RQG sorcery & other magics (rant)

[icebrand]

29 minutes ago, Darius West said:

There is for the most part, a somewhat strict caste delineation between Talari, Zzaburi, Horali and Dronari.  In most sorcerous societies the warriors don't know any sorcery, and nor do the other castes.  Now this is obviously not true of all sorcerous societies, but sorcery is tied primarily to the rune of Law, so processes of logic and order are pretty intrinsic to the thinking of these societies I would argue.  To become a reliable sorcerer is time consuming, and as with most things, if you spread your efforts too thin across too many disciplines you become a jack of all trades and a master of none.  I am not saying that dilettante sorcerers can't exist however.

Yes, Gerlant and Ethilrist are both likely related to Arkat by blood, and likely raised somewhat Hrestoli due to Arkat's pragmatism.  Meriatan is also a Hrestoli.  These guys are also heroes, not your average Zzaburi caste born Joe Sorcerer.  I also don't see any of them exercising the raw magical power of Zzabur, like closing the oceans and separating Brithos from Glorantha.  Arkat was pretty much a Brithini convert to Hrestolism by the time he left the West and became a Humakti, and this was the company he kept.  They are westerners and knights before they are really sorcerers I would argue.

I would agree that those of Hrestoli background might not be afraid of fieldwork, but they are your classic dilletantes.  They spend X years trying to master agriculture, then X years trying to master fighting, then X years learning sorcery, then X years learning how to rule.  You need to ask yourself, how many smart kids get out of the farming caste only to die in battle before ever becoming sorcerers because they had low HP or no damage bonus?  And how much weaker will a 40 year old Hrestoli sorcerer be, who might have been a sorcerer for 8 years, as compared to a Rokari who has spent 25 years  on sorcery? 

The Hrestoli system is great in terms of its fairness and apparent (but hugely overstated) social mobility, but when we scratch the surface we find that the rich families can pay to have their children tutored while the poor cannot.  Also, ultimately the system promotes people to rise not to the level of their greatest competence, but to the level of their incompetence.  Some people fail as farmers and stay as farmers.  Some warriors die, but others will stay as warriors because they are too incompetent to rise.  Some will make it to wizards, but then some of them will fail to rise any further, will they be great wizards therefore?  I think not.  Finally the cream of the crop will rise to be the Talari caste of nobility, and while they likely don't have a stat under 15, you still have to wonder how these noob nobles who rose purely on their merits will actually handle their new power.  You also need to worry about the lack of recognition for artisans and merchants, as well as miners and timber workers etc. within the Hrestoli system.

In short, while I like the career path of the Hrestoli and their meritocracy better from a player perspective, I think their sorcerers will be way too handy with a lance and sword, and like good jocks, will be struggling with their sorcery homework.  For sorcerers they will make damn good warriors, but are they really sorcerers?  Really they rise to the level of their incompetence and then stop.  I like meritocracy, but the simple fact is that caste specialists who have 17 years more experience in their born field will be better at their jobs, and they will like archiving, and order, and fear fieldwork.

And still they have the best system in Glorantha, unless you like licking the boots of the emperor or being an ignorant savage.

Clearly Hrestol revealed the true way; yes, social mobility may be low, but this is only because only the best rise.

And hear me, we don't rise to any level of (in)competence, but to the level of mastery.

True, many bright young men are taken from us at an early age, but that clearly means Malkion took them to solace in order to better serve the invisible god!

And with contempt i tell thee, if the outdated Seshnelan way were any better, they would be able to beat us in battle, which I don't see ever happening. 😂

Edited December 16, 2020 by icebrand

[PhilHibbs]

20 hours ago, Jeff said:

There are plenty of very very skilled soldiers who lack the INT and POW to be zzaburi. This is of course a weakness in the New Hrestoli system. If only those capable of becoming soldiers are brought out of the worker caste, you've eliminated many potential zzaburi (all of those too weak and frail to be good soldiers).

Is there no fast track officer programme?

[Darius West]

6 minutes ago, icebrand said:

And still they have the best system in Glorantha, unless you like licking the boots of the emperor or being an ignorant savage.

They have the most just system, but on closer analysis, it is not the best in terms of outcomes.

7 minutes ago, icebrand said:

Clearly Hrestol revealed the true way; yes, social mobility may be low, but this is only because only the best rise.

ORLY.  And why are they always from the same families?  Superior breeding or does money speak louder than merit?  After all, a rich man's son gets tutors that a poor man's son never will.  Arguably an Orlanthi stickpicker might rise to be a Chief, or a Lunar beggar rise to be a venerated illuminate sage with equal or greater facility.

11 minutes ago, icebrand said:

And hear me, we don't rise to any level of (in)competence, but to the level of mastery.

Yes, Hrestoli rise to a level of bare 90% mastery and then get shunted into their next class.  But I task you, how many great fighters become wizards and discover that all those blows to the head as warriors have rendered them punch drunk? There are plenty of warriors who would have made better farmers, plenty of wizards who would have made better warriors, and plenty of nobles who would have made better wizards.  What you Hrestoli need is some sort of hat you can put on children as they enter their majority, that can consider their temperament and abilities and sort them into an appropriate caste; a sort of magical career guidance officer that can measure an individual's potential objectively, rather than letting the children of privilege continuously rise.

20 minutes ago, icebrand said:

True, many bright young men are taken from us at an early age, but that clearly means Malkion took them to solace in order to better serve the invisible god!

This is very similar to what the Stormbull barbarians say of their fallen.  "If he was a good Stormbull he will join his god in the Eternal Battle, and if he wasn't a good Stormbull, who cares what happens to him".  It rings of the Rokari purges against the Hrestoli who argued "Kill them all, for the Invisible god will know his own"; a flippant comment that justifies atrocity with and hypocrisy that forgets that Malkion wants us to love life and this world.

24 minutes ago, icebrand said:

And with contempt i tell thee, if the outdated Seshnelan way were any better, they would be able to beat us in battle, which I don't see ever happening. 😂

There was a time when the Hrestoli were the dominant interpretation of the Invisible God in the West, but one might well argue that the true meritocrats are the Rokari Realists, who have risen from nothing to cast Loskalm and Hrestoli from their former southern holdings with singular ability.  Ideals are illusion. Reality is truth.  Place you foundations on the verified truth rather than trickster dreams if you truly seek to build a better world.  Too many were the Hrestoli Lords envisioning a higher Makan while their Seshnelan subjects suffered austerities they were never trained for.  Man may not live by bread alone, but better bread than starvation, however pious.

[Lordabdul]

6 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

Is there no fast track officer programme?

You can get a scholarship for a "quiet" part of the martial caste if you're really good at playing a Western version of Ouranekki and compete in the championships

[Frp]

The RQG rules make being a Hrestoli sorcerer easier. You don't need to learn four extra skills plus ceremony, enchant & summon anymore. Just master as many runes as your intelligence will allow and augment your spell casting percentages with rituals and meditation if you need to. Losksami farmers probably learn to meditate so everyone should be good at it by the time they're ready to be a wizard. So they'll be able to do what specialists can do. It'll just take a little longer. Depending on how caste lines are drawn, time will tell, if a farmer, or guardian, can learn a rune or two on their way up they might be pretty good at some spells long before they're a Man-of-All, too. 

[French Desperate WindChild]

the idea of "Hrestol path" is the best way (egalitarian, etc)  cleary depends on the perspective :

 

that says that a good farmer is lower than a bad soldier

that says that a sorcerer is better than a worker

why  ?

so yes you can progress in social position (I agree with @Darius West it is not so egalitarian than it is presented)

but only if you consider the hrestol social position hierarchy as the best.

those who consider than a good farmer contributes more to the society  than a bad soldier will disagree with hrestoli. Are they wrong ?

those who consider than manipulating the world essence (and not worship the good gods) will disagree too. Are they wrong ?

that is  what I like with glorantha, I don't find any really perfect culture, there are always a bad side (and a good side, well maybe not with chaos but it is another story)

[davecake]

There is a pretty obvious consequence to be drawn from the combination of Free INT, long casting times, a need for lots of magic points, powerful sorcery spells for commanding spirits, players wanting more dramatic sorcery, etc. Though I suspect it is not something that was designed into the system deliberately, IIRC quite the opposite, it seems hard to argue against from a practical perspective. Which is that sorcerers are going to find bound spirits so irresistibly advantageous I suspect most powerful sorcerers are going to want to get one. The answer to ‘how do sorcerers cast practical magic in combat’ is probably ‘they use spirit magic’ just like everyone else, only via having bound spirits that know the spells for them. The utility of bound spirits to sorcerers is enormous. 
And it ties into the more organised, collective, individually specialised nature of sorcery, too. A bunch of sorcerers will be experts in summoning and commanding certain spirits, a sorcerous school builds up a collection of known entities and classes of entities, binding enchantments can be a bit of a ‘rite of passage’. 
Capturing and exploiting spirits this way has always been something wizards could do (eg energy prison myths in Revealed Mythologies), there seems nothing against the strictures of Malkionism (or any practical rules reason why not) for wizards to capture and utilize spirits this way - they are enslaving them, not worshipping them or befriending them, Zzabur is fine with that. 
So while RQ3 sorcery tried to have rules that meant wizards would have to have familiars, and largely failed to achieve what it wanted (both PC and NPC sorcerers avoided the obvious animal familiars due to the INT reduction, and instead we got more and more strange stretches of the rules, some of the most dubious in ‘official’ publications), RQG said that sorcerers didn’t need familiars - but organically created a situation where every sorcerer will find a familiar (or other bound spirit) so practically useful as to make a huge different in their playability and utility, and clearly the best use of a couple of POW points. Ironically, this happens largely because sorcerers is so deliberately constrained and weakened that even the best sorcerers will find pure sorcery lacking in important ways compared to spirit magic. 

 

[metcalph]

A simple way for a Pelorian Sorceror to max out his free INT and still be useful in combat might be to worship Buserian (I think) and learn Call On Stars (RBoM p23), extend it a few times and hence no more need keeping spirit magic in memory.  I imagine the Arkati and other heterodox schools have a similar trick.

[metcalph]

12 minutes ago, davecake said:

Which is that sorcerers are going to find bound spirits so irresistibly advantageous I suspect most powerful sorcerers are going to want to get one. The answer to ‘how do sorcerers cast practical magic in combat’ is probably ‘they use spirit magic’ just like everyone else, only via having bound spirits that know the spells for them.

Bound spirits cannot know the spells for the magician that binds them in RQG.  They may cast any magic that they know but there is no mindlink and so the magician cannot cast their magic.

 

[davecake]

For the heterodox and henotheist sorcerers that mix sorcery and worship (including Lhankor Mhy, Lunars, Arkati etc) allied spirits are obviously awesome for sorcerers. Let’s you effectively have a very strong ability to cast spirit magic without reducing your Free INT, or any other drawbacks. 

[metcalph]

2 minutes ago, davecake said:

For the heterodox and henotheist sorcerers that mix sorcery and worship (including Lhankor Mhy, Lunars, Arkati etc) allied spirits are obviously awesome for sorcerers. Let’s you effectively have a very strong ability to cast spirit magic without reducing your Free INT, or any other drawbacks. 

Unfortunately the description of them in RQG versa) "Allied spirits are limited in number, and only the most stalwart and loyal priests can obtain these divine companions" (RQG p227) and following rules suggests they are rarer than they were in previous editions.

[Kloster]

1 hour ago, metcalph said:

Bound spirits cannot know the spells for the magician that binds them in RQG.  They may cast any magic that they know but there is no mindlink and so the magician cannot cast their magic.

 

RQG p249: Those in physical contact with a binding enchantment can mentally communicate with an entity bound inside (if there are no conditions to the contrary) and can command the entity to use its abilities.

Edited December 17, 2020 by Kloster

[Kloster]

1 hour ago, metcalph said:

Unfortunately the description of them in RQG versa) "Allied spirits are limited in number, and only the most stalwart and loyal priests can obtain these divine companions" (RQG p227) and following rules suggests they are rarer than they were in previous editions.

You don't need an Allied spirit, just a bound one.

[metcalph]

Just now, Kloster said:

RQG p249: Those in physical contact with a binding enchantment can mentally communicate with an entity
bound inside (if there are no conditions to the contrary) and can command the entity to use its abilities.

Which is what I said.  The bound spirit can cast any spells that they know.  But the magician cannot cast any spells that the bound spirit knows.  

[metcalph]

1 minute ago, Kloster said:

You don't need an Allied spirit, just a bound one.

Incorrect.

[Kloster]

20 minutes ago, metcalph said:

Incorrect.

RQG p365: The binder of a spirit can use any spirit magic the spirit possesses and the magic points of the spirit to fuel spells.

21 minutes ago, metcalph said:

Which is what I said.  The bound spirit can cast any spells that they know.  But the magician cannot cast any spells that the bound spirit knows.  

In that case, I misunderstood what you meant. The spirit can cast the spells he knows for the binder, but the binder seems not to be able to teach the spirit the spells he knows.

[metcalph]

2 hours ago, metcalph said:

A simple way for a Pelorian Sorceror to max out his free INT and still be useful in combat might be to worship Buserian (I think) and learn Call On Stars (RBoM p23), extend it a few times and hence no more need keeping spirit magic in memory.  I imagine the Arkati and other heterodox schools have a similar trick.

Although it's not explicitly stated in the text, Call on Stars seems to be only intended to cast ONE spirit magic spell.  This is inferred from the caster not needing magic points to cast the spirit magic, which would be a bit unbalanced if it conferred general knowledge of spirit magics. 

I apologize for the false hopes. 

[PhilHibbs]

17 minutes ago, metcalph said:

Although it's not explicitly stated in the text, Call on Stars seems to be only intended to cast ONE spirit magic spell.  This is inferred from the caster not needing magic points to cast the spirit magic, which would be a bit unbalanced if it conferred general knowledge of spirit magics.

Ah of course, that clarifies what I was wondering as well.

[Joerg]

On 12/16/2020 at 12:26 PM, PhilHibbs said:

Is there no fast track officer programme?

There is quite likely to be a special pathway for sorcerer candidates or even high administrator pathways. The military has all manner of duties - it will need engineers, bladesmiths, quartermasters, scribes, and guardians versed in these may well keep following those trades upon qualifying as men-of-all. Everybody will have undergone basic military training, but that doesn't make anyone an elite soldier. Everybody will have learned some first aid, but not every man-of-all will be an expert combat medic.

High ranking Hrestoli do take on padawans, or squires. It would be unusual for Hrestoli sorcerers not to pick out promising assistants.

All IMO

[Kloster]

5 hours ago, davecake said:

There is a pretty obvious consequence to be drawn from the combination of Free INT, long casting times, a need for lots of magic points, powerful sorcery spells for commanding spirits, players wanting more dramatic sorcery, etc. Though I suspect it is not something that was designed into the system deliberately, IIRC quite the opposite, it seems hard to argue against from a practical perspective. Which is that sorcerers are going to find bound spirits so irresistibly advantageous I suspect most powerful sorcerers are going to want to get one. The answer to ‘how do sorcerers cast practical magic in combat’ is probably ‘they use spirit magic’ just like everyone else, only via having bound spirits that know the spells for them. The utility of bound spirits to sorcerers is enormous. 
And it ties into the more organised, collective, individually specialised nature of sorcery, too. A bunch of sorcerers will be experts in summoning and commanding certain spirits, a sorcerous school builds up a collection of known entities and classes of entities, binding enchantments can be a bit of a ‘rite of passage’. 
Capturing and exploiting spirits this way has always been something wizards could do (eg energy prison myths in Revealed Mythologies), there seems nothing against the strictures of Malkionism (or any practical rules reason why not) for wizards to capture and utilize spirits this way - they are enslaving them, not worshipping them or befriending them, Zzabur is fine with that. 
So while RQ3 sorcery tried to have rules that meant wizards would have to have familiars, and largely failed to achieve what it wanted (both PC and NPC sorcerers avoided the obvious animal familiars due to the INT reduction, and instead we got more and more strange stretches of the rules, some of the most dubious in ‘official’ publications), RQG said that sorcerers didn’t need familiars - but organically created a situation where every sorcerer will find a familiar (or other bound spirit) so practically useful as to make a huge different in their playability and utility, and clearly the best use of a couple of POW points. Ironically, this happens largely because sorcerers is so deliberately constrained and weakened that even the best sorcerers will find pure sorcery lacking in important ways compared to spirit magic. 

 

As simple question occurs to me while re-reading this post: We know (RQG p365) that the binder can use the spells known by a spirit he has bind and (RQG p249) that the holder of the spirit binding matrix (or crystal) can order the bound spirits to use it's powers (for me, including casting spells), but it can become difficult to find the spirit with the right assortment of spells. Is it possible to ask a Rune priest or lord to use spell teaching for a bound spirit, instead of for yourself? Priests can teach to Lay Members, so being initiated (like Allied spirit are) is not necessary.

[davecake]

as Kloster has pointed out, yes, you can use the spells of a bound spirit, as page 366. It is only spirit magic, which is not as good as RQ3, but still great for an RQG sorcerer. There is no indication that either can teach the other spells - so sorcerers will want to summon spirits that they know already know potentially useful spirit magic. 
if you read only pg 249 on its own you might get confused.

And in addition if the spirit has other abilities, you can order it to perform them for you. 

3 hours ago, metcalph said:

Unfortunately the description of them in RQG versa) "Allied spirits are limited in number, and only the most stalwart and loyal priests can obtain these divine companions" (RQG p227) and following rules suggests they are rarer than they were in previous editions.

They are not drastically rare. Just down the page, you can read a new priest or lord has well over a 50% chance, and sorcerers more than that (the two attributes they use are Pow and Int, so you’d figure a sorcerer has a better than average chance). And that’s just at first - they get more chances later. I figure your average LCM (or adventurous) sorcerer has a pretty good chance. 

[FlamingCatOfDeath]

On 12/16/2020 at 2:34 AM, Jeff said:

Another reason the Brithini and Vadeli are far more cautious is because of their immortality and lack of an afterlife.

I understand they philosophically don’t believe that the spirit in the afterlife is the same entity as the person it came from but I want to double check that they actually lack afterlifes? May I ask why this is? I am sorry if this has already been answered.

Edited May 18, 2022 by FlamingCatOfDeath
Accidentally posted before I was done

[JRE]

Afterlife for the West is a mess, as how can you differentiate whether your soul disappears (Brithini) or goes to Solace in Grace and cannot be detected or interacted with (classic Malkioni)? 

Brithini practise a kind of Ressurrection, though limited in time, so the spirit can be rejoined with the body some time after death. But after that time, it is gone. You will not find it in Daka Fal's court, you cannot ressurrect the body because the spirit is gone, and the descendants cannot contact it through ancestor magics. Gone forever. It does not go to Hell like most theists do, even if only for a short while.

Most Malkioni believe in reincarnation if you do not achieve Solace, so their souls are not lost, and actually that is one of Malkion's promises, that your soul will persist after your death, rejected by the Brithini. I am not sure how you can prove whether you have a reincarnated soul or a new one, but I am sure there are people making a living by "awakening" your past lives and "proving" you were Bailiffes the Hammer in a previous life, or someone similar. 

[Jeff]

2 hours ago, JRE said:

Afterlife for the West is a mess, as how can you differentiate whether your soul disappears (Brithini) or goes to Solace in Grace and cannot be detected or interacted with (classic Malkioni)? 

Brithini practise a kind of Ressurrection, though limited in time, so the spirit can be rejoined with the body some time after death. But after that time, it is gone. You will not find it in Daka Fal's court, you cannot ressurrect the body because the spirit is gone, and the descendants cannot contact it through ancestor magics. Gone forever. It does not go to Hell like most theists do, even if only for a short while.

Most Malkioni believe in reincarnation if you do not achieve Solace, so their souls are not lost, and actually that is one of Malkion's promises, that your soul will persist after your death, rejected by the Brithini. I am not sure how you can prove whether you have a reincarnated soul or a new one, but I am sure there are people making a living by "awakening" your past lives and "proving" you were Bailiffes the Hammer in a previous life, or someone similar. 

Actually it is not a mess - you just need the right vantage.

The Brithini hold that your ego is you. As your ego dies upon death, you are gone. Your spirit and other energies, etc., dissipates to wherever they are attuned to - but that's the shade of you, not you. Everything else is just sentimentality and Hallmark cards.

Most Malkioni hold that after death the essential you persists (the soul) and will be reincarnated into the mundane world. We gain Solace in this - that there is an immortal Self.

[JRE]

Thanks for the clarification. My messiness (as a good thing*, if it was not clear from my West interest) came from a Lore auction (I think it was Sandy) claiming that Western souls did not go to the same place as Theists, and I actually think it ia a bonus if it cannot be proved whether the souls disappear, go to Solace or reincarnate. Ambiguity explains the many Malkioni sects. That would also make the Orlanthi concern about Meldeks more real, as if you convert your soul will be lost to your family forever.

*Fake religions and bad fantasy are neat and ordered. The real things are messy. confusing for outsiders and evolve to adapt to changing circumstances.