womble

29 minutes ago, RosenMcStern said:

It is true that the cap is an artificial limit, but very high level spirit magic can easily overshadow non-stacking rune magic, and give some players the temptation to go for the one-trick-pony character. For instance, Bladesharp 10 is just too good a spell to have now (you do more extra damage than you would with Truesword on average, you are almost sure to subtract something from your opponent's Parry, and you damage magic creatures). It changes a competent warrior into a killing machine who fears only being outnumbered, so a competitive player may want to do anything to obtain it. Yes, it is not easy to obtain it, but it is worth it.

Personally, I am in favour of the cap, removing it only for particular kinds of characters (shamans, monks, etc.). In Glorantha, where Rune Magic is supposed to be supreme, unlimited spirit magic makes sense only for shamans, IMO. And YGWV.

Learning Bladesharp 10 would be close to a Heroquest in its own right, I feel. It still has soft counters (if it's the first 10 CHA-worth of Spirit Magic you learn, you won't be putting up Countermagic to stop the inevitable Befuddle/Demoralise, and if someone hits you, you may not have the Heal to keep going). I think it's good that it's still worth it, even if hard to get; it would suck to go to all the trouble and time expenditure to get it and find you never cast it.

I certainly agree that high magnitude Spirit Magic is powerful, but so is high magnitude Rune Magic, and there's no reason you can't combine the two anyway... RQG is aiming for hero-level games, so someone swinging Bladesharp-10'ed weapons and casting Heal Body on themselves when they get Thunderbolt-ed should, at some point, IMG become an expected level of moulinex. It's not something a starting character can do, I think, and that's a Good Thing. I think it's important, as a GM, to recognise the downsides of such approaches, too, since both player characters and their antagonists can walk these paths, and as a GM it's good to have an idea of what the PCs can do to stop the NPCs as well as vice versa.

I also disagree that Rune Magic is 'supposed' to be 'supreme'. It certainly has its advantages, at the 'easy-access' end of the scale, but if the worry is Spirit Magic's threat to Rune Magic's supremacy, permitting Shamanic traditions to 'match' or exceed Rune Magic capabilities doesn't really address that worry: Spirit Magic still could be more powerful, just not for 'everyone'. For me, they're each part of an ecosystem, and pursuing one might create an opportunity cost in progressing the other (if you're an Orlanthi hunting for that Shaman who might be able to find you a spirit that you can beat to learn Bladesharp 10, you're probably not ingratiating yourself with your Cult or Community, particularly, for example). And POW only comes along at a certain rate, to restrict the construction of Matrices and Bindings.   

The hard cap was an artificial-seeming limit, which is the sort of thing I'd personally try and avoid and I'm glad they junked. But IMG, getting spells past the approximate rough level of the old RQ2 cap will be difficult (you have to find some[one|spirit] who knows it at that level, and can teach it to you), and its very magnitude will cramp the variety of spell arsenal available. That latter restriction can be sidestepped to a greater or lesser extent with having spirits use their CHA to hold spells for you, but then those spells can be taken away. If you want to blow 11 POW on making a Bladesharp 10 Matrix (with a use restriction) so you don't have to remember it (once you've jumped through the hoops necessary to get a-hold of it), that's also fine, as far as I'm concerned.

3 hours ago, g33k said:

... "running, but carefully" (i.e. in a melee, where you need to slow/detour regularly, etc; or in broken terrain; etc)...

AKA "hustle".

11 hours ago, styopa said:

Sometimes the dice just want you dead.

And then sometimes they want you back alive again! Ain't Glorantha great?! 

Nor are they as convenient and easy to carry safely and deploy to hand as a shortsword is. You (and your neighbouring files) do not want a sharp metal thing flapping around your hip in a belt loop; an axe needs to be in a holder that covers the head, then you have to grasp the head to draw it out, and change your grip to the correct end to use it. Not a trivial set of actions in the press. Even shortswords are best carried on the right hip for when you're going to want to switch to it while in close order formation; reaching across the body is less convenient. Axe-armed shield walls like Saxons and Varangians started out with the axe in hand.

I also treat SR as much more of an 'impulse' system because the whole treatment in RAW is borked, as far as I'm concerned. 

Movement in a combat is very rarely actual running. I've seen it described in some rulesets (possibly even RQ-previous) as 'hustling'. That reflects the 24m/round speed, as far as I'm concerned. Run is twice that. I allow a sprint at 3x and a dash at 4x speed, but with reductions in rate imposed by encumberance. I'm still noodling quite how to hard rule that increased speeds can't be maintained indefinitely. Strength rolls for the fast end of the spectrum, and CON x [small number] to maintain it.

5 hours ago, RosenMcStern said:

Reading all of our blahblah posted here could have changed his POV when replying to that old question, though.

He shouldn't have had a POV that needed changing. He just needed to clarify what the design intent of the rules was meant to be across a broader range of use cases. So we could ignore it or not. That thread is absoultely the worst place to have the line editor change their mind about how the game is supposed to work.

This thread should be (amongst other things) a place for people to spitball alternative approaches to use if we don't like what Jason states is the original rule more clearly and broadly than was done in the published material.

For me, as a 'veteran' of previous D100-y versions of Glorantha, the "filling in the bits that don't work how I like with old ways of doing it" is sufficiently small effort required for me to avail myself of the new concepts that getting additional Chaosium product in the future is pretty much a no-brainer. I accept that there will be things I love, things I can take or leave and things that I'll just discard as retrograde steps.

I still wish they'd grown the combat system rather than engaging in some false nostalgia for a system which got moved past decades ago. I also wish they hadn't copy-pasted bits of rules and elided context without which the included parts of the old rules are incomplete.

On 1/29/2019 at 12:11 AM, Atgxtg said:

Or roll back to an earlier version of RQ (RQ2 or RQ3) where most of these problem don't exist. 

And lose all the good changes? Not for me: hybrid, hybrid, hybrid, is my chant!

9 hours ago, StanTheMan said:

As I've now figured out on a different thread on a different board:

Essentially, MP is used for doing magical things (usually spells), including Rune Magic. Rune Points, however, are ONLY used for Rune Magic, and can only be replenished through Worship activities. To do Rune Magic, you need Rune Points. Without them, you can't do Rune Magic. Which means RPs are a limiter for Rune Magic, since it's harder to get them back. MP is a limiter too, but less of one, since it's easy (natural or quick) to get them back. 

Do I have it, finally?

[Hoping to add clarity:] only some Rune Magic requires the expenditure of MP. Most require the expenditure of only RP. MP is only a limiter for those spells that need MP to increase their effect (like [weapon] Trance or Heal Wound). Casting Dismiss Magic 2 only costs 2 RP, not 2RP and 2MP.

9 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

... (unless there is a joint one for some reason, such as an Ernaldan service for all the Husband Protector Deities, ask your GM nicely).

Tangentially, since both those Cults are Associated Cults of Ernalda, (I consider, them being husband-protectors an' all) you could worship both at pretty much any Ernaldan Worship Ceremony for a d6 RP replenishment.

On 1/29/2019 at 6:44 AM, JohannesH said:

If an adventuring assistant shaman wants to learn new spirit magic spells, what is the procedure? How it could be played? There is no shaman around to do it for them. Can the said assistant shaman then teach the spell to others?

Since shaman learn spirit magic off spirits by beating them in spirit combat, then the assistant shaman just needs to head off into the Spirit World, find an appropriate Spirit and make it 'cry Uncle'. How reckless such an approach may be without an awakened Fetch, and with Assistant Shaman levels of Spirit Combat, Spirit Dance and Spirit Lore, will depend on 'your' Glorantha. But once the Assistant Shaman has found such a spirit, they'll know where to Summon it from to allow others to defeat it and learn its secrets.

IMG, such an Assistant Shaman might (if they were very lucky) succeed at finding the 'teaching' spirit, but they'd have to know the appropriate spells to both summon and control the spirit to make it engage with another character, and the consequences of failure in the spirit combat would be 'as usual'. An Assistant Shaman isn't expected to be performing that function though and it would be fraught with peril every time.

I look at the difference between Religious and Chivalrous status, and think that, in vanilla KAP, Religious (needing 5 at 16+) is quite significantly harder to get than Chivalrous. I feel that setting Chivalrous to 96 from 6 makes it too nearly-as-hard-as-Religious to get. In my head, there should, by the heyday of Arthur's reign, be a fair proportion of Chivalrous knights, even if they don't exactly turn out Christian-Pious (and Paganism would be rare by then). The problem, I guess is that it's not a great leap from one to the other: nearly all Religious PKs will be Chivalrous, and vice versa. Maybe that's as it should be in the PK-context; they're supposed to be among the heroes after all.

Obviously, that doesn't address the problem of 'Glorflation' that giving nearly everyone who already gets +100 (and all the Glory for Traits) another +100 a year can generate... I think addressing that directly (say dropping the Glory bonus to 50, so being both still only gets you 100) might be a better approach. That, and really yanking hard on the levers that players are handing the GM when they push Traits over 15.

29 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

I think most of this kinda stuff stems from the fact that there are several changes between RQG from previous editions, and that combined with text that was often cut& pasted from previous editions, makes sections of the rules somewhat ambiguous.

Sir, you may have a small talent for understatement.

29 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

...rounding...

Which is confused in the rules in numerous places. And the general "round in favour of the player" which would inherently mean different crit/special/fumble chances for PCs and their opponents is frankly ridiculous, untenable and contrary to the ethos of "what's sauce for the goose"...

Frankly we're all better off just deciding how we like the thing to be and letting that be an end of it; attempting to divine the 'correct' interpretation is a futile exercise.

54 minutes ago, creativehum said:

But I'm glad I'm following this thread. Because I'm not sure if I would have noticed the distinction for several sessions of play! (It is, as often is the case in the RQG text, somewhat buried, and requiring interpolation of two or more passages to sort out.)

Note also that we may be drawing false distinctions unintended by the game's authors, who may be using skill and ability interchangeably, and the two of them interchangably with Chance to Hit (or Succeed) in places.

32 minutes ago, PhilHibbs said:

So anti parry happens if ability is over 100, Bladesharp affects attack chance, Sword Trance affects skill. Is there a distinction here, or are they alll the same thing? Does the Sword Trance increase affect anti-parry, but Bladesharp not? I don't think there is meant to be a difference, I think anti-parry happens after all modifiers.

In my lexicon:

Skill = % chance of success without category modifier

Ability = % chance of success with skill and category modifier

Chance to hit/attack chance = % chance of success after all modifiers have been taken into account.

So an Orlanth Adventurous starting character with a +10 Manipulation category modifier who's chosen "Broadsword" as one of their major (25%) personal interest skills would have a Skill of (10 base plus 15 Cultural plus 10 Cult = ) 60%, an Ability of 70%, and a chance to hit of 90% if they cast Bladesharp-4. If they Sword Trance (traded spell, say) by 50%, they get a Skill of 110, Ability 120. If, instead of Sword Trance, they are affected by Morale or Fanaticism, their Chance to hit (sans Bladesharp) goes to 105% but this does not affect the skill level of the character, so they still would not be able to split their attacks. I would always apply multipliers before adders, but to the relevant 'component' of their aggregate "Chance to hit". I don't think there are other spells which say they affect Skill.

But then, I'd agree that anti-parry happens after all modifiers, so I'd change 'Ability' in Kloster's quote to "Chance to hit".

5 minutes ago, Anunnaki said:

Whereas, characters gaining experience tend to be capped at 100%+Category Modifier (then gain only on rolls of 100% or more).

Slight diversion, but perhaps a misapprehension that needs correcting before it spreads...

p415 on Experience rolls:

Quote

To make an experience roll, a player rolls D100...and...adds the appropriate skills category modifier for that ability to the roll...A modified roll over 100 is always a success...

(my emphasis). So, by RAW, even if your skill is approaching 100+[category modifier] you still have [category modifier]% chance of increasing it. If your category modifier is less than 1, you can't increase it past 100+[category modifier] unless you get lucky with the last experience gain roll.

1 minute ago, g33k said:

I think "I win" is actually appropriate; I still don't see this as such a big problem.

You got a high-power Death Lord swordmaster who calls on his God -- the one who owns the Sword that is Death --  to make him even more deadly with the sword.

I ... kinda think that IS an "I win" button (for that sword fight).  I don't really see this as a problem.

 

I'd maybe agree, if it actually needed a "high power Death Lord swordmaster" to pull this off. It can be set up for a full day by a starting Humakti Initiate. Sure, they use (probably nearly) all their MP and all their RP to get 200% greatsword for the day, but that's probably 'efficient' if they're not alone and nobody does anything about the Moulinex, especially if the reduction in parry chances is based on full skill, rather than [chance to hit]-left-at-time-of-parry against multiple attacks.

And it actually doesn't even need to be a Humakti. Spell Trading isn't precluded (and Extending one-use spells is, I think, one of the larger and cleverer uses of Extension), and it applies to all [weapon] Trance casters where the spell works the same.

20 minutes ago, PhilHibbs said:

That's part of your attack skill, not an arbitrary function of whether you happen to have the same SR as the guy next to you.

 

I disagree. I'm effectively holding my attack until my neighbour's SR, or (something you can't do in RQ,  because it's actually not very realistic) hurrying my attack up to go when they do. Or SR are nothing to do with 'real' fighting. If it was to do with my skill, the 'improvement' would apply when I'm one-on-one, which it quite patently does not. In the end, the system we have in RQG is a disappointing kludge of various bits of previous systems which leads to very odd results (which don't gel with the original ethos/intention of the system) when edge-cases are applied, and it's a system which can permit a lot of extremity in the edge cases and in which edge cases can often occur.

The "over 100 reduces opponent's skill" rule is either thoroughly broken in its intent, or broken and limited in its implementation. Strike Ranks per RQG as an 'ordering system' are pretty much divorced from any reality I've seen in the various combat styles I have experience of; the extra detail involved in generating them (compared to simple, bare bones initiative systems like DnD's, which I emphatically do not endorse) is largely wasted fluff that while it has pretensions to realism is no more 'accurate' in that regard.

20 minutes ago, PhilHibbs said:

Flanking bonuses and/or penalties are another thing, and maybe there should be a parry penalty as well as an attack bonus.

Yes, that penalty should be about 100% (as in all of) of your parry chance, down to a net chance of 05%, if you consider RQ to be a 'gritty, realistic' game system, rather than a Wire-fu impossible-things-happen-twice-before-breakfast type system.

I bemoan the [edit: missed] opportunity for some actual game system development to have been done, based on what had gone before, rather than gaffer taping together mismatched elements from different games.

12 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

Isn't that kinda off topic here? I think both of you have some good points on this, but I think it should be a separate thread.

Again off topic, but I will point out that Pendragon does make some modifiers reflective (i.e. +5/-5) and that might work in RQ.

I'd argue that the interaction of combat penalties with high skill percentages is relevant to discussion of the impact of Sword Trance backed up with 10s of MPs... If the Sword Trancer either can't parry (because the attack is from the rear) or has large penalties (for trying to parry multiple attacks in the same split second) the impact of Sword Trance on the defense  side of the equation that seems to resolve to Sword Trance = "I win" would be greatly reduced in some cases.

19 minutes ago, PhilHibbs said:

You can modify what Strike Ranks mean, and introduce a rule to back that up. There is no such rule in RQG, you can attack and parry on the same SR, and if three people are attacking you and you want to parry them all, it makes no difference if they all have the same SR or if they are all different.

If you disagree with me, answer me this. If a line of pairs of people with equal SRs are all attacking each other, or if one side all have SR4 and the other side all have SR5, would a video of the fight look like perfect choreography, a copy-and-pasted loop with arms moving in impeccable unison, a gold-medal Olympic Synchronized Swinging performance? If that is how you envisage Gloranthan combat, then by all means apply penalties for multiple simultaneous parries. If your vision of melee is more of... well, a mêlée, then use the RQG rules as written.

I know that when I'm line fighting, I try and time my attacks with my neighbours, precisely because it's very hard to parry two attacks at once if they're not coming in from the shield side. And I'm not talking '-20' hard, I'm talking 'splitting your skill' hard.

I have been fighting for more than 30 years and I've seen a 'back parry' work maybe twice in that time. Most of the time, if you can't see the attack coming in, you don't even have the opportunity to try.

6 hours ago, Pentallion said:

So as GM you're admitting the spell is broken and will always ban the spell with dismiss.

Are there other rune spells so broken they must be instantly dismissed?

True[weapon], I'd say. Bless Champion.  Control Cult Spirit if there's a large elemental or powerful Spirit in consideration. Invisibility. Flight (if they're high... but not high enough to have opportunity to recast it before they splat).

So, are we reading this right: even though it's the 10th parry (in the same strike rank), and your 300% chance to parry has dropped by 180 points, you're still dropping the attack chance of your opponent by 200 points? I don't think that's what's meant to happen.

I'd be mitigating the nastiness of a big [weapon] Trance under current RAW by restricting parries to the rear, for a start. Additional penalties, probably, because there are all kinds of Wuxia moves to let you parry attacks from behind that wouldn't work IRL, but we're in the realms of wire-fu when Sword Trance gets a-rollin' anyway.

But if you compare the current effective parry skill with the incoming attack skill to determine the reduction of the attack chance, then later parries will not be 'automatically' missing, and the parryng weapon will take damage.

Saying that a spell is broken because clever opponents will neg it every time they see it would make lots of spells 'broken'. And I'm pretty sure some of the application of negatives is being done in the wrong place in the example calcs being offered.

Like it says on p368, it's a consequence of victory. The example text is just trying to be flavourful, or working off an older draft of the rules. It just happens.

"Searing Bolt" could just be the Thunderbolt spell any Thunderous can sac for.

1 hour ago, scott-martin said:

Kyger Litor had to couple with Man Rune for trolls to happen. Where else would Subere get it?

Wouldn't it be Subere coupling with Granpa Mortal to get Kyger Litor (and thence all Uzdom)?