Kloster

11 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

Do you do the same with Countermagic, Protection, Bladesharp, etc?

No, those are spirit magic, so don't stack. I would do this only for stackable rune spells known from 2 cults.

7 hours ago, Bill the barbarian said:

Are you referring to the numeric descriptor for TSR's intro module Keep on the Borderlands, I am not sure, it has been decades. Sounds right though.

Yes. And T1 was "The village of Hommlet", first part of "Temple of the Elemental Evil" (T1-4).

2 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

I also dislike Apple Lane a lot, for similar reasons - it only exists to cater to adventurers (inn, smithy, magic item shop, brothel... it’s almost parody). It’s worse than bloody Hommlet in that regard!

T1?

16 minutes ago, lordabdul said:

In many cases, actually, my players come up with way better tactics than me -- I'm a terrible tactician. So I adopt their tactics on the next combat... which they still win because I don't even implement these ideas remotely as well as they do.

I had the opposite problem: My co-players hated when my GM began to use successfully MY tactics.

18 minutes ago, lordabdul said:

I'll just add my +1 to the majority there. Here's what my NPCs tend to do as a rule of thumb, once they're done casting their own magic (which is generally just the first round... in some cases, they even cast magic and run into melee in the same round).

• Are there archers in the distance? Allocate a few NPCs to target them directly, either with their own ranged attacks, or by flanking them.
• Is there someone covered in Death Runes gesticulating or concentrating? Target that person as fast as possible, possibly by having one or two NPCs skip some of their magic casting.
• Corollary of previous point: it's useful in that case to have a couple dedicated casters who can cast magic on their buddies who are already running into melee. This buys their fighters a few SRs, or even an entire round, and they can get into melee before their enemies have managed to cast their own magic.
• Corollary of the corollary: is there someone who looks like magic support? (sorcerer manipulating a spell, Earth priestess casting spell from a distance on the Orlanthi warriors, shaman calling upon spirits, etc.). Then, same as archers: allocate a few NPCs to target them directly too.

Good.

10 hours ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

It does seem a smart and valid tactic to target anybody Singing, Dancing or Meditating.

Don't forget that if you use Sing or Chant to augment a spellcasting, it is instant and will not make the spell longer to cast. Meditation is a different story.

2 hours ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

Yes the point is not how many spell de are cast (i agree there are two  spells) but if at the end you get a full protection and I would say yes as shield can be cumulated with its spiritual « cousins » there is no reason to not cumulate the two divine « brothers »

In that case, I would say that if you cast, say, a Shield 2, known by Orlanth cult and powered by 2RP of the Orlanth Rune pool, and then the following round you cast a Shield 3, known through Storm Bull and powered by 3 RP taken from the SB Rune pool, yes you would gain a Shield 5. As a GM, I would accept it.

17 minutes ago, lordabdul said:

I agree but it wouldn’t be “coercion” if the enchanter is merely offering lots of money. Hence the other option of “corrupted POW”. Or, you know, just saying “you can’t do that”.

But I dislike arbitrary GM fiat that isn’t backed up by at least some kind of in world reasoning, hence my suggesting such reasons. I’m open to other reasons....

Completely agree here.

On 12/20/2020 at 3:33 PM, French Desperate WindChild said:

If I learn shield with Orlanth (a pow sacrifice for orlanth so +1 orlanth rune pool), AND with storm bull (another pow sacrifice for stormbull so +1 stormbuull rune pool) Could I cast and cumulate shield (full Orlanth rune pool) and shield (full Storm Bull rune pool).

I would say yes. But that means 2 separate casting, 1 for the Orlanth Shield spell with Orlanth RP, and then 1 for the Storm Bull Shield spell with Storm Bull RP. You can not in my opinion cast a 2 point Shield by using 1 RP from each pool, even if you know the spell from both cults.

12 hours ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

What if everybody stands back and pretends to be casting Sorcery?  What do the trolls do then???

As their own Arkati sorceror is already engaged in his own spellcasting, they protect him by bashing everything in sight.

Hello Jeff,

In previous iterations of RQ, spell boosting by using extra MP was possible only offensively, to bypass defensive magic. RQ3 words were "When it is cast, additional magic points can be added to any spell in order to help it overcome defensive magic". According to Scotty and Well of Daliath, MP spent to boost spells also count now to help non-instant spells to resist dispel/dismiss. My question is: "Why the change"?

Regards (and thanks for the work and the time you spend with us).

28 minutes ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

And how do you tell that their spell will take more than one round?  Either mind-reading, or waiting one round.

Easy: They are casting a spell (remember, magic is visible, so you see crackling energy and the like), and they don't do anything else during the round.

29 minutes ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

It does seem a smart and valid tactic to target anybody Singing, Dancing or Meditating.

Why not? You may loose some shots, but is is safer because you improve your chance of hitting a caster. At the very least, somebody that meditates during a combat is either a fool or someone that is preparing for a spell, so should be a likely target.

33 minutes ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

It's fair to say "I shoot at somebody who looks like they are casting a spell".  But there's no simple way to initially target opponents casting huge, multi-round spells.  By later rounds you could target them, or you might be busy.

This is why the 'Statement of Intent' phase of the combat round is so important. Your "I shoot at somebody who looks like they are casting a spell" is a perfectly valid option. I would phrase it differently, but I agree.

9 hours ago, Tindalos said:

Well, Create Taste would make sense as a basis. Temporarily creating a reality where the water is in fact cognac. 

Thanks for the idea. Not quite because with transform 'Substance' to 'Substance', the resultant substance is real, and said cognac has helped us greet people in our wilderness camp, buy information and 'distract' guards, among others. Not only does it tasted like cognac, but it was the right stuff, with all the side effects (happiness, drunkenness,...).

9 hours ago, dumuzid said:

To add to icebrand's thoughtful comments on this: in the games I've played and am running, tactics like these aren't a matter of picking on someone, they're what happens when the game really starts to get tactically interesting. 

Completely true.

9 hours ago, dumuzid said:

Like icebrand says, the answer to big extemporaneous sorcery is generally to stop it from going off.  Once it goes off, the Strength of any sorcerous spell big enough to require several turns of casting is going to blast through most magic defenses, if the casting has happened successfully you've already failed to counter it. 

In fact, this is true whatever the kind of magic. If you see a big guy with death rune incanting for more than 1 round, you can bet this will be a sword trance with more than 10MP, which is not good either. When you have an opportunity to stop that, you do it.

9 hours ago, dumuzid said:

The challenge to the sorcerer and their companions is to keep them casting despite the best tricks the enemy can think of to shake them up.  It's when you go a step further though, and players or their opposition start heroquesting to disrupt each other's magic in advance, that things really start to get interesting.  Then you're getting into fifth dimensional combat, and RuneQuest is the only RPG that delivers it quite this way.

I completely agree here.

7 hours ago, dumuzid said:

Well, I believe the phenomenon being discussed was sorcerers taking multiple rounds to power up major spells, which I would expect to look and sound rather different from a Humakti calling on Sword Trance in the span of a single strike rank, etc.

True, the look and feel will be different, but any spell, whether Spirit, Runic or Sorcerous, that takes more than 1 round will be powerful and will have big effects. If done in combat, it is logical to try to interrupt the caster. Not doing it is a folly.

In Shadowrun, the rule was 'hit the mage'. The rule is here about the same: If you discover somebody that is preparing something that you think will destroy you, you put everything you have on him before he hits.

11 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

Pedant mode engaged: there is nothing stopping a talented Citizen Foreigner from enrolling in the Lunar College of Magic. But the native Carmanian sorcerous tradition is very old-school Malkioni (pre-God Learner, in fact).

7 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

YGMV, but I've always seen Carmanian Magi as incredibly rare. They're essentially a hereditary noble caste of High Priests of the Carmanian religion, who seldom set foot outside the precincts of the Hierophant's holy city of Brinnus for fear of becoming ritually impure. Writing up a sorcery system just for their use feels like overkill. (But what do I know?)

The more interesting sorcerers IMO are the amoral, legalistic Carmanian Viziers. But as their caste name strongly implies, they're really intended for use as NPC adversaries.

Now that I have time to think about it, that means that if I wanted to recreate my character, it would be better to use the lunar school of sorcery: He was a lunar officer, after all, not a vizier, nor a magi. I still wonder how to convert some spells, as his most used spell was 'change water to whisky' (in fact, change water to cognac, as I am french and my old GM didn't drank whisky).

1 hour ago, lordabdul said:

In Griffin Mountain, that cost was the 1000 L fixed cost (500 L in RQG money) that added up to the spell cost and item value, I think?

My dead tree RQ2 stuff is 150 km away and I haven't purchased the pdf, so I can't check. But from memory, it seems correct.

1 hour ago, lordabdul said:

I learned about this after reading RQG, in which I couldn't really understand why spirit magic was limited by CHA, and how that stat relates to "remembering" and "forgetting" spells (doesn't make much sense!). It was @David Scott who explained the whole thing about effectively stealing bits of spirits and integrating them into your being... which explains the CHA, and explains how you can forget/remember spells (it's not really related to memory, it's about which spirit-bits you have inside yourself, like mini-allied spirits, sort of). I'm kinda sad that this explanation wasn't included in RQG (I don't think it's in RBoM either?), but it sounds like it's still the current explanation behind the scenes. It doesn't change much mechanically speaking though, unless you wanted to play out the whole process of the teacher summoning spirits and defeating them for you and all that jazz...

Yes. On that part, RQ3 was more descriptive and RQG more quick to the result. This is part of the changes I like going from RQ3 to RQG. Even if I don't like the rationale (I prefer INT for having spells kept in memory), it works, and this is what I explain to players. Up to now, it worked, so I am ok.

2 hours ago, Godlearner said:

Same here, as well as some others like Worship, Initiate and Sanctify.

Now that you remember me, same (it was soooo long ago).

1 hour ago, Bill the barbarian said:

 Well now I have to take this back to the table with David Scott’s explanation and say... well here it is... shall we carry on and use it RAW...

Luckily (?), I have no current playing group, so I don't have this problem, as we have up to this time played as RAW as we can, if only to check what was convenient for us.

1 hour ago, Bill the barbarian said:

Thanks for the time and clarity @David Scott! And all who are here debating and putting in time to get this together/sorted.. When the stars are correctly aligned, this is the thing BRP does well. David’s help is truly appreciated and noted as well.

Ditto!! Thanks David and all others, even (and especially) if we don't always agreed.

2 hours ago, David Scott said:

typically means in most cases or usually, not all, and combined with may always and regardless of type, clearly reads to me that any spell may be boosted, offensive or not. 

Agreed. I was just saying it is not clear that it allows to resist dispel or dismiss. This is why I proposed a clarification to avoid the ambiguity, as it seems I am not the only one to have misunderstood what was intended to be understood.

2 hours ago, David Scott said:

As a GM I'd have no problem if a player wanted to boost a light spell to avoid it being taken down easily.

I have no problem conceptually either. The problems I see are twofold:

- That means the GM has to track for every spells cast how many MP have been used for boosting, as we don't know at time of casting if somebody will try to dispel it..

- Spells cast by shamans (under certain conditions) and certain type of sorcerors are becoming impossible to dispel They can easily be boosted by 20 or 30 MP AND have a long duration.

This is why I said I will probably not allow it when I GM (when I am not the GM, I am not the one who decides).

50 minutes ago, lordabdul said:

Yes obviously I was talking only about the price of the enchantment, not the object... by Crom, you are nitpicky

Yes, I am. But what I wanted to say is that the cost of the object AND the work of the enchanter are extra. And for me, the enchanter can request what he wants (money, service, ...). And I agree with you, this should be expensive, as enchanters are scarce. Of course, if you are doing enchants for yourself or your buddies, you don't care about that part.

52 minutes ago, lordabdul said:

This concerns the broader issue of "what if we convince/compel someone to sacrifice their POW so we don't have to", whether this 3rd party is a stickpicker, slave, or spirit. I would probably just say "you can't do that" and move on, but if I was feeling mischievous (and that's one fun part of being a GM on occasion), I would look into a combination of:

1. "Corrupted POW": depending on the level of coercion, the resulting enchantment would be less reliable. Penalties to casting the spell from the spell matrix, or equivalent.
2. "Social taboo": if the 3rd party was only convinced (paid, etc.) and not coerced, the word of mouth would eventually spread. We previously compared sacrificing POW to donating blood... what would it look like if a rich guy was paying homeless people to donate blood for his eternal-youth science research or something? Probably not very good once it gets out!

AFAIC that lets me handle all the issues raised so far, I think.

Completely agree here. The fact I am defending it is possible and there should be a market (but not a stock exchange) does not mean it is socially or culturally acceptable. As we discussed earlier, for Lunars or Kralori, maybe, for others, much less.

40 minutes ago, Godlearner said:

This the now out of print Avalon Hills version of RQ. This is the spell as it was written at the time:

Yes, this was how (mechanically) spirit spells were taught by cults in RQ3. Now, Priests and Rune Lords can teach the spell they know, that's it. In our RQ3 campaigns, we ruled that this spell was mandatory to become priest.

2 hours ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

i think passions are a great improvment in rqg

I don't, but this a subject for another thread. It would be off topic here.

4 hours ago, David Scott said:

this is exactly what spell boosting is for; reinforcing defensive spells and giving an extra punch for offensive spells.

Except that p248 only speaks of the offensive use, in order to 'overcome a Countermagic or Shield spell, or other magical defenses'.

This is why I proposed to change the ruling p 248 to 'This is typically done to overcome a Countermagic or Shield spell, or other magical defenses. The boosting MP count both to pierce magical protection and to resist dispel/dismiss'. This would avoid any ambiguity like the one we are discussing now (again), but would not avoid having people houseruling it, if only to avoid the bookkeeping.

16 minutes ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

If you have the passion « love freedom » 

remember than all sartarites hate chaos but all don’t have « hate chaos » passion, same for freedom

8 minutes ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

And i disagree with myself 

the purpose of the sacrifice will not help the « customer » to free you

Your owner can free you without this pow sacrifice 

 

but in another case if the enchant help to kill the guards and to free you , yes it works

I have not said 'someone that frees you in exchange of POW' but 'thanking somebody for purchasing you with the sole goal to free you'. The guy buys you, then frees you without asking anything in exchange (One of my character already did it in an old RQ3 campaign). Then, you thank him by giving POW to an enchant he is just performing.

48 minutes ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

then you cannot sacrifice your pow because it is requested, you need an higher reason, a personal reason, a true conviction

like 'thanking somebody for purchasing you with the sole goal to free you'?

48 minutes ago, Nick Brooke said:

Pedant mode engaged: there is nothing stopping a talented Citizen Foreigner from enrolling in the Lunar College of Magic. But the native Carmanian sorcerous tradition is very old-school Malkioni (pre-God Learner, in fact).

Thanks Nick. This is the perfect answer to the question I have asked.

48 minutes ago, Nick Brooke said:

Once again, I strongly advise against having sorcery-using player characters in a RQG game.

I hear your warning (not related to this case because I have clearly explained I just want to recreate my old character with the new rules, not play it).

50 minutes ago, Nick Brooke said:

They won't have fun, and nor will you.

I have already done it and I had much fun.