Nick Underwood

Okay... I got cast iron munchkinnery with Shield 4 against GM nitpicking! Do your worst. (Nothing hugely new here, but an interesting combination of munchkinning egregiousneess that a new gen character could, indeed should, pull off.) Bob is a newly minted Daka Fal Asst Shaman with 3 RP, and the Rune Magic: Summon Ancestor 1 Summon Specific Ancestor 1 Spirit Guardian 1 Like many inhabitants of Glorantha he has a family and ancestors. His family maintain a shrine to the ancestors where Bob has led worship ever since his father, the head of the family, died during an unfortunate escapade in character generation. Worship is attended by the extended family and ancestors. He loves his family dearly, or at least 60%, and since "Any community with an associated Passion has a wyter." The family has a wyter - that we assume is also the wyter of the shrine. So let's say... Members: 50 (Alive: 20, Ancestors: 30) Wyter POW: 20 The wyter needs a priest, and Bob inherited the post when his father traded the pulpit for the congregation. The community of Ancestors... Tend, but not exclusivey, to be Friendly or Neutral They are "Known" to the priest of wyter since they attend worship From the Summon Ancestor table, we calculate that they would have an average of 1 RuneSpell and 1 RP each. (And the most powerful ancestor could have a POW of 36, 18 RP of Rune Magic...) So our new gen Bob, can use Summon Ancestor and Summon Specific Ancestor, to summon any of the 30 known ancestor spirtits, that probably have access to some 30 Rune Spells (probably mostly duplicates) from any of the cults worshipped by any member of the ancestor community... Not bad. [Note: the restriction that "An ancestor can only cast Daka Fal special Rune magic, and cannot cast common Rune spells." was removed for RBM - possibly because it conflicts with the description of Incarnate Ancestor "The summoned spirit knows all spells, knowledge, and skills it knew while it lived."] So, we have a DF Asst Shaman with access to a bootload of Rune Spells from across different cults. How to abuse such potential? Spirit Guardian gives the ability to cast an ancestor's Rune Magic as if it were an allied spirit. And an allied spirit "...is in continual mind-to-mind communication with the Rune Lord. They can use each other’s magical abilities, including spell knowledge, magic points, and Rune points." So Bob can cast the Rune Magic of an ancestor himself. And a wyter can cast the rune magic of it's priest. And the wyter can do the wyter super-power-group-buff-thing by spending extra POW. And so our newly minted, day 1, Asst. Shaman / Wyter Priest could: Cast Summon Ancestor, Summon Specific Ancestor (2 RP) Cast Spirit Guardian (1 RP) Instruct the Wyter to cast any of the ancestor's Rune Magic, say Charisma (1 RP) Extended for 1 year (5 RP) with a cost of 6 POW, on five people (+2 POW), or all 20 of the ancestor's living worshippers (+8 POW) for a total cost of 14 POW. And no Rune Points held in limbo for the spell's duration. Any other members of Bob adventuring party who selected be family members could also benefit from the buffs. Everyone sacrifices a point of POW to keep the wyter strong. (POW = 20 - 14 + 20 = 26) The next season, Bob starts over with any other spell available to the community. As Bob gains Rune Points, he can perform mulitple rounds in a season. The POW sacrifices are not neglible and are the ultimate constraint here. But the costs are degressive as the community grows, and there are few limitations on who can sacrifice POW to a wyter. Bob sets about recruiting the whole clan. The GM counters with Malign Ancestor payback attack. Bob goes looking for a piece of Truestone...

Great summary Sten. The original post was a (mischievious) question of what abuses of POW donation for enchantments the rules allowed. It's gone beyond that to the discussing the addtitional constraints that GMs could/should enforce. As a non-GM, non-expert, advocate of the roll-a-dice-and-make-it-up school, I have little to contibute, but very much enjoying the ride. Interesting that violence and coercion are not morally objectionable to many (most?) Gloranthan (or any!) societies as long as the coerced outcome is socially sanctioned: slave ownership, hostage-taking, prisoner collection, tax collecting, land grabs, are ultimately done at spear-point. Violence is always an option - to achieve some socially sanctioned outcome. What is repugnant (to us) in the above scenario is likely not the implict violence, but the notion of forced soul sacrifice. POW is intrinsically personal, intimate, sacred, and messing with it is taboo (to us) - we'd rather lose a leg than a portion of our soul. But do Gloranthan's see this in the same way? They regularly sacrifice trade and sell POW in return for more mundane advantages. Would glorathans rather lose a leg than a portion of their soul? Regrow Limb 2 Points, Nonstackable. Which is a funny thing in RQ: POW is both a commodity and unit of exchange, and it is somehow deeply personal and imbued with the essences of God and mortal. Magical money really does have a colour. I never really undertood Issaries, but wouldn't an Issaries priest be bound to a kind of Friedman extremism? The act of trade isn't only just - it's sacred! I will meditate on that tonight. There's a lot to unpack there! State regulation ruining my bottom line... same old, same old. 🙂

Do they have Love Money? After all, a priest is making 200 L per POW point. It's not expected that the priest make a Loyalty roll. Why make it harder for a non-priest to make a buck?

That's quite profound with deep implications, and quite worthy of a mechanic to impress the gradual avatarization of the character upon the player. Perhaps a loss of RP for demonstrating too much free will.

I was going to ask how a sacrifice-for-magic transaction would work in a world where sacrifice was real but magic wasn't. But now I don't if the answer is that they were naieve, or I am...

Power flows in both directions but it may not be of equal value on either side. On the mortal plane MP are a dime a dozen and RP are scarce. Mortals sacrifice a few MP per season and might get back just as many RP. (Ignoring the sunk cost of POW sacrifice) So perhaps MP are just as valuable in godtime as RP... Perhaps one MP, ascended to exist in perpetuity in the godtime, is what a RP is. And the initial POW sacrificed for RP is just an account creation fee. Actually such accounting would allow for gods that have no native magical power (they cannot run a negative balance). They can only convert the magic that is sacrificed to them and return it to the mortal plane in other forms.

Thanks. I did not know that. And 2 minutes after posting it occurred to me that the personal experience of sacrifice would not be blunted by community-based rewards. The two could co-exist quite happily.

Putting aside my silly economics hat for a moment... I get that worship without visible reward is a gap in the magical economy and overlooks a source of potential plot hooks. But I'm also fond of the idea that worship doesn't contain any reward. It's not transactional, it's just what your character does - like being generous to strangers - or not. And this seems closer to what worship should be. Real sacrifice is an investment with no guarantee of a payday. The gap needs to be filled with faith. (And for old atheists like me, an Orlanthi ceremony is as close as l'll ever get.)

I'm honoured that you seem to have chosen this thread for your first post. Welcome to the forum! I can't answer your questions as I'm barely Glorantha-literate myself. But hopefully others can. However I do applaud your entrepreneurial spirit as a fellow questor for bad things to do in-game that the grumpy GMs will find good reasons to ban.

We're onboarding anyone with experience of surviving a Spirit or Retribution...

Ah yes, good point... How about Inter-Pauper Super Disruption Bowl with the loser getting the lash? Stressful enough?

Gark the Calm ftw! @AkhôrahilI saw you made an excellent contribution in another thread (relevant here) about the price of a point of POW (200L), and how that would be a significant fortune for the poorer members of society who could use it in times of need - like selling a kidney! That this doesn't seem to be widespread, is surely due to the pernicious monopolistic practices of the priesthood! I propose to liberalise the market in order to ameliorate the disposition of the disposessed. Reducing the poor to 5 POW (and especially the old, infirm, or very young who have meagre need of it) each pauper would generate approximately 4.8 POW per year on average (at 80% POW gain rolls). Even after raising their living standards most considerably to 20 L per year, this would establish a market price of 4 L and 2 C per point of POW. (My corporation will of course exercise an option to purchase all POW at said rate in the territories under its benevolent oversight.)

Highly suspect. Probably heretical. Outrageously immoral. But lucrative! A good rule of thumb that, along with your other good points suggest POW sacrificed at enchantment needs to come from a creature with INT acting under their own volition and not under any form of coercion at the point of sacrifice. ...I think I can get 3 points or POW out of Trollkin children for 15 L and a toffe apple.

Not the bad guy. But certainly not a Heroic archetype. Unless your Heroic archetypes are Robber Barons, Milton Friedman, or .com billionaires...

Yes. And it would set up some nice antagonisms between players and cult in a struggle over magical resources which would encourage players to see the moral ambiguity in these power-hungry institutions that defend of the status quo and impoverish the lower classes. In Glorantha the devil really does walk on hob nails while the preacher rides a mount.