surge@milton.u.washington.edu (Jonathan Sari) writes:
> In article  raven@aix.rpi.edu (Jennifer Lynn Piatek) writes:
> 1. How much of a material does a Diabolist use in creating a rune?
> 
> I simply arbitrarily decide when 1oz of gold leaf, for example, is used up.
> Not a terribly good system.

  I have had this problem first being a diabolist and dm'ing one.  I
decided finally that there it takes 1/5th of an oz of gold to make a
single ward.  Since they have to be an inch by and inch each, this
isn't that bad, and further they are powerful enough to warrant the
cost.
  (Note, it is stated that an oz of gold leaf is 100g in the first
book, and that in the third book a pound of gold is 2000 or 3000 gold
or something.  So I want the job pounding gold leave back into gold
bars and selling it.  (I scrapped the system and redid it.))

> 2. How does a diabolist decide that a rune affects him?
> 
> It is stated that a diabolist is immune to the effects of his own runes.
> But there are some runes that it would be silly to have a diabolist immune
> to (invisibility, for example)  So, how do people reconcile this?
> 
> It seems silly to me that a diabolist simply decides that a rune is to
> affect him one particular instance, since that is rather contrary to the
> way runes work, in general.  (If that's the case, why can't the diabolist
> simply decide "I want this rune not to affect Person X", instead of
> requiring him to write the true name of the person.  Additionally, what
> if the diabolist is taken by surprise by the triggering of an area effect
> rune that he wishes to affect him?  Does he get the effect?)

  The diabolist is intamatly aware and knowledgable about himself, and
so does not need to write his true name to not be affected by the
ward, he merely adds a minor inflection to the activation words.

> One possible solution is that the diabolist has to enscribe a special
> rune that modifies another rune to affect himself.  Is there a problem
> with this solution?

  It's doable, but not necessary in my opinon.

Stephen H. Underwood                 The Heechee          The Nephron 
su11@andrew.cmu.edu                     "Evil has only complex roots."