Akhôrahil

" However, it may be successfully cast against a specific spell if the caster can magically discern or can otherwise guess the specific spell." (my emphasis) Calling out the exact spell might be enough. "The one that makes him fighty" is not that. Also, it takes no magic for Humakti to obsess about their swords.

I would rule that it matters whether you target the person other weapon. You could often just guess-target a Humakti's sword, assuming that there's something important there, probably Truesword.

It's not quite that easy. You have to have some way of "seeing" the spell you want to target (or at the very least knowing exactly what spell it was), otherwise default target selection is used, and a smart Humakti layers "bait" spells that get prioritized before the Sword Trance. Still, any ten initiates could just slap him with single-point Dispels.

It's totally unclear, I would say. Maybe the implication is that it only targets one spell, but that's just my vague feeling.

I'll give you another thing to think about. Fireblade: "This damage cannot be magically resisted". Does this mean that Ward Against Weapons doesn't work (a literal reading would indicate that the damage indeed cannot be resisted), or merely that Fireblade isn't affected by Countermagic?

Truesword normally means you don't get wounded in the first place, though.

This already exists. We have a concept about a spell's size. A spell's size matters both for penetrating countermagic, and for how difficult the spell is to dispel. Boosting a spell adds to its size. The rules are explicit that boosting a spell makes it larger for penetration purposes, and silent on whether boosting makes a spell larger for dispelling purposes. It doesn't help that the section about Boosting is poorly written and lacks any real rules, and that you have to deduce the rule backwards from the example.

In my experience, if there's even just one fight (including Spirit Combat) in a season, most PCs will manage to squeeze their POW gain roll from it. Of course, there may not be a fight.

This only matters in seasons when you're not adventuring (which might be 0), or if you somehow manage not to get a POW gain roll during the adventure.

I can see arguments both ways. You almost certainly shouldn't gain any Occupational Experience in mere two weeks, though.

I personally think that this is less convincing than how explicit it is that "There are five seasons" and "A season is made up of eight weeks". It's also as part of this regular season header that we get experience check resolution and POW gain rolls mentioned. If Sacred Time counted as an actual season, then you would earn experience gain during it as well.

My point is this: "get a POW gain roll" otherwise doesn't mean "roll it at once", and instead means "mark the checkbox, and roll for it and end of season, just like any other experience checks". So formally, the POW gain roll you get in Sacred Time would be resolved at the end of Sea Season. Now, I do think you should just get the POW gain roll the way you say, because it's Sacred Time and all and it doesn't belong to a season anyway, but that's not really supported in the rules text.

Still unclear. It says you get a POW gain roll, true, but that usually just means "mark the checkbox, roll at next end of season". Now, there wouldn't be anything weird about Sacred Time containing its own POW gain attempt - the opposite in fact, it makes every kind of sense - but it's not actually in the rules.

This is really clear - it's treated like an experience check, it has one (and only one) checkbox next to POW on the character sheet, and so on. "It doesn't say I can't" is not true munchkinnery.

I personally don't count Sacred Time as a separate season either, but I feel a bit unsure here. It actually matters a lot if you get experience rolls after Sacred Time as well as after seasons. This being Sacred Time, I could easily see it including a "free" POW gain roll resolved immediately, but I really don't like the idea of counting it as a season for experience gain.

This doesn't work. "Making a POW Gain Roll POW gain rolls are made at the end of a season" So you earn a POW gain roll, which you then perform at end of season. You can also only get one, so it doesn't do anything for you if you get a POW gain roll in another way anyway. Think of it as an experience check for your POW. It's still very useful to get to do it seasonally if you're not adventuring.

Parallel question: If you crit with an Atlatl, does the extra D6 damage get maximized? Does an Impale do 2D10+1D6, or 2D10+2D6 (that is, is the additional damage part of what gets rolled again)? Assuming 1D2 modified damage bonus, does an Atlatl Crit do 20+1D6+1D2, 20+2D6+1D2, 26+1D2, 28, 32+1D2, 34, or something else? I say "Yes", "Uhh, not sure, really, probably the former?" and "28, I think?" respectively.

-1 is higher than -4. Maximizing -1D4 means -1, as it's the highest roll. However, it still means that a Crush with negative damage bonus does less damage than a non-Crush, which is hilarious.

It's unfortunately impossible to tell whether this means "maximum (special damage plus damage bonus)“ or "(maximum special damage) plus (damage bonus)“.

This. You do special damage, only maximized. Same thing goes for Slash and Impale. (However, it should be noted that the example text on p. 206 has a completely different description, where instead of doing [Max normal weapon roll] + [Max special damage roll] + [Max Damage Bonus roll], you roll [Normal Weapon Damage roll] + [Max additional special damage roll] + [Normal damage bonus roll]. However, I no longer even remotely trust example text in RQG, because it's so badly edited as to be more misleading than helpful. For instance, it's in direct contradiction to the results table, which makes it abundantly clear that it's at least [Max normal weapon roll] + [Max additional special damage roll], and which is also supported by the rules text. Just toss it! My rule of thumb is Table > Rules Text > Example. Only the handling of the damage bonus seems like it could be unclear.)

My "only reduce down to half" solution gives: * lower has 110%, for a 55% drop for both. Becomes 135% / 55%.

It's quite doable, but it's not doable while keeping the game maximally RQ2. That seems to have been the number one design priority.

What it especially brings up is how dubiously the new Spirit Combat rules mesh with the rest of the combat system. Don't get me wrong, the Spirit Combat system of opposed rolls makes every kind of sense, but it doesn't fit very well with the rest of the rules, due to being systematically different. It might be easier to just say that Spirit Combat is Spirit Combat Attack/Spirit Combat Parry, and so on, just like regular combat.

That Heal needs to be thoroughly Boosted though... not that this should be a huge deal. And at least protective spells can be dispelled. Protection is good, but equal amounts of MPs invested in Bladesharp as opponent's Protection is better. Bladesharp (and the like), a reasonably low threshold for the D4 damage bonus, and Specials, make RQ combat a bit less bouncy than some other BRP games.

I have, routinely, in other BRP games. 10-20 rounds of people doing the I Attack/You Parry/You Attack/I Parry routine (and made even worse in games where even if when you manage to land a hit, it will probably just bounce on armor - RQ avoids that part, at least).