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How to deal with this much rune magic ?


Jon Hunter

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31 minutes ago, Thaz said:

Not exactly you dont. Some spells are more than one point.

No, this still isn't true. One new spell per rune point, regardless of what that spell costs to cast.

"An adventurer gains access to cult special or associated cult Rune spells at the same time they sacrifice POW for Rune points. For each point of POW sacrificed, the adventurer
acquires the right to cast an additional cult special Rune magic spell.

31 minutes ago, Thaz said:

Also you run out of spells available at your local shrine or even temple.

This could conceivably happen if you do most of your POW sacrifice in one or a few shrines, but you only need a Minor Temple to have total access, and this should be readily available in a tribal capital or a city.

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1 minute ago, Akhôrahil said:

This could conceivably happen if you do most of your POW sacrifice in one or a few shrines, but you only need a Minor Temple to have total access, and this should be readily available in a tribal capital or a city.

Which is entirely likely for common folk. Adventurers get around a bit. Your average clans-person will be doing it at their local shrine or perhaps the nearby town. Limits selection of spells for the common folk. More so by easy GM fiat.  

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7 minutes ago, Thaz said:

Which is entirely likely for common folk. Adventurers get around a bit. Your average clans-person will be doing it at their local shrine or perhaps the nearby town. Limits selection of spells for the common folk. More so by easy GM fiat.  

Visiting the tribal center or one of the cities is probably at least a yearly thing for most Orlanthi.

Common folk would very often worship Orlanth or Ernalda, and hence have access to a minor temple on the clan level. Oddball cults have problems. Eurmal initiates need to travel around a lot (because shrines only)!

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11 hours ago, Glorion said:

Funny, my players complain that the warriors can't go up in power because, unlike magicians who cast Befuddle and whatnot, the only way they can get a POW check is through worship ceremonies on the High Holy Day or Sacred Time, so how can they ever get any Runespells, except maybe one point a year?

Like davecake said, I'm not sure what your point is here? Everybody gets magic -- that's, like, one of the taglines of Glorantha. There's no "warriors vs. magicians", everybody is both.

9 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

In principle, I agree with you. But going by the numbers in the rulebook, where you get -10% to -20% penalties for such things, it has to be a singularly awful year to eat up the bonus. Something like ”all of the above”.

No "all" but "some". Say you get raided once by the neighbours, get some monsters/critters/whatever to push back, and some spirit-related troubles, that's -30%. I imagine that's a typical year for an Orlanthi stead. Bless Crops gives +20% so you have to Stack it once to offset it to +10%. But that's only for one hide... most likely, the -30% is for the majority of the clan's lands, so your Earth priestesses have to dump some massive amounts of RPs to make sure the whole clan benefits. Were are talking of between 100 and 400 RPs, per year, here.

9 hours ago, Grievous said:

A system like that would be great, at least for most the types of games I intend to run in Glorantha. I've been planning on using the HQ system and just slotting it in somehow and developing it from there (but since I'm not close to running those campaigns, I haven't really done much work on this). Now thinking about that, a KoDP type allotment of Magic to specific slots might tell you which spells clan NPCs have available when you meet them. Oddly, I haven't really heard anything heading this way in Runequest. Maybe that's an area that could use a sourcebook of its own.. 

Yes, I'd love to see some more proper "resource management" system in RQ for managing your stead and your clan. One of the pillars of Gloranthan gaming is that PCs belong to a community, and need to take care of it... pretty soon they'll be in charge somehow, so it would make sense to have some rules for that, at least for those who are interested in it (I suppose other people just want to hand-wave it and only play the raids and the political debates and the battles with nearby trolls). The "Between Adventures" rules in RQG hint at such rules, but don't go all the way. I'm crossing my fingers that the upcoming GM book will have such rules, but I'm frankly not sure it will.

9 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

It's fairly well buried, but you also get a POW gain roll for HHD worship. So double your numbers.

Ah yes, you're correct. Mmmh so that would give us "average" NPCs with 12 RPs at 30 year-old, and 22 RPs at 40 year-old... that makes a whole bunch of other NPCs have weird stats. For instance, Hastur the Lawspeaker (GM pack, p29) is 45 years-old but only has 12 RPs. Why did he stop sacrificing POW? One explication might be that he had actually average POW, and spent 10 years increasing it, explaining his POW 18. Now that I think about it, it might be a common long term tactic for people who want to have the best chance at resisting spells and what not. Strong-POWered clan-people means warriors who can resist enemy spells better during raids and battles.... so I guess I can halve my numbers back down and get back to where I was, while having a clan population whose average POW is higher than the human average (say, POW 12 or 13 on average).

I guess one could say this might be part of the elders' management strategy of the clan... do you want all your people to get more RPs and spells, but have lower POW, or do you want to only have them pick only a few strategic spells, and keep their POW high? It's possible different clans fall on different sides on this matter...

Quote

This is wrong. You get a new Rune Spell with every Rune Point. So the 8 Rune Point dude has (at least) 8 Rune Spells.

No, I think you may have missed what we were saying:

  1. On RQG p244, it mentions that Initiates can sacrifice POW to get more Rune Points (although not exactly... see below)
  2. On RQG p275, it mentions that Initiates do not get automatic access to a cult's special spells. They only get new special spells if they provide exceptional services to the temple, give a lot of money, or have other exceptional circumstances in their favour.
  3. On RQG p313/314, the wording is for "adventurers". Adventurers (as in : the PCs) get 1 Rune Spell for every point of sacrificed POW.

So one interpretation of all this is that "adventurers" (PCs) get special cult Rune spells for every sacrificed point of POW because they qualify to the "exceptional services to the temple", by virtue of, you know, going on adventures. Bystander NPCs, however, do not go on adventures, so they only get RPs, but not new Rune spells.

Another interpretation (due to the unclear wording on p244 mentioned in (1) above) would be that bystander NPCs only ever sacrifice 1 point of POW during initiation, and get only 1 special cult Rune spell. After that, they don't sacrifice any POW unless they qualify to the conditions on p244 (i.e. they do exceptional things, or pay money, or whatever).

With the first interpretation, you have, like I said, an average population of people with decent pools of RPs, but few spells. With the second interpretation, you have an average population of people with only a couple RPs and spells, but at least they have as many RPs as spells. I'm not sure there's a third interpretation?  I'm also not sure which interpretation matches better whatever we know, narratively speaking, about Glorantha?

Quote

I would also add to your numbers that other POW sacrifice may be required, such as feeding the Wyter, supporting an enchantment or warding, and so on. But with about yearly average POW gain, it's very easy to fit this.

Good point yes, I'll have to include this too. But I don't think the average POW gain makes it "easy", especially when you consider the new insight above about potentially wanting your clan people to accumulate POW so they're better able to resist enemy magic during battles.

I'm still working on and off on my Clan Resources Spreadsheet which tries to make sense of how magic works at large scale (clan scale). I've got a lot of stuff to add to it now... And to try and reassure @PhilHibbs that I am not trying to extrapolate the world from the game system :), I want to be clear that the point of my questions/spreadsheet/etc. is to figure out how to represent Glorantha with the proper numbers, so to speak. That is: given a certain narrative vision of Glorantha, I want to know what stats to give to the NPCs that populate this world, so that it does indeed behave "as intended" when we start rolling.

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Ludovic aka Lordabdul -- read and listen to  The God Learners , the Gloranthan podcast, newsletter, & blog !

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6 hours ago, Thaz said:

Not exactly you dont. Some spells are more than one point. Also you run out of spells available at your local shrine or even temple.  As we've previously discussed you might save up POW to use on a rare trip to town or a different temple to your usual. Or you may just sacrifice pow anyway to build your rune pool without additional spell selection, lets face it being able to crank out a few Heals is likely more useful than having every spell. As a GM you can restrict what is available from where. You can run out of new spells to sacrifice at your local shrine pretty quick. 

Heck my Storm Bull took ages to track down a Temple which had Fear available....Nochet with Troll town did the trick. And yes as a player I do try and game the system a bit and try and get in a successful Fear cast each season for the POW gain roll...

As I read the rules, it doesn't matter how many points a spell has. Get a new rune point, learn a new rune spell, and it doesn't matter whether it costs one rune point or three, or even more.

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13 minutes ago, lordabdul said:

Like davecake said, I'm not sure what your point is here? Everybody gets magic -- that's, like, one of the taglines of Glorantha. There's no "warriors vs. magicians", everybody is both.

No "all" but "some". Say you get raided once by the neighbours, get some monsters/critters/whatever to push back, and some spirit-related troubles, that's -30%. I imagine that's a typical year for an Orlanthi stead. Bless Crops gives +20% so you have to Stack it once to offset it to +10%. But that's only for one hide... most likely, the -30% is for the majority of the clan's lands, so your Earth priestesses have to dump some massive amounts of RPs to make sure the whole clan benefits. Were are talking of between 100 and 400 RPs, per year, here.

Yes, I'd love to see some more proper "resource management" system in RQ for managing your stead and your clan. One of the pillars of Gloranthan gaming is that PCs belong to a community, and need to take care of it... pretty soon they'll be in charge somehow, so it would make sense to have some rules for that, at least for those who are interested in it (I suppose other people just want to hand-wave it and only play the raids and the political debates and the battles with nearby trolls). The "Between Adventures" rules in RQG hint at such rules, but don't go all the way. I'm crossing my fingers that the upcoming GM book will have such rules, but I'm frankly not sure it will.

Ah yes, you're correct. Mmmh so that would give us "average" NPCs with 12 RPs at 30 year-old, and 22 RPs at 40 year-old... that makes a whole bunch of other NPCs have weird stats. For instance, Hastur the Lawspeaker (GM pack, p29) is 45 years-old but only has 12 RPs. Why did he stop sacrificing POW? One explication might be that he had actually average POW, and spent 10 years increasing it, explaining his POW 18. Now that I think about it, it might be a common long term tactic for people who want to have the best chance at resisting spells and what not. Strong-POWered clan-people means warriors who can resist enemy spells better during raids and battles.... so I guess I can halve my numbers back down and get back to where I was, while having a clan population whose average POW is higher than the human average (say, POW 12 or 13 on average).

I guess one could say this might be part of the elders' management strategy of the clan... do you want all your people to get more RPs and spells, but have lower POW, or do you want to only have them pick only a few strategic spells, and keep their POW high? It's possible different clans fall on different sides on this matter...

No, I think you may have missed what we were saying:

  1. On RQG p244, it mentions that Initiates can sacrifice POW to get more Rune Points (although not exactly... see below)
  2. On RQG p275, it mentions that Initiates do not get automatic access to a cult's special spells. They only get new special spells if they provide exceptional services to the temple, give a lot of money, or have other exceptional circumstances in their favour.
  3. On RQG p313/314, the wording is for "adventurers". Adventurers (as in : the PCs) get 1 Rune Spell for every point of sacrificed POW.

So one interpretation of all this is that "adventurers" (PCs) get special cult Rune spells for every sacrificed point of POW because they qualify to the "exceptional services to the temple", by virtue of, you know, going on adventures. Bystander NPCs, however, do not go on adventures, so they only get RPs, but not new Rune spells.

Another interpretation (due to the unclear wording on p244 mentioned in (1) above) would be that bystander NPCs only ever sacrifice 1 point of POW during initiation, and get only 1 special cult Rune spell. After that, they don't sacrifice any POW unless they qualify to the conditions on p244 (i.e. they do exceptional things, or pay money, or whatever).

With the first interpretation, you have, like I said, an average population of people with decent pools of RPs, but few spells. With the second interpretation, you have an average population of people with only a couple RPs and spells, but at least they have as many RPs as spells. I'm not sure there's a third interpretation?  I'm also not sure which interpretation matches better whatever we know, narratively speaking, about Glorantha?

Good point yes, I'll have to include this too. But I don't think the average POW gain makes it "easy", especially when you consider the new insight above about potentially wanting your clan people to accumulate POW so they're better able to resist enemy magic during battles.

I'm still working on and off on my Clan Resources Spreadsheet which tries to make sense of how magic works at large scale (clan scale). I've got a lot of stuff to add to it now... And to try and reassure @PhilHibbs that I am not trying to extrapolate the world from the game system :), I want to be clear that the point of my questions/spreadsheet/etc. is to figure out how to represent Glorantha with the proper numbers, so to speak. That is: given a certain narrative vision of Glorantha, I want to know what stats to give to the NPCs that populate this world, so that it does indeed behave "as intended" when we start rolling.

Hm? That's a strange interpretation. As it says quite clearly in the Guide to Glorantha and many other places in the canon, those who go on adventures are considered those who are selfish, doing things for themselves instead of doing their communal and religious responsibilities. So if you took that literally, adventurers would generally get fewer cult runespells than nonadventurers. Actually, the clause about "exceptional services" is a way to allow GM's to allow access to additional cult runespells to adventurers *without* sacrifice of POW to gain runepoints in return for service to the cult above and beyond the call of duty in an exceptional fashion.  As for point 3, the word "adventurers" is used for the simple reason that however nonadventurers get the runespells they have is off the screen and irrelevant to the game. Presumably it is the same, not that it matters except conceptionally.

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6 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

Visiting the tribal center or one of the cities is probably at least a yearly thing for most Orlanthi.

Common folk would very often worship Orlanth or Ernalda, and hence have access to a minor temple on the clan level. Oddball cults have problems. Eurmal initiates need to travel around a lot (because shrines only)!

Tribal center yes, during Sacred Time. One of the cities? No, unless they live in one, as few do. Eurmal initiates need to travel around a lot because staying in one place for too long is highly unsafe for them. If that gives them access to additional runespells that is merely a happy coincidence. Your average Eurmali is quite satisfied with his one and only runespell. They are jokesters not powergamers, and practicing one joke to do it just right is hard enough.

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17 minutes ago, Glorion said:

Hm? That's a strange interpretation. As it says quite clearly in the Guide to Glorantha and many other places in the canon, those who go on adventures are considered those who are selfish, doing things for themselves instead of doing their communal and religious responsibilities.

No. The adventurers go on adventures for the benefit of the community. Of course it depends on how you run your games, but the way I do it is that half of the adventures are actually on clan lands: they investigate some spirit activity, they deal with some old magical artifact found in the ground that is causing trouble, they push back an invasion of trolls, they prepare defenses against giants, etc. The other half of the adventures might be outside of the clan lands (or even tribal lands), but they are still benefiting the community: they're coming back with alliances with other clans, they're going on heroquests, they're going to Boldhome to influence politics in favour of their clan, they recover lost clan regalia, they hunt down cattle raiders or go on cattle raids themselves, etc.

At the end of the season, most people in the clan will have done their job all day long, whether it's dealing with the crops, raising children, hunting and fishing, or doing crafts. At best they go on a raid or other expedition once or twice a year. In comparison, the PCs, well, don't do that. They do... like... stuff. Combat and investigations and politics and stuff. "Adventures".

17 minutes ago, Glorion said:

Actually, the clause about "exceptional services" is a way to allow GM's to allow access to additional cult runespells to adventurers *without* sacrifice of POW to gain runepoints in return for service to the cult above and beyond the call of duty in an exceptional fashion.

That's another possible explanation, yes.

17 minutes ago, Glorion said:

 As for point 3, the word "adventurers" is used for the simple reason that however nonadventurers get the runespells they have is off the screen and irrelevant to the game. Presumably it is the same, not that it matters except conceptionally.

It does matter, because... well, let's ignore the rules for a moment. It matters because I don't really know if, when you go to any arbitrary Sartarite stead, you will meet with an owner who has a couple spells only and is pretty conservative about using them, or an owner who has half a dozen spells and can kick your ass. One might say that it's whatever I want, I'm the GM, I make the stories I want... but this has a snowball effect in terms of world-building that both me and my players are sensitive to. A world where an average farmer has 1 spell vs a world where an average farmer has 5 spells are two vastly different worlds. That's why many D&D settings are widely inconsistent, because many people assume you can just drop a whole pile of magic onto a medieval society and not expect it to change a lot, treating it just as an "extra thing" people do. But no, in reality it would change society quite a lot. So based on what society Glorantha is, or at least how I want my Glorantha to be, it means I must adjust the rules, and the NPC stats, appropriately. Knowing what kind of society Chaosium's Glorantha is is key to figuring out how much I need to change the rules, or not.

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1 hour ago, lordabdul said:

Like davecake said, I'm not sure what your point is here? Everybody gets magic -- that's, like, one of the taglines of Glorantha. There's no "warriors vs. magicians", everybody is both.

No "all" but "some". Say you get raided once by the neighbours, get some monsters/critters/whatever to push back, and some spirit-related troubles, that's -30%. I imagine that's a typical year for an Orlanthi stead. Bless Crops gives +20% so you have to Stack it once to offset it to +10%. But that's only for one hide... most likely, the -30% is for the majority of the clan's lands, so your Earth priestesses have to dump some massive amounts of RPs to make sure the whole clan benefits. Were are talking of between 100 and 400 RPs, per year, here.

I was assuming more like +60% from Bless Crop, as it's very easily supported with weekly holy days. You say 100-400 RPs as if it's a lot, but a single initiate with 3 Rune Points can churn out well over than 100 RPs worth of Rune Magic yearly. Just a few people can do the crop-blessing for the entire clan, if required.

1 hour ago, lordabdul said:

Ah yes, you're correct. Mmmh so that would give us "average" NPCs with 12 RPs at 30 year-old, and 22 RPs at 40 year-old... that makes a whole bunch of other NPCs have weird stats. For instance, Hastur the Lawspeaker (GM pack, p29) is 45 years-old but only has 12 RPs. Why did he stop sacrificing POW? One explication might be that he had actually average POW, and spent 10 years increasing it, explaining his POW 18. Now that I think about it, it might be a common long term tactic for people who want to have the best chance at resisting spells and what not. Strong-POWered clan-people means warriors who can resist enemy spells better during raids and battles.... so I guess I can halve my numbers back down and get back to where I was, while having a clan population whose average POW is higher than the human average (say, POW 12 or 13 on average).

We still have to ask what the people without high POW have been doing, because they can still expect about a yearly point. Feed the Wyter? Pay for wardings and enchantments? Lost to DI? Damned if I know!

1 hour ago, lordabdul said:

On RQG p313/314, the wording is for "adventurers". Adventurers (as in : the PCs) get 1 Rune Spell for every point of sacrificed POW.

I am 100% percent certain that "adventurers" is not intended to mean "PCs only", but rather just used as short-form for "characters" in order to not have to repeat the same word all the time. 

Let me give you an example: "An adventurer’s affinity with a specific Rune affects their magical potential, personality, and even characteristics." Should we assume that this means that this only holds true for PCs? That seems ridiculous to me! If we would start to go with that line of reasoning, NPCs cannot be surprised in combat (because it says "adventurers"), and so on, and so on. That way lies madness. 

Also, while I haven't done my research, I'm pretty sure that NPCs in published adventures usually have the "right" amount of spells for their RP level. Take Hastur again - he has 12 Rune Points, and he quite correctly also has 12 Rune Spells. This kind of things holds true all over the place!

 

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1 hour ago, lordabdul said:

No. The adventurers go on adventures for the benefit of the community. Of course it depends on how you run your games, but the way I do it is that half of the adventures are actually on clan lands: they investigate some spirit activity, they deal with some old magical artifact found in the ground that is causing trouble, they push back an invasion of trolls, they prepare defenses against giants, etc. The other half of the adventures might be outside of the clan lands (or even tribal lands), but they are still benefiting the community: they're coming back with alliances with other clans, they're going on heroquests, they're going to Boldhome to influence politics in favour of their clan, they recover lost clan regalia, they hunt down cattle raiders or go on cattle raids themselves, etc.

At the end of the season, most people in the clan will have done their job all day long, whether it's dealing with the crops, raising children, hunting and fishing, or doing crafts. At best they go on a raid or other expedition once or twice a year. In comparison, the PCs, well, don't do that. They do... like... stuff. Combat and investigations and politics and stuff. "Adventures".

That's another possible explanation, yes.

It does matter, because... well, let's ignore the rules for a moment. It matters because I don't really know if, when you go to any arbitrary Sartarite stead, you will meet with an owner who has a couple spells only and is pretty conservative about using them, or an owner who has half a dozen spells and can kick your ass. One might say that it's whatever I want, I'm the GM, I make the stories I want... but this has a snowball effect in terms of world-building that both me and my players are sensitive to. A world where an average farmer has 1 spell vs a world where an average farmer has 5 spells are two vastly different worlds. That's why many D&D settings are widely inconsistent, because many people assume you can just drop a whole pile of magic onto a medieval society and not expect it to change a lot, treating it just as an "extra thing" people do. But no, in reality it would change society quite a lot. So based on what society Glorantha is, or at least how I want my Glorantha to be, it means I must adjust the rules, and the NPC stats, appropriately. Knowing what kind of society Chaosium's Glorantha is is key to figuring out how much I need to change the rules, or not.

If you go to your average Sartarite stead planning to kick somebody's ass, the community will kick your ass, you foreigner clan enemy you. As for claiming that adventurers go on adventures for the benefit of the community, well, sometimes. But, as stated very clearly in Guide to Glorantha, that is definitely not the opinion of their communities of adventurers. GoG p. 16: "As a matter of note, the word for “adventurer” does exist in most Gloranthan languages. The word means many things, but usually indicates someone taking risks, often illicit or at least without too many scruples, for selfish personal gain." Which, realistically, is the perfect description of your average RQ PC, which Chaosium knows well. Nor was this a new concept, similar statements in various old RQ3 materials.

Perhaps a bit different in HW and HQ, but that is not what we are playing. Every official comment from Chaosium ever about how many initiates there are in the general population has been that they are a small minority. You have to hunt for them as it's not a popular concept, which Chaosium now that Greg ain't around anymore may abandon due to its unpopularity. I think it's realistic, though Bless Crops does punch a big hole in it.

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2 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

I was assuming more like +60% from Bless Crop, as it's very easily supported with weekly holy days. You say 100-400 RPs as if it's a lot, but a single initiate with 3 Rune Points can churn out well over than 100 RPs worth of Rune Magic yearly. Just a few people can do the crop-blessing for the entire clan, if required.

We still have to ask what the people without high POW have been doing, because they can still expect about a yearly point. Feed the Wyter? Pay for wardings and enchantments? Lost to DI? Damned if I know!

I am 100% percent certain that "adventurers" is not intended to mean "PCs only", but rather just used as short-form for "characters" in order to not have to repeat the same word all the time. 

Let me give you an example: "An adventurer’s affinity with a specific Rune affects their magical potential, personality, and even characteristics." Should we assume that this means that this only holds true for PCs? That seems ridiculous to me! If we would start to go with that line of reasoning, NPCs cannot be surprised in combat (because it says "adventurers"), and so on, and so on. That way lies madness. 

Also, while I haven't done my research, I'm pretty sure that NPCs in published adventures usually have the "right" amount of spells for their RP level. Take Hastur again - he has 12 Rune Points, and he quite correctly also has 12 Rune Spells. This kind of things holds true all over the place!

 

As for people without high POW, they are the ones who get frequent POW gain rolls suitable for getting new Runepoints. If you have high POW and aren't a priest, POW gain rolls are few and far between. Yes, there are NPCs in some of the recently published adventures who have fewer spells than their number of runepoints. This is merely sloppy writing, one of the reasons why we have edit suggestion threads for "Smoking Ruins" and so forth here on this website. Just ran "Days End" at Dundracon, that one turns out to need a whole heck of a lot of work.

 

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3 hours ago, Glorion said:

Hm? That's a strange interpretation. As it says quite clearly in the Guide to Glorantha and many other places in the canon, those who go on adventures are considered those who are selfish, doing things for themselves instead of doing their communal and religious responsibilities.

I think that's the authors poking fun at traditional RPG adventuring parties.

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2 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

We still have to ask what the people without high POW have been doing, because they can still expect about a yearly point. Feed the Wyter? Pay for wardings and enchantments? Lost to DI? Damned if I know!

My Glorantha is violent and dangerous enough that there is expectation of loss.   This is top to bottom.  "Farmers" are not 100% protected, and have to defend their own, as well as be expected to help the community defend against problems, and also have duties during times of offensive action. Storm clan farmers have always been represented as rather violent and personally hardy folk, so mine are as well.   Letterkenny is the proper example of how this works 😉

Bottom line is that I figure the PoW loss goes to things like DI and trading for one use Rune Magic, or possibly sacrificed back to the community/spirits/gods in some fashion.   If you already have a 16 PoW, you might consider doing some spell trading for a Heal Body.  Farms tend to be a very long distance from the local Priestess, and sometimes you need something *right now*. 

I also imagine that this innate magical power is a big part of what makes Sartar so capable of punching out of its weight class.  Basically very high average magic, especially and particularly with the non-professional military class, and a culture and environment that creates a population used to war.  

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5 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

I was assuming more like +60% from Bless Crop, as it's very easily supported with weekly holy days. You say 100-400 RPs as if it's a lot, but a single initiate with 3 Rune Points can churn out well over than 100 RPs worth of Rune Magic yearly. Just a few people can do the crop-blessing for the entire clan, if required.

Yes, and that's as designed I think... although "just a few people" varies.

Given the Colymar clans' populations, there's probably between 120 and 500 hides of land to take care of per clan. If the clan sustains an average of -30% penalty per year due to the usual raids and trolls and stuff, but you want +60% for the Harvest Time roll, that means you want 5 RPs for Bless Crops. That's between 600 and 2500 RPs.  It's not clear if you can only bless crops during Sea Season (when the sowing is done), or if you can do it also during Fire Season and/or Earth Season or even any season. IMG I would probably only allow it during Sea season, while the seeds are planted (I could maybe allow blessing in Fire Season for half the bonus). Earth priestesses get ~3 RPs back every week if they do their Clayday worship, and ~7 RPs back during the Seasonal Holy Day, so that's 31 "free" RPs for sowing season.

If the Earth priestesses don't deplete their Rune pools too much, there needs to be between 19 and 80 of them working on Blessing Crops. And you don't want them to spend too much because Fire Season is raiding season, where you need the healing magic... Anyway, I wouldn't qualify that as "just a few people". However, if you allow Blessing Crops during Fire and Earth season, that lowers the numbers considerably, of course. Even more so if you allow, for some reason, Blessing Crops year-round, since then you can really spread out your time and spending... in this case, yeah you can do it with "just a few people".... but then, if you do that, you end up with more unallocated people with more magic to spare... and this is the thread about dealing with, supposedly, "too much magic" in the world!  So here, I humbly offer one element of the solution as making sure a whole bunch of Earth magic is busy with Blessing Crops, and then busy healing raiders, etc.

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We still have to ask what the people without high POW have been doing, because they can still expect about a yearly point. Feed the Wyter? Pay for wardings and enchantments? Lost to DI? Damned if I know!

POW is a long game thing, so it's possible some people sacrifice several points in one go because they expect something that will need the Rune Points. I could also be they were unlucky in their rolls. And if you want to get fancy you could also consider that, with the recent Windstop in Sartar, people missed out on a couple years of replenishing.

Feeding the Wyter is very possible, although quite limited, as a Wyter maxes out at a dozen or so points IIRC. I don't think average people have access to warding and enchantments, so they wouldn't sacrifice for that... although I suppose it's interesting to think about the local shaman or priest offering discounted prices if you are the one sacrificing POW instead of them. In which case, yeah, it could be moderately common.

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I am 100% percent certain that "adventurers" is not intended to mean "PCs only", but rather just used as short-form for "characters" in order to not have to repeat the same word all the time.

[...]

Also, while I haven't done my research, I'm pretty sure that NPCs in published adventures usually have the "right" amount of spells for their RP level. Take Hastur again - he has 12 Rune Points, and he quite correctly also has 12 Rune Spells. This kind of things holds true all over the place!

 

Yes I'm pretty sure you're right, but I'm really just trying to help the OP here. Again, the thread is about supposedly having too much magic in Glorantha. I'm trying to offer optional views of Glorantha, and optional interpretations of the rules where there is, actually, not so much magic in the world after all, or at least that magic is reserved for seasonal things (like crops, above).

3 hours ago, Glorion said:

If you go to your average Sartarite stead planning to kick somebody's ass, the community will kick your ass, you foreigner clan enemy you.

That doesn't tell me if your farmers will have 1 spell each, or 5 spells each (well, I guess in your case, there's a 90% chance they don't have any spells, since you have a low ratio of initiates in your world). And obviously, yes, it might be the former in someone's Glorantha, and the latter in someone else's Glorantha. But I'm still saying it's a foundational question to answer.

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Every official comment from Chaosium ever about how many initiates there are in the general population has been that they are a small minority.

You must have seen different comments and read different books than me. Can you give some references?

2 hours ago, Dissolv said:

Bottom line is that I figure the PoW loss goes to things like DI and trading for one use Rune Magic, or possibly sacrificed back to the community/spirits/gods in some fashion.   If you already have a 16 PoW, you might consider doing some spell trading for a Heal Body.  Farms tend to be a very long distance from the local Priestess, and sometimes you need something *right now*. 

I'm not sure about DI (I don't envision it as something that happens very often in the average person's life). I'm not sure either about spell trading -- it's supposed to be one spell in exchange for another spell, not one spell in exchange for some raw POW. What do you mean here?

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I also imagine that this innate magical power is a big part of what makes Sartar so capable of punching out of its weight class.  Basically very high average magic, especially and particularly with the non-professional military class, and a culture and environment that creates a population used to war.  

I've often heard this thing about Sartar supposedly being an outlier in the number of people with Rune magic but I'm not sure where it comes from? AFAIK, Esrolia, the Holy Country, Hendrikiland, and Prax, all have also people with equal religious devotion as Sartarites. I'm not sure about Lunar provinces but I have no reason to think otherwise... I get the feeling that, because the books often say that Sartarites are violent, ruthless bad-asses, this automatically translates to "they have magic", when really it could just mean, they are training hard all day and they are not afraid of fighting with pointy things?

Edited by lordabdul

Ludovic aka Lordabdul -- read and listen to  The God Learners , the Gloranthan podcast, newsletter, & blog !

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50 minutes ago, lordabdul said:

I've often heard this thing about Sartar supposedly being an outlier in the number of people with Rune magic but I'm not sure where it comes from? AFAIK, Esrolia, the Holy Country, Hendrikiland, and Prax, all have also people with equal religious devotion as Sartarites. I'm not sure about Lunar provinces but I have no reason to think otherwise... I get the feeling that, because the books often say that Sartarites are violent, ruthless bad-asses, this automatically translates to "they have magic", when really it could just mean, they are training hard all day and they are not afraid of fighting with pointy things?

I'm pretty sure that Jeff has said that Orlanthi tend to have a much more personal relationship with their deities, and thus a much larger proportion of people personally dedicated to one (aka initiated). Pelorians like the Lodrili, by contrast, have a more practical view of religion and worship whoever meets their needs. Thus, up north, you have a small but powerful magical elite who lead the masses in worship of whichever gods they need at the moment. I think most of the Dara Happan nobles are probably initiated, but they make up a rather small percentage of the population.

Edited by Richard S.
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@Glorion please do not quote large blocks of text when you only need one sentences to be on topic, It makes points almost impossible to see. impossible to follow and makes navigating the threads to search for points all but impossible. When this happens several times on a page it makes me want to go away and read other threads.

This is not hypothetical, I have just spent 20 minutes trying to track something down to make a good point and now I leave dejected because I kept running into walls of quotes from you. Thanks in advance for your understanding.

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20 minutes ago, Bill the barbarian said:

@Glorion please do not quote large blocks of text when you only need one sentences to be on topic, It makes points almost impossible to see. impossible to follow and makes navigating the threads to search for points all but impossible. When this happens several times on a page it makes me want to go away and read other threads.

This is not hypothetical, I have just spent 20 minutes trying to track something down to make a good point and now I leave dejected because I kept running into walls of quotes from you. Thanks in advance for your understanding.

Bill, you're confusing me here, as what I type myself tends to be shorter than what a lot of other folk do, you sometimes included. If you want to quote anything at all from anyone else, as far as I know you hit the quote key and the whole damn thing comes up. On one posting of mine today I actually did painstakingly remove from the quote everything that wasn't relevant, which is a pain in the ass. I will do that more often. And why you are complaining to me in particular I don't get, as right on this very page, #8 in this thread, there are plenty of quote infested postings as long or longer than the ones I do. 

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49 minutes ago, Glorion said:

Bill, you're confusing me here, as what I type myself tends to be shorter

 It is really very simple, choose the text you wish to quote and a rectangular box shows up that says quote selection. Click it....

49 minutes ago, Glorion said:

If you want to quote anything at all from anyone else, as far as I know you hit the quote key and the whole damn thing comes up

Just llike that!

49 minutes ago, Glorion said:

what I type myself tends to be shorter than what a lot of other folk do, you sometimes included.

That is the point why quote 500 words to say yes?

Edited by Bill the barbarian
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45 minutes ago, Glorion said:

Bill, you're confusing me here, as what I type myself tends to be shorter than what a lot of other folk do

Like Bill said, it's about the size of the quote, not the size of what you're writing. Notice here I just quoted that one sentence, and not your whole message? That's the trick.

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Ludovic aka Lordabdul -- read and listen to  The God Learners , the Gloranthan podcast, newsletter, & blog !

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3 hours ago, Bill the barbarian said:

 It is really very simple, choose the text you wish to quote and a rectangular box shows up that says quote selection. Click it....

(rest deleted by hand)

Not on my computer it seems. I choose the text I want to quote and ... nothing happens. Or is this the multiquote thing you're talking about? I've never tried that. 

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Perhaps it’s a patience thing, After you have selected the text, while it is still grey keep the cursor immobile until the the rectangle (thick black lines, text stating quote selection) appears looking something like the image in the quote below... Keep at it and it will become easy ( I have been using computers since 1974 so I am getting used to them).

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391296617_ScreenShot2020-02-28at11_39_45PM.png.0709b1b171d2c38d084a1e0381d5b59a.png

 

Edited by Bill the barbarian

... remember, with a TARDIS, one is never late for breakfast!

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Continuing the interface advice:

In case of doubt,  just quote the entire text and trim it down to the part you are referring to in your reply. Just delete everything that you don't refer to directly.

Normally, you can cut a quoted section into two boxes by creating a new empty paragraph inside the quote box and hitting return when the cursor is placed there. Occasionally, the editor has hiccoughs when it doesn't support that. In that case, just trim, and hit the quote button again to isolate the other piece of the earlier post that you want to quote in a separate box.

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Telling how it is excessive verbis

 

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