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Dragonsnail

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Posts posted by Dragonsnail

  1. We could probably do without the extra meditate mechanic. I guess they wanted to make the skill more versatile.

    Regarding augmenting, it is better. But still not normally viable in combat as for most players it takes two extra melee rounds without defense to use. And out of combat you can just recast the Spirit Magic until you succeed as there are no penalties for failing.

    I'm thinking of creating some house rules for this.

    Augmenting
    I think augmenting should be quicker and with less risk to make it viable in combat. Shorten it to one combat round for augmenting with normal skill roll. Extra rounds add bonus to succeed. If you sing or dance for roughly 12 seconds you will be able to get in some verses or moves. Is it realistic? I don't know.

    Then I think you can parry or dodge, but lose the augment if you do. I mean if you are singing and a Broo attacks you, I think you should be able to abort and parry. It's not a trance, it's using the dancing or singing skill.

    Then add meditate as a skill possible to use for augmenting casting instead of having a separate rule for it. Only snag is that I'm not sure it would fit being able to parry and dodge.

    A character with very high percent in the skill used would then be getting a fairly sure +20% to cast a spell or increase resist with one melee round extra used for it. But it requires heavy investment in the skill, and there is always the risk of rolling bad and getting -20% or worse. So augment for one round to get +20% or try twice with your normal roll. I think it would be fairly balanced.

    Boosting
    Lastly, I'm thinking of letting extra magic points be used to boost spell or resist chance like they can be used for getting past defensive spells. Let's say +5% per extra magic point used. So casting a Demoralize and boost it with 4 magic points for a total of 6 MP used would give you +20% to cast or resist. This allows for an instant bonus, but it  does also costs a lot of magic points.

     

     

  2. 1 hour ago, Psullie said:

    I think both of these types of augment are not intended for combat use. How can one meditate while swords are flying about and most combats are over before you've even gotten started. If you are planning an ambush and have time to focus, then sure. Likewise for augmenting, stopping mid fight to sing a ditty seems out of place, however others in the right situation can augment your skill, so drummers or pipers blasting out battle songs during a fight would work. 

    Yes, but let's think about it with a lot of munchkinism.

    Situation
    You want to cast a Spirit Magic spell, let's say Detect Magic. You have 12 in POW and therefore 60% casting success chance.

    Meditating
    Let's take 25 melee rounds or five minutes to get a +20% bonus. You can then cast the spell with +20% success and therefore have 80% chance to succeed.

    Not meditating
    You can roll to cast Detect Magic at 60% every round 25 times, or possibly twice per round for a lot of rolls if you have DEX 13 or more (SR3 for first cast, SR11 for second etc). Failing the roll will not lose any magic points, you can just try again.

    I'm not good at math, but I think choosing to not meditate will give you better odds of succeeding with the roll, and also faster success. As the rules are, meditating is just worse in almost every case.

  3. 1 hour ago, PhilHibbs said:

    Ah, I see. Yes that does make sense, I wasn't looking at it from a time-efficiency point of view.

    No problems, I could have been a bit clearer.

    But it seems to me that meditate is almost always a bad choice unless you want to use it for ritual-like spells that aren't rituals. Detect spells maybe? Augment can be good if you have high augment skill and can afford to spend two turns augmenting before casting.

    Not being able to dodge or parry in one or two rounds is really dangerous in a fight.

  4. 8 minutes ago, PhilHibbs said:

    Why do you say that? Other than at POW 19+, a +10 bonus will make the difference between a fail and a pass just as frequently regardless of your POW. It might feel different, going from 5% to 15% than from 85% to 95%, but it isn't. It's a 1-in-10 chance of saving you from failure.

    Because when the chance of success is high, rolling twice is better than a +5% bonus and rolling once. You have to spend one round meditating to get the bonus while not being able to parry or dodge. Instead you can just ignore the meditate and cast the spell again. If you have very low POW rolling twice gets worse than the +5% bonus.

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  5. Is it just me or is the two options to improve non-ritual magic success chance extremely specific and poor for spells in combat?

    Meditation
    Can only improve chance of casting a non-ritual spell or rune (not resistance roll). Requires 1 melee round to increase casting chance +5% or 2 rounds for +10% bonus. But cannot do anything else like parry or dodge in that round. As casting a Spirit Magic spell is based on POW you must have extremely low POW for this bonus to be any good. As Spirit Magic does not lose you any magic point if you fail, and you can parry or dodge while casting the spell, it would be wiser to just try twice. With POW 12 you have 60% chance of success. Would you rather do two rolls at 60% and be able to parry or dodge, or do one roll at 65% and not being able to parry or dodge in one round?

    Augmenting (with Dance, Sing etc)
    Somewhat better as you can augment POW resistance rolls, and gives much higher bonus with success. But also takes longer time and has the risk of giving you a negative modifier with failure to augment. Similar to meditation you cannot dodge or parry while augmenting the spell or resist roll. Doing it for one round before cast halves the augmenting skill, for two rounds you have normal skill and for each round after you get +5% on the augmenting skill.

    The example text for augmenting is funny. It says that Yanioth want to increase the chance to overcome POW with a Demoralize spell. So she uses Dance at 65% but only for one round, halving the skill to 33%. That means there is a 77% chance of worsening the resistance roll. Does she really want to augment her opponent?

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  6. 3 hours ago, jajagappa said:

    Interesting.  I've always found D&D and related products difficult to access and remember what class could or could not do what.

    I think it's mostly because it is so well known. What makes it easier is the compartmentalisation of the player into a class with limited rules for that class. But spell casters are on the other hand more difficult in 5E because of the huge range of spells, at least if the player is somewhat indecisive or unfamiliar with the game. 13th Age makes that latter part easier, because it has compartmentalised the spells to each class too, which in my opinion is a much better choice. I regard 13th Age as much better than 5E.

  7. 19 hours ago, MOB said:

    Robin's books are set some 7-10 years after the adventures described in RQ2's Pavis & Big Rubble and HQ. A lot has changed in that time.

    Sounds good. I do own the other books and as 7Tigers said above, the HQ Pavis book is great.

    Maybe Pavis is for Runequest what Masks of Nyarlathotep is for Call of Chthulhu.

  8. 26 minutes ago, jps said:

    That's the reason why I'm posting here to warn people: I ordered mine on August the 8th, so quite recently and I got the bad one. So ordering right now can be a little risky.

    I think they will be good to order when Q Workshop put up the variant set on the site again. The standard set is fine of course, but I wanted to order both sets, so I'll wait until then.

  9. 3 hours ago, Jon Hunter said:

    I'm interested to see how the same tension can be found in Pavis without the Lunars in play in the same way. 
    
    I think to keep Pavis as interesting as it was is going to a massive challenge for Robin.
    
    In fact its probably one of the main reasons for  me not liking the new time setting, So I think Chasoium has set Robin a challenge here.
    
    I will very interested to watch, and delighted if robin can prove me wrong and to be a grumpy old man. 

    In my Glorantha with the Lunars on their heels from 1625 and on, there is going to be a lot more chaos instead. And for human adversaries, old feuds and wars might blossom again. I don't  follow a canon storyline, I mostly make my own stuff up to suit my player group. Source books are useful anyway for me, even if I cannot use all adventures in them.

  10. 2 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

    Charisma isn't all about being nice. Darth Vader would have 18+ CHA in RuneQuest, he's a powerful leader and people do what he says.

    The Conversion Guide should mention something about converting Rune Lords who don't have 18 CHA/APP though!

    Sarostip is a real nice and charming fellow.

  11. 5 hours ago, womble said:

    Without spoilering, can you offer any pointers on to what extent the Red Cow Saga hooks into Argrath's Cycle of Prax/Pavis/Cradle/circumnavigation, or is that background/peripheral to a more parochial/local interest tale of everyday Sartar folk? I'm considering when to set a game, given that it'll be for new-to-Glorantha players and I'm not sure about throwing them straight into full-on Hero Wars, while being happy to go through (another) retelling of the years running up to 'em to give the players chance to bed into the world (we can always blue-book a couple of years if they get settled in quick :) ) before getting on to the momentous events the new edition is set in.

     

    Most material is locally centered, and little to none is connected with Prax/Pavis. But each period begins with a summary of the hero wars and things that affect the clan and tribe. And several episodes are centered around the big events, like Orlanth's death for example.

    In the adventure book Eleven LIght's there is a short piece on how to keep the story canon if you want to change things. I think that is a summary of events that will affect the clan. I typed it below.

    Spoiler (select to show) (s
    1619 The Bat Comes to Sartar
    1621-1622, Orlanth is Dead
    1622 The Three New Stars
    1622-1623 The Rising of the Culbrea
    1624 The Eleven Lights
    1625 The Liberation of Jonstown
    1625 The Battle of Dangerford

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