Manimati

18 hours ago, Bill the barbarian said:

Perhaps not, did you recall adding 5 SRs for spell prep. I believe a multimissile or a speeddart focus can be carved into the bow alleviating the need for the 5 SR prep/change hand time, but the rules are a little hazy on that. It also says shields and swords can can have foci and that time will be saved as a result. Still a bit hazy, if I recall correctly.

Indeed, I would rule that this is limited to spells relevant for shooting, for which foci can be carved on the bow (ex: firearrow, speedart, multimissile) and not other spells like heal, countermagic, fanaticism...

For spells like coordination or mobility, which could be relevant for shooting, i would also probably allow it.

Careful examination of the table above also reveals that in some cases, after all the shooting, there are some strike ranks left for other actions, like spell casting, for example.

For more than 30 years, I have been using the RQ2 rules : "Damage taken by the shield for more points than the shield can absorb in one blow is taken on the hit location rolled in the attack. The armor on the location, if any, absorbs the excess points.", which happen to be the same as p. 218 of RQG.  

I think it is a better rule than "damage goes to the shield arm". 

If the Thanatar Create Head spell is used, the Dragonewt's spirit is trapped in the head (and as a mad head ghost after the head is destroyed). That seem like a good way to keep a Dragonewt's spirit out of the game for an awfully long time. It is not truly dead , but undeath  is a close enough approximation.

2 minutes ago, Bill the barbarian said:

Check the WoD, if you are using SRs... there is time to prep the arrow as well. It will take a very dextrous individual to get 2 shots on a S/MR weapon.

Yes, I wrote "up to". Moreover, magic like coordination and mobility can help you compensate for lower DEX scores to reach 2 arrows per round.

On 9/3/2021 at 10:13 AM, Kloster said:

The real advantage of bows are range and weight if you carry more than a few shots.

and frequency: bows are S/MR meaning that up to 2 arrows can be shot each round (up to 3 shots on a first round with preparation), while Javelin is 1/MR : one shot per round. 

2 hours ago, Jeff said:

You may find it illogical or that it does not follow your set of rational principles you have chosen to understand it, but them's Her rules. 

Indeed, in contrast to real life, in Glorantha where divination and spirits or reprisal exist, it is no use rationalizing that a given cult initiate should or should not be able to do something. The god will quickly let you know whether you are within allowed territory. The only way to escape is illumination. 

i wonder how a CA cultist should behave when attacked in spirit combat.

5 hours ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

I'd like to  have - or to make - one for troll country. 

One of the terrain type used in Close Encounters of the Sartar Kind is "Uz land" with the following description "Uz land: Sartar is surrounded by many Uz lands like the Troll Woods, East of Whitewall or Dagori Inkarth, North of Sartar." This sub-table might fit your needs.

These charts would make very nice T-shirts on redbubble  (hint, hint, nudge, nudge).

Close Encounters of the Sartar Kind has now reached Silver seller status on DrivetruRPG.

Thanks to all who bought it !

I sincerely hope that these random encounter tables have helped you GMing more enjoyable games.

What now ? 

I am now working on a table of pre-generated spirits using the info from the Runequest Gloranthan Bestiary p. 164.

For the time being  an entry in the table looks like this (there are 600 different entries generated by a python program):

-------  1 - 63  -------   
POW= 14,  CHA= 8, INT= 17, spirit cbt= 89 %, spirit cbt dmg= 1D6,  
Power:  -     Runes: Stasis
Spells: Darkwall-2, Spirit Screen-2

I'm thinking of adding a line for appearance (for exemple: "Shimmering man-rabbit hybrid").

The " Bibliography and sources" chapter of the Heroquest (HQ1) book has been an excellent source of inspiration for me.

1 hour ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

And I'm still learning to use thjose tricks, thank you Nick Brooke and Andrew L. Montgomery!   Working in that direction,  I drafted up this NPC worksheet, which may be handy -  feel free to use or improve it.  (attached PDF)

short NPC sheet PDF2.pdf 28.56 kB · 0 downloads

This is fine, but the Runequest Gamemaster screen pack has short (1/2 page) NPC character sheets and squad sheet (4 characters). I admit that they are easily overlooked, but they exist and are perfectly usable. You can also use the squad sheet at the end of the old RQ2 book.

Now, if one can't wait for the forthcoming Sartar box, and if the encounter chart at the end of the RQ2 book not developed enough for one's taste, I made encounter charts in the Jonstown Compendium: Close-Encounters-of-the-Sartar-Kind. 

Thanks, i'll fix this in the next version of the file (v 1.03).

Done! Again, don't forget to download the updated version from your DrivethruRPG library. 

2 hours ago, Baron Wulfraed said:

And yes -- I spent about 6 hours yesterday making both tables; got complex when an encounter type had subgroups... I didn't try to format for subgroups of subgroups (wild animals: general|Dinos|Bugs: individual species).

That's why I chose to stay with the paragraph format in the published file. I had been trying out many different options but it tuned out to be less than ideal, especially from the point of view of layout, and since it is a rather small format, I think that it stays manageable this way. Again, thanks for your input and your interest.

17 hours ago, Baron Wulfraed said:

Page 4: MARSH

Close 1-7 Medium 7-16

Bit of an overlap, no?

Page 5: Chaos Monsters

Friendly 1-1 Cautious 6-8

Bit of a gap

Thanks, that's going to be corrected in the forthcoming v1.02 file.

Done !  Don't forget that you can download the updated versions of a file form your DrivetrthuRPG library.

43 minutes ago, PhilHibbs said:

Any chance you could include links, so you could click on the encounter type that you rolled and go straight to the page for that entry

I'll try to see if I can find a way to do that. 

9 minutes ago, Nick Brooke said:

I'd suggest striking the only mention of "time of the encounter" / "Daytime" (p.3, third line of body text), as in the end you didn't include separate day / night / camp tables.

One quibble: Hill terrain gives the Starfire Ridges as an example, but then Rollo's GM rolls on the Wildland encounter table when he's crossing the Starfire Ridges. Possibly worth tidying this up, as it's not entirely clear what happened there.

Thanks, I'll fix this promptly.

Close Encounters of the Sartar Kind is now available at the Jonstown Compendium. It is an 11 pages supplement with encounter tables for Sartar.  

I notice that the maps have a usable scale. Yay !

By the way,  they look truly wonderful.

2 hours ago, Jason D said:

The Starter Set presents a simplified, easier-to-grasp presentation of the rules and information, so Mago's spell list explains exactly what he can do with that spell. In this case, he can summon a small air elemental. It didn't make much sense to say "Summon Cult Spirit" as the spell and then have the player have to wonder what that meant.  

Adventurers can learn Rune spells - such as elemental summonses - other than those taught directly by their cult.

It's surprisingly commonplace, though associated cults and though Spell Trading. In those cases, they would use the elemental's Rune. 

Excuse me if I seem to be nitpicking, but the consequences of this ruling are huge: for example, this would mean that a Seven Mothers cultist can summon earth, darkness, water, fire and of course moon elementals only using only common rune magic, without having to learn specific summon spells. This makes 7 Mothers cultists the masters of elemental versatility, right out of the box ! 

13 minutes ago, Psullie said:

P317 core book: Any Rune of the cult providing the spell may be used to cast a spell indicated with the rune

That rule applies to spells with the rune, but for Summon Elemental, the spell descriptions says "Rune varies depending on elemental being summoned" (in both RQG and RBoM). If Summon Elemental was just a variant of Summon Cult Spirit, then it would make sense.

Very nice. I think that Mago the fierce will soon find a place in my campaign as a NPC.

Looking at the character sheet, I noticed that Mago can summon an air elemental not only with the rune but also with the and ones.

Is that a mistake ? Did I miss something ?

21 hours ago, jajagappa said:

No, it is not definitive.  Ginna Jar is effectively the "wyter" of the Lightbringers.  She can represent the memories/dreams/wishes of important folk they have known, but does not have to. 

The way I understand it is that Ginna Jar is standing in for all the stakeholders of the quest who are staying behind (Ernalda, Heler, Yinkin, Odayla, Urox, Elmal, Kolat, ...), supporting the quest and sending energy to the questers.

I apologize if this issue has already been discussed but while preparing to run The Smoking Ruins,