womble

Chase 'em over a waterfall?

Maybe 'Rune Points available to the caster' is an inherent limit. That makes it less shocking. Still, a highly Charismatic Rune Master could have other people contribute most of the POW needed to make a 21pt stackable Matrix. The contributors don't need to know the spell, they just contribute the POW. (p249) Makes distinction between the enchanter (who has to 'have access') and 'others'. Perhaps 'others' would also be required to have access (perhaps even to the Enchantment themselves), but it doesn't seem clear to me that this is the intention and it would make the contribution option significantly less useful, especially if it was only Rune Masters could contribute, due to being required to be able to Enchant the thing on their own, if they'd had enough free POW. You wouldn't necessarily need two Priests with 5 Rune Points to make the Flight5/Extension5; if one Rune Master was making it, they'd just do it sequentially, and thinking about it, I'm not even sure you'd need to Link the two, since Extension has to be cast alongside another spell anyway. A Matrix of Extension 5 would be a good thing for a lot of Rune Masters to make or a temple to make available at the earliest opportunity... I think the fact that there is no limit on the number of enchantments on an item suggests that the Detach Head/Flight/Swallow Matrix is eminently achievable. If your GM was liberal, you could recharge it at an Eurmal or Orlanth shrine because they're associated. Otherwise, you'd have to tour it round an Orlanth temple, a Dismembered Shrine and a Glutton Shrine... As to the complexity of the Worship ceremony, would it have to be any more than a successful normal Worship? I don't see any '...getting recharged as if it was a person with Rune Points...' -type language, though that might be a reasonable additional constraint on the Big Ones (though not the Extension 5 Matrices).

Pits. Possibly with stakes. Cliffs and fire.

Ar. It's been a year or two since I read about Divine Matrix creation in v3... But I'm pretty sure that you couldn't have 'anyone with a "spare" point of POW' chuck it into the Enchantment pot in v3; it all had to come from the caster/creator. The ramifications of Divine Matrix Creation might need its own thread: how about the Clan Ernalda Priestess who decides to create a stacked "Bless Pregnancy 72" matrix in her birthing stool. Over the years, she cajoles/begs/persuades/bullies expectant mothers to sacrifice a point of POW into the stool. Eventually (possibly not even that far into the future, if she's a sympathetic midwife and given she's got access to Bless Pregnancy), she closes the enchantment. So any mother from that point could be bespelled to birth veritable Superhumans with most characteristics at species maximum. Worship doesn't have to be done on Holy days; it just takes a day, though refilling matrices does have to be done at a temple, so the frequency with which the stool could be used depends only on the success of Worship ceremonies (which can be boosted by POW sacrifices to be 95% successful) if the Priestess in question has a temple at which to Worship, or at which successful Worship is performed. Maybe 'has access to' for Rune magic should include the consideration of the Rune Master's maximum Rune Points for stackable spells. I don't think, as written, it does. As a Linked spell Shenanigan, consider a matrix of a variable Temporal Spirit Magic of high strength, which someone went out of their way to learn specifically, then forgot the big version once it was made. Then add a linked Extension-5. Every day there's a successful Worship, someone can have that spell cast on them/cast it on themselves for a year...

OMG. I hadn't realised the Divine version allowed you to create self-powering ('return to manufacturer for refill') matrices for Rune Spells. Lawks. Urk. And other expressions of boggle about the ramifications...

A lot of game system design decisions revolve around where you want to draw the line that divides abstraction from simulation. For damage, RQ draws it at the limb/location, for example, with damage variability serving as an abstraction for damage to critical subsystems (tendons, bones, muscles, nerves, organs etc) of the location, and whether it's high or low down on the location being left to 'fiat'. If you want to add 'detail' back into an abstracted level, you probably need a table, and you're looking at Rolemaster... I've played/seen some systems recently that tried to simplify things by having the one roll deal with everything, and they sound great in principle but, IMO, fail and fail quite badly, because the spreading of the information conveyed by the dice over several features (whether a hit landed, how hard it hit and where it hit, say) meant firstly that the detail/fineness of graduation of each element was reduced, and secondly that certain combinations weren't feasible, and unlikely combinations became mandatory (anything that manages to hit at long range is automatically a head shot, for example).

No problem. As I say, I'd been pondering it, partly from the point of view of how the metaphysics could/should affect chargen for the group I'm hoping to get started soon. I think it did throw something interesting up: the contrast in characters produced by cultures with different access to fertility magic is quite startling. It seems to completely overshadow any differences like the DEX/SIZ cultural modifiers for Bison/Impala riders. If, as a Sartarite or Esrolian mother you get a "Popular [high CHA], experienced [15 Rune Points say] 'Midwife'", your kid is going to be running at 13 points over average. Not a feature necessarily commonly available to Lunar Provinces where it's just Seven Mothers, or even the Praxians whose Daka Fal/Eritha worship overshadows the more human-focused Ernalda support of the Sartarite/Esrolian nations. So Sartarites might tend, in general to be bigger, tougher, faster, brighter, stronger and more impressive than your general Nomad who hasn't got 2 grannies with the best interests of their Tribe at heart and the Fertility magic to back it up. The Praxians would have better herds though... It gives an explicit magical support role to the elders of the tribes too, in generating Enchantments with all their 'spare' POW gains. Even if they all run their POW up to 21, there's going to be some sloshing around to make presents for important people, or just general Tribal use.

I'd disagree that classes and levels work in Glorantha, because I don't think classes and levels work very well even in DnD. This is, naturally, a personal opinion based on what hoops I have to jump through to play the characters that I come up with in my head. Which I don't think are particularly outre or outlandish. There are scores of outre and outlandish character concepts that are covered by the myriad splatbooks, but still you have to find how to dovetail different multiclass options together to get exactly what you want. Which is, in some cases, a satisfying problem-solving exercise, but I always come back to "Why did I have to do all that to shoehorn my idea into the mechanics?"

Oh yeah. the book that put numbers on the Gods so you could rock up and kill 'em... Forgot about that one

Verisimilitude/internal consistency/integration with the world. They all act together to make game magic feel more authentic. Even more so when some of the practices described in the 'fluff' (which isn't really fluff in RQ, it's integral to the setting) actually relate to practices thought to be magical by their real world practitioners. Not sure there are many Vancian mages in the weird world out there, or priests who pray for specific spells that can be different every day to suit their expected needs. Glen's point about the gear getting better in DnD too is quite correct. It's built into the rules. A nth level character is assumed to have a certain level of magical panoply, and the Challenge Ratings don't work without that. In 3.5ed, there's even a table to tell you how much that stuff would be worth at standard MI prices. I can't think of a way you can progress in Traveller that isn't open to progression in DnD. Social is handled similarly in both (except that Traveller has a number you can link to it).

Nah. You're wrestling with the dreadful straitjacket. Or you've accepted the fact that you need catalogue after catalogue of straitjackets to find one that's comfy for a particular game.

Heh. That didn't even need the 'A'! What you're describing there was Basic D&D (the expansions for higher levels were 'Master' and something else, my wooly recollection without consulting any oracles tells me), and is where I started too Very quickly moved onto 'proper' (A)D&D though. And then RQ. AD&D was three rule books: Players' Handbook, DMG and Monster Manual, as a 'base', so I think more convoluted (certainly higher page count) than the RQ2 rules.

I've been wondering about the impact of the apparent (relative to the perception of previous versions) impact of readily (again relatively) available Rune Magic. If what you want is lots of POW to sacrifice into Rune Points and Enchantments (mediated by your Wyter, see below), you want to keep your POW low, if that doesn't gimp you in other ways. Your average Farmer doesn't need a POW of more than 11 to function well as a community member, and your Priest with their minimum POW of 18 gets more chances for gain rolls. An average Initiate who hasn't thought much about their development within the Cult (and so has the basic Worship skill) would have their base 20%, +20% for the two MP they have to sac in any Worship Ceremony. 5% for a chicken is not unreasonable for the Big Days. The High Holy Day and Sacred Time rituals get an inherent +40 so we're on 85% for those two. So any Worship Ceremony in a Temple of any size gives a 95% chance (90% if you omit the chicken) which can be pushed to 100% by putting in an additional MP. Initiates get their POW gain rolls if they succeed at Worship at either or both of HHD and ST. So an average Initiate will gain about 1 POW per year. Very quickly they'll hit their max of 11 Rune Points (by the time they're 30). Major cults with lots of Holy Days get more Rune Points back per head, over their entire congregation than smaller cults which only have Seasonal, High and Sacred Time Holy Days. Some consequences I've thought of: Initiates with access to Reproduce can have one child every year if they want. Cultures whose Initiates commonly have access to Bless Pregnancy should have near zero chance of 'Child dies at Childbirth' results because almost every pregnancy will get a Bless Pregnancy cast on it. With Initiation so common and Rune Magic reusable, access to such spells in the relevant culture should be almost universal. If the Grandmother of the family (who's firstly got their full 11 Rune Points and secondly doesn't need to use any of them on their own pregnancies any more) does the Bless Pregnancy, the child would have +9 to spread between their stats when they roll...). With Elders casting Bless Crops, your average farmer's Income roll is going to get a decent bonus (up to +220%!), just if a senior Initiate cast the spell, making the impact of poor years or being raided less significant. The worst Income roll penalty is -60; Your average Farmer might have Farm at 60%. so Bless Crops could be cast at +100 on 6 Hides by your average senior Initiate and they could do that (absent other calls on their Rune Points) a couple of times a season. Access to Heal Body, Heal Wound, Regrow Limb and Restore Health will make the vicissitudes of life significantly less lethal when your average fully grown 30 year old has 11 Rune Points. Because magic in general makes armed conflict more dangerous, the common availability of powerful healing spells and large MP stores (s Once you're past 30 (or a bit older if you've a higher CHA), you still get POW gain rolls even if you can't accumulate Rune Ponts. While you, yourself, as an Initiate, don't get access to Enchantments, often your Wyter might (if the responsible Priest does), and you can both sacrifice the 1pt the caster has to put in to start the enchantment to the Wyter and contribute any others you feel appropriate as can your relatives and friends (though using your Wyter this way might be horribly inefficient if you have to spend Rune Points as well as characteristic POW to increase the strength of the Enchantment, because the Wyter would have to spend double). If your Wyter's representative doesn't have any enchantments, other Priests might, and they may well have a point of spare POW that can start an enchantment, for a suitable donation, or even just because they like you and want to keep their POW at 18 to maximise their chances of getting more POW gains. I can certainly see a custom of 'coming of age' gifts made with quite a lot of POW from the extended family, and possibly even 'birth gifts' for the children of those who can maintain a Noble lifestyle, and therefore have a greatly reduced chance of dying before adulthood. I would envisage the first point past 'base' contributed to be one that restricts the use of the item to just the intended recipient, partly as an OOC way of preventing a deluge of items everyone can use, and justified by a cultural attitude of "It's their present, no one else's." While this is a mechanical look at the process, I don't see why the inhabitants of Glorantha wouldn't have, by now, internalised the way the currents of magic work so that such manipulation of resources is no more unusual than efforts to maintain the functioning of social constructs. Another social consequence is that it actually directly benefits the Initiate to be more pious, because if they have the leisure to sacrifice most of their MP to their God to increase their Worship success chance on a given Worship opportunity, they'll have more Rune Points to spend on casting useful spells. Because magic in general makes armed conflict more dangerous, the common availability of powerful healing spells and large MP stores will make warfare casualties either (almost instantly) lethal or, in the longer term, inconsequential. Either you got cut in half by the True Sword spell, or your mace-broken arm is healed back up and you're ready to go. On the whole, a population having a high proportion of initiates (especially the ones which have a predominance of Ernalda initiates) does, I think, provide significant societal bonuses, because POW gain rolls are commonly available to Initiates, even if they aren't particularly pious with their praying. The supporting nature of most of the points above might also offer some input into the notorious resistance of the Orlanthi persisting even when worship of the Chief God is largely proscribed: Ernalda's powers provide such a strong base that the culture can persist in the face of terrible adversity and persecution, if Ernaldan worship is unconstrained. Also explains why the Windstop is such a pivotal success for the Lunars in their suppression of the Sartarites, since it is the first time their earth priestesses are hamstrung.

Just cos it sells more, doesn't make it better. That it sells more in spite of its cruddy flaws reflects its unique position of being the one everyone (even non-gamers) has heard of because it was first, and the fact that it's "accessible", because it offers a vanilla experience. And there are games that started in 2e or maybe earlier, which have moved with at least some of the versions. Classes and levels are, at the very best, 'training wheels', and, at the worst, dreadful straitjackets that the rest of the rule system's development expends (wastes) 90% of its time trying to undo. Witness: the core concept of the 'prestige class'; the progressive liberalisation of multi-classng rules as official versions are released; the ongoing proliferation of classes each more niche than the next. I haven't actually played 5e, but having read the rules I think there are a few developments that look welcome, maybe even nearly 'inspired' and a whole swath of changes that are, for me, definite turn-offs, compared to 3.5e. It seems to have taken half a step back towards 2nd, which for me, is a backward and unwelcome step.

That is what the ref is for: providing opportunities for all the players to shine. Expecting every player choice to lead to mechanical parity is hoping for a nirvana that cannot be attained.

Game balance is largely illusory in a system like RQG. While i agree that realism is entirely out the window, verisimilitude is extremely important in building a world that engages by being living and breathing. Ernalda's "Rune Lords" come from the Gor Sisters and Orlanth/Vinga. The relationship between the Cults is important. There are no Paladins of Chalana Arroy who've taken up arms against Chaos The Greatest Threat to the World having once been pacifists (not and retained their relationship with CA; if that God condoned violence of any kind the Mythical protection afforded all the Initiates and Healers would just go 'poof'. You only have to look at the starting Occupations to see that 'game balance' isn't something inherent to the core of the system; building a mechanic that works is. The concept that all Cults should be equal opportunity-offerers is alien to Glorantha. If the players care about power levels, they are entirely at liberty to play a character that fits one of the (many and varied) 'Major Gods' and reap some of that 'massive favour'.

I started to think that the difference might be that POW v POW was for "Resistance rolls", where the target is the active roller, but p256 put me right on that. I think the Castback spell (p392) provides evidence that it's a copypasta error from before they decided to make resistance rolls by living beings Pow v Pow. Generic offensive spells have to overcome the POW of the target in the rest of the book. I don't believe that a second resistance roll pitching [an unknown value] against the MP of the target would be mandated by the target of, say, a Disruption spell, also benefiting from being under the effects of a Castback. Dominate (p394) says: (my emphasis) After a very fast read through all the spells (again), I only find Tap Body (p400) referring to For me, the defining factor of (most) Sorcery spells that the target gets a resistance roll against is that the value used to determine the offensive strength for resistance purposes is the strength of the spell, and one of the two references to resistance (by a living being) being based on MP isn't even necessarily referring to a Sorcery spell, suggests that Tap might well be resisted by POW, and it might even be the strength of the spell that's compared to the target's POW, though 'The sorceror must overcome...' could easily be specifically their POW. Did anyone see whether this was mentioned in the big errata thread?

You need yew trunk wood to make longbows. As has been said, it's the contrast of the spring if the sapwood and the dense incompressibility of the heartwood that makes it a naturally bonded 'composite'. By Henry VIII's time (at least) a lot of the yew used for the 'best' longbows was imported from, of all places, the Iberian Peninsula (made sense until Henry decided to divorce the King of Spain's aunt and go all Protestant). Yew is probably even more expensive now because it's slow growing, and probably wasn't replanted 100% when it was cut down to make longbows.

The RAW says you lose the benefits of being a Priest. So your DI procedure would revert back to D100 vs POW+RunePoints rather than vs POW, and their other benefits would lapse. I can't find it now, but I'm sure I remember reading that a Priest who lapses because of a DI POW-related mishap could become 'just' a God Talker until they got their mojo back.

How about a nice round metric 5g...? Is the difference going to matter very often? ("That King's Ransom, paid in Bolgs is going to take 6 carts to shift, not 5...")

I'd read that as asserting that every Rune Lord will have CHA 19 unless they came via being a Rune Priest/God-talker/Shaman already (and therefore had already picked up the +1 for that threshold) . You have to have (RAW) 18 to qualify and you get another on top when you become a Rune Master (Rune Priest, God-talker or Rune Lord). Which would imply that non-human races with stat rolls that can't attain 18 CHA are inherently poor leaders with weak personalities and should, indeed, be prohibited from attaining Rune Lord status. There was discussion in another thread about the "legacy" racial modifier to CHA, and how maybe the poor stat line should be better explained by a -10 bonus than simply rolling fewer dice. Maybe that's not the intent.

And yet the cult description talks about tutelage from literature and people for Runes and Techniques. Page 389: But there are no mentions I have found of how this teaching might work, or whether it's simply required for any learning at all (but then how did the first person to learn the Rune/Technique develop it...? I guess anything is possible via Hero Quest...) I half expect there to be additional information on this at a later date. I'd be inclined to have a look at the relative efficacies of being taught and working it out for yourself for skills, characteristics and other magical traditions and make a call for my table.

I don't see anywhere that the LM cult doesn't teach those Runes; it only says what every Sorcery-trained Initiate is taught as standard and basic. Given the knowledge-seeking nature of the Cult, I'm sure and certain that the 'appropriate book' might be found in an LM temple somewhere, and also that it is entirely possible to 'locate and persuade' a fellow Sage who can teach the 'missing' masteries. The findings of which might make a fair 'prologue' scene for a new character.

Quoting for emphasis. Another way of looking at it is that you don't 'choose' to take [skill-100] off both your and your opponents' attacks; that's just a mechanism to reflect highly skilled opponents relative skillfulness without having to worry too often about 50% rates of special success... Whereas you do make the choice to attack two opponents, thus dividing your attention and skill between them. So you divide first, then if there are any >100 vs >=100 skill oppositions going on, effective skills are modified accordingly. Without going back and checking though, I don't know whether situational bonuses are applied at the beginning or the end; if you're attacking one prone and one standing target, I'd suggest you add the situational bonus after having divided, to find your actual effective skill for the purposes of opposition (because attacking the rear of one target ought not help against the other target who's facing you, for example). So if you have a large situational bonus on one target, and you bias your split so that you've got a higher % attack on them and 50% on the other, you might find your effective skill against the advantageous target goes back up over 100%, and reduces their parry accordingly.

If you split your skill and the split chances are 100% or less, whoever you're attacking doesn't take any penalty. If their parry is >100, you'll be the one at negatives. So you're right, in a one on one combat. If you're facing several foes though, if you know you thoroughly outclass the enemy, or you simply must hit (or even engage) 2 targets before the end of the round for some reason, you may want to attack more than once and strike at two targets in the same round, if you've enough space in the 12 SR. It may help to know that the splitting rule has some historical baggage, in that, for previous versions of the D100-based system, you were only permitted one parry per round with a given weapon/shield, unless you were good enough to split your parry. With the advent of the current system and its cumulative penalties for parries after the first, there will be little chance of it ever being tactically sound to elect to split your skill to parry, so a good chunk of the usefulness of the mechanic is deprecated.