I’m just using your examples, man. You were saying allowing more than three lifepaths would resulting in inappropriate combinations like augur/woodcutters, and I was pointing out it is already allowed with three lifepaths. If we can discount that possibility we can do it for both three and four lifepath characters, right?
Well, I don’t see how I can make Cassandra at the beginning of her story either. And I can totally make a Knight or Lord with the existing system. I guess it depends exactly what you mean by finished hero- I don’t see why playing an old woman augur who has never been a wife or midwife is necessarily a more finished hero than a bishop or a baron.
I can think of a lot of characters that seem standard in what I thought was the source material, like the augur who is a secret advisor to a nobleman or an old woman who has been an augur her whole life, that aren’t allowed and I’m not seeing why. You gave some reasons for having restrictions that would make sense to me if they synced up with the actual restrictions, I’m just seeing a lot of choices that shouldn’t be allowed by your reasoning and are or should be but aren’t, so I think what you are describing is a reasonable setting but not the one implied by these rules.
I think that it’s worth noting, here in post 22, that there’s no way that the printed words in the rule book(s) will enforce themselves.
You’ve gotten considerable explanation as to why the Augur LP is the way it is–in fact, why every LP is the way it is: to evoke a specific setting intrinsically within the rules–and you keep asking, “But WHY?”
OK, I’ll answer: Because Luke said so. Don’t agree; want something different; want to play a different tone of setting? Fine, go for it, no one’s stopping you. Make a hermaphrodite Troll augur that was once a Lord of Pirates (6LP).
The information I was looking for is what about the setting these restrictions were trying to evoke. Only Opcero has actually tried to answer this question, for which I thank him. But I don’t think his answers are actually supported by the rules- he’s describing a reasonable setting, but it’s not actually the one the lifepath restrictions evoke.
I’m not asking “But WHY?” about why there are lifepath restrictions, I agree with you that it’s to evoke a particular setting. My question is what setting are these restriction trying to evoke? The lifepath restrictions aren’t consistent with the sources I thought they were supposed to evoke, in the ways I have already described and could recap if I thought it would be helpful. So what kind of setting are they trying to evoke, if not the one I imagined? Opcero gave one good answer, I just don’t think the answer was consistent with the actual lifepath restrictions.
I think if you closely examine any lifepath, you’ll find that it’s a tiny bit of pastiche. None of them really stand up to scrutiny. The knight, for example, isn’t at all what French or English or German knight was like, but the path serves as a homunculus. And when combined with others it forms a convincing simulacrum of a character. Same goes for the Augur. She’s a hint of a lot of other things. She can’t hope to accurately represent all of the magic lady cults in history and literature, but from an abstract distance she does just fine.
Wow, lots of comments.
The thing that sticks out to me is what Opcero said about how Augurs are different than other lifepaths as becoming an augur changes the character, from that moment on their life becomes about the visions and the prophecies. They can never just “quit” (unlike a woodcutter or lazy stayabout) it is a part of them.
One can not just walk away from a higher calling (ask Jonah).
Still, if the limits and requirements do not make sense for your game or in your group, change or ignore them. Otherwise, try to burn the character you want without the Augur lifepath and just purchase whatever traits and skills you’re missing with spare trait points and general skills. You could even earn or learn some in game.
My thanks to all of you for your helpful comments on this thread.
