Rune points and rune spells

[Manu]

When I read the RQG, character creation, I understand that you can start with x rune point and the sane x rune spells. I understood that a 2 points rune spell counted as 2.

But in the latest scenario (the free one) that the characters have 3 rune points and 3 spells (some of them being 2 or even 3 points rune spells).

Then, when a character gain a rune point, can he choose any spell (whatever the number of point the spell has)?

[Austin]

4 minutes ago, Manu said:

Then, when a character gain a rune point, can he choose any spell (whatever the number of point the spell has)?

Yes. Additionally, if you look at the pregenerated adventurers (Vasana et al), they too have 3 points and multi-point Rune spells.

I messed around with your understanding of it for a bit as a house rule as a way of soft-nerfing variable spells (so, you'd be capped at however many RP you've dedicated toward learning points of that spell). The side effect is that several common Rune spells are variable—like Dismiss Magic—and this adds complications. Ultimately, my game reverted to RAW so adventurers wouldn't be spending POW to learn points of common spells.

I think some variant of those house rules is viable, but it would require more reworking and playtesting than I originally anticipated.

[Joerg]

1 hour ago, Manu said:

Then, when a character gain a rune point, can he choose any spell (whatever the number of point the spell has)?

Yes, although I wouldn't allow to sacrifice for a multi-point spell unless the character has enough rune points to cast that spell after offering 1 POW. If you are aiming to be a slightly nastier GM, you might demand that those runepoints have to be unused, too.

Edited October 15, 2019 by Joerg
double negation negated

[Jeff]

5 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Yes, although I wouldn't allow to sacrifice for a multi-point spell unless the character has enough rune points to cast that spell after offering 1 POW. If you are aiming to be a slightly nastier GM, you might demand that those runepoints have to be unused, too.

Why would you do that? The only reason for requiring that players sacrifice for a new rune point to learn a new rune spell is to just ease in knowledge of their cult's spells. It is not intended to be some power restriction thing - initially we were going to let you spend your rune points on ANY spell known by the cult. But we found that resulted in information paralysis.

[Joerg]

Just now, Jeff said:

Why would you do that? The only reason for requiring that players sacrifice for a new rune point to learn a new rune spell is to just ease in knowledge of their cult's spells. It is not intended to be some power restriction thing - initially we were going to let you spend your rune points on ANY spell known by the cult. But we found that resulted in information paralysis.

Was I that unclear? A character should have a pool of 2 previous rune points if he wants to gain a 3-point rune spell for a single point of POW. Basically, no character should be encouraged to sacrifice for a spell he cannot cast for lack of rune points. That's like teaching someone a weapon he lacks the STR or DEX to use (which would somewhat easily be remedied by spirit spells, at least for nine melee rounds).

The demand that he has 2 unused rune points at the time of acquiring the spell would have been for a test run (for reusable spells, at least) with subsequent regaining of the rune points invested (and yes, e.g. Zorak Zoran might wish to have a test run for Seal Wound in one of his rites - big difference if the recipient is the next meal or sacrifice, too). But given the time spent for acquiring that spell, replenishing those rune points may be a side effect of being taught the spell. At least for cults with weekly holy days (and there is always Godsday for a default occasion).

The reasoning behind this is that both player and character gain the insight of what the spell  does (and what it doesn't do) by casting it once under controlled conditions. Rune Magic is what you are, and becoming the deity for that moment or that quarter hour is an experience one ought to have made.

 

(This does open some cans of worms if people initiated to more than one deity or having traded for a spell from a yet different deity activate rune spells from various sources. Does this confuse their mythical identification?)

[Dan Z]

On 10/15/2019 at 3:13 AM, Jeff said:

Initially we were going to let you spend your rune points on ANY spell known by the cult. But we found that resulted in information paralysis.

I personally prefer this.  I was actually disappointed that the final rules didn't do it this way as I was talking this up as a selling point to folks.  To make it easier to get started I told the players that picking spells was just to have something to focus on using but that they could use any of their cult rune spells along with common rune spells.  By the third session everyone had a chance to look at their cults in a bit more detail and pick spells they liked.  I also created summary sheets similar to what was in the Quickstart for all the rune spells so they could quickly scan for them or copy just their cult spells into a concise list.

On 10/15/2019 at 3:27 AM, Joerg said:

Was I that unclear? A character should have a pool of 2 previous rune points if he wants to gain a 3-point rune spell for a single point of POW. Basically, no character should be encouraged to sacrifice for a spell he cannot cast for lack of rune points. That's like teaching someone a weapon he lacks the STR or DEX to use (which would somewhat easily be remedied by spirit spells, at least for nine melee rounds).

The demand that he has 2 unused rune points at the time of acquiring the spell would have been for a test run (for reusable spells, at least) with subsequent regaining of the rune points invested (and yes, e.g. Zorak Zoran might wish to have a test run for Seal Wound in one of his rites - big difference if the recipient is the next meal or sacrifice, too). But given the time spent for acquiring that spell, replenishing those rune points may be a side effect of being taught the spell. At least for cults with weekly holy days (and there is always Godsday for a default occasion).

The reasoning behind this is that both player and character gain the insight of what the spell  does (and what it doesn't do) by casting it once under controlled conditions. Rune Magic is what you are, and becoming the deity for that moment or that quarter hour is an experience one ought to have made.

I see where you're going with this Joerg and it certainly has some RP advantages for the players but in the current rules incarnation the characters don't sacrifice to gain rune spells do they? They sacrifice power to gain rune point that can be used to cast common and cult rune spells.

[PhilHibbs]

On 10/15/2019 at 9:13 AM, Jeff said:

initially we were going to let you spend your rune points on ANY spell known by the cult. But we found that resulted in information paralysis.

1 hour ago, Dan Z said:

I personally prefer this.  I was actually disappointed that the final rules didn't do it this way as I was talking this up as a selling point to folks.

My vision of Gloranthan worship ceremonies is that at each ceremony, you have people playing roles. Someone takes the role of Orlanth, someone is Ernalda, someone is Eurmal, etc. and the myth that the worship is based on determines what spells they can get. There can be multiple slots, where people can swap in and out, or one person stands behind another to make Orlanth have four arms, etc.

The officiating priest gets to decide who plays what role, and therefore who has the opportunity to gain a spell.

I would not make it mandatory for the person learning a spell to spend a point of POW and get an additional Rune Point. But if several people are in competition for a role and to learn a spell, then preference may be given to the person who is also gaining a Rune Point.

I would not impose this as a restriction on players, if someone wants to learn a spell and is in reasonable standing with their cult then fine, they can. Unless maybe it's a really small worship ceremony , or all five players want to learn an obscure spell, I might give them a hard time if they're about to circumvent my entire scenario by all learning Guided Teleportation....

Which raises an interesting question. If you allow access to all the spells, does that mean that every Thunderous member can teleport to absolutely any temple that they have ever worshipped at?

Which then leads me to another point, a slight topic drift onto Orlanth subcults:

Quote

Subcults: The Orlanth cult has two major subcults:
Adventurous and Thunderous. An initiate picks one subcult
or the other when they join the cult of Orlanth—typically
whatever subcult is locally favored.

This implies that clans that favour Adventurous (or Vinga) tend to have quite a few Wind Lords and not many Storm Voices, and vice versa for clans that favour Thunderous. Just an interesting bit of flavour.

Edited October 16, 2019 by PhilHibbs

[Joerg]

5 hours ago, Dan Z said:

I  see where you're going with this Joerg and it certainly has some RP advantages for the players but in the current rules incarnation the characters don't sacrifice to gain rune spells do they? They sacrifice power to gain rune point that can be used to cast common and cult rune spells.

The rules as presented tell us to choose a special rune spell at each sacrifice for a rune point, without putting an upper limit for variable spells like Shield other than the rune points available.

I have effectively played RQ with rune point pools since the mid nineties as a house rule, with a more rigid approach - like if you want to have Shield 6, you had better cough up 6 POW for Shield at some time - and if you want to have Flight, too, then you have a rune point pool of 9 or more points, minus any points spent on one-use spells. Making the common spells free of learning charge might go with this, or not. But then, where I came from was RQ3 which had RAW only one-use spells for initiates.

@PhilHibbs brings up Guided Teleport, and I am inclined to limit that to places where you sacrificed POW for a rune point, establishing the uplink, but with the upper rune point limit RQG imposes, that might be impractical (unless you are a rune lord frequently using DI, burning off rune points from your pool).

[DerKrieger]

So RAW is that you have 3 RP to start and thus can known spells equally a total of 3 RP meaning one 2 RP spell and one 1 RP spell or three 1 RP spells. Variable spells being variable you can take as 1 but cast up to whatever youre willing to spend as you would with Spirit Magic.

Are we now saying you can actually just take 3 Rune Spells to start with regardless of cost?

[HreshtIronBorne]

As far as I understand RAW PCs start with 3 RP and 3 cult special spells known of whatever required number of rp or variability as well as access to all common magic, for the big cults anyway. 

[Joerg]

12 hours ago, DerKrieger said:

So RAW is that you have 3 RP to start and thus can known spells equally a total of 3 RP meaning one 2 RP spell and one 1 RP spell or three 1 RP spells. Variable spells being variable you can take as 1 but cast up to whatever youre willing to spend as you would with Spirit Magic.

Are we now saying you can actually just take 3 Rune Spells to start with regardless of cost?

You select three of your deity's special spells regardless of cost, and cast any of these.

It just doesn't make sense to me to be able to learn a spell you don't have enough rune points for, but that's just me.

[David Scott]

On 10/15/2019 at 7:17 AM, Manu said:

Then, when a character gain a rune point, can he choose any spell (whatever the number of point the spell has)?

yes

On 10/15/2019 at 7:17 AM, Manu said:

But in the latest scenario (the free one) that the characters have 3 rune points and 3 spells (some of them being 2 or even 3 points rune spells).

Yes it's a straightforward choice. If you cast a 3pt spell, that's it until you regain the points. If you have 3 points you can choose which level you use. If you chose 2 pts of Shield and have 1 pt left you can't cast your 3 pt spell. 

Page 73 is clear to me, the bold is my emphasis:

Quote

As an initiate, your adventurer starts play with 3 Rune points dedicated to that cult. 

[...]

Additional points of POW can be sacrificed to increase the number of Rune points (and Rune spells) at the start of play.

Quote

Additionally, choose three special Rune spells available to the cult and listed in this section of each cult description. These are the special Rune spells your adventurer can use. If your adventurer has sacrificed additional points of POW to increase the number of starting Rune points, choose one additional special Rune spell for each additional point of POW sacrificed.

About a quarter of my players have spent POW is get more for their starting character.

Most players realised that getting the big spells first was cheaper in the long run as it's 100L per point later (page 275)

There is only one one magic that is hard to use - Call Founder 6 Points and you have to be the legitimate Khan of an entire tribe...

[Bill the barbarian]

On 10/19/2019 at 3:12 AM, David Scott said:

Most players realised that getting the big spells first was cheaper in the long run as it's 100L per point later (page 275)

 

nice munchkinerry, David Scott.

[Jeff]

On 10/19/2019 at 11:12 AM, David Scott said:

yes

Yes it's a straightforward choice. If you cast a 3pt spell, that's it until you regain the points. If you have 3 points you can choose which level you use. If you chose 2 pts of Shield and have 1 pt left you can't cast your 3 pt spell. 

Page 73 is clear to me, the bold is my emphasis:

About a quarter of my players have spent POW is get more for their starting character.

Most players realised that getting the big spells first was cheaper in the long run as it's 100L per point later (page 275)

There is only one one magic that is hard to use - Call Founder 6 Points and you have to be the legitimate Khan of an entire tribe...

This is correct. The entire purpose of making players spend money or do stuff for the cult to learn new speciality spells is for them to feel invested in their spells and more aware of each spell. It has nothing to do with game balance.

[DerKrieger]

4 hours ago, Jeff said:

This is correct. The entire purpose of making players spend money or do stuff for the cult to learn new speciality spells is for them to feel invested in their spells and more aware of each spell. It has nothing to do with game balance.

Interesting, in that case it seems like giving access to spells can also make for great story moments when appropriate without worrying about handing the players too much too quickly.