won't listen to you in the first place), you just don't need to bother
with determining what the Faith value of the attempt is because the
energy isn't coming from the cosm or from the faithful, its coming
from the diety.

As for the mass of faithful worshippers who don't have anyone with
Focus, unless they've got a Spirit axiom of 20 or higher then they're
screwed, unless the GM is nice enough to allow that a diety will use
"divine intervention" to aid his followers even if they don't have
anyone with Focus ("And God decided to help the poor schlubs, even
though they did not know how to contact Him").  Note that this cannot
occur if the Spirit axiom is less than 13, as such an act would be
irrefutable evidence of divine existence.

> So, I still believe that the SPI axiom represents some well of p-energy
> from which one may draw -- but only if one possesses the correst key, i.e.
> faith and focus for the appropriate god.

YMMV.

> > I would say that this means a Sacellum priest cannot perform
> > beneficial miracles on anyone who does not have Faith(Sacellum).
> 
> No.  The Orrorsh SB says that the DN to perform a beneficial miracle on a
> non-believer is at +2 or +3 (I forget which), but *not* that it is
> impossible.  This is mentioned in the intro paragraphs to the 'Miracles of
> Faith' chapter.

[flip,flip,flip]  Yeah, that is what it says (+2).  I'd say then the
comment in the 'learning other miracles' section about denying
Sacellum miracles to anyone else is a bit overblown - the Sacellum god
doesn't like wasting his divine power on non-believers but the Spirit
axiom just isn't high enough for Mr. Sacellum to prevent heathen
priests from seeing a miracle and asking their diety for a duplicate
version of it (you know the Cyberpapacy god would be perfectly willing
to accept some of the Sacellum combat miracles).

Kansas Jim (jogle@aoc.nrao.edu)
Newsgroups: alt.games.torg