Akhôrahil

This works against the Lie ”You have always loved Chaos” (you haven’t), but not against ”Chaos is a necessary part of the Cosmos” (maybe your old hatred was uncalled for?).

Stats as separate Hit Point tracks works great in Year Zero Engine, though. I believe it borrowed it from PDQ System.

That was also a question of bad game-design, where you wanted to save the Hero Points for ability increases rather than use them for effect when at all possible. No game should make you choose between looking awesome and doing sensible character advancement. I quickly ruled that when you spent a Hero Point for an ability bump, it also counted as an advancement spend.

By reason, yes, but I'm not sure I believe that's the Lie is actually worded. Disbelieving the lie requires "incontrovertible evidence", and how could you possibly find that against these kinds of statement?

Vampires right now don't work with any magic except Sorcery (no POW means no Spirit magic and no new Rune Magic), but hopefully the Cults book will give us a working Vivamort cult, presumably with some kind of draining ability for Rune Magic.

Again, Lie isn’t a memory alteration spell. If you tell the Storm Bull he has all ways been afraid of Broo, he might briefly think so, but introspection will reveal it as false, at which point the spell breaks. If you want to mess him up, tell him that Chaos is a necessary part of the Cosmos instead. How could anyone possibly disprove that by observation? Lie makes for a weirdly powerful missionary or political tool. “Hrestol’s teachings are the only correct ones.” “The Lunar Empire is a force for good.” “Orlanth is not worthy of worship.” “Argrath is the rightful king.” “Tricksters deserve to be cherished.” Since you can’t ever strongly disprove such statements, there’s no getting rid of them, except perhaps another Lie spell.

The prep-work for it is detailed in The Gathering Thunder for HeroQuest. The best description of what happens during the ritual itself is in King of Sartar. Also, I believe this exact thing is planned to get published, unless something has changed since?

I kinda like the idea that the dragons want something done about the red moon and the gods, but since they're not supposed to get involved in worldly matters, they merely pull Argrath's strings instead. Win-win (but everyone else loses).

I do think it’s a bit dubious that the EWF were thousands of people doing stuff over hundreds of years and still ultimately failing, but then Argrath comes along and gets everything right on his first try and is better at it than the EWF ever were.

Since I used the previous experience rules, some of the PCs have pretty gross Rune Point amounts without being Rune Levels (starting at 9 is a lot, and I would have cut it down had I realized the implications). The more Rune Points PCs have, especially without being Rune Levels, the more difficult it is to actually manage a full seasonal regain. Especially when some use Rune Points for downtime actions, like Bless Crops. Emptying the tank is pretty different when you have 9 Rune Points compared to 3...

Kralorelan Celestial Bureaucracy ought to be awesome!

Question thread 2.

I think it's very hard to read the Net ritual as anything except removing the competition. Interestingly, it's also hard not to see the dragons as the ultimate winners of the HeroWars. Should we really believe that Argrath was using them rather than the other way around?

Word of Scott disagrees: "Everything has a spirit, so when you discorporate, everything you carry appears as its spirit form (this needn't look the same). Those items unless specially prepared are unlikely to function as they did in the Middle World. Generally speaking, magic items and enchanted metals, function as expected. Weapons are already covered in the spirit magic section. If you want armour - Spirit Armor Enchantment."

If you're fighting one big spirit and someone has both a decent weapon skill and a suitable weapon, this is bound to happen though. A starting Humakti PC has all the necessary tools.

I would agree, but the rules aren't written that way.

This makes sense - Rune Magic and Sorcery seem to be at the same "level", so to speak, while Spirit Magic isn't.

The steadwife PC in my campaign started off by critting first a HD and then a HHD Worship roll, and then also critting a Manage Household roll on Ancestor Day (basically the only way the Ancestors won't find something to complain about). There's now a large faction wanting to fast-track her for priestesshood due to her obvious holiness.

Thi is both my reading and what seems to be the official ruling. You can't "overwhelm" a spirit with attacks (at least not to the point where it can't effectively fight back). Spellcasting works, though.

If so, it happened super early, as in before PIE migrations. The Aesir/Vanir divide is present in Indian and Persian religion as well (Devas and Asuras, where hilariously they each decided differently on which are the good guys).

1. Unless it's an in-world thing that enemies like to strike at their enemies holy days when they are guaranteed to be fresh on Rune Points and generally up on magic, this seems to be just a dick move if practiced more than rarely by the GM. 2. Any PC with a couple of adventures under his or her belt is likely to have some kind of MP storage, making the expenditure of a few MPs from storage completely unimportant.

It trivializes Worship, makes the Worship skill meaningless apart from qualifying for Rune Levels, has a trivial cost, and means that characters will virtually always succeed at Worship. It also means that other sacrifices are completely unimportant - those cost money, MPs are essentially free. All in all, perhaps not the most successful design.

If the cosmos consistently slaps down munchkins, how do you explain Argrath? 🙂

Further, when a spirit turns visible like this, presumably in order to attack, can you attack it with weapons in the turn it manifests, or do you have to wait for it to start spirit combat? Can you attack it with spells?

I read this as that it has to be visible, which it would typically do in order to initiate Spirit combat. Even then, regular characters can’t jump into regular spirit combat with it. A shaman can discorporate and go get it on his own, even when not visible. The big question is whether other characters with suitable weapons can take swings at the spirit. It’s not obvious from in-game reasoning why they shouldn’t be able to.