SevenSistersOfVinga

9 minutes ago, Darius West said:

Challenging what most people can do with a bow by bringing up Lars Andersen videos.  Where have I seen this before?  I would suggest you get yourself off to the Society of Creative Anachronism and do some shooting of your own to get a proper sense of what is possible.  Lars Andersen is a bit of a marvel, a brilliant athlete and bow sportsman, and might be considered something of a hero level archer by Gloranthan standards.  Lars claims that he has recovered techniques from Turkic horse archers and the Plains Tribes of America, and I don't dispute the possibility based on what has been written about them.  They were cultures with a lot of master archers.  In Glorantha we call what Lars does spirit magic like "multimissile".

I'm really bad at this part of translating the real world to rules, I would gladly leave that to the game rules but like I've said we have 3 archers a Sling thrower and a Javelin one.

I would like to add a little regarding archery play styles, there is a long talk about short swords here, this is the weapon we use, we would like to have a long bow archer with damage but slow and a fast, mobile one that disrupts the field, stuff like that.

But you are right, I should do something else, other than this.

7 minutes ago, PhilHibbs said:

That has been "clarified" to not be the case. Chance to increase above species maximum is 5%, unless they are also a priest with the +20% e.g. Aldrya, Waha, Kyger Litor (but not Yelm Golden Bow).

Oh thanks, I didn't know that 

16 minutes ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

I was looking for a generic ability (for all shaman) but yes that is a great ability if you choose it.

Like you said the difference between playing a low pow high earning chance character cuts 1/3 the amount of time it takes to get power points. These are not only useful for the shaman.

runelords and priests, everyone uses the same currency and I wouldn't like a group where most of the players have 10 rune points and one of them has 30. 

I find weird that a character who's main stat is pow, their main casting skill is solely pow based, their main modifier is based on pow and his damage is based on pow suddenly and totally not metagamingly decides that going with pow 1 is the best idea.

I'm not calling for a lynching or to change the rules, I just reward the shamans that play along their strengths and not the experience system quirks

9 minutes ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

added your +1 but I'm not sure, don't find the reference, anyway it doesn't change the process)

7 minutes ago, PhilHibbs said:

What is that referring to?

RIG page 361 

Soul Expansion 
Each point of Soul Expansion adds +1 to the shaman’s species 
maximum POW. This improves his chance to increase POW 
by experience.

38 minutes ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

case 3: "mundane" POW : 19 / fetch POW : 1

The only valid option to me.

Having 10 pow on a caster is really hard to play and to get what? The chance to have a spirit of 10 pow? Get a binding and move on. Need mp? Do some spirit pacts.

The other option (1) is playing with the fetch instead of the shaman and the fetch is not a full character, fetch pow 19 is a rule bending artiluge that leverages a crack in the system (pow 1 levels up faster) and should not be a valid option or at least not encouraged.

The pow on the fetch seems overrated to me, (besides having pow + fetch pow on pow vs pow)

have a nice little fetch and play your character, I doubt any runelord would go around wirh pow 1 because they spent all of theirs in divine interventions to get their allied spirit a boost.

47 minutes ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

Case 3 is special, because the progression is too hard.

Case 3 is the same progression than all the other characters, shamans have a skill to get +1 to their pow roll like priests do and that's about it. They can have a plus 10 is that's so important.

I don't see why a shaman would need twice as much pow than the others to be on the same group. 

56 minutes ago, Baron Wulfraed said:

You appear to be conflating "compound bow" with "composite bow".

Yes, there are no compound bows on our game, I mentioned them because they were on the article I was quoting. 

1 hour ago, JRE said:

. So yes, I have Dwarf sharpshooters with optic sights.

It was the logical evolution!

**This topic probably comes up every once in a while, I sorry if it's a rehash of a conversation that you already had**

**I don't have any idea about how real life bow and arrows work**

I see the bow rules and they seem to be made from a list of disjointed situations like:
"Someone can shot an arrow every 5 seconds"
"Someone can shot an arrow at 250m"
"Someone can hit a head size target 19 out 20 times at the Olympics"
"Arrows can pierce mail/plate"

So the rules try to be a mash up to acomodate all those, then a "master archer" can hit 19 out of 20 times a human sized target at 120 meters, twice per melee round at full damage.

Let's challenge that.

https://youtu.be/BEG-ly9tQGk
Extremely fast shooting, not far, not pulling the whole extension of the bow.
There are several examples on YouTube https://youtube.com/shorts/AL1W3HkjJ2Y?feature=share these are all half draw bow shots, fast but not hard hitting and totally not 120 meters range.

This is an 120 meter shot, https://youtu.be/sjnG-5N5nL0 there is no way he is shooting 19 out of 20 arrows that far every 5 seconds.
This one is 300m https://youtu.be/L-pZgHZp2ug and you can quickly tell this is not twice per melee round with a bone and wood bow.

"But he is not an Olympic archer!" You say, well, yes, let's see how far Olympic archers (95%?) shoot

- Archers shoot up to a distance of 70 metres (for recurve) and 50 metres (for compound)

(Notice that compound bow means with pulleys and multiple strings, modern tech, not just "made with bones" and the ones on my bronze age glorantha are most likely not those or the 14th century English longbows)

Ok, so not 120 meters at full %, or 250 meters at half % (which is a fair guesstimate, you are just not expecting to hit a single target, just shooting at troops I guess https://youtu.be/Gg2WImjzaAw )

So I'm planing on house ruling this and I want your opinion.

1- I would love to add half damage modifier to Bows based on weight.

2- Strongly enforce the rules for moving targets, shooting at melee and weather conditions. If the target is alive you are probably shooting at x1/2%, target practice x1%

3-
Field archery or half draw - 20 or 30 meters effective range, up to twice that at 1/2%, twice per round (even 3 times maybe? If you can) One step down on damage (1d4+1 for self) no strength damage mod (see 1)

Target practice or Full draw - 70 meters effective, full damage, once per round. (Damage mod for heavier bows)

Long range, above 70m you can take as much as you want to aim and get the "taking your time bonus", 1/2 % for being above effective range, no damage mod , full damage one shot per round.

Clout archery , up to twice the max range, once per round, half %, no damage mod, one step down damage (used in formation mostly)

On a horse you can use the field archery option.

Thank you in advance for any feedback, more than half of our group uses bows and I want to add some color to it.

6 hours ago, Imperial_Solaire said:

• Go into this as a game where the PCs are the main characters of the world and fight everything with no plan and die. (The D&D players)
• Are too scared to fight ANYTHING and want ask to do Library Use rolls. (The Call players)
• Turned off because they think you must know ALL the lore before setting fo

Yes. That's us too.

So, what we did is turn this around and make it true for our glorantha.

- The tribe is just a bunch of old people and little kids, there are few warriors/able people their character's age. Now that this [evil] comes around, honestly, there is only them. This gives them the chance to step up to be the the hero or stay with Nana, There are no other options, you can't sell everything and go be a tailor on the city. You can, just as an npc.

Then we all go without a plan and die and thats fine too. Die and learn, Die and learn. Start the adventure with "this is where you get your resurects, they cost this much"

- They should be scared, Runequest is brutal. The first time an arrow went through a neck we were hooked on the violence. Start small, repeat the same enemy a couple of times until everyone knows what's going on. 

Everyone tries to smart their way out, most characters are not smart enough to pull half of the things their players pretend to do.... and if they are, throw arrows at them while they try to read.

- They do know all the Lore. All the Lore their characters need to know.

Bullshit away my friends, we don't have any ideas of what's going on most of the time, if someone is making stuff up or read the glorantha guide vol5, most likely non of us would be able to tell.

Open the glorantha wiki find a random article and work that bit into the conversation or just let the players and characters be ignorant together, the best part of being in a world where blue people exists is not knowing you will see blue people buying fish on the next town. 

6 hours ago, Imperial_Solaire said:

How do you pitch this game to new/less experienced players. What is your session 0 like? And How do you guide your players in this world for the full experience?

We came up with "this is like the movies", honestly, there are no movies like 5e, wizards don't work like that in the movies and barbarians are not inmune to fall damage outside dnd shows or books.

Find what sort of media they enjoy and go with that "This is like [let them pick]" either be Gladiator, Robin hood, lord of the Rings, howls moving castle, full metal alchemist, Thor or the northman.

If you screw it up as a DM, just tell them.

"Well, apparently there are no machine guns on the game, my bad, moving on..." or play in a world with machine guns, who is going to stop you?

15 hours ago, JRE said:

Our current Humakti, after seeing the illustration of Humakt in the RQ:G decided that his feathers turn black and a belt of skulls appears on his waist while casting, and the skulls remain after casting shield, shooting rays to any deflected spell, while a black aura surrounds him and absorbs damage . Continuing with the theme, True Sword turns the sword black with black flames. Sword trance superposes the figure of Humakt over his, and it looks like he has four right arms and four swords, never knowing which one is the real one (all are)

Oh yeah! Like I've said I'm too vanilla with my spell descriptions but I love this.

Thanks for taking the time to share how you play the spells, I know this is not exactly a rules topic but it helps a lot.

1 hour ago, icebrand said:

it was the one and only nyatlathothep speaking through his Shining Trapezohedron

😂 (🤔)

1 hour ago, icebrand said:

My shields are big semi translucent magical shields in front of your character. This gives me a way for crits / powered spells to byspass them!

I see you too lean on the anime school of making it easy for the player to understand 

59 minutes ago, JRE said:

A Yelmite knows at a look the hierarchy of everyone in the room

The one on our table has learn to (ab)use her battle lore rating so she can read soldiers and guards, who was drinking the night before, who takes care of their gear, who is slow or maybe has a bad knee, who should be dealt first and who may end up running away. 

Thanks for the detailed explanation I'm definitely going to try this. 

1 hour ago, JRE said:

Normally no rolls, as you can often retry with no penalty, and the effects should be minor

Got it.

15 hours ago, JRE said:

A humakti can sharpen a sword without a whetsone, can sense when someone is close to death, knows how hurt they themselves are at all times, know if a weapon has killed, but not when or what, and any other death and truth related effect the player can convince me.

Just every one of them? The true gist of my original question is that I'm torn between a truly magical experience (let's say ... mononoke hime) and not ending like the mmo main square where everyone glows. I want the magic but despise the generic.

19 hours ago, jajagappa said:

The Spirit World can be quite close (and is very colorful, strange, and dream-like if you get there)

Seems like the easiest to me, as a source of weirdness. 

I'm taking your notes on the axis mundi.

What about the magic (rune mainly) does it glow faintly, almost imperceptible to the common eye or it blasts the ears of the soldiers around and Summons awe and fear all the same?

1 hour ago, Darius West said:

IMG bastard swords are a product of Jrusteli cavalry reforms,

A lot about technology is implementation and adoption, we have robots who perform complex procedures just not everywhere.

37 minutes ago, Joerg said:

when the players tread the borderland regions of the Hero Plane

We spend more of time on the shadowlands of the spirit world, what's with the hero plane?

37 minutes ago, JRE said:

But it is not a tool to explore our bronze age, as you have a mish mash of technologies. but it takes players out of the pseudo middle ages fantasy paradigm, and only for that it has merit

We have probably failed on all 4 to be fair. 

I ... think I get it. Maybe I don't but that helps too. 

3 hours ago, soltakss said:

My Glorantha is fun, it is deadly, it is exciting, is is enjoyable, it is Gonzo (?), it is me.

Yes. I'm feeling this. I like that. 

3 hours ago, soltakss said:

I don't think that is weird, though, is it?

I hope it is

58 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

xianxia

Need to read about this.

Hello! 

I'm looking for ideas to spice things up. Mostly related to rune spells but I'll take any ideas.

Where do you stand between "Keeping it bronze" age and "Keep it fantastic", how weird does your magic go? Are your ghosts 'spirited away' style? Are your bear strength casters full blown werebears or at least shirt-ripping fma style? Are there ancient alien blasters or old abandoned buildings from before the monkeys took over glorantha? 

Are your shields glowing balls of lightning or dragon ball auras ?

How weird does it get? I guess most people keeps it close to bronze age, just with invisible armor and damage

I want to hear where you try (not always succeed) to make it fantastic or even better, making it weird. 

Followup question, to the ones that make it weird, does it ever gets out of hand?

Ty! 

9 minutes ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

1) using ancestor table (red book p88) I would say very rare spirits are full of their cha

I see, I was working with plant and animal spirits from the bestiary, I'll take a look at this one. 

13 minutes ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

here is only if you look for a balance system.

I have an idea of balance so I will do this. Thanks again! 

22 minutes ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

don't know if it is good or not to not have such rules. It could drive so much frustration if the designer choice is clearly not your game style.

I would read them and then do my "mgwv" thing, but at least I have an idea, am I supposed to be playing with Summons or its a one time thing? Are spirits with their cha full something everyone has or commanding spirits is a rare, unique skill?

22 minutes ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

If you play with me (well first, speak french 😛 ) you will know that

😁 we all have issues

22 minutes ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

you will have some issue to obtain from a cult any spirit

I love this, it tells me a spirit is another being, like you, me and Bob over there, if you have one it means a relationship instead of "spirits are spiritual plankton that you use to power spells" 

I don't have the experience to balance this on my own, so that's why I ask, specially since the range of powers is so wide

(From "you have a dog spirit that sniffs stuff and gives you 4 extra mp" to "you go with 6 spirits of 2d6 rune point each or 15 spirit spells each animal spirit")

22 minutes ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

spirits are not resources you can appropriate. Most of them depends on some "party" (cult, elements, ...) and are protected by them. I see them like any npc

Good, I like this approach. 

49 minutes ago, JRE said:

They might have had it, but they cannot renew their runepool, and may have even forgotten who was their god. 

Ohh, ok, so all magic is "one shot" 

51 minutes ago, JRE said:

Normally you should bind in animals only cult spirits or others you can expect to be mostly on your side

I had to read about binding to animals, thanks!

1 hour ago, JRE said:

some guidelines, frequencies or even what to expect from your cult as a function of your status would be helpful.

Yes!

On 5/18/2022 at 3:38 PM, JRE said:

That should  require an investment of time and or goodwill, and that is good. Just looking for random spirits will probably just bring up animal spirits (without INT) or with spells of limited usefulness. Getting a spirit with INT 14, POW 14,

What I would like to have an idea is how much time?, like we have a very detailed experience system, skills, stats,pow checks, rune points, detailed gear but how do I get a spirit? 

I don't know if one can summon a cult spirit every day/week/season and go around with cha/3 spirits with 15 mp, 15 spirit magic points and 7 runepoints each 

That sounds easy, use summon cult spirit, command cult spirit, command it into a crystal. Why wait to be a runelord to do a spell matrix Enchantment if I can get 15 spirit spell points like that? Plus mp, runepoints and maybe a skill the spirit has?

Then I wonder, how easy are those to get? Am I getting the bound spirits wrong and people just Summons them on the fly? 

What spirits can vasana get and how? If she has 6 runepoints to spend and a crystal can she put a thunder brother (4d6 of rune magic) spirit in it just by passing a pow vs pow? 

If it's not one of those, a plant spirit with 14 cha has 14 spirit spells, one of the random generated ones on the bestiary has a good chance of having 2d6 of rune magic.

Are crystals way more rare than I thought?

Characters spend 3-4 adventures getting 1 pow and in that time they can get 30 runepoints just by binding spirits?

53 minutes ago, JRE said:

Getting a spirit with INT 14, POW 14, Multimissile 4, Speedart and Heal 6

That sounds like a Snake daughter or a thunder brother level spirit to me, a very lucky black horse/ghost maybe. 

We have those guarding temples, rarely following a hero.

So yes, I agree is not a random roll 

31 minutes ago, Gamesmeister said:

Given that talking is considered almost instantaneous, does this mean you can command your bound spirit to cast a spell while you swing you sword at your foe? Is there a SR cost of commanding the spirit? etc.etc.

That's my question, we assumed that you casting the spell took the same time, required the same roll and costed the same regardless of the container of the spell. 

If the same rules don't apply, using your fireblade on a sword, using a sword with a fireblade matrix or from a gem with a spirit of fireblade is not the same (+3mr, 4mp, powX5) then I have a lot of questions. 

The only reason I can think for them to not work the same is to circumvent limitations of the spell like "Well, yeah, it says it's active but you see, it's my spirit the one that uses it, like it's not me, I still can do another 6 actions on this round because I'm super good at bending the rules"

I don't know, it sounds overengeniered vs "you know the spell, you use the spell" regardless if it is just shared from your bond with this fire spirit or because you know the spell. 

Maybe we got it wrong, how do you do it?