Spell boosting with magic points

[Lordabdul]

On 6/26/2020 at 10:08 PM, GAZZA said:

There were at least a couple of those "you have answered your own question" responses where I had to scratch my head and say, "err... so, what was the answer then?"

Haha yes I've thought the same thing many times  

On 6/27/2020 at 3:41 AM, Akhôrahil said:

We have an official ruling. "Defensive boosting" is official, but separate from "boosting for effect". I'm almost as surprised as the rest of you.

I'm not. FWIW that was my initial reading of the rules. When the whole debate started around it and people argued otherwise, I shrugged and figured oh I must have been mistaken. I think I might be immune to a couple of the weird things in the rules because RQG was the first RQ ruleset I was exposed to, so I have no precedent or bias with any of this. I do agree however that the rules aren't clear and Chaosium didn't handle it very well to clear this up.

On 6/27/2020 at 4:12 AM, Akhôrahil said:

I like it in principle, but I'm concerned about the balance issue. Slapping an Extended Shield 10 on you for a season was bad enough before, but at least it could be dispelled by someone else at your power level. Add 60 MPs worth of boosting, and that Shield stays up.

Spending 14 RPs that are going to be held up during an entire season (no replenishing) is a weird thing to do, but sure, why not.

IMG, a bunch of evil spirits (disease spirits, etc.) would look at that character and think: "oooh, look at this nice little safe bubble... if I can get in there, I'm going to have a fun time! Maybe I'll call my friends to help". Any clever-enough NPC might also change their tactic to, say, lure the PC in a cave and create a landslide to trap him there, or some other way to disable the character without direct harm...

I might even go the other way, let the PC have fun with it for the season: they just go through any encounter in this season with absolutely zero problem... and that attracts a lot of attention. Maybe their chieftains and priests are super happy with them and that creates jealousy... Maybe all these successes create shifts in the nearby monster population -- maybe the local Uz call for reinforcements, or they leave their caves altogether and that creates a vacuum that has a bunch of social and political and even mythical repercussions.

Whenever the players come up with something crazy I ask myself how that can be used as an opportunity to take the story in a cool direction, whether it is by pushing back, or following along and ahead.

If you're into house rules you could also change how Extension works, and make it a multiplier instead (cost x2 for one hour, cost x3 for one day, etc.). That might make spells way too expensive to extend, but I can't tell exactly which aspect of "Shield 10 for a season with 60 defensive MPs" is problematic for you.

Quote

Similarly, if you pre-cast a big Sword Trance, it's probably worth using 10 MP or so for defensive boosting.

I personally like that you need to sacrifice some Sword Trance MPs to allocate to defensive boosting. That limits a bit the insane levels you can get to.

Edited July 10, 2020 by lordabdul

[Bill the barbarian]

On 6/28/2020 at 6:53 AM, David Scott said:

SNIP
I'm right behind him.

FOR THAT ENTIRE POST AND MANY MORE BESIDES:

 

Thanks!