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Lordabdul

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Everything posted by Lordabdul

  1. It helps but I would say there are a lot of caveats, no? First, the spirit combat must be happening in the visible mundane world -- if the shaman is currently discorporated, the whole combat is happening in the spirit world and out of reach for physical people. Second, the spirit must be reachable -- some spirits might be hovering above the characters, some naiad might be in a river, etc... which means I would apply some penalties to physical attacks (but it's hard to say, I can't see anything in the rules about how far 2 spirit combatants can be... and, on the other hand, if the enemy spirit is too close to another PC, there might be other penalties to not hit a friend). It might be a good group tactic, however, to use the shaman, or some bound spirits, to lure any enemy spirits to a place where the Humakti can swing at them.
  2. p5: “These peaks rise abruptly from the surrounding hills and from a sharp, almost triangular, ridgeline.” I’m not sure if it was meant to be “…and form a sharp, almost triangular, ridgeline”? p5: “Vingkot the Victorious was the son of the storm god and Janeera Alone.” Vingkot’s mother’s name is spelled “Janerra” in the Glorantha Sourcebook. p6: “Korol Kandaros was the son of King Vingkot and the Summer Wife.” In previous publications (like the Stafford Library’s Book of Heortling Mythology), Korol’s last name was spelled “Kandoros”. p6: "Their champion was the hero Aram Udramson" I guess he had multiple names, but for cross-references purposes it might be helpful to mention he was also known as “Aram-Ya-Udram”, since that’s his most common name in all the other Gloranthan books (actually, I found no reference to him under this new “Udramson” name). p6: "After Aram died in 178, the Goddess appeared and proclaimed a contest" I’m not sure which Goddess this is? Uleria? Ernalda? Kero Fin?
  3. Here's the table of contents.... I think the stories you mentioned are only available as extra material from the Kraken books.
  4. But that's just flavour text, not a rule. Which is why I'm leaning towards Joerg's comment that the Magic Rune is basically a free pre-requisite you get at character creation, similar to The Gift in Ars Magica, or the Magery Advantage in GURPS. Only your lab is in the back of a car, as you drive piles of obscure ancient RPG books from convention to convention. At this point, someone needs to make a canon NPC out of Joerg, frankly. Yep, but realistically, you didn't stumble upon a stash of 50 crystals. You acquired them over the years, so no need to fill them all at the same time. If I was a powerful, century-old sorcerer, I would have half of those crystals on me, and half hidden in my secret tower. As I spend them, I switch them for full ones, and either leave my assistants to fill them up, or fill them myself over the next few months, as downtime allows. No need to strain yourself when you have 50 crystals lying around. But I'm still suspecting some weird house rule the authors have been using for a long time... something, like "you need to be attuned to a crystal to suck MP from it". I can't imagine that so many NPCs only have 1 POW storage crystal for no practical reason. Delegating spirit combat is a possible way, but AFAIK the general way to deal with these situations is to either have 2 battles (or at least action scenes) in 2 places to keep the whole table engaged (shaman fighting in the spirit world, while the other PCs are defending the shaman's body against mundane world threats). Otherwise, resolve spirit combat quicker by not going into detailed round-by-round.
  5. On the one hand, you're thinking about this too much... on the other hand, my mental picture of what you look like is becoming more far-fetched by the minute That guy is 104 years old. AFAICT, recharging a POW-storage crystal only takes a day, no? (you dump your MP in them, and go sleep?) Yep, so the sorcerer still need to be careful. I think your other tactical comments are correct -- the sorcerers are basically not on the frontlines, they're behind the shield walls, or behind his bodyguards, or up on the roof, laughing maniacally. See also: Netrunners in Cyberpunk. It's an old game design problem. RQG tries to get around it by having seasonal gameplay, so the characters can indeed get back to their community and spend time on that stuff for 90% of in-game time (but 2% of table time). Ars Magica got around it by popularizing troupe play.
  6. p139, Urvantan has a "bronze necklace with magic point matrixes". Joerg mentioned in another thread that it's an old RQ3 term or something. It should probably be "a necklace with a Magic Point Enchantment", or some other official RQG term.
  7. I'm not sure that's what Joerg said. He said: "one opponent will receive an almost impossible to parry attack" (emphasis mine). He also said "the attacks of the first four people in melee with this character will likely have an effective 5% chance to land a hit", which was actually a bit over-estimated... as per my example, the 3rd opponent probably gets a better chance than 5%, but probably still a shitty chance (-45%). Oh and yeah, as I'm writing this, other people's replies are coming in
  8. 😅 IMHO the problem is that the authors are all great storytellers and designers, but they're not munchkins or rules lawyers or game mechanics engineers, from what I can tell. Not only do they probably instinctively use the rules only within the narrative framework of Glorantha because they're so used to it, but they also very much belong to the school of thought where the GM can manipulate RAW as necessary to keep the game flowing, players happy, and story consistent and plausible. For instance, I don't think any of the authors use the SR system as written. It's not a mechanical problem per se, but it's at least a problem of expectations, because a crunchy system is often expected by players to be solid and well defined. I think RQG would have greatly benefited from having a "soft release", like an open beta/playtest for an extra year. AFAIK the RQG production went super fast. Maybe too fast.
  9. Whether it's ludicrous or not is hard to tell because the percentage system is only deceptively linear -- in truth, a few things (like for example the >100% rules) make skills scale non-linearly, where someone with 200% is a lot better than 4 times better someone with 50%. So I don't know about that. However, remember that attacks and parries are not behaving the same, and you don't get to subtract willy-nilly like this! Assuming all 8 opponents have below 100% in their attack and defense skills, then: When attacking, your Humakti can either: Attack one of the 8 opponents at full skill (-85% to that opponent's defense) Attack two of the 8 opponents at partial skill, with one attack above 100... like, say, one attack at 120% (-20% to the opponent's defense), and one at 65% (no penalty to the opponent) Attack three of the 8 opponents at partial skill... say, 55%, 60%, 70% (no penalties to any opponents) The Humakti can't attack more than 3 opponents because he can't go below 50% for any attack. And he might run out of SRs anyway. When defending, your Humakti can either dodge or block or parry. Assuming he has "normal" (below 100) skills in Dodge and Shield, doing that won't affect the opponents' attack rolls. If the Humakti chooses to parry, remember that subsequent parries are at a -20% penalty. So if 8 opponents attack him: First opponent gets -85%, most probably gets parried and even hurt (or his weapon broken). Second opponent gets -65%. Third opponent gets -45%. These guys are really just here for the attrition. Fourth opponent gets -25%. Fifth opponent gets -5%. He might get lucky. Six, seven, and eighth opponents don't get any penalty, and the Humakti's parry dips below 100%, at 85%, 65%, and 45% respectively. So yeah, it might take more than 5 or 6 warriors to take down a Humakti in a Sword Trance, assuming zero magical support in favour of the opponents. That doesn't seem too ludicrous to me narratively/cinematically speaking.
  10. In theory, I would personally allow it to a limited degree, but with care. In most cases, however, I think those are different spells. "Dispel Illusion" repels the effects of any confusion-inducing effect from Orate/Madness/etc... it basically resets you back to "normal". Using "Summon Truth" when you already have confusion effects active would make, at best, the "truth" superimposed upon your current state (Orate/Madness/etc.) and so you're like "that person is making an excellent point about Ducks being evil, but then again I'm pretty sure Ducks have nothing to do with this matter, so, errr, I guess I'll let that Duck live but I'll still kick it in the face for good measure". You're not "cured" from the confusion, you just have bandaids on top. Similarly, "Dispel Darkness" wouldn't let you see in a totally mundane dark tunnel... "Summon Light" would do that. But when faced with darkness magic, "Dispel Darkness" would (should?) be more helpful because you would actively fight the opposing magic on the Resistance Table. I'm not quite sure what "Summon Light" would do against a bunch of trolls trying to wrap the area in darkness, but my first thought is that it would mix light and darkness in a confusing way, like being in a room with lasers and a disco ball on steroids.
  11. This to me is more indicative of one of the problems with Sorcery. First, the spells listed in RQG are only examples, so one can imagine different ways to enhance your INT. Second, I frankly can't picture why the Fire Rune, more than the others, would help with enhancing INT. If I wanted a "water-themed" sorcerer, I would probably allow a Water-based form of Enhance INT, instead of wasting a Free INT point for a Rune that doesn't fit the character concept. Of course some rules-lawyery people might say "but that's not what RAW says!", but the whole point of a free-form magic system is... well, to be free-form. IMHO the only Runes that will be found in all sorcerers' stats will be the Spirit and Truth Runes, because fighting and binding spirits is the basis for building up a magical arsenal, and identifying things is the basis for study and research. But past that, I can imagine, for instance, necromantic sorcerers regenerating HP in (cosmetically) horrible ways using the Death Rune instead of the Life/Fertility one. Yes, good idea! That would definitely help. Logically speaking, what's more likely? That 3 words in a yet-to-be-finalized PDF are somehow wrong, or that a whole paragraph in a 2 year old printed book is wrong? I'd go with the first theory, although like I already said, my actual theory is that TSR isn't wrong per se, but with Jeff possibly working on extra Sorcery rules for the GM book, some stats for rules we haven't seen might have leaked through and therefore don't make sense to us. If that's the case, though, it would be quite bad that TSR would require another sourcebook without mentioning it. THE RULE OF COOL TRUMPS YOUR REALITY CHECKS! Plus, maybe Urvantan isn't so impressive as a 105 year old sorcerer because he spent the 40 years learning to manipulate beakers with his nails! (it's a skill, you know!) Thanks for the explanations -- I'll go report the erratum to the tribal edit thread if it hasn't been reported yet. In the munchkinery thread some grognards reported how PCs accumulate dozens of crystals over the course of campaigns, though, so I think my question of "why doesn't a 105 year old wizard have multiple crystals" still holds... I would have, like, one gem-encrusted ring at each finger with 6 MP each, a couple necklaces with ~20 MPs each, a couple bracelets with a dozen MPs, a belt, special socks, magical underwear, etc. Why have 116 MP when you can have 500 MP? Yep, good point. but there's always the 1 round of casting, no? I would love if that was the case indeed, but where do you get the "in no time at all"? RQG Sorcery rules don't mention anything about inscribed spells taking any less time than memorized spells -- as you said you save on the boosting, but you still have to wait a full melee round. You can't "do this all day"... you can do it only as long as you can avoid having your limbs chopped off every other round when you're casting. It's fine for memorized spells, but that severely spoils my "sorcerer fantasy" for inscribed items (IMHO a well prepared experienced sorcerer should be absolutely overpowered). What do you mean? It does but you don't go adventuring with your wizard more than once every 3 or 4 adventures. My point was that there's a difference between mixing characters and mixing gameplays.
  12. I was confused that the text from "The Black Arkati" on page 137 actually jumps and continues over to page 140, "skipping" over the write-up for Urvantan. Either the layout is wrong or, more probably, it's intentional but it would IMHO require the 2 Urvantan page spread to have a different background/design to indicate this isn't part of the normal flow.
  13. Thanks for the deep dive, @Joerg! Some comments: I think you're possibly too harsh on Urvantan having so-called "wasted" his Free INT on multiple techniques. This is actually what I would expect from a narrative point of view: you "specialized" in some form/element Runes to give yourself a theme/gimmick. This sorcerer is the master or fire, while that sorcerer is a master of illusion, etc. It's like the Planeswalkers in Magic: The Gathering, you limit your deck to only one or two colours because it's counter-productive to do otherwise. As a result, a sorcerer would master more techniques in order to cast more powerful spells without the douple-MP price. I don't see this as being "one trick poneys" as much as specialization/expertise. Good job catching NPC stat inconsistencies! Although I agree that writing up spell costs/stats would be helpful, I'm not sure it's feasible or worth the space. CoC has suffered from this for decades (and still does), where big NPC cultists have a laundry list of spell names you need to look up... From my experience, what I find most helpful is the CoC adventures that give tips on how to use these spells, like "this NPC will usually defend himself with Spell1 and Spell2, but if corner he will use Spell3 to escape. If he gets the drop on the party, he will use Spell4 to attack from above...etc...". Not only does it help you play the NPC, it also often points out what the author had in mind. I often look at a big boss NPC stat and fail to see how it can pose any serious danger to my players, but often it's because I don't know all the spells well enough. I agree with you that the Magic Rune acts as a placeholder (it says so explicitly in RQG p391). I would be tempted to tell you to report the "Magic Rune" sidebar comment as a mistake -- either the text should say "a Rune of the character's choosing", or it's a premature leak of some upcoming additional rules for being able to use the Magic Rune itself as a wildcard Rune, possibly at a penalty like double MP or penalty to skill roll. Other remarks: Speaking of Urvantan, I love his illustration in the book! Zindaulo is one of the very few NPCs to have more than one POW-storage crystal. I still don't know why that doesn't happen more often. You'd think Urvantan would have a whole necklace of crystals? WTF is a "magic point matrix"? I know about Spell matrices, I know about POW storage, but not "magic point matrices"? Based on Urvantan's write-up, at first I figured those spell skills look really lame, especially for a 105 year old sorcerer, but it looks like his "main" spells (those he likely studied for a long time) he just inscribed on a bunch of items he keeps on himself? I guess that's how sorcerer go about it, inscribing and forgetting spells before moving on to new ones, slowly building up an arsenal over time... Only it doesn't look like you get any SR advantage for casting inscribed spells? It would suck if you spent years inscribing a big powerful spell, but it still takes 4 rounds to cast... maybe that's a missing rule from RQG, and that's how Urvantan does it, being able to cast things fast enough? That surely would help not having to use hand-wavy God-Time excuses... The sorcery rules might have their problems, but, again, it depend what the narrative goal is, here. The biggest problems arise IMHO when you try to mix "normal" PCs with sorcerers, frankly. But it's like trying to play Ars Magica and D&D at the same time -- you don't. You either play D&D, and therefore the big powerful sorcerers are NPCs that are either your patron or the evil boss (or your patron that turns out to be the evil boss!)... or you play Ars Magica and the big wizard is just one of your multiple characters, and you play him/her only once every few adventures because he/she's busy studying and experimenting most of the time. To me the main problem is more that a 105 year old sorcerer isn't so impressive (when he's supposed to be powerful enough to topple kingdoms, we are told...), and that a 47 year old sorcerer (which might represent a very experienced PC) doesn't look much compared to a 30 year old shaman. I'm hoping that maybe it's a mistake and they will beef up the stats significantly before it goes to print.
  14. I also remember that thread on weapon trance and IIRC it's not a house rule -- and it explains why the rules say it doesn't combine effects with Berserk or Fanaticism. At least that's how I'm going to play it. After all, it's called "trance" for a reason... the PC has to be in some kind of trance! That's how I understand the rules too, but I know some people on the forums interpret the "Rune magic always fires on SR1" rule as a catch all, regardless of MPs invested in the spell. AFAIK there hasn't been an official word on the matter. That's an interesting house rule... so if I understand this correctly, it's actually a superset of RAW? That is, the Humakti might choose to apply the whole penalty to one opponent (useful when facing one dangerous boss NPC), just as per RAW, but against multiple opponents he would have to split his penalty (for example: -50%, -20%, -15% against 3 opponents, assuming they have <100% skill), the same way you also split your attack against multiple opponents? I really like this -- apart from the small inconvenience of slowing down play for the player to choose and declare how to split their penalty, it scales elegantly, is backwards compatible with RAW, and calls back to another similar mechanic.
  15. Not showing up for me on this page at least -- only wishlist and share buttons are visible. Maybe some difference in stock in the various warehouses? I guess people can order through you if they don't see the button
  16. My my, everybody's having a slow holiday season it seems? Don't you all have clan rites and yearly heroquests to perform? 😅 On paper, it's even more likely for these to be all filled with women than with all men given that you'll always want one or two Earth priestesses there, whereas there's little or no gender restrictions for the other positions... plus the fact that Orlanthi women are supposed to be (stereotypically speaking) cunning and scheming compared to men. I can totally see one clan somewhere in Sartar where that would be the case, although I wouldn't imagine the entire clan to be all women for both practical reasons (as Joerg already commented upon) but also because that might put that clan in a possibly unnecessary awkward position with the other surrounding clans (politically and culturally). But then again that might be an interesting way to explore strong societal themes through roleplay... Nobody bothered giving @HeartQuintessence any proper links to the Stafford Library books so here it is. Note that you can buy the PDFs from Chaosium there, or follow the link somewhere on that page to their Lulu store for ordering softcover books (incidentally, I got the entire Stafford library as a Christmas gift to myself just today! I'm particularly interested in Arcane Lore, and the 2 Heortling-related books). Before you get into the Stafford Library, though, you should start with King of Sartar which, unlike the Stafford Library, is actually considered "finished". Sadly it's not available in print from Chaosium at this point (they only sell the eBook/PDF now)... you can still find the first hardcover edition at reasonable prices on eBay, but the second (and latest) edition is a bit harder to come by (I was lucky enough to grab one last year... eBay alerts are your friend).
  17. The "canonical social/religious composition" of Heortling clans was indeed a lot heavier handed in the HW/HQ1 sourcebooks than in the more recent publications, but I never read those as "you can't be a female Orlanth initiate". I only read it as "that's roughly how the population is spread out between cults", and therefore as "these are the rough numbers the GM should keep in mind when making up clan NPCs". Players were always free to make up whatever characters they wanted AFAICT, but I can imagine someone might have interpreted the intent of these old books differently. Either way, I think even now the cult membership trends are still valid, although I get the feeling the more recent books make it quite more diverse than just "1 in 7", which was pretty limiting. Yeah the dreadlock reference was mostly me having fun -- although a few illustrations I've seen make it look a bit like that... it's not like Vingans would spend much time re-braiding their hair on a regular basis (compared to time spent combat-training and sharpening their weapons), so their braids would quickly turn ugly enough to look like dreadlocks. Well, at least IMG.
  18. How is Orlanth a gendered cult? AFAICT there are no restrictions to worship Orlanth or become a Wind Lord. The only gendered thing is societal trends, where women don't tend to worship Orlanth. And even then, there doesn't seem to be any social taboo about women being Orlanth initiates, no? This makes me wonder what is even the point of the Vinga cult, apart from the cool-looking red dreadlocks.... (Jane gave a bunch of interesting reasons on her website... I don't know what we'll see in the CoG book). That's supposedly coming in the GM guide book. Last we heard, Jeff had found a solution to the problem of having to spend time to tell the players about the myth (which can take a long time depending on the heroquest) before actually going in -- I think the mechanics will allow the whole group at the table to be able to build/tell the myth while heroquesting it, or something.
  19. Highland Cattle is another option I had in mind, yes. Of course one of the problems is to try and make it different enough from the Red Cow clan so it doesn't look like a rip off I'd rather stay clear of the auroch connection because not only is my campaign set in 1611, way before Argrath shows up, but also there's already some Auroch Bringers in the Red Cow campaign, too.... Ian already did everything that's cool!
  20. Barntar's Lodge is supposedly up in the hills of the Far Place, near Alone, somewhere between the Bachad and Amad lands. Barntar grazed his "hardy redmane cattle" there until a great bear killed them all. That's pretty much all we know. I'm thinking of having one of the local clans either (1) having brought back this redmane cattle through heroquesting a long time ago, or (2) looking into doing that in the near future, either to strengthen their herds or just to make a better host for their wyter or whatever (currently leaning towards 1, though). I'm wondering what the hell this "redmane cattle" could be. If my english doesn't fail me, that's a weird combination of words since "mane" is the hair on a horse's neck, while "cattle" is some kind of cow. So was it a kind of horse or a kind of cow? Was it a weird unique animal that's a mix of both? Right now I'm leaning towards a kind of hairy cattle animal like, say, a Muskox, where the hair would be short and brown on the body but longer and redder around the neck.
  21. Ah right, yes. This was the case in RQ2 -- and actually AFAICT it was only extending spirit magic ("battle magic" in RQ2). In RQ3 and in RQG, it was shockingly switched over to extending Rune magic only instead ("divine magic" in RQ3). I'm wondering why such a big mechanical change was done.
  22. Nobody seems to have picked up on this so I'm not sure if I'm interpreting this correctly or not, but the Feathered Horse Queen and Prax are unrelated... Prax is the chaparral deserted plains east of Dragon Pass. The Feathered Horse Queen is the ruler of the Grazelands, which is in a completely different place: it's west of Dragon Pass, on the other side of Kero Fin and Beast Valley from Sartar, and south of the Tarsh Lunar Province. Prax is inhabited by nomadic tribes riding each a different beast (bisons, llamas, impalas, etc.), and ruled by Khans. They have a harsh life, fighting Chaos and Lunars and, you know, finding food for their herds. They have some of their own deities, but also tend to be very shamanic. The Grazelands are inhabited by semi nomadic horse riding people who have some enserfed peasants called vendref tending to their lands while they ride around, acting superior, and worshipping a sun deity. The only link that I know of between Prax and the Grazelands is that I think the Grazelanders were originally a Praxian horse riding tribe, but they left Prax and were among the first humans to settle back in Dragon Pass a few centuries ago. Praxians don't like horses now anyway so they wouldn't get along very well.
  23. I don't follow -- there's no such thing a "1 point Protection boosted with 4 MP". You either cast Protection 1 or Protection 4. More importantly, you either memorize Protection 1 or Protection 4, one taking up less CHA than the other. Haha... oh well. Another occurence of "I can see it work either way, but sadly the rules are super unclear". Mmmh, if you cast Heal Wound with 6 MPs, I would expect it to take 6 SRs. Why would those MPs be time-free? The SR rules are fairly clear: they both mention "+1 SR for each magic point used" and "+1 SR for each +1 boosting".... although that second one comes under the category "Spirit Magic", which make it look like it doesn't apply to Rune magic boosting, but I assume that's another situation where the authors fail to use strictly defined terminology. More importantly , why would you be of the opinion that "intrinsic boosting" increases penetration power but takes no time, whereas "bonus boosting" also increases penetration power but takes time? That seems like an inconsistent interpretation of the rules to me... increasing penetration power with MP should go hand in hand with taking extra SR, I think. Yeah I'm fine with Rune Magic being more limited because that's what makes Sorcery more attractive. Which is why Extension, for example, feels way too powerful to me -- I can see it being useful for divine blessing of crops or similar things, where you definitely want that to come from Rune magic and not sorcery from a worldbuilding point of view, but it might have been better to have made those specific spells have their own duration rules, instead of opening up munchkinery to half the Rune magic grimoire.
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