StephenMcG

Absolutely nothing. But there is plenty wrong with a club. Sometimes your character just needs a club and doesn't need the system actively working against that choice...purely for the reason that it works on clubbing rather than stabbing...

If I dont have a damage bonus that I should not use a crushing weapon. It is obviously not a direct thing but the lack of good characteristics tends to steer you down towards a club which will rob you of any bonuses for rolling well that your more stabby colleagues get. Obviously I am straying far from simulation and delving into more gamist territory but I think the RQ2 system (for most player characters) said do not use hammers and maces, use bows and spears if you want to be effective. RQ:G now provides similar damage for slashing weapons. Crushing weapons should be left to beasts and trolls...

You know. I agree that a book straight off the shelf for $55 means we have high expectations. However, Chaosium,. in this thread, have pointed out their willing to engage and actively doing so (another thread is already generating traffic). I think however you are going a bit far to say that the product does not work as advertised. I could easily run this game quite effectively from the rules as written. There are one or two areas where things are not as clear as they might be. That is disappointing for what is otherwise a quality product. I think if it had been black and white with ring-binding we would be more forgiving of the imperfections in the rule explanations. The look and feel lead us to expect more. It is always a risk pitching in with edition 1.0 but when you do, you need to understand that there is likely to be stuff not quite right. I think I am content that Chaosium are listening and working towards making this product better. I dont think it is a money back situation... Stephen

You keep pulling me out of my game and into the real world! Coshes and clubs do exist though and often because you have a character where you do not have the characteristics necessary to give yourself a high STR score or the wherewithal to purchase a sword. Again - not sure the system should be making such decisions on behalf of my players. Stephen

I never take too much realism into my fantasy roleplaying. 😄 I guess it comes to your group and how you look at weapon choices. I quite like my players to be using different things because of the look/feel/narrative of the sheets rather than being drawn to the weapons that give you greater game advantage. Thus my instinct for all special attacks to have similar game advantages wrt damage but to give each a different special advantage. I think that the stunning impact of a crush would quite happily provide distinct advantages to trolls and centaurs using big clubs without robbing those unfortunates whose stats limit them to a light mace from the benefits of a special attack. Stephen

Personally I would make this part of the game. If he wants to find folk who will teach him then he needs to go out and find those people. If he wants to go off-piste then he needs to go looking in places where there may be fragments of lore that he needs. This would be an excellent case for going to the Big Rubble or other ruins/ancient temples that may have suitable sorcery for a Lhankor Mhy sage to pursue. Obviously if it was readily available then he would be able to go to a local temple and ask about it. The next issue will be that, once he has found this lore, does he share it with his temple (of course I hear folk cry) or keep it as a "personal research project and all will be revealed when the thesis (grimoire) is completed"?? Will he risk being illuminated? Will other sorecry related types learn of his discoveries and seek to claim them for themselves (their cults). I reckon I could come up with a whole campaign around this desire... Stephen PS: it could almost be CoC-like. The sage seeking forgotten and possibly forbidden knowledge with the potential for unleashing chaos or god-learnerism all over again....

I remember first playing RQ2 and the best result in combat was an impale. You lived for those moments arrows or slingshots would impale an opponent. slashing and crushing were added on but they were always the poor relations of special attack rolls. Now, Reading RQ:G I see that slashing has grown up and is at least as good as impaling but crushing remains the poor relation. If you don’t have a damage bonus, don’t use a hammer seems to be the message. It seems an unnecessary reduction in diversity of weapon types. I intend to give damage parity for special attacks, I see good game reasons for consistency in this. Impales get value because they stick in the target with the potential for causing damage if the opponent moves. slashes will get value as they will cause bleeding. This will require immediate first aid or Healing 2 . Moving and fighting will risk the bleeding getting worse. crushes will get value as they will get a resistance roll to see if they temporarily disable the location crushed. This will be similar to subdual rules but for any location. I am also inclined to give subdual using a crushing weapon slightly better chances of subduing on a successful hit. Thoughts?

D'oh! Time to put my money where my mouth is. I will try to get my sorcery questions properly organised tonight and into this thread, it may become my most read thread on the boards....

I envy folk who claim to enjoy reading rulebooks. It is ALWAYS a chore for me. I am very much a learn by doing kind of person and it takes real effort for me to see how rules in the book will impact during the game. Stephen

Get them out there Roy. You will help everyone by bringing them to the boards, yourselves if there are accepted answers with8n the community, new folk who might avoid such confusion at the table as they are forewarned and Chaosium, in point8ng out specifics rather than a generic grumble. 🙂 There are quite a few threads going through stuff, I have been asking sorcery related questions which have drawn up other questions about enchantments. It is a bit of work getting it on to the boards but it is valuable constructive criticism rather than negativity that makes the game better over time. Stephen

I dislike the games where the resources to boost effects and to buy improvements are the same. It can mean that the guy who stands back and does not commit to group efforts can grow faster as he does not spend his hero points. I played a home brew (who might have stolen this from elsewhere) in which you checked those abilities in which you successfully boosted a result with hero points. Those abilities could be raised at the end of the session. That seemed to make more sense to me. I do think that there needs to be a way of sweeping up the little used colour skills as well. When I was running Hero Wars Imgave out runes (rather than Hero Points) and allowed those Hero Points to passively increase any skill that was a mastery less than the fifth best skill on the character sheet (or under 17) where the runes were related to the task in hand. The runes I gave out were based on the adventure or reasons that I decided to award them.

I would like to second this. I am not a newcomer and gone through most iterations of Runequest and Hero Wars/Quest along the way but I would find a rules catch-up very useful. There are quite a few questions floating about and, even if there is not an official opinion on what is right or wrong, knowing that the ambiguity exists and what the options might be would be amazingly valuable. I guess, even if you could organise a wiki-style page for forum folk to post issues and edit and amend them with the potential for official statements to be added, it would give us something to focus on and to enhance the use of the ruleset rather than just gripe about stuff. 🙂 Stephen

I am very poor at reading rules when not actively using them, so apologies for bouncing stuff of the forum. The only explicit mention of expanding I have seen is in the spirit matrix enchantment (though there is ambiguity there) and everything else is implicit as far as I can see. When talking of conditions on enchantments it indicates that once a condition is added, the enchantment cannot subsequently be expanded. The spell matrix enchantment indicates that “the strength of a matrix can be built up over time. Thus a 2-point Bladesharp could be built up into a 4-point Bladesharp by later sacrifices of POW and successful enchantment rolls”. That sounds like a usable 2-point Bladesharp that becomes a usable 4-point Bladesharp. The very next paragraph though says that the matrix can “be created a part at a time” but it “does not have the spell until the entire sacrifice is made”. Why would anyone do it this way if the former way was available? It also indicates that you cannot make a matrix for a spell that you dot have access to. Does that mean you cannot create a Bladesharp-5 enchantment unless you can cast Bladesharp-5 or unless you can cast Bladesharp at all? (I am trying to compare enchantment utility to that of inscription) Stephen

Hmm. Reading through sorcery for the first time. Obviously crafting their materials is how magicians grow in power/utility. This is the key thread as far as I can see. Do we have a settled opinion on whether you can ‘feed’ a transcription, allowing it to grow the intensity over time? Do we have a settled opinion on whether the POW fed into a transcribed spell is dedicated to Strength, Range or Duration or whether it can be allocated as hoc each time the spell is cast? Do we have a settled opinion on the magic point cost? If you cast a 4 intensity spell where you have all the necessary masteries it costs 4mp. Right? If you cast that same four intensity spell when you have it transcribed, what should the cost be? 1 or 4? My instincts are 1 - you cannot feed a transcription, this is what big congregations are for, pooling POW to provide a hero magician with the wherewithal to create a transcription far beyond anything she might be able to do solo. It provides ties to communities for those magicians that want to be mega. 2 - the POW is fixed to one attribute at the time of the inscriptionwhich is how a grim lire grows, rather than all grimoires being pretty similar. I would like the option of when a transcription is made of it being open or closed to others using it. Again, a community then might lend a hero their power but expect that inscription to be returned to the community for future use. 3 - I am inclined to the lower costs. That 4 intensity spell has cost 4 permanent POW, it needs to do more than free up INT. Stephen

I ran the cradle scenario using Hero Wars. It was really difficult to get the feel right of overwhelming tides of foes and depleting resources until the heroes have to abandon the cradle to regroup and take it back. I used the idea of increasing penalties and having abilities burn out when used for heroic actions. They limped off with one character effectively dead (the Mostali repaired him, he got the ability “heart of stone”) and recovered their abilities for the new contest. I see HeroQuest as a ruleset equipped to tell the story that you want to tell. If the story is about flashing blades then you should be able to tell that story. I think you are right in handing out penalties based on success. It should lead to smaller goals set, to gain the upper hand, to set the opponent up for a head shot, to bleed the opponent. Etc Stephen

Mine just got here. Happy coincidence, I have the day off work. Downer, I promised my wife I would do a good job of house cleaning while she is at work. 😞

So, if you fail to properly maintain your water system, it falls into slight disorder which increases the chance that there will be one or more disease spirits hanging around at any one time?

In game terms, this all seems great, in system terms, what is going on with the skilled/magic free healer treating a disease? If it was to be gamed, what is happening? Are there herbs and substances that are inimical to disease spirits and, if so, could similar skills not be applied to other aspects of spirit combat? I ask because I know my players and they will, quite understandably, look for those little edges they might gain. I am also surprised that the common diseases are associated simply with Darkness. To me that makes some sense but I would have thought they were also associated with Fire (especially those that have a fever element or even rashes). stephen

I would not class botulism as a disease - you will not catch botulism from someone suffering from botulism. You treat the symptoms of the victim with treat poison (because that is what they are suffering from) and then you would need to treat the source of the poison with another skill (which might as well be treat disease - you would be removing the infectious agent from wherever it seems to be sitting). The skill Treat Disease is interesting in the light of the conversation as, if disease is all about being possessed by a disease spirit, is the treatment simply tending to the symptoms without touching the disease or does the treatment involve doing preparations that allows the person to another chance to evict the possessing spirit, presumably with the spirit in a weakened form?? The presence of the skill looks like it implies a real-world disease paradigm. I would need to go look again at the skill description to see what that says... Stephen

I wonder if some disease spirits actually inhabit the water source rather than a person. I am going with the animist view of the disease spirit overcoming the spirit of the water body (I am presuming that even artificial water bodies used for long enough may develop their own spirit). The disease spirit then, over time, transforms the water body into one huge potion that inflicts the disease symptoms on those that drink it. This would be like Jeorg's scenario of something like Clostridium botulinum growing in a location and producing a poison that causes impacts rather than the bacteria themselves doing it. This would not mean that someone sick could infect another person but it could lay low a whole community that would then be open to raiding by a tribe of broo that would otherwise be too weak.... Sanitation programmes therefore would be specialist shaman that could detect and clear out such spirits... Stephen

Too much interesting Jeorg, but I think for a different thread...I have kind of derailed this one enough...

I don’t look on Gloranthans as primitives, they are highly sophisticated in their understanding of their world, possibly better than we understand ours. I don’t think they would mistake a poison with the effects of a disease spirit. I am working on the basis that the disease symptoms are the result of the disease spirit leaving the body to infect another person. An infected person can only infect one other as there is no secondary spirits created during an infection. It does mean Glorantha would not see the kind of epidemics with geometric injection rates that we do. The potential for sentient disease does raise other concerns though... Stephen

I think the post is great, I am with the general gist but, as a microbiologist, need to pick up details. Poisoning just is not a form of disease, there is no chance of a poisoning epidemic. And while leeches, fleas, ticks and lice attach they do not eat through and maggots consume only dead flesh (the reason they are being used clinically to clean wounds). phew. Almost Sheldon-like need to explain there. Apologies! My concern was getting the details right as the paradigms changed. It was more obvious in HeroQuest but the paradigms underpinning deist, sorcerers and animist magics are different. Spirit diseases fit the animist paradigm, are kind of appropriate in deist societies but almost completely alien to the Western sorcery paradigm. Do they explain these things differently or do they all accept d isease spirits? If a disease spirit has infected you, can it infect someone else without leaving your body? If so, does the spirit split? If you overcome the spirit, does it die? My poor scientific brain quails when looking at a universe built on myth rather than rational observation and replication.... 🙂 stephen

Very much in agreement with this, newbie GMs do this all the time. Leaving themselves “unable” to progress the adventure because the players do not have the necessary information.

I knew there was a reason I prefer playing Humakti!!