womble

4 hours ago, Darius West said:

Solar Hospitality:

Hopwite! Thwow him to the fwoa!  Vewwy Wuffly!  Know this Owanfi webble, you wiw be maw than wepwimanded foa yoa viowence!

LOL.

8 hours ago, Thyrwyn said:

It is quite possible to be able to read a language you can neither speak nor understand when spoken. This was the point of the Chinese system of writing - it allowed understandable communication across a vast empire even between individuals that shared no spoken language. The meanings of the characters could be taught to anyone, regardless of their spoken language or the sounds of the words, because the characters do not correspond to sounds. 

Even today, you can learn to read and write Latin without having the remotest possibility of understanding a word an actual Roman citizen might have said  

My wife used to work with a guy who can read and write Russian, Hebrew, Greek, and Ancient Greek without being able to speak a lick in any of them. 

There's a huge, huge difference between being able to pronounce the words and knowing what they mean, when it comes to manipulating magical power. I reckon.

Pictographic forms of writing are, to an extent, different, because they do, indeed, convey the meaning directly, and you pronounce a given pictograph differently in different languages. But that just opens a different can of worms: what if the actual sounds matter as well as  the meaning? So you have to have the ability to read the script and speak the language of the writer (and know what that is, if the script is common across many languages).

I can read 'roman' script, but there are languages that twist how that script is pronounced away from how I'd pronounce it with "the Queen's" English as my first language: if I don't know whether something's written in Scots or Irish Gaelic (languages I speak only a single word of at best: 'Cheers!'), I won't know the pronunciation of some of the thorns. Even French (my 'best', FWIW second language), can be read entirely 'wrong' by an English speaker who isn't familiar with the language: the french word for wine: "Vinn" or "van"? And in Latin, is 'v' pronounced as I would, or like a 'w'? As it's a dead language, opinons wary.

Getting new spells from old documents shouldn't be easy. That's part of the challenge of Sorcery: the hunt for and deciphering of occult (as in 'hidden') knowledge.

The Read/Write section has a box on scripts. There's probably material to be used, there.

8 minutes ago, Mugen said:

For such cases, I would require a minimum difference between rolls to have a winner.

Again, the idea is to avoid that draws are more frequent with low skills.

Hrm. If there is a third 'nul' result when neither succeed, why would one failing less hard than the other(s) matter? When 'neither catch it' is a valid result of a contested DEX check, the likelihood that 'it' ends up on the floor (to be subject to a subsequent ground scrabble) should be much higher when they're both/all graceless Klutzes; someone should have to succeed at their 'catch' check to stop 'it' bouncing.

Low skilled contests should often involve neither/none of the contestants achieving their goal. This can lead to memorable comedic moments and is one of the functions of having dice in the game.

18 hours ago, jeffjerwin said:

I suspect that Rune Lords and Rune Priests of Orlanth/Vinga, given how they were described in RQ2, can predict the weather some time in advance.

The cult write up in the Core Rules says they can predict one day in advance what the weather is going to be (Initiates just get to know there's a 'change in the weather' coming at the same timescale).

2 hours ago, Mugen said:

My reasoning here is I don't like the idea that a contest between 2 characters with low skills will result in a draw much more frequently than if those characters had high skill values. If both characters have 25%, you'll have ~50% draws. With 90%, it will be close to 5%.

I'm sure it's possible to find many ways to justify it, but I just don't like it.

I agree, surely, when the contest outcome is a pure binary either/or, but may contests have a third option: neither.

4 hours ago, jeffjerwin said:

Who was Yelm's porter?

http://www.glorantha.com/docs/how-orlanth-met-ernalda/

Says God Gryphon.

It does seem a little odd that INT is necessary for remembering the spells, but is not a factor, in any way, in the ability to successfully cast them...

I can see why DEX was secondary for Magic, in RQ3: you have to be able to do the gestures fluidly and accurately... Maybe POW and CHA primary, DEX and INT secondary? 

37 minutes ago, PhilHibbs said:

 The CHA mechanic was introduced in order to reduce shamanic dependency on INT, as I understand it.

And has the not-inconsiderable side effect (along with Rune Points being capped by CHA) of moving CHA further away from being a 'dump stat'. There's a general shift towards involving CHA "force of personality" in Magic stuff, which makes a bunch of metaphysical sense and also helps with making it a stat that players want to improve.

3 hours ago, Darius West said:

Well, I stand corrected on that point. 

On the other hand, I also can't see how it makes sense as a rule.  It looks like simply re-nerfing Sorcery so it looks more like RQ3, when the whole foundation for the limit, i.e. the use of INT is gone.  Personally I don't think it is a rule I will enforce, considering the boost Shamanism has received from Shamanic Abilities.  I prefer having Sorcerers who can actually be a threat.

I suspect it has indeed been left in there to squish Sorcerers a bit. But not having your own Spirit Magic doesn't have to be a reason not to be a threat. Magic Points available quickly become your bottleneck, once you start inscribing your 'favourite' spell. Given that you'll need all your MP just to keep your longer duration buffs up, not having any Spirit Magic isn't such a big issue.

Couple of notes on your OP:

Literacy: remember it has nothing to do with Languages. It's all about scripts. You have to have a 'good hand', not a good understanding of language. RAW, at least. I'm probably going to combine the language and script elements, as the divorce between the two, when it comes to writing down knowledge of things, is false: you need to know what the scratchings mean, not just the sounds they might make.

I'm not sure how much difference the odd few percent here and there from sympathetic magic makes compared to the IMO essential Ritual Practices boost. Worth remembering if you're actually tactically casting, maybe, but then you have to remember just how long it will take to get your spell off. I don't get the feeling that Sorcerers are meant to be stood there flinging firebolts in a fight, unless it's a really messy, big fight and they've got lots of cover to hunker down behind while they ramp up their spells.

My biggest problem with KAP Passions was the character-killing consequences of failure to succeed at Inspiration. RAW, RQG goes some way to reducing this, by making failure 'just' a mid-sized negative, with fumbles needed to really mess your day up. I'm personally still not comfortable with that level, and have toned down the consequences of failure a bit. The players seem to have grokked that high Passions and Runes have an effect on their Character's character, and are so far playing 'to type' (near breach of Hospitality when someone spoke dismissively of the 80 Loyalty Character's Tribe), and one of the players extremely conscious of potential divided Loyalties coming up.

I'm also expecting to be much more liberal than the RAW says with frequency of Rune and Passion, and especially Skill Augments.

I'm keeping track of my players' skill level separate from their 'skill plus category modifier' (effective). I'd say if the skill level of one 'similar weapon' is more than double the skill level of the other, you can use half the skill level of the better as the base, for everything from training to determining your effective level by adding your modifier to it. You shouldn't be able to 'double dip' the skills category modifier.

7 hours ago, Psullie said:

...Base+Agility Mod+Culture...

Don't weapons use Manipulation rather than Agility?

For my interpretation, the Culture bonus is part of the current Skill level. I also rule that they apply as a blanket add to all the skills in their group. The character isn't going to get much in the way of overwhelming benefit from having those few extra points; they'll almost certainly specialise in one or other to the point where the extras are largely irrelevant.

2 hours ago, Mugen said:

I would add that, in case both characters fail their rolls, the one with the highest roll should also win the contest.

This is something that is done in 4th edition of Warhammer FRP, and a good thing.

That will depend very much on the contest, the format and the environment. Sometimes both failing might mean both have to try again, or just a 'no-contest'.

Because they occur at different times in the damage resolution process. Still, you're saying different bonuses don't stack, which simply isn't true. They stack, just not geometrically: they don't work on each other. They do all work on the original damage value. "Not stacking" means you would only get the benefit of one.

Frankly, if your pre-armour doubles are ruled to combine geometrically, how you treat post-armour damage is going to matter pretty much never.

I don't see the disparity. And I have game prep to do, so I'm not going to wrack my brain about how to explain it. Our Gloranthas will evidently vary. Note that there are very few geometric progressions in the rules.

Taking Yinkin and Odayala as examples, they'd have a couple or three spells that let them change certain aspects of themselves to match their animal halves, and then one spell to 'properly' turn into the beast when combined with the others. If one of those spells were 'sprout wings', I'd be reluctant to let that allone permit them flight: glide, for sure, and augment jumps and such, but once full transformation was effected, sure, "Fly, my pretties!" But the wings would be their arms, not sprouting from their backs as extra limbs; six limbs is for Chaos, dragons and 'EWF origin' beastmen.

4 hours ago, Crel said:

Disruption does a lot of work in these situations too, for a 1pt spell. It's kind of like having a wand of magic missile in D20 games; fire and repeat until the nearly-untouchable bastard stops moving.

And any starting character with access to Multispell and Disruption can fire off a 3d3 shot every round at DEX SR. Demoralise drops the Humakti's chance to hit (by how much depends on your GM's interpretation of what gets halved, when). Dispelling the magics would let the wind out of his sails some: 3 points of Rune Magic Dispel gets rid of the Truesword and the Bladesharp, both. Slow the Humakt, and make it a running fight until some of the magic wears off. Or Befuddle him and leave well alone. Speedarted Heavy Crossbow: which location would you like to stop using, with that 2-hander (I'm assuming roughly RAW stats: with a d6 damage bonus, he'll be lucky to have superhuman HP)?

The Sword Trance trick can't be pulled off every fight, neither can the Inspiration, RAW. If the Humakti elects to preserve all his resources for the 'last fight', he might be at risk of not making it to that last fight. As a ref, I've been verrrry liberal with the MP resources my players have available; this is intended to give them greater stamina, with the potential to chuck the odd situation-changing wad, and allow them to actually use all their lovely tools rather than fretting about not having them available because they burned all their POW's worth of MP in the first fight they got a bit nervous in. Edit: and give them 'permission' to use their non-combat spells, as they'll still have the MP to do that by the time it gets to a fight.

But, even if you're going to the 'one big shot, baseline the rest of the time' model, a party can do something to stop your Humakti's evil reflection scything through them like so much barley, similarly, the NPCs will have to refrain from just going head-to-head with the bloke. Which is probably the best course of action even if he hasn't got his threshing machine rolling.

Certainly, the system starts to break down at 200-plus. When my lot get there, the higher skill will only be reduced by enough to have the matching reduction of the lower skill take the lower skill to 5%. In fact, if at any point their over-100 would take the opposed skill to less than 5 if reduced to 100, the lower will go to 5 and the higher be reduced by the same, leaving the vastly more skillful character with improved (though not full) Special/Crit chances.

Er, both. Like logic would dictate? And like I said in the post you're trying to pick holes in. One doubles the damage before armour, the other doubles what's left after the armour's taken off that first double damage. So the (2 doubled to) 4d8 greatsword rolls (or it rolls 9 and you double it to) 18, add the d4 damage bonus for 3 more, makes 21. Minus a notional 12 points of armour and other protections on the location struck, and you get 9 through, doubled to 18 HP of damage. Easy. And probably dropping the troll.

If your Humakti had 'double damage' as their Geas, that initial hit would be 6d8 (not 8d8) or 2d8 tripled (not quadrupled), under my scheme. So 30 hitting the armour, and 18 gets through doubled to 36 damage to the troll.

1 hour ago, Jeff said:

Sure it does. Each body is its "arm". If you look at Cwim from a distance, it looks like a three limbed thing.

But those 'limbs', from a distance (which truly is the only way you ever want to see them!), seem to operate more like legs (from the description of its means of locomotion) than arms...

ARg. You're right. I read the previous page where it describes "Tom [and Dick and Harry]'s Claw" .

So no, Cwim doesn't fit the Sourcebook description very well at all.

The description of Cwim in the Bestiary gives it 3 arms and 3 claws. So it does 'kinda' have 2 and an extra. Though the hit location table refers to each body having a left and a right arm... So maybe it doesn't. Or maybe "It's Chaos, innit?"

Also, the battle has a lot (like 25% because it's a +5 to a D20 roll unless you're Lunar Tarsh, and the result comes up on a 20+) of the PCs who survive driven mad by Lunar demons, so Cwim was backed up by some serious 'sendings', which might actually have decreased the casualties Cwim inflicted...

I am also interested in what "demon that had many sharp mouths" was "let out of its skin" to do for Broyan and company.

3 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

Seems to me that you're saying they don't stack just because you can, because it is mathematically possible. But when there's a reason you can't, you have to allow it.

Then you're not reading what I wrote because 'not stacking' means you only get the one multiplier: "Two applicable damage multipliers? Sorry bud, only one counts" That's 'not stacking'.

Like anyone needs quadruple damage. Or it should be easy to get.

4 hours ago, Tywyll said:

I'm not saying that that shouldn't still be a risk, but what I'm pointing out (and was pointed out by others above) is that as damage is boosted, because of the way it works in RQ, extra d6 are more swingy the more you add. A character might have 12 or 18 points of armor, but if that soaks an average hit from foes they face, a good damage roll is almost guarenteed to be a serious injury. There seems to be little wiggle room...they laugh it off or they lose a limb. 

How did you address this?

In RQ3 you could, with the application of POW, in the form of Strengthening Enchantments, have locational HP that were proportionate to your protection levels, if you chose (and had enough POW). We've not seen Strengthening and Armouring Enchatments yet in RQG...

8 hours ago, Pentallion said:

As for damage, lopping off PCs limbs can put a lot of tension into a game. Some of our most memorable moments came when the best warrior in the group went down to signal the start of hostilities and the party had an "oh S***!" moment.

Yeah. I 'converted' some DnD characters for a 'shared GM' group once. They were pretty tough, by RQ3 standards with high armour and Damage Restistance (?) Sorcery, so when they got hailed with javelins and one of them went down with one through their leg (and they couldn't heal it without removing the stuck javelin), they were pretty taken aback.

Haven't heard of that one; I'll give it a look while I've got some downtime! While I can agree that getting new players immersed in the dense background of Glorantha is important, I think that could have been done just as well as part of a more "character building", as you describe it previous experience system. The current version, for a number of reasons, feels like it was hashed out on the back of an envelope over lunch. One of the two major disappointments, I think, that I'm finding as I get more of the system internalised.

1 hour ago, Byll said:

Horse-load (disrepectful term for a Grazelander among Heortlings, implying they are indolent or obese)

As well as the extra double meaning for the load horses leave behind them, I'll warrant.

7 hours ago, drablak said:

When did that happen? Sometime in Sea Season?

Early in Fire, I think.