glarkhag

Right yes, I can see that being a problem. I experience these issues even at lower levels to be honest. The party merchant does his best to avoid melee with dark trolls and dragonewts and has developed a fear passion of tusk riders. His specialty skills and magic cluster around trade and communication and travel. He's too weak for decent armour so he let's the heavy infantry Vinga do the tanking (who tends only to be hurt by trollkins when they critical). She survived a recent allosaur attack but I doubt the merchant would have if he'd been the one the hungry dinosaur's beady eyes had fallen upon. One thing to consider perhaps is that at that kind of level their community and cult will expect a fair bit of service, which can translate to using rune points for them. Someone has to tie up their rune points casting warding spells because the cleaners knocked over the warding wands again. Adventures can easily interfere with worship schedules too, thus preventing replenishing. Build up encounters that chip away. Magic and spirits are good consumers of MPs and RPs. Smart enemies will withdraw and come back twenty minutes later if facing insurmountable rune magic defences. Three waves of attacks and an hour later, different balance. But ultimately can you avoid imbalance if you have characters with clusters of magic and skills that are not focused on melee and you have tough melee opponents? Conversely I've seen the newtling shaman in the borderlands campaign cause havoc on melee focused characters. The enemy can exploit magic too. But this is all conjecture on my part because I've not played that level and this was only one example you cited. I imagine there is lots more experience that you and others will have to share on the topic. I would be keen to hear more cautionary tales from the high end gaming table. It's off topic for this thread, so should we start a different one?

I've been starting with 16 year old characters so that by the time we have battle and heroquesting rules 🤞the characters are not OAPs. Not reached the stage of rune levels yet (and 4 RPs is highest). Can you give examples of how it breaks the game?

There is an approach in the core rule book (p 81) for generating more experienced characters. I find that to be very, very stingy. I apply the seasonal experience rules (4 exp checks for professional a cult skills) plus a random number of rune and passion and POW gain checks per year. Done with VBA to calculate instantly. I did also work out a cost-based approach using 20 XP points per year (representing 4 exp checks in 5 seasons). Gaining 3% cost different XPs depending on skill score. Eg 50% cost 2XP as on average will only succeed in 1 out 2 exp rolls. Depends how generous and simple you want it. Maybe just a flat % to dole out; setting a max of say +10% on one skill per year ( there'll be multiple views on what that cap ought to be, especially at the high end 80+, an easy way would be 100-current skill divided by 5 as a cap). Lots of ways to model that: some simplistic and easy, some better representations of experience rules and some better simulations). This assumes they're not considered to be adventuring during this extra time. If you want seasoned "adventurers" then I'd give them a few more experiences checks per season. Wealth, gear and magic are other considerations too. I struggle with the RQG economy tbh so haven't got a convincing answer for wealth. Rune Magic will depend on POW gains and sacrifice. Moderately Powerful characters will gain 1 POW per 3 gain rolls roughly. Active adventurers could get 6 gain rolls a year. Spirit magic, I'd be inclined to give 1 point per year plus whatever freebies their cult gives. Sorcery I haven't modelled or used but I guess you can extrapolate from the above. Hope this helps, despite it not being definitive.

There is an issue with inspiration of Spirit Combat. After the first roll against spirit combat in the spirit combat section the inspiration drops off. If you roll from the skill list the inspiration sticks with the skill (but again drops off the spirit combat section).

Loving this tool - it's going to be so useful! Where the second cult is a subcult (Adventurous and Thunderous) the rune points should be pooled under Orlanth as I understand.

Also, you don't have to make them roll ever but you can reduce their passion if they play against it. They can't have their cake and eat it.

I see it as a thirst for knowledge, which is not what the truth rune brings to personality as written. Some people (low in Love knowledge) watch a "historical" film and take it as seen. Those with a thirst for (high love ) knowledge will read up on what actually happened. Yes there is an element of the truth rune here but it depends on the intent. The truth rune aspect would be seeking to disprove the veracity of the film. The love for knowledge passion would be finding out just for the sake of finding out more because films usually only scratch the surface. Subtle difference I agree. High love knowledge people will be constantly learning, exploring, critiquing, curious ( in my games). Truth rune people are straight forward, straight talking people. Not very good at office politics and diplomacy. They don't have to be super knowledgeable (e.g humakti). Also, the truth rune, imo, would not have a relationship with feelings about knowledge being destroyed but the passion most definitely would have a problem. The library burns down: The high truth rune lady comments"the library burnt down. Thousands of scrolls lost. Two hundred years of records lost. That's going to be a lot of overtime." The love knowledge passion guy is just weeping and beating his chest.

Love it. Like Tarantino and his orange balloon. But I can definitely see the subconscious having a hand in writing and other art, which is perhaps more apparent to other people who are more sensitive to such than the artist. Some people do have a gift with reading people (masters of Insight (human) with a decent augmentation from the man rune). But it's curious that it was a balloon of the Air rune colour floating on the wind in the film. 🤔

Yes, agreed. I had meant someone in the RW though, unless it's being left deliberately "open" to allow us to find our own personal Glorathan truth(s).

Prove it. 😜

Yes, that's a good shout. I think the presence of past and future moons is part of where I was trying to get to. The Sourcebook says that the present owner of the Moon Rune is The Red Goddess (previous unknown). Although someone must know 😉 I work on the basis that "ownership" doesn't mean exclusive use of it though.

Nice one, thanks. That explains a lot!

I agree that it cannot be that only people with an elemental affinity exclusively show preferences for the associated things. But that is not to say that the reverse is not true. I did wonder about the Vingans though. Red Goddess subverting Orlanth with femininity... ? 😄

I think this might be a red herring. Shargash's principle element is Fire/Sky so the associated colour would be Yellow. Orlanth is blue in the pictures but the colour associated with Air is Orange... I don't appear to be making my point very clearly. There are game mechanics that directly link some of the associations with the rune. Weapons listed: these can be inspired. So there is some sort of metaphysical association/link/ connection between Moon and curved weapons. Personality is listed: character personality will skew towards this if its a primary affinity. So again there is a direct interaction between the rune and personality. Despite no direct mechanics I have assumed that the other listed associations are similarly actually linked in a real sense otherwise why not make those references in the cults section rather than the rune section of the rules? E.g. Colour: No direct reference that I can find that establishes whether this colour association is metaphysical or not. Is the design intention that this is a middle world conceit or a universal truth? Are those strong in the force moon drawn/attacted to/in some way influenced towards the colour red? The importance of this is in the question: has the rune been affected by The Red Goddess' ownership of it? And that extends beyond just the colour. For me the implications of this are profound. Perhaps I am looking for profundity where there is none. I'm looking for the cause and effect here. It's no coincidence surely that the crescent horned sables are the ones who aligned with the lunars. There must be some sort of runic influence (pre-disposition) at work there. AFAIK they were not moon cultists before, so is it because the moon rune has different associations now and they had a new-found affinity - or again is that just a conceit - or were they always moon cultists? If the Red Goddess has changed the rune through her ownership then what does this mean for an individual who has affinity with it?

So, are you suggesting that the associations listed are not intrinsic to the rune? That red is adopted as the colour for the moon by the cults and by people arbitrarily?