[Rq-rules] Re: Humakti Death Drive

[Nikk Effingham]

I'm going to side with Pete's Suggestion 3, that you have to make payment on the
gift immediately. I was thinking along those lines initially. Two other
suggestions are still enticing; that the character shouldn't get the gift as he
clearly has no intention of paying it back, and that the character can only
take gifts/geases upon becoming a Sword and then at the rate of one per year,
but I'm not convinced that this is going to get around the problem all the
time. I could imagine a character making a good case for being honourable and
not trying to screw Humakt (he is, after all, only taking what's on offer) and
the second case just means that a character can become a mega-killing machine
only upon becoming a Sword (and during a prolonged war there'll be lots of
people ready to take the place of their dead Sword and become the mega-killing
machine). Whilst this prevents PCs from doing it, this isn't quite what I was
worried about (my PCs have analysed the rules and found many loopholes; however
we all just agree not to take advantage of them), I was more worried about
explaining to my PCs why mega-killing machines don't pop up every now and
again, and I'd like to rule them out. So I'm going to go with the third option,
it eliminates the problem utterly.

I like the 'Just Say No' scheme, but then I'd have to make judgement calls about
when Humakt just says no, is it when you add 50 points to a stat? Or ten? Or
five? I'd feel like there was a bank manager decision to be made (what's your
max POW? Do you have other POW commitments? Do you agree to cut down on your
spending on Rune magic?). There'd be a whole Humakt the Mangerial Sword subcult
(a part of me actually thinks that's a serious idea and I'm going to think
about that as a more MGF option).

Simon:

>Say, the character was an Illuminate, he could take the gift and never have
>to repay it. Why don't they all do it? Because they can't - Humakt wouldn't
>let them. Because it's silly.

This was my follow-up question. What to do with Illuminates? Can they take the
gift at all? If so, how many times? Do they get two free points? Five free
points? Fifty? For a Dorastor campaign, with all those lovely Humakti
Illuminate Broo, this is quite important! I was thinking that that particular
gift cannot be ignored (I play that Illuminates cannot ignore HeroQuest geases,
and that some geases - such as this one and the additional gift/geas pairs from
Sandy P.'s Humakt write-up - are actually HeroQuest gift/geases and can't be
ignored). But has anyone got a better suggestion? One that's less arbitrary?

Cheers for all the suggestions!

Nikk