Sword Trance et all beats shields?

[gochie]

16 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

any one-point Spirit Magic on you will soak up dispels first

If non-targeted, Dispel removes the highest possible defensive spell first, not lowest.

[Akhôrahil]

3 minutes ago, gochie said:

If non-targeted, Dispel removes the highest possible defensive spell first, not lowest.

Yes, sorry, that was poorly phrased. Should have said "it will remove any even one-point defensive Spirit Magic first" - I was just thinking of how most Spirit Magic you cast on yourself is defensive (like Protection).

[gochie]

12 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

Yes, sorry, that was poorly phrased. Should have said "it will remove any even one-point defensive Spirit Magic first" - I was just thinking of how most Spirit Magic you cast on yourself is defensive (like Protection).

Ahhh sorry, didn't understand your emphasis was on the defensive aspect, not the cost.

… And then I would munchkinly tell my GM that Sword Trance is also Defensive because "parry".

[Akhôrahil]

That opens up some nice abuse of Bless Champion though, if everything that has any kind of defensive aspect, like Strength (hey, my parry improves!), counts as "defensive".

Edited March 6, 2020 by Akhôrahil

[PhilHibbs]

3 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

That opens up some nice abuse of Bless Champion though, if everything that has any kind of defensive aspect, like Strength (hey, my parry improves!) counts as "defensive".

I'd nope that.

[Akhôrahil]

2 minutes ago, PhilHibbs said:

I'd nope that.

Me too, for the same reason I would never call Sword Trance "defensive". The point was that if Sword Trance is defensive, then so are a bunch of other spells.

[gochie]

7 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

That opens up some nice abuse of Bless Champion though, if everything that has any kind of defensive aspect, like Strength (hey, my parry improves!), counts as "defensive".

I mean, is it abuse though? I don't really see the point in discerning between both to begin with (it is/can be a grey area after all). Just let dispel remove the highest spell it can, end of. The spell doesn't know the difference.

[PhilHibbs]

2 minutes ago, gochie said:

I mean, is it abuse though? I don't really see the point in discerning between both to begin with (it is/can be a grey area after all). Just let dispel remove the highest spell it can, end of. The spell doesn't know the difference.

It's not about "knowing", I think it of being about how the magic stacks itself in layers. Defensive spels go on the outside, other buffing spells go on the inside. Outside spells get hit before inside spells. Strength is inside, Spirit Screen and Protection are outside.

[gochie]

16 minutes ago, PhilHibbs said:

It's not about "knowing", I think it of being about how the magic stacks itself in layers. Defensive spels go on the outside, other buffing spells go on the inside. Outside spells get hit before inside spells. Strength is inside, Spirit Screen and Protection are outside.

Fair enough, but then you have to figure out how all the layers interact with eachother, and how each spell works on a deeper level. IE. Is a spell like Invisibility (or other spells that affect enemies) an exterior/defensive layer? What about Bear's Skin; it's defensive but that's certainly directly on your body. 

As I said, too much gray and headache to be worth it (just my opinion of course).

[Rodney Dangerduck]

7 hours ago, Joerg said:

That limits the spell to 11 magic points, or the swordperson will be out of attacks for two melee rounds. And while 110% is an insanely high boost, it is nowhere near the "plus 240%" effects that have been made the strawman here. There are characters who can get into this region with Fanaticism, a one point spirit spell. If you have mooks (like cannon-fodder trollkin or bagogi males), fanaticise them.

In my experience, the primary benefit of Sword Trance is that they can't hit you.  If you can manage a special parry, (roughly 40% chance) their weapon is in trouble.  If they use natural weapons, they end up harming themselves.  That monster trying to bite you misses, you parry, they take roughly D8+D4+5 to the head and probably fall down.  Three wolves try to bite you, good chance you take out all three in one round.  And that doesn't even count your attack!

+110% is plenty awesome.

Edited March 6, 2020 by Rodney Dangerduck

[Joerg]

2 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

You don't need that final MP to dismiss the Shield.

RQG: "The total points of the spell must be eliminated to destroy the spell. Thus [...] to dispel a 1-point Shield (a Rune spell) requires 2 points". That is, the countermagic from the Shield doesn't in fact act as countermagic for the Dispel attempt against the Shield itself. This would also indicate that if you have Shield 4 + Countermagic 4, you still only need 8 points of dispelling to take out the Shield.

EDIT: Or is this against Shield 5 + CM 1 as mentioned earlier? Even then it's not clear that the Shield's countermagic serves as countermagic for Dispel attempts against itself.

No - the shield's CM 10 effect will prevent the Dismiss 5 from taking effect, you need that extra point for the magic to manifest at all. Any 10 MP spell will fail against Shield 5. Any 11 MP spell will succeed.

 

@Rodney Dangerduck Yes, +110% to parrry is great, but an 75% advanced mook with fanaticism still has a chance greater than 5% to hit. Add a bit of bladesharp, and your mook attrition will be better.

Wolves etc. will lose a few attackers, then draw back, and play the waiting game with occasional harrassment. And there are attacks where a parry is meaningless, hence I would simply deduce the weapon's armor points without any roll, and inflict the rest. The Ewok traps cannot be parried, only evaded through dodge - which I would allow to a trancee, but which will be significantly lower.

And every subsequent parry is 20 points less than that dodge. Good luck to your swordsperson.

 

What are the rules for nets? Can they be parried without entangling the parrying object, or do they have to be dodged?

[Akhôrahil]

8 minutes ago, Joerg said:

No - the shield's CM 10 effect will prevent the Dismiss 5 from taking effect, you need that extra point for the magic to manifest at all. Any 10 MP spell will fail against Shield 5. Any 11 MP spell will succeed

If we believe the example at all (which, I will grant you, is not a given), then 10pt is enough.

It's hardly a stretch to believe that the countermagic doesn't protect itself.

Edited March 6, 2020 by Akhôrahil

[Rodney Dangerduck]

14 minutes ago, Joerg said:

 

@Rodney Dangerduck Yes, +110% to parrry is great, but an 75% advanced mook with fanaticism still has a chance greater than 5% to hit. Add a bit of bladesharp, and your mook attrition will be better.

Wolves etc. will lose a few attackers, then draw back, and play the waiting game

The Ewok traps cannot be parried,

Even if the fanatic "advanced mook" gets in a lucky hit at his 15% chance or whatever, 95% chance it gets parried and does no real damage.  Meanwhile, about one mook a round goes down, loses a limb, etc...

That's a 15 minute waiting game.  Surely the party can figure out something in that time...  If not, they deserve to lose.

Sorry, I have no idea what Ewok traps have to do with Runequest or Glorantha, you've lost me there.

[Akhôrahil]

Just now, Rodney Dangerduck said:

Even if the fanatic "advanced mook" gets in a lucky hit at his 15% chance or whatever, 95% chance it gets parried and does no real damage.  Meanwhile, about one mook a round goes down, loses a limb, etc...

My biggest concern isn't mooks... they're there to lose anyway. 

My big concern is trivially skill-tanking a T-Rex, a giant, a dragon or something. Bringing a dinosaur or a giant down to 5% is utterly trivial.

[Joerg]

26 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

If we believe the example at all (which, I will grant you, is not a given), then 10pt is enough.

It's hardly a stretch to believe that the countermagic doesn't protect itself.

That would make Dismiss and Dispel more powerful than Shield and Countermagic. The Countermagic effect doesn't protect anything, it simply prevents magic from manifesting. Including Dispel or Dismiss, or another Shield spell or a Countermagic without sufficient backing to stack with the existing Shield.

At least this strict logic makes discussion with rules lawyers a lot easier. (The doubled efficiency of the Berserk CM effect against magic from chaotic sources remains weird in any connection.)

16 minutes ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

Sorry, I have no idea what Ewok traps have to do with Runequest or Glorantha, you've lost me there.

It is impossible parry a tree log swinging towards you, whether held up by ropes or by a giant, unless you are big enough to wield a similar one one-handed, or you can cut it into two in a single attack. No percentile deduction for such attacks, regardless of their sword or axe skill. Likewise with nets

 

15 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

My biggest concern isn't mooks... they're there to lose anyway. 

And some of them will roll a special or crit.

15 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

My big concern is trivially skill-tanking a T-Rex, a giant, a dragon or something. Bringing a dinosaur or a giant down to 5% is utterly trivial.

Anything that does a knockback damage greater than the size of the parrying person should not be reduced by the full parry skill. Yes, that is hard on Humakti ducks. They deserve that, though.

Thus, a T-Rex bite attack might be parried (deflected), a headbutt, body-check or tail-whip not. It is dodge or suffer. Any player complaining about that is free to look for a different GM.

 

Invulnerable characters like Clark Kent, Achilles or Siegfried won't get any experience checks from combats they get through without a scratch, unless risking their social standing when everybody watches them (not the case in a general melee, but somewhat applicable in a champion's battle, and incurring some notoriety that will be used against them). The same for successes under the influence of the weapon trance or Sureshot. Reading a book bears a greater risk than that.

[Akhôrahil]

12 minutes ago, Joerg said:

That would make Dismiss and Dispel more powerful than Shield and Countermagic. The Countermagic effect doesn't protect anything, it simply prevents magic from manifesting. Including Dispel or Dismiss, or another Shield spell or a Countermagic without sufficient backing to stack with the existing Shield.

No, it would make them exactly equally powerful. You need X points of Dispel/Dismiss to get rid of X points of Shield or Countermagic. Not X+1.

And I think Countermagic does protect, not stop from manifesting. What happens if you hit several people with different amounts of Countermagic with a Thunderbotl? I woiuld posit that they defend against it individually. The Thunderbolt is there. It just slides off some targets.

Also, Countermagic rules text: "This defensive spell protects the target" (my emphasis).

Edited March 6, 2020 by Akhôrahil

[Joerg]

1 minute ago, Akhôrahil said:

No, it would make them exactly equally powerful. You need X points of Dispel/Dismiss to get rid of X points of Shield or Countermagic. Not X+1.

We won't agree on this, I fear.

I hold that the magic would not manifest because of the CM effect, whether it is a Dispel or even an additional point of shield. No magic can manifest that doesn't exceed the CM effect. Exceed, not equal. The contest between whichever spell that is to be dispelled or dismissed only comes afterwards.

You hold that the magic will appear to take away whichever effect there is.

So basically, one of your players (e.g. me if you ruled against me with that interpretation) could argue that a 1 point Dismiss Magic will take away the Sword Trance regardless of the Shield as it takes apart magic, which in your argumentation takes precedence to the CM effect. No additional magic is heaped on, but magic is taken away. That should make the CM field happy, right?

[gochie]

4 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

No, it would make them exactly equally powerful. You need X points of Dispel/Dismiss to get rid of X points of Shield or Countermagic. Not X+1.

Agreed. The purpose of Dispel and co. is to… Dispel. It's their entire purpose. Dispelling needs 1 less point than piercing.

So, Dispel 10 dispels Shield 5, while Dispel 11 pierces Shield 5, and has the potential to dispel an even greater defensive spell if there is one (otherwise it dispels the Shield, with 1 more point than necessary).

[Akhôrahil]

14 minutes ago, Joerg said:

And some of them will roll a special or crit.

Anything that does a knockback damage greater than the size of the parrying person should not be reduced by the full parry skill. Yes, that is hard on Humakti ducks. They deserve that, though.

At 5%, they will never Special. They will crit one time in a hundred. Odds don't get any better than this in RQ.

Also, is the T-Rex really going to declare a knockback attack? And so what if it does? (It's also really unclear about whether you can parry Knockback attacks or not - if you can, this won't work.)

[Akhôrahil]

1 minute ago, Joerg said:

We won't agree on this, I fear.

I hold that the magic would not manifest because of the CM effect, whether it is a Dispel or even an additional point of shield. No magic can manifest that doesn't exceed the CM effect. Exceed, not equal. The contest between whichever spell that is to be dispelled or dismissed only comes afterwards.

The best I can offer you is explicit example text. Given the quality of examples in RQG, I understand if that's not enough (there are many obviously incorrect examples in RQG), but it's all we have.

3 minutes ago, Joerg said:

So basically, one of your players (e.g. me if you ruled against me with that interpretation) could argue that a 1 point Dismiss Magic will take away the Sword Trance regardless of the Shield as it takes apart magic, which in your argumentation takes precedence to the CM effect. No additional magic is heaped on, but magic is taken away. That should make the CM field happy, right?

What? No! You need 11 pts-equivalent to penetrate the 5pt Shield (this could be a boosted Dispel, but I'm sure we agree about that), but only 10 pts to Dispel it. 

But in the example, it's about what it takes to Dispel Countermagic, so it's a given that the Countermagic is in place. The obvious interpretation is that the Countermagic doesn't protect itself.

If we go by your interpretation, an 9pt Dispel would be enough to get rid of 10pt Countermagic (because it's one point less, and that removes both spells by Countermagic text). This strikes me as super weird.

[Joerg]

1 minute ago, Akhôrahil said:

At 5%, they will never Special. They will crit one time in a hundred. Odds don't get any better than this in RQ.

At 15 percent, they have a 3% chance for a special. The odds suck, but after a dozen dead mooks lying about, slippery ground rules are in order. Make a DEXx3 roll or halve your attack and parry because of the lack of footing.

 

1 minute ago, Akhôrahil said:

Also, is the T-Rex really going to declare a knockback attack? And so what if it does? (It's also really unclear about whether you can parry Knockback attacks or not - if you can, this won't work.)

The T-Rex has to do an attack that can result in a knockback. A bite cannot result in a knockback, but possibly in a successful grapple. Any stuff with a sufficiently large limb (or the head butt) will do.

[Rodney Dangerduck]

 

7 minutes ago, Joerg said:

At 15 percent, they have a 3% chance for a special. The odds suck, but after a dozen dead mooks lying about, slippery ground rules are in order. Make a DEXx3 roll or halve your attack and parry because of the lack of footing.

So, your argument that Sword Trance isn't overpowered is that a dozen competent fighters, each using roughly 5 MP worth of spells (Fanaticism + Bladesharp / Protection etc...) will defeat it, at the loss of only 11?

You have just proven how freaking awesome it is.  Thanks for your support!

Edited March 6, 2020 by Rodney Dangerduck
typo

[Akhôrahil]

8 minutes ago, Joerg said:

At 15 percent, they have a 3% chance for a special. 

You really didn't have that last MP to spare? 🙂

8 minutes ago, Joerg said:

The T-Rex has to do an attack that can result in a knockback. A bite cannot result in a knockback, but possibly in a successful grapple. Any stuff with a sufficiently large limb (or the head butt) will do.

I mean yes, it can declare a knockback attempts. That's the only knockback in the game. Just stand up from it, it's not like the game has Attacks of Opportunity except in a single case.

And while I'm unsure about whether you can parry Knockback attacks, I'm pretty certain you can parry grapple attempts. So now it has 5% of Grapple?

Edited March 6, 2020 by Akhôrahil

[soltakss]

On 3/4/2020 at 8:50 AM, Kloster said:

On 3/4/2020 at 6:49 AM, GAZZA said:

I can see the point. If I have 190% Sword and you have 110% Sword, then we're basically playing "let's see who criticals, specials, or fumbles first". Even though  my skill is a lot higher than yours, we both have a 95% chance to hit and 1% fumble chance, so really it's just my 38% special versus your 22% special that matters (I am assuming we both would take no damage on a successful parry). That can take a fair while to play out. Note that I'm not sure that's necessarily a bad thing, but I do get why some people would think so.

In around 20 years of RQ play, I (almost) never had this kind of problem. Even when we had high skills, what resolved the fights was most often the tactics (close in, changing opponents, striking the weapon, striking to disarm, ...), the use of the terrain and the magic points attrition. Of course, preparing for combat is also a big factor.

We played RQ2 then RQ3 and we saw combats that were speedily resolved in RQ2 take an age in RQ3.

Antiparry definitely reduced combat length and we used that a lot in our high level RQ2 campaign. 

A 190%Sword vs a 110% Sword equates to 100% Sword Attack vs 20% Sword Parry and 100% Sword Attack vs 180% Sword Parry, so the advantage is definitely with the higher skilled combatant.

I used to watch The Water Margin as a kid and fights between Lin Chun and regular soldiers worked along the lines of the 190% vs 110% Sword, with fights over very quickly indeed.

On 3/4/2020 at 9:03 AM, Akhôrahil said:

I have, routinely, in other BRP games. 10-20 rounds of people doing the I Attack/You Parry/You Attack/I Parry routine (and made even worse in games where even if when you manage to land a hit, it will probably just bounce on armor - RQ avoids that part, at least).

We saw it in RQ3, where two Rune Lords with 200% skill took ages to resolve a combat, you effectively waited for a critical hit and a worn down weapon parry or failed parry. Magic sometimes helped, but not that often.

 

 

Edited March 6, 2020 by soltakss

[Rodney Dangerduck]

4 minutes ago, soltakss said:

A 190%Sword vs a 110% Sword equates to 100% Sword Attack vs 20% Sword Parry and 100% Sword Attack vs 180% Sword Parry,

No.  It equates to a 20% Sword Attack vs. a 100% Sword Parry.

You are very lucky to parry the entranced Humakti, AND you are very lucky to hit them.