Akhôrahil

From the moon, if you’re on the right side?

Need to find fixed-cost cults instead.

Bolthor Brighteyes is noted as "belonging to many cults", and presumably this doesn't merely mean lay membership and subcults.

It's great!

How tightly is it tied to Beast Valley? Is it mostly just an EWF ruin, or is it heavily dependent on the exact placement? I transposed This Fertile Ground outside Beast Valley and thought it worked out fine (it's a little bit of a stretch, but not massively so).

I also don't think you should rule out achieving something important even though you can't reasonably win the actual fight - she is there for a reason, and you can interact with that reason without killing her. This might be a good way to maintain player agency while not devaluing Jar-eel. I would totally give a trickster a chance to lift something from her while the other PCs try to mostly survive for two turns, for instance.

I would always at least give the players a chance to roll a crit. They certainly wouldn't win just because of that, but they would get her attention, and potentially achieve something they were attempting outside of taking her out. A warrior merely drawing blood through a thin cut on her cheek and then surviving would have something to brag about for years! Or it could be enough to distract her from something.

I do kinda think that given the kind of game RQ is (which is not necessarily the best one to generate Glorantha:ific outcomes) for good and ill, and how it stats for instance the Crimson Bat, I don't think it's unreasonable for players to expect that the opposition follows the rules (those might be very special rules, of course) rather than have an "I Win"-button. If there are superheroes - as there are - then it should be at least in principle possible to become a superhero, and somewhere along that career, it should become reasonably possible to fight other superheroes. Of course, it's understandable for multiple reasons if this is a low design priority, but even so...

Agree. Merely striking first - if you even do - isn't a massive deal. It was weird if you can attack more often with your pike than with a dagger, though...

One of the things about BRP is that it takes all kinds of weapon defense, mash them into one activity called "parry", and have it actually be blocking. This is a simplification of reality, of course, but works decently well. So in BRP, you have to be able to "parry" with one-handed weapons, as this is the only defensive action really available, and obviously people defend with one-handed weapons all the time when they don't have a shield - this is perfectly obvious if you look at Medieval HEMA, traditional sabre fencing, and so on. What BRP does do is sell shields dramatically short. It's just a vastly better defensive armament than your offensive weapon. Put someone with a spear up against someone with a sword, and the spear wins (as in, you can give a HEMA newbie a spear and a very quick introduction, and things will go this way against sword experts). Give each a shield, and it's a pretty even matchup. In one of the Icelandic sagas, it's noted as remarkable that someone without a shield won against someone with one. Shields are awesome, in a way BRP doesn't even remotely represent (one PC in my group carries a shield but tends to mostly parry with his sword anyway - his skill is higher, it's what he Inspires to anyway, and in some fights, the damage output from parries can rival that of attacks - and that just feels wrong). It has often been noted that the actual main weapon of the roman legionnaire was the shield, not the short sword. One possible easy fix here would be to dramatically increase the Base Chance of shields - I don't think 40-50% would be uncalled for. Or you could halve the chance for weapons the way you suggest, but in that case, I would use that for all non-shield weapons - the Greatsword is already far and away the best weapon in the game, no need to make it even better. This halving would also make fights shorter and bloodier, which might or might not be desirable. (Speaking of, the other thing BRP typically does poorly is weapon reach. I really liked the RQ6/Mythras solution here, where each weapon has a preferred range, and you start off at the longest one and have to make an effort if you want to get in closer. What shields and heavy armor allow is for the attacker to eat a thrust on the way in.)

Do we know what percentage of Sartarites are professional warriors (as this is essentially the only job for these cults, and there will for a certainty be professional warriors in other cults)? 5-10% sounds really high.

I think it’s fair to say that the Orlanthi shield wall will often be less disciplined and more inclined to charging. But obviously formation fighting is absolutely critical for any medium infantry.

The magic I think would both help and make sense are: Some kind of formation soldiering spell, to explain why their otherwise magically impotent units do fine in a high-magic world. Some magic that helps you survive after you (mythically appropriately) lost the fight.

Also, herding them is famously difficult.

In this situation, the answer is obviously Issaries, because when you're out of Rune Points, you're still loaded to the gills with Spell Traded rune magic, likely dozens and dozens of points. 🙂

Early modern pike didn't bother with shields, and the classical Greek hoplites didn't use a pike. The Macedonians were the ones with pike + shield. And I believe the Macedonian pike only used the shield passively (slung from the neck, the way it worked in RQ3), unlike the RQG Yelmalio style where you can actively parry with it while using a pike?

Phalanxes and shield-walls yes, but actually pike + shield? Wasn't this just using the shields, in Shield Push?

Huh, I had no idea about this - I thought they used either spear and shield or just pike, and that pike + shield was exclusively a Yelmalio thing. And it is described at the very least as an exception in RQG, and no way to learn it outside of the cult is offered: "The Yelmalio cult teaches its initiates how to use a shield in conjunction with the Pike skill. This is a special exception to the rule that a shield cannot be used with a two-handed weapon." Since the pike use is the single best thing about Yelmalio - the cult USP, if you will - I'm a little surprised if it's widely available.

I was specifically thinking of the cult-unique ability to use pike and shield together. This doesn't seem like it would be just a question of mindset?

Yes - basically, how is the pike use a cult secret? If it’s merely mundane training, it could (and should) be copied by others. And if it’s magical, just how does that work? Do you have the necessary magical experiences during initiation, ones that are necessary to be able to do it?

No, I agree, it’s nothing like that. My default position is that in a game like RQ, balance isn’t critical, but niche protection is. A Yelmalio warrior should accept that someone worshiping the actual God of Death will be better at fighting in most situations. But not in all situations, because in that case, the niche is gone. The Yelmalian might reasonably expect to be better at fighting Darkness, better at surviving a defeat, and so on. But in actual case, perhaps the only situation where the Yelmalian has an edge is fighting in darkness (because of Catseye). That might be too small a niche, and any Yinkin worshiper is likely to be better at that.

Orlanth is tanky AF - everyone’s got Shield (everyone that matters at least, yes I mean you Yelmalio), but Orlanth also packs Woad (king of long-term protection) and Earth Shield (king of absorbing arbitrarily high amounts of damage), and is far and away the most likely to receive the superb Bless Champion. Add Heal Body for when damage slips through anyway. Probably the most tanky cult if you exclude Trance cheese.

Note that Issaries still somewhat qualifies under this, due to Spell Trading. 🙂 (Honestly, if you’re looking to min-max your group, one Issaries worshiper is indispensible. It’s far and away the best support cult.)

This is the way I would expect it to work, but p. 77 - which is exclusively about character creation - says ”Cult Spirit Magic: Befuddle (2 pts.) and Glamour (2 pts.) at the normal point cost. Any other spirit magic spell at twice the normal point cost.” Taken as written, this has to refer to starting Spirit Magic. And in turn means you can never start with five points.

Some might, and for an excellent mythical reason - the situation is parallel to the Great Darkness, when BG was born from Ernalda’s dead (or perhaps ”dead”) body to guard it. The context couldn’t be more mythically appropriate if it tried.