Akhôrahil

If you have a cult like Orlanth, you can pick up about as many RPs as you like through Associated Cult worship, too

Wait what? You can explicitly get permanent characteristic increases through DI and now it doesn’t even have a permanent cost? This makes no sense - RAW, every Rune Lord should very quickly and at little cost max out all stats. (Yes, the GM will put a stop to this, but if the rules require DM intervention to stop their use, this is bad.)

My point was that since weapons are better than shields for parry, you would have to be better at shield to make it worthwhile, but fighter types cap out their weapon *anyway*. 50% base for shields in RQ2 would have mattered a lot, on the other hand.

Several of my players hope for Awakened shadowcats eventually, and as some have shadowcats with impressive POW already, they wonders if it’s possible to get the current shadowcat awakened merely with INT added (not purely from minmaxing but also sp that it’s the ”same” cat). It will probably depend on my mood whether it happens. 🙂

I'm inclined to wonder whether parts of the Bronze age collapse had to with the increased availability of iron weapons - that is, did the Iron age smash the Bronze age? It's not otherwise obvious why societal collapse and the end of the Bronze age should happen at the same time. Bronze required a fair amount of sophistication due to the trade routes, and was expensive, but with iron, any old barbarians could have access to decent metal weapons, and use them to defeat their more civilized neighbours.

The RQG take on this seems to be that these things exist as concepts and legends, but no longer as subcults. For instance, "Allfather" is still (presumably) a name of Orlanth, but not a subcult (most of that would now be in Thunderous). Thunderous and Barntar would be the two common cults for (male) farmers. Similarly, I have no reason to believe that Bevara isn't still in the myths, but the lower granularity of subcults in RQG means she didn't get one. Not that she really needs it either - you can make a perfectly fine combat medic using just the Ernalda cult as-is (as one of my players have). Such a healer might even carry some kind of Bevara tattoo, see her as a divine patron, and (naturally) pick her spells from the (huge!) selection of Ernalda spells to fit the job (with both Shield and Earth Shield, Ernaldans can be very defensive and durable). She could even have picked up some heroquest power. If you want a little more Bevara, you could easily include a shrine to her some place, perhaps even providing a unique spell for Ernaldans to learn there if desired. Or teaching the Battle skill. Basically: Orlanth subcults are Adventurous, Thunderous, Rex, Vinga, Barntar, and perhaps some few more. Ernalda doesn't have any subcults in RQG, but could potentially pick them up in the Cults book (no idea if this will happen). Local variations of cults are both supported and make sense.

Gorp can eat anything, agree, but perhaps against other forms of even Chaotic acid (like the evergreen Vomit Acid)?

The whole thing about exchanges where you make an attack and the opponent makes a parry is a gross simplification - it's pretty much inconceivable that you could be an expert attacker but you don't know anything about defending. Things don't break into such neat chunks RQ is probably overly granular even with attack and parry being the same skill, due to every weapon having its own skill. "Oh, I'm great with a short sword, but give me a kopis and I'm just crap." Skill transfer should probably realistically be something like 80%, not 50%, within a weapon class, and maybe 50% between weapon classes. Someone who's great with a sword isn't going to be useless with an axe - a fair amount of skill transfers. What would help things was if shields were just easier or better to parry with. I have considered something like giving shields a base chance of 50%, but even this won't help when warrior PCs start at 90% anyway.

Only the point from bling, as it’s dependent on wearing it. You probably should have a sheet where you track events for Reputation, Honor and Charisma, though. Makes for a neat character history.

And very likely acid?

I think spears make sense for dwarves as well - it would compensate for their poor reach.

One of the PCs in my group theoretically carries a shield, but never uses it in melee. The reasons are multiple. He's better at Sword than Shield. (This only increases as he doesn't use the shield.) When he augments Sword, it benefits both attack and defence. Damage to opposing weapons, natural weapons in particular. So it's not merely that 2H weapons are better than Sword & Board, it's that even when you carry a shield, it's better not to use it. Considering how outstandingly good shields were considered in the real world, this is a real problem.

No need for often fairly arbitrary weapon tables - weapon types merely have properties, with the damage based on Str + Siz. And plus, shields are fantastic, where they are kinda crap in RQ (two-handed weapons are the good picks in RQ, Greatsword and Halberd in particular).

I think Pendragon, personally.

One of the things about RQ weapons is that there’s no particular armor-piercing quality, which means that weapons that were used mostly for that purpose (like maces and war hammers) suck. House-rule such a property, upgrade the damage, or give them axes instead (which should be a much more reasonable weapon against both trolls and elves anyway).

Mobility in particular, I would say. Ompalam has Harmony though, so it’s at least not fundamentally opposed to slavery.

Well, not for many weeks in a row, given the permanent RP cost.

Very few gods/cults are actively opposed to slavery in general. Orlanth kinda but not fully - the Larnstings might come the closest? I could also see an argument for Issaries - fair exchange is impossible if one party is enslaved, after all.

Agree. Plus it would be silly if your Allied Spirit could achieve Rune Level and get its own Allied Spirit, and so on recursively. 🙂

Presumably they would start with one Rune Point (and the spell that comes with it), as sacrificing 1 POW to 1 Rune Point is part of initiation?

Many places have ”default” cults. If you’re mostly average and typical in Sartar, you’re likely to worship Orlanth (if male) or Ernalda (if female). Both cults are super wide, and will accommodate the things most people do. They don’t expect you to be unusual or weird. You can worship Orlanth and be a warrior, or a farmer, or a lawspeaker, or a king. The behaviours expected of you are mostly the ones expected of you as a member of society anyway.

A fellow player told me this about driving a bus. If it wasn’t for the passengers…

"Golden Shower is a Hellwood Dryad" Huh... "Her name comes from the fact that she was a lover of Yelmalio" Oh okay, I guess Yelmalio gets his freak on where he can!

I really hope there are tardigrades, especially giant ones.

I think this is pretty good (as is the standard rule, I would say). Rolling for hit location can’t mean that you swing wildly and randomly hit some body part (well, maybe with missile fire). Rather, it’s about how this was where the opportunity for an attack materialized. If you’re willing to make things more difficult for yourself, you can go for a hit location that provided less of an opening.