PhilHibbs

If you are just ignoring the damage then there has to be an advantage over healing, is it that it overcomes multiple wounds within the duration?

I'd say sorcery only.

Some of that skill might come from seeing fights between adults, either murders, raids, duels, or tourneys.

Illumination doesn't make you love chaos. There are plenty of Arkati chaos-fighters. I hadn't come across undetectability to spirits either, although it traditionally does remove the threat of spirits of reprisal. I see that more as an aspect of the freedom from cult rules though. They can't detect your errant behaviour, rather than you yourself.

I think once character creation ends, previous occupation can become irrelevant. What matters from then on is what the character does, they might continue their previous occupation during downtime, do something different, or live the high life on their enormous adventuring loot haul.

You're seriously disagreeing with Jeff Richard about rules not matching the setting? I can guarantee you that the Spirit Magic Free Int thing was not included just for RQ3 compatibility! If you want to use RQG for a non-Gloranthan setting, or a your-Glorantha-that-varies, then go ahead, allow any mix of magical types that you want. RQG is specifically tuned for Glorantha, and Jeff is one of the primary living authorities on Glorantha.

I've made SVG files, they're on the Runequest Glorantha wiki. http://runequest-glorantha.wikia.com/wiki/File:Rune_command.svg http://runequest-glorantha.wikia.com/wiki/File:Rune_tap.svg http://runequest-glorantha.wikia.com/wiki/File:Rune_summon.svg http://runequest-glorantha.wikia.com/wiki/File:Rune_dispel.svg http://runequest-glorantha.wikia.com/wiki/File:Rune_combine.svg http://runequest-glorantha.wikia.com/wiki/File:Rune_separate.svg

And to say that the inevitable consequence of that would be a historical record full of sorcerers throwing around fireballs is not the only possible conclusion.

There are two basic vows - The High Vow gives a basic amount of Presence, INT+POW-20 or a minimum of 1. The Vessel gives your Free INT as Presence. So a decent stat sorcerer can start with around 25-30 Presence just from those.

You can carry a lot more arrows than javelins.

When was sorcery ever efficient?

I read him as meaning "just use INT, not Free INT". Personally I liked Sandy's system, where you could cast 1 point per 10% of skill, or something like that.

All of the descriptions that I have heard, from Greg and Sandy, go along the lines of "this is going to happen, figure out how to save your community". Raise the land, erect a dome, evacuate to the hero plane, learn to breathe water, whatever. Or, try to stop it.

That section describes a script specifically for magical writing, actually!

There are some contests that are pretty much guaranteed a result - arm wrestles, straight dash race, etc. Some contests are likely to produce hilarious both-side-failed results between novices - climbing, oratory, etc., whereas high-skilled opponents are very likely to get a result quickly. Other contests are the other way around - novices are likely to get a conclusive result, whereas masters could go on for ages with no result. Chess is a good example of this. Combat sits in both of the latter two camps - novices can embarrass themselves by being unable to hit, whereas masters dodge and parry every blow until someone gets a critical hit or fumbles. So it seems to me that we really need several different mechanisms or variants to model the different kinds of contest.

Mostly it's the system of vows, they give a great indication of how the different sects view the world and their ideals of behaviour.

I don't think that's true at all. Sorcery is built around a rigorous religious philosophy, a particular view of how the world works. I think people only think that about sorcerers because RQ3 didn't have a Malkioni framework. If you read Sandy's sorcery rules, you get a much better insight into the cultural background to sorcery. Remember, the RQ3 rules were non-Gloranthan.

I'm ok with it, for one or more of those many ways.

As a starting character, you can't be a shaman, but you can be a sorcerer. Shamans are rune level characters, and have been beefed up to match that, but getting past that threshold to gaining a fetch is a risky and difficult step. On the other hand, it seems to me that you can start as a much more potent sorcerer in RQG than you could in RQ3. I don't think anyone has suggested that.

From the article on Chaosium.com: Earlier this year at Gen Con it was announced that Chaosium was assisting Nocturnal Media in release and distribution of its products, and would help with the fulfilment of several of its Kickstarters. That assistance will continue.

It is definitely not intended to be a bug. Learning spirit magic is supposed to be detrimental to Gloranthan sorcerers in some way, so they kept that part of the INT mechanic. It's simple, familiar, and does the job, so there's really no need to change it. The CHA mechanic was introduced in order to reduce shamanic dependency on INT, as I understand it.

This must be one of the hardest parts of running a games company - you want to be cool and friendly and everybody just produce great products and make everyone happy. Then you have to put on your tough guy face and kick someone's arse over the commercials. I really feel for you, my friends at Chaosium. And for ESD also, they may well be good people who just had a tough time running a business themselves.

Maybe a tag system, so you can tag characters in your campaign? What about an option to clone an existing character? Not sure if everyone would be happy if everything could be just copied by someone else. Perhaps exclude the picture and description.

If you want to keep track of the skill separately, then fine, it gets separate experience when using a shortsword. But if his Broadsword skill goes up over 50%, and his Shortsword skill hsa not gone up, then it should be considered half the new Broadsword skill. I can't see it explicitly stated that this is the case, and that Shortsword skill could now start rising from the higher level (rather than experience ticks being applied to the lower skill rating) but that's how I'd rule it.

Well, the OP simply asked "do they stack", and I think it's clear what he meant in the context. I can't imagine anyone ruling that only one of them applies. The only other instance of points doubling that I can think of is MP cost for sorcery with secondary runes and techniques, and that explicitly does go up geometrically. It does say that magical damage is not doubled for specials and criticals. I'd be ok with that meaning that a Truesword special isn't 4x, i.e only 3d8+3 rather than 4d8+4. The Spirit Combat chapter is clear that half of the Truesword damage is magical. I still think that after-armour doubles should stack geometrically, so 1 point getting past armour on a troll with iron and a Humakti gift means 4 points. I can see some justification for not wanting magical damage to get the doubling of iron, but I can't see a god way of doing that. The mechanics would be really ugly and confusing. You could just say that non-magical damage is blocked by armour first, and if only the magical part gets through, then it is not doubled. I can imagine the player saying "Er, dunno, I just rolled 2D8, and they're both the same colour". I'm fine agreeing to disagree, though, I wouldn't feel aggrieved or refuse to play in a game over it!