RQG Design Intent behind Spell Balancing

[Aurelius]

[Took this out of The Original Sin of Heroquesting.]

6 hours ago, davecake said:

Well, Design Intent is difficult to clarify, but I think it is very much anticipated that attaining a skill level well above 100%, maybe 200%, is attainable with the <Weapon> Trance spells, because there would have to be obvious restrictions in place for that not to be the case - PC skill levels of 90% or so are easily attainable in character creation if you so choose, and if you are creating a spell that is limited primarily by magic point expenditure you'd have to think 10 or so is going to be well within normal range. So I have to assume the Design Intent is for there to be skill levels around 200% fairly regularly from its use. 

We can assume that mistakes can be made in design, because when unintended consequences are discovered, they can be corrected. We know this happened with the <Weapon> Trance, because soon after publication the spells were significantly amended - they used to allow massive skill boosts with essentially no consequences, they were changed to have significant restrictions on subject behaviour (acting as incredibly focussed, in a fighting trance) as part of the spell effects, but still massive skill boosts. The version of the spells in the Red Book of Magic differs significantly from the version in the rules. 

Does this mean the Design Intent was to have magically boosted PCs attain such high levels of weapon attack that they could effectively render a mere weapon master, an skilled and experienced expert, powerless to even Parry at more than 05%? Hard to say, but certainly a good design would understand the ways in which those spells work when designing the rules for opposed skills above 100%. And there are other such spells (Berserk can double weapon attack, Arrow Trance doubles bow attack, even Fanaticism and Morale (which applies to entire regiments!) can get far above 100%). I think it is reasonable to assume that such spells are intended to be part of high powered play, and the designers are aware of them. 

Thanks for notifying the difference in the Red Book of Magic -- Chaosium clearly added some Trance to Axe Trance, and the intent of doing that is very clear to me. But it's still insanely powerful spell even when used casually.

At the same time Berserker is kinda-nerfed to Fanaticism-levels against non-Chaotic enemies. 

It easily also goes into dispel wars. In general, I dislike dispelling as a gameplay pattern, because then we have to assume that everyone who knows their stuff knows some dispels; and then it won't be just Trances that get dispelled but all sorts of effects as well. 

I haven't followed the RuneQuest versions closely, is Tradition the design intent here, as in, "it was such in RQ3 so it will be such now too"? I see a lot of that kind of thinking in spells -- although RQG doensn't really put Stacking Limits almost anywhere, Flood, Control Flood and Flash Flood still have stacking limit of 4. Even Preserve Food and Preserve Wealth have stacking limit of 5, so my guess is that they have just been grabbed from somewhere, edited minimally and put in.

Then again some things have been fixed, like Invisibility now being a 3p Rune Spell instead of being the funnily powerful 3p Spirit Spell it once was. Armoring Enchantment has been removed as silly powerful and Magic Point Enchantment now is actually very good, I recall once upon the time it gave 1 MP per POW.

Incredibly strong Woad is still a thing; but the cool-sounding Blast Earth still gives you a square with width equaling rune points, so a priestesses of Maran Gor can probably reduce your harvest by 1 person's food. 

6 hours ago, davecake said:

Does this mean scenario writers etc always take this into account, or the designers always are aware of all the nuances of balance issues that result? I don't think anyone is perfect, particularly not big collaborative efforts, so we must assume there are mistakes made when people don't grasp all the issues of play balance. I don't know if it is was anticipated that skills far in excess of would be such a dominant feature of high level play. I do know that the Crimson Bat had its attacks significantly reduced, because the RQ3 version had a 750% attack with its 3 Tongues, and that seems crazily high (Sandy probably got it from the same place he got very many big numbers, a vague handwaving feel for it, but it mattered a lot less if RQ3). So someone decided it should be reduced (yes, I agree! A very high powered PC should be able to maybe survive a single attack with luck and good defences) but probably overshot (but not treat such things casually as long as they can keep spamming Repair). There are lots of such issues when you create stats that you have to have a feel for the likely outcomes, which partly only really comes from trying it (I have one ongoing but very irregular game that is deliberately very high powered partly to test the RQG rules at high level, without using too many house rules that bump the power level up higher like Simons Dorastor books, so I think I have a reasonable feel for it), but partly is personal taste and table tradition. 

I think you are hitting the nail here very much: Back in the day it didn't really matter that much whether your attack skill was 200 or 300, sure 300 is better, but mutatis mutandis the guy with 200 had a very decent chance to win a duel -- just roll that 10% crit before the other guy rolls his 15% crit (no split attacks against one target if I recall correctly?).

I really appreciate the change where every point counts, and now the guy with 200 has less than 1% chance of winning, basically, crit on round 1 and hope it won't get parried or you are skewered. 

But it is a massive change -- Uroxi berserkers are now Chaos-killers instead of suicidal maniacs, and that is great. 

6 hours ago, davecake said:

One house rule I have made is that in my games <Weapon> Trance has a maximum effect of doubling the natural skill of the subject. I think bigger than that has consequences I don't like much - not just an overall escalation that makes only those with access to those spells or other unlimited skill boosts able to compete at a certain level, but it also means the winner of a Humakti duel if both are willing to use Sword Trance is the one with the most stored magic points, not the best fighter. I don't know if the latter matters to anyone but me. But if you really think that unlimited skill boosting with <Weapon> Trance is good for the game, then maybe the Crimson Bat should have kept its 750% attack, after all that is just 60+ magic points, not impossible. 

What other Stacking Limits do you use? 

I'm not fond of hard caps ("No Spirit Magic above 5") and I'm not fond of vaguely hiding caps behind vague lack of access ("No Shaman or Priest will ever teach you Bladesharp-6").

New (?) Extension I think is a well-made spell. Often these RQ rules leave me wonder what is the potential of some character or power or property, and then I'm confused wondering if they really mean that Illuminated Yanafal Tarnils Scimitars go grab all the Geasas... but the new Extension is very clear, simple and beautiful: At the cost of 4RP you more-or-less get to keep the effect on until you regain the points. And the cost is just about right. 

[Aurelius]

Valind is one of the cults that have always made me sad, and he still is. Written for MGF, he could be an amazingly awesome alternate god for a bit more magic-oriented Orlanthi players.... but Decrease Temperature, Frost, and Increase Wind all suffer from uselessness.

I mean, they are situationally useful, once on your career when doding a volley, and sure Valind characters get a lot of other good stuff, but they cannot use cold as a weapon at all, not in battle nor in war.

[Aurelius]

44 minutes ago, Malin said:

I have to say though, using up nearly all your magic points for axe/sword trance is a bit risky. A perfect target for a spirit attack or two... And without the ability to cast unrelated spells and heals. However, as the vanguard of attack with other "support casters," they can be lethal.

Problem is that if game balance allows glass cannons, conflict often turns all into glass cannoneer countering and risk management. And that's not great!

[Rodney Dangerduck]

30 minutes ago, Aurelius said:

It easily also goes into dispel wars. In general, I dislike dispelling as a gameplay pattern, because then we have to assume that everyone who knows their stuff knows some dispels; and then it won't be just Trances that get dispelled but all sorts of effects as well. 

As GM, my forces will almost always try to dispel

1. Weapon Trance  Note that you have to put in extra MP to overcome Shield and Countermagic
2. Truesword on a two handed weapon.  Very cost efficient (as is Truesword).  Note that you seldom need extra MP here.

Other spells are seldom dispelled, because it's boring.  Perhaps something like Leap or Fly.

Other GMs may differ.

Edited Wednesday at 04:59 PM by Rodney Dangerduck

[radmonger]

 

40 minutes ago, Aurelius said:

I really appreciate the change where every point counts, and now the guy with 200 has less than 1% chance of winning, basically, crit on round 1 and hope it won't get parried or you are skewered. 

There is a table here which shows the probabilities involved. As I say there, it saturates fairly early, at a difference of only 100% in skill. With several RQ:G spells doubling effective skill, this leads to a situation where a fight with an reasonably elite opponent and a trollkin have the same, albeit small, chance of defeat.

So either you change that probability table, you avoid fights where the saturation applies, or you accept you are using a really crunchy system that produces the same results as something much simpler.

The smallest fix is to not exempt MP-boosted Rune spells from the general rule about stacking caps. Rules as written, you normally can't cast a rune spell that is more powerful than your CHA, because that is the maximum size of a Rune Pool. As there is another genera rule that 2 MP is equivalent to 1RP, you end up with a limit of 2x CHA on how many MP a sword trance can be boosted by.

This keeps it extremely powerful, while avoiding the situation where a newly created PC just needs sufficient magic points to trivially flyswat anything with written-down statistics.

As a side effect, raising CHA requires heroic deeds and maintaining a corresponding reputation. This is on-brand as an avenue for  Humakti power growth. Buying MP storage crystals, not so much.

 

[Kloster]

4 hours ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

Other spells are seldom dispelled, because it's boring.  Perhaps something like Leap or Fly.

Fly is fun (and effective) to Dispel.

3 hours ago, radmonger said:

As there is another genera rule that 2 MP is equivalent to 1RP, you end up with a limit of 2x CHA on how many MP a sword trance can be boosted by.

Wrong. Ruleswise, With 15 CHA, you can cast a 3 RP (or 10 RP, or 15RP) spell; boosted by 100MP (provided you have them stored, and get the 99SR to use them).

[radmonger]

6 minutes ago, Kloster said:

Wrong. Ruleswise, With 15 CHA, you can cast a 3 RP (or 10 RP, or 15RP) spell; boosted by 100MP (provided you have them stored, and get the 99SR to use them).

How can that be wrong when what it is describing is a rule change? I said 'the smallest fix', not 'what everyone is getting wrong about what the rules say'.

The specific change is to follow the intent of the CHA cap rules, but increase the set of rune spells to which they apply.

 

 

[Aurelius]

4 hours ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

As GM, my forces will almost always try to dispel

1. Weapon Trance  Note that you have to put in extra MP to overcome Shield and Countermagic
2. Truesword on a two handed weapon.  Very cost efficient (as is Truesword).  Note that you seldom need extra MP here.

Other spells are seldom dispelled, because it's boring.  Perhaps something like Leap or Fly.

Other GMs may differ.

In order to dispel Weapon Trance you have to get past Shield and Countermagic; but you can dispel Truesword without going through them?

Just to understand better, is that an official ruling or your GM differing? 

[Rodney Dangerduck]

3 minutes ago, Aurelius said:

Just to understand better, is that an official ruling or your GM differing? 

It's follows the rules as we interpret them.

Weapon Trance is cast on the person, not the weapon.  Therefore, a Shield spell also cast on that person protects.  Same for Fanaticism, Coordination, etc.

Truesword is cast on the weapon.  Unless the weapon itself has Countermagic, it is "easy" to dispel.

Same for Bladesharp or Earth Shield - they are cast on the weapon or shield, not the person.

[Aurelius]

4 hours ago, radmonger said:

The smallest fix is to not exempt MP-boosted Rune spells from the general rule about stacking caps. Rules as written, you normally can't cast a rune spell that is more powerful than your CHA, because that is the maximum size of a Rune Pool. As there is another genera rule that 2 MP is equivalent to 1RP, you end up with a limit of 2x CHA on how many MP a sword trance can be boosted by.

This keeps it extremely powerful, while avoiding the situation where a newly created PC just needs sufficient magic points to trivially flyswat anything with written-down statistics.

The question I find myself asking is ... "in my Glorantha, are the Humakti and the Babeesteri best known for their immaculate performance in trance, like the Uroxi are best known for their blind berserking rage", and I find myself answering no. So I think I'd cap it even lower, at the Fanaticism level of boost perhaps, it's strong even then.

More generally, on stacking RP, I'd kinda want to cap it at "double cost after Rune/20", meaning if your Air is 87% and you spent 8 RP, you could crank out a Lightning-6 -- four first points at normal cost and then two more at double cost -- but considering it is a board game, that math gets too painful too soon, so trying to find an easier equation. (But that's the problem with a percentage system, trying to derive new numbers from old ones requires dividing double-digit numbers which is not phun). 

[Aurelius]

Maybe also for Spirit Magic, "needs double points in stackable spell after skill/20", meaning if your skill is 49%, and you cast Bladesharp-6, you get +20% to your Broadsword attack -- Bladesharp-2 at face value, and the rest of the points halved before they turn into payload strength.

What is this Spirit Magic skill you ask? Well, I've never been happy with the POWx5 mechanic, so I'd rather have a Spirit Magic casting skill starting from POWx5 that you develop like all the other skills. 

[Kloster]

3 hours ago, radmonger said:

How can that be wrong when what it is describing is a rule change? I said 'the smallest fix', not 'what everyone is getting wrong about what the rules say'.

The specific change is to follow the intent of the CHA cap rules, but increase the set of rune spells to which they apply.

 

 

For me, it is wrong because the CHA limit is on the number of RP you can have, but there is no limit on the number of MP you can have.

[Rodney Dangerduck]

Our next RQG campaign, with mainly new characters, we plan to experiment with the following. 

1. A stacking limit of 4 for Spirit Magic.  With a few exceptions - a CA might know Heal 6, a Humakti might know Bladesharp 6.
2. A stacking limit of 3 for Rune Magic.

 

[General Confusion]

I think personally the two biggest limiters on these allegedly 'broken' spells are MP and cast time.

Yeah, sure, if your Humakti casts Sword Trance +25 she's gonna be an invincible sword princess. . . But that means she stood still chanting and glowing for two full melee rounds while funnelling the magic equivalent of two entire human souls into a spell and nobody did anything about it. Given how fast, lethal, and trump card-centric RQ combat is, if they manage to do that they probably won't!

Unless somebody uses those two full rounds to hit her with a Thunderbolt, or a Sunspear, or a Sureshot javelin, or Madness. Or someone invisible stabs her in the back, sword skill doesn't matter there. Or she gets enveloped by a darkness elemental and Fearshocked, sword skill also doesn't help there - or she's engaged in spirit combat by a shaman. . .

Honestly I find that RQG is largely a game of resource management. From the player side this means that stuff like that never gets pulled out unless you are in an absolutely desperate situation, because blowing your whole load on one incredibly dramatic but easily-countered move like Mega Sword Trance is just asking for the opposition to stomp you out - and from the GM side this means you should be careful to manage PC and NPC resources to ensure they make sense compared to each other. Yeah, sure, if your party has five times the MP pool of their major opposition, they might be able to roll them - but why is that? Are the PCs the only Rune Lords or proto-heroes in the vicinity? How come these folks have three magic crystals each and their enemies, a veteran Rune Lord and his personal posse, don't? 

 

In this context I would suggest that the actually most powerful spells are the ones that give you an immediate, extremely potent effect without taking a ton of time or resources to charge up. Dark Walk, for example, is IMO one of the most powerful combat Rune spells available; in any kind of darkness or shadow it just straight-up makes you invisible. There's even another 1-point Rune Spell, Create Shadow, that makes it work even in bright light with no cover around. Bear's Strength kicks an average-STR character's damage bonus straight up to +2d6 and also adds +15% to their hit rolls. Crack can instantly delete an opponent's weapon, rendering them much less dangerous. This is the kind of thing that IME seems to turn fights decisively; they happen instantaneously, they're not subject to resistance, and they don't cost a lot of resources to throw out so you have a buffer if the other side deploys nasty powers of their own. 

[Rodney Dangerduck]

@General Confusion  I agree with your post.  Bear's Strength is usually the first rune spells my Orlanthi casts in combat.  Darkwalk is broken, forcing the GM to tone it down.  I also like Leap.  Earth Shield is pricey but amazing.  Crit by a Giant?  Sorry evil GM, I parried, "tink".

However, Sword Trance +25 is a bad example, a straw man: it is almost always stupid.  Once you are 100% better than your opponent there is little benefit to getting even better.

Unless the opponent is a super hero or themselves has Sword Trance, a Sword Trance roughly +10 on your PC is a nice way to use one round.

 

[Malin]

First, as someone who has played a lot of systems, including ones where the creators seem to have intently focused on trying to avoid "abuse," it's really hard to do. DnD 5e is the one I have seen focused on the most, and that still has multiclass and feat combos that our GM has just plain forbidden since they are so often picked by players looking to abuse the system. It's not like in a wargame, where you can balance things more easily since the scenario itself sets limits for player ingenuity. There the rules only need to work for the conflict in question, not having to take every possible iteration into consideration.

Second, what spells are optimizing/powergaming/abusing the system is very different depending on the table and the GM. A lot of the more theoretical constructs of the ways spells could be used/abused feel a bit... weird to me. I'm never a fan of the whole GM vs the Players bit, but so many of these scenarios seem to be predicated on perfect circumstances and being able to get away with it? There are a lot of weird and fun things for enemies to use, not just the players.

Third, some of these "abusable" spells seem, at least to me, to be geared towards actually being able to be the kind of hero that can be a part of the hero wars? The Babeester Gor in my game doesn't rely on high-level Axe Trance casting in a one-on-one fight with a normal guy (would be a liability there, no healing magic in case things go badly). She most often uses it in mass combat, enabling her to fight a lot of opponents at once, or against heroes. The damage output on certain spells, like Bear's Strength, is great, but the numbers are not that different from the damage bonus you'd get from a cavalry charge. Darkwalk is great, but it is very circumstantial in my game, because we have a lot of Yelmalians around. Shadows and darkness? What are those? Earthshield is great and heroic, and exactly the kind of thing you need to fight giants and monsters.

There is no way a game system can be tailored to fit every table. What is overpowered at one, is not overpowered at another. That's not to say I don't have my issues with certain spells or rules (oh boy, I do), just with the notion that one perfect ruling can be found that would make things perfect for everyone.

For me, the biggest question is always this: Why are players doing their best to bend/abuse the rules at their table to the point where they get dissatisfied with the result? What is the dynamic in play here? Is it the GM that is mad that they can't stop them from trivializing their planned encounters? Is it the players that are mad that now that they have loaded their characters for bear (so to speak) the GM is not giving them better challenges? If so, it seems to be a mismatch in expectations or in knowledge of the rules. Like sticking around too long in the starter area of an MMO and then complaining that the monsters there are too easy.

Or, is it a difference in expectation of what a player character is supposed to be able to do in game? Someone who wants their characters to be able to fight the crimson bat like King Broyan did would have a very different reaction to certain spells than someone who feels that the crimson bat should be far beyond any player character.

Or is it a theoretical exercise in raw numbers? Sometimes it feels that way, like in MMO's where people went "you need to have this build or be useless." And those kinds of builds would be useless in your gaming group since they relied so much on perfect circumstances and everyone exactly following the meta. And then the MMO kept changing, and everyone kept saying that other things were now useless and nerfed, and went looking for their new perfect build, and so on. No company can balance their way out of a mindset like that.

Just take the assumption of combat and runepoints. How often are people fighting? How easily are runepoints regained? That sets a lot of limits on when and how things are used. The GM in the long-running DnD campaign I am a player in is using an alternative long rest system to balance casters and martial classes for higher levels. A short rest is one night's sleep. A long rest is something you have every week (ten days). This means that long-rest reliant resources suddenly are rare and cool, and the entire game gets rebalanced. No longer do you need to throw hordes of encounters at the group to wear them down and make things tense, no, we operate on a constant scarcity level, exhaustion is BRUTAL, and some of us never regain our full amount of hit dice since we use them all the time. An entirely new game with just a single change in the base mechanics. And we are all happy for it, because that is the game we want.

I'm at best "meh" when it comes to RuneQuest's rule system. It's alright, it does what I need it to, but I have adjusted some things to fit it to my table. I don't see a system that would be better, I played RQ2, RQ3, two versions of HeroQuest (including the one where you bet points in a pool, and oh boy was that one unbalanced), and I still like RQ: G the best. If I saw another system I could hack RQ to in order to make it more perfect for me, I'd do it in a heartbeat. But I don't. Not right now. RQ: G is sat in a really interesting and awkward spot rules-wise, it clings to the more "simulationist" approach of old, down-to-earth, "realistic." While, at the same time, it embraces the player characters as heroes, and empowers them to do heroic things and act on the level of characters previously only mentioned in published materials. I think it is this conflict that makes for a disjointed reading/interpreting/writing of the rules. The mundane past and the heroic present don't always mix, old rules have weird consequences in new settings, and clashes are bound to happen. Some I would love to have fixed officially, while others I can see that while I feel they are wrong, others might feel they are right. And I am aware that my views on this might be different from someone else's. There's not a single consensus for what is "wrong" or needs "fixing" just like there is not a single truth about what spells could be "misused".

Oh boy. I have procrastinated enough. Sorry for the wall of text, just loves rules and game design.

Edited Thursday at 08:36 AM by Malin

[Darius West]

17 hours ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

As GM, my forces will almost always try to dispel

1. Weapon Trance  Note that you have to put in extra MP to overcome Shield and Countermagic
2. Truesword on a two handed weapon.  Very cost efficient (as is Truesword).  Note that you seldom need extra MP here.

Other spells are seldom dispelled, because it's boring.  Perhaps something like Leap or Fly.

Other GMs may differ.

I know a player whose Chalana Arroy character was cast from the cult for dropping a Dispel Magic on a flying Gagarthi bandit (old rules).  He didn't so much fly as plummet to his death.  Chalana Arroys aren't supposed to kill people.  It was a remarkable fall from grace.

[radmonger]

One way to make the 'dispel meta' more interesting is to move the current MP-counting dispel system to sorcery. Rune magic dispels can then be based on opposing Rune rolls or passions.

A sorceror is then the one who uses analytical magic to determine 'that is a 22 pt Sword trance, backed by 8 points of shield with 4 extra MP thrown in to add 4s to dispel time. He is 32 m away. I have enough energy crystals to dispel it, but insufficient time to do so. I need some minion to make a heroic sacrifice to buy me that time'.

A Rune level is instead saying 'death is indeed strong in you, but Orlanth is King of the Gods, and He decides when and where death happens'.

Or just 'Harrek I fear you, but I love you more'.

 

[Aurelius]

5 hours ago, General Confusion said:

I think personally the two biggest limiters on these allegedly 'broken' spells are MP and cast time.

Yeah, sure, if your Humakti casts Sword Trance +25 she's gonna be an invincible sword princess. . . But that means she stood still chanting and glowing for two full melee rounds while funnelling the magic equivalent of two entire human souls into a spell and nobody did anything about it. Given how fast, lethal, and trump card-centric RQ combat is, if they manage to do that they probably won't!

[...]

In this context I would suggest that the actually most powerful spells are the ones that give you an immediate, extremely potent effect without taking a ton of time or resources to charge up. Dark Walk, for example, is IMO one of the most powerful combat Rune spells available; in any kind of darkness or shadow it just straight-up makes you invisible. There's even another 1-point Rune Spell, Create Shadow, that makes it work even in bright light with no cover around. Bear's Strength kicks an average-STR character's damage bonus straight up to +2d6 and also adds +15% to their hit rolls. Crack can instantly delete an opponent's weapon, rendering them much less dangerous. This is the kind of thing that IME seems to turn fights decisively; they happen instantaneously, they're not subject to resistance, and they don't cost a lot of resources to throw out so you have a buffer if the other side deploys nasty powers of their own. 

Sure -- but Babeesteri get pretty much Berserker, Axe Trance, Earth Shield, Shield, and Slash, so if you play the cards you are dealt, your pretty early character is pretty soon going to end up standing behind Shield-3 getting hitting and parrying with 150+% skill in Axe Trance. 

But the bigger problem, in general, in my game design opinion, is that if you accept "glass cannons are fine because there are counters" as a starting point, there will also be counter-counters and counter-counter-counters in play: boosting Dismiss Magic with MP's to get through Shield to dispel Axe Trance. And then a sort of meta starts to emerge and gameplay starts to look like League of Legends or World of Warcraft Arena instead of playing heroic adventurers in a somewhat Simulationist manner.

"If I will Axe Trance first, he will dispel it, so I will cast Shield while he Sword Trances so I can dispel him but he cannot dispel me" is a way of playing out Musashi duels that are resolved before the first attack, but not my Gloranthan cup of tea.

Glass cannons and coutercounters also start to work really well only in bigger groups. In EVE Online you have endless amounts of ship pairings where A wins B a hundred times out of hundred, but the game works because it is intended to work on the fleet level.

But that's not my Glorantha either: "Peltast groups always choose a magically potent fighter to stay back, spotting enemies trying to cast longer spells and trying to hit them with ranged attacks; and if they see an enemy in trance, it's their job to dispel it while the front line executes [whatever]".

That's why I'd prefer a well-rounded system for my tabletop role-playing needs...

[Aurelius]

2 hours ago, Malin said:

Just take the assumption of combat and runepoints. How often are people fighting? How easily are runepoints regained? That sets a lot of limits on when and how things are used. The GM in the long-running DnD campaign I am a player in is using an alternative long rest system to balance casters and martial classes for higher levels. A short rest is one night's sleep. A long rest is something you have every week (ten days). This means that long-rest reliant resources suddenly are rare and cool, and the entire game gets rebalanced. No longer do you need to throw hordes of encounters at the group to wear them down and make things tense, no, we operate on a constant scarcity level, exhaustion is BRUTAL, and some of us never regain our full amount of hit dice since we use them all the time. An entirely new game with just a single change in the base mechanics. And we are all happy for it, because that is the game we want.

That also weirds me and makes me wonder about design intent: I understand and appreciate that "Great Gods" or at least Great Cults have more holy days than some others, I think it's a nice reflection of how Orlanth and Seven Mothers and Yelm are situated in the world.

Buuuut... I didn't do the math, but I suspect that an Orlanthi initiate regains more RP per year than Chief Priest-Lords of most cults. Not only do they have the 7*5 extra minor Holy Days, but also some 18 Associate Cults.

I 100% agree with the design decision to narrow down the earlier stupidly-wide gap between Initiates and Rune Levels, and we had house-ruled all Initiate Rune Magic to replenish already, but now I guess the intent is that initiates, at least initiates of the great cults, can too be immensely powerful in Rune Magic. 

I think that's kinda good, but also such a big change on Glorantha I'd love to see it spelled out somewhere with some intentions and world consequences. 

[Malin]

3 minutes ago, Aurelius said:

I think that's kinda good, but also such a big change on Glorantha I'd love to see it spelled out somewhere with some intentions and world consequences. 

Oh I am so torn about this. On one hand, I absolutely agree with you. I love seeing how rules interact with the world, and what weirdness that will wreak on society. I absolutely love it. On the other hand, the rules as written are not for the WORLD, they are rules written for PLAYER CHARACTERS. The assumption that everything else in the world obeys the rules for player characters really can go out of hand and just turn everything plain weird. The rules are made to create heroes, not soldiers or farmers. That, I think could be better clarified.

In my humble opinion, the rune point economy is one of the weakest points in RQ: G, but also one that is the easiest to fix if you want to adjust the power level of the campaign. I really wish there was a chapter somewhere (can I dream it might be in the GM guide, probably not) that talks about house rules, adjustments and what effect that might have on the game. Not just in the very generous Maximum Game Fun, and Your Glorantha Will Vary, but in a concrete: Here is how you do things if you want to tweak stuff this way. Some people are new and don't know what things might work; others might feel beholden to the rules and be loath to adjust anything if they don't have explicit permission to do it as an optional rule. Especially considering some things might/might not be a problem depending on your playstyle or campaign.

If your campaign has one adventure/big battle per season, it doesn't matter how many rune points the Orlanthi can regain every week, as there won't be time in play to utilize that. If your campaign is set during 1625 allowing the Orlanthi to worship at every associated god's shrine and holy day with no issue, that might lead to rune point overflow. If your campaign is set in 1615 during the Lunar occupation, worshipping at associated gods' shrines might be the only way they can regain rune points at all. It all depends.

Another big issue, I think, is player sense of unfairness. I have seen it a lot on these forums, that some say that anybody who doesn't play Orlanth/Ernalda is willingly choosing to downgrade. Both in number of holy days and the width and utility of spells. Seeing one member of the group be more powerful than yourself can hurt a lot, especially if you don't feel you have some other thing to make up for it. Especially for new players, who might feel "fooled" when they learn that the god they picked is "the sucky one" and get angry that they even were allowed to pick it. That sees every god and class as they should be equally balanced for player optimization instead of cultural vehicles to play the character you want to play.

I have no solutions. Only too many thoughts.

[Aurelius]

38 minutes ago, Malin said:

Another big issue, I think, is player sense of unfairness. I have seen it a lot on these forums, that some say that anybody who doesn't play Orlanth/Ernalda is willingly choosing to downgrade. Both in number of holy days and the width and utility of spells. Seeing one member of the group be more powerful than yourself can hurt a lot, especially if you don't feel you have some other thing to make up for it. Especially for new players, who might feel "fooled" when they learn that the god they picked is "the sucky one" and get angry that they even were allowed to pick it. That sees every god and class as they should be equally balanced for player optimization instead of cultural vehicles to play the character you want to play.

I think it's good that there is imbalance between gods and cults and that's fine, and that's always been like that. Nothing you can do as a Humakti will help you farm harder than your average Barntari. 

Orlanth Adventurous is designed for extreme MGF with great combat spells (Shield, Flight, Bear Strength, situationally Lightning, Earth Shield), great great utility spells (Dark Walk, Flight, Teleportation). If you feel like it you can also grab more great combat spells from Thunderous (Thunderbolt) and amazing utility (Guided Teleportation). For weird and surprising utility, throw in Second Sight and Charisma. And weirdly, Heal Body and Restore Health too. Some teleporting-blasting-flying-fighting-healers they are, or at least can become.

I guess I'd rather see more cults like Orlanth, but I don't think Orlanth is game-breaking. Sure it's weird that every little trick Orlanth did in a myth is available to his followers in some shape or form while most of the cults don't, but I think Orlanth is acceptably in-balance among the "great PC warrior cults". 

My regret is that Valind, Maran Gor and Queen Deezola all could also be great PC cults, but are not.

[Malin]

1 minute ago, Aurelius said:

My regret is that Valind, Maran Gor and Queen Deezola all could also be great PC cults, but are not.

ABSOLUTELY!

[Akhôrahil]

2 hours ago, Malin said:

ABSOLUTELY!

Maran Gor’s spell selection rocks. Fissure is just unbelievably useful, and Quake Earth is magnificent and surprisingly cheap for a mass area effect, especially sieges. Blast Earth is perhaps more useful as a threat, but it’s an excellent threat. Yes, something for Mace combat would be great, though - MG does not belong in melee with the current stuff. Crush, perhaps?

I am sad about Valind, though - there’s just nothing there. Some kind of combat frost effect (a frost weapon?) and some powerful endurance magic would make a world of difference.

Edited Thursday at 02:57 PM by Akhôrahil

[Malin]

I think I am just sad that blast earth doesn't cover a larger area... 😞