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Spirit Spell - Magic Point Enchantment


Godlearner

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This enchantment last forever and apparently has no consequences (in terms of POW loss) if the casting roll is failed. To me it means that there should be MPMs all over the place, and certainly many passed from generation to generation. Every adventurer should be carrying a couple and they are commonly available for sale. Seems pretty broken.

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18 minutes ago, Godlearner said:

certainly many passed from generation to generation

Those are the ones from the 'Family heirloom' table.

19 minutes ago, Godlearner said:

Every adventurer should be carrying a couple

It is almost the case.

19 minutes ago, Godlearner said:

they are commonly available for sale

Considering the base point of 200L per point of POW, there are not many possible buyers. I think they mostly stay in the family.

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19 minutes ago, Godlearner said:

Considering it is something like the year 1620+, there should be plenty floating around for sale. One can make a comfortable living selling these things as well at 200L per point.

I'm sure that there was a massive production of these things in the second age, but the rites of Zistorite Mass Production have been lost -- thankfully.

And few people would want to venture into the clanking ruins to find those cursed relics.

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6 minutes ago, Tindalos said:

I'm sure that there was a massive production of these things in the second age, but the rites of Zistorite Mass Production have been lost -- thankfully.

And few people would want to venture into the clanking ruins to find those cursed relics.

The Zistorite mass produced magic items are something else. This is just the regular concern that since they last for ever, there will just be a very large accumulation of them. Of course they don't last for ever, they get lost, broken, eaten by trolls, hurled into the howling void of chaos, etc.

Another way of looking at it is, the spell description just doesn't say how long they last because it isn't really relevant. You can't extrapolate Gloranthan reality from a spell description.

Every time someone swings a sword at you, there's a chance that it will hit an enchantment matrix that you have on your person. Got an arm torc with magic points in it? It might get broken if someone hacks at your arm. Fall off a wall and hit your head? That enchanted gem on your circlet might smash. There are no rules for this, because it's no fun to have the GM just take your toys away for no good story reason.

Edited by PhilHibbs
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1 POW isn't an insignificant sacrifice, especially since you can't guarantee how much value you'll get out of it. On top of that, it's a fairly rare spell. No cults in the core rules teach it, and my assumption is that, in practice, it's pretty much just a toy for shamans if they can hunt down a spirit to teach it, and they have better things to spend POW on than mass producing these things.

Edit: what you should really worry about is the Rune magic variation of this, since A) nearly every cult teaches it and B) there's probably more rune priests than full shamans in the world.

Edited by Richard S.
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7 minutes ago, Godlearner said:

All it takes is one Issaries/Etyries/Argan Argar to get hold of it and its all over the place.

Perhaps, but if that is true it obviously hasn't happened yet, as there is no surplus of MP enchantments (though I wouldn't say they're exactly rare either). Maybe that's something you could explore in your own games.

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2 hours ago, Godlearner said:

This enchantment last forever and apparently has no consequences (in terms of POW loss) if the casting roll is failed. To me it means that there should be MPMs all over the place, and certainly many passed from generation to generation.

Don't confuse the POW economy of adventurers with that of NPCs. Most people wouldn't have the POW to spare for such things. 

Most of my players put them on their bodies so they can't lose them. The Lunar sorcerer in one my games has his as part of ritual scarification, as he adds to the enchantment the scar gets bigger. Those that don't go for the body, tend to add restrictions on who can use them. See RQG page 250, Conditions on Enchantments. A common condition excludes all but clan members, or in one case their bloodline. It cost an extra POW, but you can build enchantments up.

2 hours ago, Godlearner said:

Every adventurer should be carrying a couple and they are commonly available for sale. Seems pretty broken.

Why is this broken?

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17 minutes ago, Godlearner said:

Broken because there is no "downside" to make these things. IMO, they would be so common that there is really no reason for anyone to use extra POW into putting conditions on them. 

There's the pretty big downside of losing around a tenth of your soul every time you make one, at minimum, with a decent risk of making something nearly worthless unless you pump some more into it. Plus, anyone who's not a shaman or regularly adventuring has a relatively tough time recovering Power.

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Quote

There's the pretty big downside of losing around a tenth of your soul every time you make one, at minimum, with a decent risk of making something nearly worthless unless you pump some more into it. Plus, anyone who's not a shaman or regularly adventuring has a relatively tough time recovering Power.

Its not really 10%, more like 6% as I do not expect anyone with a POW of 10 to do this. Even an NPC gets POW gain roll several time a year and we are talking over a period of years anyway.

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16 minutes ago, Godlearner said:

Its not really 10%, more like 6% as I do not expect anyone with a POW of 10 to do this. Even an NPC gets POW gain roll several time a year and we are talking over a period of years anyway.

Only god-talkers and higher get more than 1-2 POW gain rolls a year without training or fighting, and regardless of who you still need to make a worship roll in the first place, which for the vast majority of people probably isn't too high of a chance. Even priests will probably only get a chance once a month, and they're probably more concerned with spending extra POW on rune points, heroquests and temple rituals, feeding the wyter, and that sort of thing.

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2 hours ago, Godlearner said:

All it takes is one Issaries/Etyries/Argan Argar to get hold of it and its all over the place.

I'm sure it's not that hard to come by. But most people don't have a ton of spare POW, and there's always plenty of other things to do with it (like another point of reusable rune magic, which in my opinion is better than 1d10 MP).

And once there are "enough" of these around, the impetus to create more diminishes.

Edited by PhilHibbs
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33 minutes ago, Godlearner said:

And what you need to consider is that not all RQ games are set in Glorantha. 

While you certainly can do that, as BRP is a magnificently adaptable system, the intent behind RQG is that you will be playing in Glorantha, and thus there's no reason for the rules to be written with the expectation of playing outside of it. If you want to play something like RQ outside of Glorantha, it'd be much better to just use the big gold book.

Edited by Richard S.
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3 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

The Zistorite mass produced magic items are something else. This is just the regular concern that since they last for ever, there will just be a very large accumulation of them. Of course they don't last for ever, they get lost, broken, eaten by trolls, hurled into the howling void of chaos, etc.

I was also trying to give an implication, but should have made it more obvious, that a lot of these ancient enchanted items might be used because they signify bad things. Sorry for not being clearer.

It's just that a lot of them from the past ages may be politically inappropriate to use, and may even be destroyed. Apart from zistorites, you've got other Middle Sea Empire devices associated with soulless sorcery. You'll have EWF creations covered in dragons that probably weren't popular in the resettlement era... or any time before Argrath. Then there's the first age ones, probably dealing with Nysalor or Arkat's empires, which wouldn't be popular either.

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7 hours ago, Scotty said:

Don't confuse the POW economy of adventurers with that of NPCs. Most people wouldn't have the POW to spare for such things. 

So is this finally an official clarification that NPCs don't get at least two POW gain rolls per year from their cults (HHD + Sacred Time) the way PCs do? This has always been one of the most unclear things about the game to me.

Because if they do gain these rolls, then they most certainly have the POW to spare. Most everyone would get at least one POW biannually. Either adults should have really high POW, or they will have used it for something.

7 hours ago, Scotty said:

Why is this broken?

The game often seems to assume some kind of MP economy? It has often been noted that with a decent amount of storage, MP costs get completely trivialized, and you can cast your +1000% Sword Trances, unlimited healing, undispellable Extended Rune Magic, and the like.

Edited by Akhôrahil
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17 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

Are the PCs expected to? That's not something the game mentions.

I was extrapolating from the fact that wyters use POW to fuel most of their magic, and replenish it with POW sacrificed from the community. Now, to be fair, wyters don't need a whole lot of POW (relative to the size of the community) to get back to full, but I'd imagine that over the course of a year it'd use enough magic that most adults would need to give it 1-2 points.

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27 minutes ago, Richard S. said:

I was extrapolating from the fact that wyters use POW to fuel most of their magic, and replenish it with POW sacrificed from the community. Now, to be fair, wyters don't need a whole lot of POW (relative to the size of the community) to get back to full, but I'd imagine that over the course of a year it'd use enough magic that most adults would need to give it 1-2 points.

You think the Wyter is spending maybe 1000 Rune Points per year? That seems... dramatically high. Especially since this would be a very real drain on a community that could otherwise use their POW for more sustainable things, like actual Rune points, enchantments, and so on. What is it even casting, that the priesthood can't support instead? Now, there is emergency stuff where it might be called for, and it might have some unique powers, but hundreds and hundreds of Rune Points worth of one-use magic, routinely, annually?

Edited by Akhôrahil
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