Andrew M

It is in the early release versions of the Cult books but is a ritual not a spell , it just takes place on sacred days.

I am prepping a Scorpion man squad for tommorrow. I have settled on eight lay members drawn from the stats in Smoking ruins. 3 of them have chaotic features , High strength, High Dex and regeneration. Their leader is a former Orlanthi I have given him skills comparable to a good begginngin warrior, 90% sword and some other weapon skills, he has real armour on his torso and head. I have also given him Bagog rune magic. He also has the chaotic feature to jump around 14 metres. I also gave the leader as a reborn scorpion man human level intelligence although he is barking mad. The leader also has a full set of spirit magic, Heal, Ironhand, Mobility and Bladesharp as well as a human level POW The mook scorpion men have very little sprit magic and not many magic points

My caveat here is that most of the fights I ran with runelords were back in RQ3 but the approach is similar There are two ways I would approach it 1) I expect this NPC to survive and be a recurring character. For this I would fill in a character sheet for them, this would be done in an arbitary way. So 90+% skills for his cult skills, and other skills I think he should be good at AND may actually be rolled. Decide if he has any iron armour or weapons otherwise gear is standard. Give him and his allied spirit a full load out of spirit magic picking spells I think are useful , Bladesharp,protection Dispel magic(for the allied spirit) demoralise etc. Assign rune magic points for a Rune Lord I would generally give at least 10 but this is somewhat dependant on what the pc's have. I would assume at least some stored magic points in crytals etc , again scaling based on the pc's as they are the baseline for what your campaign world is like. That gives me a sheet I can use any time he turns up, for specific encounters I will decide if he has a warband or similar with him based on the social situation. Running the fight is always complicated for a powerful opponent and you as the GM do not have the brain power to fight an NPC as well as the players will handle their characters , there are more of them. Then you just try for your best , while making the game fun. I do 'cheat' allowing the npc to act to some degree on things I know about the characters to represent their experience and knowledge and make up for my distraction 2) One off encounter. No character sheet its too much trouble. Pick the skill level for combat skills , and write down the SR and damages for reference. Write down the cult skills and spells (or have them for reference) he will be good with those skills and have those spells. Then decide on which spells he has on the fly as he needs them, writing them down for reference. So most rune lords will have Fireblade or Bladesharp and use it, if they thinkthe pc's are serious opponents then use rune magic Shield and something like Mindblast or lightning on dangerous pc's, if possible have the allied spirit use disruption or similar to identify who has countermagic before risking wasting a powerful rune spell. In a convention game recently I had 6 powerful pc's vs a squad of hoplites, Brangbane the Ghoul king and a Lunar illuminated rune lord and priest. I had written stats for Brangbane , the Hoplites were in Plate armour with 75% weapon skills and had cast Bladesharp 3 , Shield 2 . The Lunar priestess had Shield 6 and Iron armour , had Truesword and Bladesharp 6. The hoplites were formed up between the heroes and the important people. I planned for a slugging fest while the pc's cut through the hoplites while the priestess and Ghoul king cast spells , then engaged the pc's at the right moment or instead retreated into the cave do the nefearious plot could be completed bringing the game to its expected climax. This was a solid plan. On turn 1 my players burnt all their rune magic and the orlanthi teleported a boosted Humati and Babbester gor write on top of the priestess and Ghoul, technically the pc's should then have killed the lunar that turn. By desperate improvisation (Divine Intervention) and deciding the lunar priestess was also secretly a thanatari with the severed head of a wind lord in her bag so she could teleport I managed to get her into the cave before the pc's killed her. I could not save the poor Ghoul King from the pc's. You jsut cannot be fully prepared for what your pc's will do

This is something I had not thought about and is giving me some pause for thought. I am combined with Six seasons in Sartar and there may be some tie ins which make dragon skin armour interesting , I'll have to see when my players get there. An initial thought is to look at the Dragonewt armouring skill, with donning the dragon skin armour being a ritual process which empowers it giving it potentially etra armour if well done

Balancing encounters is judgement and luck. I have had a party of experienced well equipped warriors be routed by a few trollkin with crappy weapons and skills but really good dice, and had Lunar Runelords in Iron armour and with skills and spells of doom killed by a single arrow. All you can do is guess, make sure if the pc's are outnumbered then their opponents are very much inferior and if they are going to have a strong numeric advantage that their enemies are really good if you want them to put up a fight. The nature of RQ combat rewards ambushes and other attempts to maximise an advantage and makes the pretense of something like CR impossible. Of course CR in D+D is a great way to confidently produce a balanced encounter which wil create a TPK or be totally harmless as it does not take into account the relative power of a well optimised pc against a rubbish character , nor does it differentiate between a level 1 warrior Orc with a Great Axe and a level 1 Goblin Warrior with a Shortsword. One of which is much more likely to kill a 1st level PC. Balancing encounters in all RPG's is a matter of skill and judgement by the GM and being willing to cheat if necessary to maintian fun. Such as suddenly the Lunar soldiers who have not engaged yet getting much worse skills, or forgetting to cst their rune magic or spirit magic , or going the other way the Lunar Priestess suddenly turns out to also be a priest of Thanatar and have a severed head with a teleport spell in her bag so she can complete her role in the scenario before being slaughtered by hightly efficient and deadly pc's who suprise the GM.

I am an experienced GM but for RQ I find I need less detailed stat blocks than for 3rd edition D+D/Pathfinder (I don't run 5th ed). For anything except the most basic 1st level Orc warrior I need to know a lot to use it and have to have a full stat block, for every published adventure I redo all the stats and the stat block for a high level boss encounter is huge. For RQ I need the hit chart , and hp distribution easy enough to do a typical human warrior will have 14 or 15 hp. Then I pick skills based on how good the opponents are meant to be so elites are 80-90% militia are 55-50% and give them appropriate weapons and armour. Then pick a cult and give them some magic from that cult. A leader, rune level or recurring npc will sometimes get a little bit more written down. Overall the amount of work to prep a boss fight is considerably less than for a high level D+D Wizard I can't run them on the fly. So my notes for a Squad of Silver shield Peltasts would be something like hp 14 Scale Hauberk, curiboulli greaves, 4 pt helmet. Javalins, Medium Shield, short spear and shortsword , d4 damage bonus. Mobility, Speedart, Bladesharp 2, heal 2, protection 2 13 mp . 2 runepoints Seven Mothers. 70 % skill , sergeant has 80% The statblock for 7 5th level Orc barbarians and a squad leader would take me about half an hour to create with software longer with pen and paper the silver shields took 5 minutes

The devestation caused by the mass chaos lemming stampede out of Dorastor was devestating until they ran into a cliff , then the mess was terrible and the river at the bottom was never the same again

In practice most spirit magic spells for me last 1 combat or 1 short scene, possibly 2 if they are very short and closely linked. I would need some very complicated scene which was going to keep the characters busy in micro time for an expended period to actually track the round by round duration but I can think of times when I may want to. The idea of spending a few mp to boost them for a bit longer is interesting and not I expect game breaking in any way

This was a weird none standard shade from a Hearts in Glorantha scenario and turned into a different elemental the net turn when it was killed. But given its volume 9 cubic meters it could not really stay as an aura around its victims the spaces in between had to be filled and it could have been stabbed there. A smaller one could have done the hugging tactic.

I had a shade engage a 5 character party this week, it was highly effective fear shock disabled two pc's but only demoralised a third. He and the other 2 pc's then cut the shade apart in a single round as they lack the ability to dodge or parry and have no armour . However the attack would have bee devestating if I had followed it up with trolls or something. It was a large and powerful shade so a small or medium one would have been much less effective The party had no time or warning as it typical with shade attacks so could not follow my advice on missile fire, I suspect they will investigate precautions before attacking troll caves

Sneeze is effectively an instant spell, its just the sneezing it causes takes d10 SR to get over. Preserve Herbs would be kind of pointless at 2 minutes. Cool would be pretty useless as 2 minutes but I don't see a real reason for the odd duration does not bother me , but if it bothers you ban it, your players won't notice I did not know the spell existed. Solace is the same catagory as Cool , Summon entity is a ritual effect in teh same cataogry as creating matrixes and such and is more of an sdjunct to being a shaman I would really not lump it in with other spells goven the multiple hour casting time etc. So Spirit magic spells are basically 2 minutes or instant, some instant spells have lingering effects like sneeze (you could argue that disrupt has a long duration as it takes time for teh wounds to heal) Hot foot is like sneeeze instant but you hop around in pain for a while. But for some effects which the the GM decides are in the remit of spirit magic don't make sense as 2 minute durations so if they have no impressive effect can last longer to be appropriate maybe a Warm version of cool to keep your lunch warm or something , I don't see any issue or complexity to this , it would not cause me a problem in designing my own spirit magic spells, the Issue there is deciding what effects are appropriate and an mp cost for them

Assuming no clever magics , Kill it. All elementals take damage from normal weapons (p177 bestiary/) a large shade has 27 hp and no armour or dodge skill so they will not survive long under an attack as a large elemental has average 27 hp. Preferably with missile weapons before it can get close. Vigor spell can also help against the fear shock Spread out so they can only enagage one person at a time. Any elemental is dangerous but it taking multiple rune points from your enemies to unleash

I do have your book and am using parts of it in this campaign so I will check on those as well to help going forward. I had not expected the players to aquire these spells but one of them made an unexpected spiritual pact wit the Cthonic goddess from the starter scenario I threw into the campaign

I settled with an on the fly decision, but I expected that there was a rule given the mechanic in the spell and so wanted to find out for the many times the spell will be used in the future. Trying to get a feel for how destructive a 1 pt fissure should be, in this case it damaged a fairly solid wooden building but no immediate collapse, over the next few weeks unless someone fixes it there will be a partial collapse on one end of the building.

In a recent game the Create Fissure spell was cast on a building the spell says it does 1d6 damage to the armour points of the building. After a signifigant amount of time spent searching then and more since I cannot find any reference to how many AP a building has in the rules. Have I missed it? Edit OOPS. Should have been in the RQ Forum

I was thinking , that it could be an interesting protection for a group with some unusual magical abilities

I still don't like Ducks. But these are excellent quality supplements and helped mitigate my all Ducks must die viewpoint

If for some reason I was running a game were the PC's where Tusk Riders I would revisit the charisma , to allow it to scale for social interactions between Tusk Riders. When they are NPC's the low score is fine although if they were main antagonists to experienced pc's I would consider allowing them to learn extra spirit magic and rune magic

No need to spell trade to get Shield. Most Ernaldan's encountered will have Orlanth as (one of) the Husband protectors and so have access to Shield , they may also have Catseye if Yelmalio is a local thing or Impede Chaos from Storm Bull I am generous and allow Strength , Coordination, Vigor, and Glamour as well as Shimmer or protection or countermagic or Spirit Screen from spirit magic. If for some obscure reason the ernaldan had parry I would allow that as well. Rune magic Absorbtion or Shield or Spirit block as well as Charisma, Impede Chaos, Catseye, Arouse Passion , Inviolable and Earth Shield The chance of any given Ernalaldan having access to all of these seems pretty low, I may allow others aquired via Spell trade but that would be on a case by case basis. Spells like (weapon) trance, True (Weapon) or Berserk I would not allow as they are too far over the line into offensive spells. I also think that in most circumstances Shield trumps the other rune spells, although if fighting a shaman then Spirit Block may win out

It's probably worth considering that there are many groups of rebels and bandits who attack Lunars and are not hunted down and killed by uber forces of doom. So unless players are particularly egrarious and blatent in their murders. Then perhaps burning their homes down, killing all their loved ones and even their pet Kitten may be a bit of an extreme response, or if it is impossible to kill a few lunars without this happening make sure that this is well known so the players are not too annoyed by the heavy handed rsponse of doom

Probably in this case something like surviving part of the Hill of Gold Heroquest and returning with Yelmalio's spear instead of having it stolen by some other god

Apparently I am unlikely. They are on the schedule to be run as part of the current campaign

The character in quesion does indeed now have an heirloom bow with a spirit magic matrix inherited from an Aunt . She has taken a gift effecting the bow , but has not got access to any of the Rune Magic for Bows. She may search for a Humakt the archer subcult or try to initiate in an appropriate cult to gain access to bow magic. In the meantime she can learn any spirit magic she needs

In this case the chaacter in question is a 16 year old who is just finishing her initiation into adulthood and humakt. The heirloom weapon is also an interesting idea I can try out on the player My own view is that there is a difference between Humakt and the Cult of Humakt within Orlanthi society, IIRC Carmenia's elite warriors also worship Humakt with a somewhat different set of attitudes . The typical Humakti within Orlanthi society has also performed two rituals one the seperation from Kin to become Humakti mirroring Humakt's initial break from Orlanth and then a 'resheathing ceremony' were they are again sworn into society and become the honorable weapon thanes and mercanaries which dominate the view of Humakti, This implies to me a smaller number of Humakti who only sever themselves from society and do not swear themselves back into society these are dangerous killers unbound by rule or tradition and were the sort of Humakti who kills healers as part of the Lead Cross heroquest

YGMV Absolutely and I have appreciated all the points made. I doubt I will go as far as to allow things like Arrow Trance that probably goes further than I intend and in that case I would certainly have to remove things like Sword Trance,