Lordabdul

My understanding (from previous threads about how shapeshifter magic kinda sucks) was that it's possible these spells are mostly cast at a group by the wyter or some priest figure? Like, the Telmori clan chieftain/wyter casts it on a bunch of warriors on Wildday before heading out for a raid, for instance. It makes the super expensive spells somewhat manageable thanks to the group discount the wyter gets, but of course that doesn't improve anything for PCs and lone Odayla hunters living in the woods.

In Griffin Mountain, that cost was the 1000 L fixed cost (500 L in RQG money) that added up to the spell cost and item value, I think? I learned about this after reading RQG, in which I couldn't really understand why spirit magic was limited by CHA, and how that stat relates to "remembering" and "forgetting" spells (doesn't make much sense!). It was @David Scott who explained the whole thing about effectively stealing bits of spirits and integrating them into your being... which explains the CHA, and explains how you can forget/remember spells (it's not really related to memory, it's about which spirit-bits you have inside yourself, like mini-allied spirits, sort of). I'm kinda sad that this explanation wasn't included in RQG (I don't think it's in RBoM either?), but it sounds like it's still the current explanation behind the scenes. It doesn't change much mechanically speaking though, unless you wanted to play out the whole process of the teacher summoning spirits and defeating them for you and all that jazz...

Hah thanks that's what I thought. I went looking in Rune Fixes 2 but couldn't find it there, it was in the WoD Q&A... (for those looking, you have to get past all the text from Rune Fixes, down to "Why wouldn’t Extension make a Runespell more powerful?"). That's the kind of rules text that should have been included in RBoM in my opinion (e.g. "this adds/doesn't add to the spell's strength"). Heh, I would give the Multispell's 1 RP as a "bonus" to the strength... In my mind it's the rope and elastic band that holds the spells together and make this "bundle" a little bit stronger. I would also treat the entire thing as one big spell that either pierces Countermagic or doesn't (instead of looking at each individual spell, some of them piercing, some of them not... especially since order would matter in that case!).

Agreed on all points yes. And that's RAW actually: the boxed text on healing spells shows that the same spell, mechanically speaking, will manifest differently based on which deity it's coming from... I assume it's the same for spirit spells, depending on which kind of spirit or spirit tradition you got it from. I'm not sure what that means for the discussion at hand though Thanks! I like this kind of actual-play report because it's a good reality check against some possible situation we identify only on paper. Right now it's easy for me to keep all the boosting to a minimum (including NPCs) because the players are low level and don't have many MPs to burn anyway. I may have to relax this when they get stronger. Oooh that sounds fun, we're probably going to get as many different answers as people answering them That's 2 Rune Points, equivalent of 4 MPs. Note that if the Heal Wound was cast by itself, I would treat it as 1 RP strong, regardless of the number of MPs poured into it... I only consider MPs spent specifically for boosting as adding to the spell's "natural" strength (same thing with Sword Trance for example). That's 4 Rune Points, equivalent of 8 MPs. Although it feels like Extension shouldn't count... I would, again, just count the number of points of each spell (including the Multispell itself). So Multispell used to cast two 1-point spells would be 4 MP strong (1 RP + 1 MP + 1 MP). This makes the "bundle of spells" stronger than each part, which makes it possible to pierce a Countermagic in one-go. That makes Multispell more worth the investment because you can boost it with piercing MPs, instead of having to boost each spell separately.

Yes obviously I was talking only about the price of the enchantment, not the object... by Crom, you are nitpicky This concerns the broader issue of "what if we convince/compel someone to sacrifice their POW so we don't have to", whether this 3rd party is a stickpicker, slave, or spirit. I would probably just say "you can't do that" and move on, but if I was feeling mischievous (and that's one fun part of being a GM on occasion), I would look into a combination of: "Corrupted POW": depending on the level of coercion, the resulting enchantment would be less reliable. Penalties to casting the spell from the spell matrix, or equivalent. "Social taboo": if the 3rd party was only convinced (paid, etc.) and not coerced, the word of mouth would eventually spread. We previously compared sacrificing POW to donating blood... what would it look like if a rich guy was paying homeless people to donate blood for his eternal-youth science research or something? Probably not very good once it gets out! AFAIC that lets me handle all the issues raised so far, I think. Where is this in RQ3? I can't find anything relevant.

Some GMs may not even allow it once, because this thread warned them about this potential "abuse"... so I would upvote the thread: it's useful either way. If you're talking about the term "Spirit Magic", it does appear in HQG, and it does appear in the Guide. It is a thing in Glorantha, since it is one of the magic systems identified by the God Learners, and named as such. As with many things, the God Learners simplified reality under an umbrella term, but in the end I don't think it's much more simplified or nonexistent as, say, "Manage Household". There is such a thing as managing a household, even though it involves many varied and complicated things in reality. I wouldn't say that spirit magic is significantly more or less hand-waved/simplified by the game system vs the setting than managing a household is. YRPGWV. Regarding the OP, it's a funny munchkin thing to do, but IMHO it would alert the enemy by virtue of forcing a POW contest on the NPC. I'm not sure it's worth it. I would end up not allowing it. And I don't currently allow defensive boosting -- but that decision is almost entirely out of a need to limit the rampant bookkeeping required by RQG. Sometimes, these questions are more quickly answered by figuring out which option is more fun and which option is more work or trouble.

HQG and RQG Gloranthas are pretty similar, but mine differ quite a lot in some select areas. For instance: Odayla initiates and other hunter/shapeshifting cultures. They have much more power in HQG and can be played with a lot more flavourful animinist magic by virtue of the freeform rules system. The Telmori are scarier in my HQG. Of course, someone playing HQG with the RQ spell list in mind will end up with much more identical Gloranthas. Generally speaking, it sounds like you're the type of GM that has a specific setting/flavour/genre/style in mind, and that will be the game regardless of the game system being used. That's totally fine, and I'm impressed by your ability to not get carried away by mechanics, but that's not me. I tend to pick different game systems for different flavour/genre/styles, and that tends to affect the setting because merely playing in a setting does modify it as players bring their ideas. But anyway, we digress! The 200L was because it's the price of a 1 RP one-use spell, if I remember correctly? It's entirely conjecture and extrapolation that this is what would be the price/POW for an enchanted item. It's a good idea to start from there to come up with a reasonable price, but at best that's the price you'd give the enchanter for the entire transaction. If that enchanter makes you a 4-POW item and, behind the scenes, gives 75% of the money to his assistant because the assistant gave 3 POW, well, he might be good at enchanting but is very bad at business. On the other hand, he probably has a lot of applications for being his assistant. Actually I think I misread the Griffin Mountain text? I'm not sure anymore what the percentages on p184 are for... I think they're for the availability roll, and not the price? In which case, the Bladesharp 4 Broadsword is 50 L + 200 L + 500 L = 750 L. I find it a bit weird (or at least surprising) that the fixed cost part (1000 L in RQ2, 500 L in RQG) outweighs the cost of the enchantment in the vast majority of cases.

I do agree with the other people pointing out that RQ's Glorantha differs from HQ's Glorantha, and they both differ quite a lot from 13AG's Glorantha. On a personal taste note, I prefer it when the PCs "work" the same way as the rest of the world. They may be narratively set aside (being the protagonists of the story) but that's it. Probably a habit coming from CoC where the PCs are "just mundane people" and don't have any mechanical advantage over whatever NPC they meet. The whole discourse about stickpickers, slaves, and other poor people supposedly sitting on a pile of money is I think misguided anyway. Whatever price per POW we can come up with is the price for the entire business of making an X points enchantment. That's not necessarily the price paid directly to the person sacrificing these points of POW. These people are just, at best, assistants, and they're taking an appropriately low percentage of that price (the enchanter has final word on how that money is allocated). If you consider a weapon making store, the blacksmith will take a high percentage of the price of a sword per point of damage, while the kid who pumps the furnace will only get a few coins. Similarly, the person who helps the master enchanter do their rituals (by sacrificing POW or cleaning the workbench or whatever) will also only get a few coins. The real mastery is in orchestrating the multi-POW-point enchantment, not in giving a point of POW per se. Anybody can sacrifice a point of POW, so it's cheap, of course. Common sense and extrapolation of the setting can therefore align... but see below for another option, however. I figure that poor people may come by the local temple to donate POW and get a few coins, especially in the week before a holy day. Enchanters may have to adjust their contracting schedule accordingly, where if you order a special magical item, you get it after the next holy day. It would happen even if the enchanter was alone (since they also have to recover their own points), but by having volunteers from the local community, they can take on a few additional orders and spread a bit of wealth. Another common practice might be that the person who ordered the magical object has an appointment to come and provide most of the POW sacrifice in order to get a discount. I also assume that some places in the West make that an expected social obligation, whether it's via an Invisible God worship ceremony or something else.. like donating blood at the local blood blank. Of course, in those places, it might be framed differently because the enchanter would probably keep the benefits (and magical items) to themselves. Another possible small tweak (which still fits the rules nicely) is to say that the people donating POW have to also know enchantment rituals, since they are participating in one. That way, you could only coerce Rune Masters and other people with access to enchantments... that suddenly becomes a lot harder to get free POW points from other people. So as an example (with converted prices), and assuming I didn't make a mistake: a Bladesharp 4 Broadsword would be 50 L (price of the sword) plus 200 L * 50% = 100 L (for the spell) plus 500 L for "additional labour", which gives a grand total of 650 L. Interestingly, Griffin Mountain mentions that such a cool blade would most likely be decorated with silver and gems, and the total price would typically exceed 1000 L in this case. That's good flavour stuff, IMHO, where if you have magical item stores, the prices would be inflated because all the items are "flashy". And if a PC wants to pay the minimum by putting a big spell on a normal item, they would get a judgemental look from the enchanter.

Haha that's brilliant I assume it would fail if the enemy already has one of these other spells, but casting it on an unsuspecting enemy as part of the preliminary phase to an ambush deserves to go in the Munhkinery thread!

Although it's entirely pendantic, I guess it's somewhat interesting to figure out which of these options an "associated cult spell" represents: Orlanth taught Storm Bull to protect himself during the God Time. Orlanth retains the "ownership" of the Shield spell (i.e. you acquire it from Orlanth's cult, basically as a way to not "steal the credit" from him). When you cast it, you re-enact Storm Bull himself casting it, and during that SR when you cast it, you take on Storm Bull's appearance. Orlanth protected Storm Bull with his shield during the God Time. Storm Bull doesn't know how to cast shield -- but Storm Bull cultists can call upon Orlanth via Storm Bull to get this protection, just like their god did. This is represented by using Storm Bull's Rune Points, as opposed to calling Orlanth directly via Orlanth's Rune Points. But still, when you cast the spell, you take on Orlanth's appearance, not Storm Bull's. I myself don't care too much either way, and in the interest of keeping the rules simpler, I go with the option that the two "spell ecosystems" are separate (which is interpretation 1 above). It's just easier to treat the Rune Point pools independent... we already have enough rules and corner cases to keep in mind

Maybe I should post this in the Dumbest Theory thread, but if I take your statement and push it a bit more, I could come up with a theory that Lanbril is really just a crime organization that has been brewing for too long... as in: crime "families" formed as a necessity in the first cities big enough for thieves to find a benefit in getting together (better scores, escaping law enforcement, etc). As this organized crime came and went over many generations, they came up with techniques that were mixed up with traditions and rituals, because that's the only concept people have for maintaining knowledge and group cohesion. And so after a hundred generations they inadvertently created this "Lanbril" persona more or less out of whole cloth -- like stumbling upon God Learnerism without realizing it. That's why it feels contrived and weirdly limited, because it really came from a small group of people in a few cities who didn't quite yet know how to make a guild -- because maybe there was no such thing as a guild back then. So they made a cult instead.

I have the same reading as @Joerg and @jajagappa: If the PC knows two instances of Shield linked to 2 different Rune point pools (Orlanth and Issaries), then those are 2 different spells, with different visual effects and flavour (as per the boxed text on healing spells). Being two spells, they have to be cast one after the other (they can't be both cast on the same SR as stacked or whatever). Shield can be cast on top of another existing Shield. The description explicitly says that, when broken through, Shield doesn't dissipate. So if the second casting is boosted with enough MPs to piece through the first one, the character ends up with 2 different ongoing Shields, with 2 different end times (probably just a few seconds apart from each other), and with 2 different visual effects and flavour. As for the OP, when the associated cult (Orlanth) has better temple coverage than the main cult (Issaries), I would allow the spell to be learned at that associated cult's temple. So an Issaries merchant would be able to walk into any Orlanth temple (whether or not it contains an Issaries shrine) and learn whatever spells are available to them as as associated cult. I would handwave it if there's not much about it, but it can also be a good way to play a short scene in order to introduce an NPC.

Yep, as I mentioned before, the Rune font is all garbled in some PDF readers. So far, for me, both Adobe Acrobat and GoodReader work fine, Skim and PDFExpert don't. Other people might be able to report on other PDF readers. Back to spells: I'm confused about the Tree Chopping Song spell. It says: "All those influenced can use any type of axe against Aldryami of any type as if those weapons were mauls or maces."... isn't it the other way around? They can use mauls or maces as if they were axes? Summon Luxite: the average stats are not quite correct. CON (2D6+6) averages at 13, and DEX (3D6) averages 10-11.

There's something funky going on with the embedded font in the PDF... it looks fine in Adobe Acrobat Reader (PC/Mac) and on GoodReader (iOS): But it looks wrong on, say, Skim (Mac) and PDFExpert (Mac), where it incorrectly ends up with the Earth Rune: My guess is that the book is using a semi-obscure feature of the PDF spec, and any PDF reader that only partially supports it (in order to perform much faster than Acrobat) then gets it wrong.

"Spell Strike Rank", p108: I think the text is missing the fact that you're not supposed to count the first magic point of the spell. And to be fair, the rulebook is also missing it in a spot or two... so it's possible this isn't a mistake but a rule simplification? (edit: I realized that, on p9, Rune Magic also now gets +1 SR for each MP... no skipping the first... while I welcome this simplification, it may be worth it to add a sentence that confirms the change from the rulebook?) Summary table, p109: Binding Enchantment is incorrectly listed as a 3-point spell. "Distraction", p113: the first sentence of the second paragraph ("When cast on a spirit...") seems badly worded. I suppose it should read "it automatically draws the spirit away".

You can get a scholarship for a "quiet" part of the martial caste if you're really good at playing a Western version of Ouranekki and compete in the championships

Yep, that works for one sorcerer, but like I said, I'm not sure how to justify 3 or 4 of them (the PCs) going on adventures together every season or so. Maybe they're part of the same Order or Invisible God Chapter or something. Anyway, this is entirely because I don't know enough about the West yet. I have some reading to do and then I'm sure I can come up with something (but I'll gladly take suggestions of course )

Yeah. I've been thinking a bit about a hypothetical Western Wizard campaign lately, and I can see two solutions for this: 1. The good ol' Ars Magica troupe system, of course, where only one wizard comes out at a time because the other ones are busy with their research (except for the occasional climax adventure). That's a proven system, but many players may not want to play a sorcerer only once every 4 adventures... although I suppose they would still play apprentices and assistants, who do have sorcery (just not super-hero awesome sorcery). 2. Stick more rigidly to the "one adventure per season" rhythm, but add some "downtime action economy" rules, a bit like what WFRP or Blades in the Dark do. Players could then allocate their time between adventures to acquiring alchemical elements, making use of the calendar to do rituals at the right time, etc. The RQG rules already provide a good base for half of it, so house/extra rules are mostly about the non-magic stuff: hiring/training assistants, finding herbs and other substances, acquiring crystals, heck maybe even decking out your tower with protection spells and nice curtains. That second solution is fun to design (at least for me), with the only downside being to find justifications for several wizards going out together on each adventure. I think I need to read more about the West to see if that's viable for anything longer than a handful of adventures set around important events...

Holy shit yes, congrats and thanks to Jaye, this is going to be one very pretty book! I'm happy to see many new visual takes on Glorantha! By the way, yes, it happens to me often that I start cooking something and I remember my grandma telling me "don't forget to put the mushrooms first!". Oh, grandma.

Yes, there is still that problem. But at least there's a tiny bit of progress there because it seems that Chaosium is now adding a version number on the PDF file. So while you still need to check every now and then to see if there's something new, you can at least use the version number. Before that, you had to download the file and compare it with your existing one.

Sadly, unless I've missed something or unless Chaosium has improved things since last time I checked, this is the part that sucks: you need to log in, go into your past orders, find the order that contains the product you want (which is the part that sucks the most[1]), click on it, and then you'll see the links to the PDFs. [1] It's easier for me to search for the specific book title in my emails, find the order number/date, and then go back to the Chaosium website.

...says the person who has a grand total of 2 posts on this board 😜 I don't like Facebook both because of what it means and represents, and because its UI is just plain bad to have conversations anyway (posts only reach a portion of the audience, half of the comments are always hidden by default, etc). I don't like Twitter much either for having conversations, but at least it's good for advertising and small exchanges. This is all moot anyway because @Ian Cooper is right. Ideally, in order to reach as many people as possible, one would post and hold conversations in as many places as possible: FB, Twitter, Mastodon/Fedi, Discord (many servers!), Reddit, BRP, ENWorld, RPG.net, RPGGeek, mailing lists, IRC, newsgroups, the tree in the middle of the town square, and so on. But Ian is only one guy and can't monitor all the places, so he has focus on the biggest ones until his allotted time is gone. And that starts with FB and Twitter. He therefore has to rely on us to deliver information and do some advertising in all the places we might frequent and that he doesn't have time for... and maybe, in some lucky cases, he actually has an account there so we can tag him, he receives a notification, and he can drop down like Batman before disappearing again in a cloud of smoke. That's all fine with me.

Yeah exactly. Good stuff! This is the type of creative spell creation that I love about the new Sorcery rules (which is also why I was fascinated about Ars Magica back in the day, even if I never managed to convince anyone to play it). A "Separate Water Man" spell would be the equivalent of the classic "Shriveling" spell in Call of Cthulhu. It avoids using the "evil" Tap technique using your cool loophole, and would result in a shriveled corpse lying in a pool of water. Sounds nasty!

Depends. Asphyxiation to death sounds worse, but bleeding to death from a bullet doesn’t sound good either. I couldn't rate one higher than the other. I would argue that chopping someone’s arm off or burning them is worse than choking them assuming neither leads to death. Does that mean someone owning an axe or knowing Fire spells is going to get a worse reaction than someone knowing Steal Breath? I stand corrected, thanks.

No no that's fine. It does take a certain, ahem, "type" of player to treat the rulebook as a shopping list for their character, but I'm mostly coming from a GMing point of view, where I'm the one who would have to moderate such players by saying "watch out, this has societal baggage". My point was mostly that, even though that seems to upset Jeff, I don't see much of a difference between asphyxiating people, burning them, or chopping them in bits (they're all equally bad). And I say that as someone who is relatively new to this and is still learning a ton about Glorantha. The whole "tapping is evil" and "killing air is evil" makes sense within the mythological framework of the setting, but I think many people around here have internalized it so well that they forget that it's not necessarily obvious to newcomers. If I didn't have the Guide books, I would treat Steal Breath the same way I treat a sword: the consequences you face only depend on who you use it against. I don't warn players when their characters buy a sword. I just warn them when they're about to strike somebody they shouldn't, or when they're "going too far" with it. I personally wouldn't allow targeting a specific person, but that's a fine ruling if necessary.