styopa

I can too, but not to the same location? That's really the result of per-location deductions, is that the accumulation of harm to that location stops at a point.

FTFY

Just so. This would be why there's a reasonable sense among some that it shouldn't be called spirit magic at all. Common magic, simple magic, whatever, but spirit magic is purely a misnomer. Hell, battle magic is less wrong because really, nearly all of it in the game IS combat related (that may have other uses as mentioned, but c'mon, they're mostly combat magic).

One further thing I just stumbled on in my old RQ2 notes: From a Wyrms Footnotes rambling runequestion: "ON SPIRIT COMBATA convention of play which didn't make it into RQII is the ability to ignore Spirit Attack. This means that a character who’s attacked by a Ghost or a Shaman's Fetch or controlled Spirit can refuse to fight the attack. This has two effects.1. The Spirit will be able to take POW from the victim without danger to itself and the attack will keep the victim from using any POW to make spells.2. The victim can continue to move, attack the shaman perhaps, and otherwise operate physically as if he was not in Spirit Combat. This technique’s particularly useful when the only way to possibly survive a Spirit Attack is to kill the person who set the spirit onto you."

It's astonishing, but you're correct. In fact, reading it with that interpretation in mind, RQ2 Hit Locations and Wounds actually reads a fair amount clearer. Even the bit about healing reads better. *mind blown* I even looked through the examples, to see if in any of them there was a 'deduction' of hp from a limb as a result of damage. As far as I could tell, no. The only refuge I could take on this would be circumstantial: by that measure (assuming the hp value of limbs is only a benchmark, and not a pool from which points are deducted) essentially trivial wounds could eventually kill. Someone with 19 hp and thus 6 hp arms, could be killed by four 5-point hits to the same arm. That seems...odd. Steve Perrin is frequently here. Someone get him in here STAT!

Honestly, and I don't mean this in any disrespect, it sounds like you'd rather play Heroquest. It just more narrative-driven, frankly. RQ has always been about the mechanics. TBTH... once Robin developed HQ it *immediately* felt like a much better system fit for the whole spiritually deep Joseph Campbellian thing that Greg seemed to be always attempting to evoke in his 'land of utter relativism' Glorantha. To me it's simply square peg in a round hole trying to evoke that in a crunchy mechanical system like RQ.

That would be a polite way to phrase it. Another less polite term would be sloppy copy'n'paste. The point is, to answer tcgb's question, is that the title/sub/text shouldn't imply the Resistance table is just for POW only. It isn't.

That makes logical sense, my 'huh?' was that I'd read his comment that any successful parry against an impaling weapons was automatically a complete parry - my misread.

Huh?

(shrug) Yes, that's the sort of calculation a player has to normally make whether they are making it in statement of intent OR at the moment of the attack. I don't see how the timing really matters materially? PERSONALLY, I agree with you - most of the time I'd be parrying too. I'd argue that's pretty darn realistic, since AFAIK nobody going into IRL melee combat ever went *deliberately* with less armor aside from berserkers*, and they were widely regarded to be insane. In my most personal view, what would be known in the modern gaming vernacular as 'dodge tanks' are unrealistic, gamey, and purely a cinematic thing. *yes, skirmishers etc would wear less armor, but their goal was to avoid melee combat entirely. Then again, if I'm in a fantasy game, and I'm going to be fighting a giant that's swinging a club for 8d6+12 damage, or a dragon with a 5d6-to-every-location breath weapon I'm not for a second going to try to parry that - that would be stupid. Of COURSE I'd dodge.

When you DM, there's nothing stopping you describing your version of Glorantha in your terms. YGMV. As a player, I admit I'd wonder why - if a 'disrupt' is actually a spirit flying forth to damage a target - spells like Spirit Screen and Spirit Block don't protect me from that damage? Or prevent that spirit guiding his blade from hitting me? Or why my fetch (if I'm a shaman, for example) couldn't see/catch/kill/eat such spirits. But in your world, maybe they do? Or you have a reason they don't? I'd genuinely enjoy hearing how such a world works, it sounds terrifically evocative.

Not sure about the resistance thing, but you still have to succeed with meditate just like you have to succeed with dance.

I don't think the rules explain it specifically. Personally, I have my players determine WHO they're defending against before to-hit rolls if there are multiple attackers, and the attack/defense rolls are thrown simultaneously. I don't know how you'd rationalize a defender evaluating an attacker's attack-quality before deciding how to defend?

Of course, you could dance or sing which are also ruled as ways to help spellcasting, which actually give you on average a BETTER augment than meditate at equivalent skills. Just sayin'.

I don't think you need to decide at the start which you're going to do, but once you've committed to parrying, you 'd be locked-into only parrying that round, or only dodging that round. Personally, I don't see the need for the constraint; if we're allowing subsequent parries and/or dodges against other attacks (multiple subsequent defensive moves used to be ONLY for dodge and ONLY against one attacker) I don't have a problem with simply letting a character parry or dodge, and then if they need to 'defense' again in the round, they can parry or dodge as they want, with each suffering the cumulative subsequent -20%. I think you're reading it way too closely. As mentioned, the statement of intent has to be clear (declare that you're fighting, trying to hit with weapon X, and moving over there) not PRECISE ("I'm going to dodge those three guys and parry those 2 attacks from that guy."). We always ruled that combat was fluid enough that you never had to declare your specific target, only that you were meleeing with weapon X, or shooting with weapon Y, or casting spell Z...target TBD at the moment of the action.

Huh? It's always been: 1) roll to cast (spirit magic is POWx5%, Divine was 95% to case, Sorcery was...more complicated. ) 2) roll to overcome the target's resistance for an attack spell ....for every type of magic: Spirit, Rune, Sorcery. Note that the concept of resists helps the characters survive more than anything. PCs have a LOT more spells cast at them than they cast at others.

Which is what makes it so interesting that RQG is fundamentally RQ2 again, with some pretty small bits of RQ3 left in.

Spells even have specials and criticals (albeit fairly tepid ones), but no fumbles, sadly.

...Which is precisely the conditional caveat I take issue with. It's a hand-wavy rationalization that a.) presupposes circumstances (and a mindset of the combatant) that are not always present, and b.) have - in my view - more to do with justifying rule-inertia than a reasonably objective approach. I think RQ3 tried hard to bolt handwavy bits to the floor of certainty; it's a wargame company. (ASL is what, something over 400+ pages of rules, *most* of which are dealing with boundary-cases or odd situations that never come up in 90% of games?) And yes, I started as a wargamer first, and a rpg-gamer second. I despise rules that rely on players following the 'intent' without precision...one might as well just be telling ghost stories under a blanket. I respect people that push the rules to their utter absurd limit as players who take their character's lives seriously. If I were going into a fight IRL, I would cheerfully chase every single 1% advantage I could. I think it's inevitable that SR (which, as I agree is as Psullie explained above, actually represents order not timing) would be mistaken for timing PARTICULARLY when the round is taken to be the relatively arbitrary 12 SR *and* stated to be a likewise arbitrary (but apparently coincidental?) 12 seconds...If the intent was to avoid people misperceiving 1 SR as equivalent to 1 second, that was just dumb (Sorry Steve, I know read some of these forums, but that was a bad choice.) I certainly won't try to defend the way RQ3 approached SR. I'd be a hypocrite, since my group abandoned RQ3's SR pretty long ago. I'm merely hoping that what RQG ends up with is enough of a skeleton of usefulness that we can continue to use our house system without having to convert too much.

...there are some who complain that everything should be handled consistently...just sayin'.

Maybe I'm missing something obvious, but I don't really see the distinction between a skill roll and a (stat x 5%) roll? It's more or less a placeholder for a skill.

It says his standing/drawing takes 3, plus his Dex SR of 4, meaning he can parry any attack that occurs SR7 or later. So they did add in DEX SR.

Fair point, as long as you in turn recognize that what I believe the rules say (or will say) and what I prefer might be two different things too.

NAFAIK. Opposed rolls have nothing to do with the resistance table at all. In such an opposed roll it would be the 60 & 80. From the QS rules text: (emph mine)

Not sure what you mean here? I don't believe there's a "both roll on the resistance table" option. Did you mean opposed rolls?