womble

I believe the confusion arises from the quoted example where the 'skill over 100' used is Sword. They should have used a skill which will more often be unopposed, like First Aid. Sword will most likely be opposed in general usage, so the example with the Kopis is germane and clarifies things.

My emphasis. And that's the problem. If grappling was that useful, people wouldn't bother with weapons, just good armour. 'Weapon damage' against 'mostly plate' is only rarely going to damage the grappler enough to prevent the grapple going home (unless it's a great weapon, and some of those are the 'easiest' to try and get around, so that doesn't jive either). I can guarantee, that if you're closing to grapple me and I've an arm-length sword and space to step, you will be scrabbling at the sharp edges of my sword, unless you're very good indeed or have caught me entirely by surprise. Stop hits are called that for a reason. Or you'll be eating the rim of my shield. My choice. And if I do overcommit, miss and you grab me as I attack, I know about a dozen ways of applying the edge of my blade while throwing you so that you land in two bits (most Aikido throws can be executed while holding a katana and having your arms grabbed; the geometry means the blade will cut the uke). Weapon damage from a grapple. Cool, huh? But difficult to put into rules.

Just because I've been open-minded doesn't mean I have much in the way of doubt how I'd run it. My instinct (read "opinion formed from having read things, but without conscious recall of the precise reasons why") was always that Occupation and Cult will stack unless it expressly says they don't. Any 'reasoning' is just myself making sure I understand where that understanding developed from and walking the reader through my train of thought in case they hadn't read something relevant.

Somewhat unfair on the weapon masters: you almost never 'swing a weapon and hope it hits something'. Even the successive blows of a combination are aimed at putative locations. Sure, relative motion might mean a strike makes contact somewhere other than the initial aim point, but that's as true for a grapple. The 12s round of RQ combat is necessarily abstracted, and the abstraction has to apply to empty hand efforts as well as armed. Which is the crux of the problem with simulating grapples (or even some real close quarters unarmed strikes) in weapon-focused semi-abstract attempts at simulation of melee like the RQ effort: there's little or no consideration of Mai-ai (fighting distance): you're either in melee range or not. Which isn't a condemnation at all of the rule system: simulating melee distances from pike to headbut with all the nuances between would add a level of detail that would be unwelcome to many/most gamers. The compromises inherent in the system just make 'satisfying' resolution of unarmed attacks (particularly grapples) difficult, and the abstraction level needs to be taken into consideration. How do you decide when a grapple is at "close range" in your house mods to the D100/hitloc/SR system? Getting past the weapon of your opponent is a perennial problem for grapplers that should, perhaps, not lightly be dismissed. But is emphasised more in some arts than others (Krav Maga has a strong focus on weapons retention; Aikido teaches weapon taking and how to dispose of opponents trying to take your weapon off you; graeco-Roman wrestling and boxing don't address the question at all, generally). Maybe the "Martial Arts" skill comes in there somewhere. In the end, the RQ ruleset, at least when it's set in Dragon Pass, is rightly focused on swords and sorcery, rather than brawling, so the scantiness of the treatment of empty hand technique shouldn't be very much of a problem.

In the end, it's your game. If the L-M sorc would be a limelight-hogging monster, stealing the show and making everyone else irrelevant with their extra bits of Sorcery knowledge, then they shouldn't get them. If that's not the case, it's hard to see why they should be 'penalised' by not having their Occupation and Cult stack like everyone else. The 'Cults' stanza in a Profession description is described as "The Cults commonly associated with that Occupation." For example, a Philosopher who doesn't know any offensive Sorcery, or "Tap" could join Chalana Arroy and get Rune Magic. Just because CA isn't one of the Cults mentioned in the Philosopher entry doesn't mean a Philosopher isn't allowed to be an Initiate of the Cult. Going back to the Lhankor Mhy example, it's entirely possible to conceive that the Sorcery mentioned in the L-M Cult entry for Character generation is just that which they are automatically taught, while the Philosopher Occupation's Rune, Technique and Spells represent that which has been learned in the 3 years between coming-of-age and game start at 21y.o. Just because the Occupation step is before the Cult step doesn't mean that all the elements of Philosopher are in place at the point of Initiation into the Cult. Philosopher-occupation L-M Initiates should have more Sorcery than other Sorcery-adept L-M Initiates who've chosen Scribe or Priest (or a less stereotypical occupation for a Knowledge Initiate) as their Occupation. They should also have more Sorcery than Philosophers [from | who've chosen] other Cults.

Traditionally, the general aim at any RPG table has been to avoid the grappling rules at all costs because they're pretty much universally unwieldy and unsatisfying. Unarmed combat is very difficult to simulate because a lot of people (including game developers) have no idea beyond watching WWE on a Saturday morning of what's possible with and involved in grappling for martial effect.

From a native English speaker's point of view, I can see where you might think it it was exclusively singular, but the singular form is often used to refer to a multiplicty of a thing. Consider 'whale watching': the observers do not avert their eyes when two of the magnificent creatures breach at once It's entirely within the grounds of grammatical propriety to say 'God studying' and mean 'Studying the Gods'. Given that there is a monotheistic world view, though, it is... ambiguous (since to the monotheist it would imply the study of the one and only God)

Thanks Dragonsnail. Including for the spoilers. That's the kind of thing I wanted to know (as the GM) without provoking spoilidj for others.

The character generation description doesn't say that. A character with the Scribe or Priest Occupations could elect to learn sorcery in the Cult step of the process, as far as I can tell - "Cultitsts trained in sorcery..." could mean "trained by the Cult" or "trained by another master before entering the Cult. And a LM Philosopher would still be a better Sorceror even if their Sorcery was restricted to that one possibility of Cult knowledge because they get those extra spell skill points. Or if you don't feel the need for that degree of manipulation, you can spare a bit for useful Spirit Magic; if you feel the need later for more Free INT, you can enchant Matrices or just forget the Spirit Magic. It's not like LM have any particular bias against Spirit Magic. You can also look at the Seven Mothers Cult, where there is no offered Sorcery path, though it's one of the Cults that Philosopher defaults to. They get Spirit Magic foisted on them too. Reading the Malkioni and Aeolian Sorceror descriptions on p389, it seems the Malkioni apprentice gets three Runes and two Techniques, and the Aeolian gets two and one. So both of those are better than an L-M if Philosophy as an Occupation doesn't stack with the Cult's teachings. The L-M description on the same page only mentions apprentice scribes who've spent their entire life in the Cult, not anyone who's come to the Cult after learning the basics from somewhere else. I missed the errata thread. Is this something that came up in that which needs clarifying for future revisions? Or are we just comparing our own opinions?

I don't see why they don't stack. A Philosopher who Initiates into another Cult would get additional Spirit Magic, since they're not Cosmologically exclusive, so going into LM seems like a subpar choice. Everyone else's Cult and Occupation stack: a Warrior who joins Humakt gets to pick non-Humakti weapons to improve if they want, or they can double-down on swordsmanship. The Assistant Shaman gets their Second Sight and extra spirit magic in addition to anything learned from their Cult.

... and know 6 spells, I think (3 chosen off the Cult Sorcery list from Cult, 3 chosen without specific restriction, though other facets of the character might preclude certain choices, from Occupation). Seems right to me, just from reading. The Sorcery chapter mentions the Philosopher profession, and everyone else's Occupation skills and benefits stack with their Cult bonuses, so it wouldn't seem fair if Lhankor Mhy Cult knowledge didn't stack with knowledge gained elsewhere. They get +20 to one of the spells they learn as a Philosopher and +10 to the other two, and can add 3 +10s to spells from the Lhankor Mhy list (even if they had learnt them from their Occupation, I would say; they're separate steps in character creation). [Edit] Assuming you're asking about character generation in RQ:G...[/edit]

Without spoilering, can you offer any pointers on to what extent the Red Cow Saga hooks into Argrath's Cycle of Prax/Pavis/Cradle/circumnavigation, or is that background/peripheral to a more parochial/local interest tale of everyday Sartar folk? I'm considering when to set a game, given that it'll be for new-to-Glorantha players and I'm not sure about throwing them straight into full-on Hero Wars, while being happy to go through (another) retelling of the years running up to 'em to give the players chance to bed into the world (we can always blue-book a couple of years if they get settled in quick ) before getting on to the momentous events the new edition is set in.

I think Gottlerner (or Gott Lerner) sounds like it would be an excellent translation. "Learner" isn't that widely used in English, either, being largely reserved for drivers ("trainee" or "student" would be more likely to be used in most didactic scenarios). I think the sense in which 'Learner' is used in 'God Learner' is very active: they went out and learned things for themselves about how Gods and other Metaphysics 'work' in Glorantha. That they then went and applied that learning with some success and disastrous consequences, but are still known as 'Learners' indicates they hadn't finished their journey of discovery, or at least recognised, themselves, that such a journey is never complete. Also, Gottlerner sounds better than Gottforscher... Especially if you consider the vernacular use of 'learn' as a synonym for 'teach', as in, "That'll learn 'em not to do that any more."

Or they could just be in disagreement about where the lines are drawn on the continuum. The difference between a Spirit and a God for one world view might only be small, and the difference between another world view's Gods and Spirits might be equally finely drawn. But the difference between the 'Spirit nearest to ascension to Godhood' for one and the 'God most likely to be mistaken for a Spirit' of another might be rather large.

Sorry. I thought 'strong willed' equated to 'has strong willpower' which is, IMI, POW. I'd disagree about the ease of raising CHA vs other abilities. 'Good, showy' MIs generally come to Rune level characters, if at all, IME. Your heirloom Heal 2 matrix doesn't count. The word 'can' suggests that not every raid or crisis is good for an increase, and, again, the Runemasters probably do most of the leading of those kinds of events which would be significant enough to be eligible for a CHA increase. So you get one for going to Lord via Priest, and the rest has to come from training/teaching, which is time-consuming and/or expensive. Whereas getting the 5 skills and Rune & Passion is pretty much inevitable for an adventurer. Those three lines also illustrate the inherent problem with CHA: it's a horrible mishmash of appearance, reputation and self-confidence that it's difficult to draw consistent mechanics from or extrapolate into metaphysics. At least it's not the dump stat in RQ:G that it is in so many other games, given its role in capping magic known, spirits bound and Rune Points (per Cult).

Isn't willpower mostly POW though? And isn't there a skill (Battle) which CHA doesn't help at all? Personally, I'm inclined to remove the standard CHA requirement (which seems like a hangover from 2Ed where there was no Battle skill to abstract leadership in battle into) and replace it with something specific to each Cult, usually Mastery in Battle, but potentially something else in less 'Group fight-y' Cults that have RL. In any case 'CHA 18' is a pretty arbitrary standard requirement as has been noted elsewhere. If you've got to keep it, I'd make it 'max rolled CHA for the race'. Maxing your Charisma is possibly the hardest of the requirements to meet, for in-game development.