Okay, who’s played an odd race or adventure archetype?

[ffilz]

I checked the elf’s character sheet. No misses on skills to make initiate. Also since we play RQ1 we use defense not dodge and the character has a 45% (or higher) defense and a real easy increase roll on it with the really high INT. 

[PhilHibbs]

1 hour ago, Stephen L said:

 Our house rule is that the POW gain roll is failing against the species average on the resistance table.

Oh, I rather like that.

[Stephen L]

8 minutes ago, PhilHibbs said:

Oh, I rather like that.

Thanks.

For humans, it's equivalent probabilities to RAW (If you take the round the average to be 11).  And it's much better for POWs that aren't 3D6, as it scales with the average value.

[davecake]

I also had an elf PC in an RQ3 game I GMed who totally outclassed the other players. He qualified for Wood Lord at character generation. The other players included a Hrestoli (the game was in Fronela, based around Sog City) who, according to the RQ3 rules, was a sorcery user but who wasn’t even allowed to earn Intensity until he’d qualified during play, so the gap in levels of competence was huge. 
 

The elf was a warrior, and rolled 15 on the 2d8 for age, which meant +75 to his Bow skill. He was very lethal at range, and better than most at melee (though no damage bonus). He was also an elf far from his home in a city based campaign, so needed lots of help from humans to get stuff done, in a not particularly combat heavy game. From memory he had some special mission from the forest to accomplish, in a game with the Kingdom of War as looming off scene plot driver but not actually encountered much. 

Edited November 15, 2021 by davecake

[Stephen L]

16 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

18 hours ago, Stephen L said:

 Our house rule is that the POW gain roll is failing against the species average on the resistance table.

Oh, I rather like that.

The other house rule I considered was failing a resistance roll against your initial rolled POW.  Effectively you can only increase up to 10 POW greater than your initially rolled POW (pegged at species max), and some characters who start with high POW are just more magical than those who don’t.  A bit like DEX can only be 1.5 times initial DEX.

But I think the fail resistance roll against species average (rounding up) works best for our group.

Also, I use the same calculation for the probability for increasing any characteristic (STR, CON, DEX, and CHA) through “research”, not that we’ve done much of that in my game.  Otherwise, RAW would give the Duck a big advantage researching DEX/CON.  RAW means that an Elf with a DEX of 17 has 50% chance of increase from research!  Ducks hit the 50% chance of increase at 16 DEX or CON, and Baboons it’s at 23 DEX or CON!  Pegging the 50% chance of increase to species average makes most sense to me in all cases (which equates to a fail resistance roll against species average).

[Bill the barbarian]

On 11/1/2021 at 9:02 PM, Bill the barbarian said:

Posted this in response to a question on Discord about whether Wind Children are playable and it dawned on me, what odd... ducks or baboons (once played a great film noire inspired baboon detective! "Names Monk, no, just Monk. What’s that? A similarity, no, never noticed... are ya trying to be funny?") or runners... or even odder have you played back in the cool ol’ daze? Anyone play a Maidstone Archer level weird beastie?

Remarkable, for the most part this here little thread stayed on topic. For one of my joints that is truly amazing! Some truly great ideas, but we missed some of my faves from over the years. @soltakss tells of a truly bizarre pixie, if prompted. @MOB has my favourite oddball of all times and then the fan collective got ahold of it and the Spike exploded all over again. Melo Yelo might be one of the truly great RQ and HQ and MGF characters! That’s a hill I would be willing to lose a limb on! 

Spoiler

Last I heard he was bucking for Emperor, or was that a hallucination..?

His sad sack tale of trial and aspiration and his stick-to-it-ness despite the odds! Truly a hero for all times! 

May I introduce my very fave illustration in most RQ and HW and HQ products... The Pic says it all!

Lisa Free drew this sartorially splendid individual, but I often wonder who played him.

Edited November 15, 2021 by Bill the barbarian

[Bill the barbarian]

Yep!

On 11/2/2021 at 5:22 AM, David Scott said:

We played a troll group using RQ3, and played through Snakepipe Hollow

We had a

• Annilla / Jakaleel shaman
• Zong hunter 
• Zorak Zoran Death Lord
• I played a Mistress race Kyger Kitor shaman priestess sorcerer

Now that sounds like a wonder, I would love to try the KL s/p/s but I am not sure if that is because of the power play possibilities or the truly steep learning curve challenge on roleplaying this bad Mama!

On 11/2/2021 at 10:08 AM, soltakss said:

I had great fun with Shergar Sunhoof, Centaur Extraordinaire, a Yelmalian Centaur Rune Lord. He ended up with five legs (Due to Jake's Amulet, diddle-iddle-iddle-um), which gave him an extra free attack, and a Spider Mask that meant he could turn his head into that of a giant spider, so he was a veritable windmill who would rip apart crowds of NPCs, leaving the other PCs to attack the major beasties. His failing was being really bad at climbing, so he carried a block & tackle in case he had to be pulled up a cliff.

Not knowing where to begin I will simply repeat this one and let it speak for itself...

On 11/2/2021 at 11:20 AM, ffilz said:

Oh, and the player seemed to have no interest in actually engaging the setting. So here was this uber-elf priest slum murder hobo adventuring with humans and baboons with no obvious reason why the Aldryami would give two hoots about what was going on.

That sounds incredibly tough!

On 11/2/2021 at 4:10 PM, PhilHibbs said:

I played am agoraphobic duck sorcerer who tapped his own SIZ and lived in his familiar's backpack.

A friend of mine has played a wind child and a trollkin.

Of course ya did! Ya munchkin!

On 11/3/2021 at 5:31 AM, AndreJarosch said:

My wife is currently playing a Green Elf from the Elder Wilds on a mission to search for remaining seeds of the burnt Rist forest. 

Nice, tying it into the world!

 

Edited November 15, 2021 by Bill the barbarian

[soltakss]

1 hour ago, Bill the barbarian said:

@soltakss tells of a truly bizarre pixie, if prompted

There were the poleaxe-wielding zombie pixies that one of our GMs used, they could fly, were invisible and appeared to hack at you with poleaxes, because their STR was now high enough to use them.

I can't think of another one, unless it's something that was forgotten.

There was a pixie Trickster, I think, who had the Swallow spell, so would fly behind someone, appear with huge jaws and gobble them up, but that might have been an NPC or a dream.

1 hour ago, Bill the barbarian said:

Melo Yelo might be one of the truly great RQ and HQ and MGF characters! That’s a hill I would be willing to lose a limb on! 

He became Dragon Emperor of Dara Happa in my last Gloranthan campaign. I am not sure if that is canonical, though.

 

[HreshtIronBorne]

On 11/2/2021 at 4:22 AM, David Scott said:

We played a troll group using RQ3, and played through Snakepipe Hollow

We had a

• Annilla / Jakaleel shaman
• Zong hunter 
• Zorak Zoran Death Lord
• I played a Mistress race Kyger Kitor shaman priestess sorcerer

most were members of two cults.

IIRC It was a TPK.

We once rolled up a party where a member or two were Mistress Race Kyger Litor Shaman Priestess Sorceresses. Oh wow were they incredibly powerful. We affectionately referred to the party as the Troll-niboneans because they felt like a party out of Stormbringer swinging demon weapons at mere mortals. 

[ffilz]

On 11/15/2021 at 3:41 AM, Stephen L said:

The other house rule I considered was failing a resistance roll against your initial rolled POW.  Effectively you can only increase up to 10 POW greater than your initially rolled POW (pegged at species max), and some characters who start with high POW are just more magical than those who don’t.  A bit like DEX can only be 1.5 times initial DEX.

The one problem with this is that characters who rolled less than 8 POW could never become Rune Priests, and those who rolled less than 5 could never become Rune Lords (and if applied to RQ1/2, a character who rolled between 8 and 10 POW who wants to be a Rune Priest had better sacrifice for at least some rune magic as an Initiate, especially with an original POW of 8, while rolling less than 11 POW, you need to get all the 3 point spells you want BEFORE you become Rune Priest... This is less of an issue with RQG, but still, an original POW of 8 would limit a Rune Priest.

[PhilHibbs]

12 hours ago, ffilz said:

The one problem with this is that characters who rolled less than 8 POW could never become Rune Priests, and those who rolled less than 5 could never become Rune Lords...

Well, you still have a 5% chance, but it does make it a lot harder.

[ffilz]

9 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

Well, you still have a 5% chance, but it does make it a lot harder.

But the post I quoted said: "The other house rule I considered was failing a resistance roll against your initial rolled POW.  Effectively you can only increase up to 10 POW greater than your initially rolled POW" so no 5% chance of increase no matter what.

[Alex]

On 11/14/2021 at 5:14 PM, Stephen L said:

One thing I noted, in a thread discussion POW gain rolls, in the RQ in G rules (p. 418), both baboons and elves have much greater chance of going up.  At max rollable (18), the chance is min rollable (8) x 5 or a whopping 40% for 2D6+6.

This is an odd rule, especially as it's different from the (also perhaps slightly odd, but more in line wit past practice) "species maximum"  calculation given in chargen, p52.  Not clear to me why they don't use this (or some other common value) in both places.  This seems a little like over-specialisation to the human case, where these just happen to give the same result...

On 11/14/2021 at 5:14 PM, Stephen L said:

Our house rule is that the POW gain roll is failing against the species average on the resistance table.

Seems decent.  Potentially breaks down if you used it for a species where the variability is either way less or way greater than 2D6 or 3D6, but the only real fix for such cases would be to use a different resistance table with an increment other than 5%.

[Ian A. Thomson]

Hmm. Casts mind back

Primary culprit is my own character 'Stifftail the Newtling'. My first actual RQ campaign was Borderlands (and later we got to Pavis). I was given the spare mercenary character who was just a named thug, so I was able to roll him up and invent details, and 5mins into play he was turned into a thin slice of toast by dragonfire.

So the GM (who was the most ruthless GM I ever gamed with) said that the only other character available out here in the wilds was the newtling sergeant: Stifftail. I remember three things about him:

1) He had extremely low HP, so at the start of every combat his action would be to look for, and hide in, the closest good cover.

2) He was quite good with the slingshot, and became excellent at it, saving other PCs many times by stunning or distracting their opponent

3) Under this ruthless GM, he ended up being one of only 2 (out of an original 6) characters from those early days to actually survive the campaign!

[If anyone plays GTA Online by the way, send me a friend request to Stifftail_Raqoon.]

As a GM I also remember a lively Morocanth called Hovak, who eventually found the Mask of Eurmal in the Rubble and was last scene bouncing away across the ruins. Although he did return later (as an NPC) with some peculiar boggle followers at one point when the PCs needed rescuing.

And finally the dwarf Kag Barak, who was a bit of a Maguyver character with a few select flintlocks and mini-blamkegs ('Dwarf Defensive Item: GR-nyd') and trip-wires. He lasted the whole campaign and I think eventually became a top honcho among the Flintnail colony

Edited March 19, 2022 by Ian Thomson

[JustAnotherVingan]

Way back in the 80s when I was a young and inexperienced referee I ran a party that included an elf and a dragonewt.

Also briefly a centaur but he was killed by a poison dart firing duck.

[Oldskolgmr]

Wow, all these stories are fun! 

If they are any more stories like these, I would like to hear them.

P.S. Always a GM, never a player, I wanted to play a Superior Trollkin, Newtling (and I love the Agimori but they seem super powerful).

Edited April 15, 2022 by Badder

[svensson]

14 minutes ago, Badder said:

Wow, all these stories are fun! 

If they are any more stories like these, I would like to hear them.

P.S. Always a GM, never a player, I wanted to play a value Trollkin, Newtling (and I love the Agimori but they seem super powerful).

The problem with Agimori is that their severe susceptibility to cold. A Sartarite winter could legitimately kill one too proud to accept help.

[svensson]

I have two ambitions in RQ characters, one old and one new...

First I'd like to reboot my old RQ 2-3 Rhino Rider, Grettir Sharpwind, and finally get him to Rune level as an Orlanthi. I spent two real-time years trying to get him there with no success. No matter how hard I tried, I could never get him past 85% in Sword Attack... in three different sword types!

The second, newer ambition is to play in a campaign where my Dark Troll plays through getting accepted by a Sartarite Orlanthi clan and initiation in Orlanth... from the base RQ Bestiary statistics. You know, making peaceful contact with adventurers [not hard], earning the trust of a clan [much harder], earning the Runic and skill requirements to initiate into Orlanth without pissing off my Uz matriarch, etc.

[Oldskolgmr]

 

Hey, I can have totally unplayable wants (LMAO)🤣

 

[Oldskolgmr]

3 minutes ago, svensson said:

I have two ambitions in RQ characters, one old and one new...

First I'd like to reboot my old RQ 2-3 Rhino Rider, Grettir Sharpwind, and finally get him to Rune level as an Orlanthi. I spent two real-time years trying to get him there with no success. No matter how hard I tried, I could never get him past 85% in Sword Attack... in three different sword types!

The second, newer ambition is to play in a campaign where my Dark Troll plays through getting accepted by a Sartarite Orlanthi clan and initiation in Orlanth... from the base RQ Bestiary statistics. You know, making peaceful contact with adventurers [not hard], earning the trust of a clan [much harder], earning the Runic and skill requirements to initiate into Orlanth without pissing off my Uz matriarch, etc.

These sound like cool long term ambitions. Does your group still meet? 

[svensson]

29 minutes ago, Badder said:

These sound like cool long term ambitions. Does your group still meet? 

No, the group with the Rhino Rider was long before RQG came out. Mid-90's or so.

I AM teaching my nieces how to play RQ though, in a desperate attempt to be the 'Cool Uncle' 😅. We're doing what I call an 'Atlantis, sort of' campaign. They're interested in Greek mythology and I'm playing with that.