d(sqrt(-1))

2 hours ago, soltakss said:

All you need is 11 Hit Points in the abdomen to survive a 30 point blow. Don;t forget that taking double to the location disables it, but to smash it you need to take triple points, so an 11 point abdomen can survive a 30 point blow, as it needs 33 points for a fatal blow.

Going to 0 General Hit Points might be an issue, but we normally play that 0 GHP does not mean you are dead, just very badly hurt.

Which makes it more reasonable. 

However, with a good Protection and Shield on top of armour, 30 points without a Critical can be survivable.

11 HP in Abdomen means 31+ GHP though, so not easy. Berserk is one way, I guess enchantments another, although RQG seems to say that won't be as relatively easy as it was in RQ3.

0 GHP = not dead is a funky house rule!

Ouch, that's gotta hurt.

No worries I was just interested to see how on Glorantha he survived and that I wasn't misunderstanding something!

20 minutes ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

The spell had double effects vs chaos.  So it would double your HP, not "just" +50%.

Spell says attack is doubled and berserker is protected by Countermagic 4 vs Chaos, nothing about double HP. The part about 50% extra CON (not +50% HP) is a separate bullet point which happens whenever you cast the spell, vs Chaos or not.

Besides, how would that work if you were fighting a mixture of Chaos and non-Chaos? 

On 9/1/2020 at 10:48 PM, Rodney Dangerduck said:

I disagree.  The difference is that 30 is much less than 42.  Even so, 30 would have killed almost any adventurer.  Except the Berserker spell saved the Storm Bull from instant death.  42 points damage would have been an insta-kill.

The friend nearby was nice, but only the #3 reason the PC lived.

A question here - how did the Berserker survive? Even if they had 21 HP, Berserk would give them another 11 = 31. This would give them 10 hit points in the Abdomen. So 30 points to the Abdomen should kill them as per p148 - "instant death" so not even dying at the end of the round. Berserker doesn't stop you being cut in half, it just stops incapacitation, shock, unconsciousness, exhaustion. Being dead is none of these AFAIK.

I guess if you had  21 CON, 21 SIZ and 21 POW you could have 26 HP, which would give +11 from Berserk = 37 HP? But that seems really unlikely.

(BTW, just checking that there's not something I've missed in the rules)

40 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

They usually are undefined, and there's not usually any underlying meaning to the name.  They are no different in that sense from the Enchanted Wood, the Well at the World's End, Faraway, etc.  Myths are not usually allegories, so the point of the name is that it is "somewhere else".  

Agreed, and that's fine in a story (and the names you quote are explicit as they say "somewhere else" and "different"), but if players are potentially going to interact with random person/god/place X it's nice to at least have some idea of what it's meant to be, and its powers.

Myths are not allegories? I thought that's exactly what they are supposed to be?

22 minutes ago, David Scott said:

by extension, all those odd subcults in Hero Wars / Heroquest are also the cult special rune spells:

Orlanth Vanganth the Flyer subcult is Fly

Orlanth Vingkot Champion is Command Worshipers

etc.

Despite having HW/HQ in various incarnations I never got my head round how the magic was supposed to actually work - the base system for HQ I thought was pretty good.

I think also, in a lot of the Glorantha myths I've read, they reference by name lots of other things that are undefined, so they end up just being a meaningless name to me. Now I know that can be evocative, but by the time I've got to the end there are maybe 20+ things I have no idea what they are (I just looked at the first one on Well of Daliath for Shargash as an example). I did find a similar thing with the PC generation in RQG - there were things mentioned in there that grandparents/parents were involved in, but they meant nothing to me because there was no definition, just a name.

Because of that I find them really difficult to read or understand because the text has sort of turned into, "And then X happened, as a result of Y, which caused Z, and that really upset N" etc. 

I've only just discovered Well of Daliath while looking for RQG errata/FAQ, so that's an interesting link, thanks.

I've read a fair bit of mythology/fairytales etc, but the problem I often have is that I think "that's an interesting story", but if you ask me what hidden truth it's supposed to reveal I would have no idea unless it's something like "walking on your own through a wolf infested wood is a bad idea" - well duh! Must be me.

Do you know I've been an RQ fan for years but I never knew that about the cult special runespells - now that would be nice, with each rune spell is the associated myth and some explanation for those of us whose "Spot the Bleedin' Obvious" skill is very low...

I've always felt that the difficulty is that I've never really known the myths the the heroquests are supposed to be representing - they either seem to come from obscure publications that I don't have, or I read them and I don't see what the myth is supposed to be telling me enough to get a handle on it for what is supposed to actually happen on the heroquest. 

It would be useful if these myths etc were all together somewhere, for a start, by pantheon/deity. I don't know if that will be in CoG but I would think it would add a lot more pages to the already sizeable books...

Always assume the players will circumvent things...

The Yellow curry could have included Elves, they are vegetables anyway...

I haven't seen mention of hijacking the Dragonnewt ley lines yet. Mind you it does tend to annoy them.

Sure, sorry I was only responding to the query, not intending to hijack the thread!

On ‎4‎/‎10‎/‎2019 at 4:55 PM, Richard S. said:

If we're on the topic, where could I start getting into Tekumel?

Apart from tekumel.com also here: http://chirinebakal.proboards.com/

Chirene played with Prof Barker for many years and is very approachable in replying to questions. He also has a blog here: http://chirinesworkbench.blogspot.com/

I'm also hoping for a Tekumel resurgence one day. I'd love Sandy P to do a large scale game a la Cthulhu Wars/Gods War based on Tekemel.

There are lots of pdfs available on DrivethruRPG.

There is also a huge thread on the RPGsite where he answers questions: https://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?32577-Questioning-chirine-ba-kal (he continued the thread on the forum above when he started that up)

EDIT: I forgot, there is also the Blue Room Archive, hosted now on tekumel.com that has the contents of the venerable mailing list of the same name: https://www.tekumel.com/blueroom_list.html

Also the tribal elders of the Baboon tribe featured much more heavily in early Glorantha (Glorontha?) board games, as the earlier name WHITE BEARD, RED MOON shows...

We always used to call it "Spot the Bleedin' Obvious"

Is there a list of changes/updates/errata between first printing and second anywhere?

With this sort of spell e.g. Axe Trance in RQ3 I always used a house rule that you couldn't more than double your base skill.

So if PC1 is over the range for Ys arrow shot before the round start, Y would have 50% of skill to hit. But PC1 moves into range in the unengaged movement phase. Does Y fire at full skill now?

Ok, so PC1 starts to move towards target X which will take (say) 4 SR. NPCs Y and Z shoot a bow on SR 2 and a spell on SR 3. But PC1 still gets next to X before these are resolved?

28 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

Yes, SR1 doesn't start until Phase 3, but... if someone moves into melee or casts and then engages in melee he has to factor movement into his SR.

The idea is that SR isn't really a measure on time, but just the order that things happen. That way you can tell if someone gets their spell off before they get attacked or not. 

 

The problem has always seemed to me that the PC moving then adding SRs onto what happens is not the problem, it's all the other PCs/NPCs around who could have done something in that time. It practically forces you into SR by SR counting which is OK for players but a nightmare for the GM, I've always found.

3 hours ago, womble said:

While the Rubble is dangerous, I think the so-far published scenarios for beginning characters are a stretch too... but without having played 'em I don't know whether the new power level is actually enough for 3rd-session adventurers to be taking on Dream Dragons...

Sure, where do you go after that?

But we played the defending Apple Lane scenario the other day, and I was a bit worried about the Tusk Riders, but the PCs did pretty well in taking them out because they have no missiles and not much offensive spell ability (at least outside of melee). Mind you it didn't help that two of them (including the leader) fumbled rolls badly enough to take themselves out of the fight.

I feel it would be more consistent to say that Special = Special Damage, Critical = Ignores Armour + Special Damage. Not sure it really needs to be maximised as well.

(Also posted to Rules thread):

Do projected missiles get a full, halved or no damage bonus? The section on p 213 says that thrown weapons get DB halved, which is fine, but I can't see anything explicitly saying whether projected missiles get a DB or not. The box section on p200 just says an attack gets weapon damage + DB. None of the example PCs have a DB listed for their missile weapons. Firearrow, however says "damage bonus still applies, halved for missile weapons as normal" but it could just be referring to thrown weapons (it should probably distinguish between thrown and projected weapons if so). Hendroste the Horsemaster has a DB listed for his bow, but the other PCs in Apple Lane don't. A quick look through the Bestiary didn't come up with any DBs for projected weapons.

So on balance there are lots of examples which seem to indicate that they probably don't, but enough counterexamples to make me slightly unsure. Presumably you could pay more for a special bow that does give you your DB (or half DB).

RQ2 doesn't seem to say explicitly either, but it does have the half-DB rule for thrown weapons. I guess it makes sense if you are buying an off-the-shelf bow that as it's doing the projecting it doesn't give a DB.

Because most of the time when you need to give someone lots of HP very quickly back to stop them dying it will be in combat?