Akhôrahil

From a rules perspective, the upcoming Shield spell is all that’s required to make Yelmalio a passable cult for warriors. Right now though, you get more martial magic out of Ernalda (which is admittedly hilarious).

I’m not confident here, but don’t you typically require a shaman-supporting cult to become a shaman? Even if it’s just an ”implicit” cult, like Horned Man? In this case, Waha does support this, in ways most cult’s don’t, seeing how Waha includes a shaman path?

No, that’s whether they know about you. Glory and infamy both raise Reputation.

Normally, I would say that Honour is either something internal, in which case you wouldn't take a hit to it if you didn't feel (or even know) that it's dishonourable, or it's what people think about you (as in real-world honour cultures), in which case you would only take a hit to it if people find out. However, in Glorantha, Honour seems to be almost something of a supernatural force (which is why you can detect it with magic, presumably), so this quoted text works for me.

Wait, you think Yelmalio is a good god for combat characters?!

Waha has Shield. This alone makes him better than Yelmalio (yes, I know Yelmalio will pick it up in the Cult’s Book). No Cult can be truly bad as long as it has Shield.

By the way, Create Fissure is an absolute beast of a spell against tight formations. (And a superb spell in general, we have found out.)

SAN in the Mythos sense doesn't seem like it would have a place - that's all about having your comforting illusions about reality shattered as you're exposed to the cosmic truth, and that doesn't obviously fit for Glorantha (or well, it might be Illumination...). Some kind of generalized mental stress rule could fit well, though.

This is where combat styles would come in as well - no-one learns to use a shield except as part of weapons fighting, and even having a separate skill for it isn’t obvious.

Although by my reading, you can have that already - just use a bladed or spiked shield from W&E, it should be able to receive both Parry and Bladesharp simultaneously.

I would add that I would totally allow casting Parry on any weapon. There’s no obvious reason why it’s shields only by RAW.

In RQ, defence is super important. This is why you load up on armor, and why Shield is such a fantastic spell.

I give +1 to weapon HP per point, to make it symmetrical with Bladesharp. This way, Bladesharp 10 vs Parry 10 is a wash, which I like.

Throwing a great party for your neighbours is a favor. Saving someone’s life at the risk of your own is a favor. While I think they are technically commensurable, the difference in value is immense. I think it makes sense to treat these as debts of an approximately value. You might want to track them that way if you want to be detailed. This can be as minor as you giving the shoemaker a dozen eggs per week for a while, and then you can ask for a new pair of shoes.

There isn’t much you can do about the short sword without rewriting the weapons table. Which would make sense - the old standby in both D&D and BRP, that larger weapons do more damage, isn’t always really realistic. If you check out a cutting competition, what’s used is typically large knives to short swords - Bowie knives and kukris are particularly common. Longer swords are good for the extra reach, but that’s basically it. They’re not better cutters, and they’re typically more fragile, as the length means you have to keep the weight down.

Agree, it’s important to keep track of the wording. 15 m radius, no target identifier, might be invisible spirit. So anytime Sense Chaos pings, you have to consider that some Disease Spirit might have just drifted past, or there’s a chaotic mushroom growing in the area. So I imagine it will often be a case of ”alright, no-one leaves until this is sorted out and I will kill anyone who tries” rather than ”Raaaarghhh, berserking time!” when the source isn’t obvious.

Yes. Kolat is Orlanth’s brother, and in some ways the shamanistic version of Orlanth Thunderous. Kolat is considered a friend and ally (of Thunderous in particular), and is important as the Father of the Umbroli. It may or may not count as an Associated Cult. But most cult activities are run seperately. The Kolating Shaman certainly isn’t in the chain of command of the Orlanth temple. I would say no - this is what Kolat is instead. Only few cults have both a full Runemaster hierarchy and Shamans as well (Kyger Litor is perhaps the strongest example, but everything gets mixed up in Darkness). Orlanth doesn't. Thunderous Priests can do a lot with Air elementals and cult spirits, but they're not shamans. Although you could probably have some obscure Orlanth cult that runs shamans that everyone else would say follow "Kolat" instead.

Oakfed, Kolat, Kyger Litor…

Not quite. These are entry-level requirements for Diamond Dwarves (so more elite Diamond Dwarves will be even better) from Elder Secrets, and it says that this takes about 700 years to achieve (using the Previous Experience system, one assumes). So not necessarily God-Time, although some of those are likely around as well, even tougher than the newbie Diamond Dwarves with their mere 2000%.

I don't believe the "Previous Experience" system is capped at 75? It's also probably not designed for 700 years of previous experience, though... Anyway, off-topic here... except to the extent that a singe Diamond Iron Dwarf puts a lot of seriously extreme creatures to shame.

There’s actually a logic to it - you pick up maybe 3% yearly in skills just from your profession in RQ3, so after 700 years…

You're right - 2000%+ in each of nine skills.

Diamond Iron Dwarves had 5000%, I believe?

Agree, trying it out will give a lot better feel than reading about it. Queen Leika from the GM box or Ironhoof from The Smoking Ruins packs quite a punch.

One interesting thing is that players (mine, at least, old war gamers as several are…) often manage to wring a lot more effectiveness than you might think out of even fairly new characters. I had to houserule a POW vs. POW for Thunderbolt, because any two Thunderbolts will take out essentially any humanoid opponent, and once two PCs have say six Rune Points each in Orlanth, they can almost instantly take out a full enemy party as long as there’s an overcast sky. Similarly, maxed-out Shields and Weapon Trances are very powerful. Even the humble Javelin + Atlatl + Multimissile makes for a devastating attack on most creatures (not counting Dorastor baddies).