Rodney Dangerduck

A medium shield will protect one arm and, typically, either head or abdomen. That's 25% - 30% of the hit locations. While useful, I'd hardly call that "for the win". Most if the time (70% or more) the dangerous crit or impale will hit an area not covered by the shield.

Climb is an Agility skill, hence Water.

Given that the Lunars are great at "discovering" that some local god is "really" an aspect of one of the Lunar core gods, their answer to the question "Is Etyries worshipped in Esrolia ?" is certainly this: "Yes, but they just don't know it yet."

One thing the Passions might miss on is mirroring actual player role playing, not simplistic "I've got this Rune therefore XXX" roleplaying. My current character, the youngest daughter, is very much a show off / daredevil type. She should have some sort of "Reckless" passion. Another PC consistently roleplays as "Hard Drinker". Various groups can come up with Home Brew rules to deal with this.

My PC, so far, has been lucky with Inspiration rolls. But most of us are much more cautious after witnessing the downsides. I'll usually wait partway through the climactic scene to see if it is "really needed".

I like Runes for casting rune magic, and for gently guiding behavior. I dislike the 80% GM can force rolls, since you really need high runes to cast rune magic semi-reliably. IMO, a game mechanic shouldn't be used to control players. Our GMs seldom enforce the 80% rule. I'm more o.k. with Passions. If you don't want a GM to mess with you, keep them below 80%. In practice, my main complaint is that players often choosing their highest passion instead of a more relevant one. How they "really work" when you augment is above my pay grade. 🙂You bring up many good points.

I agree that they should decide on the terms of the duel. But, IMO, it's more complex than your suggestions. 1) Why? What if the other participant wants to use magic? Do they play Rochambeau to decide? 2) Again, why? If the gift is bound to a bad geas, why does the gift (say +10% to Swords) count, but not the bad "no armor on your head" geas? As for Sword Trance, our group plays with a "no more than double your base skill" rule. Also, due to different game mechanics (we don't use strike ranks) the user seldom puts in more than 8 magic points. +80% to attack and parry is still very very good.

I have very little idea how a Humakti duel actually works. Is there a designated "preparation" phase? Or does a successful Disruption or Lightning or good Javelin hit on SR 1 win? All I know is that Sever Spirit is forbidden. The Cults of Prax example includes a lot of preparation. Is there a more detailed guideline or example anywhere? Are there variants, such as "no Rune Magic" or "no Preparation" or "exactly N rounds of preparation, then anything goes"?

"Sehzade" and I raced several of the Praxian beasts, and bested them all, though the Sables are a tough match. One of our PCs is very proud of his War Bison.

For a while my character went out of the way to take extra care of her Goldeneye. But the GM didn't really notice. Or, he did, but decided not to "punish" the other PCs who were leaving it more to stable hands. It's a tough call how realistic you want to be, as opposed to MGF.

Note that a God Talker has less formal duties (those duties that everybody here seems to ignore) so might be a more appropriate formal title for a PC. That can still have an Ally Spirit, so are nearly as powerful as a Priest.

Minor correction: light (or Light) does not dispel Darkwalk. Just makes it ineffective until the sneak runs off into the shadows. How the sentries know to cast Light (or Soul Sight, if that works, I'm not sure it does) at the proper moment is an interesting question. If the sentry is just walking around with a torch, the sneak presumably has some chance to notice and try to move away...

Dark Walk isn't noted as a "special" Rune spell, just as a rune spell available to Orlanth Adventurous, along with Flight, Lightning, Shield, etc... Are you saying that PCs need to do exceptional service to get Shield? Without exceptional service, they only get access to the Common rune spells? The pregen PCs have the "special" spells.

Note that Eurmal has no set holy days. They are determined by the priest at each shrine. Lots of opportunities for PCs of Eurmal or associated cults to bribe the priests (or get them drunk) and regain rune points. Orlanth also has an extra (single) seasonal holy day at a time TBD. IMO, these are bad ideas in RAW and our group is limiting this. It's not like Orlanth and Eurmal are short on associate cults.

BTW, I will become our GM in a few months, so if there are any, er, "interesting" spells from RBoM that I have overlooked, and should be considered for use by the opposition, please let me know. Not sure if this should be a new topic or not - we're getting away from Darkwalk. Thanks!

I completely agree. I know the Game Designers could care less about game balance, but this "Storm Tribe has all the coolest stuff" is extremely tiresome. Lie, Sword Trance, Darkwalk and Thunderbolt are completely broken OP spells. And I'm running the Vingan who used the Darkwalk! Can't wait for the Gods book to see if the Trolls, Solars, and Lunars get any cool stuff to counter.

I cleverly snuck up on the toughest Dark Troll, made a dishonorable sneak attack, and rolled a 00. We then fought indecisively for around 10 rounds, he finally turning invisible and fleeing once his maul was broken.

Very good point. Unless the opposition are trolls who don't have Light. Seriously, I'm very interested in this question because, in about 3 hours, my PC with Darkwalk and Catseye will be fighting trolls in a poorly lit cavern. I'm hoping that the other PCs don't cast their one remaining SunBright, or that the trolls quickly dismiss it. The PCs probably think otherwise. 🙂

Orlanth is probably the most popular PC cult. So lots of players will have this spell, and, at 1 Rune Point, it's easy to cast. The spell does not require pitch black. It requires "darkness and shadow". (Arguably, that "and" should really be an "or"). Now, maybe I'm misinterpreting that requirement, but a dimly lit corridor or cavern applies. Most any "dungeon crawl". Conditions where no GM would penalize a PC by -75%. When your PCs burglarized Raus's house in Pavis, did you give them a huge penalty to all skills for being in pitch dark?

When you ignore encumbrance, do your players all end up in plate mail? Or do they show more restraint than our group would?

What cultures in Glorantha do use dogs to herd?

The reason is that the newer authors hate the crap out of Yelmalio. They have made the classic RQ2 PC cult of Rurik and Starnia (Griffin Mt.) into a nerfed lame useless uninteresting cult of slaver misogynists.

The gift that adds +50% hit points to their iron sword, so that it parries 27 points of damage, is mighty sweet too. If you beef up opponents so they can do around 40 damage to get through this + armor, not many other PCs will survive. I agree that run away and Dispell are the best counters.

I agree. I'd argue that Babs is a better combat cult than Humakt. She doesn't need more goodies. As David notes, Slash is roughly as good as Truesword. They have several excellent spells with no equivalent in the Humakt list: Earth Shield is awesome. Berserker and Small Elementals have their uses. Heal Body can be a lifesaver in combat. Down to 3 hit points and missing a leg? No problem, all better! They have a couple of Associated cults, so they recover rune points significantly faster. This is a big limitation on our group's Humakti PC. And they don't have that whole "you only die once" problem.

We are finding the same - several characters have natural skills in the 120-130% range. With Augments, Strength (or my new BFF spell, Bear's Strength) and Bladesharp they easily get into the 180-200% range. (Though it's tricky to remember that Bladesharp only helps attack, not parry) And our Humakti was up to over 250% one battle with Sword Trance. It makes life challenging for the GM - how do you make worthy opponents for them, who won't just overwhelm the others.