PhilHibbs

The generic illusion spells are very expensive, but since they are just that - generic - you can do anything with them, so it's reasonable that they have a high cost (not that everything has to be "balanced", of course). There are more specific illusions that are less flexible and less expensive, such as the Eurmal "Become (shape)", which are specialised illusions. My trickster had "Become Pair of Smoking Boots", which he first used when another character fired a Disruption at him. So you could have "Fortuitous Flock" as a specialist illusion spell, call it 2 RP maybe, or 1 RP per 5 sheep, that causes a flock of sheep to barge in between you and the enemy. There's plenty of other options. For example, Road Runner has "Looks Real Enough To Me" which allows him to run through the painting of a tunnel on a wall or rock. On a special success, a truck drives out and runs over the coyote. That example needs a little more adaptation to a Gloranthan context than the Scooby Doo one.

You spend a permanent Rune Point (which is almost the same as losing 1 POW), and then roll a D10 (for a Rune Lord) for the number of temporary Rune Points you lose.

That's some impressive rolls - not impossible, one of the characters in my game ended up with more than half her D6 rolls being a 6. I assume that's after rune bonuses, did the +2 go to CHA? (that's my rule, by the way) So that could just be three rolled 16s and one 17. Still pretty good!

Not sure where "just because it suits your personal goals" comes from, if someone is arguing from a position of personal aggrandisement at an important tribal council then they will be treated with suspicion regardless of their use of magic. Mind-altering? It's purely self-altering. Not even vaguely close. Those are entirely different kinds of actions to using your powers of persuasion, and Charisma is just another of those powers of persuasion. The fact that it is a magical ability is entirely irrelevant.

I tried to start a game about 6 months ago but one of my players tried to create a sorceror and gave up and we ran out of enthusiasm. I said we should wait until the slipcase is out and try again with traditional Sartarites. So we did, and I've run The Broken tower which took three sessions, then a trip to Boldhome to witness Kallyr's heroquest, then A Darkness At Runegate which they mostly avoided like the plague. One of the players refused to even enter the town and stayed outside the walls the whole time! It's his first time roleplaying though and he hasn't really got the hang of it. I'd given him a pretext to need to go to Runegate, and he seemed to have it stuck in his head that that was the only reason to be there, his job was to get it done and go home and that's it. I've never had a group that is so keen to avoid the scenario at all costs, they tried to get out of The Broken Tower as well but they couldn't think of an excuse to come home empty handed.

That was wrong of me, I apologise. I rather did become "some guy on the internet", didn't I? It's just that to me, the integral nature of magic to Glorantha is one of the biggest positive features. It is THE defining feature that makes it great to me.

I think that's over-stating it. Someone with a CHA over 30 is pretty impressive, and it would be a reasonable conclusion that divine power has been invoked even if the spell doesn't have obvious zing-bang effects when cast. The enhanced CHA would be apparent, but the source would not necessarily be. Again, just baffled that an Orlanthi would call out a priestess for doing something that Gloranthans consider to be so perfectly normal and acceptable. Nobody accuses accountants of cheating for using a calculator. To us, this is a game, and we define some parts of it as magic and some not. To Gloranthans, it's all a normal part of life. In the HeroQuest game system, there's literally no difference between a mundane ability and a magical one, and in that respect HQ is more like Glorantha than RuneQuest.

So an answer from Chaosium's creative director, who has had access to Greg's thinking on Glorantha for decades, isn't good enough? Ok, I think this is a lost cause. Like I said, maybe Glorantha isn't to your taste, and that's ok. Plenty of people whose opinions I respect don't like Glorantha, and this is one of the reasons. Nobody is saying "she cast Charisma therefore everyone has to obey her without question", which is what you appear to be arguing against. They roll their dice and that decides who is the most convincing. Nobody has to. They probably wouldn't even notice the signs of an Ernalda Charisma spell, so you just run the game mechanics the way you would normally, but with a bit of a CHA bonus to the skills. I really don't see the problem here. Yes, people might notice that divine or spiritual power is present in the world. No, that doesn't make it cheating. That's Glorantha - everything is magic and magic is everything. You wouldn't call an engineer a cheat for using a slide rule.

If there's a perfectly good thread for it, I see no reason not to keep using it, keeping it all in one place. I have no time for necromoaners.

An Ernalda priestess calling on Ernalda's power is cheating? Baffled. That just makes no sense at all. Fair enough, though, maybe this isn't your kind of game world.

Yes. Tapping destroys the air. Not in the literal sense of making a vacuum, but in the sense that the air is drained of its natural air power.

Or learn the Law rune, assuming that they are opposites and thus related.

If you didn't have that rule, you'd have to make up a rule for something like Bless Pregnancy, Troll drinks, weird stuff found in scenarios like The Sea Cave, etc. Far simpler to have a core mechanic that can then be referenced elsewhere. The point is that you have a mechanic for a tipping point beyond which magical improvement becomes much harder. Up to 21, relatively simple. Bless Pregnancy (or, in my opinion, "Increase a raiseable characteristic" gift) can take it up to that limit. Beyond 21, you need bigger magic to breach the "species maximum" threshold.

So your problem is with the terminology? Fine.

"enchantments and similar magically potent objects", doesn't sound like spells to me.

I still don't think that the absence of any mechanism in the basic rules for getting that last extra +1 to INT means that the rules should say "INT maximum is 20 for humans, because we can't think of a way that it could get to 21". Required time for training, not duration of the increase...

Does anyone else think that the existence of Bless Pregnancy is a good enough reason to throw out the 18 limit for the 3 points distributed if you rolled low?

You can't get them at character creation time, so it's pointless? Really? Anyway, some cultures have modifiers, Bison Riders get +2 SIZ, so 18 SIZ and Darkness dominant would give 22 if not for the species maximum. Also a Humakti with INT 20 (rolled 18, Fire dominant) can take "increase a raiseable characteristic" for 1 geas and get INT 21. He can then take "increase a non-raiseable characteristic" for 3 geases and get it to 22. I think the simplicity of all stats having the same calculation for species maximum, despite some of them being less achievable than others, is better than having a different calculation for each one for no good reason. Are you really arguing that the rules should specify that the species maximum INT for humans is 20, whereas the species maximum for POW is 21? Also, any child born under a Bless Pregnancy spell can have an INT of 21, because that's the species maximum. Oh, and those scrolls weren't in the basic RQ2 rules so by your logic the RQ2 rules should have had lower species maximums, making those treasures impossible.

I think that would be hilarious. You cast Bless Pregnancy and add +18 to STR. You want to guarantee that 21 STR so even if the kid rolls a 3, it's got 21 STR. So when a baby is born, it has some fraction of the adulthood STR. If a baby is born with a natural STR of 18, it's going to be pretty strong for a baby, but still, just a baby. But THIS baby has +18 STR, so its normal "baby strength" of 2, when most babies have a STR of 1, is now 20. Sure, its STR will be capped at species maximum by the time it's 3 years old, and will never get any higher, but how hilarious would that be! As to SIZ? Not a problem. If rune magic can regrow limbs or double your strength, then getting a super-size baby out of a mummy's tummy is pretty basic stuff.

I think a more powerful blessing would overwrite the lesser.

Oh yes, that's possible. The thing is that there are so many other spells that are worth making community matrixes, and Bless Pregnancy ties up those points of POW for the entire duration of the pregnancy. You could have Shield 15 for a year for the same price. The spell explicitly says that only one Bless Pregnancy can be cast on a pregnant mother.

Those restrictions are largely cultural anyway. Vishi Dunn doesn't seem to worry about it in the examples, he just awakens his fetch and gets on with adventuring.

I'm not entirely convinced that you can make a matrix for a spell that the creator cannot cast. "An enchanter cannot make a matrix for a spell they do not have access to". It's a little unclear, but I'd say if you can't cast Bless Pregnancy 40, you can't make a matrix for it.

It would not surprise me if there were other ways of awakening the Fetch other than the formulaic Bad Man fight. I think Shamanic Abilities probably require a Fetch, although again there are probably Heroquest powers that strongly resemble them. I doubt that any of this would be any easier or safer than the Bad Man method, otherwise more people would use it. Maybe Argrath knows.

Each roll their Orate, or whatever skill, with the CHA bonus. What's the problem?