Jump to content

the length of spirit magic spells ?


Agentorange

Recommended Posts

I was looking at spirit magic spells in the Red Book of magic ( RBOM ) and obviously most of them stick to one of the two most common lengths either: instant or temporal - 2 minutes long.There are a few that do break out of this mould, and I guess when the Gods book comes out we might see others
 

Cool, variable, 4 hours

Preserve Herbs , 1 point, special 1 season

Sneeze 2 points, 1d10 SR

Solace 3 points, 24 hours

Summon Entity 1 point ritual variable

I was trying to work out if there was a theme or common underlying property that made them different lengths to standard spirit magic spells . But i can't seem to find one: they're different lengths, different MP costs, different deities.

So is the answer that they are the length they are.......because thats the length they are !

Edited by Agentorange
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Agentorange changed the title to the length of spirit magic spells ?

They're different lengths because the designers decided they'd be different lengths, there's not really a pattern to it. Spirit magic isn't sorcery, it doesn't have concrete mathematics or tiers of effect, it's just a grab bag of tricks borrowed from the spirit world. Most of them follow similar patterns in terms of duration or effect because the powers behind them are only so strong, but there's going to be exceptions.

Edited by Richard S.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The pattern is that these spirit magic spells come from a variety of implicit understandings of what spirit magic is and from the basic practical aspects of magic. Preserve Herbs would be utterly useless if it followed the basic "grammar" of spirit magic or Rune magic, summoning spells similarly, so they break the "rules" of the system. A cohesive grammar would require a broad reframing of the system- perhaps these kinds of enduring magic should be sorcery, if we're wedded to 2 minutes/15 minutes as the spirit/Rune magic duration, but it would also be quite bizarre for preserving herbs to require literacy and experiences of henosis and divine gnosis, as apparently sorcery is meant to be. 

This does make it hard to design your own spirit magic spells, just like you could in RQ2, but perhaps that's a feature, not a bug? 🤔

Though a Lunar through and through, she is also a human being.

"I just read an article in The Economist by a guy who was riding around with the Sartar rebels, I mean Taliban," -Greg Stafford, January 7th, 2010

Eight Arms and the Mask

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Eff said:

The pattern is that these spirit magic spells come from a variety of implicit understandings of what spirit magic is and from the basic practical aspects of magic. Preserve Herbs would be utterly useless if it followed the basic "grammar" of spirit magic or Rune magic, summoning spells similarly, so they break the "rules" of the system. A cohesive grammar would require a broad reframing of the system- perhaps these kinds of enduring magic should be sorcery, if we're wedded to 2 minutes/15 minutes as the spirit/Rune magic duration, but it would also be quite bizarre for preserving herbs to require literacy and experiences of henosis and divine gnosis, as apparently sorcery is meant to be. 

This does make it hard to design your own spirit magic spells, just like you could in RQ2, but perhaps that's a feature, not a bug? 🤔

It does feel a bit odd, but maybe that just a quirk of the spirit world. It's meant to be  a strange, unusual and wonderful place after all.

Edited by Agentorange
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sneeze is effectively an instant spell, its just the sneezing it causes takes d10 SR to get over. Preserve Herbs would be kind of pointless at 2 minutes. Cool would be pretty useless as 2 minutes but I don't see a real reason for the odd duration does not bother me , but if it bothers you ban it, your players won't notice I did not know the spell existed. Solace is the same catagory as Cool ,

Summon entity is a ritual effect in teh same cataogry as creating matrixes and such and is more of an sdjunct to being a shaman I would really not lump it in with other spells goven the multiple hour casting time etc.

So Spirit magic spells are basically 2 minutes or instant, some instant spells have lingering effects like sneeze (you could argue that disrupt has a long duration as it takes time for teh wounds to heal) Hot foot is like sneeeze instant but you hop around in pain for a while.   But for some effects  which the the GM decides are in the remit of spirit magic don't make sense as 2 minute durations so if they have no impressive effect can last longer to be appropriate maybe a Warm version of cool to keep your lunch warm or something ,

I don't see any issue or complexity to this , it would not cause me a problem in designing my own spirit magic spells, the Issue there is deciding what effects are appropriate and an mp cost for them

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Andrew M said:

Sneeze is effectively an instant spell, its just the sneezing it causes takes d10 SR to get over. Preserve Herbs would be kind of pointless at 2 minutes. Cool would be pretty useless as 2 minutes but I don't see a real reason for the odd duration does not bother me , but if it bothers you ban it, your players won't notice I did not know the spell existed. Solace is the same catagory as Cool ,

Summon entity is a ritual effect in teh same cataogry as creating matrixes and such and is more of an sdjunct to being a shaman I would really not lump it in with other spells goven the multiple hour casting time etc.

So Spirit magic spells are basically 2 minutes or instant, some instant spells have lingering effects like sneeze (you could argue that disrupt has a long duration as it takes time for teh wounds to heal) Hot foot is like sneeeze instant but you hop around in pain for a while.   But for some effects  which the the GM decides are in the remit of spirit magic don't make sense as 2 minute durations so if they have no impressive effect can last longer to be appropriate maybe a Warm version of cool to keep your lunch warm or something ,

I don't see any issue or complexity to this , it would not cause me a problem in designing my own spirit magic spells, the Issue there is deciding what effects are appropriate and an mp cost for them

Yeah, I tend to the view that they are as long as they are just because that's how long they are. But you know sometimes you think " have I missed something here ? "

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I see the "2 minutes" as a simplification. In the "underlying Gloranthan reality" that RuneQuest is a simplification of, I'm sure that different magical effects last different amounts of time. Speedart probably only lasts a few seconds, Bladesharp a few minutes, Vigor might last quite a bit longer. Some people may be able to make their magic last longer than others. RuneQuest gives us a simple model that's easy to play.

Glorantha didn't change when 3rd Edition extended spirit magic to 5 minutes, and then change back again when it came back down to 2 minutes after the Dragonrise. Although some people enjoy playing in a Glorantha that closely follows the RuneQuest rules including such changes, feel free to have fun with that if that's your bag.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

In practice most spirit magic spells for me last 1 combat or 1 short scene, possibly 2 if they are very short and closely linked.  I would need some very complicated scene which was going to keep the characters busy in micro time for an expended period to actually track the round by round duration but I can think of times when I may want to.

The idea of spending a few mp to boost them for a bit longer is interesting and not I expect game breaking in any way

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Andrew M said:

In practice most spirit magic spells for me last 1 combat or 1 short scene, possibly 2 if they are very short and closely linked.  I would need some very complicated scene which was going to keep the characters busy in micro time for an expended period to actually track the round by round duration but I can think of times when I may want to.

The idea of spending a few mp to boost them for a bit longer is interesting and not I expect game breaking in any way

I think for me it's very much about the 'feel' of something. so some kinds of magic feel like spirit magic rather than Rune magic even if their length might seem more like Rune magic. That's rather  a woolly nebulous concept I'll grant you but there  you go. Call it rustic, call it down home, call it primitive if you like but often the feel of a spell comes from the Tradition it comes from - if you see what I mean.

I think in RQ3 ceremonial magic wasn't just a spell enhancing thing , but a form of magic in it's own right. so you could have ceremonial  Spirit magic , ceremonial Rune magic etc and the lengths were a little more elastic with the ceremonial styles. that said it's been a good while since I looked at the RQ3 magic book.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...