Lordabdul

Sounds like an acceptable take on Lie, although it makes it more powerful I think... So how would you handle the Lie to a Storm Bully that he's really always been deadly afraid of broos then? What would the exit condition be? Would even facing a broo dissipate the Lie, or would he be indeed afraid and run away?

Hey there. @MOB ran a fun little Lankhor Mhy centered scenario at Gen Con called "For Getting of Wisdom". Does anybody know if that scenario is available anywhere? Or might it show up in the Cult of Chaos library in the near future?

Yeah at that point it becomes a "he said / he said" situation in favour (originally) to the trickster. Indeed, but I think the finer art is that of the GM handling it. To me that's where the value of this thread comes from, because reading how various people would interpret and play this or that type of lie really helps create a good mental framework. That's where, IMHO, the Lie wouldn't work. As the targets thinks back for a minute about how they feel about the other person, they should quickly find that they still indeed love them. There's no reason that Lie changes feelings and personality traits, otherwise tricksters could just as well use Lie to say "you're really impatient and reckless!" to a well-known pragmatic Earth priestess, or "you've always been afraid of broos!" to a renowned Storm Bull Chaos killer, and so on. How would they ever shake the Lie in that case? Would the Storm Bull have to face broos to realize he's not really afraid of them? But in the meantime, he's going to refuse going out to the devil's marsh, and so the spell will last until he encounters a broo accidentally? I don't know, that seems untenable to me.

AFAIK it follows the excellent gimmick of the CoC Starter Set where the SoloQuest is meant to be the first thing played, so the owner of the box learns the rules, and then becomes the GM by running the other adventures for other players. I'm not sure if they will do like CoC where the 2nd adventure is meant to be a 1:1 adventure, so you have an intermediate step between the SoloQuest and GMing for 4 or 5 people. I assume it will be there.

You just need to do the math The Glorantha map set has 24 sheets measuring 30.5x42.7cm, folded in two. They unfold horizontally and get laid out 4 across and 6 down. So the complete map is about 183cm tall and 171cm wide. You can basically lie down next to it and it will be the same size as you! I don't have a good picture of that one, but last year I posted a picture of the Genertela map set with the obligatory banana for scale. That one is made of 6 sheets measuring 61x91.5cm, folded six ways. They are laid out 3 across and 2 down. So the complete map is about 122cm tall and 183cm wide. Once again, you can lie down next to it! Look at the picture below and imagine that the Glorantha map is more square but almost just as wide. Needless to say, these map sets are huuuuuuuge! I'm really looking forward to the new Sartar map coming up for the Sartar book (or is it the Starter Set?). I just hope Chaosium will think about us cartography nerds and do justice to what looks to be a truly wonderful map by selling it as a big poster on premium material (something better than what RedBubble offers, preferably). For instance, the legendary Harn map is available on vinyl and it's stunning.

The 24 map set of the entire Glorantha is at a much smaller scale than the AAA: The 6 poster set of Genertela is at a very similar scale, just a tiiiiny bit bigger than the AAA. More importantly, both map sets are printed with a better contrast than the AAA, which I find too dark (assuming I didn't get a bogus version.... I got it from eBay).

Oh that's a good point actually. Thanks!

Oh nice I didn't you could do that... thanks!

It could still be useful if you somehow lost control of the spirit, or someone let it free, or whatever. In that case you could bind a new spirit right away (using a spirit command spell to order it inside the enchanted item), compared to having to re-do the enchantment in addition to the binding. The other useful case is that few PCs would have a Binding Enchantment spell (they are limited to Rune Lords/Priests), so they can't get a bound spirit unless someone can enchant an item for them. This is somewhat supported by the published material: there are a couple of NPCs in Clearwine who have bound spirits but no Binding Enchantment... but arguably, they might have used Spell Trade for that (especially since one of those NPCs is Sora). For me, it's either option 2 (someone can enchant the item and then sell it to you to bind or rebind something in it), or another option: that the Binding Enchantment has to be cast at the same time as the binding itself (and possibly by the same person only, given the wording of the rules), and so a lot fewer people have bound spirits.

I also don't like very much the MP sacrifices. The only difference between gaining +60% with 3 cows vs. 6 MPs is the warm fuzzy feeling of good roleplay when you paint and slaughter the cows... but the cows don't come back the next day, unlike MPs, so players who are not easily swayed by warm fuzzy feelings need other incentives to pick the cows. Lowering, or even eliminating, the MP bonuses is the obvious "fix", especially since I agree that "punishing" players who spend too many MPs by having an action scene that same night is kind of a dick move from the GM after the second time it happens. If you're into more positive reinforcement techniques, you could narrate and create consequences differently between MP sacrifices and other stuff. A PC that spent many MPs would have been dancing and singing until they looked visibly tired, like the guy who spends all his time at the buffet and is seen puking in the bathroom at the end of the party. Comparatively, gifts and active participation could lead to Reputation increases on a good Worship roll, important NPCs noticing the character and giving out cool missions and opportunities, or miscellaneous NPCs wanting to help out or provide services to the PC. The rules specify how many points come and go, but the GM comes up with what it means and what it leads to.

Thanks for the clarifications @Scotty ! I had one in my previous group, the obligatory Humakti with True Sword, but the good thing with these rules is that it forces players to spend Rune Points to engage the spirit, and these are not easily replenished (especially for a Humakt!). So the Humakti can only help with spirits a couple times per season at most, at least near the beginning when they have less than a handful RPs. That limits group attacks on a spirit to big evil bad ones near the end of an adventure (but those tend to have corporeal qualities anyway for obvious scenario design reasons). FYI I just ran the numbers in a spreadsheet and it helps quite a lot to have even just one PC spending the RPs to help out with a magical sword, assuming they can boost their weapon skill. If they can overwhelm the spirit's skill with a superior >100% score, they have a good chance of dispatching the spirit. It's worth spending the MPs to do that (even if it leaves you open) because the spirit will rarely damage you in that case. If you can't get a comparatively high skill, it's pretty much not worth it unless you feel very very lucky. Also note that in my stats (assuming I didn't mess up), if the spirit was clever enough to attack a PC that didn't look like a shaman or Humakti, that PC is in deed trouble, being open to possession in a couple rounds even if another PC helps out.

You have excellent memory

Fun topic necromancy: I was reading back on some of the RQG designer's notes that I had missed, and there's a little interesting tidbit about shields in there. See if you can spot it!

Yes it's a pretty personal and wild (thank you! ) interpretation. And to be honest, I just came up with this interpretation today. Thankfully, I never had a player ask questions about this, but I figured it would be good to have a half-assed in-world interpretation ready in case it happens. I'm open to other interpretations.... that is: once we actually figure out how the rules are supposed to work I was going to say "it replaces the Spirit Combat roll" but now that I'm re-reading the rules closely... it's not obvious One way to read it could indeed be that attacking with a magical sword is an optional thing. I mostly reject that interpretation because otherwise people with weapons (2 rolls per turn: weapon and Spirit Combat) have the advantage over shamans (1 roll per turn, only Spirit Combat). This doesn't make sense to me... shamans would always carry and use magical daggers if that was the case. Unless there's a 3rd interpretation? Yes Isn't the internet a fun place? I was talking about weapons skills in their "natural" setting, i.e. melee combat. The "normal" way to use a weapon skill is to sometimes roll it as an attack, sometimes as a defense (parry). Not as a general "one roll to resolve it all". Same thing, I was talking about the "normal expectations" of the weapon skill. The goal was to see how these "normal mechanics" can be transposed when that skill is used in a spirit combat context. Sure! That's cool too. It makes it harder to explain why 5 PCs can't gang up on a single spirit (if that's how you want the rules to work), but it makes it easier to explain if you want that to be possible! Whether 5 PCs can attack the same spirit is open to interpretation... on p366, under "Combatants", it says "They may choose to attack the spirit attacking them using enchanted weapons (see below) without succeeding at a concentration check". Does that mean that the whole "Attacking With Weapons And Spells" section is hanged upon this statement, meaning that it can't be read on its own and is only about stuff you can do to the spirit attacking you? Or is it just a reminder to check that other section, which can be read on its own, meaning that anybody can attack any visible spirit? That second reading seems to be the most logical, I agree, but it leads to the "ganging up" problem... and whether it can be considered "ganging up" depends, again, on how you interpret the rules... Consider this: can the spirit get engaged in spirit combat with all 5 PCs swinging their swords at it? Or can it be engaged only with its original target, in which case the other 4 PCs get free swipes at it? RAW says that "any number of discorporate spirits may attack a single entity at a time", but we don't know if a discorporate spirit can attack multiple corporeal entities at the same time, or if multiple corporeal entities can attack a single spirit at the same time. If the spirit gets to roll Spirit Combat against each of the 5 PCs, this seems to open up a whole new world of combinatorial pain. My guess is that the first sentence in "Attacking With Weapons And Spells" is missing a "with them" just after "engaged in spirit combat". Obviously, that's wild speculation on my part.

I gave my own interpretation of this in my lengthy post above.

My go-to translator tells me that the anglophones say "white elephant" ? I can't say it conveys exactly the same meaning though... it seems to also carry a "it's a useless thing" meaning that "using a gaz" doesn't have... the French term is only focused on something being needlessly complicated, even though the thing is still useful and in active use. As @Trotsky said, I like having Spirit Combat resolved differently than physical combat. I imagine it's more like a magical/psychic stand-off from CoC where you roll POW vs POW (and CoC probably took it from RQ2 to begin with!). Spirits could still "attack" at specific SRs instead of SR12, but keep the opposed roll instead of an attack/defense. Note that an attack/defense mechanic would double the number of rolls since each entity would get an attack, which may or may not be what you want to do. If we summarize the problem, I think we get that: Spirit combat is considered as a "tug of war" (or "contest of psychic energy", as the rules put it) between parties, modelled with a single opposed roll... not some fight where each party tries to find an opening into the other party's defenses. The Spirit Combat skill has no expectations of a "limit" on how many times it can be used in a round against multiple spirits. One can also use a physical weapon skill to participate in a spirit combat "exchange". Physical weapon skills have the expectation that they can be used either as attack or defense -- not as an "exchange". Physical weapon skills have the expectation of a "limit" on how many times they can be used in a round. As an attack, they're limited by SR. As a defense, they're limited by the cumulative -20%. Now consider this take on spirit combat: Spirit combat is not on SR12 because spirits are slow to act... they're on SR12 because both you and the spirit are spending the whole combat round "struggling against the psychic forces of each other". That's why it requires a concentration roll to do anything else during the entire round. Using a physical weapon in spirit combat may not mean that you're physically swinging the sword around at the spirit. It may mean that you're picturing yourself swinging it inside your mind. Your spirit is kind of swinging the "magical shadow" of the sword on the spirit plane (where the combat is really taking place). That's why only parts of the magical aspects of the weapon do any damage. That's also why someone else can't help you by swinging their own physical sword at the (visible) spirit that's attacking you... because they would be swinging the physical weapon at some visibly translucent form, going through it without causing damage, instead of using the "magical shadow sword" at the "psychic form" that's not there at all. Unlike Spirit Combat (the proper "skilled" way of confronting psychic energies), picturing yourself swinging a sword leaves you a victim to your own mental limitations and expectations. That is: you can only swing it a certain number of times (a bit like when you dream that you're running and you're getting tired in your dream). You're using a picture of yourself swinging a sword as a crutch because you don't know how to properly use your mind. So this interpretation may be translated into a few streamlining house rules: Count the number of times you can swing a weapon in a round. That's just how many times you can use it to fight spirits. The rules say to resolve these opposed rolls on their respective SRs to keep things simpler but that possibly unintentionally creates edge cases. If you write the swing-count on your character sheet, you can keep all spirit combat stuff on SR12, and roll your sword skill the appropriate number of times. But that requires pre-computing that number, which is something the designers maybe wanted to avoid. A possible house rule is to also keep all spirit combat rolls on SR12, but apply a cumulative penalty to each weapon roll. Maybe -20% (like cumulative defenses) or -40% (if you're a mean GM) (read below before you say "...but Sword Trance!") If we consider that swinging your sword in your mind relies on how well you can picture yourself doing that, we could rule that this can only use your actual proficiency with the sword. That would exclude any magical bonuses, which means you can only roll against a spirit using your normal skill. I know that you can almost equally argue for the opposite ("your god can surely help your spirit swing the sword just as well as your real arm!"), but hey, we're trying to get rid of the edge cases, here! So if your mind is all by itself swinging your imaginary sword, there are no bonuses, and no edge cases with attack vs parry bonuses. It also makes spirits more dangerous, which is something some people here seem to want. The rules indeed seem to prevent people from ganging up on spirits (only the other way around). The only way to gang on a spirit is for everybody to be discorporate, I think. See above for a possible take on spirit combat that explains why you can't "just swing at the spirit there". Also, like other people here, I describe spirits attacking a character as weird blurry ghosts whirling chaotically around the character's head, while the character flails around madly for a few rounds. Hard to hit that, even if you subscribe to the interpretation that you're really hitting the visible spirit with your physical sword. Visible and corporeal are two different things. Something can be visible and take no space, overlapping with other things. I don't understand your reasoning here.

Yeah. I suppose you "go to contact" on your own terms in that case. I would have liked to see SR ratings on spirits too, so that some spirits attack faster or slower than others, which can be "fun" when you consider spirit attacks with special effects like madness/disease. I don't know what the explanation is for "normal" Spirit Combat to happen on SR12, but I imagine it could be to simplify running most scenes where melee fighters are mixed up with shamans? So you do all the "people with pointy things" first, and then the "people with drums and trinkets" last? Yep, that's what I pointed out earlier: https://basicroleplaying.org/topic/13173-magic-weapons-vs-spirits/page/2/?tab=comments#comment-204950 As I understand it, if you have multiple spirits attacking you, you can only really push back against one or two of them with a magical sword. The other ones will attack you at SR12 and you only have Spirit Combat to oppose them. Most people would only have around 35% in Spirit Combat, so that's a good way, I suppose, to keep your Humakt initiate humble. If you want to be a mean GM (and I love being a mean GM occasionally), you could even rule out that switching between magic weapons and Spirit Combat in the same round comes at a penalty, or can't be done. There is precedent for that kind of rule with magic and melee.

Not more difficult, sorry. I meant that it's a good baseline/rule of thumb for this case, but that spirits being spirits (i.e: weird and diverse), the GM should feel free to come up with other regeneration rules for other spirits elsewhere. So for instance I could imagine a naiad recovering MPs much faster whenever a group of fishermen come around and do their usual little worship rites before pushing the boat into the water. Did you have a reference for spirit MP regen in RQ2 by the way?

I genuinely read it first with the 2nd meaning! I even started writing a reply saying that I didn't see anything of the sort in the rules... and then, as is often the case with me writing on the internet, I paused, took some time to read back what I wrote, and asked myself "is there any way I can look more stupid than usual with this?". That's when I realized I was reading it wrong. It's very probable that this is an ESL problem. Different languages have different sentence structures, so whatever "mental grouping" naturally comes to mind to some people might come differently to other people. In this case, if I read "So and so may only <BLAH>", to me "<BLAH>" is the only thing so and so can do (it would take extra stuff like obvious punctuation or heavy-handed wording to break up "<BLAH>"). I believe this is one reason it's very important rulebooks have editors from various backgrounds and cultures.

Even if you consider Sword Trance to be a proper trance, you could argue that it's allowed: Sword Trance means your character is only focused on waving their sword to fight enemies. It doesn't necessarily mean that it has to be "fleshy" enemies only. That's a great example of the type of multiple-interpretation wording we can find in the rulebook 😋 It could be read as: If you're going to cast an offensive spell, it can only be targeted at the spirit that's engaged with you (i.e. you can't attack another spirit, but you can cast other types of spells) The only type of spell you can cast is an offensive spell targeted at the spirit that's engaged with you (i.e. you can't cast defensive spells on you) Of course I'm 99% sure you were thinking of (1) when you wrote it...

"WE ARE LEGION! THERE ARE... err... TWO OF US!" (Chaos feature: two heads)

Thanks a lot! Regarding this little bit from p366: They may choose to attack the spirit attacking them using enchanted weapons (see below) without succeeding at a concentration check. ... it occurs to me that multiple people can never gang up on a spirit, either using Spirit Combat or using enchanted/magical weapons (they can only use magical weapons in response to a spirit initiating spirit combat). So only spirits can gang up on people, right? Looks like it's one of the downsides of not having Spirit Combat, yeah: if you have 5 spirits ganging up on you, you may be able to fight off one or two of them with your magical sword at, for example, SR 5 and 10... but then the other 3 spirits are rolling their Spirit Combat unopposed at SR 12 and, basically, mess you up without any problem. In comparison, someone with Spirit Combat would be able to roll against each of the 5 spirits on SR 12.

I assume they indeed regenerate MPs. It's not mentioned at what rate, however. Using the mortal characters' rate makes sense as a baseline, but I wouldn't be surprised if spirits had a bit more variation there, especially those that can receive worship. I went looking for the same information in RQ2, thinking that might give me a lead for something I might have missed in RQG, but I don't see any rules either there? It's harder to find in RQ2 though since instead of looking for "magic points" I have to look for POW and that obviously lights up the entire PDF document. Do you have an actual page reference for this? Yes, the relevant quote is from the various forms of the Magic Point Enchantment, so it doesn't apply to spirits.

To me that would be a feature of the rules. The other sorcerer looks at the item, waves his hands around for a second and goes "who is the idiot who prepared this piece of junk? I could do better even in my sleep!". Most of the time, using someone's inferior stuff (or stuff that is limited to provide broader access, as it's the case here) makes it more difficult than it should.

No idea! I'm not even sure that MP regeneration for spirits is spelled out in the rulebook... at least I can't find it after a quick 2 minute search through the rulebook and bestiary PDF. The only vaguely relevant mention I found is that a shaman's fetch regenerates MPs at the same rate as the shaman, but neither the shaman nor the fetch regenerate while the shaman is discorporate, so....