womble

5 hours ago, davecake said:

Being old and wizened (and knowing spells to a high level so you can cast them with ritual preparation, and having a large number of power points in Inscriptions) IS being a master sorcerer. 

At which point any sucker of average intelligence or better (13 for a human, right?) can be a master sorceror. And the only reason they're old is because getting POW gain rolls is slow. But classes of Sorcerors can take a week, if the Government is paying.

Which means at least half of the platoon are able to cast something at substantial effect. When you've got 50 guys working together, and 50 more troopers providing their mojo:

5 hours ago, davecake said:

Yeah, you think you are arguing against me while arguing my point for me. Yes, a platoon or company of troopers who are able to fill up your magic point stores - versus a big crowd of initiates who are individually able to cast good magic. The point being the sorcerers are able to cast a small number of powerful spells - while an equivalent group of theists is likely to have individually weaker magic, but a LOT more of it. 

Isn't supporting your point. Those non-sorcerors can be Theists or Spirit Magicians; they're not casting Sorcery, ever, cos they can't learn a Rune or a Technique. And who cares if every other trooper is 'only' casting one spell at 'considerable' effect? There's 50 of 'em supporting their mates. They're all  immune to something, Castbacking, +2d6 damage, bouncing half the 15-point hits they take and ignoring the target's armour half the time or better.

5 hours ago, davecake said:

Orlanthi culture does though. Imagine spending 5 years learning how to cast Neutralise Air at a decent level because you want to take on those Orlanthi over the hill, and then dying in 5 minutes to the priestesses Earth Elemental. So you go back, get another sorcerer to spend years learning Neutralise Earth to a decent level as well, and the clan Champion Sever Spirits you. So.... you learn Neutralise Death as well and then... get ambushed by trolls. Neutralise <Rune> is an excellent example of why the inflexibility of sorcery goes too far for my taste. 

Only it doesn't work like that: the Earth Elemental just gets shredded by the combined melee damage of the unit before it can really do any damage; maybe it gets to engulf one guy. There aren't many Large Elementals floating about; they're a beyotch to Command. And how many Sever Spirits are we going to see before one of the Castback spells works and drops your Champion stone dead. Or the Champion kills, let's say, half a dozen guys with his full 18CHA of sacced POW; 7 if he's really good, but has then shot his Rune Point bolt, and there are still a bunch of mincing machines coming his way, and he's no Shield or Truesword. We're not talking about one-on-one, or dozen-on-dozen, which is what Orlanthi are 'optimised' for; we're talking about Society-on-Society, if you're going to talk about how Realms can and can't exist under a given metaphysic.

Sure, the wives could've "Bless Champion"ed their hubbies with what protection spells they can mange, but unless you bring the whole Tribe with you, you can't mount an offensive longer than, oo, a week or so, and still have very much magic left for actual defending rather than prolonging the spell. And even with the wives along in tow, they're getting 3-4 points a week back, which means they'll soon not be able to make their Champions' buffs last til next Clayday. That is more magic than they have available. To date, I don't think we have any way of storing Rune Points...

And versus a General with 2-300 in Battle, you just know you're going to get led on until your buffs run out, and then monched. 

The first City-sized polity that can get this model rolling will soon dominate its neighbours and have the root of a pretty unbeatable operational/strategic machine. Sure, it takes some organising, but so does any army.

Just now, Kloster said:

18 on 3D6 is 1/216, so around half a percent, but 36 on dD6+6 is 1/36, i.e. around 3 percent, but with the 3 points to add, you need 9 or better on 2D6, which is 28 percent. More than 1/ of the players wanting to play a sorceror can have the 18 INT, not counting the Fire rune possible bonus.

Oh yeah. Good point re: 2d6+6. So minging about a PC having 20 in either SIZ or INT is even less justifiable.

25 minutes ago, Tindalos said:

Seems so, according to page 45.

If you're from Sartar, your Air Rune gets a bonus, and likewise Fire Rune for Grazelanders.

Doesn't necessarily mean more people have the given Rune as their highest-of-3; that 10% wouldn't make a second-pick Air Rune higher than a 1st-pick... Just means everyone's a bit windy, and the windiest Sartarites are windier than the windiest Grazelanders...

However, looking at the NPC stats so far available, it looks like not everyone gets three Elemental Runes, and 50% is actually a notable score for Form/Power runes; Ifni alone knows what their 'lower' Runes are supposed to be... Total of less-than-100 for the pairs? Is that even possible?

Another thing with Shaman is that you actually get something specific for becoming a Shaman, which you don't, directly, as a Priest, unless you get an Allied Spirit. You get improved Spirit Combat Damage, a couple or so abilities, Second Sight, Discorporation. Specific things you can do directly. Things like having a Fetch are 'potentialities'; mostly they're things that 'can be improved' like saccing for more Rune Points is for a Priest. Priests' benefits are more along the lines of 'opportunities for growth'.

Lots of tables like 'assign n points' character generation systems so players can play the character they want to. 18-going-to-20 for a given stat really won't be out of the ordinary in the wider PC-sphere. In a society, you're looking at half a percent at 18; how the Runes manifest themselves, from a demographic perspective, I have no idea. Do Solar-focused Societies tend to have higher Fire Runes than Storm ones do (and vice versa for the Air Rune)?

I've always wondered what 'funny' tasted like.

26 minutes ago, Psullie said:

these are full Shaman abilities, did your GM allow rolling up a full Shaman?

There aren't many hard and fast rules about becoming a full Shaman from Assistant. Given the PCs are meant to have been doing their current Occupation for the past three years, the 1 year qualification period has passed, and, RAW, it's just about awakening the Fetch which can be as hard or easy as the Ref decides. Though one hurdle is that the Assistant Shaman has to have a way of Discorporating; they don't get to do it out of sheer natural talent until they already have a Fetch. Easy enough to get as a Daka Fal or Waha Initiate though.

Edit: definitely the one of the easiest Rune Masters to hit early, whatever character generation method is used, though Priest from the off is also doable with an 'assign your stats' method.

On 11/29/2018 at 9:43 PM, Atgxtg said:

Yup. It took six months but I think we are in complete agreement about something! 

 

Oh, and characters who earn lots and lots of glory start to have a whole new set of problems some of which they aren't even aware of. In my last campaign the guy with 25,000 Glory and Sword 35 ended up as the group unit Comannder in Battle. He would routinely lose family knight and put the other PKs through the wringer- mostly because he couldn't evaluate the threat level of situations properly anymore. When you have Sword 35 and a +5/-5 most opponents on the battlefield aren't much of a threat. Saxon warrior with 2H @ 22 with the Wotanic bonus who does 9d6 damage? Not a problem! What the player failed to understand was that no one else in his group had a 35 skill and opponents that he could rip right through were mauling the rest of his unit. 

 

Those "Notable" Traits and Passions should be their own pinion for the character too. Opponents with even the measliest political or social nous should be able to manipulate the knight into all sorts of trouble.

We're hitting a sort of inflexion point in our game at the moment, where the second generation knights are filling in their fathers' places in the Eschille, and the last battle did not go so well because we (as a group) expected to do as well as we had been, combined with the fact that we're fighting knights now, and they're harder than Saxons cos they get horses too...

On 11/29/2018 at 2:14 PM, Atgxtg said:

The +3 CON, in fact Attributes in general aren't so much of a problem. It's the traits, because they have the potential to bring in lots of glory. In my last campaign we rolled them randomly per 5th edtion and the Book of Knight & Ladies, and between the cultural and religious modifiers, 6 free points, and the ability to turn one trait into a 16, I very quickly wound up with several knights who qualified for both the religious and chivalrous  bonuses, and were racking up over 300 glory a year. Combined with adventuring,they were earing a glory point every other year. 

And that opened up the door to rapidly bringing skills up over 20, which in turn helped to increase their glory per year.

Having 15 in several combat skills ins't a problem, it that by starting that high PKS can quickly and easily get up past 20. I had a PK riding around with something like a 34 sword skill! He started with a 15, worked it up to 20 (which is quite sensible for a knight to do) and then put that glory point he was getting every other year into it for awhile. He also got very lucky and rolled a string of 20s for improvement (it got to the point where everyone at the table would stop and watch when he rolled to improve Sword). 

In previous editions PKs didn't start off quite so skilled, or with as many trait modifiers, nor with a religion that helped so much with the chivalry bonus, so characters netting 300 glory/year from traits were a lot less common, and happened over time. 

 

It's what my character (my second; the first died gloriously at Terrabil) in my current game ended up doing. He gets over 300 annually from Traits, Passions and Religious and we don't even get 100 for Chivalry yet (nobody's going to dish out respect for a concept that isn't really recognised until Arthur is established, is how my GM sees it) though he qualifies. I have gone 'full Passion' and spent all my Glory Points on "Loyalty (Lord)" which is now at 30... Was the most Glorious Knight and got to Knight Arthur at the Tournament. GM thinks he's too overpowered, with three or four other Passions over 16, but I hate to think how vicious he'd've been if I'd put 'em all into Spear Expertise and just kept the Passions sitting at 20 with normal Annual Improvement points: "Can I Passion? Oh goody. Autocrit with spear."

Actually one way Rolemaster did deal with the Death Spiral was to have spells which allowed you to set it aside for a while, for some classes. Spells that cleared off "Stunned, unable to Parry" results and negatives for Concussion hit thresholds having been passed, or set them in abeyance for a shorter or longer time. But, being class-based, those weren't available to everyone, and they took resources which you may or may not have had left.

I think the absence of the death spiral in any given game is a philosophical design decision, quite often, rather than an omission by negligence. DnD doesn't have such a thing, none of the BRP games have ever had anything but fine-unconscious-dead distinctions, except maybe as optional rules. RM was the first place I found it, I think.

1 minute ago, styopa said:

SO what's the pleasure-mechanic of eating an ice-cream cone?

The exact opposite of the pain-mechanic of not eating one?

It's not often you see GMs hitting players with penalties to skills/Passions/whatever for skipping meals, or bonuses for having just sat down to something special, but I do see people getting on and roleplaying such 'trivia' anyway... On a slightly larger scale being feasted by a Chieftain might push your Loyalty (Clan) up, or your Rep. More social than limbic, I know.

Oh, there's a thing: magic crystals don't often have restrictions on use... makes them more risky vessels to keep a Spirit in as someone with magical sight and the appropriate Control spell can take them off you and set them on you in Spirit Combat (at least), which can be a bit of hindrance if someone else is trying to put pointy things through your bodily corpuscles.

I should probably read the Shaman rules again... that sounds fascinating.

38 minutes ago, HreshtIronBorne said:

Well, my LM with just a total of like 4 POW in inscribed spells has the whole party rolling in +2d6 damage weapons with year long durations, +90 to every Lore skill, he can banish befuddles and demoralizes, and he can locate all sorts of stuff. He hasn't learned any spirit magic but, has acquired a couple matrices thriugh adventuring for a Heal 2 and Befuddle so he can go up in POW. He only has 2 POW storage crystals too, both contain POW 17 spirits. 

Yeah. That's what I'm anticipating out of the Sorceror NPC (I chucked him in for shits and giggles - he's a Sword Sage wannabe) as we go on. It doesn't take much. Lack of opportunity for active seeking of POW gain rolls is the major bottleneck I think I'll see.

46 minutes ago, HreshtIronBorne said:

Some entities have knowledge or abilities which the wielder can use while it is bound within an item. However, many entities are not very effective when so trapped and must be released to be useful (e.g., wraiths, healing spirits, elementals, etc.). Without the use of a control spell, an entity can be released from an item to perform one function, and then it is free. If a control spell is used before the entity is released, then it can be commanded to perform many actions and return to the binding item. Control spells automatically work against creatures while they are bound in items.
Also, a control spell supersedes the innate control held over an entity bound into an item. An enchanter who does not use conditions (see below) to restrict the use of their items may find their bound entities stolen or turned against them by crafty opponents using the proper control spells. Anyone that can use the item can also cast spells on the entity trapped inside: they do not need to be in physical contact with the item to affect the entity with spells, although they must use magical means of seeing (such as Pierce Veil, Second Sight, or Soul Sight) to target spells against a bound entity in this way.

No need to reduce anything's MP if you are patient and cast your control spells. 

That was exactly my point: the Control needs to be cast before you let it out, not, as Psullie said a couple of posts previously: release then control. I was pointing out that not only doesn't the Control not automatically work if you've released the Spirit, but for Control(Entity), it takes potentially many rounds of Spirit Combat to bring a now-useless (cos it has 0MP) Spirit back under control, unless you just want to have it clear off after it's done its work.

We've been through this in this thread, and Psullie misspoke himself; I was helping him say what he meant to in the first place.

1 hour ago, styopa said:

An endemic problem to rpg games generally is that there are no pleasure/pain mechanics...there's no mechanical "reward" for having a pleasant beer with friends, though I think we'd all agree it's something we'd definitely seek to do in the real world. 

Ticks on your Loyalty([group you're drinking with]).

1 hour ago, styopa said:

Likewise, and more relevant here, there is no pain in RQ...nobody really cares about injury except insofar as it pushes them incrementally closer to losing function in that limb.  It's a HUGE omission in rpgs that afaik nobody's ever satisfactorily solved.  As long as someone heals the hp, we are like lepers, insensate to harm until actual function fails...

The problem with implementing an incremental detriment for sub-incapacitating damage (and lots of games have done that, notably Rolemaster) is that it tends to lead to a "spiral of death" whereby the first hit effectively decides the contest, because the person hit first will be at a disadvantage for the rest of it. Apparently, people don't like playing that kind of game, or that's what's been asserted by some games designers when I've seen it pop up in discussion before. Me, I don't mind. Some of my favourite memories of Rolemaster have come from "Rocky-style" moments of getting back up off the floor at 70 penalty, and somehow winning. Or just plain surviving long enough (as the Big Bad hammered my character into the ground like a nail) for the Long and Silent Stride Ranger to fillet the Troll.

It does mean more bookkeeping and probably slows the game down a bit.

Not sure how you solve the 'death spiral' effect. But then I'm not sure it needs solving; someone shanks your leg, you're going to be slower getting out the way of the next prod from that spear, even if they didn't cripple it. A 'gritty' game like RQ should have room for that sort of tension.

Most Spirits have more POW than the capacity of a crystal. Even a measly 5pt Crystal can hold that 5d6+12 monster you somehow managed to beat down because Spirit Screen and rolling a crit or two...

I'm pretty sure there's a limit of one Spirit per Binding, whether that's a Binding Enchatment or a Binding Crystal. It might even be explicitly stated somewhere, but I get a feeling it's clearly implied throughout.

16 minutes ago, Darius West said:

How is pointing out a fact that nobody is addressing "going around in circles"?  That is just rude.  You just have a fixed idea that things have to be a certain way, and aren't ready to consider the possibility that there is a case to be heard against an arbitrary rule that is based on a long standing prejudice that in its turn is subtly damaging the world by making elements of its history implausible. 

Only it does nothing of the sort. Sorcery can be extremely powerful. It has also never existed in a vacuum. As has been said before in this thread, the societies where the higher-ups are Sorcerors have lower-downs who have both Rune and Spirit Magic. So the trivial stuff can get done with the easy Spirit Magic, leaving the top nobs to work on ending the world by accident.

The cosmological incompatibility of Spirit Magic and Sorcery in the canon setting has been laid out, and you're ascribing results to that which suit your own prejudices. If you don't want to consider that your assumptions about the consequences of the incompatibility might be overstating the case, that's fine: YGMV, but to require the world to change to suit your viewpoint over that of the caretakers is pushing it a little.

You call it an arbitrary rule: is that just because the default setting as-published for RQ3 where Sorcery was first trailed under the noses of starting players was non-Gloranthan? Are you assuming that the only reason for the incompatibility then was for game-balance? I do not know that to be the case. Perhaps it is. Perhaps there's someone who was 'there' at the creation of RQ3 before it went off-Glorantha who can say whether the incompatibility is Gloranthan or Avalon Hillian.

To avoid droning on: it seems to me that your disastisfaction stems from the fact that you believe that Sorcery and Spirit Magic being incompatible would preclude some of the major achievements of Sorcery-based societies: I believe the game designers disagree, and personally, you're going to have to say something new to convince me, let alone them, that it's sufficient impediment for a Society at a Geopolitical level to not be able to do what it has been said to have done.

11 minutes ago, Darius West said:

Spirits are also great for filling up your MP crystal collection (as you develop one).  IDK if this is still a thing, but you could bind spirits into your crystals, and use them to fill the crystals instead of drawing on your own MP.  Thus an 11MP spirit in an 8MP crystal would fill the crystal if it was empty, leaving the spirit with 3MP and it would get the remaining 8 points back over the intervening hours.  In the meantime, you had the 8MP to draw upon and more from the Spirit if you needed it.

It's still a thing. Mentioned in that telling paragraph on p366:

"...Spirits may be bound into a magic crystal...The binder of a spirit can use any spirit magic the spirit possesses and the magic points of the spirit to fuel spells."

No shilly-shallying about with having the spirit fill the crystal and having its own MPs. With a crystal, it's like a binding enchantment, you just get the option to store your own MP in it, if you don't happen to have a Spirit to bind into it just yet.

The thing with Sorcery is that it's the 'long game'. There are no 'caps', like you have for Rune Magic, or Spirit Magic. POW keeps coming to those who 'act' and there's always something you can do with that POW to make your Sorcery more powerful. There are only so many spirits you can Bind, Rune Points you can stash away. There is a limit to how many stored MP you can usefully use with Spirit Magic and Rune Spells (even if that limit is how fast you can refill the stores).

This might mean that 'adventurers', especially starting ones, find Sorcery a bit pointless, because it is, obviously, weaker in the short term and tactical time frame.

2 hours ago, Psullie said:

Yes, that would be the safer option. As it takes a round to impart the commands to the entity, you would do that then release. 

Is there not also the consideration that once it's out you need to first, engage it in Spirit Combat, and second reduce it to 0 POW before you can tell it to do anything?

1 minute ago, Kloster said:

What I have always understood is that the 'automatic working spell' is only for the spirit/elemental/entity that is WITHIN the binding enchantment. If you order it to exit to perform a task, then the control spell follows the normal rule.

Kloster

That's what I understood, too, from p260

"Control spells automatically work against creatures while they are bound in items." (my emphasis)

If it said "...bound to...", I'd see Psullie's sequence of events working, but I think it may have just been a slip of the keyboard, which is why I was checking what he meant. It may be that the rules mean to put more emphasis on 'bound' and less on 'in', and the state of 'bound' may persist once the critter is out in the world again, until it has fulfilled its required single command. In this case, I don't much mind either way. There's a certain aesthetic preference for the Spirit manifesting out of its prison and being told 'out in the real world' what to do, rather than the more humdrum 'doing it all inside the belt buckle (or whatever the enchanted item is)'.

2 hours ago, Psullie said:

Yes, only the binder (the one that spent the POW and cast the Enchantment spell) gets the MP bonus and cast spells.

I'd count the binder as 'the one that put the spirit into the binding', for the purposes of my Glorantha. That way the restriction works for crystals too, which do not have a 'maker'.

2 hours ago, Psullie said:

Alternatively he could release it, cast Command (entity) which is automatic, and ask it to cast the spell.

Just to be picky, and only because we're trying to sort out how this work, shouldn't that be cast the Command(Entity) first, because it's only automatic while the entity is in the binding? Or does 'bound' as a state apply until the spirit has performed its one required task upon release?

3 minutes ago, Kloster said:

Yes, but as it can not perceive the world outside the binding, most of the spells can't be cast (RQG p249).It needs either magic to perceive the world (RQG p249) or cast it's spells on the binding owner (my understanding).

Kloster

That's not what it says. It says "...the binder...can use..." Which doesn't necessarily imply that it's the spirit that's doing the casting. The section on Allied spirits also says:

"They can use each other’s magical abilities, including spell knowledge, magic points, and Rune points."

Again, 'use'. You may be right, and you're certainly right that the spirit itself can't (be commanded to) cast most of its spells from within the Binding, but I'd lean towards the 'user can cast spells the spirit knows' interpretation, because the language admits it as a possibility, and it's how it used to work, with no indication that there's meant to be a change. The section about spirits being unable to cast out of Bindings makes no mention of MP-sucking, either; combining the two on p366 reinforces the 'can use' interpretation in my mind.

Wish it was clearer though. Like so many things. Sometimes they're dead pernickity with their terms and other times they just breeze on by using vagueness.