Alex

Y(RQ edition)WV, but RQG covers this explicitly. "Spells that have a 95% chance of success against an enemy do not provide sufficient stress to allow a POW gain roll."

Probably so. I think there's some legacy baggage where they came up with a good mechanic for Affinities, then decided to make things crunchier in an ad hoc manner, hence spirit magic and sorcery -- and mysticism, my goodness -- had to be different for the sake for being different.

I guess the question is, does the goddess even (appear to) "notice" this? The death is outwith the immediate scope of the use of the magic: the divine blessing is invoked, happens, ends, all pretty much instantaneously, everyone is still alive and well. "It's not the fall I'm worried about, it's the ground." This is also "common" rune magic, which seems like it's be less somehow less intensely scrutinised by the Otherworld when and as it occurs. Or in the extreme case, say a CA initiate does this, but using a different RPP in the process. But regardless, CA does potentially have "eyes on" this via the perp themself, whether or not she discerns their motivation for the magical act itself. And the secondary question is, do any other CA worshippers notice this? Either first hand (in which case it's all yet-more visible to the goddess, as in the first case), or when the rumour-mill reaches the local temple. Other Lightbringers might have scope to magically meddle here, to a lesser degree, or anyone inclined to tattle by mundane means. If there's a pattern of behaviour here, the goddess will eventually "notice" it if only via the initiate's applicable Runes'n'Passions. Unless we're back in the Illuminated case, of course!

OK, "bad example", as Colonel O'Neill famously (and repeatedly) said. But you get the general idea! Now you've got it! 😄 Thought experiment: what sort of "Air" rune rating would someone like Lokamayadon -- said to be trying to supplant the god himself according to his detractors, maybe actually largely responsible for the modern cult, if you believe his revisionist defenders -- have in his pomp? Or Argarth Orlanthsson/Orlanth Argarthi at a similar point? Or is there there some other mechanic entirely at work here than Rune ratings, or have we just thrown away the RQ completely at this point? (Pass the Questworlds rules, or 13thAG, or Fate, or AW, or Dragon Pass...)

Which story is that, remind us?

I suspect I am! 🙂 For example, from RQG on divination: "The god does not know what a Rune Master or initiate is thinking and cannot deduce motivations." I think that's pretty consistent with how it's been written since Bernard Hinault was a fresh-faced young cyclist. (Bonus French reference!) Now of course, one could give oneself some wriggle-room by arguing that what a deity knows, and what a deity is telling for the purposes of divination are distinct. Or that "motivations" and "thoughts" are in a different category from "thing I specifically want to accomplish for the purposes of this use of rune, in which the goddess and I are in a sense temporarily one". Sure, I think that's a valid way of looking at it. But at least in the usual case (RQ rune magic, all happening on SR 1) there's no "oral arguments" phase of pleading the case here -- it's a pretty snap decision, on whatever basis it's made on. There's indeed a roll involved, but it's an "incarnate the god" -- or that runic portion the worshipper and the deity have in common, to take the rules literally on that -- thing, not a 'second-guess the worthiness of the action taken in that capacity' one. You could certainly factor that in, but logically that'd be an additional roll (or a penalty to the first one, or the like), rather than a rationale of it. Or an "imperfect vessel" of Ernalda. Others are available! Looking for manifestations of my wife in aaallllll the wrong places... But look at an even simpler example. Orlanthi initiates knock lumps out of each other on a regular basis. Does Orlanth have a myth about beating himself up? (Actually, I guess there are stranger things one could be asked to imagine...) But we don't find ourselves asking, "which side does Orlanth want to win here?" in the process of deciding of whether rune magic activates or not. That seems a little convoluted to me. I think if anything, Illumination underlines the fact that deities are indeed pretty limited in what they know of their worshippers' minds, and that turning into a cross-legged levitating type simply makes that moreso. They're still seeing other perspectives of what you're up to, but your own initiatory state is even more compartmentalised to them. "I see your Air rune is 90%, and your Movement one is 70%, excellent!" <fails to take cognisance of the 120% Status, 140% Fire, 160% Earth, and 210% Moon>

But no magic other than spirit, rune, and sorcery! So, some incomprehensible mixture of those (and some "time me, gentlemen!" quack with a dragonbone saw).

Ermagawd eXtreme physical austerities! (Or whatever the old Greg jargon for that "misapplied" mystical path was.)

Old jokes about meddling in the affairs of dragons and ketchup spring to mind. Maybe healing magic would work if you "bind up" or otherwise physically separate the halves in the process? Or maybe the patience and suffering involved in natural healing is a desirable or necessary part of the process.

IIRC, the Gloranthan deities don't have access to their initiates' intent, broadly speaking -- much like mortals in that respect, except that unlike mortals, when they don't know, they won't presume! They'll be aware of whether they're acting in an affine manner, a contrary manner, or a "seems tangential to me, who know? mortals gonna mortal!" one, and that's about it, I think.

Certainly. Humakti can "handle" all sorts of entities and problems... all in pretty much the same way. 🙂 (What was that line about "taking care of" something -- in the Robert de Niro sense.) But there's things they're especially mythologically and temperamentally opposed to, and things that might just happen to get killed -- sooner or later, at least! Undead are the former, spirits are the latter.

i.e. when discussing ghosts and spirits. Not when discussing undead. Thus, not to the same effect at all.

That's kinda like them Gregging the previous set of rules. 🙂

Thanks, I'd have been a long while remembering those (and a while before thinking to check RQ3 Book 4). Are those even Gloranthan? Generic? Sandy cheese dream? 🙂

i.e. German? 🙂

I was about to say something along the lines of, "but do we have Bronze Age Andean maize harvest records?", but that's kinda a contradiction on its face. so I'd better not. I doubt it's beyond human wit to tweak to rules to fit it, I'm just not seeing it as fitting either the desired correspondence, or the desired connotations. And if it were to have that many annual crops as a matter of course, doesn't it dilute the significance of the human sacrifice element? Or are we going to have six crops, as long as the blood keeps flowing? If I were making a hot-take suggestion, if anything it'd be a one-crop baseline and additional blood crops at greater and greater sacrificial cost -- you known there might be another Gloranthan eurogame in there! It's the eternal struggle of too much analogue vs not enough. If something is being pitched as a mythology that speaks to a modern-day sensibility, the tensions and contradictions are built-in. Inevitably, some people's most dearly treasured choices will sound bum notes for others.

Oh yeah, in fact that's covered by that same route in the core book, p347. Should have remembered that, after quibbling about "POW vs MPs" rolls as against "POW vs POW" ones.

Can't help but imagine some Humakti muttering a little about that. "Very nasty, but we can't touch you for it." Help me out here... are there also, say, enchanted creatures that fall into this category? I believe we've had statements -- for example in the RQ3 Bestiary -- that this is a defining characteristic of undead. (A necessary but not sufficient one.) One can imagine some sort of lichoid counterexample -- a ghost bound into a non-living body, or permanently dominantly possessing a living past the point of extinction of its original consciousness? -- but evidently these are either cosmologically impossible or pragmatically non-occurring.

I was very fond of Asimov in my impressionable youth, but as a model for a legalistic set of "laws" for how theistic magic should work in Glorantha, I really can't think of a worse model one might follow.

"Will" is a strong threshold. "Your Will Will Vary." As Rodney says, always an option, but remember the converse, that there's always another way. One other way being, being the "bigger person"... another other way being, coming up with a bigger insult in return. What's a good generic insult been I think pretty well-covered, kudos posters. Question their cultural virtues and compliance with social norms. But if you really want to enrage someone, make it personal. Tell some brazen lie about their dearest claim to fame, or say something that's a little too close to the bone about their generally known flaws. I'm sure we're all aware, and is maybe even implicit in the question, the Orlanthi don't have a "sticks and stones" attitude to verbal insults versus physical force. Or a even hard and fast legal distinction, in terms of one being a "criminal" matter, and the other a "civil" one. If you're provoked into killing some cur for vilely calumniating you, and there's a subsequent suit, you might not merely argue that in mitigation, you might counter-claim for the offence against your honour, and assert that one tenth of your wergild is greater than the the full amount -- if correctly assessed! -- for their worthless hide: they owe you, stump up.

The fantasy Bronze Age has never looked bronzer! And pretty fantastic, too.

While my personal preference is generally for the lower-sodium options on the Monomythic buffet, bear in mind there's scope for actual cultural contact here. In particular between Sartar and Prax, so that's likely a very generally accepted correspondence. And via the God Learners, of course: not always right, but rarely bashful in having spread their ideas around!

My hot-take is this will ultimately come down to what happens at the table. Illumination finesses a lot of the "god's eye view" restrictions on what you can do magically, but does nothing -- or worse! -- for the human side. And there's inevitably going to be a lot of different ways that could end up being played out. Just remember what Arkat said. No powergaming without respect and understanding!

Enjoying this image as something of a companion-piece to the producers of Star Wars recounting their practical and mental struggles with the '70s British film-technician unions...

Hence the well-known saying, "To err is human, but it takes a deity to really f-- ...oul things up!"