Psullie

another thing to note is that with other systems unions can be represented by half a dozen or less factors which makes easier to roll out the nameless canon fodder. You can do this with RQ but you are missing out on one of it's key advantages, the uniqueness of individuals. With a little planning an encounter with 6x trolls can become quite memorable by selecting interesting spells, allied spirits (which have personalities too), terrain, equipment and goals. Give all of your NPC's a little motivation, then act accordingly.

As a reference that would be great, with the caveat that regional differences can be direct, refer to an aspect or simply speculative.

Excellent stuff, I for one would prefer it that you hold off adding new material so we can get our hands on it sooner.

Rune Magic is about channelling the divine power. The same spell from different sources would look, sound, smell and feel different. All Rune spells would be obvious - except of course those that are meant to be hidden. Spirit magic can range from the mundane to the magnificent, Bladesharp 1 would look very different from Bladesharp 6. Note to that due to the origins of Spirit Magic those spells could be far more varied in colour and texture. Sorcery is arcane, bound by the will of the caster. Long casting times would make the process obvious but the effects less so in my opinion due to conservation of energy. Personally I think Jack Vance's Dying Earth with regard to Sorcery. It is up to you - don't make the visual effects too obvious least you negate the usefulness of Detect Magic!

And I have question regarding set-up. When you layout the Sanity cards no value can be the same. Does this only apply to the Red cards? On the diagram the Black and top Red card are both 6. cheers

I don't see any issue with Vishi. Yanioth is just a poor combatant (but one of my favourites), Nathem is just as bad at melee (basically artillery support and my least favourite PC) and Sorala is only moderately better. There is much more to running a RQ game then how well your character can fight.

Royal Mail dropped it off this morning, and it looks rather spiffy. Cheers guys!

Personally I would rule that 'impaling' cannot be used as a condition. Using the Target condition to state those who are impaled is beyond it's scope. I feel the spirit of the Target condition relates to race, cult affiliations etc.

He is NOT a front line fighter. In one of the games I ran he was devastating with the dagger-axe so long as he remained in a supporting role. Perhaps the player in question should have picked Vasana or Vostor.

I believe that Glorantha, at least the civilised bits; Esrolia, Lunar Empire etc. have a reasonably high literacy among certain classes. Trade, civil building projects, prolonged warfare all require writing. But as Socrates pointed out, it does not necessarily exclude oral traditions. http://neamathisi.com/literacies/chapter-1-literacies-on-a-human-scale/socrates-on-the-forgetfulness-that-comes-with-writing

In the past I've run a host of battles involving PCs. The first thing is decide just how much they can alter the outcome. Are they generals, captains, heroes or spell fodder. This will not only give them very different experiences but allows you the GM to establish suitable challenges by which they can determine their victory. A good example would be giving the PC charge of holding a key position. As the wider battle rages on, their success or failure effects the final result. As for the Battle Skill. I would use that to gauge an individuals fate. Failed rolls don't necessarily mean death, but could be range from being captured to actually nothing as the PC got lost and ended up missing all the glory. For those in command of forces, I would use their Battle skill, opposed with their counterparts, to determine situational mods for abstracted combat rolls to determine their losses and or gains.

Shield operates just like Countermagic in that it resists all incoming spells. You character must cast all the magic first then Shield/Countermagic. However if someone else casts Bladesharp on a weapon in their possession, nothing prevents you from subsequently picking it up and using it. As LHM said, it would not extend to your mount.

I like to keep it simple and use 3m hexes. Each round a character can move 8-ENC penalty hexes. If you move more than half MOV then that's all you can do for the round. Those that move half or less can interact with other combatants with a +1 SR penalty per hex moved. If the PC is starting from stationary they start to move on their DEX SR.

There is a scenario in that. Researching lost spells, find out who last knew them and venturing off to the spirt world/underworld to find the spirit and learn the spell.

Heler doing his bit against the Empire!

I think we are saying the same thing then.

the reduction effects everyone in the contest. So everyone who attacks gets their skill reduced if the defender chooses to parry with the high skill. Example Harry the Humakti with 150% sword and 95% shield is attacked by 3 Broo. If Harry decides to Parry all three with the sword then all involved will have their Skills reduced, His own attack at 100% with the target suffering a -50 on their Parry. Harrys 2nd and third Parry at -20 and -40, dropping his Skill down to 130 & 110 thereby lessening the negative mod on the Broo attacks. If he parries with his Shield then only the Broo he's attacking will suffer a -50 on its parry. With other non-combat tests, such as Listen v Move Quietly, everyone is reduced.

Sumath is correct. Note that maimed limbs that don't get fully healed within 10 minutes are permanently useless and have their HP reduced. As a GM you could impose suitable restrictions based on that, Manipulation penalties for activities that would normally require 2 hands in the case of an arm, ranged attack Penalties for and eye etc. Regrow Limb will correct even those in time.

But that's incorrect. The Huamki will fail to parry on a roll of 95+, and the defender will Hit on a 1-5 regardless of skill levels. Slim chances sure, but not guaranteed.

I'm not sure, the table on p199 says that with a Normal attack vs a normal parry excess damage goes to the hit location.

Asking players to roll against a skill happens all the time. Player: I climb the tree, GM: Roll your climb skill. So making PC's roll dice is part of GMing. Why not extend this to Augments. Example. PC: I want to sneak past the guards. GM: Well it is very quiet and reasonably well lit. So Roll your Move Quietly first then your Hide. Now it's up the the GM to interpret how to handle these two dice rolls. Limit one against the other as with Ride & Attack. Treat them a separate tests where a fail in either alerts the guards, or that the first augments the second. With the latter, a fail with Move Quietly only makes the Hide more difficult but doesn't necessarily expose the hero. That to me adds tension and more fun. So I think they are times when a GM could require PC's to augment a skill, but then I a harsh GM 😀

There is a potential false economy with Sword Trance, for the attack 96+ is always a fail, a 00 a fumble. The defenders Attack will succeed on a 1-5. With Abilities above 100% all skills are reduced. So a Humakti with 90% Sword, pumps 10MP to go to 190%. he's jumped by 6 Trollkin with 30% skill. The effective numbers are 95% for the Humakti and 5% for the trollkin. So he's essentially spent 1 RP & 10 MP to get an effective +25. You could argue that the -20% for subsequent parries are absorbed by the Sword Trance bonus, so he does get to make 5 parries at 95%, and he still only gets one attack per round. so I don't think it breaks RQ

not harsh, they didn't even want to spend the round Singing, they thought that they could just start singing and immediately get the bonus 😁. I still think that the GM has to adjudicate each request based upon the scene. P139 gives guidelines on Skill times, and Fast Talk, Sing etc all take 1-5 minutes. So it would follow that to gain the Augment for those types of skills requires the appropriate time.

the limitation of once per session is, as you mentioned, intended to reduce abuse and make the use of Augments a special case, particularly with Runes and Passions. Skill based augments however are, in my opinion, much more common, and should be encouraged. But the key factor is relevance. The PC must be able to reasonably justify the augment. I recently denied a player using a sing augment to casting a spell as they wanted to cast the spell immediately, how could they benefit from the music when they barely got past the first verse? Skill augment, unlike Rune or Passion, takes time to implement the benefit. It make for very good cooperative playing when your PC's factor in time to properly augment their skills.

This I think is down to the GM and style of play. Nothing wrong with very powerful PC's, as long as the opposition gets the same opportunities.