GAZZA

It gets trickier, yes. If you have 180% Farming, for example, then you have a 27% special chance and a 9% critical chance: If your d100 roll is 01-80: If the d20 is 1-2, you critical. If it is 3-8, you special. Otherwise, you succeed. If your d100 roll is 81-100: If the d20 roll is 1, you critical If the d20 roll is 2-4, you special. Otherwise you succeed. Critical chance: 0.8 * 0.1 + 0.2 * 0.05 = 0.08 + 0.01 = 9% Special chance: 0.8 * 0.3 + 0.2 * 0.15 = 0.24 + 0.3 = 27% "But what about failures and fumbles?" Well, we have to use a slightly different rule there: If the d20 comes up 20, regardless of the d100, you fail. Roll the d20 again, if that is also 20, you fumble, otherwise you simply fail. RAW, once your skill level is 96+, your chance to fail and fumble never changes (it's always 5% chance to fail, and hence 0.25% chance to fumble). In fact one can unify the <100 and >100 rules: If your base skill is 96 or greater, ignore the rule that 96-100 automatically fails. Find your skill level ignoring anything but the tens and ones digit; call this the "modified skill". If your base skill is less than or equal to 95: If the d100 roll is less than or equal to 95 or your skill (whichever is lower): If the d20 roll is 1, you critical. If the d20 roll is 2-4, you special. Otherwise you simply succeed. Otherwise, if the d20 roll is a 20, you fumble; otherwise you simply fail. If your base skill is 96-99: If the d20 roll is 20, you fail. Reroll d20, if it comes up 20 again, you fumble instead. Otherwise, if the d100 roll is equal to or less than your skill: If the d20 roll is 1, you critical. If the d20 roll is 2-4, you special. Otherwise you simply succeed. Otherwise (100+): If your d100 roll is equal to or less than the modified skill: If the d20 roll is 20, you fail. Reroll d20, if it comes up 20 again, you fumble instead. If the d20 roll is 1 to (1+base skill/100, dropping fractions), you critical. If the d20 roll is (2+base skill/100, dropping fractions) to (4+base skill/100 + 3*base skill/100, dropping fractions), you special. Otherwise you succeed. If your d100 roll is greater than the modified skill: If the d20 roll is 20, you fail. Reroll d20, if it comes up 20 again, you fumble instead. If the d20 roll is 1 to (base skill/100, dropping fractions), you critical. If the d20 roll is (1+base skill/100, dropping fractions) to (1+base skill/100 + 3*base skill/100, dropping fractions), you special. Otherwise you succeed. Some examples: Base skill 60. If the d100 is 01-60, you special if the d20 is 2-4, and critical if it is 1 (otherwise you just succeed). If the d100 roll is 61-100, you fail unless the d20 is a 20, in which case you fumble. Base skill 97: If the d20 roll is a 20, reroll; a second 20 means you fumble, otherwise you fail. If the d100 roll is 01-97, you critical if the d20 is a 1, special if 2-4, otherwise succeed. If the d100 roll is 98-100, you simply succeed. Critical chance: 0.97 * 0.05 = 4.85%; special: 14.55%; succeed: 0.97*0.75 + 0.03*0.95 = 75.6%; fail 4.75%; fumble 0.25%. Base skill 153: If the d100 roll is 01-53: If the d20 roll is 20, you fail. Reroll d20, if it comes up 20 again, you fumble instead. If the d20 roll is 01-02, you critical. If the d20 roll is 03-08, you special. Otherwise you succeed. If the d100 roll is 54-100: If the d20 roll is 20, you fail. Roll d20 again, if it comes up 20 again, you fumble instead. If the d20 roll is 1, you critical. If the d20 roll is 2-4, you special. Otherwise you succeed. Chance to critical: 0.53 * 0.1 + 0.47 * 0.05 = 7.65%; chance to special = 0.53 * 0.3 + 0.47 * 0.15 = 22.95%. Base skill 216: If the d100 roll is 01-16: If the d20 roll is 20, you fail. Reroll d20, if it comes up 20 again, you fumble instead. If the d20 roll is 01-03, you critical. If the d20 roll is 04-12, you special. Otherwise you succeed. If the d100 roll is 17-100: If the d20 roll is 20, you fail. Roll d20 again, if it comes up 20 again, you fumble instead. If the d20 roll is 1-2, you critical. If the d20 roll is 3-8, you special. Otherwise you succeed. Base skill 500: If the d20 roll is a 20, you fail. Roll d20 again, if it comes up 20 you fumble instead. If the d20 roll is a 1-5, you critical. If the d20 roll is 6-20, you special. Note that you have 0% chance of simply succeeding. Base skill 2000: If the d20 roll is a 20, you fail. Roll d20 again, if it comes up 20 you fumble instead. If the d20 roll is 1-20, you critical. You cannot simply succeed or have a special success, only critical, fail, or fumble. Granted it takes a bit of getting used to for >=100 skills, though! However, the charts don't go up that high either, so it's either grab a calculator or follow some steps (whichever you prefer). Also as you can see the mechanics get a bit wonky at 500 and 2000; RAW, that's what happens, but for those of you with powerhouses like that running around, you might want to consider some sort of rules that adjusts the chance of failure and fumbling down. But that's beyond my scope!

In that case an emphatic no, because that seems to reduce to the question "Do illuminates have emotions?" Certainly they do! You might think Arkat hated Gbaji, you might think Arkat was jealous of Gbaji, you might even think Arkat was a power hungry opportunist that simply spun anti-Nysalorian propaganda for his own nefarious purposes... but he certainly had emotions! If you mean that illuminates have some special ability to not act in accordance with their emotions... that simply describes the human condition. I hate getting up in the morning and going to work, but I still do it. I love eating cheeseburgers, but I still stop myself when I'm dieting. And I can assure you I'm as far from the enlightenment of Illumination as it is possible to be.

I'm sure I'm not the first to do this, but just in case - whenever we're playing RQ (or I guess any BRP game, but RQ is the only one I play - having attempted several times to read even a single short story of Lovecraft, I have come away with the impression that it's just not my cup of tea), we don't use the charts for specials and critical chances. Instead, roll a d20 along with the d100: If the d100 roll is a success, then if the d20 is 1, it's a critical, if it's 2-4, it's a special. Otherwise it's a normal success. If the d100 roll is a failure, then if the d20 roll is a 20, it's a fumble. Otherwise it's a normal failure. Mathematically identical, but works out smoother in play (you don't have to worry as much if there's a +20 modifier or whatever - no recalculating your special chances on the fly). If you're using something like Steve Maurer's old Hero Quest rules, or some similar "Super Runequest" idea, this is easily extended for those over 100% skill: If the d100 roll is a success: If the d100 roll is less than or equal to your skill divided by 100 (rounded down - yes, this is math, no, I don't think this counts), you have a "super critical". Otherwise, figure out your skill modulo 100 (that is, just take the 1s and 10s digits - again, this isn't really complicated). If the d100 roll is less than or equal to this adjusted skill, then you critical if the d20 is 1-2, and special if it is 3-8. Otherwise, you critical if the d20 is 1, and special if it is 2-4, as normal. The d100 roll only fails if it is higher than 95 + (skill / 100, rounded down). So 96-100 for 1-99, 97-100 for 100-199, and so on. Calculate fumbles normally (the reduced chance of failure automatically means a reduced chance of fumbling). For really really high skills (400%+) the concept can be extended, left as an exercise for the interested student. (I want to play in your game! ).

I've toyed with the idea of instead of a straight subtraction, some sort of division. Like, if both sides are over 100, divide each by 2 until at most one side has over 100. That preserves the relative chances of specials and criticals, for example. Possibly a bit too unwieldy to use at the table, though increasingly I tend to play with spreadsheet character sheets these days.

I agree with @davecake here - I don't think there's general agreement on that sort of thing. For example, Immanuel Kant would say that if I donate $1 million to charity because I'm trying to repair my public image and want people to like me, that I have not committed a good act; the philosophy of utilarianism would say who cares why you did it, that charity is $1 million better off and that's still a good thing. Alternatively, suppose you're a non-Jew in WW2 Germany hiding a family of Jews in your basement; when the Gestapo asks you if you're hiding Jews, should you lie? Kant would say no, utilarianism would say yes. Can the end ever justify the means? Or does any good achieved via impure motives suffer the fruit of the poisoned tree? If there were clear answers to these sorts of questions, philosophy would be a largely solved endeavour. YGMV of course - ultimately, illuminates are sociopaths if that's the way it is in your Glorantha, and more power to you - but personally, I don't think it necessarily or even often follows.

(nods) Seems fair enough. Personally I'm thinking of keeping the Attack/Parry split, and for previous experience if you get (eg) +3 to Sword skill, you can take it as +3 to Sword Attack, and either +3 Sword Parry or +3 Shield Parry. (Assuming a 1H weapon that is). I am also not particularly enamoured of the "over 100 reduces the opposing skill" rule, though I will see how it works out in play before making any final ruling (given that several far more experienced RQ GMs than me don't seem to mind it).

Oh don't get me wrong, I'm in favour of players power gaming - as long as it doesn't come at the expense of the roleplaying. Heroquesting is fun, after all.

"We are all individuals." - "I'm not!"

However, in RQ3 if you were a BBG with 95% Shield Parry, Great Parry was awesome. It is considerably less so when every Tom, Dick, and Harry Humakti can slap that 95% down to 5% with a few MP and a Sword Trance (or your fellow BBGs with Axe Trance, of course). Strictly speaking Earth Shield is the same... but the new mechanic (or old, if you were a RQ2 player) of anti parry means that it no longer is nearly as good.

That minority does, however, include the majority of PCs.

Huh, I always thought the God Learners were sorcerers.

Ah fair enough. I actually own not only Hero Wars and Hero Quest but also, as far as I am aware, all of the adventures and supplements of both. I have yet to even attempt to run it though (and, clearly, haven't even read a lot of it). Thank you for the correction.

For a long time the joke was that the God Learner secret was "it's only a game!" I think there is a certain confusion of God Learnerism and Illumination here. Very roughly, think of God Learners as munchkin power gamers, and Illuminates as the sort of player that wants to play a ninja regardless of whether there are ninjas in the setting. God Learners stormed all over the Hero Plane for personal power, built devices to automate the robbing of Giant cradles, and treated the gods as, essentially, just powerful spirits they could manipulate and use as power sources. As is the eventual fate of all munchkins, eventually the GM dropped the sky on them. Illuminates, on the other hand, are essentially free of cultural and religious taboos. But their insight is not that the gods don't exist; rather, it is that they realise the gods only know what their worshippers can tell them (even subconsciously). Thus, an Illuminate Wind Lord can befriend trolls and Yelmalions without getting impests because he realises that only his own guilt allows the spirits of retribution to find him, and that guilt can no longer be imposed as a religious taboo. (Note that the Illuminate might genuinely hate Uz and dislike Sun Domers - it is merely that if the only reason that the Illuminate was previously avoiding them was the religious taboo, he is now free to ignore that). Illumination is very much a philosophical position. The vast majority of humanity is happy to get its morality code from their culture or religion, but the likes of Nieztche, Hume, Kant, Sartre, or whoever your favourite is are not willing to just take society's word for it. An illuminate is in a similar position to such a philosopher - freed from Plato's cave, in a sense, and able to construct their own view of right and wrong. Now, there are some philosophies that suggest without some sort of divine justice, mankind's natural state is that of the law of the jungle. Such illuminates may indeed become sociopaths. But this is far from universally true; indeed, other philosophies suggest that if the only reason you refrain from doing bad things is because of the threat of divine justice, then you are pretty much already a sociopath, you're just constrained. Not all illuminates follow the same philosophy. There are illuminated broo High Healers; illumination took away their cultural enforced desire to rape and murder. Arkat opposed Gbaji. Remember that when Vetinari pointed out there were no good people (only evil people, but some of them are on different sides), Vimes retorted that no, there were just people.

Mechanically, possibly not important. The only use I've seen of Saints in RQ was in Sandy's Sorcery system, where I don't recall it mattering at what point you sacrificed POW to get whatever the saint gift was, and where all you got from a worship ceremony was a warm and fuzzy feeling that the Invisible God got the magic points. In Glorantha? It's an interesting question. Do Malkioni even use the same calendar?

There appears to be a bit of "versionitis" for wraiths; spirit combat is no longer MP vs MP as is implied by the Wraith description: "If the wraith overcomes the victim’s magic points, the victim loses 1D3 magic points and must take double the result as damage to a random part of his body" It isn't clear here whether or not the first attack (versus CON, and reducing STR, CON, or INT) is on the resistance table, but the fact that the Wraith has a listed Spirit Combat skill implies that the subsequent rounds are normal spirit combat (except that it does hit point damage as well). At the very least this is quite unclear; it appears that the RQ3 description here needs a bit of tidying up.

As I understand it, the illuminate would argue that it isn't that they no longer know what "evil" means. It's that they realise Chaos isn't inherently evil, any more than a hungry Uz is.

I'm not exactly a Gloranthan scholar, but aren't Gbaji and Nysalor the same thing? Isn't the former just what Arkat calls the latter?

"Opinion differs on the matter". For example, Arkat was an Illuminate, and at least most propaganda portrays him as a good guy. On the other hand he is the classic "I'm alright Jack, pull up the ladder" type he doesn't like the idea of other people becoming illuminated, and has spread a whole pile of anti-Nysalor propaganda... Essentially every illuminate will answer that question differently. Remember however that it's possible for Chaos beasts to become illuminated; an illuminated broo (for example) no longer feels the need to destroy the world. In fairness the idea of "illuminates as sociopaths" is hardly unsupported though.

I assumed they were "made an offer they couldn't refuse".

I mean why not? Honestly, this is not the hill I would choose to die on.

Depends how often you face gorp, maybe. In the River of Cradles scenarios Disruption is a lot more useful than Demoralise or Befuddle. Besides which, it's not like you have to choose. Even if you're at the point where you can't learn any more spirit magic, there are always matrices and spirits (apparently no more need for Power and Intellect - which I guess would be Charisma now - spirits, since anything in a binding enchantment provides its spirit magic and magic points to whoever owns the enchantment).

And I'd consider Disruption to be probably the second most important spirit magic to get (after Heal of course).

Eh, why not. I can always buy any good modules and convert them to Champions.

I give it even then.

I wasn't very clear there, obviously. My point was that if you ditch the idea of Substance and quasi-reality, you could then make a couple of illusion spells that were a lot cheaper. To copy from that-game-that-must-not-be-named, you could have "Spectral Force" for 1 point that included sight, smell, and sound up to say 100 SIZ per point (so a single point could create the illusion of a few Uz), "Programmed Illusion" for 2 points that included motion on a pre-programmed path, and "Mirage Arcana" for 2 points that also allowed motion but was Active (both a benefit and a drawback - you need to concentrate, but you can make it move anywhere/however you like within range). Permit Perception rolls to see through it or something. Or if you want finer granularity, replace the lot with a 1 or 2 point Illusion spell that requires you to spend MP to activate the various sensory parts (and boosting them so you don't need to be a Rune level to make a convincing illusion of a Great Troll, so maybe 1 mp per 10 SIZ or something). Essentially though once you have illusions that are quasi real, I think it's a lot harder to decide what a reasonable cost is. You could of course have some sort of table that says how much damage it can do, how big an area of effect it can cover, whether or not it can have special effects (fire, acid, poison), and so forth... but by the time you figure all that out, you've put in a fair bit of effort to create something that does arbitrary damage and, frankly, doesn't fit any common definition of the word "illusion" anyway. I would prefer that if illusions are able to do damage at all, then it should be of the "your mind makes it real" sort of effect, and best handled with similar mechanics to fear shock.