Jar Eel Statblock ?

[French Desperate WindChild]

I can understand some GMs want to create stats, no problem. (I would use stats for her if they were published, but i don't need them because that's jar eel, this awesome goddess avatar)

the most important thing I don't understand is the concept of a GM cheating. People cheat to beat others in a competition (or a competitive game)

But what is the interest for a GM to cheat ? supersede players ? why ? finishing the night with "hey hey, you are all dead, I m the winner" ?

never played with someone like this for sure, and I would stop after one session, or maybe less if I meet a gm like that

 

what is the difference between considering :

a) the superhero has 300% skill : creation (with all the magics spent by her family during so many years - bless pregnancy, etc... - ) + xp + buffs from her followers + buffs because she is prepared and not surprised +  heroic powers (next heroquesting rules). In addition, thousands of worshippers giving her enough heropoints to resist any spells, heroic abilities allowing her to multi cast in one round ten sever spirits,  madness to every one in 100m radius and why not "duplicate body" super power (next heroquesting rules)  and apply the rules 

versus

b) considering there are very few chance to survive if the players decide, after the GM warns them, that is a suicide to attack her.

 

a)  is rule compliant so b) is a cheat ?

And how to determine if 300% is the right number ? if she is able or not to sever spirits ? or to provoke madness and not lust or love ? How many bodies could be allowed ? don't know... If there is no official stat for a npc, I would not advice anyone to create stats, they  could be accused of cheating because she is too powerful or not enough !

Is it a cheat to decide there are 3 broos in the next cave ? To decide the boss has 80% or 60% or explode when dead ?

Is it a cheat to decide without any roll that if you jump from Kerofin you will die if you do nothing (DI, fly spell, any good idea) ? Is it a cheat if Orlanth himself -aka the gm- decides to save you because it was roleplayed as a pure devotion deed ?

 

I  don't understand where is the cheat  and why a gm would like to "cheat".

So for me it is not a cheat (with all the pejorative sense) but a gm style among others.

Not better, not worse, than others. Just one style. Some like it, some are not confortable with it because there is no rule to support it, some dislike it.

That is not an issue. That should not be an issue. That should be good food for thought

 

 

 

 

[Gene M.]

Need some stats for Orlanth so we can kill the big blue bastard.

More seriously, it's a tough situation to balance fidelity to the setting with player agency. Suggestions like looking to her runes or it being an aspect of her seem the right track to me. You could stat her up reasonably high, but I think the flavor of it should be weird and challenging, especially if she acts in some way unexpected to the players (maybe drawing on that Harmony rune). What are the players willing to risk?

[JRE]

That is why I ask what is the GM intention in presenting Jar Eel. Not all meetings must be combat unless the players are stupid or rash (unlike Harrek). Actually, as she knows it is always better to get allies than enemies (that Harmony rune), I would play she is always friendly in a chance encounter. Argrath is like that, too. 

As I do not want any non major Hero player to kill her, she uses her mastery of the Mastery (weird wording) rune so she does not fumble or fail at 96-00 and being immune to criticals. Sword trance does not play a role because it is dismissed at will. No matter what people say, if you give it stats it does not mean it can be killed, unless you are lazy making the stats and just putting big numbers. She also has guaranteed DI (rune level with infinite POW), add the no failure, so no killing. 

It serves as a guideline however. If you have someone with mastery of the infinite rune (the other known people in Glorantha are True Dragons, Harrek and Androgeus), Mastery (Harrek and Androgeus again, but IMG other Heroes have Mastery too), and possibly Death mastery so she cannot heal or use DI to unmake the death blow (like Harrek) you can kill her, though we know she will get better and come back to help her son. I added the fall in love if you beat her to Harmony, because according to some sources Harrek retired after killing her, so he was out of the Dragon Pass Hero Wars, while she came back. Who really won there? It fits with harmony making each other feel the same.

This uses the runes she is known to master (When I said Chaos for the Nysalorian riddles I should have said Moon, but it does not really matter) so you can say it fits with the sources. We just need to decide what the rune mastery means in her case, and I propose my interpretations. Is it cheating? I hope not.

I consider the Mastery rune is usually the first rune in the major hero path. I do not know how Chaosium will solve it, but for me becoming independent of the extremes of Luck is the first step to become a capital Hero, so I have always made major heroes have this advantage. My players never thought to risk their hard earned characters by attacking Heroes, but it helped when I made clear the Hero had this advantage. They still interacted with them, and sometimes even fought in the same side. Makes those opposed rolls against Argrath or Ethilrist less luck dependent when they cannot fumble or fail, but they can still lose. 

I cannot understand how a character that represents an investment of years can decide "I will attack Jar Eel, in the unlikely chance I will win." So, after a warning, I would just make an example (as she would do, to keep any half cocky hero coming after her), so death and imprisonment in a Lunar hell, or if not pressed, capture and indefinite torture / illumination / chaos corruption in the Moon. Which may give interesting rescue adventures for a bunch of powerful characters. 

Of course, if you want your characters to beat Jar Eel, just give her the stats you feel she should have, with no powers the players do not have, and roll.

[Akhôrahil]

3 hours ago, Joerg said:

RuneQuest is but one set of simulation conventions for the setting. If you want to modify the setting to fit your rules, that's your right. I don't think the current design team supports rules that let you rules-lawyer major antagonists through gaps in the GM's shield against such approaches. Cue Thor's Hammer debate...

I do kinda think that given the kind of game RQ is (which is not necessarily the best one to generate Glorantha:ific outcomes) for good and ill, and how it stats for instance the Crimson Bat, I don't think it's unreasonable for players to expect that the opposition follows the rules (those might be very special rules, of course) rather than have an "I Win"-button. If there are superheroes - as there are - then it should be at least in principle possible to become a superhero, and somewhere along that career, it should become reasonably possible to fight other superheroes. Of course, it's understandable for multiple reasons if this is a low design priority, but even so...

[Jeff]

4 hours ago, icebrand said:

OH MAN 1000%!!! SHES SO COOOL!!! Also she has 4 attacks in a 25m radius, not only shes cool, she completely defies reality as defined by our ruleset, like in the comics!!! (rolling eyes @ 1000%, that doesnt work in the current ruleset dude)

PSA: random starting character with axe trance + 10MP and shield 2 also comepletely slaughters half the slave army.

Seriously, if MY gm does something like that i would just gladly accept that fate then just go play videogames or smth, no need for rules lawyering. I mean, you are literally championing ignoring every single rule in the book to support your narrative; if you want arbitrary like that just write a novel

Lune has counterplay. "she is so cool and so much better than you and you die without recourse because shes deadly and beautiful"... Well... 

 

If you made rules for all that stuff just forget everything i said and you rock and share them

I dont think we understand each other; you use "cheat" as a narrative device, when i said cheat i meant like literal cheating (breaking the rules to control the narrative)

No one is rules lawyering, and the design team clearly doesnt support making up mechanics on the fly that work for that single NPC so it can kill whomever wants to derail whatever the GM wants to happen (and if they do they should reconsider).

Icebrand - "Cheating" is a very loaded word.  I don't know if English is a second language, but your approach is consistently aggressively argumentative. After talking with other moderators, I'm giving you a time-out. 

[davecake]

On 6/7/2022 at 3:52 PM, Shiningbrow said:

How did Harrek defeat his god? I don't think he was a full-on hero who had all those HQ powers before he killed his god...

Well, he wasn’t a superhero then - but bear in mind he’d already killed the Red Emperor in a Dart War by that point. So was probably at least a minor Hero then (in 1607) just to be capable of that, then killed the white bear god in 1609 - and has been pretty much non-stop adventuring since then. So he has been steadily accumulating powers since then, but was no slouch even before. 

[Eff]

18 hours ago, icebrand said:

See? This is what i'm talking about. You are straight up cheating. There is no rules for that, why would i die?

Oh yeah, because shes sUpEr SpEcIal and i'm just a player... Because we all know NPC>PC.

BUT i guess it's ok if you run a "narrative" campaign and ignore rules as you see fit. YGWV and all that.

I mean, I wouldn't run it as PCs instantly dying, but Jar-eel is a person of importance in the setting, a major antagonist if you're aligned with Sartar or Pentans or White Moonies, and also, quite literally within the fiction, a one-woman army. I think that fighting her for a PC group should probably be a major plot event, and for a casual "let's us and her fight" encounter like the one described at the start of the thread, I think it's actually extremely fair to have her contemptuously (or graciously) knock the PCs aside in their first encounter to build anticipation for finally defeating her. Just like how video ganes will use unwinnable battles against a major antagonist to build anticipation for finally defeating them. 

And to my mind, Jar-eel's stat block is just "this is what you're interacting with in rules terms to represent the fiction", rather than a direct representation of her as a person in the imaginary space. 

[Akhôrahil]

25 minutes ago, Eff said:

I think that fighting her for a PC group should probably be a major plot event, and for a casual "let's us and her fight" encounter like the one described at the start of the thread, I think it's actually extremely fair to have her contemptuously (or graciously) knock the PCs aside in their first encounter to build anticipation for finally defeating her.

I would always at least give the players a chance to roll a crit. They certainly wouldn't win just because of that, but they would get her attention, and potentially achieve something they were attempting outside of taking her out. A warrior merely drawing blood through a thin cut on her cheek and then surviving would have something to brag about for years! Or it could be enough to distract her from something.

Edited June 8, 2022 by Akhôrahil

[Jeff]

42 minutes ago, Eff said:

I mean, I wouldn't run it as PCs instantly dying, but Jar-eel is a person of importance in the setting, a major antagonist if you're aligned with Sartar or Pentans or White Moonies, and also, quite literally within the fiction, a one-woman army. I think that fighting her for a PC group should probably be a major plot event, and for a casual "let's us and her fight" encounter like the one described at the start of the thread, I think it's actually extremely fair to have her contemptuously (or graciously) knock the PCs aside in their first encounter to build anticipation for finally defeating her. Just like how video ganes will use unwinnable battles against a major antagonist to build anticipation for finally defeating them. 

And to my mind, Jar-eel's stat block is just "this is what you're interacting with in rules terms to represent the fiction", rather than a direct representation of her as a person in the imaginary space. 

It is perfectly appropriate to only provide those stats that show what you are able to interact with in rules terms. In the Short LBQ, that"s going to be what Jar-eel is able to manifest physically in the ceremony. 

Remember that in WBRM terms her combat factor is (20!!) and her magical factor is Invulnerable to attacks from the Spirit Plane. That"s terrifying. When fully present, she is able to destroy regiments. Remember, a single superhero is the equal of a small army and superheroes are invulnerable to most forms of magic.

In MY RUNEQUEST games, anyone going up against Jar-eel, Harrek, Androgeus, a True Dragon, etc., in direct physical combat is going to get probably maimed or killed. The best case scenario is to just last a few rounds without getting maimed or killed (with a really great roll, maybe draw some blood - but that carries its own dangers!). Maybe the point is to delay things a round or two, but unless they have carefully quested to find or create weaknesses (which should be a major theme of the campaign), they aren"t going to beat them in combat or spell casting.  

Edited June 8, 2022 by Jeff

[AndreJarosch]

The best outcome of a PC confronting Jar-eel is not defeating her, but coming alive out of that situation. 

[Akhôrahil]

6 minutes ago, AndreJarosch said:

The best outcome of a PC confronting Jar-eel is not defeating her, but coming alive out of that situation. 

I also don't think you should rule out achieving something important even though you can't reasonably win the actual fight - she is there for a reason, and you can interact with that reason without killing her. This might be a good way to maintain player agency while not devaluing Jar-eel. I would totally give a trickster a chance to lift something from her while the other PCs try to mostly survive for two turns, for instance.

Edited June 8, 2022 by Akhôrahil

[AndreJarosch]

2 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

I also don't think you should rule out achieving something important even though you can't reasonably win the actual fight - she is there for a reason, and you can interact with that reason without killing her. This might be a good way to maintain player agency while not devaluing Jar-eel. I would totally give a trickster a chance to lift something from her while the other PCs try to mostly survive for two turns, for instance.

Yes! Screw with her plans! Make it harder for her to archive her goals! Slow the progress she makes down!
That isthe way to interact with Jar-eel. 
It is a baaaaad idea to try to fight her face to face. 

[Nick Brooke]

13 minutes ago, AndreJarosch said:

The best outcome of a PC confronting Jar-eel is not defeating her, but coming alive out of that situation. 

I disagree. The best outcome was shown in Prince of Sartar, chapter 2.

[davecake]

FWIW, Jar-Eel did put in appearance in an RQG game of mine, so I sketched out some stats for her. The players were very unlikely to try to fight her, she was actually a nominal ally, but they could interact with her in other ways, and it was possible they would end up fighting with her at some point - so a lot of her stats were really in case the PCs ended up with an opportunity to see her in action (they haven’t so far, but they have been privileged to hear her play a tune, and several PCs now have Passions towards her). I used a variety of sources to guess at her abilities - including WBRM, access to a Gods book draft, and yes, her Arduin Grimoire stats (useful more as a source on interesting details, but I just loved finding some use for this ancient oddity). The spells I mention should all be in RBoM.
 

I assumed -

• she was fully Illuminated, and capable of all Illumination abilities at 100%. She almost always recognises other Illuminants straight away. 
• at least her Life, Death, Harmony, Truth, Illusion and Moon runes were at 100%. Yes, some of those are Opposed, Illumination let’s her ignore that. She may have mastered more runes than that. 
• she was effectively a Rune Lord and Rune Priest of multiple Lunar cults, including Seven Mothers, Yanafals Tarnils, Deezola, Hon-Eel, and the Red Goddess, at least. That’s conservative. It’s possible she is a rune level of all the Seven Mothers individually. 
• in no fight that PCs are involved in will she come close to running out of Rune Points or stored magic points. 
• she knows significant Lunar sorcery, and probably has some significant sorcery up if she is remotely facing danger. This includes common combat sorcery too. She also has master sorcerers in her entourage. She has an effective Free INT in the mid-30s. 
• she is a master of Red Goddess magic - so she can manipulate her spirit magic like sorcery. Eg she can cast something like Countermagic 30 if she wants, though it takes a few rounds. She has access to most common spirit magic - but her Free INT is still near maximum. 
• she can discorporate like a shaman if she wants, but avoids doing so most of the time. On reflection, likely she is a Jakaleel witch too, and as such has a fetch (or something like it) and a bunch of shamanic abilities too. 
• she has a bunch of extra surprises, including Spell traded spells, bound Lunar spirits, etc. 
• she has a permanent Glowspot spell on her, so all her Lunar magic is always cast as if it’s Full Moon, and so is that of people near her. 
• she has Cyclical Characteristic cast on herself at all times, for all attributes except SIZ, and her Glowspot means it doubles her attributes, so her attributes are at a minimum in the mid-30s. 
• her attack skills are at least 200%, probably more like 300%+, before she boosts with magic etc. Her personal kopis, Moon Dancer, can fight independently, and is always True Sworded, and many APs. It has a spirit within it (an allied spirit, though not her only one, that is a Yanafals Tarnils cult spirit with Rune Magic of its own) that has Sense Assassin at 100%+, can Detect Undead, and may paralyse all men it hits (those details from the Arduin stats). If she is in a fighting mood she may boost it with more, such as a sorcerous Neutralise Armor, or a Bladesharp 15. It probably also has the effects of YT geases, so double damage after penetrating armor,. 
•  She can Sprout Arms, and will in any serious fight, so fight with up to four kopises or similar. She is also skilled with the bow, sickle-sword, sickle, shield, etc. 
• Her harp I took from Arduin stats too. So it’s called My Song, can charm all who hear it (a bit like the magic of a satyrs pipes), neutralise magic, etc. It’s extremely difficult to target her with weapons or magic while she is playing it. 
• her interpersonal skills should all be considered over 100%, sometimes far more - eg her Sing and Charm are probably 200+%
• hearing her perform musically counts as the Sing or Play Instrument Nysalor Riddle. 
• She has a few other magical bits and pieces, such as a necklace of 37 red jewels that makes her immune to poison, a magical belt that lets her flee to the hero plane in moonlight, etc. 
• of course she has the 1d10 DI of a rune lord. 
• she is usually accompanied by an entourage, typically multiple members of the Bloodspillers regiment, and several elite Lunar magicians of various kinds. 
• if actually encountered in battle, not only will she have a huge amount of extra combat magic up, she is likely able to command resources like the Bloodspillers regimental wyter. 
•  While it is unlikely she’d get injured, and even more unlikely she’d be killed (if not killed in one round, she is usually fully healed at the start of the next round), she will return from the dead within a day or so. Magic to prevent this is beyond the normal rules - it probably would involve heroquesting to confront her as she existed in the Lunar heroplane. 

but as I said, that’s all just a sketch of what she can do, and doesn’t really cover her really cool powers, which will be at the limits of the as-yet-unpublished heroquest rules. It’s just to give my PCs an idea how powerful someone of her status is - if they really tried to take her on, they’d need to be experienced heroquesters to have a chance. 

[AndreJarosch]

1 hour ago, Nick Brooke said:

I disagree. The best outcome was shown in Prince of Sartar, chapter 2.

Getting Illuminated by her?

[Rodney Dangerduck]

2 hours ago, AndreJarosch said:

The best outcome of a PC confronting Jar-eel is not defeating her, but coming alive out of that situation. 

My Vinga worshipping PC has an explicit long-term goal (mainly a section to give GMs ideas).  Along with "Stick it to Annstad" and "Outshine her brother" she has:

"See Jar-eel from a distance and survive.  Even better, meet Jar-eel and survive."

[Gene M.]

27 minutes ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

My Vinga worshipping PC has an explicit long-term goal (mainly a section to give GMs ideas).  Along with "Stick it to Annstad" and "Outshine her brother" she has:

"See Jar-eel from a distance and survive.  Even better, meet Jar-eel and survive."

Reminds me of the Sharpe TV series when they're at Waterloo and want to see Napoleon on the battlefield.

[Rodney Dangerduck]

17 minutes ago, Gene M. said:

Reminds me of the Sharpe TV series when they're at Waterloo and want to see Napoleon on the battlefield.

I stole the idea from that Sharpe episode.

[Lordabdul]

2 hours ago, davecake said:

she has Cyclical Characteristic cast on herself

What's that?

Nice write-up, by the way, although I personally wouldn't have the time or energy to prepare my NPCs so thoroughly 🙂

 

Edited June 8, 2022 by Ludovic aka Lordabdul

[Shiningbrow]

So, how about... if your PCs were to accompany Kallyr on her short LBQ, would allow for the possibility of her completing it successfully? Or, at the very least, not get mortally wounded?

 

 

15 hours ago, JRE said:

We just need to decide what the rune mastery means in her case, and I propose my interpretations. Is it cheating? I hope not.

Yeah,  this is really important - what does "mastery" of a Rune mean, in RQG terms. And will it be covered in the HQ rules? @Jeff

[Nick Brooke]

2 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

So, how about... if your PCs were to accompany Kallyr on her short LBQ, would allow for the possibility of her completing it successfully? Or, at the very least, not get mortally wounded?

People who insist that "Jar-eel should roll fumbles just as often as my players" will, of course, welcome that prospect.

Me? Like Harrek, I consider Jar-eel an essentially unstoppable force of nature, a deus ex machina. If I were putting her into a RuneQuest scenario,* I would decide beforehand what I was doing with her, and give the adventurers clear and achievable goals (inc. "not dying," "distracting her," "escaping heroically," etc.). She isn't a player character,** she doesn't have to be specified as one. Think of encounters with her as scripted boss fights in a MMO. You'll probably have more fun running them that way than you will by diving into attritional melee combat against an overwhelmingly superior opponent while praying for an absurd NPC dice fuckup to save your players.

And if I wanted to derail the "future history" of Glorantha, I'd just man up and do it, not keep asking for permission. You're the Game Master, right? You've read the warnings, you know your rights. Go for it! If it goes well, you'll be as famous as Derek the Troll; and if it goes badly, you'll know why all those people were warning you.

---
* She does feature in my next scenario, and I seriously considered adding her to Black Spear Act 7, until I noticed I'd hit page-count.
** Usually.

[Shiningbrow]

11 minutes ago, Nick Brooke said:

And if I wanted to derail the "future history" of Glorantha, I'd just man up and do it, not keep asking for permission.

I don't know if you're referring directly to me with this (it feels like it is!), but I'm not "asking for permission". I have ZERO problems with "derailing" the supposed future history of Glorantha. I, for one, want Glorantha to remain a magic rich world - and so I'm completely against the view that Chaosium has taken with the results of Argraths actions in the future.

My post is asking others' opinions, and to see how they would justify it. (as well as asking how much of Chaosium's canon they stick to... especially since this is a significant point in time).

[JRE]

Most of my ideas for Glorantha crystallized in 90s, and I have not really updated much (nor found much reason to change them). That makes Sandy Petersen's Lore Auction probably the most influential factor, as he is easier to follow than Greg. And I remember some discussion of Superheroes and how each Superhero in WBRM had a main rune besides infinity (Death, Harmony and Man). 

People seem to put Jar Eel in the same class as Harrek. Harrek is death incarnate. Either you are one of his guys, or you are dead. So any meeting with him quickly goes the way of either proving the first, or becoming the second.

If you accept Jar Eel is Harmony, unless she is in a mission or with a strict timetable, I would say she will be friendly to anyone. That is how she is. And as she is very aware of her likely life path, she treasures those small moments when she can still feel a human being rather than the Fourth Inspiration. She will play music in way inns, have risky sex with people she just met, and enjoy quiet time with the few people she trusts. That is Beat-Pot's role, to anchor her humanity, and he is just the last one with that role, and the longest lasting so far. I assume her anchors are typically victims of Dart contests and her own family trying to influence her. Her enemies know it is not a good idea to mess with them.

Her biggest pleasure main role is to make friends out of her enemies, and I am sure that will be the case even if she finds some rabid orlanthi gunning for her. But as I also said, if one of her people is hurt, or if they appear serious, she will make an example out of them, or her entourage will, just so the next group of rebels she meets will be polite and talkative, so she can learn from them and show them the wonders of the Lunar way. 

Never had her in my games (her actions were seen, and some witnesses remembered her, but the players never got close), but I would not have any problem with using her (unlike Harrek). 

Those discussions is what made me develop the rune mastery abilities, somewhat similar to the unofficial Illumination rules, so there were automatic powers, and other abilities that you developed as your mastery grew. Part of my homebrew Heroquest rules. The Mastery rune was the most developed, as I have it as the entry point for heroes. And I defined it mainly to avoid accidental hero deaths and to allow skills to improve faster. All of it is now a fuzzy memory, as the floppy disks where all of that was stored are now unreadable, but I am recreating it for RQ:G. I am very interested in seeing what is Chaosium's proposal for heroquest powers and herodom, but I am not holding my breath. 

[Akhôrahil]

24 minutes ago, JRE said:

If you accept Jar Eel is Harmony, unless she is in a mission or with a strict timetable, I would say she will be friendly to anyone. That is how she is. And as she is very aware of her likely life path, she treasures those small moments when she can still feel a human being rather than the Fourth Inspiration. She will play music in way inns, have risky sex with people she just met, and enjoy quiet time with the few people she trusts.

I think what makes Jar-eel interesting (in a way that Harrek isn't) is that she's all that, and ready to slaughter people by the tens of thousands. After all, killing everyone in a rebellion will also restore Harmony... 

Edited June 9, 2022 by Akhôrahil

[JRE]

Of course. And she is not her own woman, but answers also to a corrupt power structure that nominally has authority over her, unlike Harrek who only answers to the bear, if that, and his own duty to his followers. Curbing the empire excesses is not her role but Great Sister's. 

I also consider that when she harmonizes with someone (white moonie debaters,for instance), they also share a bit of the experience of being Jar Eel, and that may well kill someone not fortified enough, or if they are strongly committed and not illuminated, as they may well die before conceding defeat. Makes debating with her a risky activity. 

I would expect she does not often massacre lots of people, but the Oraya revolt required making an example out of the slaves. Her wisdom can be seen now, when the slaves cannot join the King of Wings and make things even worse for the empire.