davecake

And humans that turn into trolls. Among the Kitori.

Pamalts cult is a shamanic cult in the sense that he has shamans that have access to rune magic rather, like Daka Fal or the Hsunchen cults. But he is also a god of sovereignty, to his chieftains may act as priests as far as rune magic and leading ceremonies go. The chieftains are too busy being chieftains, though, so most spirit magic is learnt from shamans. Peter is right that the RQ3 long form write up that was in Tales of the Reaching Moon is the best source on the Pamalt cult. I suspect the RQG version will be very similar. That’s what the Guide says. And as he seems to have only Earth spells as cult rune magic, that’s probably all that is needed. I don’t really think there are worshippers of Pamalt in Genertela even among the Agimori. And if there were, he would be much weaker - none of his Power abilities, including no Necklace. But YGWV. I think yes - all the gods of the Necklace have each other as Associated cults, and there are a lot of them, so that is a lot of magic available. In some cases the god may be present only as a spirit cult, or only at particular sites or during special rituals, but it’s still useful. (Well, Bolongo may not actually be useful). Pamalt has connections to other gods, too, such as fiwan/animal gods, maybe some Artmali ones. I think the Power rune is about Pamalt becoming powerful because he has connections to others, whereas Orlanth or Yelm has connections to others because they are powerful. Or something like that. FWIW, I think the cults book will say that the God Learners identified Faranar as the Pamaltelan version of Ernalda, probably correctly.

The God Learners in Kralorela/ the False Dragon Ring investigated the Hsunchen there more thoroughly than elsewhere. In part this was because their investigation of the haunches deep myths led them to the legendary dragon hsunchen, which led them to the knowledge they needed to create the Path of Immanent Mastery, a vital part of their campaign to usurp the draconic role of the Emperor. Though some of the investigation of the dragon hsunchen probably used knowledge gained fighting the Serpent-Beast society in Fronela and Ralios. One of the big mysteries is why the Sepent-Beast or Dragon connections don’t seem to surface in Pamaltela - where dragons are unknown, but not Serpents. And does it have anything to do with Pamalt still being alive (who is half serpent himself).

The word Hsunchen is a Kralori word, spread by the God Learners, IMO when they recognized that the ones they knew of from Seshnela and Fronela were part of a wider phenomenon, one the Kralori already had a name for - but the hsunchen exist independently of the God Learners recognizing it, particularly in Pamaltela the term fiwan is used instead. The Hsunchen long predate the God Learners, their commonality was there before the God Learners, and extends to hsunchen/fiwan people that the God Learners never reached. The God Learners were the first to recognize how deep the commonality goes, by recognizing phenomena like how the languages of hsunchen of the same species are always the same despite distance and lack of interaction. But they did not create it.

Another way of looking at this is that they where attempting to purify themselves, which suggests the God Learner project, connected to the Zistorites, of trying to create the Purify rune, that would be capable of reversing entropy and returning things to their pure nature before the Fifth Action screwed everything up. Because there is a difference between the purest abstraction of a property of reality, and the smallest indivisible unit of that property, and atom is the correct term for the latter? Essentially, I don’t like your idea much personally, because it relies on Gloranthans using the word Atomic in a sense that modern science does, rather than as Democritus would have. To Ancient Greek philosophers, the term sub-atomic is nonsensical because if there is something smaller than an atom, it’s not an atom. And the idea that we have a God Learner sect trying to turn the universe back to when the Zzaburite worldview was true, before Hrestol and Arkat and barbarian gods were necessary, appeals to me more than some sort of Moorcockian multiverse interacting with Glorantha does (not that Moorcockian multiverses don’t have their charms). But that’s just my personal reaction - I don’t think there should be any official position on such obscure single references, and we can interpret them to suit the exciting ideas they invoke in us as we wish for our own wildly speculative campaign ideas.

Absolutely. But we don’t even know what sort of abilities are reasonable for us to assume they have. Sometimes, the rules we have are not sufficient to have sensible play for beings at their level. Eg what does DI mean to entities who have a direct line to gods?

I don’t think so, in that ‘extremely low chance of success’ implies that the chance is quantifiable, and can be increased, and probably made significantly larger. Sure, your character with 100% skill has a very low chance of success against someone with 200% skill, but increasing your skill beyond 100% skill is slow but possible. And other factors, like careful tactics, can maybe increase it more. Do I think your characters should be able to take on Harrek and Jar-Eel? Well, not really, but not so much because the idea of the sort of play doesn’t appeal. But it’s also not a useful question, because Heroes should have an extremely low chance of success against them, and we don’t yet have enough understanding of what a Hero is, and how an experienced Hero compares to an inexperienced one, and how Heroes deal with other Heroes, and what are successful Hero tactics are vs bad ones, or the pros and cons, and all that. Once we’ve done that, then we can talk about Jar-Eel and Harrek and what it means to fight them. Right now, we can only really only speculate about what Heroes do, talking about what Superheroes should be like is very uninformed speculation. I sort of am - but with a very big caveat, which is that Superheroes should be those that are those who are the top of the Hero game, not simply those that are the top of the SuperRuneQuest game. And we don’t have good rules for the introductory, basic, Hero game yet. Harrek shouldn’t (just?) have 1000% to hit and a lot of hit points. Harrek should be, to take an important example from the fiction, the guy that who, at Pennell Ford, when they tried to hit him with a massed Sunspear, caused some of the priests that we’re backing the casting effort to catch of fire. No current rules can explain that. Hell, they don’t even explain how to do that massed Sunspear. If you want to take on Superheroes, we simply don’t have the rules yet. (Also, Harrek isn’t the ‘main character’, frequently in the narrative he is a foil for Argrath as protagonist, which he could still be for your PCs. When he wants to loot your allies, or slaughter enemies (including non-combatants) without mercy or honor, it’s an opportunity to demonstrate that you are morally better, even if he is tougher). Now, when we do have them, Harrek and Jar-Eel are still going to be crazily formidable, and in ways we don’t really understand yet. Before Harrek killed and bound a god, amassed his own armada of pirate followers including expert killers and magicians from across at least half a dozen cultures, looted the City of Wonders and many other repositories of magical treasures, and led a magical expedition across half the world - before all that, he was already someone who could not only survive in the vicious and highly magical world of Lunar Dart Competitions, but so good at it that he killed the Red Emperor. Jar-Eel was heroquesting as an infant, led the attack on Boldhome as a child - and since then has gained numerous powers and resources, including the magical support of a regiment that not only are the best human soldiers in the entire Lunar army, but also all worship her. They shouldn’t beat you because their attack% is very high (though it surely is). They should bear you because they’ve been playing the Hero game at a high level for decades, and because they and their team of supporters are three steps ahead of you. Because their Tricksters whispers Lies into the ear of your sorcerers, because they heroquested to find and resurrect your enemies, because they learnt that secret you covered up and when revealed it causes your trusted companions to turn on you, because they have items from half a world away that provide magic you’ve never known, because your god refuses to aid you because they have earned a favour, and because they have a collection of heroquest boons and rewards that is long and formidable, as well as being at the top of what is attainable by more normal means. It’s not that I want Jar-Eel and Harrek to be undefeatable in the game, or for it to be impossible to get to that level. I want getting to that level to be comparable - something that requires years of successful adventure *after* becoming a Hero - and I don’t think there are going to be many such games (and they would far beyond the RuneQuest rules). I want defeating a Superhero to be like defeating Sheng Seleris, involving years of effort, and to involve the magical resources of Empires, fighting in heaven, side-quests that could be the whole story of a Hero (such as creating new gods by by fathering children on fearsome demon goddesses), unleashing old Curses against them that have been waiting for a century, etc, not just working out what you think is a clever way to twat them with a rules loophole of a particular spell or whatever. The issue that such a game of duelling Superheroes would likely drift far away from the standard future timeline, and as such doesn’t interest me personally that much, is a separate one - plenty of opportunities to get involved in other parts of Glorantha with a far less defined timeline, for a start. But I don’t want Superheroes (or Heroes) to be the ‘Deities and Demigods’ syndrome - ie we took these characters from fiction, put pretty big numbers next to them, and then someone who has managed to get comparable numbers through dubious house rules says they’ve beaten them in a fight. Reminds me awkwardly of D&D culture in the 1980s, when the hobby was in its collective adolescence, and you’d often hear these stories. Making Superheroes undefeatable by fiat might be problematic to some, but I think making Superheroes defeatable by cheapening what they are is more problematic. Think of making Superheroes undefeatable by fiat, or defeatable only by GM nareative fiat, which is much the same thing, as just a rules patch until we have the right rules. We waited 30+ years, we can wait a few more. And yes, I know that back in the 1980s some of todays titans of gaming, including Greg, thought that the SuperHeroQuest approach was the way to go to make gaming around heroquesting etc work. I don’t think Greg would think that now. He tried and rejected a bunch of ideas for various things over his life, and was never afraid to change approach when he found something that worked better. And this already far too long post is not just me ranting about about an abstract point about Superheroes that will only be of significance to a tiny percentage of games. Because how we understand Superheroes is built on how we understand Heroes. And I absolutely do want PCs to become Heroes (with the general understanding that Heroes usually represent the efforts of a group, one often conveniently about the size of a PC party). I think that should not be every game, but an accepted and common style of game. And I want Heroes to be able to take on regiment level threats, and make a real difference. But I don’t want that to happen via big attack %ages, a bunch of Rune magic, and endless thousands of attack-parry-damage cycles (I’ve already run The Cradle now, and while it was fun, I really don’t want to spend multiple days of play of my PCs fighting hordes of soldiers again, plus it is still a bit unsatisfying - and still doesn’t really represent defeating a regiment, just holding them off until the deus ex machina kicks in). I want the PC Heroes to defeat regimental level threats as big gameable stories, by heroquests (which depend as much on choices and commitment as martial prowess), by use of powerful magic such as wyters that depend on community and cult support, by being clever and skilled commanders, by diplomacy and intrigue, by leveraging the cool rewards from earlier adventures, by drawing on new or established allies. And by extension, Superheroes should be like that, only more so. ‘High level play’ in the sense of big fights that involve lots of use of the RQ rules is certainly something that should be part of that sort of game, and can be heaps of fun, but I don’t think wanting to be explain all of how Hero level fights without going beyond the current RuneQuest rules is a sensible goal. Which doesn’t mean I am not very happy to keep talking about high level play within the RQ rules, just recognise it’s limits.

The annual professional experience rolls in RQG are experience rolls, not training. And separate to any training you might get, even though many cults will offer free or cheap training to many.

He’s never been officially statted, so does he have 1000%? I think one of the persistent problems is people extrapolating incorrectly from Dragon Pass Combat Factors saying Argrath can take on a regiment (and Harrek can take on 5), to assuming we need SuperRuneQuest rules because heroes and superheroes take on a regiment in a big damn fight, the way Superman would. But I don’t think that’s intended. They take on a regiment more the way Batman would, or Doctor Who - planning, identifying their weaknesses, a bit of use of various special and exotic resources, and having a bunch of companions with their own special talents doing their part. When Argrath defeats a regiment, that doesn’t mean he, or even he and his companions, stab them all in a stand up fight. It means Argrath finds the point where the whole regiment has to pass through the one narrow point, his priestess summons the local spirit of place, his sorcerers cast a great spell, Elusu seduces the commander, etc and the whole unit ends up in the one avalanche with Argrath and friends slaughtering the fleeing survivors from a huge tactical vantage point. Or whatever. Hero units are like good adventuring parties - they are much better than average people at fighting, but also use magic, creativity, teamwork and a huge rank of tricks and tactics and such. And sure, Harrek and Jar-Eel are really really good at stabbing people. But they are the same, only more so - what really matters is not what their attack % ages are, but that both a direct connection to a god to draw on, have a range of magic tricks an resources for practically every thing, have expert advisors who have warned g him of your coming, magically anticipated you, are already in the middle of heroquesting. Harrek isn’t just a guy in a cloak that stabs you. He is a guy who has other expert fighters around him, with shamans guarding the spirit world, Jonatelan sorcerers buffing him, whose Tricksters have already anticipated yours, whose companions have access to the stolen treasures of a hundred lands. Harrek himself isn’t just a great fighter, and a guy who has a god at his beck and call, but he is also a great heroquester, an experienced dart warrior, an inspiring leader, and the core of a team of experts who support each other. All of that is why he is a superhero.

We did work out there is a potential slight workaround - you can cast Restore INT, and maybe get them up from 0 to only being an idiot. But yeah, often Mind Blast is in some situations worse than being dead!

I don’t either, both for that reason, and because talking to my wife, who is an emergency physician, and her colleagues has made it clear that the gap between ‘unconscious and dying’ and actually dead is quite a bit larger than most rpgs, including RQ, make it. Sure, mostly people in that condition are going to die without serious help, but usually in several minutes not instantly, and modern emergency medicine is pretty astonishing compared to pre-modern equivalents, but Heal Body is pretty astonishing too.

Actually my feeling was that Brangbane on his own was quite vulnerable for such a classic villain - he has only one defensive combat option, parrying with his sword at 110% (really, far too low for an ancient horror). He can maybe overwhelm a single opponent with two attacks, but if multiple opponents survive his howl, especially if they have beefed up attack %ages (such as Berserk or Sword Trance, but Bladesharp 6 will do it, and always punch right through his armor). He also has no physical defences beyond ok armour (people taking him 9n are likely to have shield), and no magical defences either. He is also very vulnerable to spirit combat. And while the howl is a great ability, his other tough ability, paralysing venom, requires it to hit, to not be parried, and then to overcome Con with venom Pot - mostly, it will get parried, if he uses it at all. He also has no normal magic at all, and no healing of any kind, so could be befuddled, Mind Blasted, etc. He is unpleasant, but against a competent ‘rune level’ party able to take him on, he should go down very quick. He struck me as having been statted out by someone with limited familiarity with high powered RQ combat. He looks dangerous, but he is a bit of a glass cannon. Against, say, a decent Death Lord or Kargs Son (at this point, I’ve statted out several troll rune lords that should end up in Chaosium publications, any of them would do) he is going down very quick unless his howl stops them. And they could arguably block that with Counter Chaos pretty easily.

I think it is a positive thing about the RQ rules that many of the tactics that were popular and effective in the rough time period it aims to emulate are effective enough to be plausibly popular and effective in play, and magic often only enhances that. Peltasts were a big deal, javelins an important part of single combat stories, and eventually Rome conquered Europe with a distinct fondness for pilums. Similarly, it’s great that the shield wall rules make it a pretty good tactic for soldiers (if not necessarily PC parties). And that Sun Dome phalangites are especially effective (leaving aside Yelmalios uniquely crappy magic, the only fighting cult that decreases your access to weapon enhancing magic). I tend to see times when the rules lead to ahistorical tactical preferences, at least for ‘average’ fighters without masses of magic, as a flaw. Eg 1h spears are currently very poor weapons, and short swords are also terrible, with no reason to use them at all. Both were super popular in the Bronze Age, and the rules should reflect that. But we have a few challenges in correcting decades of experience with rules that say otherwise, often based on ideas from SCA fighting experience that we might think about differently now ( just as we removed bastard swords), What does this have to do with high power play? Not much, except that high power play is sometimes the only way to test some rules to see if they work as designed. The tactics cults encourage their warrior leaders to use should be effective ones for high powered play. The rules do make certain tactics more or less effective, and that changes the details of the setting a bit, eventually flowing into scenarios and then fiction. An example - in RQ2, attack and parry being separate, very few advantage for shields above other parrying weapon besides higher base chance (an advantage that disappeared with experience), and the power of the ‘action economy’ meant that two Sword fighting was a very effective tactic, and we saw this creep into the fiction, such as the (quite classic) image of Bolthor and Oddi the Keen heading into battle with an iron bastard sword in each hand from Cults of Terror. In RQG, attacking with a shield is always at a high percentage, and it has distinct advantages such as passive shielding - so starting an off hand weapon at a tiny percentage is rather less inviting just to get the option of an off hand attack. And an advantage in attack percentage always counts for something. So even for berserk’s and such, Sword and shield is likely to continue to be the popular option for PCs. Which I like, because we can have berserk’s that chew their shields just like the sagas say.

I always find the idea that PCs are unimportant because they aren’t Argrath very odd. It’s a bit like saying it’s not worth playing in a WW 2 setting if you don’t get to replace Churchill - for most of the Hero Wars history, Argrath can be treated as a commander and a quest giver, and your characters defeat some unique threat (even one that threatens to destroy the world through Chaos, or reviving God Learner heresies, even one involving Argrath as part of the threat (perhaps he doesn’t know that he might provoke a second Dragonkill until you stop him from carrying out his plan)). Or saying why play a superhero game if you aren’t Superman. The idea that the game isn’t worth playing if you can’t potentially punch out the most powerful characters in the setting is a strange one to me. It’s saying the only satisfying game is a sort of game I find definitively unsatisfying. A game in which all threats can be overcome by force does not excite me. The SuperRuneQuest, beat up Harrek and Jar-Eel and the Bat, seems a line of reasoning that ends with the D&D Deities and Demigods as high level Monster Manual scenario. One in which your PCs convince Jar-Eel to turn on the Red Emperor, or distract Harrek by raising a sexy bear goddess , etc sounds more fun to me than one in which you beat them up and there are no threats that cannot be defeated with force. It is very easy to have games where the actions of your characters are central. I think stories that concentrate on a vital microcosm of a broader world - the story of one clan, or one town, one family, are fine. After, that’s still the great majority of all stories ever. But if you want a story in which your players are the ones that save the world, then offer a different perspective on the story we know. All which is: a) not intended to say that your gonzo, over the top game that ends with you skinning the Crimson Bat with Arkats Adamantine Sword, then defeating Harrek because you now have an even more powerful god-as-clothing-item, is wrong or anything. If that floats your boat, you do you. It’s just that the idea that games that don’t allow for that kind of ending are somehow flawed seems ridiculous to me, and it’s a bit of a bugbear when people suggest that playing RQ the way the vast majority do instead is somehow lacking. and b) a bit off the main topic. In suggesting that what I consider high level play is doable and fun, I just wanted to add the caveat that I think high level play starts a long way below the Superhero level, and there is a huge load of fun to be had without ever getting to the point of kicking over the furniture of the setting. And if we ever did get to the point of PCs directly taking on Harrek etc, I’d like it to have several more layers of adding expanded layers of complexity to the game, whole extra rules sets that we are a fair way away from, rather than just like an RQ fight with bigger numbers. You should at least have to, I don’t know, find Harreks secret horcruxes or something.

I’ve got an ongoing, but irregular, campaign of what I consider high-level play, though by that I mean RuneMasters kind of stuff, not soltakss or Dorastor kind of stuff. The PCs were converted from a very old RQ3 era campaign, are all Rune Lords or Priests, and heroquesting in some form is now a regular feature. Not all are that powerful as combatants (one is a Sage of Lhankor Mhy, for example), but some are (one is Sword of Humakt who now is fully kitted out in iron gear). I revived my old game initially with two goals - I specifically wanted to try high level battle in RQG, and i wanted to, at least once, to have run infamous scenario The Cradle, which was more or less the defining high level scenario for RQ2 and a notorious ‘Rune Lord killer’. I beefed it up a fair bit, in particular by turning ‘big fight against a bunch of troops’ encounters into ‘big fights against a bunch of troops and several tough rune lords’, which also made it more fun as the enemy rune lords were mostly ones the PCs had history with, such as the Coders, Radak the Iron Centurion, Invictus in Sun County, etc. My PCs all survived, though there were a couple of successful DIs needed. The Cradle took quite a few long sessions. I’m trying to keep it to what I think is fairly RQG RAW (apart from not having heroquest rules so having to improvise a little, but trying to be fairly compatible with what we are told the rules will likely be). I have a few house rules, but not many. One is that Axe/Sword Trance has a maximum effect of doubling your base skill. No one has done that yet. But we have still had the Sword throwing around effective attack% of 200%+, once they are fully revved up with Bladesharp 5, Runic inspiration, etc. And damage rolls have made it into the 30+ level now and then. There are a couple of other spell tweaks, and a few other little rules changes, but nothing that seems to drastically change play - for example, I often use the RQ3 missile hit location tables. The RQG rules for abilities over 100% is one of the most significant changes between editions for high level play. Remember a 200% skill level means if you are fighting a ‘starting’ weapon master such as a newly qualified Rune Lord, with 100% skill, you subtract 100% from their skills, so they are about as dangerous as a toddler, with 5% chances vs your 100%. It definitely feels like high level play! And it means RQG skills work similarly to HeroQuestWorlds levels of mastery - it’s a logarithmic scale, not a linear one. And effective skills levels over 100% are not difficult at all to happen - a starting character with Fanaticism is there. One interesting thing with The Cradle was how shield wall tactics are a really good idea against high powered opponents (The Cradle has a lot of fights against ranks of soldiers, especially hoplites). A parry would often be reduced to very low levels by their high attack, so passively shielding most locations was much better, and then that leaves them free to go Fanatic or similar, at which point their attack skill was high enough to be a worry. My PCs eventually took to just accepting that they’d have to take a hit or two, and doing aimed blows to the head at the end of round. Not as much dispelling goes on as you’d think, and also not much boosting to get past defences. Sometimes smart PCs would target anyone who is taking a very long time to cast a spell because they are boosting it with magic. Allied spirits helping shore up magical defences and heal awhile there ally fights one are very valuable. But while having an allied spirit that is an elemental (added in RQG) sounds very cool, usually it’s an incredibly bad idea, they are very vulnerable. Same with materialising a fetch. There is definitely a different feel to ‘Rune level’ play that is more than just the numbers getting bigger - the extra actions from spirits, lots more magic points to spend, lots more magic options available. And often damage is higher so that one good blow can decide a combat - but healing options grow as well, and becomes a crucial part of teamwork. There also seems to be a bit of a natural point at which those things will hit some barriers and start to hit the level above that. A few are nearing the point at which they have maxed out their rune magic from a single cult. There are relatively few ways to have a POW above about species max for spell casting purposes (though easier defensively). Few multitarget or area effect spells. Things like heroquest abilities, big enchantments, and access to a wyter or other powerful spirit are starting to look like they will be more important. I think a lot of how that next level works is going to be really open up with the Gamemaster book, which I hope is coming next year. I think the answer for how do you have a character. who can beat the opponents in soltakss Dorastor books using the standard HQG is you mostly shouldn’t expect to. They are created assuming the very different rules in his heroquesting etc books, which has very different assumptions about both how the numbers work, and what style of play is the goal. But RQG RAW high powered play is real, it has been big fun to play, and I think we are heading towards a version of the game that will support pretty high powered play well if you want to do that. I also am very much looking forward to heroquest rules that, while heroquesting continues to be an important part of high powered play, aren’t simply about bigger numbers. Things like the support of your community (which might give you the aid of a wyter), or making choices about which Passions you are willing to maintain at a high level and how that might limit you, or which taboos you are willing to accept for the help of a particular spirit, or which ‘foreign’ powers you will accept help from, that’s going to be more vital to a high powered game than just numbers getting bigger. I hope that’s what we’ll be getting. As an aside, my PCs don’t include any shamans or sorcerers. So I’m just speculating about them, really. My feeling is that shamans will be interesting for high powered play, but we probably won’t see too many shamans with huge fetches - the marginal value and fun of putting their POW gains into rune points (even just from random spirit cults, but definitely from shamanic cults like Daka Fal), shamanic abilities, even enchantments (especially spirit bindings) is going to be higher than just making the fetch bigger. I don’t think they will be overwhelming or unbalanced though. High powered sorcerers I still despair of somewhat, it seems like a design goal of sorcery is to make it less fun to play a sorcerer. And it seems like we’ve only got half the rules. It does seem that even if they are made significantly more fun, that the most effective high powered sorcerers will inevitably end up being a lot less focussed on using sorcery - for example bound/allied spirits, especially ones that know spirit magic, are incredibly useful to a sorcerer. And we will get our first taste of mysticism in RQG with Illumination rules - and I’m pleased to say that the primary role it will have in high powered play will be to take all the interesting choices you have to make around cults, Passions, Runes, community, and add more options while making it all messy and complex.

No, the post I was quoting used the singular.

In this particular instance, not quite. Anything the party can do their opponentS can do, but combining magic to buff one of them is still a good tactic by which the party can tackle someone that could beat any of them singularly.

Exactly one of the reasons I limit it to doubling skill. So if two Humakti both have access to lots of magic points and both go full Sword Trance, the better swordsman wins. That seems MGF enough - in that it makes it less likely the lesser swordsman will take that route, and will try different tactics. Though I think it would also be perfectly fine to say that Humakti duels only allows magic cast after the start of the duel (making huge Sword Trances a ridiculously risky tactic, as you’d usually have lost the duel by the time you have finished casting), or at least don’t allow you to start a duel tranced.

Nah. invisibility or blindness is only a mere -75% to hit. Shadow Walkers better stay out of weapon reach. They might get one surprise attack if the Humakti is unaware of them, but they would want to be very certain it worked. And even in Sword Trance, you can still use shields passively and charge, so bows aren’t foolproof - but they are an effective tactic, just as they are against berserks.

Actually now I think about, in RQ3 rules the value of Sword Trance is splitting your attack. So you get to hit those trollkin 4.5 times a round. You’ll need more than 10. (or wait until the end of the round and hit two of them in the head)

It stands to reason that if you are using very different rules, you will also have very different house rules. And as Humakt doesn’t have sword trance in RQ3, you only need to worry about axes. I still find, even if it doesn’t have as great a practical effect, that the best swordsman will be the one with most access to magic points rather than the one with the best skill, a but odd.

In Glorantha generally we know that some animals are intelligent, and treated differently to the rest of their species as a consequence. The intelligent fish in the Zola Fel are one well known example, but there are many others. In the Green Age, perhaps all animals were like this - or perhaps all humans (and other intelligent species) more like animals. Perhaps all animals seem like this in the spirit world. I think part of the Hsunchen worldview is that some animals are more ‘awake’ in the mundane world than others. You just accept this, much like some humans are shamans and more in the spirit world. I think among the Hsunchen of herd animals, there will be usually be a myth in which they agree that some must be eaten for the good of the tribe. Usually, it’s the ones with the animal bodies. They are thanked and revered for this. Sometimes, among predator peoples (the Hsa, I think most likely) the animals eat the human bodied. This is also acknowledged as correct (or at least, with good reason - the human who was eaten may have committed some crime, such as breaking a taboo, perhaps unknowingly). I think even in tribes like the Uncolings that must eat their animal relatives, you ask them if it’s ok. And it’s wrong to kill them if they ask you not too. Sometimes an intelligent reindeer will ask not to be eaten, and that should be respected (killing it against its will is murder). The real question is whether they will cannibalise (or at least use the body parts of) humans who consent, such as the very elderly who know they will not survive the winter. I think it’s also possible that the Uncolings have some form of long term transformation magic and sometimes winter as reindeer, but I don’t think it’s universal. In rules terms something done by great spirits/tribal wyter, not something individuals are capable of. And they think of this as turning back into the ‘real’ reindeer forms. I think there are probably such wide scale transformation magics among many Hsunchen - it seems entirely wrong that the only Hsunchen who experience full animal form are those who spend 6 or 8 rune magic points to do so. Also magic that lets you have your spirit in an animal body are probably common among Hsunchen, not just the full body transformation. Tangent - a long standing annoyance to me, that fully transforming into animal form is very expensive for Hsunchen (and Hsunchen-ish cults like Yinkin and Odayla) compared to other magic). And a special example of this is vampires getting to transform into wolfs and bats without any mythic explanation.

I have now settled on a house rule that <melee weapon> Trance can have a maximum effect of doubling base skill, thus making its maximum effect on parity with Berserk and Arrow Trance. This, plus the restrictions on what you are able to do when in a Trance that are in the RBoM, makes it just about ok for me, though still very powerful. It also means in fights between Swords of Humakt sword skill still matters, not just who has the most stored magic points. I think it was a big mistake to give it to Humakt without considering these issues in the first place, but I thought Axe Trance was a mistake in RQ3 too (just hardly anyone played BG characters back then). I think it’s now been reasonably fixed. Once you think of Axe Trance as basically a loose Berserk equivalent, then I like Humakti having Sword Trance more than Berserk (as they had in RQ3), seems much more in character for the Honor-bound Truth rune cult. And in RQG without some massive skill boost spell, Humakti against a berserk ZZer are utterly outmatched (even with they are still in big trouble). Though if it is a loose Berserk equivalent, why does Babeester Gor get both? (Because they are awesome, that’s why)

Well, oddly enough - the Morale spell is the one that gives a unit amazing benefits from good morale. And Yelmalio doesn’t have it - Humakt does, though. And in RQG, Polaris (just to rub it in that Yelmalio doesn’t even come close to having the best hoplites, That’s the theory - but does it translate into practice well? The problem with that theory is that Humakti also come in regiments - often of experienced mercenaries. With the Morale spell on them all. Throw a few javelins as they head in, Parry those pikes, that Sword leading them is there to break that shield wall…. and as soon as the Templar shield wall starts to fail it goes very badly for them. (I’ve actually run a fight with a Sword of Humakt and friends against Sun Dome Templars in formation. It did not go well for the Templars. Though Invictus was a tougher nut to crack). Similarly Templar shield walls against Orlanthi that Fly or Leap past them, trolls that hit hard enough to break through the wall, practically any other skirmish troops, etc. Honestly, the only way it makes sense really is to assume the Yelmalions are using just as much magic as everyone, but mostly sticking to boring stuff like Healing and Repair, just spend it keeping the shield wall up as best you can - and even then it suffers from the problem that the Sun Domers are supposed to be elite, but Dara Happan hoplites like the Granite Phalanx are just better at hopliting in most ways. Morale spell, weapon enhancing magic, and backed up by better archers, and plenty of other cool magic. Even the other variants of Yelmalio, like Kargzant, are probably more effective - they at least might be able to be decent light cavalry. The issue is not that all cults should be the same, or have similar stories, or that you should only play the most effective - the issue is that the rules should reflect the fiction, and in the fiction Sun Dome Templars are supposed to be elite fighters among the most effective infantry around, and the rules make such a point of depowering them it’s now becoming a bit implausible. The rules don’t reflect the fiction well. I’m running Sandheart right now, and it’s great fun, everyone is enjoying playing Yelmalions - but we are enjoying it because Yelmalio has, over the years, become among players the cult for a bit of light relief and fun low powered play. That shouldn’t really be what they are for! There is always challenge in RuneQuest! And Humakti, FWIW, are so much more easy to turn into rich role playing PCs! An inflexible code of honour, keeping their oaths above all, a code of duelling… the stuff writes itself - while Yelmalio really only works in Yelmalio centric campaigns (which as I said, tend to end up with a fair bit of comedy). And what you can’t do easily is run a game in which the Templars are tough grizzled veteran mercenaries, like they are supposed to be, because they just usually aren’t very good at it!

I think Storm Bull is fine. They are not particularly fearsome warriors (though they have decent spirit magic, and a few interesting tricks) - unless they use Berserk, which can be quite alarmingly effective even against non-Chaotic opponents, or are fighting Chaos, or both. And against Chaos they are very effective. The spirits that a Storm Khan can have to support them (the Parts of the Bull) are nifty too - while the spells aren’t very powerful, they can cast spells even when the Storm Khan is Berserk. Of course Babeester Gor, and Zorak Zorak, both have access to a lot more magic as well as Berserk. But Storm Bull’s purpose is killing Chaos, and he is damn effective at that.