As a new Barbarian full of interest and enthusiasm in the Guild I was thinking about the potential of Meditations after reading over all the old posts in this folder. It seems to me that a good principle would be that the Meditation would be a pre-battle activity, as you are too occupied fighting during the battle and post-battle activities are drinking, eating, and visiting Empaths. And to me the whole concept of Inner Fire and Meditation right now as using a flame as almost a mirror into you makes it somewhat silly to propose that Inner Fire could be used to light rooms, or that at certain levels you should be able to check Inner Fire without flames or even Meditation.

Now given that Meditation brings up an image of being focused and disciplined as you prepare for battle it doesn't seem to follow that you should be able to Meditate to boost your Berserking ability later in battle. Meditation seems like you are preparing for the fight in an attempt to gain clarity, and the lack of self-control from Berserking doesn't fit. But, as the idea of trying to herd off Barbarians into pathways died off I don't think it's fair then to allow for Meditation to aid in Dances. It just would be unbalanced in favoring Dances over Berserking.

So in other words Meditations would have to start out as the only Meditation there is right now, focusing on a flame in order to see into one's self. It would take place before you go out and hunt and prepare you for the future fight. But it would not boost your Dancing or Berserking, instead it would alternate fighting benefits. Burning Inner Fire to increase spirit, magical resistance, use of certain skills, and so forth. There may be an argument that Meditations should work indirectly in the fighting. Instead of helping your offensive skills directly it helps fatigue, for example. I would like the idea to be able to use Meditations to prepare a weapon for harming incorporeal creatures. Despite the lack of them I don't view it as fluff.

Finally, as an exception to the thoughts above I think that Meditations as a way to prepare for forging would be particularly interesting. Say your Meditation presents you with a vision of a weapon and for a short period following you have a boost in the forging of that type of weapon.

Lupca[o]n