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Spells for Odayla


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3 hours ago, svensson said:

Why is initiating into two cults 'an easy workaround'?

Because, as you quite correctly point out, double, triple and more initialion is widespead and common.

If, in rules terms, double-culting correspondingly doubles your magical effectiveness, then there exists a mismatch between the game rules and the underlying fiction. For example, single-cult Humakti are generally presented as effective and feared warriors. And not solely as promising youngsters who have yet to actually get good at what they do.

Multiple initiation seems to typically between the likes of Orlanth and Yinkin, or Ernalda and Redalda; gaining access to magics you wouldn't otherwise have. And hardly ever Humakt and Yelmalio, to get twice as good at the one thing you do.

Maintaining all the personal relations and ritual obligations is, IMG, exactly the thing the CHA cap abstracts. if you have twice as many RP, to get them all renewed you have to worship twice as often, participate in the community twice as muich, have twice as many significant dreams, and donate twice as much. Whether you do that at one temple or two doesn't affect that limit. If anything, it would make it somewhat harder, not dramatically easier.

You could say that the CHA cap _actually_ represents what you can get with 10% of your time, money and energy. So in practce the actual cap is potentially up to 10x higher. But that just moves the boundary of herodom out of reach of realistic campaign lengths.

A possible canon counter-example is Arkat, a hero who serially adopted different and incompatible cults, for their magic, from pragmatic necessity. But, iirc  he lost access to the full power set he had learnt before each time he adopted a new role; only his personal hero powers carried over.

 

 

 

 

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@radmonger

My position on initiating in more than one cult is that there has to be a strong relationship between the cults and that the initiate must observe ALL the strictures and limitations.

Orlanth, Odayla, and Yinkin are all related within the Storm Tribe, so initiating between any two of them isn't a problem. And at my table, I'd probably have an issue with initiating into all three or initiating into Odayla and Yinkin. Those two cults perform the same duties /have the same sphere of influence AND share the same High Holy Day, so I perceive that as power-gaming min/maxing.

I would also have a problem with initiating into Yelmalio and Humakt. Those two aren't related in mythology, nor in Runes, nor even in function. Yelmalio provides an entire culture to his adherents, whereas Humakt is strictly a warrior cult. There just isn't enough connections to initiate in both within bounds of character generation. If it comes up during game play, and the PC roleplays it REALLY well, I might consider it, but I'd set that bar pretty high.

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9 minutes ago, AndreJarosch said:

Now i have to create an odaylan yinkini duck, and i claim you responsible! 😉

Only if the party includes my Orlanthi trollkin and we get Mello Yello to fill out the crew, man.... 😁

Oh, and we HAVE to name the party Team Weirdo

Edited by svensson
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9 hours ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

What is it about their cults that makes them lethal?  Yinkin doesn't even have Bow or Speedart as cult skills / spells.

I contend that the rune spells of a hunting cult are more useful if they help you survive when a hunt goes wrong than if they help you catch prey. In that light both Odayla and Yinkin are great cults for hunters: they provide claws which greatly assist with climbing, sometimes that allows you to escape most monsters. 

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Can we all just back off the power-gamer min/maxing here?

This discussion is getting right back to the BS of 'Yelmalio sucks cuz he doesn't give Shield' and the rest that nonsense.

If you want a cult that gives Sureshot and Speeddart, join one. But don't grouse because the rulebook says that the cult you want to join doesn't have it.

Your Glorantha Will Vary. If your referee thinks it's appropriate for Odayla to have ranged weapon spells, then include them. If they want Yinkin to have stealth spells, include them. If they want Yelmalio to have Shield, include it. There is absolutely nothing in RQ that stops you from doing that. In fact, the linked doctrines of Maximum Game Fun, Your Glorantha Will Vary, and We Are All Us encourages you to make changes to suit your tables needs.

So, go forth and make such adjustments as make sense to you! RQ, Chaosium, and the Memory of Greg won't mind a bit!

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37 minutes ago, svensson said:

This discussion is getting right back to the BS of 'Yelmalio sucks cuz he doesn't give Shield' and the rest that nonsense.

If you want a cult that gives Sureshot and Speeddart, join one. But don't grouse because the rulebook says that the cult you want to join doesn't have it.

We are pointing out that the so-called "hunting cults" aren't very good at hunting.  It would be fine to play a limited, small, less powerful, "roleplaying" cult, if that cult was at least superior (or at least decent) in within it's own limited focus.  But they aren't.  Hunting cults are mediocre at hunting and scouting, let alone in the overall sphere of general heroic game play.  See next section:

1 hour ago, FlamingCatOfDeath said:

I contend that the rune spells of a hunting cult are more useful if they help you survive when a hunt goes wrong than if they help you catch prey. In that light both Odayla and Yinkin are great cults for hunters: they provide claws which greatly assist with climbing, sometimes that allows you to escape most monsters. 

Claws is 2 points.  For 2-3 points, an Orlanthi can get Flight (depends on their SIZ), or for 3 points Teleport, both of which are infinitely better at escaping when things go bad.  And are, of course, great general use spells.

Yet again, powerful general purpose Orlanth is superior to hunting cults at their own game.

Edited by Rodney Dangerduck
Toned down language
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28 minutes ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

Yet again, powerful general purpose Orlanth is superior to hunting cults at their own game

 foundchild seems to me a better hunter cult than Orlanth or I miss something

in all cases if you want to play a powerful hunter and you consider the best choice is to be a Orlanthi Hunter, just do it, there is no problem

but I m pretty sure that an eurmali hunter is more efficient than a orlanthi one, so if you look for power gaming follow eurmal (same advice for any occupation except scribe and honest crafter)

Edited by French Desperate WindChild
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A cage won't be moved by a solitary hunter (ok, with their companion beast if applicable), and the Great Hunt demands that you bring the beast on your own, so no brigade of carriers and askari to carry the caged beast to the rite...

You might of course prepare a pit or something like that at the site where the rite of the Great Hunt is to be held, but will you actually come across the beast that cannot escape that prepared trap? Once you have found the beast, it is hard to do the work on the cage/trap, and you cannot risk that another hunter will claim the beast while you haven't clearly subdued it as your own. How much does the hunting "community" of anti-social loners at the Great Hunt play by the Marqess of Queensbury rules equivalent?

 

IMO the successful Master Hunter will have magic from half a dozen or more spirit cults to aid with the impossible task.

Telling how it is excessive verbis

 

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I've established to my satisfaction how Odayla works, but I've just reread the Yinkin short-foim writeup from RQ:G, and I have _questions_.

Two quotes:

> Yinkin has a very small cult and is normaly worshipped through Orlanth as an associated cult.

Does the writeup apply to that normal worship, or to the rare exceptions? As it has more than one Rune Spell, presumably the latter. Or is it that different shrines, in different Orlanth temples, offer different accociated cult spells?

If its a full Rune Cult, who are those people who join that cult, what distinguishes them, and what social role do they fill? 

> Yinkin initiates can join the Orlanth cult merely by sacrificing a point of POW

And presumably they can also buy a cup of coffee for a dollar. In other words, isn't that the default? I guess it means they just skip the initiation test rules. The question is, if you are a Yinkin initiate and not already an initiate of Orlanth, who are you? And why? 

I am going to try give some answers to those questions, mostly to give everyone somothing to object to.

Maybe, in some clans, when a teenager goes into the normal Orlanth initiation rites, one possible outcome, especially if they have a strong Beast Rune, is that they end up learning the spell Identify Scent, and adopting a shadowcat kitten. If they do, they probably get called a Yinkini, or catbrother. But they are still a full clan member in good standing, and therefor (in rules terms) actually an Orlanth initiate.

Perhaps many or most Yinkini are like that. They live in an Orlanthi farm, village or city, worship at an Orlanthi temple. They don't so much hunt for food as provide pest control. Glorantha is full of wildlife dangerous enough to threaten cattle or crops. Yinkini can search for and deal with most of those. They also know to call for aid when the _really_ dangerous stuff, like broos, or Lunars, show up. They may be a formal part of the clans defences, paid a stipend. Or just the guy everyone knows to go to when you have a rock lizard problem.

Maybe some very large cities, like Nochet, have enough of a need for pest control that there is a Yinkin temple dedicated to keeping the grain silos free of rubble runners? If so, initiation at that temple could be mostly hereditary or voluntary, creating non-Orlanthi Yinkin initates.

Or is there a Yinkin equivalent of Sylila, a distant land where there actually are temples that the cult writeup fully applies to?

In any case, like bearwalkers, some Yinkini choose the path of the deep hunter, spending a year alone in the wilds as a second initiation test. That way, they learn the deeper cult secrets, and get to participate in the Great Hunt ritual. There, they can barter or wager both spirit and Rune spells with other qualifiying participants.

Note that unlike a 'standard' associated cult relation, those cults associated via the Great Hunt ritual are not limited to exchanging a single spell. So it is kind of meaningless to rank them as better or worse hunting cults; there are only better or worse hunters.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I've just done some reading of the various Yinkin write-ups, with only one of them anything like 'extensive'... ie, more than a couple of paragraphs. That's in Hero Wars Storm Tribe...

And, only a relatively small part is dedicated to hunting. Sure, a lot of it is hunting, but there's also the seduction side which doesn't even get a mention in any other write-up... (which is why it has Charisma).

So I wonder what GaGoG will have for him.

It's certainly missing a few things according to this version, and some Rune spells for stealth would be good (not necessarily human versions of hunting though). I even take back the idea of having Sureshot - that's a human thing, not a cat thing, although Chameleon (or similar) still makes sense.

But again, one can't really expect every cult to have every single spell and ability laid out like a shopping list, and it makes perfect sense to develop them yourself (with or without relevant myths).

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20 hours ago, radmonger said:

If you can ignore those caps by simply double-culting, that's a clear rules bug requiring an errata. There is no point in having a rule about a cap that is so easy to workaround. A runelord with two full-sized rune pools is like a shaman with two fetches; a scary thing indeed. Instead, it is the the sum of all rune pools should be bound by the CHA cap

Except....

Consider what it takes to actually do that. Any PC worth their salt wants their POW at around 18 to give a 90% chance to cast Spirit Magic, and to have a good (75%+) chance to affect or resist spells. Sure, you could go a bit lower, but 15 should really be a minimum.

That means for mere Initiates, only a 30% chance to succeed in a POW-gain roll (no, Rune Lords don't get the +20%!). 5 times per year... so, on average (rounding up), two successful POW gains, and an average of 1 point each - so +2 POW per year... Not going to get even close to max (for the RL - 18) CHA worth of Rune spells for a good 6+ years for just one cult.. and that's not including things like sacrificing POW to the clan wyter, or taking into account the occasional DI. or enchantments.

God-Talkers and Priests have to maintian a POW of 18, but do get +20%, so at best a 35% chance of getting that extra POW - so, close enough to the RL to be the same.

 

RE: Shaman with two fetches... Other than the free extra CHA (versus the purchased ones), I don't see the point....

 

If you think taking over a decade (while suffering regular spell failures and failing resistance rolls (yeah, ok, the RL does have an extra 30% or so resistance)) is so OP it needs to be errated out, then we have quite different ideas of what it means to be OP.

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2 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

Any PC worth their salt wants their POW at around 18 to give a 90% chance to cast Spirit Magic,

I've never encountered that opinion before. It is perhaps more pertinent with spirit magic only lasting 2 minutes as pre-casting is less useful.

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4 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

Except....

Consider what it takes to actually do that. Any PC worth their salt wants their POW at around 18 to give a 90% chance to cast Spirit Magic, and to have a good (75%+) chance to affect or resist spells. Sure, you could go a bit lower, but 15 should really be a minimum.

Nono - while 18 is nice in its way (and critical if you're looking for Priest or God-Talker - probably the most important part), for the long term otherwise, you want to maximize POW gain. 13 is a good spot for that.

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1 hour ago, Joerg said:

IMO the successful Master Hunter will have magic from half a dozen or more spirit cults to aid with the impossible task.

 Their is an easier solution: cripple it’s movement, let it bleed until it passes out, stop the bleeding, tie up its muzzle with rope, heal it some, remove claws with knife while keeping its hit points up, keep removing dangerous parts  you have nuetrelized it and drag it by a rope wrapped around some appropriate part back to camp.

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2 minutes ago, FlamingCatOfDeath said:

 Their is an easier solution: cripple it’s movement, let it bleed until it passes out, stop the bleeding, tie up its muzzle with rope, heal it some, remove claws with knife while keeping its hit points up, keep removing dangerous parts  you have nuetrelized it and drag it by a rope wrapped around some appropriate part back to camp.

And then use a "Peaceful Cut" at the rite?

We are talking about hunter cults, not Ikadz, god of torture.

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Telling how it is excessive verbis

 

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5 hours ago, Joerg said:

And then use a "Peaceful Cut" at the rite?

We are talking about hunter cults, not Ikadz, god of torture.

alchemists have almost certainly developed some form of general aesthetic, if opioids exists refinement by alchemists would be  straightforward, if they do not the alchemists may require more exotic ingredients 

Edited by FlamingCatOfDeath
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