Kloster

16 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

My preference would be:  players can determine if they want their characters birth dates to align with their Runes, or not.

I don't find it useful to rigidly align Runes and dates unless a player thinks it makes a good story.

Completely agree.

Except for Superworld (Superpowered damage would obliterate any hit location for every hit), I very much prefer hit locations. It has a better feeling (for me), allows for localized effects, armor variation, better healing rules.

On 11/14/2015 at 7:34 AM, Mankcam said:

I hope the bastards who did this are brought to justice

They are currently.

According to old RQ's motto, monsters are people too, so yes.

4 hours ago, jajagappa said:

The Starter Set is much more colorful though!

Not very difficult, though!

And a bit out of scope, but the lunars seem to accept almost anybody that convert to their way. As far as I understand, this include tarshites.

18 hours ago, Richard S. said:

Edit: even if it's not actually canon, after giving this some more thought I think I'll run with it for my Aeolians. Wizard-priests who simultaneously learn sorcery and sacrifice to Orlanth, a typical noble warrior class of chieftains and thanes who worship Orlanth normally, and a general "everyone else".

This is also how I see them.

2 hours ago, Alex said:

I randomed across this disclaimer in the Sorcery Q&A:

Warning

Please be aware that, Sorcery is presented to allow Lhankor Mhy adventurers to be created. Future supplements will detail sorcerers from other cultures and provide more details of the sorcery system. Some elements of the system will likely change to portray other cultures.

So depending on just how canon-cautious you're feeling, that could put Aeolians either in the "similar henotheist heretics" category, and therefore essentially (as it were) covered; or as subject to revision as and when we get the definitive Malkioni take.

I had read this previously, and I have already told that if Chaosium writers wanted us to play only LM sorcerors, they should have provided the rules only for LM sorcerors, and if other kind of sorcerors are provided, they will be used. I agree rules for Malkioni and Aeolians are only a sketch (and the ones for lunars are non existent), and they will (and should) be revised and expanded, but they are present in the rules.

My Aeolians are certainly not canon, and I don't care: They are for me the only henotheists described and I use them (as player and as GM) as they are described.

I hope that Santa Claus will be generous, even if I'm not anymore a child and that I'm not always nice. According to my wife, it should be delivered on time.

13 minutes ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

but I think the point is if you have 10 different hate passion or 5 different love passion, what could mean passion then ? maybe transform the 10 hate passions in one : "hate everybody"  or "hate any foreigner" but if you love Raoul, Richard, Germaine, Sarah and William the definition of love would be special and interesting to explore

Agreed.

11 hours ago, Alex said:

If this comes up organically in play, or the player is delighted with it as it arrives out of chargen, then great stuff.  But if they find it bitty, meh-ish, and with a poor ratio of descriptive complexity to "oomph" (as I think I would), I think it's useful and valid to offer them the opportunity to do some consolidation.

On this, we agree.

11 hours ago, Ian Absentia said:

Honestly, more than 3 or 4 begins to dilute the definition of the word "passion" and becomes just-another-game-mechanic.  Too many Passions begins to look like a personality disorder.

As you have already 3 from homeland and 1 from cult at chargen, it seems to me difficult to have fewer than 5 or 6, once personal history kicks in.

1 hour ago, Alex said:

You can readily have six different Loyalties, all at 60%.

Yes. You can even go much higher (The highest I've seen was over 10, with 3 of them at 80% IIRC)

1 hour ago, Alex said:

Fewer at higher initial values seems muck more story-driving

I don't think so. More passions can mark a character with a tortured soul, conflicting interests, or more simply a broad pattern of interests.

1 hour ago, Alex said:

and works better for the PC game-mechanically, indeed.

Definitely.

2 hours ago, Crel said:

Off the top of my head from the Jonstown Compendium, I believe The Pendulum & the Pit is set in "any urban environment" but especially with Nochet in mind. I don't know if it's of a length appropriate to one-shots or con-style scenarios.

I played it in Nochet and it fits perfectly. We played it in 2 sessions, though.

43 minutes ago, Paid a bod yn dwp said:

Yes that’s how I see it too. Unless you’re splitting attacks, you have one attack per melee round. The restriction on combining magical attacks with melee attacks is a way of maintaining that offensive balance - one attack per melee round -  that’s  my interpretation. 

In fact, I will correct my own post: You can attack several times per MR, but only with a missile (bow or sling), and only once with a melee or magical attack.

10 hours ago, lordabdul said:

That would mean that spells like Create Fissure (right under your enemies) is OK to cast while attacking the same round.

With my reading, yes. 'Create Fissure' is not an attack spell. The way I understand the rule is that you can only attack once, whether physically or magically.

16 hours ago, Alex said:

That's true, but we don't have much on those yet either -- I assume we'll get lots of Esvulari detail in the Heortland book, which is somewhere on the pile/in the pipe, but not yet on any class of boat from China AFAIK.  And any or all of those might still be "off-brand" sorcery, cross-contaminated by too much theistic or animist thinking.  Rather than the pure and unsullied variety, which might on the one hand, introduce a different SorCatMod, or on the other give us a rationale for why the RAW are actually perfectly fine and Logical.

Agreed on most. I spoke specifically of the Aeolians just because the rules to create an Aeolian sorcerer are in the core rulebook.

9 hours ago, buzz said:

P. 313-4: "An adventurer gains access to cult special or associated cult Rune spells at the same time they sacrifice POW for Rune points. For each point of POW sacrificed, the adventurer acquires the right to cast an additional cult special Rune magic spell." 

Doesn't that mean there is functionally a limit to the number of Rune spells they can know? They can't get more than CHA in Rune Points, and hey gains access to spells the same time they gain Rune Points, right?

IIRC, when your RP reach your CHA, you can still sacrifice POW to learn spell, but your RP total does not increase anymore. I can't find the thread but I'm sure it was one of Scotty's clarification.

44 minutes ago, Alex said:

Let's no start too far down the road of what "doesn't matter", or bang goes the entire hobby!  As I say, CHA seems the better choice, either for "balance" or for "story", so all in the plus column, however minor in magnitude compared to [actually important thing to taste].

Yes. This is why I wrote 'Replacing INT by CHA works perfectly well for spirit magic (with the new rationale of negotiating with spirits)' and 'Yes, but not a bad thing, as CHA was frequently the dump stat. '.

46 minutes ago, Alex said:

I'd offer only the small caveat that for me it seems that to me that we're very much at the stage where all plans between wizards are provisional.  We've had a preliminary sketch of LM sorcery, and we assume sorcery is still a significant thing for the Lunars.  But until such time as we get a deep dive into Mostali and Malkioni sorcerors, it all seems rather like a provisional ball we're smacking down the fairway.

Don't forget the Aeolian, the trolls and all the stygian churches, but yes, agreed.

16 minutes ago, Baron Wulfraed said:

RQ:RiG makes most of the spells reusable, usage tied to available rune points. So if one has enough rune points, one can cast spell-X twice, but only needs to "know" the spell once.

Yes, but your Rune Points are limited by your CHA. You can know an unlimited number of spells (as previously), but are limited in casting capacity (although less than previously in the short term, but more in the long term).

6 hours ago, Ryan Kent said:

How many folks allow characters to cast Rune Magic Buff's such as True Sword and then attack the same round?  I do.

There is no reason not to do it. Buffs are not attack spells, that are the only one limited when engaged. And if you are not engaged at the beginning of the round, anything goes: You can cast any spell, become engaged (by your move or someone else's) and then attack.

16 hours ago, buzz said:

I also find the change from INT to CHA for Spirit Magic limits weird — it weights CHA more heavily than earlier editions.

Yes, but not a bad thing, as CHA was frequently the dump stat.

14 hours ago, Alex said:

Conceptually it makes sense, I think, as dealing with spirits isn't a matter of intellect, as is sorcery, but of presence.  Arguably this is a little loose -- does what impresses a follower or negotiator cut ice with the spell spirit?  But that's in the nature of characteristics for you...

Frankly, the fact we rationalize spirit magic capacity with memory (=INT) or capability to negotiate with spirits (=CHA) does not matter. Both work correctly.

4 hours ago, g33k said:

For me, linking Rune-magic to Rune scores on the sheet is a great change.  It makes for a great element of the new RuneQuest!  The new Rune features make the game truly "Rune Quest" for the first time.  It makes for a difference across characters -- some spells need certain Runes, and different characters will be better or worse at it.  That kind of differentiation always looks like a win, to me.

4 hours ago, g33k said:

And "spirit magic" never was about "INT" really -- smarter characters were no better at it, etc (as noted, that's Sorcery).  So again:  making them different seems like a win...

Yes, same for me.

In fact, what bothers me is not the difference between different releases on the max number of spells or the chance to cast the spell, but the change in the  Magic category modifier. Replacing INT by CHA works perfectly well for spirit magic (with the new rationale of negotiating with spirits) and does not change much for divine magic (the modifier does not count for casting spells, and the skills are a negotiation with the god or the cult, so OK), but feels wrong with sorcery. The free INT mechanism is OK, but using CHA to cast a sorcery spell has a bad feeling for me. I can think of 2 hacks on this: Either adding INT to the magic category modifier, counting as CHA, or adding a specific sorcery category modifier that would replace CHA by INT. My preference goes to the latter.

2 hours ago, Mugen said:

My comment was not specifically about skill oppositions. I also think someone with 200% should have better crit and special success chance than someone with 95%.

Same for me. This is why I don't like the reduction of skill over 100%.

30 minutes ago, Rick Meints said:

In the UK, there is no Value Added Tax (VAT) on books, but there is on boxed games. In the 80s VAT was 15%. Importing the boxed set from the USA (where it was printed) was just too expensive, so Games Workshop opted to produce the game line as hardcover books. If you bought the three core RQ3 books done by GW (Standard, Advanced, and Monsters) you actually got more content than the RQ3 deluxe rulebook, not a trimmed down version.

In France, the VAT was (at that period) 4% for books, but 33% for boxes, but even without taxes, AH deluxe box was 600FF (that meant it could reach 800FF as retail price in a shop. Don't laugh, I saw it in the shop I was working at that time) Those 800FF correspond (with that period currency exchange rate) to 150 US$. No wonder GW's book and Oriflam box, then book, were more successful: IIRC, Oriflam's book was around 250FF.

10 minutes ago, deleriad said:

As a UK RQ player who had forked out my life savings for RQ3 I was excited at first to see GW producing UK prints but they left a bad taste in my mouth. Funnily enough, my RQ3 boxed set has held up a lot better than the hardbacks despite many years of intense use. 

As a french player that found AH products too much expensive, I was very happy to find the GW ones, with their much lower price tag and even if illos were often not appropriate, they were better than most of the AH ones. Now, my GW bindings are broken, and I still use my AH ones 35 years later. Of course, most of my usage was with Oriflam's french version, which was prettier, less expensive and more sturdy (especially the hardcover one): most of my players were/are not english users.

1 hour ago, Bill the barbarian said:

Had the centaur for a touch of hellenic class on top of the Glorantha madness?

No. The player was a good munchkin with not much historic madness.

I was not the player, but in RQ3 time, we had a Maidstone Archer and a Centaur (by the same player). He stopped playing the Archer because he fount it unfun and created the Centaur, who died when falling from a stair that climbed down a cliff. Before that episode, he was a formidable opponent with his lance and bow. Ah, and we also had a duck sorceror, with quite high martial arts and damage-enhanced fists (Master of Quack Fu), that was a fantastic seductor.

As any liquid can, given time, squeeze through any opening, I would say a water elemental can. It is made of water, after all. But the main point here is 'given time'.