davecake

Usually such opponents will have enough magical defences - and healing options too - that a blow getting through isn’t a fight ender. It has a back and forth, like a movie fight, rather lots of hit/parry cycles for little effect. A normal hit against someone in armour, let alone buffed with their magic, is generally a small hit - and it’s usually not happening that often, as with relatively equal opponents parry is usually still 70-80%. I do think RQ might benefit from some sort of ‘fight defensively’ option, when one or the other is trying to prolong the fight deliberately, currently it only has the converse in Fanaticism. But actually, in real life highly skilled opponents do often take each other out in seconds if they are actually trying to. A few more seconds than a skilled opponent versus an unskilled one for sure. I generally think that’s a feature not a bug.

General hints for more exciting combat - most general, but some very RG or RQG specific: use Passions. I use Runic inspiration sparingly, but Passions whenever they are applicable. have an idea of specific tactics the opponents will use, including ones that depend on Spirit magic. Opponents like trollkin, duck bandits, etc are not just weaker versions, but will use what tactics they have to maximise their survival. Soldiers will have set tactics that are usually very good at being maximally effective for their equipment, whether that’s shield walls, skirmishing or charges or teamwork. Ambushes. make use of ranged weapons, but encourage use of cover, magic, passive shield charges, etc to counter them. Basically make ranged weapons add a sense of danger, but often reward taking risks to counter them. try to incorporate a range of opponents, some with unusual weapons or tactics. Unusual weapons from the Weapons and Equipment book, like whips and nets. Dual wielders, wrestlers, martial arts fighters. Reward your players use of plausible tactics too. Especially if the tactic involves some risk. And reward abilities to counter their opponents - don’t get annoyed when your PCs avoid an ambush, celebrate it as a chance to celebrate your players abilities. always try to make something about the fight a bit different, at a minimum try to make scenery and terrain possibly significant. There are a lot of possibilities here - cover, environmental hazards, movement hazards, falling hazards, opportunities for swashbuckling heroics. Fights that involve climbing, riding during a chase, Lean into the magic of particular opponents. Not every soldier should be using Rune magic (I make the assumption most soldiers are saving their 1 RP for Heal Wound etc.), but Priests and Lords absolutely should, and dedicated initiates may well have planned it for an important battle. Use their spirit magic. Have cult spirits and elementals. Remember there is a lot of ways to customise these too - if they’ve fought several air elementals, this time it’s a variant. This ghost might be about be able fire damaging arrows, or control flocks of crows. don’t be afraid to give PCs fights that it is very difficult for them to ‘win’, just don’t give them a lethal surprise. Let them have to think about desperate escapes, fighting rearguard actions, stealth, even allowing some of them to be captured.

Definitely, and PCs will definitely end up in the situation of an injury to their weapon arm that causes them not to be able to attack with it. Berserks will often do this. And I also allow fairly liberal use of the passive shielding rules, as it makes shields valuable defensively beyond weapon parry. This is RAW too.

I find the opposite to several others - I find the over 100% rules make for far more exciting combats. My experience with RQ3 was that combat between two skilled fighters (and my main campaign ran for a long time, and by the later years almost everyone was a weapon master, some much higher) could become very dull - even criticals were usually not fight ending after parry, and often combatants had enough healing available it could be just a temporary setback. Combatants that should be amazing clashes (eg party Sword of Humakt takes on Count Julan) could often become long and dull and very dependent on chance, essentially waiting for one or the other to roll 96-00 on their parry. So I really find the over-100% rules make combat far more exciting, and really play up the value of magic like Berserk. And usually ends up with a less than 100% parry chance, as there is far more magic that increases attack% than defence%, which makes high powered combat consistently more dangerous and exciting. It also makes Fanaticism and Berserk much more dramatic choices. So my advice is keep those rules to make combat exciting. The only small house rule I usually make is that rather than the higher skill always being reduced to 100%, their skill is only reduced by whatever it takes to reduce their opponents skill to 0%, but that doesn’t come into play that often (only when your effective attack skill is 100+ more than your opponents defenses). My players are happy with the extra arithmetic required, and it keeps that sense of truly awesome magic going when it comes into play (eg if the Sword used Sword Trance to put his skill up to 300%, and then attacks someone with a mere 150% effective parry skill, not only is their parry reduced to 5% minimum chance, but he crits and special as if his skill is 150%).

Oh, yes. Carvak Zirian was never the ruler, but the representative. And as Jeff says, Belintar is a sacred king, not a mundane ruler - zzaburi business, not Talar business. Some other sixths sent the ruler as the representative because for them, the mundane ruler is also the sacred ruler. Carvak presumably continues right on being the ‘Mind of the Talar’. I think the Shadow Plateau has room for more than one prominent figure. And it is unlikely that a male Orlanthi troll would represent all of them, even the majority.

Joerg, I was referring to the History of Dragon Pass, not the couple of decades covered by the board game.

That is exactly the sort of question that should be settled by the actions of your players. Or even not settled, but explored - maybe it succeeds but the outcome is tinged with Lunar magic (you brought someone back, but now they are Illuminated and have a 100% Moon rune! And may have met the Goddess in the Underworld!), then many might see it as having gone horribly wrong despite success, or even horribly right! (though I think Etyries as Orlanth is likely setting yourself up for failure at other parts of the quest. Which may not necessarily mean total failure, but is unlikely to mean traditional success)

Recall that dragonewts use of dragon magic is said to be spiritually harmful. Perhaps if they can not use dragon magic, and/or have less need to do so if there is less magic used by their enemies, this is actually a huge advantage in the slow process of becoming a dragon? Who was it who is said to have destroyed the magic? A known follower of the draconic philosophies you say? Maybe the reduction of magic was the dragon plan, having tried giving the humans access to dragon magic and seen what a hash they made of it.

I think that’s a pretty controversial statement as it stands, considering their key role in the EWF and it’s rise and fall, but it would be quite ridiculous to say they have not featured heavily in the History of Dragon Pass. Their role is just not always highlighted in human histories. We know the Red Emperor devoted some effort to opposing the Dragonewts Dream And in doing so, magically excised dragons from Lunar cosmology. So the Lunars seem to have rejected any bridge to the Dragonewts - who, of course, opposed the creation of Osentalka so are presumably opposed to the modern Lunar Empire too. Which doesn’t mean the Dragonewts and the Goddess herself might not understand the dragons destroying the Moon as a mystical utuma, completing the cycle and releasing the Goddess from her links to the material world. The Kralorelan perspective is, I agree, the most interesting, as the Kralorelan Dragonewts appear to acknowledge Godunya as a dragon.

Do we know the status the various members of the Six in the post-Belintar era, up to the current era? Well, we do for Hendira. Her history is fairly well documented, especially in the early 1620s. It seems reasonable to assume that the long lived Xoroho Hellspeaker and Carvak Zirian are still alive, and still likely occupy their other positions, but are somewhat diminished in importance, at least outside their home Sixths, with the fall of Belintar. I don’t recall any other mention of them. Xoroho likely continues to be a key ally of Hendira? What about the others? For example, how fared Orngerin the Sophisticate in the Lunar conquest of Heortland, and if he is alive what relationship does he have with Broyan? Did Sednamidos have any role in the (failed) defence against the wolf pirate raids? Verakanos Bluesmoke is said to be Governor and High King of Caladraland, and by 1621 is no longer Governor, because Valeros Highpeak is. But it’s said that Valeros ‘wants to become king’, so either Verakanos has somehow held onto the Kingship, or the clan chiefs disagreed and voted for Governor but not for High King, or more plausible to me, somehow the institution of High King has ceased to function with the death of Belintar, perhaps temporarily. The Guide says ‘He refused to relinquish the Diamond Diadem given by the dwarves to the First King and seeks to make himself king of Caladraland.’ Which implies becoming King has something to with the assent of the dwarves normally, but do we know anything more about it? Perhaps a High King is a Governor elected by the clan chiefs, that then gains the assent of others, but who? Governor sounds a very Belintar era title, so this system was probably instituted by him? But do we know if Verakanos is still around, and if he has any part to play? (Perhaps even as a potential war leader for the Warm Earth Alliance?)

Then it can be attacked by more than 10 troops, maybe 15. Let’s say 10 of them hit. Even with a shortsword, that will be 10x (1D6+1 +1D4) (assuming damage bonus for elite troops), doing an average 70 points of damage. Which is more than double the hit points of the elemental, which has an average of 28.5 hit points, and a maximum of 36. Elementals are really super fragile. Unless you spent more magic, and time, to buff them of course. A Protection 6 helps a lot. But then you aren’t summoning on top of troops either. And they are still kind of fragile. Fearshock and Madness are effective, as they take effect on the SR they contact the troops. But freezing, and Lunes magic point drain, are very minor, of minimal use in that sort of fight (though potentially nastier if used more tactically). The burning only takes effect at the end of a round - by which point the elemental may well be dead. Earth elementals can make pits, which have tactical value beyond the attack … but then, if they don’t do it as a direct attack they can do it a lot, so it may be best to keep them for that. Plus their value to attacks fortifications etc. And air elementals are the worst, because their attacks don’t scale… it has to divide its STR between its targets. So barely useful to direct attack multiple troops - but they do let you fly your own elite troops around, which is potentially very useful. Yes, elementals used this way are effective. Direct attacks by Lunes or shades will likely disrupt a formation quite badly. But they aren’t super powerful, turn the tide of battles, magic either. They are a potentially useful attack, but often those resources are better used differently. Though bigger spirits can be battle determining. She That Strikes From Afar, for example, can cast a lot of Madness spells (using the magic points of the many magicians linked to her), is worth heavily buffing with defensive magic (enough to mostly ignore arrows) , and also pretty much hits anyone that physically engages her, typically a 12 meters from, with Madness. But She (with her magical backup) has a WBRM counter of her own, so off course she is.

Seriously, if it’s been in the middle of a military unit, without any defensive magic, probably already dead. Elementals, with 0 armour points, are far more vulnerable to ranged weapons than any other troops. As well as making big obvious targets. Elementals that just move out of close combat are in big trouble if they can be targeted by ranged weapons. Keeping them safe means a combination of casting a whole lot more defensive magic, and keeping them a long way away from combat. Seriously, elementals don’t last long in the middle of battle. I had a whole bunch of elementals when I ran the Cradle, and some had a few notable wins, but they are very fragile.

If it’s not at the front, it’s not where it needs to be - you are using really good magic in order to inflict casualties where they are not useful. Not useless, but not usually how you win battle. And if it’s attacking the front, the rear ranks just stab it. Also, if the elemental is summoned in the middle of a group, then there is no chance to cast defensive magic on it. I mean it’s not a worthless tactic - if it’s in the middle of pitched battle, it will be damaging for sure. But it’s not a super powerful tactic that turns the tide of battle either. Very little Rune magic is, really. And it’s a very desperate way to use your elementals, which used in less direct ways are very useful. Well, sure, any tactic looks good if you selectively interpret the rules with a bias to making it look good!

The Yelmalio cult ‘will not teach the sword for any price’, though do not technically forbid it. I am amused by the idea of the Sun Dome Templars ostentatiously saying ‘we do not teach the sword for any price, for it is a vile weapon that slew the divine father Yelm’, then saying ‘and unrelatedly, weapons training on Windsday will be provided by independent contractors, the Deathsword Killers…. ‘

Elementals are expensive magic, and and very vulnerable to plain old combat and surprisingly fragile in combat unless you spend a lot more magic to defend them. They are just a big pile of hit points, but armour less, and fully vulnerable to mundane weapons. And remember that their attacks are always last in the round - and elementals often last less than that in a real fight. So the tactic to use against elementals is just kill them very quickly! Earth are the most useful - you can use them to create earthworks. Air are mostly useful for moving people around the battlefield, though they are very vulnerable to missile fire. Darkness and Fire and Moon all have the same problem - not really useful for anything but direct attack, but very very vulnerable if they do. Though Fire can be used to mess with enemy defenses by lighting fires.

I don’t think this is that always true. The advantage Orlanthi have is mobility and maneuverability (multiple forms of magic, fairly light troops) and generally they are good at skirmish tactics (javelin as a cultural weapon), which they will use against Yelmalio pike formations, or will try very hard to attack them from the flank if they do enter close combat. The pike formation will absolutely crush average Orlanthi troops that end up facing a pike formation front on, but an Orlanthi commander should be trying very hard not to that. More generally pike formations are very good heavy infantry, probably superior to almost all Orlanthi heavy infantry, but the Orlanthi have plenty of light infantry and it really comes down to how tactics, terrain and circumstance - are the Orlanthi able to wear down the phalanx with skirmishes and flank attacks before it engages the main front. Of course, the Templars have a few other troop types that they use to prevent flanking, and I think understand combined arms tactics pretty well, but not many of them. (though if they, say, are fighting with a bunch of eg Yelmalio worshipping Impala tribesmen, it’s a different story). Of course the Templars can also use other formations, but that has other issues, and mostly doesn’t change things much, because it’s the skirmishing that’s more important than the flanking. The pike formation is very hard to beat by normal close combat, but it’s going to advance slowly (because tight formation) with skirmishes tearing at them. If they last with enough intact to engage the enemy shield wall etc, they should win. Though when they do meet, the Orlanthi are still going to try to use their mobility advantage (eg Leap over those front rank pikes! An ambush from behind! ) and some individual heroics to try to break that formation, and if they succeed the Templars are in big trouble - can’t use their pikes, probably just their short swords (or whatever), and they can’t even use their shields without ruining the formation.

That is a misinterpretation. The next sentence clarifies, and the longer explanation in past and future Yelmalio cult writeups makes it clear - they use a large shield (passively in a shield wall, rather active parrying) with a pike wielded 2h, with the aid of a strap.

The whole idea of a phalanx is a tight formation all using the same fighting technique. And it’s a special skill, not magical at all. Plus they don’t officially have any such magic, and it’s unlikely they’ll ever have any. And if they get it from a wyter - then restricting its use to its community is what wyters do, basically.

My issue is that if the cult refuses to train the sword in any way, which should include drilling etc, and it seldom sees use, it should not even get that 15%. The idea that a military unit would refuse training with any of its weapons is ridiculous.

This issue is a genuine actual FAQ. I’ve personally seen it multiple times just in the last couple of years. The Humakti spell requires that the spirit must be a volunteer. I don’t think it’s necessarily Chaos or Thanatar etc to force it though - any shaman with a binding enchantment might be able to stop a spirit of the dead from moving on - but it certainly seems pretty nasty. Thanatar magic is Chaotic because the Heads are pretty much undead - they aren’t just ghosts, but remain some semblance of life, at least at first. A better comparison is Tusk Riders using Death Binding to bind a sacrificed victim into their tail or hand - not Chaotic, but generally considered evil, selfish and awful behaviour. First, this was a long time ago, and we didn’t have all this sort of thing 100%sorted out, and Biturian isn’t an expert - he may have referred to a ghost as undead in error. Though the Bind Ghost spell was from Cults of Prax. I don’t think a ghost is referred to as Undead in any of those era books, and the spells mostly haven’t changed. Second, his shock at a Humakti remaining as a ghost is, I think, about it being done against their will. Even in Cults of Prax the spell required them to be a volunteer - and a Sword of Humakt would have access to Free Ghost you would think! Bind Ghost isn’t an Enchantment, though, and binds the ghost to an area rather than an object. I don’t think it stops with the death of the caster.

Annilla is the most obvious choice. And is known for assassins and obsessed with secrets. But restricted to an unusual small minority of trolls - I think the median number of Annilla cultists in a given troll settlement is none. So unless your troll is very weird (fine for a PC of course), probably only for trolls from the Blue Moon Plateau area. Argan Argar has the most appropriate magic otherwise. Dark Walk is nearly as good as Invisibility (and much cheaper, 1 rp vs 3), and they have several other Darkness spells that help with sneakery (though admittedly most aren’t very useful against other trolls, except for permitting Dark Walk). Though the cult doesn’t seem to particularly specialise in stealthiness as a social role (its known more for trading and warrior roles than scouting or stealing etc), it’s a very good and widespread cult for those trolls that do want to be sneaky. Xentha is the mother of Argan Argar, though, and the cult seems to value stealth skills and teaches them at half price, and stealth and sneaking appears to be a major focus of cult members. It has no specific stealth magic - except it does get Dark Walk from Argan Argar, which is all they need really. So might be the best choice for a sneaking specialist - except in most places it seems to hardly exist as anything except an associated cult of Argan Argar. Still, that might be all your troll sneak specialist needs - stealth skills, Dark Walk, and a bit of other darkness magic, gets you a long way. Almost all trolls, and definitely ZZ and KL, as people have noted, enjoy an ambush now and then, but it doesn’t seem to be something they have much magic to support (Darkwall can be handy, though). Though Lead armour means they are better at it than most humans though. And both cults recognise the value of stealth skills by recognising some as a possible qualification for Rune Lord, but ZZ also teaches it to initiates, and appears very enthusiastic about ambushing. I don’t think the cult cares about it beyond combat uses for ambushes and scouting, though. ZZ is very keen on getting combat value out of its trollkin, but sometimes as little more than ablative shielding. Though a bunch of trollkin slingers behind Darkwall is handy, and keeps their foes pinned down until the warriors are on top of them. AA is the only cult that thinks trollkin have anything to offer in hand to hand, though. I doubt that they make use of stealth while actually Berserk, but the best time to go Berserk is from ambush when you are already almost on top of the enemy. Helps minimise the advantage most traditional troll enemies have in missile combat. Pity about those annoying Humakti though - Sense Ambush is another reason to hate them. Subere is more a cult for those who want to summon scary underworld monsters and spirits. It pretty much is uninterested in non-magical/ritual abilities.

These things are currently campaign relevant to me - I’m running an intermittent Sandheart game, and the PCs will often try to form a small (3-4 person wide) shield wall, so issues like this come up often. And I’d like my PCs to have reasons to act like historical troops a bit more when doing so. Of course, attempting to apply tactics used by large military formations in war time to small messy skirmishes is often a bit of a disaster, but that’s half the run - Yelmalion traditionalist and conservative thinking keeps leading them into using the wrong tactics for the job. it’s a bit of a running joke that I wanted the PCs in the Sandheart game to be generally less combat effective than average RQG beginning characters for a less heroic, more low level, game, but I didn’t need to change the rules to accomplish this, just make them Yelmalions (thus saddling them with inappropriate tactics and depriving them of much good combat magic). A further Gloranthan weirdness is that several of the cults that use hoplite/phalanx tactics refuse to teach sword fighting in any way, which would be rather a problem for hoplites using short swords as a standard back up weapon. Rules wise, this gets compounded by treating 1H and 2H use of even the same spear as two unrelated weapons. So hoplites etc are likely to be pretty terrible at using anything but their primary weapon. And then there is the further weirdness of the rules not believing any spear other than a short spear is used one handed*, thus making the 1h long spear that was the primary warriors weapon in the era and area it claims to be focussed on replicating non-existent. *sigh* like several others, I think a 1H long spear approximating the Greek doru is an obvious gap in the rules, and house rule it. * well, the rules do list a lance as a 1h spear, but then in the description says it is used 2H. And this was carried through to the weapons and equipment guide. Also, though it’s obviously a cavalry weapon, nothing in the rules seems to say it can’t be used on foot 🤨 but let’s just skip lightly over all that. There seems to be some confusion between the 2h kontos, which probably could also be used as a sarissa, and the later 1h couched lance.

Part of the reason why the use of light weapons is often queried is because historical armies tended to feature a mixture of spears and light weapons - there appears to be no reason in the rules why your soldier would carry a mixture of a spear and a short blade (such as a xiphos or gladius), despite that being the standard for many ancient armies, including the most extraordinarily successful ones. So the historical argument tends to work against lighter shorter gear always being better. I’m tempted to make some sort of rule specifically to cover those cases. A specific rule that covers the cases of hoplites and legions might be that using a weapon of SR 1 or 2 other than against an opponent directly in front of you requires you to drop out of formation/break the shield wall just as dodging or parrying does? A shortsword then becomes a useful backup weapon, because if the shield wall is breaking but mostly intact, you can still stab the guy who killed the guy next to you without breaking the shield wall further. One issue is the rules more or less conflate very tight rigid phalanx formations with looser 1-2 person deep ‘Viking’ style shield walls without uniform weaponry (which seems a very common Orlanthi battle tactic), in which using larger 1-h seem less of an issue. The rule might still work, though, with the expected result that such shield walls fall apart easily when breached, turning into more of a standard melee - which actually seems pretty fair.

Not really - these are all clearly metaphysically different realms, not alternate worlds for mortals. Literally no, because saying it is in the underworld is literally saying you DO know where it is, it is in the underworld. The underworld is a place. It has different qualities to other places, that are distinct from various other metaphysical places. Oh, almost everyone visits the underworld eventually. It’s coming back to tell other people about it that’s tricky.

And humans that turn into trolls. Among the Kitori.