Austin

It's a good question. Again as you said, it'll ultimately be up to the GM, but I would consider the spirits of Orlanthi or Storm Tribe heroes from the God Time to be connected to the Air rune in a similar way, if @Kolati's GM is looking to expand the list. So entities like warriors who fought alongside King Vingkot, maybe. IMHO feel it would be "fair" to ask for the +20% interaction with air elementals.

Neutralize (Rune) and Neutralize Spirit Magic both resist against incoming spells. Incoming spell's strength v. the Neutralize's strength. Neutralize Magic, however, does not; it just cancels a spell for the duration. Both Solace of the Logical Mind and Logical Clarity provide immunity to varieties of mental confusion, Befuddle, enthrallment, etc which might count. Each also cost the subject access to their Passions.

That's another good point. I find all the differences in special damage type frustrating. My group has just played double damage for ages to simplify.

An element that gets missed a lot, IMHO, is that while d100 systems have this initial conceptual simplicity in "Just roll under your number!" there's some hidden math involved with specials and crits. Some players, you roll a 17 and the math for "wait, is that a special?" takes a few extra moments. Or you roll a 98/99 and the GM has to go "hang on a minute, that might be a fumble..." Whereas with D&D, you can see a crit or fumble clearly on rolls of 20 or 1, and the standard "I beat him with my sword" roll is usually just d20+number. Report it to the DM and then hopefully roll damage. I've encountered this a fair amount with both less experienced players and with less math-inclined players, and it absolutely can bog down the game at times.

The first sentence reads "For the duration of the spell, crimson fire falls from the sky in a 5-meter radius, doing damage to a random hit location, ..." My initial reading of this was you finish the spell, and then for the duration it deals its damage each round within that radius. It's important to note that the spell is Active, so while a shot to the leg from your own Moonfire might not kill you, it could make you lose concentration on the spell if you fail that INTx3 roll. From a balance perspective I like the notion of "take damage one time while you're in the area" but I don't see "realistically" how that works, nor do I feel that's the most accurate reading of the text. Further, that "for the duration" clause makes me think that the spell's effect happens once you finish casting, not at the end of yet-further duration. I feel this is implicitly supported by the fact that the Temporal tag and levels of duration only increase, rather than decrease, the time needed. Temporal sorcery spell are 10 minutes. Base is 5min. 10min base is RQ3, though I'm not sure the distinction heavily alters the question of how often Moonfire's damage hits.

Ack, I feel dumb. Thanks.

So I've been re-reading over p.382-390 of the Sorcery chapter and I'm trying to figure out how the rules indicate the Magic Rune works. Previously, I thought that it was similar to how the Magic Rune is treated in the descriptions of Rune magic, where the sorcerer could substitute any other Rune when that symbol appeared in the spell description. However, I think that assumption was in error because I'm not finding an actual statement of that in the rules text. Am I missing something? The spells this is relevant for are: Castback, Drain Soul, Magic Point Enchantment, Neutralize Magic, Pierce Veil, and Protective Circle. Page 382 has a sidebar describing the Magic Rune as a Condition Rune, rather than an Element, Power, or Form. This led (leads?) me to believe it was not a Rune which sorcerers could normally master. Although the Malkioni are noted as having mastered the Magic Rune on page 389; I wasn't sure how to understand this, and just sort of hand-waved it away as irrelevant for the time being because the Malkioni and Aeolianism entries seem incomplete for use by players without a good deal of GM improvisation. Now I'm not so sure. Can sorcerers master the Magic Rune in the same sense that they master the Beast or Darkness Runes? Does it have associated Runes? Is mastery of this Rune necessary for casting the above spells? etc. is what's wandering through my head.

Okay yeah, fair. Undeserved hyperbole. But I do feel it removes the necessity for a spectacular starting INT.

Steal Breath until you have MP equal to Free INT+Steal Breath's cost, cast Enhance INT to get more INT, then cast Steal Breath to get more MP and cast Enhance INT to get more INT.

In my considerations, I left these aside as not sharing enough actual information. I read those sections as being more like fluff with passing rules reference, rather than actual play data. For example, it suggests that the Malkioni can master the Magic Rune on p.389, but this is not described elsewhere as a sorcerous Rune. Likewise the nature of Aeolian sorcery is still indistinct because we don't know how it interacts with theistic cults, just that they worship several Lightbringers in some form. As it stands I don't think we should consider Malkioni or Aeolian adventurers because there doesn't seem a good foundation for rock-solid rules munchkinnery. Lunar sorcery has more of a basis--play a Philosopher, master the Moon Rune, be a Seven Mothers cultist and bam, you're a Lunar sorcerer. I presume other, better options will later be published. P.384 "A sorcerer must have a minimum INT of 13 to understand one Rune and one technique." So you can get one of each at species average. Each additional point of INT gives you one more--I suggest focusing on Runes, not techniques, because with Command or Tap you can get all the techniques. I do acknowledge that the nigh-infinite Enhance INT looping is cheesy as hell and moderately bizarre, but I see nothing in the rules apart from time which prevents it. As for time requirements, all you really need is a day or two of downtime to focus on casting, which I believe is generally a reasonable request of a GM in a game where the paradigm is 3 weeks or less of adventuring per season. Snatching a day here and there for personal stuff feels plausible. Choosing Fire/Sky over Moon is definitely a reasonable choice. I would emphasize the extra point of POW more, though, because it lets you get set up earlier. The buy-in on this adventurer has a very high POW cost, and if you can get 16+ points at creation that gives you some breathing space to set up MP batteries, sacrifice for extra RP, and so on. With Enhance INT ramping you only need adequate, not extraordinary, starting INT. Yeah, perceived only by me. As in, no one else can see the air elemental lifting me--but I'm still floating. No one else can see the bridge I'm walking on, or use it, unless they're in magical mental connection with me (which is noted in the spell description although no spells yet exist in RQG [like Mindlink] which develop that connection, thereby restricting this mostly to an allied spirit). Magical connection is noted in the description. Rune illusions are real; with Hallucinate, they're real only for the caster. (And for what it's worth, I know at least three GMs who allow this.) One area which looks decidedly not C&P. I acknowledge that the machinery is new (and cool, IMO, even if I personally dislike Free INT). In my head, my C&P comment was speaking more broadly than sorcery alone; however within sorcery I do think there's a demonstrable amount of reused and repeated concepts, particularly in the spells. Ex. Castback, Tap Body, etc. So I feel that assuming old RQ3 spells and materials coming back in some magic day when Sorcery finally gets published is kind-of safe. As for this potential sociopathic librarian's take on all the sects, factions, traditions, temples, etc. ... FOLLOW THE GOURD! you bunch of sillybillies.

I've used Battle once in my game back in December, basically for the reasons @Zozotroll mentions. The adventurers had just finished defending a village from raiding trolls (got caught up in a feud between two clans) and were invited to go along on the counter-raid. This was going to be our last session for a couple weeks since I was traveling for the upcoming holidays. So I had the adventurers who chose to go each roll Battle for their personal outcome so that we could move on to the next adventure when we started play again. The highlight for me was that the party's herdsman was an accidental war hero. His brother, a Zorak Zoran Warrior with troll friends, was going, so he augmented with Love (family) and reluctantly went along as well. He rolled a crit Battle and it's been a defining character moment since.

Unfortunately, this magic is not present in the new edition. Given the level of copy-paste I presume we'll get something similar when sorcery's actually developed. SO I'VE BEEN READING. And I'd not say I'm certain what the best options are, but at this stage I do have some thoughts. Currently, I'm focusing on what choices seem optimal at adventurer creation and shortly after, since I feel it's unlikely any games have gone long enough to develop high-complexity play--meaning having developed sorcery-using adventurers who've nearly filled out their Rune/Technique choices, learned 10+ spells, and so on, shamans with a large amount of powers, Rune Priests with their CHA full of RP, and have climbed temple hierarchy, etc. I think an Eurmali Philosopher might be the strongest start-of-play combination for a sorcerer. Plus, there's some elements which just tickle the roleplay side of me, and I'd personally enjoy trying out. In all of the ideas and combinations I've considered, the best Rune choices are probably Moon and then Fire/Sky--yes, you want more POW than INT because in these combo-builds you can sacrifice POW for RP, Inscriptions, and most importantly for casting Magic Point Enchantment. For the Eurmal sorcerer, you want Illusion high and the rest of your Runes don't really matter. Additionally, for each adventurer I've contemplated, I think the Philosopher sorcery choices remain the same. There's a lot more variability if you're a Lhankor Mhy initiate, naturally, You get one Rune, one Technique, and three spells. Choosing the Water Rune gets you Fire/Sky and Air as its minor Runes, and choosing the Tap technique gets you all of the techniques implicitly. For spells, the best combination is Enhance INT (Fire/Sky, Summon), Magic Point Enchantment (Magic, Command) and Steal Breath (Air, Tap). This combination allows one to both generate and maintain large amounts of MP, and to refill your large MP stores all you need is 5 MP (4 to cast a double-costed Steal Breath, and one to remain conscious). You do need a reasonably high INT still, but can sort-of operate on the 13-INT minimum to learn one Rune and one Technique, then start boosting with Enhance INT from there. The biggest challenge here is that Steal Breath is an active spell. According to p.247, you can cast other spells while an active spell is up, but you must make an INTx3 roll for the active spell to continue. On my reading, this does mean that you can acquire large amounts of MP with Steal Breath--above what you can store--and then cast a nice fat Enhance INT, and repeat castings of the two spells back and forth until satisfied; occasionally, the Steal Breath will even persist, but you can't count on that. After that, we're looking at what's available courtesy of cult options to abuse massive amounts of MP. The Eurmal Cult's choices are fairly good in this regard; if you expect your POW to remain high-ish after character creation (say, 13-15+?) then Disruption is excellent. Other buffing spells are good, particularly Strength, Protection, and Countermagic (all of which you can get through associated cults). You don't really want your full five points because that will limit your Free INT, and you need to ensure you have enough Free INT to at least start an Enhance INT ramp. For common Rune spells, Eurmal only offers Divination, Extension, and Multispell. The big one here's Multispell. In my eyes, the best use of enormous amounts of MP for a starting adventuring sorcerer probably isn't attempting some big sorcery spell, but rather to sac POW to build up a few points of Extension and Multispell both, then to cast mass buffs quickly and simultaneously, or to shotgun down foes with Disruption. This strategy is horribly expensive MP-wise--but you should have plenty to spare. The real challenge is that if you're sacrificing POW for MP Enchant as well as additional RP, it's quite difficult for a thrown Disruption or mass Befuddle to reliably affect the foe. If you have the POW to pull it off, remember that Multispell'd spirit magic activates on DEX SR + MP in the highest cost spell, not the total MP. So in magical Christmasland where you have Multispell 5, you can Befuddle six guys on DEX SR + 2! Cast Steal Breath after every fight, and be ready for the next round whether you're buffing, debuffing, or blasting. Don't forget you can augment with your high Moon Rune in order to get a bonus to your rolls overcoming enemy POW, or for your casting percentages. Another important flaw in the Eurmal build is that you don't get access to Heal Wound, unlike most cults. The Seven Mothers has a lot of similar utility in these aspects, and better common Rune magic, but as a starting character you have worse spirit magic access (at double cost), I prefer Eurmal in this build over Seven Mothers largely because I think the special Rune magic has greater potential, in addition to the possible cultural issues of following a Lunar cult. The magic which really strikes my eye is Hallucinate. Given the Flight discussion earlier, I figure you can get that effect by casting Hallucinate 1 and save some RP in the process; there's no explicit rules for the strength of illusions, only what SIZ they make up, their MOV rate, and how much damage they deal, so this will require some amount of GM's discretion or interpretation. Additionally, if your GM allows, an Extension'd Invisibility or Reflection is quite strong. But, I'd say that RAW you only get one subcult special Rune spell at adventurer creation. For extra munchkin points, claim the twelve points of Illusion Rune magic you get from Hallucinate are going to one point of Illusory Substance (1 SIZ, about 5kg) and eleven points of Illusory Motion to get an air elemental illusion carrying you around at MOV 11 since STR isn't specified in the spells and 5kg limit seems plenty reasonable for a person-sized volume of air. The advantage of Issaries seems more long-term to me. You have greater access to a variety of magics, but not as many strong combinations for a starting adventurer. Arguably it has access to all of the above spirit magic spells through a combination of associated cults, but the Rune spells feel more specific and less "tight" to me. you can sacrifice for Flight, for instance, and for Analyze Magic, but those both rely on Rune ratings which might not have been notable at character creation. As an adventures-going, hack n' slash type of player, the Eurmal Rune magic choices are a lot more appealing. Also I must confess that a Moon'd, Illusion'd sorcery-wielding Trickster just tickles the hell outta me. I only really found one other possibly-viable method of abusing masses of MP. If it's a sorcery-permitting cult, Argan Argar has the spell Safe, which you can boost with MP, and which only costs 1RP to guard a passage or box. Set it up, blow a bunch of MP, breathe deeply, then go to sleep safe in the knowledge that no one can leave that cave for eight weeks without serious trouble. Obviously things like Sword Trance and Oath are out there, but I avoided multi-adventurer combinations for the time being since Humakt seemed clearly like a no-fun-allowed god who won't let his initiates tinker with sorcery. In combination, you could hand your MP storage to a Humakt worshipper and let them go to town with an insanely high Trance (or any of the other Trance cults). Oh, also worth noting that the Philospher occupation implies the Seven Mothers allows sorcery (surprise surprise) as it's listed as one of the cults. So we can add that to the book-confirmed Lhankor Mhy and Chalana Arroy. Unfortunately it looks like there'll be a change from RQ3's familiars, since they use that to describe spirits bound into animals. But I like your petty distinction-making . Of course, surely a no-fun-allowed god like Orlanth will be awful grouchy if one of his initiates suddenly started having fun... What're his Spirits of Reprisal again?

A bit of copy-catting what I've heard of other people doing, I'll admit. But part of my rationale is that any magic you cause, just sort of stays in place. Maybe another way to think of it is that it's not that the adventurer "loses" magic, but rather that it gets transferred into an effect. MP returning would be a natural process, and I figure natural processes don't go onward in the same way when you're in the Hero planes. But I'm very, very much not an expert. For why that rule's been around awhile concerning heroquests, I suggest asking someone else.

So I've been running the adventure The Spire of Quetzel from Fria Ligan's game Forbidden Lands as an adventure site within the Big Rubble for my RQG game, and it's sort of relevant to this post. I've never done an actual "Follow the myth" heroquest but I've read a little, made up some random crap, and ad-libbed a lot and ended up with a few ideas and abilities which could be interesting. I translated the Spire into basically an artificial Hero plane or Otherworld, created by the mad sorceress Quetzel before her demise. It consists of several sub-regions, each connected by a magic silver door. Within this space, the adventurers are outside the web of Time. Magic does not cease in duration, and magic points do not regenerate. If they stayed there long enough, they'd find that the natural healing rate doesn't occur either. Their assigned goal was to pluck a black gem from the torso of Quetzel's corpse at the "top" of the tower, but they buggered off before getting that far to go do other things. My approach to adapting this adventure was to consider the challenges already present (and add a few), and to make rewards possible depending on if certain events happened. None of them were actually required to "clear" the tower and obtain the black gem, but basically things that the party could tinker and experiment with. Some include: Surviving a almost-surely lethal POT 18 systemic poison, given as a challenge by Quetzel's separated consciousness. In addition to winning the being's trust, the adventurer who dared the challenge would have gained a heroquest gift of +20% on resistance rolls to resist poisons in the future. Additionally, I was considering giving them a CON check (in the same manner as a POW check). The first "floor" of the Spire is a ruined city, haunted by "bent-backed wolves," and ash-colored ghosts which cover their eyes, weeping. In the original, the ghosts of ash can be defeated by FL's procedures or by pulling their hands away from their faces and staring into their empty gaze. The lore is that the city was built by Quetzel mixing the blood of men with the bricks; the "wolves" are descendants of its inhabitants, and the ghosts souls trapped in the crafting. I decided that if the adventurers were brave enough to capture a "wolf" alive and to manhandle a ghost into staring at it, the two would be merged into an Ashen Wolf, once more a complete being though no longer human. The Ashen Wolf has a Loyalty Passion to the adventurer who forced the ghost's vision, and its abilities would be similar to a bound familiar. Each adventurer could attempt this rite once; further attempts might succeed, but would not bind another wolf to the adventurer. Finally, I decided that since this artificial plane was "off the grid," so to say, the spirits of the adventurers could not find the way to the Otherworld. When an adventurer died, their spirit remained, and was visible to the naked eye (but had access only to POW, INT, and CHA). Healing and overcoming CON with POW let them "resurrect." Any MP expended as a spirit caused a direct loss of POW. One of my players, an assistant shaman, was extremely enthused of being a spirit, and since he attempted, I let him basically "act" as a spirit while they carried the corpse around--MOV equal to POW, limited flight, initiating Spirit Combat, attempting possession, etc. When he re-possessed his corpse, I ruled that due to his time as a spirit he gained the Spirit Rune at 3D6% (I'm envisioning this as an odd heroquest gift, but haven't told him that's basically what the ability is). As a Form Rune, the percentiles were reduced from Man and Beast to gain this Rune, so all three have to add up to 100. If his Spirit Rune ever becomes dominant of the three, he immediately becomes a spirit, and disappears from the Middle World. This was in addition to other possible treasures, relics, and lore the adventurers could find within the various regions of the Spire.

However p.275, "In many cults, initiates may not become shamans or sorcerers." Hence my reluctance to assume beyond LM and CA, and almost certainly the traditions-breaking Seven Mothers. Love me some min-maxing munchkinnery, but also want to be as rules-tight as possible, even when my memory and greedy nature gets the better of me.

IIIIIINTERESTING. Gonna go do some math and reading. Any other cults confirmed to have sorcery permissions?

They don't have to occur together. P.315, "With a successful Worship roll during an associated cult's high or seasonal holy day, initiates get 1D6 Rune points restored, and [Rune Masters] get 1D6+1 Rune points replenished." I assume, though, that it's the Worship skill associated with the initiate's own deity. For the "reality" of it, I imagine this would be like playing LM's role in a reenactment of the Lightbringer's Quest on Orlanth's holy day. Though I guess with that understanding you could only act one role, and get one cult's RP back. Still, it really emphasizes how strong a player choice it is to join a cult with many associated cults. Cults like Orlanth & Ernalda have many more opportunities to refill RP than smaller/less affiliated cults like Odayla or Humakt.

Munchkin follow-up: Can you get back RP for two cults in one worship service, if you're a member of one cult, and of one of its associate cults? Ex an initiate of Lhankor Mhy and Orlanth worshipping Orlanth on a seasonal holy day succeeds on his Worship (Orlanth) roll, and gets 2D6 Orlanth RP back. He succeeds at his Worship (Lhankor Mhy) roll as well, and gains 1D6 Lhankor Mhy RP back as well.

Is it really that easy to just up and initiate into an extra cult? I've not gotten that impression from the rulebook except in very specific cases, like Yinkin initiates joining Orlanth. If joining a second cult is that simple, that opens up all sorts of shenanigans I've been disregarding!

Is it reasonable to assume an initiate of Issaries could be a sorcerer? Because they get Flight through Orlanth Adventurous as an associated cult, thus getting a flying sorcerer on the current rules. Otherwise, best bet is to tame a critter or to use an air elemental (which still isn't a bad idea, as that has a variety of applications and you'll want either the Air Rune, or the Water or Darkness Runes in order to learn Steal Breath anyway).

Sorcery sort of constructs spells from Runes (in Glorantha "sorcery" means something close to "wizardry" in D&D btw), but the system is explicitly incomplete. I'd expect the basic premises to remain in the future. However, pretty much every character has "Rune" magic, which comes from the cult of the god they worship. Each god has two or three major Runes, and certain spells known by the cult. To cast a Rune spell, your percentage is equal to your rating in the Rune needed. So for most adventurers the concept is that the magic is more... "out there in the world" than "constructed," and through acting like your god you can channel their power. There's a reason some folks say that every RQ character is a cleric/paladin in D&D terms.

Because I'm an egregious munchkin and don't want to waste time/MP/Runes & Technique choices learning Flight. ... Also because apparently there is no sorcerous Flight spell yet. Hrm.

IIRC this is fixed in the print edition. Finished reading through it a few days ago.

Perhaps it's relevant to ask if an animal would be aware it resisted a Dominate (Animal) spell? Would it just be like "whuh?" and do nothing, or would it get aggressive against creatures nearby? How would an animal react to getting spirit attacked?

Which unfortunately goes counter to the initial argument, that higher Spell Strength means Countermagic maintenance isn't necessary. Although it'll probably still have more Strength than Control (Entity)'s pitiful 1. As for tap, I don't think we have a spell to tap POW yet, just SIZ and Air IIRC. Yeah? Well, in the shaman route I can do drugs to find my dino--and we all know winners do the drugs, right? *angsty shaman noises* (Just joking, of course. )