PhilHibbs

And if a poster isn't big enough...

12 hours ago, SDLeary said:

Correct, it is a SINGLE spirit. So if the body dies (from reduction to 0 POW or otherwise), the Shaman should still exist in the spirit world, and if they are the crafty sort should be able to find themselves a new... host(?), or if killed by someone, exact revenge, and then perhaps use their body as host.

If the Fetch dies (reduces to 0 POW), then the Shamans ability to travel the spirit world should be stopped, but their mortal self should be fine. Perhaps they live in a reduced state, perhaps they can find a way to awaken another fetch.

SDLeary

I was going to say "if your arm is cut of, you can't just..." oh wait yeah you can. Regrow Limb.

What we do know is, there's no easy well-trodden path that has been formalised into a rune spell. You need to find some new (or old, lost) way to do it.

1 hour ago, SDLeary said:

That’s a bit extreme. Especially if the reverse is true as well (at work, so no books handy), and the Shaman is truly dead at 0 physical body POW. 
It precludes the ability of the Shaman to wander the spirit world to find a new body. 

What is it that would be wandering the spirit world to find a new body? Zero POW means zero soul/spirit. Annihilation of the soul, very serious, and yes, very extreme.

1 hour ago, mfbrandi said:

[emphasis mine]

That is the nub of it, though — can you loot anything from Chaos creatures you have murdered without exposing yourself to the threat of Chaos taint? Wouldn’t it amount to living off immoral earnings, “nurturing oneself on chaos”?

No, if the loot does not itself carry a chaotic taint, then there's no problem. I suppose chaos can taint mundane physical objects, but I think it's unusual. You have to be careful with diseases and Broo loot.

1 hour ago, mfbrandi said:

And if you are making lists of people it is OK to kill to take their stuff, your soul may already be poisoned — not necessarily with Chaos, but poisoned all the same.

I think you can go too far applying modern western liberal sensibilities to other societies. And in any case, most adventuring parties aren't just looking for rich people to kill and rob, there's usually some pretext for "hunting the monsters" or "taking down the bad guys".

1 hour ago, svensson said:

There is a very simple way to show the players the 'community asset' emphasis in RQG.

Apprentices. Acolytes.  Foster children. Squires. Hangers-on.

All of which have to be fed, protected, trained, and elevated [given livelihoods, introductions, pensions, something for their future lives]. And while YOUR Player Character miserly arse is willing to sleep in the stable, drink water and the cheapest beer available and eat turnip mush with hard tack on a daily basis, your reputation will suffer mightily if you try and serve your followers that literal beggar's banquet.

Why would anyone want to play in this game?

I mean, if that's what your group wants, then fine. But it seems a pretty confrontational way to go about it.

And it's very different to the main example that we have out there to the public - The White Bull Campaign - in which there is a full shaman with no societal responsibilities at all and no explanation as to why. Unless I missed it.

On 3/5/2024 at 11:55 PM, Akhôrahil said:

Vargast has a lot of expensive stuff on him, worth well in excess of his ransom value. If you beat him up and take his stuff, it’s rightfully stolen and your property.

Hmmm, not keen on that, sure it might be realistic but in game terms taking a character's stuff is generally a big no-no. Great way to lose friends.

5 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

There's a strong need to justify the likely actions (constant adventuring) of the characters.

Your whole post is written with the assumption that they haven't done this, or that this is really hard to do. I would de-emphasise the need to justify their actions, unless they really are a bunch of murder-hobos with no sense of responsibility.

Hopefully the GM Book or Sartar Campaign (if they aren't the same thing) will cover this, but it's a long time coming. With the power boost to starting characters, a lot of games will have run up against this problem already.

To me, the bigger problem is how do you run an adventuring campaign with a shaman-priest of Waha in the party, like Vishi Dunn becomes in the Vasana story.

In the story, it is glossed over. He continues to be a wandering adventurer. That's what most people are going to want to do. But there is no guidance on how to do this, all the rules in the book basically say you can't do it - they don't explicitly say this, but the most obvious interpretation is that it basically is end of adventuring career in the traditional sense. It's clearly a mistaken interpretation, but is a common initial assumption.

I have no problem, I can deal with this. I've dealt with it before in previous editions of the game, we can come up with our own mental gymnastics in our group to work around these problems because we're experienced RuneQuest players.

A lot of players are not, and are going to see these obligations as an impasse. This question is an example of this rules-versus-intent problem, the questioner asks how to cope with a 90% income tithe, and the official answer is "he gives 90% of his income to himself".

Introducing my new avatar, what do you think? I've been using one of Simon Bray's woodcut-style drawings for a long time now, and felt guilty that I never asked permission. Someone else is now using the same one, I could have tried to rectify the permission but then that looks like I'm getting into a fight and I just didn't want any of that.

So I made my own. I used "AI" generation and style transfer to get the bits I wanted then composited them together manually with some heavy editing to make it all fit together. So yes, there's a bunch of copyright abuse still going on behind the scenes (and lets be honest, most avatars on the forum are straight lifts), but the work as a whole is a mashup of many things, and is of course non-commercial.

3 hours ago, Bahntah said:

I found reading the RQ2 rulebook (available as PDF or POD) helped me understand RQG. It gives you the core of the system, and then you can appreciate the RQG bells and whistles on top.

Interesting, yes the main rulebook is a bit of a mammoth tome to digest all at once.

I guess that's what the Quickstart and Starter Set are for, but I haven't really read through them with that context in mind.

Apologies for my earlier post, I may be muddling Find and Detect. This is my reading of the two.

Find (Substance) gives a fake augmented reality glow for the caster, like you sometimes get an outline of an enemy behind a wall in a video game.

Detect (Substance) gives a real visual glow to everyone, plus a distance-and-direction for the caster.

On 2/29/2024 at 11:22 AM, Runeword said:

Fingers crossed. It's a decision that would make sense.

I reckon the timing is all about stock levels of the second printing, which I heard was quite large. They won't want to undercut demand for the current edition whilst it's still selling. If supplies drop, then we'll see a new run which I suspect will be more than just a few errata that got missed before the second printing.

So if you want a new edition, buy a spare copy of the current one!

15 hours ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

How does one specifically attack an opponents weapon?

I don't know if there are mechanics for that, I think there might have been in previous editions, but one way is just to whack it while it's lying on the ground. But then I guess the HP-as-AP numbers might be wrong, as weapon stats are specifically written with parrying in mind. Deflecting a blade is different to taking the force full-on.

So yeah, maybe not a sensible question.

On 2/27/2024 at 9:52 AM, Runeword said:

Are these errata corrections in shipped out on print versions? If so, what would I be looking for to make sure it is the updated version?

No, this feedback is all based on the print version.

16 hours ago, svensson said:

Guys, I think we're all really REALLY over-thinking this.

Of course we are, and we're loving it!

On 2/23/2024 at 4:27 PM, Squaredeal Sten said:

My own interpretation is that when the edge touches skin, the remaining damage is doubled.  Simple.

So you would double it before subtracting natural hide armour? I'm not going to quibble about skeletons or dryads or elementals, your intention is clear in that respect.

The "Why can Death do this" reasoning is a bit of a rabbit hole, leading to "Why should Truesword damage shields" etcetera. But just because something can be forced into an absurd-looking corner, doesn't mean it is inherently absurd.

Part of me is comfortable with the how-it-works being a little funky and open to interpretation, essentially the whim-of-the-GM, but that also opens the door to munchkin bickering and drama.

What about damage to an attacking weapon on a really good parry?

Failed Attack vs Special Parry

Defender rolls
parrying weapon’s
special damage.
Attacking weapon’s
HP reduced by any
damage over its
current HP.

Should a blessed parrying weapon do extra damage?

What if you specifically attack their weapon to destroy it? Is that a "Non-Humakti" thing to do, and does it make a difference if the wielder is illuminated?

As you might read from my tone, my instincts are to allow it but I do recognize the complication.

9 minutes ago, PhilHibbs said:

Special Attack vs Normal Parry

Defender’s parrying
weapon takes damage
over its HP, with same
amount of damage
going to adjacent hit
location.

Right, this is where the complexity really kicks in.

Here we have weapon damage being done to the shield, then going on to the arm. But the arm might have AP, so you can't double the weapon damage for the purposes of damaging the shield, because it still hasn't hit the AP.

Since the damage is applied to both the shield and the arm separately, I suppose you could treat the two sets of damage independently:

Weapon damage: 20
Shield HP: 12
Arm AP: 7

Shield HP reduces the 20 down to 8

Shield takes 8x2=16 and breaks

Arm takes 8-7=1x2=2

I'm glad I'm not programming a VTT to figure in all this!

Special Attack vs Normal Parry

Defender’s parrying
weapon takes damage
over its HP, with same
amount of damage
going to adjacent hit
location.

Right, this is where the complexity really kicks in.

Here we have weapon damage being done to the shield, then going on to the arm. But the arm might have AP, so you can't double the weapon damage for the purposes of damaging the shield, because it still hasn't hit the AP.

Since the damage is applied to both the shield and the arm separately, I suppose you could treat the two sets of damage independently:

Weapon damage: 20
Shield HP: 12
Arm AP: 7

Shield HP reduces the 20 down to 8

Shield takes 8x2=16 and breaks

Arm takes 8-7=1x2=2

I suppose one complication is this:

Critical Attack vs Normal Parry

Defender’s parrying
weapon HP reduced
by the damage rolled.
Any excess damage
goes to adjacent hit
location, with no armor
protection.

How much damage does the parrying weapon take? Is the damage doubled?

A literal reading of the rules would be "yes", since there are no AP involved. I think that this is the heart of the objection, that a crit-versus-parry becomes a shield auto-destroyer.

14 minutes ago, Geoff R Evil said:

I am on the NO side, it’s clear the doubling of damage occurs once you have hit flesh. Probably as others say, related to death power once it touches a live thing…or an unliving thing. Once you start doubling the damage in order to by pass defensive measures where do you start and stop…too complex.

I don't see the complexity. After AP are deducted, you double the damage that isn't blocked by armour. Contact with life force is not necessary, because the doubling happens before matching it against Ward Against Weapons. At least, that's my interpretation, I guess you could match the un-doubled damage against it.

I can see both sides of this, I’m going to come down on the “yes” side because it’s simpler.

I think the “priestess will cast Bless Crops” is a world building thing that wasn’t really thought through properly.

On 2/10/2024 at 6:51 AM, French Desperate WindChild said:

2) to learn a special rune spell you must sacrifice 1 POW to your deity - even if the spell is 2RP 3RP: learning = 1RP)

P.275 which I and others have quoted above contradicts this. You can learn a spell without expending POW.