resurrected duck

I would have put the body components (head, left arm...) in columns instead. Like the weapon list. Same for characteristics. The table seems to be too wide for printing purpose. Anyway, nice work!

6 minutes ago, Godlearner said:

They would have to be edited. Just giving all initiate NPC a rune pool and runes will take care of some things, but you will now have to consider that they will all be a lot more willing to use Divine magic and the abilities that opens up for them.

Ah, indeed, I should have thought of it. Any other adjustments needed?

16 minutes ago, Bill the barbarian said:

Just checking your question and see you are asking about reedited scenarios. If I understand your question correctly I would have to say there are no reedited scenarios.

I mean these pdfs from Runequest classic on the chaosium site: Borderlands, Griffin Mountain, Snake Pipe Hollow.... Sorry if I was not clear.

So, as far as I understand, RQG is compatible with RQ2. I guess Pavis is the only RQ2 scenario I ever played and I guess I should try a few RQ2 supplements. Hence my question: what is the best reedited scenario for RQ2 in your opinion? What is the best one for a party of beginning players?

I am confused by the errata concerning Rune spells in matrices. From the Well of Daliath page, chapter 14, matrix creation - Matrix Creation (page 334) – Rune Magic Matrices entry. It says

The matrix’s virtue is that it allows someone without the spell to cast it using their POWx5 chance

and then it says

The user of a Rune spell matrix has a chance of casting that spell equal to their POW×5.

Rune Magic Matrices, page 335

Is this a mistake and should the character use the correct Rune percentage instead?

Yes, that should be the Rune’s chance. 

I don't get it. It seems that there is a contradiction here. Any hint?

Aventures gloranthiennnes. You don't say aventures à Paris or aventures à Lyon
but aventures parisiennes and aventures lyonnaises. It sounds a bit strange though.

1 hour ago, Rick Meints said:

 I was actually shocked when I opened the D&D starter set and found out that it was half empty, if not more than half empty.

As the owner of the D&D starter set, I must say I am quite pleased that the box is so big, because the three rulebooks almost fit in. I use the box to carry them, I need to strap it  so that the cap does not fall but that's a minor annoyance. Actually the box may be the most valuable part of the starter set, far outlasting its content and still useful to a seasoned player. And the Deluxe edition Runequest third edition box stands fiercely at his side on the shelf. I wish it was bigger so as to hold both the RQ3 and the RQG rulebooks.

tl;dr: boxes are like monsters. BIGGER IS BETTER.

10 minutes ago, PhilHibbs said:

And maintaining a POW of 17 is inefficient as you have a low chance of improvement. Much better to have INT 17 and POW 13, as you then have TWICE the chance of succeeding on a POW gain roll.

If you hit 21 POW, you have plenty of opportunities to sacrifice them. Get 8 Rune points and go back to POW 13 before your next POW gain roll if you feel so but note that means a -40% in your POW vs POW roll (am I correct there?) next game unless you are a Rune lord. It also decreases your hit points, and I am not even talking about magic points. And it decreases all your skill bonuses by 10% (except for magic  -15%, and stealth, +10%). That's a huge loss in my humble opinion.

It seems to me that if free INT goes away, there remains very few incentive to puts points in INT at character creation. Is there any reason to put points in INT at characters creation, but free INT sorcery? I would argue that without free INT, INT would just be like RQ3 Appearance, a useless characteristic that all players ended up minimizing.

With RQG, INT provides skill bonuses, but it is always shadowed by POW in the tables, so that it is almost always better to put the points in POW instead. Int 17 Pow 13 provides the same Knowledge modifier as Int 13 Pow 17. What is the best here? Int 13 Pow 17 of course unless you want to be a potent sorcerer, since Int is so hard to raise during play.

48 minutes ago, Arcadiagt5 said:

Thank you! Because of course it wasn't in the Magic or Cults section. 

Yes, the information is a bit hidden. I remembered that there was something special about Chalana Arroy, so I headed to the cults section without success. I found the information by searching the pdf for all occurrences of the string chalana arroy.

1 hour ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

Our ancestors say that when they plundered the yelm temple, they suffered magical damage (just 4d3, ridiculous)

Are you joking? In my temples, even the corridor leading to the toilets is protected by a dozen wardings, laid one after another, in case of an enemy with urgent needs. That's 12x4d3 both in and out, bypassing armor.

The player's guide makes reference to the RuneQuest Gamemaster’s Guide several times, e.g. p.305. Is it in fact the Gamemaster's screen pack or is it some forthcoming book?

RPG player's rulebook page 406:

A temple will usually cast cult magic (such as Healing magic
or special Rune spells) on its members, but typically expects
to receive a sacrifice from the beneficiary equal to 20 L
per Rune point expended. One-use spells cost ten times
this amount. If the caster must spend magic points, the
beneficiary must spend an additional 1 L per point spent.
The Chalana Arroy cult heals all who come to their temple,
based on available resources. They never ask for payment.
However, it is a custom enforced by the gods themselves that
if a character is saved from disease or poison or maiming or
death by the actions of a healer, he immediately will give the
healer’s temple an appropriately generous gift or percentage
of the person’s income for the next year [...]

I just paste the start of the "Casting Spells" section, you may want to read the whole section. So, it depends on the income of the player. Getting back characteristic points is hard, so I would make it also a function of the points restored. Maybe Points lost X income per season, so that restoring five points would cost the full year's income, 200L for a noble. Perhaps a discount if the player is from an associate cult. It also depends on their level, as stated a bit later in the section.

Rune levels of friendly cults will have their debts paid by their cult, out of their own payments into that cult.

What do you think of the new character creation mechanism in RQG?

We are pondering whether upgrading characters from previous editions or starting new characters from scratch. It seems that characters creation in RQG is tailored to players who have already played Runequest. We may actually end up with characters as strong as the battle-hardened ones we used to play.

For beginning Runequest players however, who need to learn everything, this new creation process seems quite long as compared to the previous editions. I am specifically thinking of the background steps. In RQ2,3 characters were informed about past history during their adventures. Now it seems that they need to take an history course and learn all the dates of major Glorantha events at character creation!

RQ2,3: during your journey, you meet the spirit of a fallen warrior that reveals that your father's brother served in the Lunar army in his youth.

RQG: please write down on your character sheet the name of all your ancestors up to third generation. Then roll for each of them on some of the following 49 tables (no joking!).

It seems not so easy to bypass these steps since it brings a few skill bonuses I understand that there are these pregenerated characters for a quick start. Character creation was a mandatory initiation ritual for the beginning players in 1621 though, and a pretty fun one. Ah, the old times...

Which brings me to the following question. Is there a cheatsheet somewhere for quick RQG character creation?

2 hours ago, Dissolv said:

Why can't the Warding be dispelled?

I don't think that an enchantment can be dispelled. Am I correct?

From the Warding spell description in the RQG rulebook.

The Warding spell remains in effect until the props are
removed. Anyone but the caster that attempts to touch the
stakes is affected by the spell. But after suffering the Ward-
ing’s effect, the sufferer can then remove the stakes. The
stakes need not be visible to work.

The wording from RQ2 allowing the ward to be  dispelled is gone.

I don't have the RBoM and I don't know if there is an erratum. Even if  Warding is dispellable, it seems to be a very strong spell.

EDIT: I realize that Warding is not an enchantment anymore in RBoM. So, it may be dispellable in RQG, as it was in RQ2...

From the rulebook,

The wands can be made of any material and can be so spaced as to enclose a maximum area of up to 100 square meters. The spell extends into the air for 3 meters above the wands, and underground to the depth of the wands.

So, yes, a cube. The spell is quite powerful. Dealing damage both on entry and exit is broken in my humble opinion. Just make the area 1cm wide and anybody going through must both enter and leave. A Ward 3  laid in front of the entry of a room now deals 6D3 damage,  12 points on average, ignoring armor.

Undispellable, and of course, you can lay several wards 1cm from each others to make a single step in the room activate them all. If the monster survives, he probably doesn't want to retreat either.

In RQG, Warding is known from start by characters, who can cast 3 points of warding from the very beginning. So a party of 5 players can set a trap dealing 5x6D3 damage, 60pts on average, 30 at minimum, that can't be dispelled,  detectable only by magical means, that remains in effect as long as they wish and targeting only enemies.  Even if the GM rules that the damage is taken only on entrance, it is still 30 damage on average, which seems completely broken to me. And this is not even a rule abuse. Warding should be restricted to Rune Priests. This is meant to protect temples, not to ambush monsters in dungeons. Alas, characters start with Sanctify so that anything is sacred ground now.

7 hours ago, Kloster said:

This appeared in the RQ3 AH official errata.

 

Augh! I am devastated! All these years spent lying... At least we had 1d6/POW armoring enchantments.

24 minutes ago, David Scott said:

Most cults have 4 (Eiritha) to 9 (Orlanth) cult spirit magics. An Orlanth rune lord with a CHA of 18 should have no problem knowing all of them. As you said, an allied spirit would certainly help.

As the owner of the RQ2 Rune Masters supplement, I may perhaps shed some light on the matter. The supplement lists stats for 45 Rune lords/priests belonging to 15 cults from Prax. It is true that together with their allied and bound spirits, these Rune lords average around 100 POW/INT points. I think that in previous editions, either POW or INT was used to cap the number of spell points known to a given spirit/character.

This does not mean that these Rune lords know all the spells. Instead they have quite a few points in some variable spells.  Healing 6, Countermagic 6 are widespread for example. There must have been a 6 points cap for variable spells in RQ2 since I don't see any stronger spells. Such a limit is not present in RQ3 and RQG.

11 hours ago, lordabdul said:

 I've been using, on occasion, this short spell duration as a tactic. Basically, combats generally last less than 10 melee rounds, but sometimes I just drop out of combat-time and back to narrative time for a bit. For instance, some trollkin might attack the PCs, realize that they're vastly outmatched by spirit magic buffs, and retreat for a while. They wait it out while hidden in tunnels or behind cover or whatever, and then carefully attack from a distance (throwing rocks and such) to test whether the PCs have more MPs to spend to keep the spells up.

I see. It is always possible to cast the spell again after the 2mn duration, but then that's 2.5 times more magic points on average that have to be expended to reach the 5mn mark. So spirit magic has become more expensive and slightly less reliable. On the other hand, I see that magic point storage is cheaper. The sacrifice of one point of POW in a magic point enchantment now gives 1D10 MP storage! It was just 1MP in the previous editions.

Actually I was quite surprised to see Vasana start with a 10MP storage enchantment in the players RQG book, such an item was definitively 'Rune Lord level' before. This makes sense now. Thanks for all your answers.

I didn't have the pleasure to play with the latest Runequest edition yet. Browsing the RQG players' book,  I noticed that spirit magic spells have their duration reduced to 2mn. I am wondering, how does it affect gameplay?

Thinking about it, it seems that it probably has few consequences concerning spells used in combat. On the other hand, this is a big drawback for spells providing characteristics modifiers such as Charisma or Strength.  We used them to gain some advantage concerning characteristic rolls and ruled that the effect should be on for the duration of the action: bargain, lifting etc. 2mn seems to be pretty short. Same for Glue. The spell that seems the most affected by the duration change is Control Creature. 5mn was already very short, but 2mn, you can't even order your fire elemental to boil an egg!

2 hours ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

what about warriors with size 8 and str 8, it is too unfair ! they have damage malus and no access to the most deadly weapons (great sword, etc..)

 

Indeed playing a warrior with low STR and CON is not easy. There is a famous example of such warrior in the chaosium pantheon though, namely Elric of Melnibone (STR 5, CON 5). The trick is to use potions, drugs (-> STR 12, CON 12)... and sorcery to raise the characteristics when needed.

Indeed playing a warrior with low STR and CON is not easy. There is a famous example of such warrior in the chaosium pantheon though, namely Elric of Melnibone (STR 5, CON 5). The trick is to use potions, drugs (-> STR 12, STR 12)... and sorcery to raise the characteristics when needed.