Hârnic Shamans

The shamanic abilities in this depend upon the ritual skill, which is fine. A problem I forsee (if used as player rather than NPC) is that ritual does not increase with practice, it must be learnt. The answer is presumably that you learn from a better shaman, but how does he get better? In terms of conventional religions (Larani etc), the priest would learn from a high priest or books, but the same 'where did the high ritual item / person come from' exists. I'd probably claim that self teaching would work, though there would definately be some chance of getting it wrong!

Steve

In regards to a PC's ritual increasing, I have a player in my game who worships Jarlak. (actually his character does... :) ) If you dont remember, Jarlak is the carrion lord of Sarajin. He is a huge white wolf. I thought that it would be acceptable for him to worship Jarlak. He was a Hodiri tribesman who was cast out of his tribe by his brother, and went to Cherafir and became an animal trainer, training dogs and horses. The character had about 6 months to kill (he missed a few weeks) and he said he wanted to increase his Ritual EML, perhaps learn a few invocations. We thought about it and decided that His character would endure several ordeal drugs and ceremonies to gain some idea of how to get closer to Jarlak, (ie increase Ritual ML) He gained a vision of a mantle of Jarlak being held by some strange creatures in Ivinia. And to make an epic story short, he retrieved it and was granted an audience with a divine pack of white wolves, and increased his ritual by SB. (i think) Anyway, as you can imagine, not all religions followers gain knowledge of invocations from a book.

-eric (not parson) anderson