Does a UC IV Wight have infinite firepower

[hcobb]

When I try to run the numbers for a Wight with UC IV my firepower formula blows up because she pins, drains, and stays at full ST forever.

[Skarg]

Your firepower formula isn't enough to rate the combat value of a figure, because it's just one aspect, which is simplified to down to one number.

For just one example, if you're actually using the clearly-extremely-broken effect of UC on Pinning, then whoever has 1 or 2 more levels of UC than their opponents has a huge advantage in single combat since they can trivially pin foes in HTH.

For just one other example, defense matters. The Wight can be chopped up before they enter HTH, and your chart-topping poison hydra has no armor and so (unless you fix the falling down rules for it) can be butchered by any group that does enough to knock it down before it bites them.

But to more generally answer your question about UC IV wights:

* At some level, a wight who is a martial arts master SHOULD be very (rare and) deadly in the situation where it faces single opponents in HTH combat.

* UC effects on pinning are broken - see my post here about that.

* The deadliness of a wight in single HTH combat is irrelevant if it gets taken out before it gets into HTH.

[FireHorse]

This thread caused me to read the relevant ITL entry and I was surprised to discover that TFT's Wights and Revenants are classified along with Ghosts — as incorporeal undead, that is.

Revenants are maybe a bit less surprising. While most of the Revenants I've ever read about (in modern fiction or old folktales) were reanimated corpses, I have seen a few that seemed debatable. So, less surprising.

But I'm pretty sure all of the Wights I've ever encountered were definitely corporeal. The most archetypal example I can think of is the Barrow Wight in The Fellowship of the Ring, who (as I recall) was just a standard issue Mark III Cursed Tomb Guardian. (The Mark IV is a Mummy, of course.)

[mark hill]

'Revenant' used to mean 'returned one' (from the dead) .. doesnt really define whether walking corpse or floaty spirit :) .. note its liberal but correct use in the de Caprio western (frakkin awe-some job that).

I think 'wight' used to just mean the same as 'bloke', 'geezer', just some dude .. was it Tolkien who made it into a word for an undead, or is it older than him? He might not have intentionally repurposed it, maybe he meant it like 'barrow man' kinda (who in that case happened to be a dead guy). 'Lich' I think is similar, used to just mean same as 'a guy' .. no one on the web would use it that way nowadays, it OBVIOUSLY means undead wizard :)

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by mark hill

was it Tolkien who made it into a word for an undead

A man named William Morris, in a 1869 translation of the Grettis saga, first used the word barrow-wight (so "barrow creature" or "barrow spirit" or "-thing") in the sense of an undead thing. Tolkien probably was aware of his work, because Tolkien.

[mark hill]

ahah .. thank you Anaraxes :)

[JLV]

Certainly the Medieval usage of the term "wight" was what Mark Hill suggested; though I think the implication was that it was someone who had suffered misfortune (often through no fault of their own -- "the poor wight"), or as a term applying to someone of no real importance socially speaking. You can find it in poetry and plays (as an allusive term) going back to Shakespeare, and I believe Chaucer used it in several of his tales as well. Anaraxes was spot-on with regard to the origin of the "undead" meaning, though...

[mark hill]

knew I shoulda picked Scholar last level up :)

the 'barrow wight' is presumably not a nobody, probably a dead king or pseudo-saxon/celt chief? (or whatever lost peoples made barrows in britain)

I think the barrow-builders are the same guys who made stonehenge, which is not as old as it looks, its built about the same time as the mega-pyramid period in egypt .. archaeologists assure me it was NOT built by the celts (as everyone assumed for centuries), but by a pre-celt lot with a chalcolithic tech level who we know pretty well nothing about, not even a name .. spooky history :)

meh its probably in the silmarillion somewheres

[FireHorse]

Anaraxes: Danke! I think maybe I had that piece of information in my head already (I've read a lot both by and about Morris) but had forgotten it.

So I looked up Grettis Saga and found that the undead creature Morris called the "barrow-wight" was in the original Icelandic a "draugr" — which is a product of traditional folklore (not modern fantasy fiction), and was described as a reanimated corpse whose spirit came back and refuses to leave for whatever reason.


JLV: The "poor bloke" sense you and mark hill mention is the same Normal English usage of "wight" that I am familiar with. Evidently, we have Tolkien (via Morris) to thank for the modern Fantasy English definition. :)


mark hill: I wish you hadn't mentioned Stonehenge. Now I'm wondering what it would look like in Megahexes.

[hcobb]

Stonehenge is 100 hexes in diameter (the earthworks ring), with the biggest pillars being 3-hex giant counters.