gochie

As I wouldn't limit the number of spirits Vishi can damage in a round, I would rule that Vishi deals special damage to spirit #1, deals normal damage to spirit #2, and deals no damage to spirit #3.

If you walk around with empty Binding Enchantments and a high-POW adventurer with the Spirit Binding spirit spell, you can instantly get rid of spirit/elemental obstacles. You can keep trying once per round until successful, likely trapping it before it wins in spirit combat against another adventurer. If you want to empty your Enchantment again, just cast a guaranteed Control (Entity) on it and let it attack other creatures/spirits for you until it loses and is sent back whence it came.

There is no attack and parry in spirit combat, only an opposed success. The adventurer will likely end-up losing VS many spirits anyways, since in the case of a tie both parties deal their damage.

I thought about this a while back actually, and I think it depends a lot on the combination of elementals... and common sense. Some like lunes, water, and air elementals would have no effect on most elementals, as none of them can go mad, drown, or fall. Others, like fire and selene, can cause at least some direct damage to most of them and disrupt their physical form. I might say the only elemental that can damage another of its kind is a selene, as they can technically both drain each-other. And then of course, every other combination would be pretty unique. Some examples are: Water vs Fire: Water can hurt fire more than fire can hurt water, but they still probably damage eachother (ie. Water deals 1D6 damage while Fire deals 1 damage). Earth could swallow fire and extinguish it, if the fire elemental is ground level (and slow to react?). Earth would probably take minimal damage while doing so. A strong earth elemental may or may not be able to damage ALL types by crushing them underground? Shades could potentially freeze water, very slowly. They could also extinguish fire, but suffer damage in the process. Lunes would stay away from anything without INT. In closing, I wouldn't even make a roll out of it. If they're "fighting" (ie. in contact with one another), deal damage in a logical manner. Fire deals 1 to water while water deals 1D6 to fire. Earth deals 1D6 to fire (if strong enough to contain/envelop it) while fire deals it 1. Selene deals her 1hp/1mp damage to any of them. Darkness deals 1D6 to fire if it can envelop it, and possibly sustains 1d6 damage back, etc.

To be fair, I did nerf special damage to double rolled STR bonus, instead of rolled STR bonus + max STR bonus. I just don't see why a crush special would have max damage anything when the others don't. I'm sticking to the general recipe of double rolled damage on specials and double max damage on crits.

Huh? My ruling is exactly the same as the official ruling, hence *Monocle Emoticon*. They don't maximize weapon damage, only STR bonus.

🧐

It could, but that's not expanded upon in the adventure at all. It would be completely GM-created content.

Don't get me wrong, I think what you're saying makes complete sense, but at the same time I'm willing to bet the vast majority of GMs will simply tell the player "now you have 7 points of spirit magic to spend on any of your cult's listed spells". RAW, there is technically nothing preventing a player from doing that, especially an egregious munchkin.

It's worth pointing out that an assistant shaman is NOT a shaman. There is nothing wrong in assisting a shaman as an up-and-coming Chalana Arroy initiate, especially if he's the main healer of your little village.

It's legit at character creation as far as the book goes. Getting an additional 2 points of spirit magic for being assistant shaman can bring it to 6, or even 7. I know in RQ3 we limited starting spirit spells to 3 points for initiates and I think 5 points for Priests/Rune lords (before needing to go to a shaman), but those were likely house-rules.

I didn't play it, but I do feel like Urvantan's assistance isn't actually required to win, since the real winning move is beating the boss (in a duel or otherwise). He's also very apt to die if the adventurers don't intervene... So that's fine. Honestly, I expected Urvantan to be way more overpowered, and "win" the adventure for the players. It sounds like the most fun adventure in the book to me anyways. 😊 As for the Smoking Ruins... I feel like the whole putting-the-ancestors-to-rest-side-quest is fun, but you get absolutely nothing of worth from doing it. You could easily just get the mirror, say "nice, an easy quest!", and skip over the rest. It needs something... Deeper? Like you can only help one of them with their ritual, and the choice you make affects the rest of the story in a big way (or something in that line).

I think it's also important to note that nobody knows the mirror shard is there. The priestess just asks for any artifact that would be of significance to an Ernaldan temple.

Do MA work with Cestus? Fighting claws? Where does it stop exactly--a "hand blade" à-la Assassin's Creed/Diablo 2 assassin?

I think, in the end, it's up to the GM to decide if the NPC has a huge face-tat or emblem on his shield, and how far it could be seen, and up to the PC to decide that for their character.

Cool commissioned game art is one thing... But I'm not going to assume everyone has face tattoos (plus they're not wearing a closed helm, and they're not exactly "normal" everyday characters). Also, if you're outside of Dragon Pass you might find cults that you don't know/recognize, or that simply don't use tattoos or obvious rune displays.

As a sidenote, under the Dispel Magic spell it actually says "to dispel a 1-point Shield (a Rune spell) requires 2 points". Under the Shield spell description is says: "If cast on a target already protected by Countermagic, the Countermagic would be Dispelled before the Shield, if possible.", which is why I placed countermagic on the "outermost" layer.

I think RAW, no. I believe someone from Chaosium answered that for me directly. Would I house-rule that? Absolutely. It sucks that a good hunter with a 100%+ skill has no use for his main spell.

Plenty of examples, but I'll just point you to this quote: p. 254. "All targets, except voluntary ones, resist spells cast at them and need to be overcome (POW vs. POW) with a resistance roll". Yep. It sounds like this spell is probably meant to be used by priests instead of shamans. Not sure why they made it this way, but RAW it is definitely better.

Ah my bad, forgot about that spell. Either way, the creature resists if it doesn't want to be bound, just like any other "offensive" spell. Spells don't need to specify they can be resisted, rather the opposite.

True, it does RAW. A Binding Enchantment doesn't target a spirit... It targets an item or unintelligent creature, and only creates the "space" that a Spirit can be shoved into. You need to somehow control the spirit to force it into the binding enchantment.

Countermagic is automatically destroyed if a spell pierced it by 2+ mps, so for Dispel 6 for example, it goes right through (and destroys) countermagic 3 and dispels Shield 3.

I think the Distraction spell taunts a spirit. Either way you can cast control (entity) to force the spirit into your Binding enchantment. The only time control spells can't be resisted is when the spirit is already in a binding enchantment.

I agree it's a strange spell as written, and perhaps what I'm describing is not exactly as intended... But it's all we've got 🤷‍♂️. So for your first point, look at it as if you're summoning a portal that brings forth an entity. Your spell succeeds, so you lose your MPs, but the entity is not pulled into the portal (ie "resists). So your spell was successful but yielded no results, just like a resisted beffudle spell. As for your second point, the spell is actually incredibly powerful, which is why it takes so many points to pull a powerful entity across. You're summoning a spirit to you "permanently" (it probably escapes if you don't react and attack/control/communicate with it, but still). You don't have to spirit travel to find spirits, which is huge for assistant shamans. If the assistant forces the entity to attack him, he farms checks in his spirit combat skills and POW without spending a single rune point. Plus, you can bind multiple small spirits in enchantments or to a shaman's fetch, which can add up to a huge ammount of MP storage, plus whatever spirit magic you can force them to use or learn from them. Once again, you get all this by only spending MPs, and without needing a shaman at all.

Which one? Thought I touched everything lol