Pentallion

Thanks guys.  Good stuff to think upon.

Another evil plot of my players is to put a fire elemental inside a spear with the condition that the elemental is released from the binding if the spear impales.  They're thinking fire elemental inside impaled person's body.  On it's own, that seems fairly straight forward and my first instinct is to say it does its fire damage automatically without being told to attack due to the nature of its manifesting.  the person probably ignites but the elemental, if not given a command, then goes about doing whatever it pleases.

But knowing these guys, this won't stop there.  What would water elementals do in an impaled person's body?  Earth elementals?  What happens if they impale with a ghost spear?  All of it seems like fun, but I'm leery of it possibly opening up an exploit they can break.  Does anyone else see a potential danger to allowing them to do this before I make it okay?  Something possibly obvious I'm not taking into consideration?

This is beyond my scope of knowledge.  My players are discussing the idea of their shaman casting Heat Metal (it's not in RQG, but it's in RQ3 as a Lodril spell, so I allowed it) on a spear tip and using the shaman power of spell extension to make it last for as long as they want it to.  Not hot enough to melt the spear, but hot enough to get the extra damage should the spear impale (I ruled the idea of Heat Metal is the damage comes from being exposed to the metals heat an entire round, so it would take an impale to get any damage out of it).

My question to any of you grognards out there with metallurgy, is how hot is too hot for bronze/iron that prolonged exposure would weaken the spear?

On 2/7/2019 at 10:43 PM, davecake said:

, if you then rebel against the dissolution of ego into the all, lapsing back into ego and solipsism, you become a Black Brother, and are toxic and destructive no matter the good or evil of your intentions. 

 

Or so the All would have you believe.  Tha All is oblivion, chaos, Gbaji the deciever.  Do not give your Self to the emptiness of the All.

Why not just give them all to him if it's just a one shot, or toss in a ring with Befuddle/Demoralize, etc. offensive spell for him to cast?

The Eurmal spell Strike gives players coming from D&D the most thief/Assassin like feel.  If that's what they're looking for, that's the best way to go.  Trickster assassin.

I believe, though someone happily correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that what the cross hex defense is supposed to do?  Allow you to sweep multiple attacks away?  At least, that's what an axe wielder who used it (making a vertical 8 or infinity motion with your axe) told me it was for.

That was an allegory.

4 hours ago, Tupper said:

First, let me say that this is a very interesting conversation.  I can't resist adding my 2c, as a newcomer to RQ, but a veteran of some other similarly gritty games (Rolemaster, Harnmaster).

I think the purpose of the "over 100" rule is to allow a really powerful character (call him Goliath) to (almost) shut down the chance of a lucky hit by someone weaker than them (call him David).  There's still the 1% danger of David scoring a critical, but the probability of a David getting a successful hit while Goliath fails the parry is being allowed to become miniscule.  If you don't have that rule there, there'll still be a 5% chance that Goliath fails the parry, on top of which there could be 2-3% chance that David gets a critical, and suddenly we're close to a 5% chance that things go pearshaped for Goliath when he squares off with David. This is similar to Rolemaster, where there's always the danger that David is going to roll an open-ended attack (96-100) on Goliath, and do some vicious critical to him, even if he's been parrying prudently.  While this may be realistic, if a player has put Goliath in a situation that he *should* win, it seems a bit rough to then kill Goliath with a 5% chance (from a game perspective). 

Put another way, if someone with 300 skill fights someone with 50 skill, it should feel one-sided. 

The second issue then, is: is it sensible for someone to drop 1 rune point and (say) 20+ magic points to have a combat skill of 300. It's a great deal if you're fighting people who *aren't* initiates (or animals).  Then you can re-enact the Crazy 88 fight, or Hit Girl in action (and maybe playing some cool music would be appropriate).  However, a lot of people who you're going to fight in RQG *are* initiates.  And all initiates have access to the common rune spell Dismiss magic.  So a fight is likely to look like:

Round 1, Humakti casts Sword Trance.  Kills someone.

Round 2, Someone on the other team spends a rune point, dismisses the Sword trance.

Now, you might point out that the Humakti can just recast Sword Trance for another rune point.  But the problem is all the magic points he/she is burning.  Even with 50 magic points, this will only be tenable for a round or two. 

Note that this is a very rational response by initiate opponents.  They're not being cheap.  They're just doing what the PCs would probably do under the circumstances.  They saw their buddy get sliced six ways to Sunday, and shut down the magic that caused it to keep it off their backs.

Remember that if many opponents the PCs fight are initiates, then the rune point economy favours the PCs opponents.  There are 4 people in the party (say) and they have 3 rune points each.  That's 12 to get through the adventure.  If, in various encounters, they deal with 20 opponents, they might have 60 rune points between them, so getting into a war of attrition over rune points is not a good strategy for PCs.

So as GM you're admitting the spell is broken and will always ban the spell with dismiss.

Are there other rune spells so broken they must be instantly dismissed?  Idk, but this one is if it requires instant dismissal, ie GM banhammer.

But I'd like to reiterate, it is not Sword Trance per se that's actually broken.  It's Sword Trance with the 100% rule that id actually broken.  Ie, it's really the 100% rule.

Though IMO even in RQ3 days Axe Trance needed nerfed.  + x% where x is the amount in all your mana crystals for 1 rune point?  Benefit is way out of scale compared to cost.

Just to be clear, I'm speaking as a GM who games RQ once a week for the past 12 years and started gaming in '82 and gamed regularly since.  So I'm speaking from extensive experience with the 100% rule as well as Sword Trance.  In one of our games, the Humakti settled down in a doorway and since there are no longer any fatigue rules (sadly, while they kept the horrible 100% rule from RQ6, they dumped the excellent fatigue rules from RQ6), he was able to hack and slash all day long.

So, good GM doesn't want to ban Humakti so doesn't design specific encounters meant to kill any Humakti who uses Sword Trance.  ie, archers all targeting the Humakt.  Archers, cool, still use 'em, just not to specifically kill Achilles.  And doesn't want to ban sword trance so sparingly uses dispel to bring it down.  Here we are, at the doorway of the never tiring Humakt with Sword Trance.  While the others all unpack the lunches and discuss what movies they've seen recently, the Humakt goes about his business of Death.

Que elevator music.

Eventually, everyone gets bored.  The bodies piled up, and the enemy retreated, but this just keeps repeating itself, doorway after doorway.  Either I take out the Humakt or I throw a boss at him designed to challenge him.   What happens now?  If Humakt dies, the party is the recipient of reverse sword trance.  tpk.  so party, having realized this and not being afraid at all to ban sword trance from the GMs repertoire (adapt or die), they begin using the same tactics to ban the spell as a GM could take, but without the shackle of not wanting to kill the NPC.  Dispel magic, archers, traps etc.  All to take out the only boss that can handle the Humakt.  so the GM designs a boss who is skilled, not boosted, who can withstand archers and who can't be dispelled.  and what then?  Eventual party wipe?

Or just ban the stupid spell by dispelling it constantly?  Or just ban the character class outright?  All for a stupid spell that turns beginning characters into death zombies? If that isn't the very definition of broken spell what is?  For 1 rp?  No.  as a GM, either the 100% rule has to go or sword trance does.  And axe trance was just fine in RQ3 so 100% rule it is.

1 minute ago, Kloster said:

This is RQIII's rule.

Yes and it worked fine.  The new rule is actually the RQ6 rule and it causes too much wonkiness IMO.

6 minutes ago, Brootse said:

Cool your jets.

No one in the history of mankind has ever cooled their jets from being told to cool their jets   What part of my jets were too hot for you?  I drop f bombs.  sorry if that offends you.

8 minutes ago, Brootse said:

, just shoot Achilles in the heel.

 

 

This is why Sword Trance is broken.  As a GM, you don't want to just kill the players character.  If your solution to sword trance is just kill the players character, then you're basically saying, "Okay, you can play a Humakt, but I will kill him."  So why let him play a Humakt at all?

So many replies to this thread have been ways to kill the Humakt who casts it.  Since there are so many ways to kill the Humakt, by their reasoning, therefore the spell is not broken.  But this is precisely why the spell IS broken.

You are essentially banning the spell by killing anyone who can cast it.  And as the GM you don't want to be killing off all the player characters.  That is never the solution to a badly designed spell.

Also, Dispel Magic isn't relevant here either.  IF you include someone casting dispel magic on it in every encounter - and most scenarios published for the game do not - then you are essentially banning the spell.

You're admitting the spell is broken.

So let's only look at what happens when the spell doesn't get dispelled and you don't kill the caster in response to the spell being cast.  If, in that situation, the spell causes serious balance issues and problems in Boss Design for the GM, then yes, the spell is CLEARLY broken.

Sword trance is clearly broken for the reasons already stated.  If the spell is cast and the caster is not killed in response to casting the spell and the spell is not dispelled (ie, the spell isn't being BANNED from the game) then what happens when we inevitably have to design encounters around it?

We're fucked.  The 100% rule fucks us.  Group of brand new characters and one of them (who you don't want to BAN), casts sword trance and walks through the entire battle no problem.  Boooooorrrrrrring!  Especially doesn't make the other players feel too heroic.  OR, you design a Boss that's a challenge to said players character and then the Boss wins and you're looking at tpk .  Again, not a solution.

If you keep the 100% rule, then Sword Trance is clearly broken.  If you drop the 100% rule, then you have a discussion about cost/benefit of Sword Trance making it one of the more OP spells in the game, just like Axe Trance of old, but it is no longer clearly broken.

As Soltakks said, he likes the 100% rule.  Then Sword Trance needs nerfed IMO.  I personally hate the 100% rule and so Sword Trance is OP IMO.

On 1/21/2019 at 11:58 PM, Atgxtg said:

Hold the phone there Tywyll. I don't think there is a consensus that the spell is broken. You might have things about it that you don't like, at least in conjunction with some of the other rules in RQG, but that doesn't mean that everybody is up in arms over this. I'd say the reaction about this so far is mixed at best.If you feel the need to houserule this and want to post your houserule that's fine, but it's hasn't been show to be "clearly broken". 

 

 

The spell is clearly broken.  You being stubborn about admitting it is not withstanding.

But the simple fix is dump the skills over 100% rule that is the worst rule in the game.

Then sword trance goes back to being like ace trance in rq3.  Op but not quite broken.

Speedart is the most cost effective spell getting +3 and +15% for 1mp.  But its not stackable.  Look at the cost benefit of sword trance.  

It is broken.

15 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

That's not really a secret: it's stated rather plainly in the various books I've read. The God Time/Plane was created as a separate realm where the gods could relive their myths eternally, and Time/the Mortal Plane was created as a realm where gods could only act indirectly in order to avoid another Gods War (iirc).

Your comment could of course more specifically be that the events of the God Time are all constructed - and that would indeed be a pretty groundbreaking secret that would shake a lot of Gloranthans to the core (or be promptly ignored).

The latter is my meaning.

1 hour ago, soltakss said:

Well, in a description of the Dawning, it mentions that Time, with her 294 daughters, steps out. These clearly refer to the days of the Gloranthan Calendar and personifies Time as a Goddess.

Another construct like Yelm.  The dara happans had time before that.  Yet the god time is chronillogical.  Many myths, one real chronological order.  Just like many sun god myths, one sun in the sky.

How to reconcile this?  Your chronologocal order is true or mine is?

Hard or soft polytheism of Time?

It's no coincidence that Arachne SOLara and Yelm are so intricately tied together mythologically and both have this Many and One duality.  There is a deeper secret here.  The God Plane is a construct.

2 hours ago, Joerg said:

Ah, the unavoidable Occluded perspective. The downside of illuminating insight - doubting it all, losing the picture while studying the frame in detail.

Hahaha.  Otherwise known as seeing through all the bullshit. 

There is only one Real sun.  There is only one Real timeline.

Dont be shocked if it turns out Zzabur was "Orlanth" (the murderer) and Vadel was "Yelm" (the Namer aka the Discoverer).  And none of it Really happened the way any myths say it did.

This all confirms that the myths are not true and in my opinion, the God Learners retconned it all.  Yes, Yelm is a syncretic diety.  Isn't Yelms rise supposed to herald the coming of Time?  And yet, the Dara Happans already had Time.  Their calendar goes back over 100,000 "years".  And don't the Brithini count time back to Danmalastan?

Is Time a hard or a soft polytheism?

I prefer to think the reason the God "Time" doesn't have any cause and effect or is chrono"ill"ogical is because it's a construct.  Started before the God Learners, but exploited and completed by them.  The western sorcerers have it right:  the "gods" are just powerful sorcerers.  I believe Argrath and Harrek began to suspect as much after the visit to Teleos and something they learned there or else just from comparing notes.  That's why they went to Jrustela and raised a sunken temple and wrenched answers out of the ghosts of God Learners.  They learned that the secret the Gift Givers were wiping out was the truth that Glorantha's God Plane is in essence the Matrix and that all the worlds worshippers are nothing more than Duracell batteries.

Yelm being a syncretic diety seems to confirm this as a very real possibility.

Vampires lost the ability to drain rune magic in RQ2.  They never had it in RQ3 and they don't in RQG either.  So it's all moot.

In my glorantha Lanbril has heroquests to steal magic from other cults.

I posted one up here a few months back.  Lanbril steals Yinkins eyes.  A HQ to gain Catseye a very useful spell for a thief.

I hadn't caught that dodge was now an opposed roll.  Not too keen on that one.  Hold on!  Dodge is the same as in RQ3.  Kind of an opposed roll but simpler and more reliable.

The rest just takes a little getting used to but try it you'll like it.

(I'd make a joke about Mikey but that might be showing my age).  

10 minutes ago, davecake said:

Having a percentage in a Rune isn't a fundamental truth of Glorantha, it is an abstracted game representation, like hit points. 

Oh no, my Orlanthi has only 70% of his air rune tattooed on his body.  It was 80% of the tatoo complete, but he had to have part of it taken off.  That was a real walk of shame day.

30 minutes ago, Jeff said:

A shaman is not a discorporate entity and thus is not well-represented the Spirit Rune (except when he discorporates). 

?  Isn't when he is discorporate when he will be augmenting his skills with the spirit rune?  Oh, nvm, I follow you, he can't use his spirit rune to augment his negotiate with spirits when he isn't discorporate.

On 12/29/2018 at 4:19 AM, David Scott said:

Here's a quote from the upcoming Gods of Glorantha that neatly explains this:

Daka Fal has both runes as he bridges this form gap.

None from an adventurer point of view.

 

I would argue a shaman could use his spirit rune to augment a great many skills.  From spirit dancing to negotiating.

7 hours ago, Darius West said:

I have found something pertinent.  Page 35 of Pavis: Gateway to Adventure says the following about the Blind King's Palace:

Palace of the Demi-God Priest:  One of the demi-god priests of the EWF built his palace atop this hill and a strange mystical labyrinthine canal nearby.  Students seeking draconic insight still flock to this hill.

That is a pretty solid gold indication that the Blind King was Labygyron.  It also puts to rest the whole Janas Khyree theory, and the notion that it was Urvanyar too.

 

You overlooked the fact that the site was originally Labrygons temple but that part is buried and the Blind Kings Palace built over it.