Dwarven Ceramists

[Erol of Backford]

LOL, I went back and looked, I found it in Different-Worlds-21 p.30 from June 1982...

1 hour ago, davecake said:

Jolanti into living stone again

Spoiler

I might have PC's use the Howling Tower scenario when some living stone is needed?

1 hour ago, davecake said:

using parts of the Faceless Stone Statue

I like this and then they'd be used to kick troll butt, well at least those that are not able to coexist...

1 hour ago, davecake said:

Cut them open, they are flesh, just tough and weirdly mineral.

100% agree, they are living beings...

1 hour ago, davecake said:

I’m a bit concerned the ‘back to RQ2’ tendencies of some current writing will revert it rather than run with it

we tend/tended to use whatever version of RQ that fit... I am glad the game in general moved back towards the RQ3 direction and away from Hero Quest as the basic RQ system... for me its all good stuff!

 

[davecake]

47 minutes ago, Erol of Backford said:

we tend/tended to use whatever version of RQ that fit... I am glad the game in general moved back towards the RQ3 direction and away from Hero Quest as the basic RQ system... for me its all good stuff!

This wasn’t so much about the rules system (I like RQ as a system, and I’m happy with RQG in general, though often a bit less thrilled about the ways in which it sometimes goes back to RQ2 rather than building on RQ3), as about the idea that while the Pavis cult is a standard city god rune cult (providing City Harmony and a few common spells), Pavis himself was a practitioner of EWF sorcery (that differs from the Malkioni system in some ways, especially the language it uses - it’s all Auld Wyrmish), and his cult retains many of his sorcerous secrets. 
The Flintnail cult was written up as a sorcerous school that taught Mostali magic, had no ‘rune magic’, and just organized itself like a cult. They were clearly apostate Mostali, though. 

(sorry, what follows will be baffling to those who do not have access to the Paris:Gateway to Adventure book for heroquest this will be baffling, and it’s out of print because it’s HeroQuest and they don’t own that trademark anymore, which is a pity because it’s great)
I think Pavis knowing secrets of EWF Sorcery, and most of the grimoires described, is extremely cool, and should be retained as at least deep background info, though I don’t think it’s normal for Pavis initiates to learn any sorcery, and The Book of Treaties as a way to explain the Pavis cults unusual access to elementals is unneeded - Command Cult Spirit works fine. But the Master of the Faceless King grimoire is very cool as a repository of inner Pavis magic, and the Alchemical Wedding of Lord Pavis and the Book of the Original Man are cool maguffins and sources of interesting campaign ideas. All full of EWF alchemical babble. 

And most of the Rune spells of the RQ2 Flintnail cult are obviously in RQG as Mostali spells or common sorcery, so I think it would be very weird for the Flintnail cult in RQG to use Rune spells that imitated Mostali magic. But I think this is the planned approach, as they are all in the RBoM. It seems that Mostali magic can become Rune magic in the hands of apostates or associated cults? (See Sartar’s use of Support in the Lightbringers book)
The Flintnail cult in RQ2 had fairly limited rune magic access (though could join Pavis freely) - besides common 1 pt spells, they could summon gnomes, dismiss elementals, Mold Rock, Shape Metal, Support (a section of wall), and animate a Warrior of Stone by putting a gnome in it. While removing Divine Intervention entirely would have been a problem in RQ2, Flintnails use was very weird. Most of the spells have close equivalents in Mostali magic or standard sorcery - Mold Rock is similar to Shape Stone, Support is similar to stabilize Stone, Shape Metal is similar to Shape Iron. Dominate Earth Elemental would cover most of the rest. Only Warrior of Stone isn’t duplicated elsewhere - and frankly, it should be something achievable by Mostali sorcery, probably a simple sort of enchantment used in conjunction with Dominate Elemental. I’m sure Mostali can do the same thing. And having two different, nearly the same, sets of magic spells seems a bit pointless, mostly just to precisely emulate the cult writeup from RQ2 when we knew nothing about sorcery or Modtali magic. 
 

Sorry, got a bit off track, and off topic, there. 

[radmonger]

Flintnail is presumably an incredibly powerful and ancient sorcerer, constantly engaged in decade long ritual quests of unknown purpose. If you had a complete rule system for what his sorcery could do, you still don't know what he can do. For that, you would need to know everything about what he is doing, and what allies he is currently supporting and being supported by. Only then would you know what time and resources he has to spend on a problem, and so could feed that into the system to see what happens.

It is much simpler to model things from the point of view of a recipient of his magic. Such a person is much more likely to be a PC, or at lest interact with one directly. And the Rune Magic rules work perfectly well for that. You could create something just slightly different, using a thesaurus to find synonyms for the terms involved, and changing the defaults of numeric values. So apprentice rather than initiate and so on. But that seems useless added complexity.

His cult may teach sorcery as well. But having such a skilled sorcerer relatively readily available, it is usually going to be more efficient to have him actually do the magic, while the initiate simply supplies the  required magical resources.

 

[metcalph]

Given that Mostal teaches Diamond Edge (but not to the Mostali), I really don't have a problem with Flintnail being a Rune Cult for humans or Rockheart Veinseeker casting rune spells.  Whether the Dwarfs of Pavis know rune magic or not (Ginkizzie probably does while the others might not) isn't that much of a big deal - they are apostates or merely strange and weird.  Dwarfs casting rune magics isn't that much of a concern to the Decamony in the way Openhandists are.  

If Pavis was a sorcerer in his lifetime, he's almost certainly a demigod worshipped for his rune magics now.  A big problem with the cult of Pavis being a sorcery cult in RQ:G is the literacy requirement for effective sorcery.  So if either his priesthood were competent sorcerers protecting their flock or the average Pavisite during the Troll Occupation was literate.  Neither works for me.  The Priesthood may know some sorcery but it's probably obscure ritual magic rather than being anything handy like City Harmony.  

[SDLeary]

In the early RQ3 days, I played a Flintnail Dwarf. It had already been put forward at that point that "good" dwarves don't learn spirit or rune magics. Because of this, and the uniqueness of Flintnail as presented in "Pavis", we decided that Flintnail Dwarves do not learn spirit magic, instead learning sorcery, but they do have access to the cult rune magic if it fits their mission parameters. Humans, of course, would follow normal cult structures.

SDLeary

Edited January 31 by SDLeary

[Erol of Backford]

13 hours ago, davecake said:

Gateway to Adventure

Its fabulous... question is the guy wearing the toga Pavis and which one is Flinnail? What happened to the big guy who might be 75m tall, the old walls were 25m IIRC?

Some really good stuff in there. Who might rework it to RQ?

13 hours ago, davecake said:

Pavis knowing secrets of EWF Sorcery, and most of the grimoires described, is extremely cool

You betcha. When we played in the 80's-90's anyone could get sorcery, divine magic (much less so as it was always a loss of power back then, not may runelords running around) and mostly spirit magic. With spirit magic stored in head not much free INT for sorcery so that was always a limiting factor and again matrix's costs were power as well. That was one reason we like the Heortlands who seemingly could use all 3 types of magic, at least back then.

13 hours ago, davecake said:

And most of the Rune spells of the RQ2 Flintnail cult are obviously in RQG as Mostali spells or common sorcery, so I think it would be very weird for the Flintnail cult in RQG to use Rune spells that imitated Mostali magic.

YGWV, dwarves use sorcery.

13 hours ago, davecake said:

Mold Rock is similar to Shape Stone, Support is similar to stabilize Stone, Shape Metal is similar to Shape Iron

It seemed like a good bit of divine magic was quite similar to sorcery. I think religious NPC's didn't like those using socrecry as it made their diving magic seem cheap. A higher intensity sorcery could outshine rune magic quite easily besides the time and MP cost when casting.

13 hours ago, davecake said:

Sorry, got a bit off track, and off topic, there. 

This totally hits the spot for me, Dwarves use sorcery and LM should not, they are priests... that is unless they live on the Plateau and are Aeolians? With all the new back-forth, it seems the 3 old school types of magic are quite blended and are more available to PC's and NPC's based on the whim of the GM. If it make the game more fun and doesn't unbalance the play too much so the PC's are too powerful then why not.

Dwarves are weird and should be special, all the time, sorcery is best for them, the more unknow and exotic the better.

Jaja hit it right on the ole dwarven noggin...

"Twentieth-fifth Projection of the Attendant Triangulation?"

I'll continue with the idea that Barbarian initiates read write at a 15-20% similar to middle school level and civilized a bit higher, they have to in order to be able to do sorcery... Dwarves would be at an even higher level, YGMV.

4 hours ago, SDLeary said:

It had already been put forward at that point that "good" dwarves don't learn spirit or rune magics.

Or date humans, elves or trolls? We had the same understanding regarding spirit magic and that any dwarf PC was really an outcast.

It was always funny when the PC tried to hit on girls in game and were rejected unless some heavy coin was part of the deal and even then the timer was exacting... (what can I say we were in high school)

It should be a PC class, Dwarf Gigolo Ceramist, like a trickster but in some ways not... Do dwarven ceramists make good Uleria initiates? 

[Erol of Backford]

The Flintnail tunnels under Old Pavis were in YOBoT vol.03 p.77.