Mugen

Well, that just means you have to adapt the number of MPs you spend depending on your opposition, and you don't spend the same number when facing 3 Trollkins and 3 Rune Levels.

D&D 4th edition called this "Temporary Hit Points", and put a limit on it that you should use : if a character should benefit from 2 or more sources of THP, only apply the greatest one, to avoid too much stacking. EDIT: I realize RQ already has a solution to that problem, as spirit magic spells don't stack... Funny how D&D 3+ had a problem RQ2 addressed years before.

I would not give too many of your "ablative armor" per MP spent, because they're basically a way to apply "preventive healing" on a character, and extend a character's hit points. 2 per MP sounds right to me.

Yes, but there are many cases when a tie is just as good as a success. If you're hiding from someone, for instance, you're happy if nothing happens.

For what it's worth, RuneQuest 3 version of the spell only worked with Sorcery spells. You could combine it with as many spells as you could multispell with it.

As a matter of fact, the difficulty to find a satisfying rule for skill opposition is one of the reasons why I prefer Roll-Over systems nowadays. Skill opposition in Roll-Over is simple : both characters roll and add their skill, the highest one wins, period. In Roll-Under, skill opposition either require subtraction between roll and skill to compute margin of success, or a comparison between roll and skill that is counter-intuitive to many people, because they tend to think "lower is better". The drawback is that you lose the simplicity of Roll-Under when you're facing standard difficulty, when you just have to compare your roll to your skill.

For such cases, I would require a minimum difference between rolls to have a winner. Again, the idea is to avoid that draws are more frequent with low skills.

My reasoning here is I don't like the idea that a contest between 2 characters with low skills will result in a draw much more frequently than if those characters had high skill values. If both characters have 25%, you'll have ~50% draws. With 90%, it will be close to 5%. I'm sure it's possible to find many ways to justify it, but I just don't like it. :)

I would add that, in case both characters fail their rolls, the one with the highest roll should also win the contest. This is something that is done in 4th edition of Warhammer FRP, and a good thing.

I see no reason why it would not work with RQG. As a matter of fact, I think RQG runic affinities would be a nice addition to a Mythic Iceland game, even though you'd need to adapt it to Futhark runes.

There aren't category modifiers in Mythras. My guess is the names are those from the skill modifiers option in BRP Big Yellow Book from Chaosium.

Highest roll win ties is definitely my first choice. Success Margin means more maths for little benefits. Low roll creates strange cases where a character's higher skill will make him lose a contest (as it is the case when you roll over your opponent's skill). Least favored is the one that was chosen for RQG : nothing happens on a tie. It basically means "defender wins" when there is a "defending" party.

In a way, equivalent spells in Elric! and Mythras can be seen as fixes to Bladesharp. I don't remember the spell's name in Elric!, but I remember it adds X (= MP spent, max 4) to weapon damage, but it can't make it go beyond weapon's maximum rolled damage (that is, if you cast it with 4 points on a 1d8+1 weapon, it would deal 1d8+5 (+db) with a maximum of 9 (+db). Mythras' Bladesharp bumps by 1 the weapon's damage die, and, as all Folk Magic spells, is a 1 MP spell.

I think the spell was meant to temporarily transform the target weapon into the equivalent of a +X D&D magic weapon. So, basically "it's magic"...

Yes, it affects the weapon, but in which way ? Does it make it easier to use, or does it magically enhance its wielder's skill ? Obviously, you consider it's the former, and Jason Durall thinks its the latter. As for myself, given the rule that high attack skills reduce defender's skill, I think splitting attack is already a bad idea, so I'd rather give the full bonus to both attacks.

And there's also an INT-boosting spell associated with Fire Rune.

As for myself, my intent was absolutely not to debate about or disagree with anything here, but report what I think is a discrepancy between the rules as written and an explanation given by @Jason Durall. I'm perfectly fine with the explanation given, and my feeling was he could get tired of seeing the same question again.

Isn't this in contradiction with what @Jason Durall explained earlier ? It seems to me he explained you can do 2 attacks, one at first weapon SR, and the second at (sum of both weapon's SRs) with second weapon, and parry with either weapon as many times as your skill allows.

It's rare that RPG systems handle well such scale differences. Those that do (and care to have a consistent scale of attributes) use exponential scale for attributes, and were specifically designed to be able to handle mundane humans and super-heroïc beings. BRP SIZ is vaguely exponential for low values, but the whole system is not consistent.

A system I like is to roll 1d6+7 (varies according to species) for all stats, in order, then spend X points among them, with a maximum of 5 points per stat. It gives a different distributions than the standard 2d6+6 for SIZ & INT, 3d6 for others, but I prefer to have the same range for all stats for humans.

Maker of Pendragon, Prince Valiant, Glorantha, and above all founder of Chaosium, a company that changed Role-playing Games into what they are now. I was not sad when I heard of Gygax's passing. I am now...

And I honestly don't think most reviewers looked at the system enough to see the inconsistencies.

Yes. Big available MP amount is not a limitation, but rather a condition to become very powerful with sorcery.

As a matter of fact, the way inscribing is described in RQG is very similar to RQ3 Enchant Spell Matrix for sorcery spells. What changes is you don't need an Enchant skill and to learn a specific ritual spell to do it. Plus, of course, the interaction with the new rules.

Unless there's an errata I'm not aware of, it's the same rule as in RQ3. I just checked Avalon Hill's players book, and it uses the exact same example as RQG to illustrate the rule : limb with 4 HP takes 9 damage, which are reduced to 8 because the limb can't go beyond -4. RQ3 doesn't mention inflicting 3x base hit points, though : a slashing weapon or a natural weapon such as claw or bite will sever the limb when reaching its negative limit.