davecake

FWIW, I've been seriously rereading pretty much every canon source on sorcery recently, and Jeffs conception of sorcery as a system of known spells with very little on the spot improvisation, but considerable flexibility given some weeks to months to come up with a solution (eg create learn a new spell) seems to me pretty much correct. 

I'm not thrilled with the emphasis on day of the week etc as a major source of pluses/minuses (often tends to come across as often a bit of an arbitrary choice of whether an event occurs at a time that helps or hinders a player), but location, carrying things around, time of day, etc all work great in play ( and day of week, season, etc still great for big ceremonies. I thoroughly agree that static bonuses are better than small dice rolls most of the time - thanks for taking that on board, Jeff. 

In practice I suspect/hope for a few emergent mechanics:

1) skill in the spell will not be hugely relevant to many big, massive spells - the caster will ceremony (etc) it up to 100% or so if they are going to invest days worth of magic points in it. A great sorcerer might learn/invent a spell to deal with a problem, then boost its chance of success and free INT up. It should feel like big intellectual endeavors are vital and important and useful.

2) great Maguses will have other means to boost up their effective Free INT and skill that are beyond those available to apprentices, including Enchantments, HeroQuests, the use of very powerful captured spirits/demons and other magical allies, and massive community support. Being a super powerful sorcerer like Yomili or Argin Terror should be doable within the rules, but not just having a huge skill percentage (though that should help, so Brithini are scary). 

3) there will be eventually be more flexible and dynamic magical techniques that either require advanced magic (such as magic that effects Magic) or borderline heretical (from Emanationalist to demonological) techniques (eg want flexible responsive Fire Magic? Summon a Fire spirit that can perform several magics!). Though I don't expect these in the first rule book. There are plenty of techniques that we know are possible, but are clearly beyond the average sorcerer eg Mostali creating Jolanti and variations on that. 

I think of the schools as being primarily intellectual traditions, but certainly some of them may be associated with specific institutions, just as we speak of Chicago school of economics or the Oxford school of international relations. but some schools (eg the Debaldan) will have many individual centers of learning, without one being pre-eminent.

My conception of alchemy is that a number of alchemical physical processes are known, that correspond to various Powers (eg Putrefaction is Death, Crystalisation is Harmony), and substances are catalogued according to correspondences with elements and sub-elements (eg Alcohol is the Fire of Water, vitriol might be literally water of Death?). Philosophically, it becomes vital to Western sorcery and philosophy - it is the key by which the abstract world of Runes is intellectually translated into the complex world of matter (and back). Without Alchemy sorcerous interaction with Matter would be far more simplistic - probably just simple Elemental manipulation. It concentrates on metals and minerals because much Western Sorcery is ultimately from Mostali sources, but that's not all there is - Plant and Beast alchemy is known to Malkioni in the modern era. Note also the Pavis grimoires seem pretty clearly alchemical and deal heavily with Man (though of course not Western). Alchemy has mundane as well as magical uses (like old RQ2 Alchemists Guild, also perfume manufacture in Fonrit), but purely magical or philosophical use still has value. I admit this is more medieval than Bronze Age but *shrug* 1600 years of sorcerous development surely means Gloranthan sorcery has progressed beyond our own Bronze Age, especially if some Mostali secrets have been stolen.

I don't think that knowledge of gunpowder is common - it may be a known secret, but still likely to lead to an invasion of gunpowder gobblers, and no one wants that, so it isn't widely known or used. 

Of course seeking Iron is desired practically, but a secret the Mostali guard jealously. And philosophically, Iron is Death, which seems uninviting. Ultimately perhaps they seek to refine Adamant, pure solid Law. And surely no one who isn't a major Hero or demigod at least has ever done his. Maybe only Zzabur, or perhaps Ezok. 

Eastern alchemy, though still sorcerous, is of course a whole different thing. 

I've always thought of the Schools of Magic as being intellectual traditions, rather than specific learning institutions/organisations of any kind. So the idea of someone using the magic derived from Against The Demons but not being part of the Furlandan School is incoherent to me, or at the most a subtle distinction probably not worth making. But the idea that the magic changes in practice have taken place in how it is used and approached over history depending on social context, absolutely. 

Against the Demons is a Dawn age book, because it contains dialogues attributed to Hrestol, though its conceivable other Furlandan grimoires predate it. I don't know the name of the author, but quite likely a companion of Hrestol, who used its magic initially to combat the lion men of Fronela. I know it was founded in Woswal (in Seshnela, though now underwater). Of course it could be based on earlier sources, much as the Hrestoli Telendarian school is based on Viymorni sources. 

Its always (as far as I can tell, given its obsession with hygiene) been about both fighting animists and also fighting disease and other spirit based 'enemies within'. So certainly it probably became popular for fighting the Enjoreli in the Dawn, but retained some value for fighting disease as well as other mundane spirit attacks even in the Ban - though the idea that they would turn inward and focus on purging the populace makes sense. I do like the idea of purging the populace of spirits. 

I also think that during the ban the Furlandan exorcists would summon spirits to purge the land, expel them from Loskalm to purify the country - and are thus responsible for empowering the Kingdom of War with the dark side of Loskalms power. 

5 minutes ago, Jeff said:

The "effectiveness" of RQ3 sorcery is not why it was broken - in truth RQ3 sorcerers, particularly once they had high skills, a familiar and spell matrixes, spirits, etc, were absurdly overpowered. Let's not look at munchkin monstrosities like Arlaten or Aziok - even Maculus the Monitor was just a nightmare to manage as a NPC. It was over-powered, soulless, and made little sense within the overall setting. The new RQ sorceryis the least effective per magic point of the three systems, but unlike spirit magic you can put 15 additional magic points to bump up the strength of your spell to impressive levels.

TL;DR I think the really overpowered sorcerers only came from munchkin NPCs, but there are still real RQ3 play balance issue. 

In my experience it was both too effective, and not effective enough. A sorcerer with high skills, a familiar, a bunch of bound spirits and magic items, was very powerful - though not necessarily in a way that super fun to play (you often got to buff everyone if you had a lot of Duration, but powerful spells still took a long time to cast), and it was far harder in play to get to be a powerful sorcerer than it was to become a priest or shaman. And if you did have a powerful sorcerer, your game became spells and spreadsheets, constantly juggling huge sets of magic point resources vs complex tradeoffs of Duration, all mostly done out of play. In short RQ3 sorcery was not broken in one single way, but multiple ways.

But I'd like to take a closer look at that idea of the very powerful sorcerer. Because I think its spread largely by crazy NPCs in official publications.

For example, Maculus the Monitor and the like were quite overpowered, but it was very difficult to be Maculus (let alone Arlaten or Halcyon Var Enkorth (Griffon Island version)) - he had 17 different spells or skills at ~90% or over. Spell Matrices added up to 37 points of POW worth (a large percentage in tattoos so personally enchanted not inherited or found), plus similar enchantments to hold 7 bound spirits (I think thats another 14 points of POW worth?), plus another 6 points on one of his familiars. Plus a bunch of armouring enchantments, and other magic items. Plus some fairly obvious abuse of the Familiar rules (which was absolutely more common than not in published characters). He was overpowered, but it wasn't just sorcery that made him so, and I don't think many games would have anyone like that as a player character. Was he that overpowered compared to a Rune Lord-Priest that had over 60 points of Rune Magic and enchantments? Though he was certainly considerably more complicated to play. 

And Arlaten was similarly difficult to replicate as a PC - 25 skills or spells at 85% or higher (a couple more for evil Arlaten), 14 points of POW worth of Matrices, at least 10 points worth of spirit binding enchantments. PCs did not replicate these guys often. And again, gratuitous abuse of the familiar rules. And somehow he got all this POW despite maintaining a POW of 21 so he basically never made POW Gain rolls. So again, implausible as a PC, and very difficult to play. 

This was my experience with RQ3 - that most of the impressions of wildly overpowered sorcerers came from the munchkin sorcerers within official publications, rather than characters worked up in play, and that sorcerers were often a little underpowered, at least at character creation. But the sort of things achievable by a moderately powered sorcerer, like buffing the entire party with a few spells before any major fight, still upset the sense of play balance of most people, and did seem to challenge most peoples ideas of how the world worked. The most challenging thing conceptually about RQ3 sorcery was the idea that large chunks of Glorantha ran around with a lot of magic perpetually active, which was not true of any other magic system.

None of which is really meant to challenge or criticise the new RQ sorcery in any way, just to say that the problems of RQ3 sorcery might be widely misperceived. You might be able to create similarly super powered characters in new RQ sorcery, if you assume they are that skilled at a huge number of skills and spells, and give them absolutely enormous amounts of POW to create enchantments, but there might be nothing wrong with that. Worrying about whether you can create an incredibly powerful sorcerer given that sort of crazy 'budget' shouldn't be a huge concern IMO, as long as priests or shamans with a similar budget are also crazy powerful and one or the other isn't obviously inferior - and without knowing how the heroquest stuff works, it may not even matter at all, if you are just pushing the rules into zones where they aren't really designed to be played. 

Whether or not sorcery is overpowered should be looked at within the realms of play that are likely to happen. Are they roughly equivalent at starting PC level to experienced PC level is what matters. Magic that is a bit less effective per MP but allows the casting of big powerful spells with many MP sounds great, usefully different to other magicians.

But it is worth noting that heavy use of multispell and duration was what really bothered people about RQ3, and replicating the same exponential scheme is probably where the weird issues of significant amounts of perpetually maintained magic come in, which was what bothered people about RQ3 sorcery. Anything that uses the exponential scheme of RQ3 is likely to run into similar issues eventually - if boosting Duration 10 is 10 times as long, no problem, but if Duration 10 is 2^10 times as long, as in RQ3, then it will end up with the same issue of permanently maintained magic upsetting some peoples ideas of what Glorantha is like (I have no strong opinions as to what is preferable, but it certainly makes play balance easier if you just avoid the whole issue). Though permanently maintained magic by other means (eg by enchantments that cost POW) are by no means as problematic. 

So after that long rant - Jeff, are the Duration etc effects exponential or linear? If exponential, are there 'hard' limits that might prevent them leading to the perpetually maintained spells of RQ3?

18 hours ago, Jeff said:

Yes. But it is also deliberately not being tested using people who have strong preconceived notions what they want or don't want to see in a sorcery rules (or any other rules). Just people who want to play with it and give me objective feedback (such as "hey we found that the sorcerer's ability to cause damage in combat was way greater/way less than anyone else in the party - even though she specialized in combat magic").

Jeff, I can assure you that if I playtest, I playtest. I give it to my players (who vary widely in their experience with both Glorantha and various game systems) and let them play with it, and only let them know my opinions beyond the most general after I've heard what they have to say (and I'm regularly surprised). My preconceived notions do make a difference, but mostly in that I have ideas about what I think should be possible that I try to test out - for example my experiences with running a Fronelan game make me think that the case of a character who learns sorcery from scratch, rather than starting with significant previous experience, is worth looking at. I'm sure I'm not the only player with preconceived ideas (as any experienced player will have) but who takes objective playtesting seriously, and I'd like a game that considers some of the concerns experienced players are likely to have as well as the new player. 

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19 hours ago, deleriad said:

 

It's certainly not what I expected. Reminds me of D&D/Vancian style magic where a very specific thing done in a very specific way leads to a very specific outcome or none at all.

This seems to me intentional, and expected. Sorcery in HQG was very much your spells are a collection of very specific effects rather than flexible effects. 

And it seems to me to be Vancian, in the sense of gloriously flavourful spells with cool names, without being at all D&Dish (not the use and forget mechanic, not likely to lead to a pile of bookkeeping keeping track of very minor unexciting spells that soon become redundant). 

I'm not really treating the Furlandan school as unchanging - rather, their favourite Furlandan grimoire, Against the Demons, is unchanging (more or less), though new spells can be found in it.  And we perhaps know a little too much about that book for it to be too much fun - from what we know of Against the Demons, most of it is about evil spirits or hygiene, so its difficult to extrapolate really cool interesting spells without going down 'the dark side' of commanding evil spirits. It does appear to be useful mostly as a source of defensive magic, though that might include laying the dead to rest, cursing shamans, curing madness, etc. There are some very general chapters in the book, like an account of creation and the expulsion of Malkion, and there are some very prosaic chapters (praise of marriage and charity, praise of physical effort (some physical buffing spells? hardly exciting), and the indignity of breach of contract (oath magic?) and assault (calming magic?). I do like the idea of New Hrestoli spells based on their superior hygiene, though. 

A Man of All smiling broadly, the light glints off his perfect teeth, overcoming the smelly pagans by virtue of his perfect teeth, hair and body odour.

Ultimately, Furlandan magic, even if we extrapolate multiple new grimoires, is still going to be Spirit Rune magic, and that is still going to be mostly defensive to a culture that thinks messing with spirits is generally a bad idea. Not every school needs to be cool. There might be some careful theurgic summoning of beneficial spirits. Of course, there are presumably forbidden volumes of Spirit rune magic that cover commanding and summoning all manner of wicked spirits but well... they're forbidden. Or at least restricted to the truly wise and trustworthy. 

HeroQuest is a very different game system to RuneQuest, very minimalist in many ways. Its very satisfying for some sorts of game, and not so much for others (particularly, combat heavy games are probably not well suited to HQ). 13th Age is different again, and kind of the opposite - great for games that focus a lot of combat and not much else. 

I would say get Sartar:Kingdom of Heroes, Sartar Companion, and Pavis regardless of what rules system you want to play in. The Coming Storm is a lot more focussed on a smaller area of Sartar, but is also pretty great. That will give you the updated collected info on most of the areas you liked.

It will be years, if ever, before all the background info in those books is available for other game systems, and most of it is either systemless or very close. Even things like the cult writeups in those books will be useful (there is a lot of info in those 'long form' cult writeups that can be easily combined with rules from other games). 

The Guide is systemless, and wonderful, and will give you masses on useful information. What you get in it is basically two or three things. First, you get a solid introductory section, with information on the basic monomyth, the major cultures, the Elder races, the broad sweep of (Genertelan) history, the metaphysics and hero plane, etc. Second, and the bulk of the two books, is maps and detailed discussion (at least down to city and major landmark level) of the entire inner (mortal) world, in a similar format to the old Glorantha box (so including some overview, major individuals, cultural notes, summary of hero wars conflicts, etc for each area) but in more detail and much much better maps. Third, you get a collection of extra material that goes into detail about a few of the more unusual aspects of the world including some things that were big secrets previously - maps of the mythic history, information about the coming hero wars, the first age, the Sky, The Gods Wall, the Red Moon, etc, 

To clarify a bit there - when I say everything is permitted, I mean the Lunars admit to no moral absolutes. None at all, so genocide, slavery, the use of chaos, torture etc can all be justified under some circumstances (though not routinely, mostly exceptional acts require exceptional circumstances). But they also believe that you should be motivated by compassion, as the goddess is, so there should be an outcome that justifies the means, and also that while there may be no absolute moral limits on your actions, in practice there should be many pragmatic and utilitarian limits on your actions required to make a functioning society (limits that, in Dara Happan tradition, they often enforce brutally). But ultimately, the only person able to make the moral judgement as to whether your actions are correct is you (of course, that doesn't mean they won't feel free to enforce consequences on you according to their judgement). So they have laws like anyone else, but are less inclined to make laws that simply regulate private morality (unless in the service of their state religion). 

It is important to note, however, that it is spiritual compassion that motivates them, rather than more mundane interpretation. Executing those who are fallen into grave spiritual error, even on a mass scale, can be seen as a compassionate act, liberating them from their downward path free to try again in the next life. Making war on the truly spiritually mistaken (like the Orlanthi) is compassionate, because you can free them from their spiritual error and lead them to liberation. Of course destroying the souls of the unlucky few is justified by the greater spiritual project. And so on. 

The Lunars truly do believe that they are doing the right thing. Or at least many of them do. Its almost impossible to stop this style of reasoning falling into at best brutal pragmatism, at worst dark cynicism. And that is also true of many Lunars. 

If anything separates Arkat and Nysalor, perhaps it is that Arkat does not believe that this goal of spiritual liberation justifies atrocities and other dubious moral acts. But Arkat later comes to believe that opposing that worldview justifies atrocities itself. 

The Lunar goddess, in her compassionate wisdom, gives us the Red Emperor and her Immortals to instruct and guide (and you know, occasionally execute) her faithful so that they do not fall too far into the path of Occlusion. Any allegations that the Emperor has fallen into Occlusion are clearly absurd (unless you manage to assassinate/execute and replace the Emperor, in which case they were clearly correct). Nothing is true - this is true of the Lunars philosophy, but it is also true of all other philosophies, and by acknowledging it the Lunars may seek the deeper truths denied to the heathens. The Lunars (or at least, the Illuminated elite) understand that their empire is based on illusion and deception - but so are all other empires and philosophies (especially including the Orlanthi), and at least the Lunars understand that it is so, and have something beyond that to rely on.  

It is of course true that incorrect use of Illuminated philosophy can lead to global destruction and ruin, should an occluded Illuminate (like Arkat) use their Illuminated insights in the service of hate and fear. When used correctly in the service of liberation and insight, Illumination can also lead to a Golden Age of peace and wisdom and wonders (like the Bright Empire, or the Lunar Empire itself). 

As far as I can work out, the only really unusual about the grimoire (apart from cultural factors like it being non-Malkioni and written in Auld Wyrmish) is that it has two runes instead of one, but that is perfectly within the rules (it says most have a single Rune, but that implies some Grimoires have more than one). You can still combine one of those two runes with any other rune. 

Harmony of the Parts - this is a Harmony effect obviously enough. Call it Summon or Command Harmony. 

Soothe the Dyspeptic Stomach - I'd call this a Combine Darkness with Harmony - it is said to suppress hostile Darkness magic, but rules wise it actually doesn't suppress all Darkness, only magical attempts to make the Darkness hostile (practically the same thing for most purposes). I think calling this Dismiss Darkness is technically against the rules - its not involving one of the original runes of the grimoire. 

The entry to the Room Without Doors could be anything - we don't know much about what magic is used to seal the room in the first place - but my guess would be that this is a Command Stasis effect, and the Room Without Doors is normally kept closed by Flintnail Stasis magic. Same rules objection goes to making this Separate Earth or similar. 

We know so little about the magic of the Alchemical Wedding of Lord Pavis and The Book of the Original Man that there really isn't much to say, but as they have a single rune each they seem perfectly normal grimoires from a rules perspective. Given the marital metaphors of The Alchemical Wedding its a safe bet that it makes heavy use of Combine. The ritual allowing different species to reproduce from The Book of the Original Man sounds like its Combine Man and Fertility to me. 

The Book of Treaties is very straight forward - it has the Magic Rune (hey, a bit odd, I'd think twice before letting a player do this, but fine for the GM) and each spell is Combine Magic Element. Command Element is probably the canonical way of summoning an elemental, but Pavis is doing something weird here to get his multi-elemental grimoire, and his grimoire has disadvantages as a consequence (the single shared elemental for the whole cult issue) so its fine if odd. 

In the Guide its called 'The Essential World', which is a better name for it, and its described on page 162. 

Its not dropped entirely, but its a lot less important. Contact in the Essential world is how sorcerers contact the Runes I think, but its no longer something that would be played out or put into the foreground. For example when the HQG sorcery rules says of a mage seeking to create a new spell:

And I'm sure we aren't going to convince one another Jeff, but to me, there is still a difference. In HeroQuest and RuneQuest for a theist, the fundamental limit of trying a magic effect remains 'is this something my god can do with this Rune', for an animist 'can a spirit in my tradition do this'. I can easily handwave away the issues of how many rune points, magic points, skills levels, attributes of the spirit, and come up with more or less the same answers. 

But the difference between 'is this spell in the Master of the Faceless King grimoire' and 'is this doable with Stasis or Harmony runes' are quite different questions. A character in one game can not do some things that a character in the other may be able to. It breaks the abstraction. Add to that that HeroQuest sorcery is deliberately treated in a less abstract way than other HeroQuest attributes (in that you can't stretch, etc) and its hard to maintain the idea that the two systems represent the same thing. Handwaving has its limits. 

It wouldn't even be that hard to turn HeroQuest Sorcery into the same system as RQ - at a first guess, keep track of which Runes and Techniques had been mastered by the sorcerer, base all sorcery ability off the characters Law rune or an appropriate keyword (which tends to happen anyway) and reduce grimoires to books full of spells that you can learn if you know the runes. It would at least then feel like the same system. 

If you were Illuminated, you'd understand. Gbaji just means deceiver. But if nothing is true, then aren't we all deceivers? And if nothing is true, then everything is permitted. 

52 minutes ago, Jeff said:

 

So in practice, sorcerers tend to have very high INT, master two or three Techniques (either Tap or Command as a base), and two or three Runes maximum. This gives them very flexible magic, but also requires that they "specialize" in types of spells. If Damastol (INT 17) masters Command, Tap, Dispel, Truth, and Fire, we can have a pretty good idea of the spells he can do cost-effectively. But he also might want to learn a few spells that are more magic point expensive, but really useful for him.

So how does the 'each spell is a skill' part come in? Does this mean a sorcerer may be able to cast many spells, but will probably be basically terrible at many of them?

1 minute ago, Jeff said:

Expecting sorcery mechanics in RQ to match how we narrate stuff in HQG or 13G or KoDP is IMO silly. Basically in HQ, you know a book and can use the formulas in that book to overcome obstacles. Nothing needs to be scaled in HQ because everything is essentially the same mechanic. RQ has a LOT more moving pieces, uses resource depletion (hit points, magic points, and rune points - as well as Lunars, potions, etc.) in order to generate tension and force choices. 

 

The problem is not so much about the mechanics matching to me (though, FWIW, I think mechanics that worked more like HQ-G would work fine, and probably better), its that they describe fundamentally different worlds. In one, sorcerers study Runes, in the other, sorcerers study grimoires. 

Of course there are plenty of different layers of abstractions in RQ, and many more moving parts. But ultimately, priests still devote themselves to the Runes of their god, animists still summon spirits, there is plenty of detail about exactly how it is adjudicated in terms of different resources, but HQ still makes sense as an abstraction of the more complex process. But if grimoires are an irrelevant concept, then HQG  sorcery is not an abstract presentation of RQ but of some other sorcery system. 

The Ars Magica verb/noun construction doesn't really work for me anywhere near as well here. The verbs don't seem a particularly well chosen set (where do Perception and Communication spells go? if you want to buff your Strength, is that Summoning or Commanding, either way a strange way to think about it).

And really, the Power runes are more or less Verbs, just abstracted. Stasis is an abstraction, but stop is a verb. Death is an abstraction, but fight and die are verbs. Movement is an abstraction, but move is a noun etc. So many spells will be verbing an abstracted noun.

Again, the HeroQuest Glorantha construction (a grimoire has a rune, you mix it with a second rune, so a Element/Form + Power worked well as a noun + verb) worked better for me. 

13 minutes ago, Jeff said:

Let's see in RQ3, a sorcerer needed four separate skills to manipulate spells (as well as the skill for the spell itself), spells had no connection with the core magical themes of the setting, sorcerers used familiars to get around the sorcery rules, there was no guidance for how to create new spells (as a result, new spells were rarely created), and most importantly,

Removing the multiple manipulation skills is a good change, working the runes in is good, and familiars were a disaster in many ways. All of these things are excellent changes, especially removing familiars, which never worked as designed (hardly anyone wants an actual animal familiar, which meant sacrificing INT) and have no support in Gloranthan writing at all that I've been able to find. 

13 minutes ago, Jeff said:

the effects of sorcery at high intensity, duration, or range thoroughly overpowered Rune magic or spirit magic. As a result, an RQ3 sorcerer was a book-keeping mess and a power-gaming nightmare. 

I think this was far more observed in theory than in practice. I saw a lot of overpowered NPCs in supplements and things, and lots of discussion about it - but very few people who actually ran a sorcery based game to get to that level. I tried running a game with sorcery PCs, and my experience was that making your way through being a low to middle powered sorcerer was so long and difficult that no one ever did it. And when you did do it, it was kind of unrewarding - sure you got to buff the party and yourself, but you didn't actually get to cast much cool magic (your powerful combat spells were often not as powerful as your friends Rune Magic, and took enormous time to cast) and the skill based system meant it basically wasn't worth learning new spells, because you wouldn't want to risk using them in combat until they were at a decent percentage. I think you've removed some of the worst bits of RQ sorcery, but kept some of other worst bits. 

13 minutes ago, Jeff said:

In RQ4, sorcerers need to specialize in a few Runes and Techniques and then learn spells accordingly. Or learn spells that rely on a related technique (which is why the best two Techniques to learn are Command or Tap - everything other Technique can be inferred from either of those). They need plenty of magic points. They also want to use the natural Runic ecology in order to increase their chance of casting a spell - and will tend to use ceremonial magic that takes much longer to cast, but can dramatically increase the chance of success. 

I hope that ceremonial magic doesn't translate to 'your character won't really be any use in combat or any other fast paced scene'. 

3 minutes ago, jongjom said:

On the corollary should then sorcerers start out kick-arse and immediately gain more power?

Ideally, sorcerers should start out about as powerful as other magicians, and progress roughly as quickly. Except possibly a little more so if you are playing Rokari etc (in which a wizard really is expected to be a completely dedicated magician, more so than most theists). If you are playing New Hrestoli, who basically start out as non-magicians and have to learn most magic as they go, it really sucks - learning new skills to a reasonable level is far far slower than learning new spells as other magicians do. Obviously I haven't experience with this system - but I did try to run a game with Hrestoli characters in RQ3, and basically concluded that spells as skills made that totally unviable. 

You do want to make the various kinds of magician be a bit different in how they progress etc, but not so different that players feel they have been screwed for choosing the wrong one. If your specialist magician character actually advances as a magician slower than other people, that player is likely to be annoyed. And using totally different mechanisms for advancement makes it hard to get that right (that was part of the problem with RQ3 sorcery - priests and shamans advanced by getting more POW, but sorcerers advanced by getting more skills, which was totally out of whack). 

3 minutes ago, jongjom said:

Also without knowing the chargen process for sorcerers it's difficult to say at the moment how powerful a starting character is?

It is. And presumably a starting sorcerer will be competent. But if they advance at a different rate to other magicians (and with spells as skills, probably a lot slower) than other magicians, eventually it will be an issue. Its also an issue of flexibility. If a priest wants to gain a new interesting ability, he spends some POW for a new spell, or joins a sub-cult, or something. If a shaman wants to get a new ability, they go and capture a new spirit. Both things that can happen in a single game session. But if a sorcerer wants to gain a new spell, then they can learn it in a single session - but it isn't as useful as their existing spells until they've had maybe dozens of sessions to get it up to the same level. 

Peter I said the Loskalmi were fond of the Furlandan school because Against the Demons is one of their core texts, and it is the specialty grimoire of the Furlandan School. We also know the sort of spells it contains - resist spirit, banish spirit, remove curse, etc. Not the most exciting, but with its practical uses (it's good against disease as well as shamans and other spirits). I assume that its popular across Loskalm because its a core text of Siglats New Hrestolism. It is true that it isn't uniquely Hrestoli magic, but they are clearly enthusiastic about it. 

You are quite right that I said Telendarian when I meant Zendamalthan. My mistake. The New Hrestoli of course regard the Telendarian school very unfavourably, since it was banned by Talor at least. Quite right too, with its ancient Vadeli connections, and associations with unsavory travelling types. I presume also a favourite of Nysaloran missionaries in the first age, hence Talor hating it (and its not just good for travellers, but also perfect for infiltrators and spies). 

The Zendamalthan school is I think uniquely the only major sorcery school that is described, but without knowing any sample spells. I personally think it concentrates on improvement of all mental attributes and perceptions. Boring, I know. The idea of geometry and magic together also makes me think of magic circles, walls, lines, all manner of magic defences, magic prisons. Even using the magical correspondence of one circle to another to create teleport circles, clairvoyance devices, etc. 

I do think the Zendamalthans are very influential in New Hrestoli magic theory, replacing old rote lists of correspondences and conditions with new geometric and numerological correspondences, so New Hrestoli sorcery seems more intellectual and less concerned with material detail than the older forms. 

But to answer your more general question - I think the New Hrestoli are as capable of learning any form of magic as any other, and confronted with the Kingdom of War will turn back to the less favoured but very effective elemental magic and Death magic, and corrupt their Furlandan spells to begin commanding spirits rather than just defending against them. This is really rediscovered God Learner magic, though they won't say as much. 

But their native magic, perfected in their time of isolation, will concentrate on self-empowerment - but eventually to the point where this is symbolic, or entirely transcends. A beginning wizard will enhance his ability to fight with a spear. A better wizard will send his spear screaming away from his hand like a rocket to slay enemies on its own at a distance. A great wizard might attack with a spear that exists only magically. Knowledge of the body that enables them to enhance it (including various ways of filling the body with runic power, such as fire), or disrupt it (spells to paralyse, blind, etc). Plenty of spells to manipulate perception. Spells that work in the world of the purely mental, such as telepathy, mindlinks, confusion, mental attacks. Spells that enhance themselves in subtler ways, such as boosting morale and the charisma and presence of their commanders. Spells of self-empowerment don't stop at simple mundane boosting (thought that is where they start), but extend to making things approach their platonic ideals - a wizard-knights sword cuts through both magical and mundane protections as if it was the true Sword of Justice, his Shield protects against magical attacks, he is not just indefatigable but is not confused or afraid. 

But its not just their philosophical ideas, but also the structure of their society that will influence their magic, at least. Perhaps the idea that every wizard was once a farmer or crafter manifests as more spells that deal with animals and plants. That so many wizards are also warriors and former crafters almost certainly means that the New Hrestoli are masters of practical enchantments such as magical armour and weapons. 

(and to pick up on a smaller point from earlier - yes, Hrestol did not discover henosis. But he did discover that it could be used fully by castes other than the zzaburi.) 

I have to say that this sounds really disappointing to me as well. 

I have one really big issue with it - it sounds like it conceptually is very different to sorcery as described in HeroQuest Glorantha. In HeroQuest Glorantha sorcerers studied Grimoires (that were associated with a Rune). Now in RQ sorcerers study runes, and a grimoire is just a collection of spells if it is anything at all. This means RQ and HeroQuest now describe quite different versions of Glorantha! 

(for theism and animism, they feel like the same magic system described at a different level of abstraction - this does not) 

But it also seems to have kept a lot of the bad ideas from RQ3 sorcery. Spells as skills was absolutely terrible in RQ3. made it terrible to start as a sorcerer, and hard to progress. Free INT was also an idea that should have died with RQ3. Of course, without looking I can't tell if the duration etc rules are also as problematic as they were in RQ3. 

So this is basically the last thing I expected from Jeff - some bad ideas retained from RQ3 sorcery, but throwing away the core ideas of his own recent previous work! 

I think that knowing things like the Furlandan and Zendamalthan magic does tell use something about what the Loskalmi use. We know it is not uncommon for Loskalmi to train as Furlandan exorcists, and we know they get spells to combat spiritsa. We know the Telendarians avoid physical effects, and like geometry, are known as a cult of engineers, so they have spells that enable them to perform works of engineering. But we also know there is no reason for them not to have access to other schools even if they are not held in quite such high esteem. 

But in general, I agree that we simply do not know enough about what sorcery grimoires actually contain. We need much more info about what the common schools are, what spells they teach as standard, etc. We don't have it yet, and as a result discussion of sorcery and the West tends to flounder in philosophy before getting to the playable. 

I agree that neither the Rokari nor the Irensavalists are likely to have any enthusiasm for Tapping others. They leave that to the various heterodox sects of Ralios mostly. Though Tapping a spirit might seem perfectly sensible to either. 

The rewriting of the animism and spirit sections was appreciated, and looked great to me.