Dragon

Definitely possible to gang up in Spirit Combat. Multiple disembodied spirits could all attack the same embodied spirit in Spirit Combat. As normal for multiple opponents, the solo participant is -20 in skill for the second, -40 for the third, and so on.
It is generally not possible for multiple embodied spirits to all use Spirit Combat against a disembodied spirits. There are a few exceptions like Attack Soul. However, it is possible to attack disembodied spirits with enchanted weapons. Multiple people in the party with Truesword, Slash, Firespear could 'gang' up on a visible disembodied spirit.

If the entire party was discorporate (there are ways), they could gang up in the spirit world on a single spirit.

But those don't happen as often as a single character being attacked by a single spirit and the rest of the party watches. Until the party has Rune levels in it.

My take:

• Runes and passions fill in more of the environment of magic
• The expanded Glorantha story
• The artwork is fantastic
• Characters begin capable, but with plenty of room to grow. (meaning more skills than previous versions - appropriate for the start of the Hero Wars)
• The rule set is more complete, with the seasonal rules, the W&E, etc.
  even though we still await more details in Gods and Goddesses, with Sorcery, and with Heroquesting.
• The interaction with the Chaosium staff: Q&A, Jeff's posts on FB, the Forums - phenomenal
• The Jonstown Compedium is great for us all to participate
• The stories are not just a bunch of monsters to overcome for levelling. The skill set is so much more.

And I agree with much of what was said above.

My main house rules:

• If your POW check is successful, my campaign uses the increase from RQ2: 01-10 is 3 points, 11-40 is 2 points, and 41-00 is 1 point. It is an average of only 1.5, so barely over the RAW average of 1. Stat training over a season gets the same roll. Hence no one spends the money and an entire season training their STR and gets +0 STR.
• Seasonal skill training went to a straight 5 (capped at 75 for check-box or 100 for non-check-box).
• I figured we are about to enter the Hero Wars, so I slightly increased experience gains. All check-box skills can have up to 3 checks: for a normal, critical, and special success. BUT you only get to increase once. So if a character rolled 6 normal successes and 1 special with their weapons skill, that character gets to check twice if they will get a gain. They still can gain only 1d6.
• Non-check-box skills can only have one check, and they can increase by experience each season. I may have done it once annually at Sacred Time, but I didn't want to have the players retain the checks that long.
• Heal Wound still requires magic points, but this does not affect the speed of casting, i.e. it goes off at SR1. This is the main advantage to use Heal Wound when you have Healing 6; use a RP and get it fast. In comparison Heal Body is also SR1.
• I found the 1 week to learn a spell odd to me. A shaman could summon a spirit and send it to attack in spirit combat. If you drive it to zero, you immediately gain one of its spells. Hence a couple hours out of a day. I figured most people would seek out shamans rather than priests, RAW. So I decided a new spell would be 1 day rather than 1 week. It also frees up the priest for other important functions.

That may be an artist's view of Woad, for the sake of publishing. But he has greaves, bracers, and a waist wrap - a definite no-no for maintaining the magical qualities of Blessed Woad. It could just be non-magical woad. Wouldn't tattoos also be covered by woad, magical or not? In the above answers, the woman on page 9, also wearing non-magical woad with lots of clothing.

So I am more inclined to think he is heroforming Orlanth. Page 276 is clearly Orlanth and Aroka, so agree with the statement that Orlanth is depicted as blue. As is the image on page 300. The image near Flight on page 329 could be someone (very likely Argrath) heroforming Orlanth simply by casting the Rune spell Flight. The rules do say that rune magic causes "The caster always exhibits some form of manifestation of the magical powers at their disposal. The caster might appear to grow larger (even if their SIZ is unaffected), burn with an inner glow, crackle lightning from their fingertips, or even start to physically resemble the image of the deity."

So without Woad or rune magic, there are not people in Sartar with blue skin. Unless a Veldang happened to be travelling through.

As I understand it, the central figure on the cover of RiG is Argrath. And most Sartarites do not have that lovely slate blue skin color. I had an impression that the slate blue skin may be associated with the Helerites. Perhaps because of GtG page 357 "The river goddess is a blue-skinned daughter of Heler." or Sartar Companion write up of Heler as a blue god/goddess. Heler can also change genders.

Is Argrath's blue skin in that cover because he is a descendant of Helerites?

Because he completed the Aroka quest and freed Heler?

Because of the statement in Greg Sez "Being blue shows that these people have more water in their physical makeup than all of the other elements combined"? Which seems odd because we expect Argrath has significant Air/Storm Rune.

Or some combination?

I want to have a decent explanation of what the Sartar people expect for the players to understand when they pick their character's appearance. Thank anyone who can explain.

RAW never actually states the actual definition of 'defensive spells'. Written in a few spell descriptions is 'defensive' as a declarative: Countermagic, Absorption, Entrance. 

Then there are spells which state if affects defensive spells: Demoralize, Detect Trap, Dispel Magic, Aurora, Bless Champion, Call on Stars, Conquer Beast, Crack, Dismiss Magic, Group Laughter, Harmony, Inviolable, Soul Sight.

Humor also mentions 'defensive' but in terms of actions, not spells.

Clearly Protection, Shimmer, Spirit Screen, Impede Chaos, Shield, Reflection, and Spirit Block will count as 'defensive spells' by almost everyone. Like others here, I would tend to be much more inclusive with Vigor, Coordination, Glamour and Charisma (both aid against spirit combat) and many others.

A GM could go so far as to say any spell which is not an Attack spell (cast upon the opponent) is a defensive spell. I won't go that far, as weapon-enhancing spells like Truesword, Slash, Axe Trance, Bladesharp, and Fanaticism probably should not count as 'defensive' either.

Note that Bless Champion does not stop incompatibility. So you cannot cast two of Countermagic, Protection, Shimmer, and Spirit Screen on the champion. I do note that Shield, Absorption, Reflection, and Spirit Block are no longer written as incompatible. Though Shield of Darkness remains incompatible with all of the Rune versions.

23 hours ago, Godlearner said:

So hunting using missle weapons such as a bow was not the standard way until the invention of firearms. Most of the weapons used by our hunter ancestors were things like spears and clubs. Use of pits and traps was also pretty common. Bows just did not have the stoping power or the accuracy needed and would be used for mainly small game, birds and fish. 

Prior to arrival of the horse, Native Americans used bows to finish off bison trapped in a chute. With noise, they drove the bison into prepared chutes. Then they used bows to finish off the bison. A single arrow would not have stopping power against a bison. But a trapped bison, or bunch, could be slowly hit by many arrows. Spears and clubs not so much in that example. The arrival of the horse changed how easy it was to get bison into chutes. The end result was the same, but on slightly larger masses of bison. Then the arrival of firearms changed it completely.

There are many similar lessons from Earthly history. Some of them used spears and clubs against the trapped animals.

If there is a similar myth about how to hunt big animals on Glorantha, the bow could certainly be used. But the myth wouldn't be much about how accurate Odayla or Yinkin is with a bow. The myth would be about the preparation,  e.g. traps and Devise skill, more than rune arrow magic. Note that 'traps' are a much broader category than ones that cause damage.

On another point, I watched a nature video where polar bears went after seals, big seals. The seals were congregating in huge masses and could potentially seriously injure the polar bears, or escape into the seas. But some seals had climbed the shore cliffs (the long way around). The polar bears, in groups, threatened them and chased them off the cliffs. Then they just walked the long way around and ate the crushed seals. Perhaps something similar could be the basis for an Odayla hunt scenario. No arrows involved at all.

11 minutes ago, whitelaughter said:

How do you come to that conclusion? Cast the spell, spend the PP, recover the PP next holy day.

Heck, if you have Eurmal as an associated cult, someone can cast Sanctuary *any* day and declare it to be the current seasonal holy day of Eurmal.

From the Q&A: https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/home/catalogue/publishers/chaosium/runequest-roleplaying-in-glorantha/cha4028-runequest-roleplaying-in-glorantha-qa-by-chapter/cha4028-runequest-roleplaying-in-glorantha-chapter-14-rune-magic-spells/#ib-toc-anchor-76

"Rune points stacked in Extension and the affected spell cannot be regained until the spell expires."

On 9/13/2022 at 10:26 AM, French Desperate WindChild said:

I may be wrong of course however :

The target of the spell must be in the range. 
if it is a passive spell, once the spell is cast within the range, I don’t care about the range: the spell is done the effect is on the target

if it is an active spell, the target must be in the range of the caster 

if the target moves in the same direction than the caster it is not an issue the caster can move  for sure

But , in our case the target of steal breath could be

- a being but once dead there is no more breath, but i agree the being may move

- an area: this area cannot move. And that is my point. The sorcerer must stay in the range of the source of mp.

As I understand the target area is not a radius around the sorcerer or anything able to move. It is « there » and nowhere else

But the target is 'the air'. The air is a very large target, but the sorcerer can only affect a specific volume each round. If it is always the exact same specific volume, that was converted the previous round. There is no air there now to convert. If the remaining atmospheric air collapsed in to the vacuum (a modern idea of Earthly physics), the person inside could breathe. Glorantha works differently. The winds will fill in that area eventually, but not immediately. (And not even within days during the Windstop.)

This is entirely consistent with the person asphyxiating. Ergo, the winds don't fill the space in that round. Hence, for 'per round' to make sense, the area must be any air within the range of the sorcerer.

The best comparison I find with other sorcery spells are the Illusion spells, i.e. Create X. Those target an area, and then can move 'The caster of an illusion must concentrate on it to cause the illusion to change or move up to a MOV rate of 12'. So the area (the illusion) necessarily moves.

Conflagration specifies '...in a place' and specifies it does not move. Steal Breath lacks that additional statement. Call Cold is a radius around the caster. So if the caster moves, the area should. Call Light doesn't mention whether it is an area, or if you could cast it on a hand and move around it with. The Attract spells target someone in range, and then the range of the affect is centered on them.

Of course, you can apply Earthly physics and <there> to the spell in your game as you wish. This is just my two copper pieces.

I recall a story that Eurmal ate all the Flying Raccoon babies. So they don't exist anymore. Though I suppose Eurmal could cough one up, like a hairball, as a result of a heroquest.

On 9/12/2022 at 6:55 AM, French Desperate WindChild said:

2) range

the spell is ranged. It means that if the sorcerer is too far from the designed location , the spell is broken. So having the spell for a day means stay all the day at the same place

I don't play this way. I play the range moves with you as you move - at up to 4m/round. For example, if you cast Animate Dead on a corpse, and the corpse moves with you, it remains in effect. If you cast Boon of Kargan Tor on your knight's weapon, you don't have to continually touch the knight's weapon. If you cast Attract Missiles and walk toward the enemy, it follows you. If you cast buffs like Ward Against Weapons, Solace of the Logical Mind, Pierce Veil, or Disappear the targets must stay within the Range of the caster, not the original location at which they were buffed.

Even spirit magic like Mobility. According to your logic, the person affected by Mobility could not run farther than 50 meters from the casting point. 

If you cast Create Image, the illusion can move along with you, it just cannot leave the radius away from the caster. It would be obviously weird if Hasten Vessel didn't allow the vessel to continue to move (as long as the sorcerer was on board). Or Move Across Water for the same reason. I presumed that all the creatures would have to stay within 10 meters of the caster (or larger if points are added to Range), not that you would have to cast a sufficiently large Range as well as Duration for the entire desired travel.

Likewise, Steal Breath's radius would move with the caster. Destroying Air within the new space. That obviously has little limitation in the open field. But it does have the limitation when cast upon a person who may be inclined to run away - much faster than the caster can.

Forcing the caster of Steal Breath to stay at the same place is not consistent with how other spells work with Range.

On 7/21/2022 at 7:47 PM, MOB said:

MGF - Freaky Fireday: The player character's spirit returns, but accidentally ends up in the Shaman's body. The Shaman's spirit then has to go reside in the PC's body. The strain (and professional embarrassment) causes the shaman to faint, so no one actually twigs this has happened until later, when everyone's gone their separate ways. Hijinks ensue...

Though in this case, given we are discussing the Resurrection spell, and mentioned 'NPC healer' not 'NPC shaman', I rather suspect it was a Chalana Arroy.

Yes, I know Daka Fal also has Resurrect (one-use), but that is a lot more costly to the PCs. 

So the PC spirit ends up in the High Healer's body. Only to awaken in the inner temple where CA initiates have taken her to recover. The High Healer's spirit wakes up with the remaining PCs in the local inn. "Um, I have to return to the temple. Now!"

8 minutes ago, Rob Darvall said:

In my game they'd not be kicked out. BG would test them to find out if they were still a woman in spite of the unfortunate genitalia. Part of the test may be finding a way to recover, or it may be a requirement for another proof of womanhood. 
The latter I see as involving lots of entanglement with Ernaldans and, given the cause, Aldrya. All good adventure/heroquest fodder. 

Indeed.

Though I hadn't thought about the Aldrya angle, given "Voralans are not true Aldryami, because they are descended from Mee Vorala rather than Aldrya." But Ernalda and thus Babeester Gor is closer to Aldrya than to Mee Vorala. The local Ernalda Priestess may not recognize the difference, so the PC may be sent to the Aldryami first. Only to learn the elves simply tell them they cannot help except to point them to known voralan locations. e.g. after a week of proving yourself worthy to talk with the Aldryami shaman, she laughs and tells you she has nothing to do with that, go X cave and talk with the voralans. And the shaman can't even give you an introduction letter that would be meaningful. I like it.

There is always the possibility that a woman Babeester Gor initiate or Axe Sister found a certain black elf-made potion in some loot and decided to test it by drinking it. Or maybe the local Eurmali had one and convinced the Gor to down it in a drinking contest. Said Babeester Gor may now be male.

Would he be kicked out? I suspect that person would try heartily to find more black elves who would prepare another potion. That may be a grand adventure.

I haven't seen a canon RQG Mee Vorala cult write up yet. I am only extrapolating from earlier editions such potions still exist. They do in my Glorantha.

So my answer to the original question is Yes. Possible, but extremely rare and a story by itself.

On 4/13/2022 at 1:00 PM, icebrand said:

Apparently Countermagic can be cast at the same time as shield, but literally does nothing. Im not reading this in the book, and the Q&A is very... Messy (maybe it's cristal clear for natives idk).

What puzzles me is... What is the NEED for this? We have a very complicated ruling -way more complex than with pretty much any spell, and not an actual rule- and it does... Nothing?

Like, if countermagic is higher than shield you can cast it as normal, just note under shield that it doesn't stack despite the rules stating that it does...

Rq2:

If Shield and Countermagic are stacked together, and a spell which would normally knock down a Countermagic spell of their total strength is put against this, the Countermagic will go down, but the Shield will stay. Thus, if Ariella put up both points 
of her Shield spell, and added 2 points of Countermagic (a total Countermagic effect of 6 points), and a foe put 5 points behind a Demoralize spell thrown at her, the Demoralize spell would fail, but the 2 points of Countermagic would also be blown down and she would only have her Shield spell left for magic protection.

Meanwhile in RQG we get an abridged copy paste that ends with:

If cast on a target already protected by Countermagic, the Countermagic would be Dispelled before the Shield, if possible.

I read the spells back to back they seem to work the same (why would shield change and that change not be documented in the book but in a "clarification" that adds rules not seen in any other part of the game???

IMHO it's clear that shield has been changed and not properly documented, then patched online, OR shield was always shield and the CM / writer that posted that gave us their house interpretation 

Well, not the 'same' time, there are only a few times when you can cast two spells at the same moment. They can certainly be in effect at the same time.

The need of it is to protect you better. Take a different example, Shield and Protection. Someone with Shield 2 and Protection 4 stops 8 damage due to the magical protection (then armor). Everyone can see the benefit in that. Likewise for Spirit Block 2 and Spirit Screen 4 which stops 8 points of Spirit Combat damage.

So take that example for Shield and Countermagic, at the same levels. If someone casts 3 points of Cause Disease at you: Shield 2 isn't going to stop it, Shield 2 and Countermagic 2 will stop it and go down, Shield 2 and Countermagic 4 will stop it and remain in full effect. 

Dispel Magic 4 will take down the Countermagic 4. Then the next Dispel Magic 4 will take down the Shield 2. Dispel Magic 8 will take down one spell, the Countermagic 4, not the entire combination. In other words to be efficient, the person casting Dispel needs to be really good at guessing or have some spell like Soul Sight which allows them to see magic points of spells "including the amount devoted to currently in-effect spells (such as defensive spells)."

Soul Sight will note two different 4 magic point spells currently in effect. It doesn't tell you exactly if those spells are Shield 2, Countermagic 4, Protection 4, Shimmer 4, Spirit Screen 4, Absorption 2, Reflect 2, Parry 4, Ironhand 4, Bear's Strength, Sea Strength, Scram 2, or Shield of Darkness 2. Shimmer 4 or Shield of Darkness 2 have rather obvious visual effects. There will also be individually recognizable visual effects to most of the Rune spells. e.g. a user with Bear's Strength will have a superimposed bear image around them. Parties which want to dispel often are well served to have Soul Sight ready.

Note: Maybe Parry 4 shows as a 4 point magical spell on the shield rather than the person.

32 minutes ago, PhilHibbs said:

In my edition (© 1978, 1980, yellow Games Workshop print), only four of the eight baboons have disruption and there's no mention of simultaneous casting. There's no mention in the RQ3 edition either, more of them know it but other than a reference to "their massed Disruptions" there's no special mechanics.

I do recall in the original Cradle, the dragonewts were stated to all coordinate their spells, but I thought the mechanics on Disrupt were just that they targeted the same PC and thus were likely to get enough successes on their resistance rolls to do more than a single minor wound to each character, and thus may take a character out of the fight.

Page 40: "All the dragonewts will do the same things at the same time; i.e. if one decides to cast a Disrupt spell, all will cast it simultaneously, and all the nearby dragonewts will cast the spell at a single target player' character (probably the one that has proven the most stubborn). They will always act in conjunction, inhumanly so, as if they shared the same mind, though this is not the case." - So no special mechanics on how the Disrupt worked, just that they had it out for one dude.

Which also means the inhuman conjunction is really hard to accomplish for any non-dragonewt. So, I agree with you PhilHibbs.

4 minutes ago, icebrand said:

Btw, you can totally resist healing on RQ2, check under "did the spell work?" Pg33 on RQCE

I don't have RQCE. I have RQ2. Page 33 "Some spells almost always works. Spells which a character casts upon himself, or spells cast on inanimate objects, or any healing spells, do not need to overcome resistance. Also unconscious characters cannot resist a spell of any sort. However, a roll of 96-00 means the spell will fail." (emphasis added)

So, the way I played it was RAW that I recalled. Having the original meant I never bought RQCE. So any change in that rule I would be unaware of and my 'pretty certain' stands.

Perhaps you should quote what page 33 of RQCE states that is different than the original. Then I could respond to that part.

13 minutes ago, icebrand said:

...other spell incoming against...

The language clearly stated 'against'. Not for. Not helpful. Against. 

That changed in RQG when they answered the question of how did spells differentiate between good incoming spells and bad incoming spells (the meta-concept). The authors changed how that worked to be consistent. And changed the wording to 'any other incoming spell', and changed unconscious characters to always resisting.

QED.

On 4/8/2022 at 12:02 PM, jajagappa said:

'd allow it, but perhaps make a penalty on the casting attempt (or have to overcome some natural resistance from Water).  The other question is whether the radius extends downward??

The alternative to 'Yes, it extends downward' is to allow Krarsht to bypass Path Watch if they set their ambush well. 

On 4/10/2022 at 11:30 AM, soltakss said:

But, no doubt, there will be some shrines that remember the names and secretly worship them.

There are still Cargo Cults in some other non-Gloranthan world. 

3 minutes ago, icebrand said:

Your medium shield doesn't protect your enemy from your sword, but your armor sure as hell protects you from your fumble.

I can't accept (i shouldn't) an implicit statement that has huge game-wide implications. Maybe I've been playing wrong since forever and defensive spells are even better than i think.

(In RQ3 we did use to play like this, ie being able to cast on you with shield up... But it was a murderhobo/munchkin campaign)

Your fumble is still your sword incoming to your greaves. Armor doesn't protect you from ahem, peeing yourself because you saw Harrek or the Crimson Bat. That is already inside your armor. Just like casting a spell on yourself is inside your Countermagic.

In RQ2 or RQ3 I am pretty certain allowed Healing to ignore all types of countermagic/reflect/absorb. Healing also never required a resistance roll in those versions. Now in RQG if you are unaware of a Heal spell, you resist it. Note that you are always aware of your own Heal or your ally's Heal.

Which means RQG is more consistent with a meta-concept of how magic works.

Hence if you go unconscious because your leg was maimed, you resist the incoming Heal 6 or Heal Body. Because you did not voluntarily and knowingly accept the spell (Page 244 Core Rules). It will also knock down your Countermagic 4. But the loss of your Countermagic is likely acceptable to the alternative of remaining maimed.

Anyway, you can disagree with our (Andre and my) interpretation of the meaning of 'incoming'. But then the original quote "If cast on a target already protected by Countermagic, the Countermagic would be Dispelled before the Shield, if possible." makes no sense ever. Hence, I really think our interpretation makes it all fit together. YGMV.

3 minutes ago, icebrand said:

How is it not an incoming spell? Is there even a definition for incoming spell? What page is this stuff in?

Sometimes sentences have normal and implicit meaning rather than having to be explicitly defined in every situation of the Rules.

Countermagic, Absorption, Reflection all use the phrase 'incoming spells' Absorption page 317 specifically states 'enemy spells'. Which seems a little odd, when Countermagic specifically states it even absorbs Healing - which in almost all situations will be cast by friends and allies. Reflection does not specify 'enemy spells', but all spells that fail to overcome the POW of the protected being. Which clearly means that self cast Healing, or self-cast anything, would not be Reflected. Because self cast never needs to overcome your own POW.

Note in Armor page 216, the use of incoming as well. 'Shield Statistics' on page 217 also mention incoming attacks. Your medium shield doesn't protect your opponent from your sword. The use of incoming is consistent that it is something coming from outside the target and coming at the target.

9 minutes ago, icebrand said:

"If cast on a target already protected by Countermagic, the Countermagic would be Dispelled before the Shield, if possible."

Like, dude, if cast on a target already protected by Countermagic either the shield can't get past it or it knocks Countermagic down (or both).

I'm angry and confused at this, what happened here??? 

Let's see Countermagic so i don't make a fool of myself...

"This defensive spell protects the target it is cast upon against any other incoming spell, including those such as Detection, 
Protection, and even Healing spells."

And as we all know, shield's magic defenses are "equivalent to the spirit magic spell"

Ideas? I was arguing about this with a friend yesterday. He said some nonsense about spell layers (straight out of Sandy's munchkin rules lol). Is this still a thing?

I believe the main scenario where the quote applies is when the CASTER already had Countermagic 3 and cast Shield 2. Then it is not an 'incoming' spell. The two stack, and the caster/target now has 7 total levels of Countermagic. If a spell with 9+ magic points is incoming, the spell gets through. If a spell with 6+ magic points is incoming, the Countermagic drops. 

As for the 'would be Dispelled before the Shield, if possible' part: A Dispel Magic 3+ would take down the Countermagic. A Dispel Magic 4, which is sufficient to take down either, would take down the Countermagic first. Meaning the next Dispel Magic 4 would take down the Shield.

3 hours ago, svensson said:

Folks, we are all seriously overthinking this.

> Some opponents with published statistics cannot be defeated by standard mundane or magical means. It's just that simple. To defeat them, you have to be as extraordinary as they are. That means Heroquesting. Or, more to the point, successful Heroquesting.

Now, none of my players have attempted a Heroquest yet. But I know three very important things about it.

- 1. I'm going to tell them to play several games of KODP to get a 'feel' for Heroquesting.

- 2. The usefulness of the information they receive from their cults will be in direct proportion to their Runes, Passions, and roleplay as supporters of their temples.

-3. At no point during a Heroquest will the players be allowed to use a written reference beyond their own notes.

Why all this? Because Heroquesting is deadly serious business, with deadly serious consequences. Heroquesting also measures the party's mastery of the myths involved. And most importantly, you don't have a handy dandy rulebook or Guide to Glorantha, or even a reasonably non-biased discussion of the myths and history to refer to on a Heroquest. Gloranthans don't have a player's omniscience to fall back on. Chasing big powers requires big risks. Nobody can Heroquest 'on the sidelines', every 'Quester has to have skin in the game.

I am confused. You don't allow the player a reference beyond their own notes, and so those players that spent multiple times reading the entire two volume set of Guide to Glorantha will have a distinct advantage over those who only take the RQ sessions as a break from their real life learning. You complain about player's omniscience, when the truth is that the characters have been immersed in that world for 20+ years and will know much more than the player about the myths and legends they were taught. Excepting that player who really did read Guide to Glorantha four times cover to cover.

By that I mean that the Chalana Arroy character will have heard the story of Chalana Arroy Heals The Scars over 100 times, chanted it for hours at least every Sacred Time. The character will know it backwards and forwards. The player will have heard it mentioned once by the GM acting as the High Priest once. Thus they player may not recall how to respond when Elmal laments how everyone would follow the Emperor if the Storm Tribe hadn't brought Death into the world. At least the character will know the orthodox answer. The player is the one who can role play it and perhaps try a different way.

Not all my players want to spend their recreational time drilling themselves on Gloranthan myth or playing King of Dragon Pass for hours to get to a point where they can save and run through that heroquest a few times to see the effects of different options in order to note the answers they want to give at each station. If all your players are willing to do that, you have an exceptional party!

In general, I agree that to get to that level, the party will need to heroquest. That means having the approval of a clan or tribe which will provide magical support, e.g. murder hobos are frowned upon. It means having a basic understanding of the myth involved. It means having the party put in game time to prepare. But the GM can provide pointers the character would know that the player may not recall in the instant. YGMV.

At the moment, I am playing a game where our party, so far, has 13341 words of notes (I have them in Word). Most of them are contradictory. Many of them appear to be jokes. We just finished an encounter where we successfully gleaned dozens of things from those notes, and we were told the canned response written before we even mentioned what we know. How do I know it was canned? Four pages of new notes were loaded into Roll20 seconds after my character had explained what we had gleaned. That canned response boiled down to 'we know nothing, and we have to LISTEN', but not which of the many different accounts should be listened to and which ignored. So I am a little annoyed at GMs who think we should spend vast amounts of time to be prepared for a recreational activity.

Not quite the same, but my character in RQ2 got pretty experienced. In that game, the GM allowed an additional skill gain after 5 additional successes and that roll was only for an improvement of 1. Remember the first skill gain is for 5 skill in RQ2.

Hence, my character after nearly 4 years in the Real World, was 215 skill in bastard sword and 201 in composite bow. She had an special magic item that was treated mostly like an additional allied spirit. So she had 2 allied spirits, 3 bound spirits, a POW Enhancing crystal, a bunch of matrices, and some other things. She had dozens of Rune Spells, but only Shield and Arrow Trance were particularly useful in combat. With one round of preparation, she fired that composite bow with Multimissile 8 on the first arrow, Firearrow on the second, and Multimissile 4 on the last one. Since those were attacking at 402 skill with Arrow Trance, one target was usually dead with 1 in 5 ignoring armor, even if some couldn't impale. If the enemy didn't close, those two allied spirits kept putting more spells on my arrows...

Then the GM found some draft rules on Heroquesting and she was given the option to go along with the Storm Bulls and Babeestor Gors for Berserkergang. She needed to find an Issaries to trade for the Berserker spell to qualify. On the HQ. she succeeded well and even drank three special draughts. As the player, who did not have those rules, the GM asked me how many Will points to expend for each. At this point, I should mention, she was something of a polymath and had something like 19 skills at mastery (only the 2 above were over 200, but she had a few in the 120-150 range), which gave her significant Will and she expended about 100. A reasonable number more than the other party members. Long story short, from then on, she gained 102 STR, 106 CON, and optionally 39 SIZ every time she went into 'combat'. So 9d6 or 11d6 damage bonus. At that point, she could have fought and destroyed some, but not all, of the creatures in Dorastor, Land of Doom (RQ3 publication used for comparison). And the rest of her party were no slouches either. For comparison, the Mostali Lhankor Mhy had a battle axe that normally did 3d8+2 damage and ignored all magical protection (no more spoilers). The Wind Lord had the Windsword. The Axe Sister and the Storm Khan were running around after the HQ with 3 to 5d6 damage bonus in combat and very hard to kill. And even then, we sometimes needed divine intervention.

So, that party, even without the first heroquest that GM ran, could rip Leika or Kallyr apart, though they would have no desire to do so. Though I have not seen any stats for Harrek or Jar-eel, we never thought we could compare to them. Or the Crimson Bat. At least a few more heroquests before that.

So there you go, a minor change to RQ2 rules, and we had a party that could challenge. Not exactly RAW or RQ:G, but close. Is that what you wanted to hear?

On 3/31/2022 at 4:43 AM, Shiningbrow said:

Maybe - the Bully didn't sense anything at all... and thus, perhaps it's time for the GM to quickly slide an ogre into the local townsfolk....

I see that most of you assume the effect of a Sense Chaos fumble is to wrongly sense chaos nearby. Shiningbrow was the one who suggested that may not be the effect of a fumble. I think perhaps the rules should suggest what happens on a fumble, such as the Storm Bull gets some other effect. Like fumbling a Passion gets you turmoil. I am NOT suggesting the Storm Bull lose 1d10 skill. That would be extreme. Something more akin to doubting his Sense Chaos for the duration on the Psychic Turmoil chart (page 229 of Core Rules).

I will note that Sense Chaos doesn't suggest how to adjudicate critical or special rolls either. It does state "The skill does
not single out the source" (page 183) so I presume that still applies to critical or special rolls. So I don't think a fumbled Sense Chaos should cause, or at least necessitate,  the Storm Bull initiate to feel that familiar sense of unease around the candidate. Of course, each GM can adjudicate that differently.