---------------------------------------------------------------------------
         Sauramud's Advice Column for Young Wizardlings   Issue 6
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Once again, culled from the pages of the _Wizard Weekly News_ comes the
latest installment of Saruamud the wizard's advice column.  But first,
a word or two from Sauramud himself:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Readers,

     It has recently come to my attention that some overly-liberal
activists have begun a 'Save the Orcs' campaign in response to recent
alleged depletions in the Orcish population due to over-slaughtering by
adventurers eager to gain experience.  On behalf of the the Wizard's guild
I would like to say HOGWASH!  PIFFLE!  There are NO FEWER Orcs today than
there were twenty years ago.  The guild keeps _very close_ watch on Orcish
demographiques because they are one of our main sources for experimental
subjects and I can tell you that there is NO CRISIS.  We always end up
trapping FAR MORE Orcs than we need every year.  The world has enough
problems without these ill-begotten groups trying to save these parasites
from harvesting!  Nuff said, on to this issue's questions...

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Sauramud!

	I have a rather unusual problem!  (I think)!  Me and my group were on
a nice little adventure here the other day, where we suddenly encountered a
group of other adventurers.  Naturally, we attacked.  To sum it up, they
sliced us in pieces.  They had 60 attacks/round, lots of strange spells
I've never even heard of, and they could run at least 200 yds/round.  For
some reason they spared me (I'd been hiding behind a small shrubbery the
whole time).  After they had taken all our gold and magic items, they left,
but one of them said to me:  "Next time, use GURPS or another 1
round/second system".  And then he laughed.  Evilly.

     I would now like to know:  Where can I buy a GURPS?  What is it?  Some
sort of super speed potion?  What should I do to prevent this from
happening again?

		The Frustrated


Dear Frustrated,

     GURPS is more a movement than a system; vile but seductive in its
seeming simplicity.  Whilst followers of this movement gain great speed and
other advantages, they are all saddled with disadvantages and quirks that
one may utilize if he discovers them.  Followers of this movement tend to
be as slow witted as they are fast moving, fr'instance.  If you hear of any
more activities by this group you may want to appeal to Monty Haul - deity
of overabundant treasure and magic items.  A word of caution here; any
appeals to this deity cause one to turn into a Munchkin, Maximizer and
Rules Rapist.  This is not necessarily bad as nobody in _any_ system is
more powerful than a true Munchkin, sixty attacks notwithstanding.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Sauramud:  I have this ongoing argument with the party thief, Mog.
Mog says that it is not fair that he has to train to climb walls, and all I
have to do is alakazam!  and I "spider-climb" with no chance of falling at
all.  He also says he hates the fact that I can make his lock-picking
obsolete with my nifty "Knock" spell, his Hear Noise with my
"Clairaudience" spell, and Hide in Shadows with "Invisibility".  Not to
mention he is out classed when all I need to do to get a rich man's purse
is "Charm Person" him, no need for messy Pick Pocketing.  He says it is
folks like us mages that ruin the thieving business.  What should I tell
him?

signed,

   No Honor Among Thieves


Dear NHAT,

     I can understand his point.  This is a touchy situation that must be
handled quickly in a mature and sensitive fashion.  If I was in your
situation I would sit the thief down, poke him in the eye and say,
     "Of course I'm better than _you_ are ya wiener!  Neener neener!  Mages
are BETTER than EVERYONE!  Why else do you suppose everybody with a HIGH
INTELLIGENCE decides to BECOME ONE?  We're GREAT!  Can you do THIS?
(Barroomph!  goes a nearby copse of trees, victim of a fireball.) or THIS?
(Kapow!  a flock of songbirds explode in a bolt of lightning.)"
     The thief might argue at this point that he is more environmentally
friendly than is a mage.  To a certain extent this is true.  Cede to him
that point and then short-sheet his bedroll that night.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Sauramud,

	Well ya see I've got this embarrassing problem, and I was wondering
what you could suggest.  My problem is I'm a cleric.  The great god of my
world, Mr.-DM-Sir, outlawed clerics, in favor of these oh-so-exclusive
specialty priests.  I tried to become one of these Specs (their nickname),
but they had all these silly requirements like a good constitution, great
strength, quick hands, and the ability to appeal to the masses.  I mean for
heavens sake, I'm a goddamn cleric!  (Ooops maybe that's part of the
problem ...) I walk around in armor, have good hit points, worry about
shedding no blood while busting the orcs head to smithereens with my mace,
heal on demand, and scare the shit out of undead.  Now Mr.-DM-Sir wants me
to actually PREACH and act RELIGIOUS!  For God's sake, enough is enough!
	Anyway, I tried to cope by pretending to be a mage.  For instance I
told the party that my Cause Light Wounds spell was actually a real short
range magic missile.  I told them my Light spell was actually a stationary
solitary Dancing Lights spell.  I also told them my Command spell was a
limited power Sleep spell.  Anyway now the party thinks I'm a lousy mage,
and thinks I was stupid to waste such a high wisdom.  They're convinced I
couldn't cast my way out of a paper bag.  (They're right, clerics can't get
Teleport spells.) Anyway, how do I extricate myself?


				Joe Schmo the Cleric

PS I'm tired of carrying around these 47 'optional' complete handbooks and
telling them all they're spell books.  How 'optional' are they if my DM
forces me to read them for 4 hours each day?


Dear Cleric,


     Of all the other classes I hold the clerics in about the highest
esteem (outside of my own of course).  I tend to think of them as wimpy
mages that foam a bit at the mouth and preach too much.  I wouldn't worry
too much about trying to extricate yourself from this little problem.  I
don't think your party would know the difference between a mage and a
cleric anyway.  Heck, anybody who doesn't question a wizard decked out in
smelly metal armour and lugging about a holy symbol and mace hasn't the
reasoning to outwit a bowl of green slime.
     "Oops, somebody slap the fighter - he's forgetting to breathe again."
     As to acting religious and preaching, I would remind the powers that 
be that adventuring clerics make _lousy_ preachers!  Since most of their
experiences revolve around smashed in heads and dangling entrails they tend
to use those a lot to illustrate points in their sermons and it turns most
decent citizens into raging mobs of pitchfork wielding fury!
     As to those books; ALL books are optional.  Either you read them or
you don't.  I recommend the former.  Seeing as you are carrying around
forty seven of them anyway, you might as well add one more to your
collection; Magely Ways by yers truly.  This clever handbook will instruct
even the most rank neophyte on how to act like a seasoned veteran mage in
only ONE reading - complete with colour illustrations and cross-referenced
index!  This book is a compendium of many years worth of my columns to the
Wizard Weekly News and includes such skills as;

     * Using your fighter as a shield
     * The art of cringing
     * Fun with polymorph
     * Poking the monk in the eye

If you haven't ordered your copy of this book yet then watch for the ads in
the next W.W.N.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Sauramud,

    Coming as I do from a small village, getting together an adventuring
party was not easy.  Why my master ever decided to build his wizardly tower
in this gods-forsaken backwater is beyond me (though why the thieve's guild
has a chapter here is perhaps a bigger mystery - what do they hope to do,
shake down some farmers for a dozen eggs?) As you can guess, the choice of
companions to raid the local dungeon was not great, so when I put this
bunch together a few alignment troubles were to be expected.
Unfortunately, a "few" problems is putting it mildly.  While the fighter is
a goody-goody lawful type with hopes to one day become a Paladin, I'm sure
the thief is a card-carrying Chaotic Evil type.  The priest is more Neutral
than anything, but still finds fault with every action everyone makes - I
mean, one little magic missile into a nearby cow in a field and he spazzes
out.  Sure he's a priest of some tree-hugging nature deity or something (I
never pay attention to that drek) but is that any reason to threaten a
magicer with burning his spell books?
    In your long adventuring career I'm sure you encountered party alignment
conflicts like this before.  What can I do to make them less of a
distraction on my quest for magical power?

Sign me,

    Alignment Anarchy


Dear A.A.,

    Some people are a little anal retentive when it comes to this whole
alignment thing.  I've always considered an alignment to be more of a
guideline than a fixed rule - especially when it gets in the way of a
little clean fun.  Heck, what's nuking a couple of cows or peasants now and
then?  There's always plenty more where that one came from.  I think what
your tree-hugging cleric needs is a good night out where he can get
seriously drunk and laid.  I wouldn't worry too much about the thief.
Don't ever let him prepare dinner, protect your belongings with some a few
nasty magical traps and quietly report him to the authorities of every town
you pass through so that he's too busy watching his back and doesn't have
time to think of nasty things he can do to you.  I have found that this
works well for monks too.
    The budding paladin would be my first concern.  Paladins can be an
awfully stuffy lot and tend to frown on every imagined iniquity they spot
in their companions.  I had the fortune of travelling for many years with a
paladin who didn't have the brains to realize that he was supposed to be
Lawful Good.  While he did most of the things that a paladin is required to
do he did so in ways that I don't think they considered when they wrote the
book on paladins.  He was so pissed off when he found out that he was
expected to give away ninety percent of his money (even when the rest of us
tended to short change his share because of this) that he took to
delivering it to the needy with a slingshot.  You've never seen a feeding
frenzy until you watch large group of starving urchins fight over a gold
coin!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Wise and Noble Sauramud,
    What to do?  I am a young mage travelling with a half-elven
triple-classed dolt with a large attitude problem.  For instance, upon
meeting, he introduced himself as "I cannot tell you my real name, but my
friends call me Titan." He is impossible to travel with or get along with,
as every small slight against him is taken as a personal insult, and he'll
spend days or weeks to exact his revenge.  Meanwhile, the rest of the party
just comes along for the ride.  So you may wonder why we travel with
him....well, we had been in the company of an almost identical character,
who fortunately died on one adventure.  This "Titan" took his place.  They
must be twins or something, because I can't tell them apart.  And I have
the feeling if we were to desert Titan or kill him off, we would end up
with another identical "Titan v3.0" for our efforts.  What can we do?

    The Men behind the Titan

Dear Men (etc),

    This is a common complaint.  Most of these letters start off with,
    "Dear Sauramud, We have this real loser in our party and no matter how
many times we kill him he always comes back with a new revision number..."
    None of these mysterious strangers of questionable genetic background
ever comes with a name, just a one or two syllable alias such as 'Bear',
'Titan' or 'Strider'.  Don't be fooled by appearances, these foul creatures
are _not_ human, they are the ill-spawned offspring of the evil deity
Clonius.  If you kill one of these things off there are just a million more
like them ready to step into its shoes;
    "Greetings, I have no name but you may call me Zulu XXIX - say, did you
just break wind in _my_ direction?  Fiend!  Prepare to defend yourself..."
    I would like to say the the solution to this problem is to simply kill
this thing and the entire gene pool that spawned it, but no such simple
solution exists.  There's a better way though.  Don't kill it, humiliate
it!  C'mon, if it takes offense at small things then give it _real_ things
to be offended about.  When it's not looking slap a 'Kick Me' sticker on
it's back.  Lace its healing potions with oil of ipecac...
     "Tch tch.  These potions won't do you much good if you can't hold them
down."
    The next time you are passing through a small town anonymously enter it
into the local pig wrestling contest.  Pay a hobbit to introduce himself to
this 'Titan' as a long-lost half brother and love-child of their common
father.  The one thing that ones like this 'Titan' want is to be taken
seriously and if you don't do that then, if you're lucky, they will wander
off to sulk.  Good luck.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Well that's all for this installment folks.  As always, send _your_ 
questions for Sauramud to [m m caleese] at [csr.uvic.ca.]  "Sauramud's Advice 
Column" is written by David Braun ([David Braun] at [panam.wimsey.bc.ca])
and Michael McAleese ([m m calees] at [csr.uvic.ca]), A.K.A. "Those Dudes".


Contributors of "letters to Sauramud" were:

<[L P R 100] at [PSUVM.PSU.EDU]>
[e--i--g] at [ecn.purdue.edu] (Eric C Garrison)
[b--d] at [colonial.eecs.umich.edu] (Eric Boyd)
Niels Ull Jacobsen <[n--l] at [diku.dk]>
-- 
*     [m m calees] at [csr.uvic.ca] (Michael McAleese) : I speak only for me...       *
  "Man can believe the impossible, but never the improbable." - Oscar Wilde