Legends: Strategic Reserve #5

From: dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig)

Date: Thu, 29 Apr 1993 22:01:39 +0000

I may write a letter to the Strategic Reserve, but I guarantee that I'll
never write another article.  For no obvious reason, they edited out about
20% of it (not obvious because the page layout didn't demand it), which
had the unfortunate result of rendering much of the balance embarrassingly
incoherent.  Sigh...

The issue contains more teasers for Legends II.  I continue to be
impressed:  They've obviously been listening to players.

The most informative part was a pair of articles on statuses, one for
CoA and one for RoI.  The value of the information is lessened by the
fact that those modules are both in the process of being phased out,
but they still have a fair amount of play in them.

I'm not going to be the one who transcribes all the figures for posting,
but I will note a couple of high points and a couple of low points.
Low ones first:  a) MG said that Vampyres only morph at production,
but unless the article contains a typo, they only morph in battle.
b) The morphing probability for Nethermorph is either missing or misprinted.

On the plus side, they explain which statuses can over-ride which.  It's
*not* as simple as "the status with the higher INV is stronger".  Rather
each status has a strength value in each of four categories: Undead,
Lycanthrope, Other, and Religious -- and can only over-ride another
status if it is stronger in the category of *that* status.  For instance,
Vampyre has strengths of 12, 6, 6, and -18, respectively, so it can
over-ride Nethermorph (status of type 'other' with strength 4), but
it can't over-ride "Blessed" of anything, since those are all statuses
of type Religious with strength far greater than -18.  (There can
also be religious restrictions.  For example, while anyone can be afflicted
with Vampyre, only evil characters can morph.)

-----
Dani Zweig
dani@netcom.com

The inability of snakes to count is actually a refusal, on their part,
    to appreciate the Cardinal Number system. -- "Actual Facts"