EpicureanDM

I rolled this back to how it worked in RQ3 when we played RQG, figuring splitting your attack and parry would be more palatable to my group, which it was. Maybe I should give it another chance, though. Yeah, I've also looked at The Cradle for years wondering how strong the PCs might need to be and what it would look like to wrestle all of those stat blocks in play. 😉 That's a nice counterpoint to what others have been saying. From what I can tell (this thread, Rune Masters), this was an expected part of high-level play, so it's interesting to hear that it didn't feature in your game. It ties back to what I said earlier, that my personal group didn't get close to squeezing these sorts of advantages out of the rules. But other folks did and it's fun/instructive to see how it's done. That's what's been tickling the back of my mind for years! This is a great list of stuff I hope we see, too. No one in my RQG game showed interest in sorcery, in part because I talked it down a little. If someone had shown any interest, though, I'd have used RQ3 sorcery despite what the esteemed members of this forum seem to think of it. 😉

Great stuff. I've added it to my offline notes. 🙂

I want to emphasize this point (again?). I only pointed to certain published NPCs to have some concrete rules and numbers to point to. I think I mentioned that I don't care that the particular stat block I pointed to is called "Leika Black Spear." Make her Generic Wind Lord #3, just a bundle of stats for an X-Men-style Danger Room hypothetical.

Definitely. I'm a big fan of reskinning NPCs and monsters. It seems a waste to me, though, if I've got a big NPC stat block full of Rune spells and allied spirits, but I don't know how to make use of all the bells and whistles. If fighting Leika or whomever feels the same as fighting Rubble bandits - because I don't know how to fully deploy Leika's advantages - then her stat block feels a little...superfluous? Indulgent? (I'm using some hyperbole in that comparison, so grant me a little latitude.) We all seem to be on roughly on the same page of my "18th level" metaphor, but I sometimes wish I hadn't used it. No, that's not true. It's done its job, but can distract a little. One of the things that I like about RQ is that there aren't defined character levels or defined power levels like there are in D&D. I used it to try and get people thinking about high-level play, as @soltakss said. In hindsight, I should have perhaps said, "Rune-Lord-play." Examples by @HreshtIronBorne and @Dragon have provided good examples of the power level I was trying to point to. 😉 Speaking of @Dragon, that's all valuable stuff to me, too. What's been interesting to note is that many folks report that their GM somehow needed to introduce homebrew Heroquesting at some point if their game reached a certain point. The rewards and advancement provided in RQ2/3 were inadequate for the sorts of Gloranthan stories people wanted to tell. Also new to me and I thought I'd gone through RQG's text fairly closely. I'm I'm sympathetic to both @Eff and @icebrand on this one. If there's a stat block for Gunda or any other Hero (Harrek, Beat Pot, Ralzakark, whomever), then there should be a clearly recognizable path through RQ's rules for PCs to obtain the same numbers on their character sheets. But if there are no stat blocks published, then I don't think the players are supposed to interact with those NPCs through the game's rules. I see this tripping up RQ/Glorantha folks quite a bit. As soon as someone invokes a Named Person from Glorantha, the discussion can get sidetracked with the abstract stuff such as discussion over whether Named Person gone on Heroquests or other Glorantha-related lore. People stop talking about the rules themselves. Another combination of too-abstract followed by a glimpse of hard-won rules knowledge. I can't recall RQG's rules for dividing 300% skill across SR. Can you fill me in or point to the right page? Again, abstract enough to be accurate, but without the same granular detail we get from @HreshtIronBorne, @Rodney Dangerduck, or @Dragon. I don't mean to pick on you either, Darius. Whenever I lurk in the Glorantha forum, your takes on different topics are great grist. 😉 I wondered if this would come up! I suppose my stance is that if you publish a stat block, the players should be able to kill it using the published rules of your game (no home-brew Heroquesting). Allowances can be made, I suppose, for stuff like The Crimson Bat if you specifically call out that those stats are "stunt stats", as Chaosium does in the Bestiary. This sort of ties into a point I (hopefully) made earlier: it's one thing to publish those Rune Lord stat blocks and another for players to understand how to use the rules to defeat those Rune Lord stat blocks. Lots of trial and error and dead PCs (and NPCs and monsters) will eventually build that knowledge in your local group. But variations exist between groups. I've got several years of RQ3 experience from back in the day and my group didn't come close to discovering the l33t rules hacks that some folks have described in this thread. I would have enjoyed knowing some of that stuff back when I played because it would have made the game more fun. EDIT: It's not that I expect my PCs to defeat the Leika, but I hope they'll defeat someone as powerful. So I'm keen to understand how to use the rules to have fun fighting someone that powerful.

I'm glad you posted both of these lists because they illustrate part of what has frustrated me in the past. The first quote is accurate, but too broad and abstract for someone who wants to use RQ's rules. I can tell that you did use the rules, but you aren't being specific. In the second quote, though, we're in the details. We've got spell names, how many times they're stacked, different Multispell techniques, etc. (I'm starting to get a sense of how much folks leaned on Multispell back in the day.) Someone reading RQG today can look at those spell names and draw direct connections to what's in the book they're holding. They can try to pull off those same feats or get inspired to create their own. I suspect that the folks who know this stuff don't recognize what it is they know. It's a style of play that's largely unknown these days, but it's suddenly relevant again with the success of RQG. If you know this stuff, it's because you spent years acquiring this knowledge through actual use of rules that are largely the same as those in RQG. It seems a shame to me for that knowledge to be lost. It feels like I'm trying to preserve a language that only a couple dozen people on Earth remember how to speak. 🙂 That's right. It ties into something @Eff said, which I'll tackle in a moment.

I wish I'd attended the thread a little more since the weekend, since I'd point to this as the sort of response that resonates. It doesn't contain SR-by-SR detail, but it signals the mode of thought about high-level RQ play that I'm so curious about. If this is true, then why are Chaosium publishing stat blocks for characters like Leika Black Spear or Jardarin? Even if players aren't supposed to fight these characters, their stats can serve as goals to aim for. If there's consensus that RQG's combat rules stop being fun at a certain point, then what is that point? And if Leika or Jardarin or whomever is past that point, then why are the game's designers putting them in print? This is also the sort of analysis that I'm keen on. That all makes sense to me. I still find it odd, though, that no one's replying to say, "Yes, my group of PCs has actually rolled dice and spent Rune points to defeat an opponent of similar power." To use my other analogy, it's people who've only played D&D at 5th level telling me how they think a fight at 18th level would go. I'm not trying to pick on @Eff specifically on this point! Maybe they have "played at 18th level" and are just responding to the examples I presented. Like @Rodney Dangerduck, this is the sort of feedback that I'm looking for! It's detailed and grounded in the rules, showing how folks with access to lots of spells and gear use them at the table. This detail strikes me in particular because it's showing someone synthesizing advantages in the game by combining the game's rules. It sounds like someone who's been in the guts of the system in order to figure out how to work it. 🙂 Again, gold. I emphasize the detail at the beginning (Shield 1 to counteract the enemy dispels) as another example of someone who's clearly had time in the trenches. Great stuff. 🙂 For simplicity, every response by @Rodney Dangerduck and @HreshtIronBorne is exactly what I was trying to find. I'm saving it offline in a note to refer to it later, not merely to copy but to get me in the right mindset. More replies to come.

Sorry for the delayed reply, @soltakss. Affairs of state kept me busy throughout the weekend. 😉 I start by apologizing for using the term "stunt stats" to describe what you wrote. Without the context of your initial reply, I couldn't chart a course from my experience with the rules of RQ3 and RQG to what's in Secrets of Dorastor. Having reviewed Soltak Stormspear and reading about the particulars of your game, I now have a much better sense for how you intended the Personalities of Secrets to be used and, if necessary, fought. Even though you couldn't remember the blow-by-blow, some of what you wrote points to what I'm curious about. Details like these caught my eye especially: These quotes hopefully illustrate and point to the sort of information I've been trying to unearth. These demonstrate not necessarily how PCs obtained 300% skill ratings or Heroquested Gifts making them immune to Chaos, but how familiar spells and skills present in RQG or RQ3 - available to most RQG PCs - were used to win battles. I've spent a lot of time recently diving into the Glorantha forum here, going back into old threads to piece together my vision of Glorantha. I often agree with your takes on various Gloranthan topics and your willingness to make the setting your own. I should have extended that understanding to Secrets of Dorastor and Secrets of Heroquesting. In hindsight of this thread, Secrets of Dorastor makes a lot more sense to me. Still valuable and still lots of fun, just better contextualized. Keep running RQ the way you do. You tell @Nick Brooke that I said that Your Glorantha Sounds Fun. 😄

I don't care what the game expects or about balance per se in a particular GM's particular campaign. I want to see the full breadth and majesty of RuneQuest's rules expressed through high-level combat between matched foes. Show me how much fun it can be when players use RQ's rules in a back-and-forth battle of oneupmanship. I feel like I keep repeating the same thing and it's not making sense to anyone. The problem must lie on my end somewhere.

For the sake of clarity, I'd point to NPCs like Leika Black Spear in Gamemaster Pack Adventure Book or Jardarin the Sun Lord from Pegasus Plateau as being "18th level." I know that "18th level" is vague and imprecise, but I'm trying to point to the more powerful stat blocks that everyone seems to think will count as "extremely powerful" within RQG's rules. What I don't want to get distracted by is these NPCs identities. Strip out all of their identity and personality so that Leika becomes High Priest of Orlanth and Wind Lord of Vinga #45 and Jardarin is Sun Lord #8.

I will reply to you as well, @soltakss, but I want to do it properly in consideration of your generosity and patience in replying to me as you did.

That's not what I meant, but I appreciate the forbearance as I try to express myself the right way. 😉 I didn't use example foes from Secrets of Dorastor because I expect or want to run battles using RQ's rules with those foes. Whenever I see monster stats in an RPG, I expect that they are designed with the understanding that the players can use the game's rules to defeat them. What would be the point of defining them using the game's rules if the game's rules aren't meant to be applied to them? Acknowledging that Secrets of Dorastor isn't an official Chaosium product, I couldn't figure out how the rules of RQG (or RQ2/3) would produce characters that could defeat those foes. But it's not really the production of sufficiently powerful RQ characters that I'm confused about. It's how they're played, round-by-round at the table, using all of their gear and magic, that I can't seem to find. I've tried to think about some concrete example that I could point to as what I'm looking for. For now, it's something like this. I'd love to read an Example of Play in the style of the small, green-text examples found the combat chapter that describes a battle between, say, four experienced Rune Lords (complete with allied spirits, magic storage crystals, iron armor and weapons, all the trimmings) against four opponents of comparable skill and equipment. I don't care about whether one side has a massive advantage via stealth or ambush. I don't care if one side gets a bonus because they're fighting on Orlanth's High Holy Day. Set it up however you like. What I'm curious to see, I suppose, is someone being able to demonstrate what mastery of RQ's rules looks like. Bring every piece of mechanical weight and cleverness to bear to showcase what a battle looks like when both sides squeeze every advantage from the rules. And show me what it looks like at the same granular level as we see in the green-text examples in RQG's Combat chapter: SR by SR; Rune point by Rune point; roll by roll. Powerful RQ characters have all of these rules and systems built into them. Can no one take them for a spin and show them off? EDIT: I don't mean to suggest that anyone somehow owes me what I'm trying to find. I've spent a fair amount of time since RQG's release trying to find people who can speak about high-level RQ play and they remain elusive. This is probably the last time I'll pursue this topic. EDIT, PART TWO: It sometimes feels like sometimes RQG's showing me 18th level characters (in D&D terms), but everyone's playing RQG at "5th level." So when I ask how to play these 18th level characters, no one can tell me how because no one does it. But they're in the books...

If the consensus is that we're talking about "stunt stats," that's fine. It strikes me as a bit silly, like someone publishing that a D&D monster has AC 500 and immunity to all spells. Even the Bestiary's authors can't resist the temptation, but they at least call out the fact that they're goofing off. I still think it's weird that no one seems capable of talking about RuneQuest's power curve in terms of actual play using the rules. I can read a few pages in Rune Masters - a book that's almost 40 years old - about what high-level combat is like, but can't find any modern players who can describe having done it themselves. People seem to know what a high-level stat block looks like, but no one ever talks about using them in play. It's all vague references and allusions to Gloranthan battles and history that I'm told I should ignore when I ask how I can create those moments in my RuneQuest game.

All fair enough, but these NPCs and opponents (not just in Secrets) are presented in the same format as bandits to be dispatched in the Rubble. It suggests that I should be able to use those stats as they're found, just as I would for bandits my PCs find in the Rubble. But I see stuff like "-200% to all PC attacks" and it doesn't seem like I'm meant to take that seriously in the same way that I'm supposed to accept that a Rubble bandit has Bladesharp 3. I agree with all of that. So tell me about the special abilities, magic items, and allied spirits that you've seen used to defeat foes even close to the level of these NPCs. How do the players actually use the rules of the game, round by round, to win this sort of fight? Don't describe it in the abstract. "Boss monsters can be surprised, outwitted, distracted, PCs can search and find their weaknesses, or something that strips certain abilities" is a statement that can be made about any game. I could write that about D&D, Rolemaster, Cyberpunk 2020, GURPS, you name it. Tell me how to beat these opponents using RuneQuest's rules, dice, and numbers. How many rounds did you have to prep your magic? What spells did you cast during that prep? What were your allied spirits doing during a combat round while your character did their thing? Was the battle only won with a critical hit? How many times did Rune Lords invoke Divine Intervention to return to the battle? Has nobody ever actually fought these opponents using the rules of the game? Why can't anyone give me some sort of "battle report" describing how one of these fights goes? It's fine if the answer is, "We've never done it by the rules," or "We make up a bunch of house rules and handwave some stuff." But that should be made clear when presenting these high-level monsters. There should be a sidebar explaining to the GM that these stats are theoretical somehow or that they aren't really meant to be used in play. If someone has done it fair-and-square using published rules, I'm quite keen to know how it's done.

My group played RQ3 steadily for two or three years and intermittently throughout the '80's. Skills started much lower than they do in RQG and even during our steady years, I don't think I saw anyone advance a skill much past 120-130% naturally using skill checks. Once you get to 100%, the odds of increase were so low that plenty of skill advancement rolls just failed. And that was in the days when attack and parry advanced separately. If part of the answer to my question is that PCs need to naturally achieve 150% in their primary weapon skill and that will require three years of weekly play, that's fine. I just want to hear how the rules produce characters of sufficient power to take down the big threats. What do characters who can beat these creatures look like? How do the rules produce them? I'm looking for responses from people who have produced these characters using the game's rules in play. As for True Sword, aren't you thinking of Axe Trance? In both RQ3 and RQG, that seems to be the one that allows you to funnel magic points, not True Sword. True Sword just doubles your damage and isn't stackable with itself. I also own and admire Secrets of Heroquest, but it doesn't have the sort of information I'm looking for. 😉 Dorastor's a great book. Congratulations. 😉 I'm familiar with the concept of the "action economy," but it's a little underwhelming as an answer. With the greatest good humor, it reads like this to me: "How did the PCs beat this monster?" "The GM played the monster badly." How many PCs is "several'? Even that's helpful, particular information. As a GM, am I expected to understand that only groups with 8 PCs have a chance against a particular monster because 6 will die guaranteed over the first four rounds? Besides, lots of the write-ups of Personalities in Secrets of Dorastor mention allied spirits, fetches, damage immunities, special Rune magic, or retinues that make it unlikely that it's just one monster against a group of PCs. The stats for The Mistress of Light on pg. 87 of Secrets says that the Mistress exudes a shimmering glow that subtracts 200% from opponents attacks. 200%! So my PCs need to have some sort of magic or gear that gives them at least +200% to even get them back on level ground! Has anyone fought The Mistress of Light? What rules did they use to counteract that massive penalty?

Reading the Personalities section of @soltakss's excellent Secrets of Dorastor, I found creatures and opponents with eye-watering stats. 50 AP across each location, 30-HP averages across locations, weapon skills in the 300%+ range, damage ratings of 2D6 + 20D6. It makes me wonder if these are really intended to be used at the table or if they're "stunt stats" in some way. I know that there's no such thing as "levels" in RuneQuest, but these creatures represent the top of the power range. In D&D terms, they're the ancient red dragons, the pit fiends, the Tarrasques, etc. Having played enough D&D over the years, I can look at these monsters and get some rough sense of what the characters that can defeat them will look like, their level, spells, magic items, etc. I can also figure out what their tactics might be, how they'll use their advantages to try and defeat the monster. Stats like those in Secrets of Dorastor (and in other sources throughout RQ's published history) seem unapproachable, almost ludicrous. They strike me the same way as someone telling me that this ancient red dragon in D&D has AC 100, not AC 22 (in 5e terms) or AC -1 (in 1e terms). The numbers for high-level RQ opponents feel like they're off by an order of magnitude, even if they aren't off by the strict definition of that term. In the Prologue for Secrets of Dorastor, @soltakss writes that the book springs from long-running RQ2 and RQ3 games that featured "High Level" characters. I assume that some of the PCs in that game actually fought and defeated some of the high-level opponents mentioned in the book. On the basis of that assumption, I have these questions: What were those PCs stats, skills, spells, gear, etc.? I can look at Rune Masters to see what "High Level" characters looked like in the RQ2 days. Is that what they looked like in this campaign? What tactics did the PCs use to actually win these fights using the rules and dice? How did the players use what was on their character sheets and the rules of the game to win? How long were these fights? Were they over in three rounds? Ten? How did the rules of the game impact their length? I know that Secrets of Dorastor is technically an RQG product and the source campaign ran under RQ2/3. I'm familiar enough with the rules of RQ2, RQ3, and RQG to spot how differences in how RQ2/3 did things might impact how they're done in RQG. Just tell me how it was done in RQ2/3. 😉 If anyone else has specific examples of how their groups used the rules of the game to defeat an opponent on par with the heavyweights from Secrets of Dorastor, I'm all ears.

We got rid of Passions pretty quickly into our RQG run and only used Runes. Their analogues in Pendragon made sense in exactly the way you described, @Eff, but they felt like double-dipping (or overegging the pudding, as the Brits would say) next to Runes. We only used Runes and settled on the idea that just like the gods, our characters were comprised of the Runes in a way. To use a modern analogy, our characters' bodies, minds, and soulds were made of Runic energy in the same way we would describe modern bodies as being comprised of carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen. We didn't get too into the weeds about exact compositions. 😉 We settled on this analogy because that's how we made sense of how invoking Runes works mechanically. When you decide to invoke your Air or Illusion Rune, you're trying to make a small connection to the fundamental forces of the universe. That's always dangerous to do, like playing with live electrical wires. Most times, it went fine (Success). Sometimes it went great (Special or Crit), and sometimes you got burned (Failure or Fumble). That's to be expected when you try to contact the fundamental forces of the universe. The vast majority of people in the world don't have Runes at 80%+. Those who do essentially have a lot (too much?) of that Runic energy filling their bodies and minds. We used a caffeine analogy. Consume too much and you get jumpy, your heart races a bit. You might knock something over accidentally or talk too much. You can't help it. You're full of caffeine. Same with Runes, but more broad and metaphorical. EDIT: It just occurred to me that you might analogize Pendragon's failed Passion rolls to Runic "mind control." Have you tried that explanation with your players? Would it work? The big conceptual hurdle is to both get rid of Passions and then remember that even though Runes use the same mechanisms, they aren't intended to be used like Passions (in either the Pendragon or RQG sense). We rarely used them to guide conduct in the way the rules suggest, the "mind control" option. But when we did, it arose very naturally and it just made sense to roll. We didn't look for opportunities to use Runes that way in the same way you might playing Pendragon. When someone actively invoked a Rune for some benefit, though, that's when we leaned into the personality/mind control stuff. You had to describe your action in a way that suited the Rune and the influence of the Rune lasted the entire scene. If you invoked your Darkness Rune early in a negotiation, the GM would put limits on how the Darkness-invoked character could act for the rest of the scene. If someone invoked their Death Rune in combat, the GM would force the Death-Runed PC to kill every defeated opponent, forgoing the chance at ransom. That sort of thing. If someone wanted to invoke a Rune for a more discrete action, we'd make sure that the approach they described fit the Rune's vibe.

Thanks for digging that up, @PhilHibbs. The answer could be nudging some annoying, follow-up questions in the back of my mind, but I'll ignore that feeling for now.

I realize now that people haven't read this paragraph from the Bestiary's entry for wyters. This same language appears on pg. 286 of RQG:

I'm sure that wyters would too if they had the option. Do they? Naturally, the Bestiary contains Kogui, a village deity who breaks the general rule by specifically stating that it can spend Rune Points on certain Rune spells. So Kogui can spend both Rune Points and POW on Rune spells, I guess. C'mon, Chaosium. *rubs eyes*

I've somehow missed during this discussion that while wyters in the Bestiary have Rune Points included in their listings, the rules say that wyters cast Rune magic using their POW rather than Rune Points. Why exactly do they bother having Rune Points, then? Can Rune Points be used for something other then casting Rune magic? EDIT: Is it to measure how many points of Rune magic spells a spirit has access to? So a spirit with 8 Rune Points has 8 Rune magic spells? That doesn't strike me as the sort of thing that a GM would leave to chance (e.g. a GM wants designs a powerful Snake Daughter with 11 particular Rune spells, but only rolls a "9" on 4d6, so they change their concept to fit the random roll).

I shared it with my players, but they also shied away from doing their homework. "Engaged" might seem more tricky than it is, but what's obvious to some might not be for others. I used the old wargaming "base to base" concept with my players, meaning that if they could imagine the base of their character's miniature touching the base of another, they're "base to base" and Engaged in RQG terms. We don't use minis when we play RQG, but they could visualize it. Another way to think about it is if one combatant tried to make a melee attack against another (regardless of success), they are Engaged. There's a distinction here between being close enough to engage in a melee attack and actually trying to make one. There could be some edge cases where one combatant is within arm's reach of another and not Engaged. My rule of thumb is that once one combatant tries to murder another with a melee weapon, that's when both become Engaged. It represents a narrowing of the combatants' worlds and options to being in a fight for their life with someone who's in their face.

If I read this correctly (the fault is mine if I'm not), then I don't think I factor SIZ into things when someone's Statement of Intent also contains movement. SIZ is bundled into a character's overall melee Strike Rank (DEX SR + SIZ SR + Weapon SR). It's accounted for there. To recalculate it or adjust for it again once combatants become Engaged is probably more trouble than it's worth. Your example is unintentionally awkward because you're starting in melee, i.e. you're Engaged in RQG terms. You can't move 3 meters if you're Engaged in RQG without triggering a 5e-style Attack of Opportunity that you can't parry or dodge. That's pretty nasty. Assuming you aren't Engaged, your tentative SR would be 7 (1SR to move 3m + DEX SR 3 + SIZ SR 3) before your weapon SR is added. RQG allows you to draw a weapon as part of that movement, so you wouldn't trigger what I call "The Universal 5 SR Penalty." I deal with most of your questions in the document I linked to above.

@Bill the barbarian has added some important details to the basic answers, except for the MOV/SIZ stuff. I wrote this guide to RQG's Strike Rank system. It borrows from RQ3, so it's not RAW. The RQ3 additions are minimal and mostly related to quality of life. They don't include the RQ3 MOV/SIZ stuff. You might find it helpful, @klecser. Link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/sqmq88ratu5s6go/Newcomer's Guide to Runequest's Strike Rank Combat v0.5.pdf?dl=0

Semi-related, I'd be keen to know how healing potions are made in Glorantha. Does someone dump a 4-point spirit magic spell into a special flask?

I'm with you and @HreshtIronBorne on this one, @Pentallion. You're exploring the rules given to you by the designers. If the rules about wyters had been playtested more rigorously, we might have seen some limits published in the RAW. I think you found a very interesting set of ideas and rules around wyters and clan war. Some reasonable limits have been proposed to tone down the pure power-plays, leaving some powerful new options for RQG play. I've taken some notes for use in my own game. I find this thread interesting for addressing the stunt monsters in the Bestiary like the Crimson Bat or Cwim. I understand that they're designed using a "LOL, this is funny" principle and I couldn't see a way for RQG characters to ever challenge them (using the rules we currently have). But now we've got this "burn down your wyter" idea to think about. Can it be theorycrafted? Maybe. I'm probably not the one to try. But it expands the horizons of what's possible. And before the grognards start declaiming about AD&D/Deities and Demigods/"If it has stats, we can kill it," I know. I know. I've been around a long time. I read about it in the letters section of Dragon.