simonh

Agreed, reading your own books and looking at your own art on a computer provided by work is a privilege not a right, and it's hard to argue the art is inoffensive when someone's actually complained about being offended. None of this is in any way worth the hassle.

Any chance of a wallpaper of the God's Wall image? I know the aspect ratio is wrong to fit the whole thing on a screen, but just the right hand 2/3 would be fine. The panel on page 7 of the PDF in the pack is too narrow.

I agree with Joerg, Humakt is death to everyone. Therefore any species could be a foe species. What a Humakti in Boldhome considers a foe might be different from a Humakti in Ralios, or a Humakti in the Sazdorf clan of Trolls in Dagori Inkarth, or one of Ralzakark's Broo Humakti in Dorastor.

It’s not clear. Initially I interpreted as meaning the effect happens at the point the spell crosses the boundary, but in fact it only really seems to mean it takes effect if the spell is cast across the boundary. its ambiguous but I think so would prefer it to just stack, so since it’s open to interpretation, that’s the interpretation I’d like to go with. Warding doesn’t actually say it’s compatible with it stacks with other spells, so again I suppose it’s up for interpretation either way.

I can see the countermagic if a warding stacking with shield and countermagic. I think I was reading the bit about ‘across the barrier’ meaning at the point it crosses it, before hitting a target, but that’s not necessarily the case. I think it works better if it just stacks.

Fair point, the shield stays and blocks 4 points of damage.

I don’t understand why boosting MPs should be eaten by anything. They are part of the spell. It either all goes through or none of it goes through. In the example the Lightning has a total of 10 points, so it goes through the 6 points of countermagic effect in the warding when it crosses the boundary, then the 10 points go through the 8 points of total countermagic effect on the (shield 2 plus countermagic 4) taking both down in the process. The protection points of the Shield spell don’t take effect because it’s down already.

Since I don’t play RQG at work, I don’t really care whether it’s NSFW or not. If it contravenes a workplace policy, just don’t read it at work. What matters is whether the art is valuable and appropriate in its intended context, and I I think it clearly is.

Maybe the bonus for a sacrificed cow counts for everybody present, while individual MPs only give a personal bonus?

In terms of Rune Magic, learning a spell involves understanding and experiencing the myths, rituals and magical secrets of the cult. Many rune magic spells are ‘minor’ versions of powers a god gained in a myth, so wielding that power requires a level of initiation into the secrets of the myth. Learning it is simply part of the character’s religious practices and devotion. For example Sanctify is the ritual by which a priest purifies and dedicates a place of worship to their god. Learning the spell simply involves learning that ritual for your cult.

Right, as I said I didn't know where to find detection blank. Thanks. RQG doesn't have detection blank, so I just think it isn't relevant to this discussion, however... From an RQ2 perspective, detection blank's description is just a mess. It implies all sorts of of things about how Countermagic works that are not supported by the spell description itself and is completely dysfunctional in that respect. I just don't think it's useful to deduce all sorts of complicated, inconsistent implications about countermagic from that. If RQ2 countermagic protects you from being detected, the spell should say so, but it doesn't

Exactly, the detection effect is purely passive with respect to the thing being detected IMHO. Viewing it this way eliminates most of the ambiguity and all of the ridiculous side effects. All that remains is the concept of casting a detection spell on somebody, whether that's possible and how it might work. I think it doesn't work and the reference to Detection should simply be removed from the countermagic spell description as it was put there in error (in RQ3 originally). Doing that, removing one word and a comma, would remove the whole basis for this entire discussion.

The countermagic spell descriptions in RQ2 and RQ3 don't make any such distinction. In RQ2 it doesn't mention detection at all, and in RQ3 it's just as ambiguous as in RQG and doesn't clarify anything. In fact we could be having exactly the same argument in RQ3 terms, all the same elements are there just very slightly differently phrased. I just checked both. The old Detection Blank spell might muddy things but I don't know where to find it, that must be where the ambiguity in RQ2 comes in, the core rulebook is silent on this. I realise that, but I think that is the scenario the author of Countermagic mentioning Detection was imagining. I probably muddied my argument with that example.

We've been looking at this all wrong. Countermagic says this: "This defensive spell protects the target it is cast upon against any other incoming spell, including those such as Detection, Protection and Healing." Note that in this case protection and Healing are clearly spells being cast directly on the person protected by the Countermagic. I think Detection is being referred to in the same sense, It is not talking about people being detected by a detection spell being protected by Countermagic. It's talking about the person the caster is casting the detection spell on. Those are not the same thing. The confusion is because the detection spells talk about direction and distance etc from the caster. If there's an inconsistency in the spell descriptions it's this, not the details of the detection effect on people with countermagic. My character Bob has a friend Alice with him who has 2 points of Countermagic on her. A bunch of strangers are approaching and Alice is worried they might be a mob coming to lynch her. Bob wants to cast Detect Enemies on Alice so she can see if they are after her. He has to boost the Detect Magic with 3 Ms to get through Alice's Countermagic, which is eliminated in the process. Alice then uses the detection effect to see if the approaching strangers mean her harm. It doesn't matter if they have countermagic up or not. Nobody is casting a spell on them, so for them the detect Enemies is not an 'incoming spell'. So in my view the detection effect is not an 'incoming spell', it is merely a peripheral side effect of the spell, in the same way that the illumination cast by a Light spell isn't itself a spell. Detection allows you to perceive and see things you could not otherwise see, but you are not casting spells on the things you perceive. I don't care what other editions said about countermagic blocking the detection effect, even if it does that's a separate issue. RQG does not actually take a position on that in my view. It's just talking about when someone casts detection on somebody, it's just that doing so doesn't make much sense in the context of the detection spell descriptions. REVISED for clarity.

I’m very m Ch of the opinion that when the text says ‘attack physically and magically’, by magical attack they actually mean just casting a spell. I know that’s not what it says, but I really don’t like the idea of differentiating between attack spells and other spells in this way. Apart from anything else it creates all sorts of problems deciding if specific spells are attacks or not. Is a detect spell and attack? I would assume not, but apparently it might b able to destroy your countermagic defences, which seems pretty ‘attacky’ to me. It just don’t want to have to deal with that. Fir me, the bullet points win.

Detection targets don’t always have to be visible though. Many of the detect spells are not blocked by less than 1m thickness of stone, metal or earth.

Six Ages was game of the day on Wednesday on the App Store! Just noticed it, a bit late. At least it was here in the UK anyway. Check out the link for their write up on it.

They could always man up and die. They don't have to give in. If an oath is acceptable enough that it's preferable to death or suicide then it's acceptable. No weaseling. At least that's the Humakti in me talking.

I don't think the rules were intended to have any of the consequences we are discussing. If they were, it should have been obvious that as written they were ambiguous, so I think the consequences just weren't fully considered. So while the first step should always be to try to figure out the meaning of the rules as written, at this point I think we're solidly into territory where we need to add new rules text to resolve this. Detect spells checking targets sequentially and being matched against countermagic, and potentially being killed by or killing the countermagic is logical and consistent with RAW, but I hate it. There's nothing explicit in the rules that supports this as the intent, and if it was the intent then I think there would be. Since detects don't have to overcome POW, they're not operating like conventional hostile or targeted spells, so I think it's reasonable to make them an exception to the countermagic mechanics in the same way that they are an exception to the spell resistance mechanics. I do think it's a good idea to allow countermagic to block detect spells though. I was against it instinctively, but on reflection it makes sense that there should be some way to avoid detection. I imagine the detection effect as diffuse enough that it can leak through weaker countermagic spells without destroying them, but is blocked by powerful enough ones. So my preference is as follows. The points of the detect spell plus any boosting MPs is compared to the countermagic on any potential targets in range. If the points of detection exceed the points of countermagic by 2 points or more the target is a candidate for detection, if it does not that target is ignored for the purposes of the spell.

I had clearly underestimated how confusing detect, countermagic, etc is. For example it makes no sense to me that a character can cast Detect Life boosted with 4 magic points, and destroy every defensive countermagic spells of 6 points or less on everyone within 50 metres. However it’s hard to reconcile the description of countermagic without coming to that conclusion.

Doh, quite right. I didn’t have it available and misremembered.

I think that only means detection blank blocks the detection effect. The stuff about being a form of countermagic and otherwise working like countermagic is absurd. Detect spells aren’t cast directly on things they detect, don’t have to overcome POW and often can detect multiple targets simultaneously. Nowhere has it ever been said that countermagic blocks detection and in fact the RQG description of detect enemies makes it explicit that the spell doesn’t have to overcome countermagic. You don’t even have to cast in on a specific target.

You don’t cast detect spells on the thing you are trying to detect, so countermagic and such are not relevant.

It’s think by ‘if cast on a target’ it means if that target has had the spell cast on it, not ‘if you are casting the spell on a target’.

It’s tricky. Spells that aren’t specifically targeted at a specific spell always hit defensive magic first, but I think the targeting caveat in the description of dismiss magic trumps that. Both those are stated in the rules but I don’t have Access to the PDF right now.