PhilHibbs

This. The combat becomes a tactical one, where the Humakti has to make choices between carving a way through to the enemy spellcaster at the back, or backtracking to save the scholar from the monstrosity that just dropped out of the tree canopy. It can be a challenge for the GM, making sure everyone gets stuff to do, but try not to worry about comparing body counts. Can be a problem if the Humakti player is an insufferable jerk about his superiority, I don't know if that is the case or not!

So doubles before armour do not stack (adding up multipliers, rather than just multiplying). Doubles after armour do not stack (iron + Humakt gift = x3 not x4). But doubling before and doubling after do stack. That's the disparity that I take issue with, the selective application of multiplicative and additive stacking. Why stack a before-armour and an after-armour, but not two befores, or two afters?

So Truesword doubles damage before armour, then iron doubles it after, which do you apply vs a heavily armoured troll?

Seems to me that you're saying they don't stack just because you can, because it is mathematically possible. But when there's a reason you can't, you have to allow it.

I expect that different schools will teach more or less the same spell but with different techniques - Combine vs Summon, Dispel vs Separate, Stasis vs Movement, Harmony vs Fertility etc.

You don't start rolling on the background tables until you're 18, it's only the most recent 4 years of your life. If you're a farmer, you've been living on a farm for 18 years, and working on the farm for well over half of that, probably herding sheep or milking cows since the age of 5. My uncle helped with a sow birthing at age 7, his father came and took him out of school to do it because he needed his small hands. Sure, a more detailed character creation system might be good for some, but too much for others.

The way I see it, the occupation is what they were doing back home both between the exciting events and before they were old enough to participate. The elective choices reflect what they did whilst off in foreign lands.

So maybe they can just encocde the base spell and act as a 1-point inscription. I seem to remember MRQ2 had a similar mechanic, you could cast spells from memory or by opening up your grimoire.

I'm not convinced that Enhance INT is such a game changer. You can get 4 points of INT, I think. Is that worth shaping your repertoire entirely towards that objective? On the other hand, the Fire Rune is quite useful in and of itself anyway, so why not. If you want both Enhance INT and Steal Breath, then that's both Air and Fire which are not related. So you could go for Water instead, which has both Air and Fire as minor runes. Maybe once the other Enhance spells are detailed, they will be attractive in their own way giving incentives to study other elements.

They can, if they are a philosopher. You have a free choice of rune and technique.

Bear in mind that inscriptions cannot be passed on to others, they are specific to the sorcerer. I think that's why the rules use the word "inscription" instead of "enchantment". Maybe we will see rules for orders with grimoires that act as inscriptions that can be shared, but right now it's not strictly an option.

I don't know where that idea comes from, I think that anyone making liberal use of Steal Breath in Sartar is going to have a really hard time.

I think you probably do.

Of course the Uz can use those sub-sonic tones to share insults about (or plan an ambush on) the nearby humans, even those that "know" Darktongue.

You seem to be implying that the lifepath can't be chosen. The rules explicitly say, in bold, that you can choose or roll.

I think that's something that everyone has to accept - your Glorantha will never be canon Glorantha, the amount of slavish restraint required to stay within the bounds would lead to a stifled campaign in which the GM's major job is to stop the players from doing anything interesting. (I played in a Lord of the Rings game like that once, and on the other side of the coin, a game where the first thing we did was rescue Isildur from the Anduin.) If the players have been doing anything significant, then any new material that covers the same area (e.g. Argrath's liberation of Pavis, after your players already did in or usurped most of the Lunars) will have to be adapted to fit.

RQG goes some way to fix this, characters are pretty tough to start out. They can all chuck rune spells around and the fighters can hit reliably in combat. They are ready to start playing with the big toys. But I agree in general, RuneQuest has always focused on the more "realistic" end of the power scale, and progressing to the higher power levels has always been a tough slog and required generous GMing. Part of the problem is that a lot of groups like to start at the low end, and feel that starting out on the cusp of rune level, like RQG, is cheating somewhat. So it's difficult for one game system to cater to all tastes.

When Greg was asked "what about game balance", his answer was usually laden with dismissive profanities.

I've always said it as "Us" with a "z", so the latter. But that leaves room for variation, from the RP through to something more like "oos" or "oss". Pronunciation will no doubt vary between regions, and possibly with context. There may even be variations in the language depending on whether it's dark or not, with difficult subvocal harmonies needed to cut through the daylight and make oneself clear, that are not needed in the calm of darkness. Darktongue should be strange and somewhat terrifying to humans who are not used to it.

Maybe it should be reworked in a similar manner to (weapon) Trance, where each MP gives a bonus to hit. Since it only affects a single arrow, maybe +20 per MP spent, with full bonus to crit and special, so 5 MP gives +100.

For sure they'd get no benefit from eating anything animate or otherwise, but I think the instinct to eat would still be there. Zombies do love brains, after all.

The resistance table isn't really set up to handle skill vs skill rolls.

I'd never thought of it that way, I don't think I ever mapped the numbers to the world like that. I guess that's just a difference in the ways that different people think. On the other hand, I have come across D&D players who hate BRP because rolling low is good, and that just made no sense to them. I guess that's similar - "Roll low to hit, but high for damage? How am I supposed to train my dice for that???" 🤣

In my experience, people have gone for headshots because that's an obvious choice, one that other people will also go for and so avoids the need for coordination. Perhaps abdomen would be a better choice for this, it has the same hit points as the head but has a higher chance of taking a hit on a random location roll. It's also more dramatic, and large non-humanoids might have more abdomen hits than head (although in RQG this will only ever be 1 or 2 points difference).

He was probably created using an earlier iteration of the rules. Maybe Sartar used to get +15 and it's been increased since then.