Akhôrahil

Another thing that I wonder about is whether the gods and spirits benefit from larger MP sacrifices. Because if they do, then a culture that said "screw it, we won't just sacrifice 2 MPs at holy days, we're going to do 10 MPs instead, and as often as we can!" would actually feed their god/spirit into higher strength at a very marginal personal cost.

Don’t get me wrong, I think this is absolutely the way to do it - use Species Maximum instead. But it’s not what the actual rules say.

Yes, exactly. P. 361 says it affects species maximum and hence POW gain rolls, while p. 481 doesn’t involve species maximum in the first place. It’s a clear contradiction.

Something like 1617-1620 sounds right for The Colymar Campaign (the Wiki has 1618).

I was thinking the same. "Blue Bloke Clan", and so on. (I know I read somewhere, likely not canonical, that the chaos-killing god is 'The Storm Bloke'. The notion that by any reasonable standard he must have a tapir body with a herd-man head in order to show off his bestial nature is disturbing in the way Glorantha does so well.)

It's also silly that a creature with a stat of 10d6 has a racial maximum of 70, while one with 5d6+30 - better by any standards - has a racial maximum of 66. Fortunately, this is easily patched by the obvious houseruling of letting 30 here count as 5d6 for species maximum purposes instead of 1d6.

RAW, you need to keep racial maximum separate from characteristic gain calculation, which means that you could in theory have a chance to to gain a characteristic point which would then either exceed racial maximum (unlikely) or get flushed down the drain. This would be instantly obvious if humans didn't by chance have the same value in each. I ignore the rules on p. 418 - characteristic gain is [Racial maximum] - [Current], which is the obvious way to run it, even though RQG makes up a completely new rule here. For additional weirdness: Shaman Soul Expansion increases Species Maximum for POW for the Shaman, but this has no effect on POW Gain Rolls...

Correct, but characteristic gain follows a rule that's completely different from Racial Maximum: "To determine if POW increases, add the adventurer’s maximum rollable POW not including any Rune characteristic modifier (i.e., 18 for humans) plus the minimum rolled POW (3 for humans)." "If done by research, the player must first roll to determine if the research is successful by adding together the adven- turer’s maximum rollable characteristic value (not including any Rune characteristic modifier) plus the minimum rollable characteristic value." And then the example for POW gain is back to Species Maximum, even though it's not in the actual rule. And Soul Expansion on p. 361 says that since Species Maximum is increased, POW gain chance increases. It's a complete mess.

I think it's ridiculous that Characteristic Gain has weird special rule that's completely different from racial maximum, so I go with [Racial Maximum - Current Value] for everything. It'd be pretty crazy to research POW in the first place, too, when it's so easily raised by other means while other stats aren't, so I doubt it will ever come up.

Apprentice Shamans have a truly massive advantage when it comes to getting to POW 18.

Toss a Slow at a runaway cow? Befuddle a pig that struggles at slaughter? Disrupt pests? 🙂

You get pretty big temple, holy day and sacrifice bonuses. Minor Temple and HHD/Sacred Time gives you a +50% even without any sacrifices (and MP sacrifices are essentially free) or augments. Assume 75-95% chance of success. Plus, since they keep succeeding, they get experience checks, and it snowballs from there.

What this shows is that the character advancement system is broken when applied to regular people. I think that's a bad thing, as PCs shouldn't be privileged by the rules in a simulationist game, but it will be even worse if you try to apply it to regular people expecting a functional outcome. This will result in incredibly high skills and vast reservoirs of POW spent for different reasons. Hence the need for a "Regular Vargast" advancement template, as I think it's clear that you're not expected to use either of the advancement schemes in the rulebook.

I'm actually not sure, did they? Perhaps the trick is getting out in time, but even that didn't save Mularik, for instance.

While +3 Rune Points per decade seems far too much for the average Joe. Another thing I don't even have an idea about is additional magics. How much POW does a veteran Shaman have, and how many shamanic gifts? How many spirits, how strong, and of which types? What kinds of magic items should we expect a Rune Lord to possess? If 10 Rune Points is the lower limit for a Rune Lord, how many does the average one have?

This a great idea that has been raised a number of time. It would help a ton to have some kind of NPC template, perhaps adjusted by age and success. We have had to guess and deduce a lot of things, like expected Rune Point amount (the typical competent adult, at least in the Dragon Pass region, seems to be an initiate with 3 Rune Points and 50-75% in important professional skills) and Spirit Magic knowledge. Even if not an official product, a well-made Jonstown Library publication along these lines would be helpful.

"Heortlings for Dummies" "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Lunar Religion"

Even to the point of earning Seasonal Experience, and not just rolling for POW gain and resolving experience checks?

Magasta’s Pool shows how the final roll was a one?

Aldrya isn’t a goddess in the traditional sense. ”She” is ”merely” the collective consciousness of the aldryami and their woods as experienced through Elfsense. Mostal also isn’t a god, merely the cosmic order imagined as an individual (like Einstein’s God, in fact - does Mostal roll dice?).

This is correct. I’m unclear about whether Sacred Time counts as a season, though. Note that Assistant Shamans get one extra POW per year outside of this, making it a great min-max occupation.

Arkat was good? News to me! Arkat fought Nysalor and Gbaji won, after all... That said, I think you could probably raise the heckles on any PC by describing Argrath as a combination of overpowered and ethically sketchy...

"'Hmmm! it smells like elves!' thought Bilbo" —J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

Maybe because of things like this? 😉

HeroQuest had something like this - above Devotee was Disciple, but at this point, you have given up so much of your free will and personal identity in order to emulate and personify your god that the character is barely playable any longer. This is what I would expect from Old Wind heavyweights.