Lordabdul

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....

That’s assuming they are all at their full MP, which doesn’t seem to be the case: a couple of those spirits have 3MPs only (pretty much their species’ minimum if we used that for POW). And a 15% chance of casting a spell doesn’t sound fun. I think Vamargic should be more dangerous than that.

I meant the roll to cast Protection. Arguably, many GMs might just skip the rolls and rule that Vamargic succeeds... same thing for the necklace spirits casting spells. It may not be interesting to have him fail.

Yes good point, there could be a cap that the INT roll is maxed by the sorcerer’s skill score at the time of the enchantment?

Yes, although the problem here is that it's unclear what happens on a tie. Even the Core Rules Q&A dodges the question. The rules say "the physical attack is resolved normally, but opposed by the spirit’s Spirit Combat skill". The way to "normally resolve" a physical attack is to roll both attack and defense and, on a tie, things happen differently depending on whether it's a parry or a dodge... which doesn't help much. I think the phrasing of the rules is misleading here, and IIRC someone from Chaosium mentioned that the action is actually resolved like Spirit Combat, so it should read something more like "the Spirit Combat round is resolved normally, but the corporeal entity uses their weapon skill to oppose the spirit's Spirit Combat skill". So it means that, on a tie, nothing happens... except if the tie is a tie of critical successes, in which case both entities deal damage to each other (so not quite like the dodge mechanic all things considered). I would say no. Humakt's whole thing, as I understand it, is to kill living things and send then to the Underworld. Spirits aren't living things, so Humakt's gift wouldn't apply IMHO. It's tricky because it goes into which kind of spirits can have a Bite ability. IMHO this would only be embodied spirits or other spirits with a physical form, like elementals. The only example in the RQG Bestiary of a spirit with a Bite attack is a specific type of Dehori (Darkness elemental), and it has Hit Points and SIZ and such. Now I have zero idea whether a spirit's physical form takes mundane damage or only magical damage... but either way, yeah, IMHO the spirit's physical Bite attack would be parried with the sword and, at the very least, the magical boosting would apply to the spirit. I don't like it in terms of general in-world logic. But I do like it in terms of gameplay, to keep as many players as possible involved in the scene. There might be a good argument to give a "half-skill" penalty to people who are not specifically trained to battle weird ass looking ethereal forms with their sword. It could also get a bit scary when the fallen PC gets suddenly possessed by the spirit, and now the other PCs have to fight their comrade.

7Tigers is kinda like the French Joerg. Hard to catch them having their facts wrong

I have no idea how many h's there are and where they go either It's possible that spelling that name correctly is the entrance exam for new initiates. I think that's how RQ3 sorcery spell matrices worked? But anyway, it would kinda defeat the whole point of the OP, which is to give spells to people who don't know the spells. It's OK to rule that this can't ever happen in your Glorantha. If it *were* possible in someone's Glorantha (I'm not sure yet about mine), I think I would base the roll on INT. I like @Stephen L's idea that you still have to study the sorcerous item to know how to use it, possibly read the hastily scribbled user manual provided by the sorcerer's apprentice when they sold it to you, and so on... in which case, maybe the roll is INTx2 if you want to use the item in a hurry (you have never studied the object), or INTx5 if you have spent at least 1 hour studying the thing.

Yes, get it! I think it's amazing to see Mark and Dario improving from book to book.

Kinda hard to move on when the GM doesn't know what to roll What I'd do is give Protection 6 to one of the eyes on the necklace, or add an extra eye (maybe he has two troll eyes?). So he orders that spirit to cast Protection. No need to bend the rules. As for the necklace spirits not having POW listed, I assume it's missing information that wasn't caught in the editorial phase. Again, no need to bend the rules, I would just assign the species' average POW (or roll it) for each spirit.

@David Scott has written some super useful posts around here on the topic, I'm pretty sure they will clear up the confusion (you're not alone there!) Spirit travel: More spirit travel, to gain a shamanic ability: More spirit travel details:

Don't forget that the Charisma Rune spell as described in the RQG isn't set in stone as the only ever ever way for anybody across the entire Glorantha to look pretty and sound good. There might be other Rune spells and gifts that give similar or related advantages.

Nope, I tell them they found a super nice looking blue gem with reflections of white and purple, or some other such description. They have to do Evaluate to figure out vaguely how much it might be worth (although I'd give, for free, a price bracket to a PC with a decent skill score... they can roll for a more precise bracket). If they don't cast Detect Magic on it they might miss that it's actually more interesting (or more dangerous!) than it looks, and therefore might trade it for less than it's worth. I give more precise or more vague information based on the results of the rolls. I like that! Leaving the clan's lands for a grand adventure or lengthy trip means that they need to count their coins and other resources until they come back... whereas the clan was taking care of a lot of this while they were staying within the boundaries of the tula. I'm stealing that! Call of Cthulhu 7e has a nice way to abstract some of this. Based on the character's occupation and social standing, they get a "Cash threshold", which means that anything below that threshold is considered "peanuts" and can be bought/sold without having to precisely keep track of your money (i.e. you just buy the item, add it to your equipment, and that's it). Then there's the actual money that refreshes regularly from the character's day job, from which you deduct bigger purchases. And then "Assets", which you need to sell for really big purchases. I could see something like this adapted to RQG to simplify small purchases. I'm not sure that it's really related to D&D per se, but yes I've seen groups that don't do "in world" item descriptions, and flat out say that the loot consists of a +2 Sword, a Shield with Magic Missile in its crest, and so on. Other groups would instead describe the sword and shield as the characters see it, and they wouldn't know what they do (and what their stats are) until they use them or have them analyzed. Since I mostly grew up on Cyberpunk (with its "in world" sourcebooks like Solo of Fortune) and Call of Cthulhu (where you're strongly encouraged to NOT use "real" spell names and "real" book titles, and instead make it scary and mysterious by coming up with alternative names), I'm definitely in the second group. Even stranger (to me), I've met players who never really talk in their "characters' voice". That is, they always use the 3rd person: "my character tells the shopkeeper that he want to sell this shield", or "my character tells the guard that he has an audience with the king", and so on.

For those wondering where Rick pulled this description from, it can be found in the Gloranthan Classics version of Griffin Mountain, p193 (it's a two pages chapter on dragonewt plynths). There's a very partial drawing of a dragonewt plynth (with a dragonewt dancing in front of it) in S:KoH p243. It's not obscured by the location table on my PDF.... what are you reading this on? Or is that the physical book? Also, if you flip back a few pages to p38, bottom left, there's a big drawing of that same plynth.

To be fair, RQG p342 specifically says that a failure when casting Command Cult Spirit results in the elemental becoming "hostile to the caster". I generally don't interpret that as "the elemental fights the caster", more like "the elemental is annoyed that the caster tried to control it, and may hinder the PCs". I treat the spirit as genuinely angry towards the PCs on a fumble of the command spell only. But yeah, like @Akhôrahil said, in many cases the players don't even need the control spell in the first place anyway (at least not at my table). If the party is fighting Chaos creatures, for instance, pretty much any cult spirit will attack those creatures by default. There's no need for giving out a command unless you want it to do something specific (defend an NPC, protect an area, transport something/someone, target a specific enemy, block someone's path, etc). Same thing for a Fire/Sky spirit while fighting Darkness people, or vice-versa... the full sentence is "acts in according to its nature and cult affiliation" (it's for elementals but I apply it to all cult spirits). The "cult affiliation" part is important, I think. Again, the players are dumping a fair amount of Rune Points to summon a cult spirit, so the GM should be lenient enough to make it worth their investment. That includes not making it too punishing when they fail their castings. The MGF rule definitely applies here. Spirits are fun. Don't discourage players.

Yeah only discorporate entities can initiate spirit combat, so you'd have to discorporate to do that. BUT, as far as I understand you don't need spirit combat to put a spirit in a binding enchantment? You either just command a cult spirit in there (using the Rune spell), or do Spirit Binding.

You could think about it as it looking the most used, and not the oldest?

Wait I'm confused... you said you consider the rule being the same (i.e. you can't change the spell once it's been inscribed) but then you say that it doesn't have to be done in one shot (i.e. you can change the spell afterwards?). How do you do it at your table?

Yeah I've come to the conclusion that it has to do with the lack of homogeneity in the crunch. Some parts are crunchy, while some are not (probably a byproduct of upgrading a 40 years old system in one go, which is quite an undertaking). So we end up semi-unconsciously "smoothing it out": simplifying some things in some areas, adding crunch in others.

Ah indeed thanks.... then I don't understand why people complain. Maybe RQ3 made improvised sorcery so powerful that nobody ever needed inscribing spells? Even though that's supposed to be how it works in the setting? Because it sure sounds like improvised casting is how most RQ3 grognards are doing it all the time (I have no idea myself, I never ran RQ3). And like I said before, I'm not interested in "another magic system that does the same thing the same way". If sorcery isn't "broken" only when it does similar things to Spirit Magic in the same amount of time and for the same amount of MPs, then... what's the point? Interestingly, the RQ3 text answers my question here: "Once a spell has been Enchanted into an item it may not be changed, though more spells could be later added". I wonder if that's still valid in RQG? I'm really tempted to allow upgrades, maybe at some extra cost.

Sounds fun! Check p389 in RQG ("Learning New Spells"). Don't forget that you can't know a spell better than your Read/Write skill (p388). The character will have to learn new Runes and Techniques too. This is limited by your INT, which isn't upgradeable per RAW, but I think that's super lame (especially compared to CHA for shamans, which you can upgrade... doesn't seem fair) and possibly a holdout of antiquated opinions on IQ and such... So in preparation of a player becoming a sorcerer, I have pre-ruled that you can get a chance to increase INT by studying hard during a season.

AFAICT RQ3 doesn't have spell inscriptions. If you really want to use RQG sorcery (it doesn't sound like you do but if you did...) then retcon the character so that they have their 10 years' worth of inscribed spells in various trinkets on them. These are "pre-manipulated" so you can fire all kinds of powerful spells in minimum time. Boom! And if you want to get a bit munchkin-y, you could say that you can fire those almost every rounds... you lose the first round, but then you can concentrate on the next spell as soon as the previous one is off. So second round the spell goes off on DEX SR, third round the spell goes off on 2*(DEX SR), fourth round the spell goes off on 3*(DEX SR), and so on. Boom boom boom! Btw, question to the RQG people: do you allow inscribed spells to be "updated" incrementally? That is: create, say, a 3-point spell by spending 3 POW. Then, a season later, spend another 2 POW to increase the inscribed spell to 5? It's not specified whether this is allowed or not, but if we don't allow that, I'm not sure what this sentence means: "This enables the sorcerer to create spells with a greater intensity than their Free INT would allow"... since you can't really spend much more POW in one go than you would have Free INT... (edit: unless it means that you can have an inscribed spell of, say, power 3, which, upon casting, you can further manipulate up? That doesn't give a lot of pre-manipulation IMHO but I guess it's better than nothing)

So this would be sort of an intermediate casting mode between fully improvised casting, and inscribing spells? I like that. It also gives out vibes of D&D-ish magic, where you prepare your spells in the evening, and these are your "ready-to-go" spells for the day... only at least you can still then improvise spells after you've run out of pre-cast ones. Do you make it just a magic ritual that costs the same amount of MPs as it would as improvised casting? No other changes? I don't think I would like POW sacrifice for this, since that's already how inscribing spells work... that would be a big thing to give up for a one-time stored spell when you can make it permanent for a similar (identical?) cost. The idea would be that you can pre-cast spells every evening if you can. Yep, "combat powerful" is also what I meant. They're not very powerful when improvising things on the fly, but they're very powerful when they have things prepared. Think about, say, a "gadgeteer fighter" type dude. He has many gadgets to save the day: poisoned caltrops, explosives, dart-launchers in his sleeves, and so on. When these things are prepared ahead of time, he can blow up and kill dozens of people in a few rounds. But when he runs out of ammo, or if he loses his gadgets, he's just a dude who can barely swing a punch. Just because you have to prepare your ammunition, reload your weapons, and so on, doesn't mean you suck in combat. It occurs to me that some sorcerers might be a good subject for "flashback mechanics", like those featured in Gumshoe or Forged In The Dark systems.... it goes a bit like this: You figure out how much free time you had between last adventure and this adventure. You declare "I spent that free time working on my wizardly things" A couple sessions later, when combat is looming, or even in the middle of it, you say "OK, flashback time: it turns out I spent last 2 weeks working on a water-control device that I attached to my staff". Figure out the ritual bonuses you got, retroactively spend some stuff (including POW... don't sweat too much how it might have changed recent rolls), and boom, it just turns out that you had a water thingie that's super useful right now. Of course, you have to be comfortable with these kinds of story-editing mechanics. You should try them, they're really useful if you have players who always spend wayyy to long preparing something. Check out Trail of Cthulhu or Night's Black Agents or Blades in the Dark or Scum and Villainy for more info. Even just for Bladesharp, I don't make them roll if they cast it before combat. I do make them roll if they cast it during combat. That's pretty useful! I figured I would do a bit of math, and my conclusion was that the MPs released by the support sorcerers need to be split between the INT-enhancing sorcerer and the primary caster, no? Otherwise, the amount of MPs from multiple people, crystals, and enchantments can very quickly go over whatever one person can provide with Enhance INT.

I don't think anybody is saying that. Sorcerers actually tend to be super bad-ass and super powerful. I think what we're saying is that sorcerers don't routinely improvise spells on the go. I think they go adventuring with a whole bunch of stuff prepared in advance. IMO, "battle wizards" tend to have an arsenal of trinkets and artifacts that contain monstrous spells prepared and grown over days and weeks and months, ready to be unleashed on unsuspecting enemies. And don't forget Lunar magic benefits from the glowspots. Of course, YGMV and all that jazz. A quick look in my RQ3 books seems to indicate they basically divided a whole bunch of stuff by two in RQG. Duration starts twice shorter than in RQ3, manipulation takes twice longer (2 SR per MP), and so on. So yes, it looks like RQG nerfed it, very much on purpose. I could be wrong, but I suspect it is to "force" sorcerers to prepare stuff in advance instead of improvising it in the heat of moment. My suspicion is mostly based on the presence of a non-negligible "Sympathetic Magic" section in RQG, which gives advantages in preparing spells. I understand it's a big change in terms of gameplay, especially if your vision of Glorantha doesn't support it. Just keep the RQ3 rules. I don't think anybody will change their minds here. But you shouldn't feel too alone, there's a fair number of RQ3 holdouts around here. See, that's a good example where my Glorantha and gameplay expectation differs. I don't expect that, in a mythical world, some logician sorcerer can end a battle in 3 rounds of improvised casting, while someone who can invoke the power of gods cannot. It should take more work than that. Alchemists prepare powerful potions during long nights of experimenting, not by being bartenders assembling a cocktail in 30 seconds. And like I said, I envision Gloranthan sorcerers more like alchemists, not like Magic-Missile-wielding D&D wizards. The rules are only wrong if they don't match the setting, so maybe you have a problem with the setting. I'll leave it to other people to argue whether the RQG rules actually match what we know of Gloranthan canon, or if they're actually broken in that sense.

I don't know about the Black Horse troop (I don't know much about them), but I guess our vision of Glorantha differs on the other two. For the sake of clarity, however, I didn't say they don't fight/adventure/etc... just that they do it very infrequently and for better reasons than just murder-hoboing... Feel free to make your Glorantha vary from mine! It looks like where you're going wrong is by trying to upgrade the game system while continuing the same campaign and keeping the same characters. That sounds like a recipe for a whole bunch problems, regardless of the game system.

What Joerg and David said. IMHO, Sorcerers are scientists and philosophers and alchemists, and they stay up in their towers and laboratories and libraries for months on end before coming outside. And when they do, they have months of prepared spells at their disposal, stored in trinkets and staffs and amulets and such, plus some minions and sidekicks to accompany them and deal with the mundane affairs of hitting people on the head. Basically: it's Ars Magica in Glorantha. And there's a reason Ars Magica uses troupe play by default. From a pure game design perspective, though: there is zero point in adding a third magic system that does what the other two do, which is to be useful in action and combat scenes. If a character wants to be able to cast spells in less than a round in order to buff themselves up or deal damage or control the forces of nature, there's already Spirit and Rune Magic for this. Sorcery (again, IMHO) is for something completely different in terms of gameplay, storytelling, and flavour.