Akhôrahil

This would seem to be a major candidate for Spell Trading, too, as the kind of conditional spell that you don't need often but is crucial when you do need it.

Because of the power of the Morale spell and how long it takes to cast, I would urge people to stack a lot of defensive boosting MPs in it. Otherwise, it will be a cheap and easy target for dispelling, almost certainly going away in the first round of combat, and can then not be replenished.

It's crucial not to forget about the Allied Spirit - it all but doubles your Rune Point cap, and is a really big deal in general these days. Still, the cap is still there, just later. (You can milk some more out of being an initiate in multiple cults, but even then, it's just a matter of time before you run out of space for new rune points. Except perhaps barring illumination, at which point you can go wild with cults.) By the point you're up to 40 Rune Points or so, the GM Book should be out with Hero Level abilities, too. That will remove much of the cap.

This just part of a wider problem - can you buy slaves and force them to sacrifice POW for your project through a mix of punishments and rewards? Slaves aren't that expensive, and it's a pretty solid deal for a slave to be offered his or her freedom for a sacrifice of, say, 5 POW (for optimization, buy the cheapest slaves you can find - you don't care about their ability to work, after all). (And this is the kind of munchkinnery that this thread is about!)

I think I will go with the RQ3 version (IIRC) - fetch’s POW added to defense but not offense. And on top of that, include some restriction to the classical Sleep & Slit Throats, either by Chalana Arroy being unhappy about it or by Sleep inherently containing a geas that you don’t get to hurt the victim afterwards. Befuddle at least includes a balancing element, while Sleep is an “I Win” button. (Honestly, Sleep should be a Rune spell in the new system. With shamans being able to easily learn any Spirit Magic and then teach it, the idea of secret cult-specific Spirit Magic is risible)

Although on the other hand: ”Spells cast by the fetch have the POW and magic points of the fetch behind them instead of the POW and magic points of the shaman.” Which might point in the other direction.

I agree about this interpretation, but it’s pretty obscenely powerful and I strongly doubt it was playtested at any higher power level. One unexpected thing about it - shamans will routinely have 95% to win POW vs. POW, which means they don’t get a check. They will have to pick up the checks in other ways, such as Spirit Combat.

I’m very concerned about stuff like Sleep spells with virtually always 95% chance of success in the future, when a PC qualifies for shaman.

Plate armor isn't a thing in Glorantha, but Roman legionnaires surely marched in their armor, while being about as armored as you get in Glorantha?

Fatigue is at least exemplary easy not to use! 🙂

Girls' magic, ew! Gives you cooties!

I don’t believe this is in the rules. You may be thinking of how Spirit Screen is incompatible with Protection. Shield itself is surprisingly allowing.

I think that would have been a good call. RQ3 really does have a lot of good rules changes.

These would be amazing as Jonstown PDF publications, even if it's just scans.

This decision keeps being a drag on the game, and I honestly doubt how wise it was. But even so, just creating either a system of attributes for weapons (like "Armor-piercing") or giving special abilities to weapon classes (Pendragon-style), would be quite easy and not shatter compatibility. Weapons like warhammers have no reason to exist unless for countering armor. Greg Stafford was an amazing rules designer as well as world-builder, something which is sometimes forgotten. But it's not a strike against him that a design from 1978 is a bit clunky today.

Even in D&D, the loot weighs a lot. It's just that you have Bags of Holding for it.

Four levels deep of of Bladesharped pikes really does go a long way, though... it was the lack of any good combat Rune Magic that was the problem with Yelmalio, not specifically lack of additional offense.

The game also has fantastic weapon differentiation - swords are good but not against armor, axes chop up shields, maces bash up armor, warhammers penetrate armor, spears can repel attackers, daggers strike quickly, two-handed weapons deal out immense damage but lack of shield is really bad until you have great armor, and so on. This is something RQ could really take in, in order to make weapons lists more interesting (Pendragon already does this in excellent way).

I believe there are plenty of strong feelings here, though?

Battle Brothers, an excellent computer game clearly inspired by BRP, does it like this: Attacker has an attack skill in percent. Defender has a (usually quite a lot lower) defence skill, which is subtracted from the attacker's Attack skill. Shield increases the defence skill, but if it’s the shield that matters, you take damage to it (and both the defence and HP value of shields vary). While simple, this works out great in practice.

I have always loved this. Second only to how your feelings towards dragons can be Fear Dragons, Fear Dragons, Fear Dragons, or Hate and Fear Dragons.

Yes, I meant iron historically, but it's also hardly a secret that Gloranthan bronze can frequently behave suspiciously much like iron... Still, I would stay with either just the buckle, or a small all-metal shield.

It's not clear that above-standard Ancestors can be incarnated. Lots and lots of Heortlings have Vingkot and/or Heort among their ancestors, but I would strongly doubt that they're available for incarnation.

If you put metal on a wooden shield (apart from the buckle), it's usually as a rim. A more detailed shield system might differentiate between rimmed and non-rimmed shields.

Don't forget impales vs shields, either - two javelins in a shield makes it useless, which can screw up a shield-wall pretty good. Which was part of the point. In a campaign where we played Balazarings, my bread and butter was Javelin + Atlatl + DB + Multimissile. We shredded sabretooths with that!