HreshtIronBorne

So, my party will probably walk into a basilisk in The Rubble pretty soon. I am wondering about their stats other than the specific stat block in the adventure. Are they chaos creatures? Is their Death Stare stoppable, i.e. with Countermagic or something? Would a Storm Bull walking into a room with one even get a chance to react? What about with Detect or Find Enemy? In some writeups they have acid blood and poison and are even scarier than just a Death Stare. Also, for any of you that might have an inkling about the adventure in question, what would you say the Armor or HP of a "Large Metal Cage" is? In case said Strom Bull wants to smash it.

I am trying to pin down the differences between these spells and how exactly they work. My questions mostly pertain to which works versus what. Both descriptions seem to mention some magical and non-magical effects. Further, would either spell keep a minotaur from going into their non-magical Berserk Frenzy, or at least help them out of it? Each description only mentions using spell strength to affect an unwilling target, so would a single point on a willing target make them immune from a TON of spells and mind altering baddies for crazy duratiom at PC creation basically?

In my campaign a Sword of Humakt who was in massive Sword Trance, and also had a Shield that had been pumped so full of MPs is almost impossible to remove, got a critical arrow in the chest from some lousy bandits, and would have died if his sword hadn't rolled a 1 for Divine Intervention. This is almost exactly what has happened everytime one of my PCs has blown every resource and cooldown and is in full-on badass mode. They seem to become magnets for magical 01s to the domer. And our GM rolled dice on the table, with no screen or anything. So, no fudging. Lol.

I thought Sorcery in general was regarded as 'Creepy Foreign Magic' among the Orlanthi because it is usually invisible/not readily apparent. As far as we have played almost all Rune and Spirit Magic have some sort of visual component.

I can't find the thread to quote it now but, I believe Soltakks has some good stories about using low level spirit magic to 'block' the casting of really peefy protection spells. I know in our Glorantha we have seldom used it but, it has come up once or twice. A daring assassin punching well above his power level used fanaticism and spirit screen to get lucky in a 'duel' with a Rune-Level baddy. We have played it similar to Kloster. If an incompatible spell of any size is present on the target the newly cast spells fizzles/slides eight off, however you wanna illustrate it. Also, good use of Countermagic offensively is to throw even a CM 1 up right at the start of an ambush, makes healing slower and harder.

1. Heroquest is a separate gaming system. Though there are mythical reenactments in the setting of Glorantha, which is integral to the new RuneQuest, which are known as HeroQuests. This can sometimes get confusing for newcomers. Following allenowen's point for 2, the system and setting both encourage alternative forms of combat resolution not necessarily as readily available in something like D&D, or even CoC. You can challenge the opposing champion to a duel, apply to be captured instead of killed because your kin will pay ransom, remind them you belong to X cult/group/clan/tribe and invoke protection or retribution. It can work for most of the threats in the game. Even some chaostic opponents are reasonable and intelligent enough to not desire complete destruction over a rout.

I like that it gives some ideas for the scope and flavor of divine magic in RQ:G. It gives som idea of how epic things can tend to be. Especially if some Glorantha circumnavigating mega-munchkin starts mixing weird cults, mystical, and mythical traditions together. My munchkin brain absolutely loves everything I have seen of it so far.

Captain Souls is top tier magic. Brings back Mindlink plus its better?

I have seen Call on Stars mentioned a couple times. I am unable to get my munchkinny hands on a copy until after the holidays, anyone care to give a quick recap?

Wouldn't it just take a refular dispel plus MP? Or does the boosting mp suddenly become spell strength once you boost a Hotfoot or sleep?

Well, taking the general use of Intensity in most cases sorcery is brought up to indicate intent works just fine for me. I think making all the interactions similar keeps it simple and moves the game forward. Sorcery does therefore have the immense advantage of basically smashing most Countermagic effects from all but the most powerful Rune-lords, Priests, or Shaman. You'd have to dedicate a lot of resources and/or preperation to even find a Countermagic 7 or higher, in Gloranthas I have played in anyway.

I guess the difficulty in Countering Sorcery with either Spirit or Rune Magic is one of the big reasons it is so fearsome. Countermagic calculates defense versus the whole spell Intensity, rather than just spell Strength. So, you would have to stack it pretty ridiculously high to get some consistent resistance to sorcerous attack magic.

I am not sure if this is an artifact of an old copy of the pdf or what but my descriptions for Dispel Magic (Spirit) and Dismiss Magic (Rune) each interact with sorcery differently. For Dispel - This spell eliminates magic: 1 point removes 1 magic point of spirit magic or intensity of sorcery spells; 2 points removes 1 point of Rune magic spells. The total points of the spell must be eliminated to destroy the spell. Thus, to dispel a Befuddle spell requires 2 points of Dispel Magic, to dispel a 1-point Shield (a Rune spell) requires 2 points, and to dispel a Conflagration spell with 4 magic points would require 4 points of Dispel Magic. One cannot Dispel only part of a spell. For Dismiss - Cast at a target, this spell eliminates magic from the target. Each point of Dismiss Magic cancels 2 points of spirit magic or sorcery, or 1 point of Rune magic. Only the spell strength of sorcerous spells (see page 385) needs to be overcome.When cast against a general target, without specifying any particular effect or spell, Dismiss Magic always destroys defensive spells first, beginning with the most powerful spell that it can affect. However, it may be successfully cast against a specific spell if the caster can magically discern or can otherwise guess the specific spell. This means that at least for RAW a Priest/Rune-Lord isn't quite as hard pressed to shut down a sorcerery spell unless all the manipulations are in Spell Strength.

It is more a practical concern from past experiences. Even a Humakti attempting to have an honorable duel to first blood can end in an instantaneous decapitation depending on how awesome you are just standing around. I have had more than one bad guy get cut in half when I only meant to win. So, sometimes it might be best for the humalti to relly stand down. This can also happen with Babs and other high octane combat cults. Keep the Stormbull from 'zerking. Lol

Thanks a ton. I really appreciate the knowledge. It makes sense that the Humakti wouldn't be set loose willy nilly, like for cattle raids and stuff where there might be too much bad blood, literally, for the community to deal with.

As far as I am aware Humakt, at least as he is worshipped among the Orlanthi of Dragon Pass has some interesting social status quirks. Mythically Humakt severes himself from his kin to shield them from the consequences of his grim actions. I would like to understand a little better how this should translate into clan based play. I would like to leave the door open for my new friends to be able to roll up a Humakti PC if it catches their interest. If the PC were to kill an enemy during a cattle raid, either attacking or defending a raid, would he personally need to pay wergild? If he kills a bunch of Lunars on patrol because of a Hate Passion, who gets blamed? Just the Humakti warrior, the clan, or whoever the pissed off invading Lunars feel like? Where can I read a bit more about how the various cults fit together in Dragon Pass? Is there something written like Cults of Prax? It does a crazy good job of laying out how the cults make Prax function.

I have been trying to get a Stormbringer campaign started and been reveiwing the many different versions of the rules available. I have tried rolling a couple PCs with Stormbribger 4th edition. My brother is going to be a Melnibonean. I wanted to try and check out the rules in Elric! for rolling up a Melnibonean PC adventurer but, cannot find which book cantains that info. Anyone got any leads?

That's the Mostali!

The dude with a bow might take out a couple dudes if he gets good hits. Sorcery gets straight up quadratic at times. You can get so much more throughput from some sorcery spells than you could get with even a maxed Rune Point dump for a Rune-Lord. Granted, you gotta stay safe for the couple rounds it takes to cast but, with some of the spells you can throw around you can level whole cities!

Is Form/Set (Fire) the specific issue? Finger of Fire in the RAW is almost exactly the same spell, well the bottom half where it describes hitting people with a controlled substance anyway. You could easily add a Stasis Rune or something and make it exactly Form/Set Fire? What were they accomplishing with their cinematic Hero moments that are currently lacking in RQ:G? As far as I can tell the RQ:G RAW support arbitrarily large spells, depending on resources and time spent preparing a particular spell. Your experienced sorcerer with 210% Form/Set (Fire)/Finger of Fire probably has many points of inscription, which would allow him to do crazy stuff like form/set for practically forever or control huge amounts of Fire tendrils to attack people with. Even just a Free Int of 16-20 allows 2 attacks per tentacle per round and up to 6 tentacles at 1d6 damage or a single Badass tentacle doing 6d6 damage twice a round. That is freaking AWESOME! 3 tentacles attacking twice a round for 3d6 damage is, I would say, probably worth taking a round or two to cast. You can probably kill a whole slew of regular dudes!

Not sure if this should be in the Sillh Ideas thread. Playing some sorcerer-type characters with each of 6 specializing in an Elemental Rune, Summon, and Command techniques. Yeah, we are doing Captain Planet, Rings and all. It works either as an Argrathi Warlock group with Captain Glorantha as wyter. Or an experimental HeroQuesting group out of Loskalm or something. I was just rereading the Summon Sorcer spell and it is absolutely bonkers. Combine it with lots of research and prep and almost anything is possible. You could even have the Players roll a second set of dudes as their bondsmen/henchman or whatever and go troupe style play and bring out the Wizards when stuff gets real bonkers.

See, I would disagree. There is plenty of lore establishing that sorcerers with proper preperation can do things that are nigh on unimaginable, literally splitting the world maybe? Just look at how a sorcerer interacts with spirits using the RAW. With proper application of knowledge gathering spells you can harness a spirit that is WAY too strong for any regular Rune-Lord or non-Blueface Shaman to do much about other than flee. Summon (species) ...If the spell succeeds, the result depends on whether the caster knows the true name of the entity (typically by having successfully summoned that specific entity before, or using sorcery like Identify Otherworld Entity, or consulting old sorcerous records that might list the true name of some entities). If the caster knows the true name, the entity appears and obeys the caster for the duration of the spell... No one else has anything NEAR that OP. You could have a pet fireberg for years! Several of them! Why research and collect a whole family of a type of element! In the lore genealogy is really important to sorcerous powers. A properly prepared sorcerer is the only PC I can imagine capable of Directly Confronting something like Granny Keeneyes and winning. Without McGuffins or plot hooks or anything. Just use some spells and learns some stuff and boom 200 POW mega-ghostygoo. Sorry, my Munchkin might be showing.

In our campaign my LM Sage was allowed to incrementally increase his spell inscriptions. By the end of year 8 he had Boon of KT +several points of duration, Enhance INT +several points of duration. He could buff his INT by 3 for a year and could buff it by something like 5 or 6 for "ritual" casting. Everyone in the party had +3d6 damage on everything for a year duration minimum, with enough MP storages/spirits to make sur even ammo was covered. In an emergency he could throw up a +5/6d6 Boon of KT for like 40 minutes or something.

I played a Lhankor Mhy Philosopher with our best interpretation of the RAW for 8 or so game years. While I would agree with the sentiment that the RAW don't do enough to show what makes the heart of Malkioni lands work, they do work wonderfully well for the Philosopher/Sage/Librarian. As fasr as I understand that is the current intention with what has been printed so far. With only Boon of Kargan Tor as his offensive spell he was still relatively capable in a fight. Buffing everyone in the party with +2d6 damage on any/all weapons forever is really freaking awesome. He could also turn his quarterstaff into a freakin lightsaber if he needed to, it did take a bit to get it running but, it is real dramatic when the librarian suddenly sends the hulking monster flying with an extra 5d6 damage on each swing. I too wish to bring my Hrestoli from RQ3 days back to life in RQG but, they will hopefully get there eventually. I have an inkling there are much more "Awesome" magics in Sorcery than anything you can do outside a HeroQuest with other magics. I dunno if it is an oversight or what but, there has been plenty of chat on this forum about how bonkers broke Moonfire is. I would just make up a mega awesome 4 rune spell.

I think this is the secret of How Stormbull Kicks Butts. Berserkers go in and wreck stuff til they fall over twitching, then Chalana Arroy strolls over and puts all his parts back on! She's even got a couple minutes to figure out which parts go where!