How to create a Rune Master/Rune Lord Priest RQG/Classic

[Prince3121]

Hello,

 

I am creating a campaign from scratch and would like to create a Rune Master, well - actually l, I would like to convert an existing Rune Lord Priest, Ran-Eel, from the Rune Masters supplement into the current RuneQuest: Role-playing in Glorantha, and I did print out the conversion sheets, but I don’t really understand it. Is there a place that walks me through this very slowly and has examples, or - is there an easier way to roll up a Rune Lord Priest in the new system and then I can just make him close to Ran-Eel? Thanks for any help/suggestions.

 

 

 

 

Edited February 16, 2023 by Prince3121
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[Joerg]

The old Rune Masters characters were badly mini-maxed with their spirit zoos - in their steeds and other companion animals, plus plenty in crystals. The steeds aren't eligible in RQG except as allied spirits from Eiritha or Waha. The total amount of spirit magic now is limited to the Charisma attribute, but that can be overcome by moving some spells known by spirits other than the allied spirit to enchantments (which weren't part of the RQ2 rules). 

Of the characteristics, INT and SIZ should be in the 8-20 range, any values up to 10 might benefit from a slight upward adjustment. CHA is essential for rune lords and needs to be adjusted, in case of doubt by the use of ostentatious trimmings.

Other than that, use such characters as you see fit, allow for some overpowered skills if you feel they are what your characters are supposed to face.

[Scotty]

Using Runemasters NPC as a basis will give you a very unbalanced adventurer (unless that's what you want). Although RQG is based on RQ2, the conversion process for these individuals will likely give a lot of work

For ease I would recommend starting with the Seven Mothers Initiate in Book 4, page 39.

Change:

• Change - CHA 8 -> 18
• Change - Moon Rune 80% - > 90%
• Add - 90% Loyalty (Red Emperor)
• Change Broadsword to Kopis
• Raise two of the following to 90%:  1H Spear, Kopis, or Lance
• Raise three of the following to 90%: Battle, Climb, Conceal, Insight (Human), Listen, Move Quietly, Read/Write (New Pelorian), or Track.
• Raise to 50% Orate, Ride,  (Scan is already at 60%)
• Add Befuddle and Glamour to Spirit magic
• Replace the appropriate passions

Run whole character through creation, but don't add any rune characteristic modifiers. That will flesh out the rest of the stats and skills. Decide:

• skip the family history section following the box in RQG, page 29
• Homeland
• Occupation

You should end up with a playable Rune Lord. I wouldn't give them an allied spirit, save that for an in game event.

[Bill the barbarian]

2 hours ago, Scotty said:

For ease I would recommend starting with the Seven Mothers Initiate in Book 4, page 39.

 

From the starter set?

[soltakss]

15 hours ago, Prince3121 said:

I am creating a campaign from scratch and would like to create a Rune Master, well - actually l, I would like to convert an existing Rune Lord Priest, Ran-Eel, from the Rune Masters supplement into the current RuneQuest: Role-playing in Glorantha

Here is what I would do. I am sure that other people would do it in different ways.

Use the same Characteristics, there's no point changing those.

Recalculate Hit Points per location and Armour Points, although it is probably easier to use the RQ2 versions

Calculate the Rune Pool by adding up the points spent on Runespells, but this is capped at his CHA of 18, ignore any left over or have him as an initiate of another cult, maybe one of the Seven Mothers. Alternatively, keep his Rune Pool the same as the spells that he has. I'd give him 18 as he is powerful.

Keep the same Rune Spells, but lose the Common Magic, leaving him with Chaos Gift, Madness, Mind Blast, Regrow Limb, Shield, Summon Lune, Summon Fire Elemental, Truesword.

The Seven Mothers don't grant Shield, unless to Chief Priests through Hwarin Dalthippa, so you could say he keeps his Shield spell, in fact he has Chaos Gift, which is only available to Chief and High Priests, so he sounds like a Chief Priest.

Spirit Magic spells are trickier, as he has a lot of Spirits. You could keep them and say that they have CHA=INT, for convenience.

• Ran-eel: Befuddle (2), Bladesharp 2, Dispel Magic 4, Disruption (1), Healing 6, Multimissile 2, Protection 2,
• Allied Spirit: Lightwall 4, Mobility (1), Repair 2, Spirit Screen 2, Vigor (2), (It wouldn't have Invisibility as that no longer exists as a Spirit Magic spell)
• Falcon: Countermagic 4, Ignite (1) (Mindspeech doesn't exist so he'd lose that)
• Bat: Detect Enemies (1), Detect Life (1), Detect Magic (1), Detect Undead (1), Extinguish 2, Strength (2)
• Hawk: Dullblade 2, Farsee 1, Glue 1 (He loses Xenohealing as that no longer exists)

 

For skills, keep the same percentages and convert according to the conversion guide, ignore piddly little skills such as Find Cattle Food 20%. Identify Plants simply becomes Plant Lore, Identify Animals becomes Animal Lore. he has both Lock Picking and Trap Set/Disarm which both become Devise, so take the highest value. Lose The Peaceful Cut as he is not a member of Waha or Storm Bull. Lose piddly skills such as Rowing or Masonry at 40%. Take the highest of Camouflage and Hide in Cover, for Hide, they are the same so stay at 100%. Don't bother increasing skills like Evaluate by +5, as it has a higher base. Give him a decent Worship (Seven Mothers), Cult Lore (Seven Mothers), Homeland Lore (Lunar Empire) and Insight (Human) as they are cult skills.

• Communication: Orate 95%, Bargaining 35%
• Knowledge: Evaluate 80%, General Knowledge 20%, First Aid 100%, Treat Disease 100%, Treat Poison 100%, Plant Lore 100%, Animal Lore 100%, Mineral Lore 100%; 
• Manipulation: Craft (Map Making) 100%, Climbing 110%, Conceal 80%, Jump 100%, Devise 110%, Ride (Horse) 100%, Disguise 75%, Swim 100%;
• Stealth: Hide 100%, Move Quietly 110%, Sleight 90%
• Perception: Listen 100%, Scan 110%, Search 105%, Taste Analysis 80%, Track 100%.

He doesn't have any magic skills, so give him Spirit Combat at a reasonable level, maybe 60%. He good in combat, so give him a reasonable Dodge, maybe 70%.

Languages: Keep them as they are. I like the RQ2 format of Language xx/xx for Speak and Read/Write, so retain that format.

Equipment: Keep his equipment, but you might need to convert the Armour Points and ENC, so that they match RQG values. Iron is half the ENC and 1.5 times the AP. Maybe change Scimitar to Kopis and redo the ENC/AP/SR. Keep the weapon skills

Weapon Damage Attk% SR Pts 
(I) Kopis 1D8+1+1D6 120% 3 18
(I) Greatsword 2D8+1D6 130% 2 18
(I) 2H spear 1D10+1+1D6 110% 1 15
lH spear RH 1D8+1+1D6 100% 2 15
Javelin 1D10+1D3 120% 0 12
Composite bow 1D8+1 - 0 10 50%
(I) Large shield 1D8+1D6 - 5 24 120%
 

Magic Items: Keep them as they are, as life is too short to worry about them. Keep the Potions, if you like, or lose them, whatever you prefer.

Passions: Add relevant Passions. Sor-Eel would have Loyalty (Red Emperor), Love (Eel Clan) and maybe Loyalty (City). He might even have a relationship with his cousin, Jar-Eel, so give him Love (Jar-Eel) or Resent (Jar-Eel).

 

And that's about it. Keep it simple and don't try to minimax the conversion.

 

 

[Shiningbrow]

14 hours ago, soltakss said:

Keep the same Rune Spells, but lose the Common Magic, leaving him with Chaos Gift, Madness, Mind Blast, Regrow Limb, Shield, Summon Lune, Summon Fire Elemental, Truesword.

This doesn't really make sense. Most cults give everyone access to the Common spells, and each RP grants a cult special spell. So, from that list, anyone who has sacrificed 8 POW would have all of those, plus all Common.

[jajagappa]

2 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

This doesn't really make sense. Most cults give everyone access to the Common spells,

I think the point is that in Runemasters, there was no concept of "Common" rune spells so those are part of the Rune spell list. And some "Common" rune spells like Mind Link were removed, so easiest to strip out all the non-special Rune spells so you get down to what's unique and then just have the Common rune spells as available as usual.  (I.e. just like our own character sheets where we don't bother listing the common rune spells.)

[soltakss]

10 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

This doesn't really make sense. Most cults give everyone access to the Common spells, and each RP grants a cult special spell. So, from that list, anyone who has sacrificed 8 POW would have all of those, plus all Common.

He originally had common spells listed, such as Divination and Multispell, some with multiple points. Just lose them, as you don't need to list them any more.

10 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

So, from that list, anyone who has sacrificed 8 POW would have all of those, plus all Common.

Yes, and that is a problem with cultists who have big Rune Pools, eventually you run out of spells to access. Cults with lots of associate cult spells might have more Runespells than the normal maximum of 21 CHA, for a Rune Pool of 21.

[Shiningbrow]

16 hours ago, jajagappa said:

I think the point is that in Runemasters, there was no concept of "Common" rune spells so those are part of the Rune spell list. And some "Common" rune spells like Mind Link were removed, so easiest to strip out all the non-special Rune spells so you get down to what's unique and then just have the Common rune spells as available as usual.  (I.e. just like our own character sheets where we don't bother listing the common rune spells.)

 

9 hours ago, soltakss said:

He originally had common spells listed, such as Divination and Multispell, some with multiple points. Just lose them, as you don't need to list them any more.

Yes, I get this.

Perhaps we are interpreting the phrase "lose the common magic" differently?? I'm taking it sort of literally (obviously not 'lose', but 'remove'). I think you guys are reading it as "don't bother to write them down, but know that they're still there". And, yes, I know some spells have disappeared. That's sort of beside the point.

 

 

[soltakss]

6 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

Perhaps we are interpreting the phrase "lose the common magic" differently?? I'm taking it sort of literally (obviously not 'lose', but 'remove'). I think you guys are reading it as "don't bother to write them down, but know that they're still there". And, yes, I know some spells have disappeared. That's sort of beside the point.

Ran-Eel has the following Rune Spells in the Runemasters supplement.

RUNE SPELLS: Chaos Gift 4, Concealment 2, Divination, Madness 4, Mind Blast 4, Multispell 3, Regrow Limb 2, Resurrection 3, Shield 4, Spell Teaching, Summon Lune 3, Summon Salamander, Truesword 3.

Splitting them into Common, Specialist, and Missing Runemagic gives us:

• Common Runespells: Divination, Multispell 3
• Cult Special Runespells: Chaos Gift 4, Madness 4, Mind Blast 4, Regrow Limb 2, Resurrection 3, Shield 4, Summon Lune 3, Summon Salamander, Truesword 3
• Missing Runespells: Concealment 2, Spell Teaching

We don't list the Common Runespells as Runespells, because they are Common, so we lose the reference to them and can remove them.

The Concealment and Spell Teaching spells no longer exist, so simply remove them.

That leaves us with a list of spells and points, remove the points as they are no longer relevant, leaving us with the following spells:

• Cult Special Runespells: Chaos Gift, Madness, Mind Blast, Regrow Limb, Resurrection, Shield, Summon Lune, Summon Salamander, Truesword

When working out the total number of Rune Points, simply sum up the individual spells that Ran-Eel had sacrificed for, in this case 13. Alternatively, sum up the total number of spells sacrificed for, so Truesword 3 becomes 3 points rather than 1, which gives him 34 points, which is far more than his CHA, so limit it to 18.

 

Hopefully, that is clearer.

[Shiningbrow]

16 hours ago, soltakss said:

Hopefully, that is clearer.

No.

I still don't get why you wrote ...

On 2/17/2023 at 3:50 AM, soltakss said:

but lose the Common Magic

 

16 hours ago, soltakss said:

We don't list the Common Runespells as Runespells, because they are Common, so we lose the reference to them and can remove them.

You might. I wouldn't (and nor are they 'removed' in the pre-gens). Especially since a) not every player is going to remember they have them, and b) some cults don't give access to all Common Rune Spells...

 

16 hours ago, soltakss said:

When working out the total number of Rune Points, simply sum up the individual spells that Ran-Eel had sacrificed for, in this case 13. Alternatively, sum up the total number of spells sacrificed for, so Truesword 3 becomes 3 points rather than 1, which gives him 34 points, which is far more than his CHA, so limit it to 18.

I'd go with number of points sacrificed for, as that's the clearer amount of POW that has been sacrificed.

Sure, it's pretty big, but then as suggested, I'd have him in another Seven Mothers cult - probably either Danfive or Yanafal given his background (the latter slightly more appropriate) - although this means adding more special Runespells.

Alternatively, spend some POW on enchantments. Eg, Spirit Armour, or maybe a Magic Point ... (or even put some of his Runespells into enchantments).

Sounds big, mean and scary? They should! That's the whole point!

[soltakss]

5 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

I still don't get why you wrote ...

On 2/16/2023 at 7:50 PM, soltakss said:

but lose the Common Magic

You don't need to write down the Common Magic spells.

So, instead of having a list of Rune Spells which includes Common Magic, you strip out the Common Magic spells from the list.

As an Initiate of the Seven Mothers, Ran-Eel gets All Common Magic anyway, so why write down the spells?

5 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

You might. I wouldn't (and nor are they 'removed' in the pre-gens). Especially since a) not every player is going to remember they have them, and b) some cults don't give access to all Common Rune Spells...

So, you could write down All Common Magic, as a reminder. I wouldn't list all the Common Magic spells for every NPC or Adventurers, though, what's the point of that?

5 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

I'd go with number of points sacrificed for, as that's the clearer amount of POW that has been sacrificed.

Sure, it's pretty big, but then as suggested, I'd have him in another Seven Mothers cult - probably either Danfive or Yanafal given his background (the latter slightly more appropriate) - although this means adding more special Runespells.

Alternatively, spend some POW on enchantments. Eg, Spirit Armour, or maybe a Magic Point ... (or even put some of his Runespells into enchantments).

Sounds big, mean and scary? They should! That's the whole point!

That works for me, but I prefer more challenging NPCs.

What I would avoid, though, is mini-maxing the conversion. By that, I mean don't just add up all the points in every Rune Spell in the writeup and them assume that the NPC has the same number of points in Rune Pools. RQG restricts the size of Rune Pools to CHA so having 50 Rune Points doesn't really work in RQG. Sure, you could turn them into enchantments, but that means having to account for every single point, which is a pain. Similarly, for skills, Ran-Eel has Lock Picking and Trap Set/Disarm, so has 210 in those skills but 110 in Devise after converting, just ignore the lost 100%. After all, he is going to get skills such as Cult Lore and Worship for free anyway, as they shouldnl;t be at base chance.

 

[Jon Hunter]

On 2/16/2023 at 3:11 AM, Prince3121 said:

Hello,

 

I am creating a campaign from scratch and would like to create a Rune Master, well - actually l, I would like to convert an existing Rune Lord Priest, Ran-Eel, from the Rune Masters supplement into the current RuneQuest: Role-playing in Glorantha, and I did print out the conversion sheets, but I don’t really understand it. Is there a place that walks me through this very slowly and has examples, or - is there an easier way to roll up a Rune Lord Priest in the new system and then I can just make him close to Ran-Eel? Thanks for any help/suggestions.

 

 

 

 

I get the impression he is an NPC, just make him up and give him what is justified in game world and run with it, always give a couple of blind spots and holes even if he is powerful.

Ensue he has the minimum requirements for his positions or a good in game reason he may have lost those requirements over time