Tywyll

Say a party gets attacked by some ghosts. Can their allied weapon spirits or animal familiars help if they are not attacked themselves? Edit: Any allied spirit, item or animal? What about familiars I.e. For sorcerers?

Where can I get PDF versions then?

LOL! Yeah, no thanks. I don't understand why they have never been scanned. Just for historical preservation if nothing else.

Yeah, you know where I can see a copy of that?

Awesome! Yes, I would never have picked up my Snakepipe Hollow to look for that! I mentioned RQG Bestiary. Sartar Companion? Is that a Heroquest thing?

So, beyond the Dragonnewt Dragon Magic presented in: RQ3 Rulebook RQG Bestiary Mongoose Draconic Mysticism Mongoose Dragonewt Book Are there any other books with Dragon Magic detailed in them? I am looking for a spell I think I read that was Dragon Magic but can't find in any of the above sources. If I recall, it was something like you sacrificed POW and when suffering injury/death it would heal you. Does that ring any bells?

They may not be in the rulebook, but they certainly were in the modules. Argueably, every dwarven and elven item is enchanted. So, no I don't agree. That assumes you consider it a problem. Yeah, he did, as did Moorcock. The sword was cursed to kill friends and was itself intelligent and spoke to its bearer. It is far closer to Stormbringer than Excalibur. Tolein makes it clear that the items are in fact magical versus some idea of them simply appearing magical to ignorant people. Yeah, but that's one hobbit who never had access to or exposure to common every day magic. The elves, the Numenoreans, the Dunedin, they all have them as common place. The knives Mary and Pippin carry aren't ascribed any particular emotional significance, and they are clearly magic, so no, I completely disagree with you. As for the Similarrion, that's a whole order of magnitude beyond 'magic items'. No one gets caught up for caring too much for Orcrist. Artifacts =/= magic items.

While it might go overboard with actual magical items, I think items with bonuses is entirely fitting within Middle Earth. A great deal is made about craftsmanship and special weapons, and having 'elven blades/cloaks/etc'. It's clear these items are better than mundane so them having bonuses fits ME quite well I would say. That said, is ME really that low on magic items? I mean, in the Hobbit, we see 3 magic weapons found in one encounter. Then we get the Ring (which originally wasn't special beyond being one of many magic rings in the world, until he retconned it). The Arkenstone is clearly magic, though maybe not in a FRP sort of way. Black Arrow seems to be magical. Then in LOTR, we get the Numenorean knives (and if the knives were that magical, who knows what the proper weapons would have been like), we get Aragorn's Sword (which arguably is merely symbolic buuuut Narsil was forged first by a famed dwarven smith and then reforged by the elves...if that isn't a pedigree for a magic weapon, I don't know what is. Not to mention Stormbringer, er I mean Gurthang wielded by Truin, which literally talks and can cleave any armor. In some ways, I think ME may be the setting that is most like RPGs when it comes to magic items, i.e. the characters get them and then, in most cases, they stop caring or treating them special!

Well, actually not entirely. Galadrial tore down the 'Walls of Dol Guldur' so I imagine that was some high level magic there, though it is debatable since its mentioned in passing and not described.

Skill/5%=caster level maybe? This makes the spells incredibly weak from a damage perspective. They'd need to cost little to no mp to make it worthwhile. I'm not talking about using the crit tables. There is a class of spells that bypass inflicting damage and simply 'Save or Suffer a C Impact Critical' or 'Enchant a weapon to inflict a bonus B Flame Critical' whatever. That's what I'm looking for ideas on how to convert. Should it map to 2 AT=1 point of BRP protection? So AT20 (the max) in RM equals 10 points of Protection in BRP (which would be about right, as Iron Plate in RQ). Sounds good. That's probably what I'd do. If you are going to capture the feel of the lists, you'd want to keep them as lists!

Someone had referenced converting them and I really liked the idea, but there are several questions it raises. Because MERP/RM is % based, a lot of the things work fine, but things that don't include: 1) Level based duration/effect 2) Damage from attack spells 3) Damage from Crit inflicting spells (or break bone style spells) 4) Healing (though that's probably just 1die=1point) 5) Armor Class/Defence Bonus boosts. 6) Learning Spells/Spell Lists

Ah, bummer. Thanks though!

Yeah, that's the key point and one of the problems I've always had with the Allegiance system, tracking all the bits! This idea makes it a bit worse, having the God's be individual. Though I do think there's something to lumping other gods into the general pool, unless you want to dedicate to multiple gods, in which case you choose to keep track of that stuff. That's not a bad idea at all.

It's tracking all the gods that's a problem. But I think you will only have to track within your pantheon. The opposing forces won't grant you anything but the base Allegiance ability, as you won't have points in the specific God(s) of the pantheon, but the tempation is there.

So, mulling it over as I lay in bed, recovering from having my gallbladder removed, I thought, what if we keep the L/B/C score as is. These earn points as normal. In addition, you have a bonus score in Gods you dedicate actions to. So you might have Law 25, Dakanan +25 (so for Dakanan you were considered to have a 50). I think the generic abilities of the Allegiance would go off your generic score, with the special abilities being off your God score. So this character could call on Law to grant them +25% to any skill, and +25% to Communication Skills, 1H Spear, Lore: Science which are the Dakanan skills...or whatever). Talia, the lawful goddess of Marriage, Motherhood, Harth and Magic could probably be called upon to grant bonus MP just like Chaos. Etc, etc. I think that your opposite alignment always tempts you, without dedicating acts to any God. You earn checks against general antagonistic faith for performing any of the antagonistic acts...though I want to be careful with Balance characters as that seem punitive for them to constantly get checks in both Law and Chaos. Maybe if Balance is your highest, when you succeed in an Alliegance check for an opposing act you only gain 1d3 or 1d4 points, instead of the normal amount.

So, I am considering tacking on Allegiance to the game I'm going to run. In my world there is the usual Law/Balance/Chaos divide (long ago Moorcock influence). And I really like the idea from Mythic Iceland of different gods granting abilities based on your Allegiance scores. So my question is, how to handle it? Do they keep a Law v Balance v Chaos score? Do they have individual scores for the Nine Gods (there are 3 of each Pantheon)? Mythic Iceland gets around the issue by only having dedicated activities count for Allegiance purposes. But then that doesn't have the benefit/drawback of you getting points in your opposing camp with misdeeds (yeah, I know there is the loki score, but that doesn't work in an opposed system like this). I guess it feels weird that someone's score in the Lawful Wargod's Allegiance could also impact the Healer God's rewards. Any suggestions on how to rationalize these elements?

Ah...interesting. How does the new magic system work?

Thanks for the info! Do any of them do a conversion of RM/MERP style magic to BRP?

Would you mind talking a bit more about the disappointment? I'm looking at the English translation kickstarter and thinking of jumping onboard, but I would like to know what went wrong. Also, is this the actual system? In their breakdown, they list 4 stats (for example). Is that how DoD worked instead of the classic 7? What about magic? How does it work? Is a mage superior to a warrior (ala DND issues) or are they fairly 'balanced'?

Thanks for the heads up!!!

Ah...yeah, I missed that.

Oh, you've written about mysticism on blogs? Can you give some links? I do like the RQ6 Mystic rules and Sandy's rules. Land of the Ninja is interesting but very 'High Level' for sure.

I...have no idea what you mean? Could you expound on this a bit more please?

I have Magic of Glorantha (one of the few MRQ books I didn't ditch years ago) so I have access to that stuff. Any idea why no RQG rules? Where in HQ would I look if I wanted to see their take on Mysticism? For what its worth, I really like Sandy's version.