PhilHibbs

That gets into the subject of where the line is between a spirit and a god. The God Learners discovered that a god could be manipulated - that if you pray in the right way, the god has no choice but to respond with the magic. Now I may be making the mistake of referencing Second Age material written for The Edition That Shall Not Be Named here, if so my apologies. But if that is indeed "true", can the wyter resist a command from a correctly installed wyter-priest? Or, is it closer to being a middle-world being with a choice in the matter? Does it make a difference if there are other high-ranking community members that can help it resist such abuse, or that it could call out for to intercede on its behalf if it suspects a bad actor?

My theory is that a "community spirit" is a widespread Gloranthan phenomenon, which different cultures have different ways of relating to. The Theyalan and Lunar "wyter" that we are familiar with is a very efficient and powerful form, which to me raises suspicions of God Learner meddling. As has been suggested on the RQ forum, the wyter is wide open for egregious munchkin abuse. Tank it up as a big power battery, get your person in charge of it, then abuse that power in a massive splurge that leaves the community ruined. Other cultures may have patron saints, demons to propitiate, processions of ghosts to be bound or banished, all different manifestations of the Gloranthan tendency for communal activity to attract spiritual attention.

Not all Heroquests are massive, daunting, dangerous undertakings. Everyone goes on a Heroquest as part of their adulthood rites. Sure, sometimes it gives horribly wrong and they come back to find that they are really an ogre, but that's rare.

"Casting a spell" is not the same as "creating an enchantment". Problem solved.

Or Heroquest? Just make it a 0% skill, then you have to get training, you avoid creating the confusion that way.

Well, you could claim on your insurance for something you willingly gave away... Good luck with that, try not to get caught...

Chase scenes are all about getting away, not just literal straight line speed. There are ways to get an advantage over a horse other than outrunning it.

Ok I totally mis-read the post! Still no though, the wyter's ability is for replicating spells cast on community members, not on enchanted items.

Ah, I see. Still... the ability is intended for spells that the wyter casts, and I'm not convinced that it can use a matrix in conjunction. If it is not intended in the original conception, then it's a big, big change to allow it.

Correct. You can make a matrix of a spell, but you can't make a matrix of a special ability.

Natural skill has to be over 100 to split, bonuses do not enable splitting.

Where does that come from?

Interesting. If a wyter's priest is illuminated, but the wyter isn't, that presents interesting situations. Also I wonder how successful the God Learners were at manipulating wyters.

See @jajagappa's last post, he was muddling up Cattle Raid with The Broken Tower from the Quickstart. Which, to be fair, deals with the aftermath of a cattle raid...

Fair point.

Ringworld had a pure "impulse" system, a smooth continuity of strike ranks. So it is an option in BRP, but I think most people found it too fiddly and book-keepy. The abstraction is an abstraction, and if you follow any abstraction too far, it fails. I agree that the "SR6 discontinuity" is a little jarring - if you have skill over 100, and you can get your melee SR down to 6 or below, then suddenly your attacks per round double. It's fairly unusual for a competent fighter to have a melee SR greater than 6 though. I think the MPs are spent at the end, as a failure to cast means you don't lose the MP. In what way does it seriously affect the combat? Should there? Really? So a Great Troll with SIZ 22 and DEX 21 and a greatsword hits every Strike Rank? Nice! (yeah, cheap shot, the serious point is that a change like that needs to be taken into account in quite a few places, you need to plateau the melee SR calculation so that you can't end up with numbers that are too small)

We don't know that, it's an assumption. A focus might take days to make. I've never made a spell focus so I don't know. Again, the evidence from the rules is that it is not from Spirit Combat and it takes a week, not 30 seconds. Even if spirit combat is involved, it could still take a week from start to finish. Spirits are not USB drives that you can just plug in and copy data from. Well, I'm falling into the same trap - making an assumption - they might be just like USB drives, but in that case MGWV. Again, assumptions. Sure, there's a spell for summoning a spirit, and it takes X amount of time. There's a spell for controlling a spirit, it takes less time. But there's no spell for transferring the knowledge of a spell from a spirit to a person. The other spells are necessary but not sufficient, there is clearly a third process going on, and it is the most time-consuming of all. In the old days, you HAD to learn Heal 1 before you learned Heal 2. Then, you know both, and each takes 1 point of Free INT. So in that sense, the spirit that knows Heal 1 may also know Heal 2. The fact that this has been somewhat simplified and we just talk about "learning Heal 2" doesn't mean that the underlying "reality" has changed. The game mechanic has just been simplified. RQ3 is out of the window. Forget everything you knew about RQ3 spirit spell teaching, which absolutely was just "summon it, beat it up, done".

I think... Smoking Ruins scenario pack is next? I'd need to dig out that video that Jeff and Jason did at a con in Germany where they were talking about the GaGoG book. There's that, then Pegasus Plateau scenario pack, then Campaign Guide (formerly Gamemaster's Guide), then Gods and Goddesses of Glorantha.

The way I see it, a Wyter will have a Rune Point pool that it can use like an initiate, and if that runs out, it can use its POW. As to why a wyter wouldn't always have as many RP as it has CHA is a mystery, surely it makes sense to keep the RP at maximum to avoid wasted POW. Adventurers tend to have RP much lower than their CHA only because they haven't had time to stack POW into RP. I'd expect any wyter that's been around for a generation or two to have capped out its RP. In order to explain that, there would have to be some balancing factor that keeps the RP down. I suspect that only POW can be used for the spell replication trick, and not RP. Or, it can spend permanent RP to do it. In effect you get a "Replicate" stackable, on-use spell that copies a spell onto another community member. Oooh, Bless Pregnancy... nah, keeps the wyter's powers tied up for too long. Unless a small group with a powerful wyter retreat into a temple's protection for the duration of the pregnancies. I imagine an itinerant group of crones with an ancient fertility wyter moving once a year to a new community and bringing its blessings in return for protection. Maybe they came to Clearwine in 1603...

Apparently so.

I'd much rather use a Rune Point than a point of POW!

Could be, but Augments aren't everything anyway.

Also, Lightning is a great way to scare off predators if you're a herder. It's pretty much an instant "problem solved" spell even if there's a dozen large wolves coming at you. BANG, and the wolves are gone! Worth having even in the old days of one-use spells.

It's not entirely clear that summoning a spirit is the way that cults teach spirit magic. It just says that priests can teach spirit magic, but that it takes a week (p277). That doesn't sound like the old RQ3 mechanism of summoning a spirit and beating it into giving you the spell.

Are they? Allied spirits are initiates, not sure that temple wyters are. I don't think that they should have DI. It's too risky for a community spirit to cripple itself like that. I agree, you don't get to compel anyopne or anything to spend of POW unless you are a vampire.