Deadstop

p. 66, "Aram ya-Udram was a human, one of the original founders of the ancient Empire of the Wyrms Friends." Was he? I thought he was a First Age hero, the human on the Unity Council. Possibly "World Council of Friends" is meant, though if the information on the Glorantha Wiki is correct he apotheosized shortly before that name change as well.

Surely that is an absurd reduction of the escalating-difficulty rule, though. It’s like the people who insisted that having a table of average difficulty by level in the much-maligned D&D4 meant that doors and things were supposed to level up with the PCs. Yes, the base difficulty for a significant challenge to your 2W5 demigods might be a like number, but that doesn’t mean that “all the average warriors” in the setting now have that as their default ability. If those PCs were actually to go back and scuffle with their clan mates or those bandits from the first session of the campaign, those NPCs would not suddenly be of 2W5 difficulty unless some extraordinary circumstance had intervened. (The GM is empowered to come up with such a circumstance if she wants a significant fight, but then the opponents will visibly not be just the same guys the PCs fought as callow youths.) Most likely the NPCs are so outclassed that there’s no point in even using a contest. And that, too, is mentioned in the HQG rulebook. It’s just that most of the PCs’ adventures at that point will not be against petty bandits. With 5 masteries, we’re looking at something like Lanbril himself (or at least a worshipper godforming him) stealing your stuff and running off. It’s the same with the parallel D&D complaint I mentioned. The existence of a table of average difficulty by level doesn’t mean that every lock on every door levels up to keep pace with the party rogue. It’s a signal to the DM that for a lock to be a significant challenge to the rogue, it needs to be that difficult (and be described appropriately). But all the regular door locks are still their normal difficulty, which it may be pointless to make the rogue roll to beat.