womble

I read it differently: when it says the SIZ of the elemental doesn't add to the mass of the binding item, I took that to mean that the element still had to be present. It also conveniently sidesteps the conundrum Pentallion has posed, which is, IMO, a Good Thing. But it really isn't very clear. IMG, no. And no. The Summon spells require "...at least some reasonable amount of that element...". Ignite a small bundle of sticks or leaves, and your Salamander can appear focused on that. A match or candle flame isn't enough.

By the same token, if it's as obvious as the Salamander-spear trick would be if elementals didn't need some quantity of their element present to manifest, it'd be standard practice. There's a reason why it isn't.

Your spear shaft would have to be made of something pretty special to avoid becoming frangible charcoal in the socket of the head, and breaking off as soon as it struck anything with even small force. Firespear (another Lodrili spell) is meant to be cast on fighting weapons, is Rune Magic and could be Extended to year-long duration (followed by a short downtime before it gets recast, and the spear shaft wouldn't suffer, because the effect is 'designed' that way. Repurposing a Heat Metal as an ersatz Boon of Kargan Tor should take a similar investment in time, sacced POW and MP.

It'd need another point for the Condition on the Command Cult Spirit to cast it on the Elemental just before it's released. And the wielder would need to have the two Rune Points to power the spell, since the Matrix doesn't do that, as far as I've read, RAW. And it wouldn't work anyway IMG because the Elemental needs a volume of fire available to manifest within; the consequences of 'released-from-a-binding' Elementals not needing some of their element available to manifest in/around would be awkward and beyond the intentions of the game, I feel. Which would be to clear off, sharpish, back to some more fiery place. Or just go around setting light to anything flammable. And unless some Control was cast at the time of release, it'd be a one shot per summon... I think these worries come under the heading of the 'unintended consequences' that allowing the elemental to manifest other than in a (nominal) quantity of their element (and no, being mostly water doesn't make a human body count as water) would draw down upon your Glorantha if you permitted this.

From personal experience, I can attest that SIZ and DEX in combat are vastly over-emphasised in all editions of RQ rules. Skill is the most important factor in who strikes (effectively, which is what an RQ attack roll purports to represent) first. I have fought in knife-fights with a guy a foot taller than me, who played squash really well (indicating decent reflexes and coordination, i.e. DEX), and he couldn't get first hit on me, or even hit me on the way out. I did a lot of knife fighting. I'm rubbish at squash and he beat me seven ways from Sunday at that. He was new to the lines and angles of stabbidj.

It is the 'standard cost' to learn that spell, in 'Lunars' (the standard currency unit). It's mentioned, kinda in passing, on p253:

I read that as Shield being a special exception to the "Countermagic and Protection are incompatible" rule.

Aye, the movement system, RAW, is thoroughly borked. It bears little relationship to reality (either in terms of ground covered or how movement affects what else is going on in a round) and drags the combat system further from simulation and towards abstraction than I'm comfortable with. It requires overmuch interpretation by the GM of how it's supposed to work outside the very narrow confines in which it could be considered to be 'believable'.

I'd agree with that interpretation.

I'd agree that when I played RQ2, we just let Shield stack with whichever of the other two got cast and didn't give any consideration to the countermagic effects working on each other. However, by the same token, we didn't require Heals to be boosted to get past Shield or Countermagic, either, and that's not how it's meant to be in RQG, so our interpretation of RQ2 is very much thrown into question for the purposes of the current version of the rules. Not quite. If the Shield is cast first, and the Spirit Screen or Protection are not sufficient to beat the Countermagic element of the Shield, they'll fizzle. Since neither Spirit Screen nor Protection has any Countermagic effect, you can cast as small a Shield as you like on top of them; it's the other way around when I'd argue you have to take care.

A high enough level to 'stick' on the previously-Shielded target. The standard interaction of Countermagic/Shield and other spells.

"Cumulative" is what it says. You may be correct in your interpretation. In your Glorantha, you pretty much certainly are. However, the language of this version supports an interpretation that means Countermagic is only cumulative if it is cast at a high enough level. I prefer that interpretation, as it is more consistent with other mechanics.

My current reading of the way Spirits in RQG happen (based on Bestiary and Core), I don't think the strength of the spirit has much to do with whether they have a 'focused' knowledge of (one big) spell or not. Bestiary seems to have most Spirits having a CHA-full of spells. I don't think Spirits get to choose their spells much, cos why would they ever pick anything other than Spirit Screen and Dispel Magic (and a few others); it's not like they have any actual use for Bladesharp or Repair... having such spells just makes them targets for getting mugged in Spirit Combat and potentially bound.

It remains arbitrary because there's no particular reason for it to exist; the levels at which it is imposed are figures plucked out of thin air. Why pick 3 over 2 or 4 or 5 as a divisor? To have a max that's consistent with RQ2, 4 is probably a closer fit: the best Humans will be able to learn [variable-spell]-4. Of course, that would be basing a selection on an previously arbitrarily-set criterion. There are better ways of framing 'restrictions'. Simple probability, really. I assume in my Glorantha that Spirits have knowledge of various spells, and the higher the magnitude of the spell, the less likely it is for a spirit to know it. Same as people, really. [variablespell]-2 is going to be fairly common, if it's a useful variable spell. The same spell at 10 isn't. It's probably some Maxwell-Boltzman shape on the frequency curve, with the peak at 3-4.

I agree with Runeblogger, that is a pretty cool idea. Since a giant could cast Protection on themselves for a normal MP cost, the canopy's surface area isn't an impediment... The characters would effectively be able to take advantage of some semi-hard mobile cover. The 'classic' ends of the wagon would be open, the driver would have to be a bit exposed, and the canopy could still end up being shredded by melee attacks, unless that was some mondo Protection...

It's still an arbitrary limit. It just varies. RPGs are basically collections of arbitrary limits: CHA for total memorisable Spirit Magic; CHA for Rune Point Cap, are two contextually relevant ones. Q: "Why isn't the Spirit Magic limit 2xCHA?" A: "Because." It's arbitrary. I see zero need for arbitrary limits in this matter of Spirit Magic maximum variable spell. I'm perfectly happy with setting story-based ones that can be overcome: the overcoming creates story, and taking advantage of the opportunity means an opportunity cost in other aspects of opportunity.

For me, the casting of Second Sight would not be enough to permit perception outside the Binding. It is not the lack of 'sense organs' but the barrier of the Binding, to my mind, which prevents perception. I agree that someone in contact with the binding can have the spell cast on them, but only someone, not something. To have a spirit cast a spell, most of the time, they must be released from the Binding (whether constrained by a Command/Control/Dominate or not). And it is worth stressing, I think, in this context, that any such controlling spell cast on an entity in a Binding will work automatically without the POW v POW roll or need to reduce to 0MP or SpellSTR vs POW roll.

IMG, Shield protects you, or whatever you cast it on. Having it protect your weapon and or shield for all those extra (parrying) AP as well as your own tender bodily particles would be too much of a freebie, IMO. And if the sword isn't protected by the AP, it's not protected by the Countermagic strength either. You can cast it on your weapon and/or shield, but that's extra Rune Points, and you might've preferred to stack those on yourself. Still, Shield can't distinguish between friendly and unfriendly spells, so it would protect the target from buffs such as Strength, Charisma or Catseye, as well as, importantly, Healing spells. If you want to stack Protection, you'd better cast that first, or boost it so it can beat the Countermagic strength of your Shield, and Countermagic pretty much has to be cast second if you're looking to stack that with Shield, and at high enough magnitude or with boosting MP to get past the Shield spell's Countermagic element; if you try and cast Shield on yourself after Countermagic, either the Shield doesn't work, or the Countermagic is blown down, or, worst of all, both of these things occur. But your mount and equipment need protecting separately for all of these spells.

Quite. They'd be rare, which is why not every Shaman knows where to find a spirit with such a high mag single spell for you to attempt to beat in spirit combat. Of course. Absolutely. So the spirit you transfer your Bladesharp 10 to will need CHA 10, but that's not too much of a stretch. The eventual limit will be that you can have 6 or 7 spirits bound (as your CHA starts to get close to hu-Max), so you can theoretically have about 7 or 8 'big' Spirit Magic spells available. If I'm (as is entirely likely) wrong about being able to transfer knowledge of spells, there's a further consequence: since you have to actually have the spirit bound in order to have access to its spell, knowledge of the Big Spell will be further restricted, since the Spirit won't be available for the Shaman that found it for you to summon in order for someone else to learn the spell off it. Aye. IMG, the Big Spirit Spell would be 'suboptimal', and largely unavailable anyway until the party's fairly well-established at Runemaster level, and would need to be actively sought out. I'd say Bladesharp 10 is quite a bit better than Bladesharp 5, as damage is a threshold game, and while you might expect a couple of points of the 5 to actually end up 'cleaving flesh', you'd expect against the same target that 7 would. I also started with RQ2, and I'd disagree that everyone 'just learns the capped value'. They may, eventually, gravitate towards knowing the variables they do know at their capped value, but they start off with lesser variants. And when there aren't any caps, they go past as far as the resources available to them in the world permit and they think their chosen role requires (which latter consideration makes the comments about Healing true whether there are caps or not, with the 'modern' exception, perhaps, of everyone having access to Heal Wound). For me, having natural "story-based" limitations works way better than fixed limits.

There are ways of extending your Spirit Magic cap. You can use the spells that bound Spirits know "...The binder of a spirit can use any spirit magic the spirit possesses and the magic points of the spirit to fuel spells." And I'm struggling to find the reference, but I'm fairly sure you can transfer knowledge of Spirit Magic to a Spirit you have bound, so you can forget it... But that might be a [mis]remembered feature of a different ruleset. Creating matrices is an option for Priests (or people with knowledge of Spirit Magic or Sorcery Enchantments), and the sacrificed POW can be applied either piecemeal, or by contributors other than the caster (I can imagine a Hero Band or set of Huscarls all chipping in a point for a big Matrix that can be passed around).

You could use this as a 'default' level of 'what is commonly available', I guess, for when you don't have a 'view' on what would be available from the readily-accessible temples/wise folk. If you're the type of GM who details all the senior NPCs in the area, you'll already know who can do what for the PCs, but if they have an 'unusual' request, that might possibly serviced from outside the 'detailed' environment, having some sort of guideline for yourself is probably a good plan.

I think that only applies to starting characters, really, and because there aren't many "long-running" games of RQG yet... That, and the 'rules' for HQ abilities haven't been published yet. I certainly expect my players to achieve all those things (if any of them fancy digging into the game enough to try Sorcery, having seen their NPC companion chugging along at 'player' level). I feel that the spectrum of NPCs notionally present in the world (even if the players don't get around to interacting with them so they remain somewhat nebulous) should include the full gamut of power levels. But that doesn't mean the players should have immediate access to those power levels, nor that they should be thrown directly into conflict with NPCs at that sort of level of ability. So there's (probably) a Humakti Sword somewhere in the world who knows enough Bladesharp to take a Theist past Bladesharp 4 with a week's prayer and meditation, but the player characters don't know the Sharp Sword exists, let alone where to find 'em. And they probably ought to know better than to be getting into the sort of contest where having that sort of Bladesharp is 'required' until they've got the tools they need. Just because an NPC has something doesn't mean a PC must have it, but it does mean that, as I see the ethos of the game's design, it ought to be possible for a PC to attain it if they can pay the price and pass the tests.

Aye. But if you consider only the quantity of material/absolute weight of a set of leg armour, it's not twice the mass of an equivalent piece of arm protection, and might even weigh less than similar protection to the abdomen. It feels like/wears you out more because you have to pick it up and move it with every lift of the foot.

Indeed. RQ3 had leg armour weighing in at twice the encumbrance of 'equivalent' arm protection.

My experience tells me I can hit 'run' speed in full armour, carrying a pack. By 'run', I mean the sort of speed I can maintain for a mile when unencumbered. But I can't keep it up any longer than I could maintain a sprint, in sports kit (couple of hundred metre). I can't say with any accuracy how well my 'few paces' speed, in mail, greaves, vambraces and large shield compares to the same in lighter gear, because it's much more difficult to gauge, I'm afraid. I also can't say how much long grass would slow me My experience is by no means universal, though. I'm stocky and on the strong side; I walk, even in full adventuring kit carrying supplies and equipment beyond panoply, faster than 'the rest of the party' including mages in robes and underweight packs (often ending up being told to stay back out of the scouts' way... ). As a passing note, it is my observation that, lacking a declared party order (and someone enforcing it), a group of adventurers will string out according to movement speed in pretty much whatever terrain they're within, and there's a lot more variation in that speed than most rule sets offer.