Shiningbrow

4 hours ago, soltakss said:

It is too far away for sense chaos to have any effect. Also, it is buried under a lot of rock and soil, so this masks Sense Chaos.

Well, Robin wasn't clear on the exact location (I think he was saying it was up to each GM).

"Buried under lots of rock and soil"...' except, a simple fire releases it... Burn some branches, evil incarnate comes back into the world. 

Now, if it was under a buried temple with a pile of solid rock to mask it... ..... 

8 hours ago, lordabdul said:

Yep. If Darius' idea of fun is "more realistic income and education inequality" then by all means he should proceed -- it's not my fun but I support and love to see people come up with house rules. My point was to highlight that this kind of change tends to seep into many other parts of the system. Even if you have different design goals ("realism" vs "game balance"), it does affect all that other stuff one way or another... so that's why I was challenging Darius' quick reply composed of "it's easy, look" followed by a simple table.

Agreed. I think if you're going to go to realism approach for one, you should probably go for the whole lot. (In contrast to what I write below :p)

It just gets a time-consuming.

(Although, personally, I'd like more differentiated hit locations, and damage/absorption for weapons/armour).

2 hours ago, Darius West said:

Or you have made a system which is pretty realistic even better.  RQ has had a lot of re-writes, like many RPGs.  The aim of every rewrite is to make the game better, isn't it?  And isn't RQG getting another rewrite soon?

More realistic doesn't necessarily mean better. I'm going to presume a large number of people don't want more realism in RQ. If they did, they would have said so earlier, or appropriated Harnmaster.

Remember - MGF!

11 hours ago, lordabdul said:

Why not? Because you have to draw the line somewhere about what to model and what not. RQG drew the line there and I don't feel the need to move it... and that's coming from me, a big GURPS nerd, a system that does have different skill difficulty ratings.

But see, it's "easy" to come up with a table, but it's harder to make it work and justify it -- if only vaguely evidenced by the many lines of text to try and justify it immediately afterwards.

First, your table has 6 levels of difficulty. GURPS, a system known for supposedly being overly complex, only has 4. Why did you pick 6? Did you think about it?

Second, your table only addresses training. Why are character creation rules exempt for this? Why would 21 year-old basket weaver and a 21 year-old alchemist have the same ratings in their respective professional skills when one has an easy skill and the other has a very difficult skill?

How are you going to address gameplay balance? Different difficulty ratings will mean that different characters will progress at different speeds. You might realize that, given the categorization you've done, some occupations will be unfairly "slowed down" while others are "boosted". People with "difficult" rating for their main professional skill will progress slowly, which affects their yearly income... but if their skill is "difficult", surely they are in some expert field and are bound to charge more, no? So you have to go and check back on all the income amounts. And you have to check back on all the skills marked as "main occupation skill", to see if that needs rebalancing. And also you need to see if any occupation has an unbalanced skill list compared to other occupations... I call that the "suck it, healer" problem, where if you want to play, say, a druid-type healer, you need to learn medicine and surgery and herbology and chemistry and all kinds of stuff like that a suddenly you have a whole bunch of "difficult" skills, so your character creation points evaporate way faster, and your character progression comes to a crawl, compared to the fighter guy who only spends points and improves his weapon and shield skills (both average in difficulty). So then you need to maybe change the skill list, to fix the problem of some occupations having too many skills by grouping several skills into one or something... and so on.

This thing is going to slowly and insidiously ripple through the whole game system and next thing you know there's something slightly wrong or unsatisfying with your characters and your campaign, and you realize what you've done. Or maybe your players are not so picky, maybe your campaigns don't last that long, maybe you end up with a bunch of PCs that don't expose this problem too much or at all (like, say, everybody's a fighter!).

Or... You suddenly realise you're no longer playing Runequest.

Q: if Wakboth's eye is under Pavis, would the Stormbullies be permanently uneasy?

7 hours ago, tnli said:

 

So, to summarize my understanding. in one season you can do all of the following:

1) Adventure (for a week or two)

2) Do you duties for your temple

3) Do your duties for your farm/etc

4) Pay and gain training in one skill.

And not much else. So if you're planning to do something that takes plenty of time (like, I dunno, travel all the way to the other side of the Genertela, build a temple, or something), you can't train, and have to make alternative arrangements for your farm not to perish, your temple not to get angry to you, etc.

Temple duties for most initiates is only 10% of your time.

Duties to farm will purely depend on occupation.

So, yeah, need a much better answer. How's, as a guess, I'd say normally you can only get a maximum of 2 hours training per day. Remove farming, and you can treble/quadruple that!

7 hours ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

start with ~25/30% in sword AND axe AND bow AND spear AND dagger for a "standard" sartarite woman who is culturally not dedicated to fight seems to be too much, doesn't it ? I would prefer a gender table

Everyone in the culture has some weapon ability and training. Whether for defence or food. And using a weapon at 25% is something many of us can do now anyway, with bow being the hardest. 

You should be able to dance around in a melee combat and score a reasonable hit 25% of the time, and maybe parry a strike towards you with some effectiveness about 25% of the time... No???

7 hours ago, Darius West said:

Okay, but if they aren't taking spirits of retribution, the community can hardly say the gods are angry with the "perp" if they are illuminated, and of course they can hardly prove the person is illuminated either.

No, but I wasn't suggesting that. More that the local priest will know that they're shirking duties, responsibility to the temple, not paying tithes, etc. And most of those things are outside the interests of the gods anyway.

4 hours ago, Kloster said:

Only up to the normal max (21 for humans), and you first loose a permanent rune point, to gain 1 INT (or other stat) point.

True true..

But I think most going sorcery (or, given the +5% to most category modifiers, ironically excluding Magic), it's well worth it!

13 minutes ago, Darius West said:

but that is what illumination is for... Dodging the repercussions.

Spiritually, perhaps. But not within the community. 

26 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

Published adventures don't really support this - they have some hefty loot in them. If nothing else, the magical items you take from your enemies.

True. I should have said "shouldn't be the money grab". 

40 minutes ago, Mugen said:

No, it was a sorcerer using the sorcery spell Enhance INT multiple times, each time with a higher Intensity. 

I get that. I'm saying they could get to 21 easily enough, then Enhance INT. You'd basically need to, to get to 27/28. That's a +6/7enhancement.

Firstly, need to remember - 9 points for 1 day, 12 for a week, 17 for 1 year... So, even for a pretty short duration - unless it's purely for a few minutes, is going to be expensive in Free INT.

Secondly, 2 FI & MP for +1, 6 for +2, 10 for +3, 14 for +4, 18 for +5, and 22 for +6. You *need* at least 4 to get the additional +1 to re-do the improvement.

So, if you start at 14 INT, and no duration, you can get to 18 INT... which can get you an extra +1 improved on the next casting - ie, 19. 

Therefore, you can really only get to 28 if you start with a really high INT. 21 INT (and inscribed spell) gets you to 26 (+5), and on a second casting to 28 (INT +7). For woot! A whole 10 minutes!!! Slightly useful for some occasions.

NB - not including inscriptions, you *need* to start with a natural 21 INT to get to 28!!! 

Now, having 4 INT  points in inscriptions (14 POW) however, would be extreme munchkinnerry! (If GM allowed). Combine with 4point POW Enhancing crystal for added fun!

Re: skills. Current skill in hours per roll sounds about right... Not that difficult to calculate (especially if rounding).

A teaching skill should be introduced (or somehow made part of some other communication skill). I think MRQ had this. 

6 hours ago, g33k said:

I think the idea is, you get involved with your community, your clan.  "Full time adventurer" isn't what the rules are aimed at; your "day job" isn't an optional choice you make.  You're expected to be a responsible & engaged member of the clan, the community (more or less non-optionally).

And your god generally cares about this stuff.  Don't expect rune-magic & rune-points if you're behaving selfishly; your god wants their whole community to thrive!  The world doesn't just go on by itself -- if YOU, personally, aren't helping it get along, YOU can expect personal repercussions.

The "landed aristocracy" isn't the same thing (in Sartar); it isn't a leisure class, and it isn't "landed."  You hold land, and work it, on behalf of the clan ... but it's still Clan land, not YOUR land.  If you delegate the duty to a lieutenant so you can go adventuring, you can expect the Clan may soon decide you were right, and reassign the land formally to your (former) lieutenant, who has demonstrated ability and dedication (unlike some slacker who calls themselves an "adventurer").

Not necessarily true. Depends on the community, the gods, your character (perhaps too useless to do much else) and even occupation (e.g., warrior).

Easy examples would be Stormbull and Humakt... Where your job is to kill things. Another might be Issaries, where as long as you're bringing in the cash, who cares what you do? 

But, I'll also add that usually, adventuring isn't usually the money grab that seems to be implied. Most adventuring is costly (in numerous ways), and rarely has a good payout. It normally revolves around doing stuff for other people (and helps the clan) like killing invaders, undead, chaos... And very rarely are they rich... Or even slightly wealthy. And really, anything touched by chaos should be burned... Including those 10,000 gold wheels 😆.

(However, raiding the Lunar garrison's payroll would make for a fine adventure).

23 hours ago, Garwalf said:

Thank you to the OP and to the respondents who I feel have given me "permission" to use something more generous like 4d6 x 7 to generate ability scores

Except that.normal starting arrays have two 2D6+6. And that's only applying to humans. 

Perhaps not significant, but maybe worth the reminder.

Maybe allow a couple of +2 in the mixes??

20 hours ago, Mugen said:

It seems to me someone on this forum showed that you could go up to INT 28 by casting Enhance INT multiple times, so that each spell was more powerful than the previous one, and with a reasonable duration.

I don't remember the details, and obviously you had to have a good INT stat to start with.

Given Rune Lords can DI for stats at 1D10 (T??? 😜) renewable Rune Points, it's quite possible. 🤑

(And I can't get rid of that emoji at the end.... )

1 hour ago, lordabdul said:

Maybe I need to look at the spells a bit closer, but I figured the PCs might look similar in terms of Runes/Techniques because combat spells might all cluster around the same things

I figured that combat spells won't be relied upon because of the time it takes to cast.

Besides, at the moment, Moonfire, Wall of Flame and Finger of Fire (names???) might appear so standard that taking an alternative combat element might really confuse/impress.

Instead of a Fireblade, you make an Iceblade (Summon Death Darkness Water???). Hailstorm  (Summon Air Water???). Earthbludgeon on a mace (Summon Earth??) Wall of Freezing Darkness - pitch black and does freezing damage, as well as reducing mobility.

1 hour ago, lordabdul said:

which maxes your INT, and that's if you even managed to boost it to 20.

Enhance INT ....

Although I wonder about the mechanics of mastering something, and then losing the INT later...

8 hours ago, lordabdul said:

To show how limited that is: there is a total of 26 Runes/Forms/Techniques (there might be more if you consider condition Runes... I'm not sure why they're not listed). With INT 20 you can know 8 of those. So at most, a sorcerer can only master ~30% of all there is to master in sorcery.

True... But that's full Mastery. If you Under a lot, it seriously brings that down... Strictly, you only need 1 Technique. 3 Elements (Moon +2 others), 4 Power... And the whole arsenal of Forms ( 5 - although I'd imagine not many would take Chaos, and very few Plant). Plus Magic, now that the rules have changed.

So, 12... Sure, it'll make some spells expensive, but I seriously doubt many will actually try to cover every base... It's not worth trying because of skill economy. Unless you're really happy with 15-25% for most spells. Also, POW economy for inscriptions.

What I imagine is going to happen with PCs is that they will go Heroquesting and take +Free INT and +extra Rune/Techniques as gifts, not unlike Shamans' gifts. (If you have the choice of +1 INT, or +1D6 Free INT/Runes/Techniques, which would you choose???)

11 hours ago, lordabdul said:

Not all sorcerers are "adventuring" sorcerers, so there's probably a good distribution of specialties, but as far as sorcerer PCs are concerned, I don't know if it would push them all to have the same things and look very similar, which would be sad.

I doubt it. Especially with the limited amount of Runes you can master, plus the skills required for each spell. 

Not many are going to have a repertoire of more than a dozen spells, which will be restricted by Runes/Techniques. I'd presume very few will have more than a couple of spells using multiple Inferred Runes/Techniques. 

So, yeah, I think most PCs would specialise and be quite different. And, actually, would be more likely to work together to ensure little doubling up on spells (and probably also Runes). There's not a lot of spells you'd need more than one player having, anyway. Variants - yes. 

4 hours ago, g33k said:

Well, maybe SOME buying.  Maybe he inherited a busy mercantile operation in Boldhome, and needs to buy goods to sell there; maybe he inherited lands outside Sartar-proper ("outside" because, as noted, Clan lands are Clan-owned) and needs to decide if he'll have ranching or farming, and either way what he'll put onto the land... and then BUY that!  (And get some people to work the hides).

Etc.

True the first bit.

No reason the lands couldn't have been gifted (unless, of course, it came from outside the clan... But even then a case could be made).

The character shouldn't really need to do any "buying". It should all have been inherited (as a good backstory for a Noble occupation).

But you could have a blade (Or armour, shield) the same weight as usual with more hit points.

You're not changing AP? Only HP?

Pricing - depends firstly on how easy it is to source the raw materials. Secondly how easy it is to work. And thirdly the improvement. The last... 10%? 25% 50%. Then adjust nicely! (I.e., not merely 1 for 1, but maybe 1.5 for 1)

ETA: are you thinking bone-smithing needs to be a different skill to red-smithing?

@Joerg what sort of stats are you giving to Godsbone Bronze???  And what sort of prices to go with it?

The ABC news (U.S.) has 3 stories on the front page (but scroll), and 3 stories in the Top News for International news.

TheGuardian.com has the story about Pink a ways down, but the first 4 stories in headlines in World News...

Anyway... I think this is not going to be recoverable. Too much damage done at all levels in the worst hit places. Half a billion or more animals gone, with probably a few species now extinct (Or will be soon).

Seeds from the trees gone. The animals that spread the seeds gone... 

I'm currently in China, but my friends' place is in dry bush in outer south-west Brisbane, not far enough away from the fires in that general area to feel safe...