PhilHibbs

Yeah, 'cos no-one's ever seen a mad sorcerer...

Unearthed Arcana, I think. So, not original AD&D. It could have been lifted from RuneQuest, but I don't know if it was.

I'd say not, because PC only affects people, not weapons, and only applies protective spells to the people inside anyway. So not even unarmed combat. Maybe it would apply to successful parry damage vs a less successful attack. Personally I'm a bit surprised that attack spells can be cast on it, that's new and I suspect it hasn't been thought out properly.

He was a priest, they always could get their spells back after Truestone had sucked them up. Unless they were one-use to priests, in which case they were gone into the stone. The problem is, if the spells in the stone are fixed, what spells go in? If I have 5 RP and I know 10 spells, which ones go in and at what point levels? Or does it become a clone of my RP pool with all the flexibility that I had? My suggestion is that the RP that I have left go into the stone as copies of the last spells that I cast. So if I have 5 RP, and my last spell was Shield 2, before that Heal Wound 1, and then Lightning 2, then that's what would go in. If it doesn't end up with a round 5 points... well, replicate spells until it does, going back further if necessary. There's bound to be a 1 point spell somewhere in that I've cast at some point in the past. And if you can't remember, the GM makes it up. So in that example but if I only have 4 RP left, then Shield 2 and two Heal Wound 1s go in.

Whilst there are no specific rules for flanking or rear attacks, or for parrying against them, I wouldn't have any hesitation in spot-ruling if someone were to do that. I'd warn them about it though.

Back in the "Rune Power" days, where more-or-less the current Rune Points were a set of house rules, there were opinions on what happened, but it's never been officially ruled. Do Initiates lose their Rune Points permanently? What spells end up in the stone, does it keep the full flexibility that the initiate(s) had or do the spells somehow get fixed with point limits? It used to be really simple - if I know Shield 2, Heal Wound 2, and Lightning 1, that's what goes in. But if I have 5 Rune Points and I know 10 spells (including all the Common Divine spells), what does that mean? If an Orlanthi and a Chalana Arroy have 4 and 6 RP each, does it get two separate Rune Point pools that can be called upon, each limited to the spells that the two adventurers had access to? As to spirit, draconic, sorcery etc., it does nothing. What does it do in HeroQuest or 13G?

Well, it's an Issaries cult spirit, and Harmast didn't want to use 2 Rune Points to cast Command Cult Spirit, which would be the normal means.

In our last session, both Harmast and Vasana broke their swords by parrying critical attacks. They carried on using them under the half chance rule for the rest of the combat. Since no-one could repair them, Harmast cast Summon Cult Spirit to get a spirit that knows Repair, Vishi Dunn attacked it in Spirit Comabt (having discorporated already), and beat it down to zero. He then commanded it to teach its spell to Harmast. There may be some minor consequences for them on return, for beating up a cult spirit, but I think it was probably worthwhile in the circumstances.

Still, it doesn't really make sense for Orlanth Rune spells to use the Mastery Rune, unless they are advanced spells only available to high level Rune Masters.

I thought you were saying that you use your Water Rune affinity, rather than studying it.

So what other runes would you add, and how would you deal with the ratings? If adventurers then have more runes to spread their points among, would you give them more points in character creation, and how would they acquire the extra runes if they join another cult?

I seem to remember that the blood of dead gods was un-powered MP storage crystals, whereas powered crystals were the blood of gods that didn't die. I don't know if that was ever official. It's probably possible to tell which god, Divination could almost certainly tell you if the blood was of your god, and maybe you could use it for something funky in a heroquest.

That's Bazza being careless with his statement of intent, a strict reading of the rules is that Gabby gets to hit him and he gets to parry, then they start afresh the next round. What Bazza should have said is, "I will close but not engage, unless Gabby also closes enough so that I can hit in the same round". That's what he wants, surely. Bear in mind that the characters in the world don't know when the melee round ends or begins. There's no big counter in the sky, or galley drummer beating out the rhythm. If the distance at the start of the round leads to odd situations like this, where a different distance would mean that Bazza is not at a disadvantage in losing an attack, I'm not going to make the melee round structure affect the world. If the abstraction gets in the way of visualizing what's going on, then work around the abstraction. And to be honest I doubt that this will ever come up, and if it does, only in the first round of combat.

Pardon? Those are requirements, but that's like saying the requirements for Solve Rubik's Cube is just Rotate and Turn Face. Knowing a Rune and a Technique does not give you knowledge of all the spells that are possible with that combination. And Water is not a technique, it's a rune. Open Seas requires knowledge of the Command Technique, the Water Rune, and the Open Seas spell. This latter component is what Dormal invented. And clearly there is a version of the spell that DOES use techniques, it's right there in the RQG rule book as a regular spell that DOES use Command and Water. What Jeff is saying is that there's another way of learning the spell that doesn't require studying of the Rune and Technique.

Another possibility is he just cocked up. 😂

I think there might be compatibility a gap that we can squeeze through here. Aeolians can worship Orlanth. Orlanth cultists can't learn sorcery. Therefore Aeolians worship Orlanth, but not through the Orlanth rune cult.

If you want to replace the Strike Rank system with an Impulse system, go ahead, but it's probably better if you don't call them SR in that case, because it leads to this kind of confusion.

It's not impossible at all. It's perfectly possible for someone to pass close by my and be killed by someone else before I react. Why is that impossible?

I've never explicitly thought of a rule like that, but I can't think of any way that you could act before that, except for rune magic or divine intervention. Are you thinking of parries or dodges, that a character can't defend against an attack that happens before their DEX SR? I wouldn't rule that. So no, I wouldn't play that way, and I don't think I've ever seen it even suggested. It would be a pretty rare situation anyway, maybe a Diminish DEX spell could bring it about. Or were you thinking of movement, that if you have a DEX SR of 3 then you can't move in the first 2 SR, so 3 ranks of movement would finish on SR5, then you start counting your melee SR? Do you imagine someone running has to stop and not run for a couple of SR because the melee round reset and they can't act? Or that they have to continue running and can't stop until their DEX SR? Nope, that's never occurred to me either. Handle what, specifically? If I'm missing the point, give us an example.

I've never seen them do pre-orders before.

Also available as a preview sample chapter if you subscribe to Chaosium's RuneQuest pre-release newsletter: https://www.chaosium.com/blogrunequest-roleplaying-in-glorantha-is-comingsign-up-and-well-let-you-know-the-moment-it-launches/ (Yes, it already relesaed, but the newsletter is still called pre-release)

https://www.chaosium.com/blogrunequest-slipcase-sets-to-be-released-on-march-28th/

We never bothered with detailing spell focuses, in any RQ game I've ever played in.

There is no moment in time called "SR4". SR are not impulses, so saying where someone is "on SR4" is meaningless. You say it's not an impulse system, then talk as if it IS an impulse system. It isn't, it's just a system for who goes first and how much you can get done in a round. Ok, my mistake.That's a house rule that I will probably use though.

You can't just run past people who want to engage you in combat. As soon as you are in melee range, you're engaged. If you then move past someone to get in range of someone else, they get a flanking bonus to attack you. And I have no problem with resolving those attacks each on their normal SR. Although I can also see the justification for allowing the attack earlier, but then I might say that you don't get the flanking bonus that waiting for your normal turn might give. Depends - if you're using a houserule in which SR are no longer an abstraction but instead are an impulse system, then I'd need to know more about the houserule, but SR6 looks like the answer. In the rules as written, I see no reason why Gabby doesn't go on SR4.