Which is the *worst* cult?

[SevenSistersOfVinga]

Trigger warning: power gaming.

 

So you are telling me, that 
Loup Fireclaw, shaman of waha, storm bull berserker, keeper of oakfed, trained by the waha cult in Spear, uses shamanism to hold protection, strength and ignite his Spear on fire wich burns brighter by the secret of the wild fire Is not power gamer worthy?

With armor + protección + shield + berserk protection
With a Spear that does fireblade+ damage mod + wildfire d6s (you pick your power level)

With skill x2 from berserk (and a fetch)
A hero who can sense chaos and be unaffected by it, even heal it's wounds.
A hero who can summon helpers to attack chaos beats and even the odds 
A hero who can walk on the spirit grass as tall and proud as he does on this land 

Waha is top tier damage as far I know.

 

 

 

[Eff]

5 hours ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

A shaman, especially a PC shaman who breaks the usual rules like PCs do, can come from most any cult.  I agree that shaman are very effective PCs.  Claiming that Waha is a fine effective PC cult because it's members can be shamans is almost meaningless.  Would one claim that Humakt is a "good knowledge cult" because it's members can also join LM?

Our party has a Eurmal shaman.  He's super effective because he can do those awesome shamany things.  And, in addition, he can Lie, Crack, and go Invisible!

I think it's also very much the case that the Waha cult as it is presented is the dominant socially organizing cult of Praxian men, and unless we take it as given that Prax is the land of shamans in the way Sartar is described as the Kingdom of Heroes, the fact that the cult's magic is the way it is and the assumed commonality of Rune Magic make the cult incongruous with the apparent workings of Praxian culture. Which is somewhat similar with the incongruity of Yelmalio's cult magic with the ideas of the Yelmalio cult. I think these things are perfectly fine with an intent to get players wondering about these incongruities, but insisting that there are no incongruities and that there's nothing funky about the implicit mythological landscape here runs a bit counter to that.

But this is the crux for me, as opposed to pure power-gaming considerations- it doesn't really matter that Uleria has three very specific spells, because those spells all tie into the base conception of Uleria, even as they fit more weakly with the more elevated conception of her as more than the goddess of sex and sex workers. If I play an Uleria cultist on the basis of a description of the cult and goddess, I know what I'm in for, generally speaking.

Edited May 16, 2022 by Eff

[Darius West]

On 5/15/2022 at 4:54 AM, Rodney Dangerduck said:

This is meaningless.  Issaries, Argan Argar, and Pavis make absolutely no claim to be combat warrior cults.  They provide many other opportunities for PC role play and to let them "shine" in action and missions.

Waha and Yelmalio are presented as "traditional" male oriented warrior cults.

At what point did your initial comment mention warrior cults specifically?  Having read over your first comment, you may have thought you mentioned that you were talking about warrior cults, and it may have been clear in YOUR mind, but you didn't actually include any mention that the cults under discussion had to be war cults.  I mean, no biggie, it's easy to forget things like that when jotting off ideas on a forum...

Edited May 16, 2022 by Darius West

[Shiningbrow]

One thing I would fine annoying about being in Waha is how half of the skill selection to be a Khan aren't on the Cult skills list - no Orate, Scan or Track, and the "another weapon skill" may or may not be a "tribal weapon". I hope this is corrected in the upcoming book! Certainly, there needs to be an 's' added to that last one.

Can one be both a Khan and a Shaman/priest? Because it says Khans are also priests... this is confusing.

[Shiningbrow]

7 hours ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

A shaman, especially a PC shaman who breaks the usual rules like PCs do, can come from most any cult

I don't think this is correct. Although not specifically mentioned, I doubt it's true for most cults, as they are theistic not animistic (yes, I'm using RL terms which don't fully align with Gloranthan terms).

[Gamesmeister]

7 hours ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

A shaman, especially a PC shaman who breaks the usual rules like PCs do, can come from most any cult.  I agree that shaman are very effective PCs.  Claiming that Waha is a fine effective PC cult because it's members can be shamans is almost meaningless.  Would one claim that Humakt is a "good knowledge cult" because it's members can also join LM?

Our party has a Eurmal shaman.  He's super effective because he can do those awesome shamany things.  And, in addition, he can Lie, Crack, and go Invisible!

Can they? I mean, YGMV of course, and you can allow your players to do whatever works for your game, but I would think that Shamans would be far too busy in the spirit world and doing their spirity things to also find time to worship a non-shamanic deity. I mean, if you want to have a Yelmalio-worshipping shaman at your table then go for it, but to me that goes against the mythology of the god and I wouldn't allow it. I'd also include Eurmal in that category - gods are quite jealous when it comes to sharing worshippers with non-associated beings, and I don't see even Eurmal being keen on his trickster spending all their time in the spirit world holed up with the Horned Man. 

[Eff]

9 minutes ago, Shiningbrow said:

I don't think this is correct. Although not specifically mentioned, I doubt it's true for most cults, as they are theistic not animistic (yes, I'm using RL terms which don't fully align with Gloranthan terms).

The language is that certain cults forbid members to become shamans or learn sorcery, not that certain ones permit it. The restriction that might matter is the need for a shamanic tradition, but there's no exhaustive list of shamanic traditions out there and no requirement they need to be associated with a member cult, and nothing in the chapter on shamans in the rules treats them as intrinsically part of a cult.

[PhilHibbs]

13 minutes ago, Eff said:

The language is that certain cults forbid members to become shamans or learn sorcery, not that certain ones permit it. The restriction that might matter is the need for a shamanic tradition, but there's no exhaustive list of shamanic traditions out there and no requirement they need to be associated with a member cult, and nothing in the chapter on shamans in the rules treats them as intrinsically part of a cult.

That may be true, but if you're a shaman then you can never progress to Rune Level of a cult unless that cult specifically incorporates shamans into their structure. And I suspect that you would have to become a shaman through the cult's tradition as well, rather than through a foreign shamanic path. So being a shaman and an initiate of another deity means the other deity is always going to be a side hustle.

[Squaredeal Sten]

7 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

I’m not confident here, but don’t you typically require a shaman-supporting cult to become a shaman? Even if it’s just an ”implicit” cult, like Horned Man? In this case, Waha does support this, in ways most cult’s don’t, seeing how Waha includes a shaman path?

Waha even gives bonuses when the chacter is promoted to full shaman.  So Waha shamans are better than other shamans of similar experience and they are also ex officio rune priests.  Of course getting there is a development challenge for the player, but how to get to rune level is the core chalkenge for every RQ character..

Ignoring the shaman path for Waha is like ignoring the warrior path for  Humakt.  It's bound to lead to frustration.  But don't expect sympathy when you complain that Humakt cultists really suck at negotiation and their ambushing skills are negligible, and Eurmalis are much better at deception.

 

 

 

Edited May 16, 2022 by Squaredeal Sten
Spelling

[Godlearner]

7 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

’m not confident here, but don’t you typically require a shaman-supporting cult to become a shaman? Even if it’s just an ”implicit” cult, like Horned Man? In this case, Waha does support this, in ways most cult’s don’t, seeing how Waha includes a shaman path?

We always played that shamanic cults have acolytes/God Talkers. These leaders would have access to all the rune spells, but no be shamans.

[Eff]

1 hour ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

Waha even gives bonuses when the chacter is promoted to full shaman.  So Waha shamans are better than other shamans of similar experience and they are also ex officio rune priests.  Of course getting there is a development challenge for the player, but how to get to rune level is the core chalkenge for every RQ character..

Ignoring the shaman path for Waha is like ignoring the warrior path for  Humakt.  It's bound to lead to frustration.  But don't expect sympathy when you complain that Humakt cultists really suck at negotiation and their ambushing skills are negligible, and Eurmalis are much better at deception.

 

 

 

The thing here is that if I look at any given bit of Glorantha material, I am likely to learn that the Animal Nomads of Prax have a culture where men primarily worship Waha and women Eiritha, with the additional Storm Bull, Foundchild, Daka Fal, and non-gamified Helpwoman, etc. And if I want to play an Animal Nomad man, I'll pick Waha, probably. But Animal Nomad culture as presented is not one where the assumption is that you're playing a nascent shaman, you're playing someone who lives in an environment of raiding and skirmishing and jockeying for position. 

And outside of Prax, Waha is a professional cult for butchers and meatdressers and the like. And maybe we should read them as nascent shamans too, but the text seems silent either way. 

To contrast, I will be told that Humakt is a god of war and the sword, and that is what I will get at every level of the cult- skills, spirit magic, rune magic, and then I can look at things like Oath and contemplate what else Humakt can do- but the discontinuity between the fiction and the mechanics is not really present there. 

Is this incongruity bad? Well, that depends on a lot of contextual factors. I think part of it is that in the RQ2 era the Animal Nomads weren't seen as a source of PCs and so the Waha cult being weirdly incongruous is less annoying for some people in that context, but now they are seen as a core source of PCs. And of course part of this is whether there's a "lesson" to be taught in Waha like with Yelmalio, as well, such that the incongruity points to something. 

[Rodney Dangerduck]

The Chaosium White Bull campaign features Enkala, a Storm Bull shaman.  (She might be only an "assistant" in season one)  Unlike Daka Fal, Waha, and Yelm, Storm Bull does not explicitly "support" shamen in the rules.  I take that to mean that other cults generally allow shamen.

Edited May 16, 2022 by Rodney Dangerduck

[Rick Meints]

I've always thought Primal Chaos was the worst cult.

[Eff]

One option here might be to make Storm Bull the presented dominant cult of Animal Nomad men, which synchronizes a bit better with that Hate (Chaos) Passion. Storm Bull has a fair amount of options for the violence of Animal Nomad life, Storm Bull downplays the Oedipal weirdness of Waha and Eiritha as the men's cult and women's cult, and so on. You could even say something about how in RQ rules terms most Praxian men shift from Storm Bull to Waha as they grow older while remaining in the same cult, as it were. Of course, this is still something of a significant change. 

[EpicureanDM]

On 5/14/2022 at 8:36 PM, Jeff said:

Yelmalio did his greatest deeds after he was stripped of most of his power, after most every other god was dead. And that was to not be extinguished. He remained, a Last Light in the Darkness, when everything else had gone.

Yelmalio didn't have to use the rules of RQG to make his mark.

[g33k]

12 hours ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

A shaman, especially a PC shaman who breaks the usual rules like PCs do, can come from most any cult.  I agree that shaman are very effective PCs.  Claiming that Waha is a fine effective PC cult because it's members can be shamans is almost meaningless.  Would one claim that Humakt is a "good knowledge cult" because it's members can also join LM?

Our party has a Eurmal shaman.  He's super effective because he can do those awesome shamany things.  And, in addition, he can Lie, Crack, and go Invisible!

I agree that "interesting" PC's can be exceptional cases, but you're rapidly heading down the powergamer path in this argument:  shamanism "doesn't count" because non-RAW characters can add it to their other/Cultic affiliations.  Eurmal has *nothing* to do with shamanism; there is no "Axis Mundi" or "Discorporation" or any of the other classic "shamany" things.

Waha has *everything* to do with Shamanism -- it is the explicit growth-path within the Waha-cult:  not toward more and more Rune Magic, but toward Shamanic power.

Unless you feel that a "pure shaman" is a "bad" cult-choice, because it isn't paired to a potent "adventurer's" Cult?

Also:  Shamanism is just as time-consuming (if not more) as pursuing Cultic advancement & the Rune-Magic path.  At my table, there's likely to be some hard choices to be made... in any given "downtime" advancement, are you going on a spirit-quest for shamanic power, or a temple-meditation & POW-sac for Cult/Rune advancement?  There usually isn't time to do both!  Your Eurmali Shaman "should" be only about half as powerful as a shaman -- in Shamanic Abilities, bound spirits, etc. -- as a Waha shaman is; and correspondingly, also less-powerful as a Eurmali, than a pure Eurmal initiate.

[jajagappa]

2 hours ago, Eff said:

I think part of it is that in the RQ2 era the Animal Nomads weren't seen as a source of PCs

I think you only have to look at the RQ2 Cults of Prax, Borderlands, and the like to see that was not the case.  That was pretty much the sandbox that was available in the 80s.

[Eff]

5 minutes ago, g33k said:

Unless you feel that a "pure shaman" is a "bad" cult-choice, because it isn't paired to a potent "adventurer's" Cult?

I don't see anyone saying negative things about Daka Fal here, and in general, either. I think there's a kind of twofold question here- should Waha be treated as a "playable" cult like the Lightbringers (+Ernalda), or a "playable" cult like Engizi or Daka Fal, or a cult like Ty Kora Tek or Uleria or Barntar which is also "playable" but was not put into the core book? And if we answer that question in terms of "it's OK if Waha is a specialized shaman cult and not particularly effective at adventuring", how should that be communicated to players and GMs so they understand what they're in for when they pick Waha? 

Like, is the ideal Runequest state that playing a Praxian male character who's a typical member of his society (an initiate, not a shaman) means that you should have less useful magic available to you than a typical Sartarite or Esrolian (playing Orlanth or Ernalda cultists, or maybe Lightbringers) for the situations of a typical published scenario? If that's so, it should probably be a bit more obvious than it is, because I've anecdotally had to deal with quite a bit of player frustration at these kinds of gaps in understanding. If not, then there is perhaps an issue at work here, whether around what kinds of scenarios are published or around the cult or around the way in which Prax is laid out and described, and maybe there's cause to adjust things to resolve that issue. 

2 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

I think you only have to look at the RQ2 Cults of Prax, Borderlands, and the like to see that was not the case.  That was pretty much the sandbox that was available in the 80s.

I mean, when I read through Borderlands, I was surprised at the extent to which PCs are assumed to be outsiders to Prax who wouldn't have connections with the Praxians who interact with Duke Raus's people. Which is why I came to the conclusion that Animal Nomads were not seen as PC-friendly back then by the people writing campaigns and scenarios as they are seen as PC-friendly today by the people writing campaigns and scenarios. It may be that I misunderstood Borderlands completely, but that was the impression I got from a readthrough! And of course that's separate from how people actually played. 

[Godlearner]

2 hours ago, Rick Meints said:

I've always thought Primal Chaos was the worst cult.

As a Choatic, it gives you choices. 

[Bill the barbarian]

5 hours ago, Gamesmeister said:

I mean, if you want to have a Yelmalio-worshipping shaman at your table then go for it, but to me that goes against the mythology of the god and I wouldn't allow it.

Howdy, nice to meet you GM. just to check how wold ya feel about a Yelm worshipping shaman?

2 hours ago, Rick Meints said:

I've always thought Primal Chaos was the worst cult.

Yep

 

Edited May 16, 2022 by Bill the barbarian

[Jeff]

49 minutes ago, Eff said:

One option here might be to make Storm Bull the presented dominant cult of Animal Nomad men, which synchronizes a bit better with that Hate (Chaos) Passion. Storm Bull has a fair amount of options for the violence of Animal Nomad life, Storm Bull downplays the Oedipal weirdness of Waha and Eiritha as the men's cult and women's cult, and so on. You could even say something about how in RQ rules terms most Praxian men shift from Storm Bull to Waha as they grow older while remaining in the same cult, as it were. Of course, this is still something of a significant change. 

Storm Bull is not the dominant cult of Animal Nomad men - that is definitely Waha.

[Jeff]

1 hour ago, EpicureanDM said:

Yelmalio didn't have to use the rules of RQG to make his mark.

Nor did Orlanth. Or Ernalda. Or any other deity. 

[soltakss]

2 hours ago, Rick Meints said:

I've always thought Primal Chaos was the worst cult.

Or Gestetner!

It still burns ...

 

[EpicureanDM]

34 minutes ago, Jeff said:

Nor did Orlanth. Or Ernalda. Or any other deity. 

Right, so let's not confuse a fictional deity's purported achievements written using a word processor with what a PC might expect to achieve using the game's rules and dice. I can quote Yelmalian scripture about how their Templars achieved outsized success using their famous phalanx tactics against magically and numerically superior foes. That's useless to a PC Yelmalian who's in a party with three other non-Yelmalian characters, none of whom is trained in formation fighting. 

[EpicureanDM]

1 hour ago, Eff said:

Like, is the ideal Runequest state that playing a Praxian male character who's a typical member of his society (an initiate, not a shaman) means that you should have less useful magic available to you than a typical Sartarite or Esrolian (playing Orlanth or Ernalda cultists, or maybe Lightbringers) for the situations of a typical published scenario? If that's so, it should probably be a bit more obvious than it is...

This is absolutely correct. If there's a published adventure whose success depends in significant part on a successful Peaceful Cut or Ride roll, or the use of Axis Mundi, I'd be grateful to be pointed to it. There's a real disconnect between the designers who think that it's important for PCs to have the Farming skill and the ones sending players into The Smoking Ruins.