PhilHibbs

18 minutes ago, Nick Brooke said:

Part of it has been published in the RQ Starter Set. The rest is “coming soon,” as they say.

Oh yes, it does go a little further north than the Starter Set map! I hadn't noticed. That's a nice tease.

More generally, the scenario has a broad menu of clues to give to the adventurers. They shouldn't need all of them, so don't try to pack everything in. Pick and choose the bits that you think suit the players or characters, and bring in more if they are struggling.

I don't like the idea of gifts on bows. There are no spells that affect a bow, only the arrows. Bows, or any ranged missile weapon, would become massively OP if they could be boosted with either spells or gifts.

And there is something distinctly un-humakti about missile weapons. It's kind of cheating, not facing your enemy hand-to-hand (but then again, so is Sever Spirit...)

50 minutes ago, Darius West said:

The up-side is that Humakt has access to all common magic, which includes all the missile spells.

Not sure what you mean by that.

46 minutes ago, whitelaughter said:

The difference is handedness is important because you don't get half skill from Off hand weapon One handed, but do the other way.

Off hand skills are just another skill in the same category. You get half skill with any weapon skill in the same category. If you train Off Hand Broadsword as your best 1H Sword skill, that gives you half chance with any one handed sword with either hand.

19 hours ago, Godlearner said:

Against a target like a deer with no armor, Multimissle will actually be better. 

I think Speedart is better for a hunter than Multimissile. The objective of the hunter is to either kill the animal or for it to escape unharmed. It serves nobody for an animal to run off wounded.

4 hours ago, whitelaughter said:

The myth/practicality divide is a false dilemma, given the gods are supposed to be making their cults as strong as possible.

Huh? No they aren't. They are what they are, if anything it's the other way around. Cults are supposed to be making their god as strong as possible, and that involves reinforcing the god's nature. Straying from that can be dangerous or detrimental. And reinforcing your god often involves making personal sacrifices.

During hard times, a cult might focus on community survival. But there will often be a tension, the interests of the god may not always be aligned with the interests of the community, and that's great scenario fodder.

The only rule I can remember for missing parts of a limb is if it is severed in combat you roll % for how much is lost. That's the RQ3 rule, I don't recall if it's there in RQG. If it is, then the limb is still considered "gone" even if you've lost less that 50% of it, so by that rule the arm simply has no hit points at all.

But that's not really what you want, so there's no rule for it. I wouldn't change it myself, but I'd be ok with a 1 point reduction.

The down side is that the limb is easier to cut off. The up side is that less general HP are lost when it is severed.

59 minutes ago, Nick Brooke said:

Have you somehow not understood what this thread is talking about?

Maybe. I thought it was about a potential third printing. The "second printing corrections" document that I remember seeing was just the changes already in the second printing. And the OP explicitly mentions The Well.

Yeah, if this is the file that Jeff posted (that is 403 Forbidden):

...then that's the errata already in the book.

I'm pretty sure that this thread is about incorporating the changes in The Well into a new printing. Am I so far wrong? If so I can't see how I went astray.

@Mordante Can you clarify that that is what you are talking about? One of us is clearly confused.

23 minutes ago, Jeff said:

Um, the list of errata is pretty short:

https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/CHA4028-second-printing-corrections-1.0.1.pdf

The corrections on The Well are far more extensive than the second printing corrections.

On 11/16/2022 at 4:49 AM, Darius West said:

If you cast your definition of HQing very broadly then potentially every day a Barntar initiate is out planting or harvesting crops can be considered a HQ.

Personally I don't buy it.

If you look to the King of Dragon Pass book, you can see that Argrath does plenty of HQs but likely not more than 20 real HQs in his life, if memory serves me correctly.

I agree, I know it's over-used and in some ways outdated but I like the King of Dragon Pass model. A proper "heroquest" is something that the community seldom does and plans carefully for - either it's great need, such as to fix a problem, or it's a way of honouring the gods and spending resources in the good times to get a big reward.

I guess the premise of all these narratives is that there is some underlying cosmic principle that requires a unique focal point for the power that is needed to "save the world" or whatever the film is about. There doesn't have to be a conscious chooser, in the same way that nobody chose the value of the fine structure constant, or the value of pi or e. Or if there is, it's God, who also exists because of the same cosmic principle of singularity.

Characteristics are supposed to be somewhat exponential, so a difference of 10 is a huge difference at any scale. The SIZ chart in RQ3 had each point of SIZ being slightly more than the last point, so the scale accelerates gently until you get to 100 whereupon it's flat. So that doesn't really back up the exponential theory.

Just another example of how the rules don't really scale that well. But they don't need to. They work well enough that you can play a game and have fun and kill a giant monster. What's not to love?

2 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

Isn’t it also going to be hard to become a priest in that situation?

Vasana's Saga ignored the problem of no Devotion and no Loyalty (Temple). Maybe they assumed that Loyalty (Mentor) works instead. Or they just don't mention that he picked up a Devotion (Waha) passion at 60% at some point. But in that saga, Vishi just goes to Pavis, meets up with her, travels with Argrath's army, and initiates on the journey at a sacred site in northern Prax. We're planning something similar.

There is also the problem of giving enough POW to your fetch to have it be useful, whilst retaining the 18 POW requirement for priest. Vishi does NOT do this, he goes below the minimum. Scotty in the Q&A said that this means he's not a priest until he gets his POW back up. So I guess you don't need to qualify for priest to become a shaman of Waha. If you become a shaman, and you qualify for priest, they you're a priest of Waha. Otherwise you're just an initiate who is also a shaman.

7 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

I think it make sense to force the PC to pick up the passion, though - Loyalty(Temple) shouldn’t be overly hard to come by. Do a job for them.

Well, this is one of the reasons that Devotion is in my opinion the far better choice. It's hard to pick up a passion for your temple when you're an outcast from your homeland.

On 11/11/2022 at 1:34 PM, PhilHibbs said:

Does the pose a problem for Vishi Dunn becoming a priest of Waha? Does his loyalty to his mentor work here, and what happens if his mentor dies?

I'd just like to point out that that would be a dick move by the GM. Unless the player goes out of their way to bring their mentor into play and deliberately gets them into a dangerous situation, this should never happen!

I might give +1 for having one or more impressive magical items, and a separate +1 for either conspicuous displays of wealth, or being famously ascetic.

6 hours ago, soltakss said:

Sop, does that mean that you only allow +1 CHA, no matter how many flashy items the Adventurer has?

That's what the rules say. I'm not entirely convinced of it, but I think a character would have to have a lot of famous stuff to get a second point.

8 hours ago, whitelaughter said:

Yet starting PCs can set themselves up to have a functional 42 strength: Bison Rider + 2ndry darkness rune serving Odayla or Orlanth with bear's Strength+4 levels of Extension, or CHA 40 with anybody serving Ernalda, Eurmal, or Yinkin with Charisma + 4*Extension.

Yes, you could sacrifice 2 extra POW and get Charisma for an entire season. Or 3 POW to get Bear's Strength. That's all your Rune Points locked away for the duration though, so you can't cast anything else. And if the next seasonal holy day doesn't coincide with the expiry of the spell, you lose it until the next worship opportunity. I can only see 40 STR as being achievable though without something like a Humakt or Yelmalio gift.

So yes, you can do that. You'd get +25 to all your manipulation skills. That's starting to get a little strange, that a huge strength suddenly makes you a proficient flute player, but it doesn't bother me too much.

10 hours ago, Oracle said:

I guess, you mean this one:

Can't wait to get a big one of those on my wall!

7 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

”In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals that the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.”

—Jerry Pournelle, ’The Iron Law of Bureaucracy’

On the one hand, that's true. On the other hand, it might not apply in a magical world. On the gripping hand, Glorantha to some extent "really is how ancient peoples thought the world worked", and if the mundane ancient world was riddled with self-serving bureaucracy, then maybe the magical world should be too. But maybe for different reasons.

2 hours ago, Gamesmeister said:

 I don't see what that has to do with anything, we're talking about the rules in the current volumes, not previous ones.

I think what is happening here is that Scotty is interpreting the rules as written, and hasn't gone back to the current authors (Jason, Jeff) to get a change considered. Maybe it will be when the new revision is done, I've heard rumours that it at the very least intended, if not actively worked on.

2 hours ago, Gamesmeister said:

Bladesharp 2 is a magic spell that increases the damage of a bronze broadsword by 2 points. 

Truesword is a magic spell that increases the damage of a bronze broadsword by 1D8+1 points. 

Where's the difference in these two spells? I assume you're ruling this just because it mentions Telmori in the spell description of Bladesharp, but that doesn't make sense...Fireblade doesn't say it can hurt Telmori in its spell description, but we already know that it can.

Truesword does the extra damage to Telmori in my game. And a Humakti weapon blessed to do double damage once armour is penetrated would do normal damage, the "extra" from doubling counting as magical.

3 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

If anything, the loyalty to a temple should probably be more emphasized, as every Priest or Rune Lord will at least initially get the position in a temple. Just imagine the interview:

”Right, so you’re going to perform your duties in loyalty to the temple?”

”I serve only my god!”

”Er…”

That might be the case if the other senior rune levels also are highly temple-oriented rather than devoted. You could just as easily construct the narrative the other way around.

"Right, so you're going to perform your duties in devoted service to our god?"

"No, I'm going be worldly and political!"

"Er..."

1 hour ago, Richard S. said:

EDIT: Also forgot it's a requirement for Rune Priests too, which decapitates the example I was going to try about how a non-Devoted priest would work. Whoops.

The priest requirement is trivial, since new passions start at 60% and you only need 50%. Which is a bit daft... 50% means you really have no passion at all, you're as likely to not care as you are to care. I'd make it 75% for priests, or even the same as Rune Lords.