A question about Spirit Cults

[Akhôrahil]

21 hours ago, Bill the barbarian said:

And as much print as Humakti have gotten for being OP, I am shocked none have raised the banned for Shamans in this regards. Where are the naysayers calling this profession into question.

Shamans are viciously strong, but I'm thinking the Hero Soul mechanic that will arrive with the Hero rules will kinda balance this? Although it still means that you have to be a hero in order to resist POW vs. POW from a decent Shaman...

Irresistible Sleep = stronk.

(IMO, Sleep should have been a Rune spell. It's stronger than most of them anyway.)

Edited February 3, 2023 by Akhôrahil

[Joerg]

10 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

Shamans are viciously strong, but I'm thinking the Hero Soul mechanic that will arrive with the Hero rules will kinda balance this? Although it still means that you have to be a hero in order to resist POW vs. POW from a decent Shaman...

Irresistible Sleep = stronk.

Spirits teaching sleep will demand the Chalana Arroy code of conduct. Sure, a shaman could raw-force an Arroyan spell spirit, but that will keep him busy defending against all manner of avengers and questers.

 

10 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

(IMO, Sleep should have been a Rune spell. It's stronger than most of them anyway.)

Sleep as a rune spell would be harder to dispel, faster to cast and last longer.

[Akhôrahil]

44 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Spirits teaching sleep will demand the Chalana Arroy code of conduct. Sure, a shaman could raw-force an Arroyan spell spirit, but that will keep him busy defending against all manner of avengers and questers.

The player in question made the character while Sleep was still freely available. But yes, I had a CA spirit show up later that asked for that kind of commitment (and got it).

That said, I have a hard time imagining that only CA cult spirits know Sleep. Surely there are various sleep-related spirits a shaman could seek out and beat up for the spell? In fact, we know that this is the case, I think, with one at least in a published adventure?

[kalidor]

3 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

Shamans are viciously strong, but I'm thinking the Hero Soul mechanic that will arrive with the Hero rules will kinda balance this? Although it still means that you have to be a hero in order to resist POW vs. POW from a decent Shaman...

Irresistible Sleep = stronk.

(IMO, Sleep should have been a Rune spell. It's stronger than most of them anyway.)

Last time I read about it you add your hero soul to your Pow to resist even if you are not a Hero with "H" yet. This is already in a published supplement.  Do you remenber the green rock adventure in Sacred time? 

[g33k]

On 1/21/2023 at 9:47 AM, soltakss said:

Yes, although Shamans, not Shamen, because English is funny like that.

"Shaman" is a loan-word from an entirely unrelated family of languages (the Tungusic branch of Altaic, see below).

There is absolutely zero relationship to our word "man," or to our "-man" suffix; so it doesn't pluralize that way.  Instead, we just add an "s" (as per most English pluralization) as the "most correct" way for us to pluralize a foreign word.
 

[g33k]

7 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

Shamans are viciously strong, but I'm thinking the Hero Soul mechanic that will arrive with the Hero rules will kinda balance this? Although it still means that you have to be a hero in order to resist POW vs. POW from a decent Shaman...

Irresistible Sleep = stronk.

(IMO, Sleep should have been a Rune spell. It's stronger than most of them anyway.)

But it's CA-unique.  Not really any "stronger" (in a combat-utility sense) than something like Befuddle.

[Akhôrahil]

10 hours ago, g33k said:

But it's CA-unique.  Not really any "stronger" (in a combat-utility sense) than something like Befuddle.

It’s a lot stronger than Befuddle.

[Joerg]

3 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

It’s a lot stronger than Befuddle.

How so? A single soft kick, bite or tossed rock by an ally will awaken a victim of Sleep, and a passionate kiss should do the trick, too. Befuddled characters can be harder to return to functionality.

Edited February 4, 2023 by Joerg

[Bill the barbarian]

Sleep

3 Points
Ranged, Temporal
If the caster overcomes the target’s POW, the target falls into a deep sleep for the duration of the spell. The target only awakens if injured or if a hostile spell is targeted on them.

 

[David Scott]

They both last two minutes, but a sleeper moves into a light sleep, and awakens easily. 

[Joerg]

A befuddled person should mistake the attempt to dispel the spell as an attack.

Can you dispel a spell cast on a person not recognizing your spell as benevolent without overcoming that target's POW with your own? Can you dispel say Fanaticism or Ironhand without a POW vs. POW rol? You can't:

https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/home/catalogue/publishers/chaosium/cha4034-the-red-book-of-magic/cha4032-the-red-book-of-magic-qa/cha4032-red-book-of-magic-chapter-03-spirit-magic-spells-qa/#Dispel-Magic

If the befuddled target successfully resists the Dispel, it will recognize the source of that magic and their allies as hostile. Resisting the spell once is enough to make the befuddled person aware of the caster even if the caster hasn't been within the field of vision, and the befuddled victim may act while that caster prepares a second spell, possibly with enough time to strike a blow or throw a weapon before another attempt at overcoming the POW succeeds.

[Joerg]

 

 

16 hours ago, g33k said:

"Shaman" is a loan-word from an entirely unrelated family of languages (the Tungusic branch of Altaic, see below).

There is absolutely zero relationship to our word "man," or to our "-man" suffix; so it doesn't pluralize that way.  Instead, we just add an "s" (as per most English pluralization) as the "most correct" way for us to pluralize a foreign word.
 

 

Or rather shorter: The English language plurals of cayman, shaman and human are caymans, shamans and humans, not caymen, shamen and humen. Basically any word where "man" couldn't be replaced by "woman".

 

 

[Akhôrahil]

6 hours ago, Joerg said:

a passionate kiss should do the trick

If it's passionate enough to do actual HP damage. Which might not be every kiss, at least?

Once the enemy has been broken up and can no longer easily assist each other, or if your side merely outnumber them, or if they don't know the mechanics of Sleep (like animals), Sleep is devastating.

[Joerg]

1 hour ago, Akhôrahil said:

If it's passionate enough to do actual HP damage. Which might not be every kiss, at least?

Once the enemy has been broken up and can no longer easily assist each other, or if your side merely outnumber them, or if they don't know the mechanics of Sleep (like animals), Sleep is devastating.

I don't want to speculate on what exactly the prince did to sleeping beauty, but that trope is too hard to break IMO.

[Bill the barbarian]

2 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

If it's passionate enough to do actual HP damage. Which might not be every kiss, at least?

 

You have Klingons in your Glorantha, doncha? If not, trolls should work!

[Qizilbashwoman]

15 hours ago, Joerg said:

I don't want to speculate on what exactly the prince did to sleeping beauty, but that trope is too hard to break IMO.

let me warn you not to read the original narratives, o innocent one

[soltakss]

On 2/3/2023 at 3:30 PM, Akhôrahil said:

The player in question made the character while Sleep was still freely available.

Sleep has never been freely available.

However, if someone has only read the RQG Rules then I can see how they thought that it might be.

On 2/3/2023 at 10:06 PM, g33k said:

"Shaman" is a loan-word from an entirely unrelated family of languages (the Tungusic branch of Altaic, see below).

There is absolutely zero relationship to our word "man," or to our "-man" suffix; so it doesn't pluralize that way.  Instead, we just add an "s" (as per most English pluralization) as the "most correct" way for us to pluralize a foreign word.

Isn't that what I said? 🙂

 

[Bill the barbarian]

3 minutes ago, soltakss said:

Isn't that what I said? 🙂

 

Sorry Guv, could not make owt tha words from tha accent. How's yer english, we could try that.

[Akhôrahil]

36 minutes ago, soltakss said:

Sleep has never been freely available.

However, if someone has only read the RQG Rules then I can see how they thought that it might be.

What other rules applied when only the rulebook was out? 😉 The one that said repeatedly you could learn any spirit magic spell?

Edited February 5, 2023 by Akhôrahil

[soltakss]

43 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

What other rules applied when only the rulebook was out? 😉 The one that said repeatedly you could learn any spirit magic spell?

People who remembered what was written in the Chalana Arroy cult and played that it was still true. People who had a wider view of Glorantha than that provided by the latest version of the rules. People who have seen cults butchered and then improved again by new rules coming out that did not mention skills and spells, then saw them added again.

Those kinds of people.

 

[Qizilbashwoman]

On 2/3/2023 at 5:06 PM, g33k said:

"Shaman" is a loan-word from an entirely unrelated family of languages (the Tungusic branch of Altaic, see below).

There is absolutely zero relationship to our word "man," or to our "-man" suffix; so it doesn't pluralize that way.  Instead, we just add an "s" (as per most English pluralization) as the "most correct" way for us to pluralize a foreign word.

Just as a point of clarification since I'm a linguist: the Altaic theory isn't real. Tungusic is just a language family on its own.

[g33k]

2 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

Just as a point of clarification since I'm a linguist: the Altaic theory isn't real. Tungusic is just a language family on its own.

Thank you.
There's... kind of a lot of this theory out there, including Britannica, who writes:

Quote

... many scholars who work on Turkic, Mongolian, and Manchu-Tungus languages today consider a genetic relationship between those languages to have been proved ... Nonetheless, some scholars continue to regard the relationship as a hypothesis yet to be proved, while yet others believe genetic relationship to be indemonstrable... A small number of scholars reject the hypothesis ...

Do you see Tungusic as an isolate, then?  Or, where does it sit on a broader linguistic family-tree?

[Qizilbashwoman]

1 hour ago, g33k said:

Thank you.
There's... kind of a lot of this theory out there, including Britannica, who writes:

Do you see Tungusic as an isolate, then?  Or, where does it sit on a broader linguistic family-tree?

yes, it's an isolate. it's unclear if we'll ever be able to connect it to another language simply due to time. the same is true of Turkic, Mongolic, Korean, and Japanese. This is also true of Indo-European; there just a huge time-lapse and its closest relatives might have been lost.

the other thing about the Altaic theory is that it isn't really one. No two people who argued for it back in the day even agreed on which families belonged to it!

[Akhôrahil]

17 hours ago, soltakss said:

People who remembered what was written in the Chalana Arroy cult and played that it was still true. People who had a wider view of Glorantha than that provided by the latest version of the rules. People who have seen cults butchered and then improved again by new rules coming out that did not mention skills and spells, then saw them added again.

Those kinds of people.

 

What you define as "the rules" is exactly what I define as "not the rules". 🙂

[Joerg]

1 hour ago, Akhôrahil said:

What you define as "the rules" is exactly what I define as "not the rules". 🙂

And that's the problem with the short cult format in the rules, whether Kyger Litor and Black Fang in RQ2 or the RQ3 Gods of Glorantha book (which had enough sidebar to make the restriction on Sleep explicit).

The setting lore was never generated from the RuneQuest core rules books, at best it was complemented.