Rune Magic in RQG - limits seem to be off

[hkokko]

Got a bit more time and read something about magic. Quick notes on first quick read. 

Comparing to RQ2 it seems that 

About stacking: "There may be a ceiling to the maximum allowed to be cast together."  It seems pretty much none of the spells have mentioned any limit (I noticed only two extension is capped at 5 and warding at 4). are there some limits to how high version you can learn?

Absorption used to have max stacking limit of 4 - now no limit. It also used to be incompatible with Spirit Block, Shield and Reflection.  This can create very strong combinations 

Bless Woad with 15 points of Magic and Damage protection is a strong one. When combined with Shield 4-6 and Protection 4 you can be quite unstoppable. 15 + 4*2 + 4 = 27 points of armor and 23 points of counter magic protection. 

Create wildfire with 4 points is quite powerful - no stacking limits wildfire 6 is very powerful - for example fire blade +4d6 damage... One just needs to protect the weapon from the damage. 

Extension is significantly more powerful than in RQ2 with very long times at high levels. This can create very strong combinations. Should there be a limit of how many extensions you can have open at one time... For example some fighting and protection spells are forever on with extension 4. 

Peace with Extension 5 looks quite neat - one year of peace in 1km radius - except for rune levels. Combine that with Harmony protecting the High Priests from Rune level enemies. 

Good powered caster with Inviolable can protect most situations from being violent. So always keep Ernalda priestess with you in combat. 

Lightning at 4/6 points is a nice enemy killer with 4d6/ 6d6 with only protection spell and shield spell protecting. Most of the animals will not stand a chance as well as most of the humans unless they are prepared. 

Reconstruction is quite powerful for revealing secrets. Spend enough time on the area you will see anything from the recent past. 

Reflection used to be max stack 4 and incompatible with absorption, shield or spirit block. This can create very strong combinations 

Shield used to be max stack 4 and incompatible with absorption, shield or spirit block.  with no limits and availability from basically the initiate level can create very strong "clink" combinations - for example predators even the mighty ones might not pose much of a threat anymore. Same goes for noninitiates or normal initiates who did not pick high damage special rune spells. 

Slash I think used to be max 4? Now the axe lady can get it with 8 points = 8d6 extra damage for the already nasty great axe +possible damage bonus. Axe trance she of course already has extended to a season with 15 points of magic = + 150% extra to skill.  She has most likely done also the Shield spell plus protection,,,

Spirit block used to be incompatible with shield, absorption, reflection. Can create very strong combos now with those. Spirit block is common spell, in high points 4 and above - spirits might not be a threat anymore. 

Sword trance with extension 5 sounds like a thing to do. Let's boost it with 15 points of spirit magic in the start. +150% to my sword skill for the next year. With extension 4 - this is for next season. 

Thunderbolt is quite nice. Get three of the Orlanthi initiates have the spell. Boost it with 1 rune point so 6 opponents get 3d6 to total hit points without a resistance roll, no armor or normal protection spells would help but if they happen to have counter magic on - 8 points of it - that would help. 

If you are into clan warfare or tribal fights (and who wouldn't in Dragon Pass or Esrolia) - you probably will have Earth priestesses on both sides? 

Already initiates can pick special rune magic and have access to all rune magic. Should initiates have availability only to lower level spells of special rune magic. 

it might be useful to bring back the incompatibilities with spells from Rq2. 

It might be useful to have max stacking limit. 

Some of the defensive spells on above take away "any fight can be dangerous" (ordinary humans and animals/monsters might not be a threat any more especially when combined with almost unlimited parrying (the -20%) ) or may create forever fights that can only be solved with very strong magic. 

If I misinterpreted some of the above - please correct... Have only had absurdly brief reading time available... 

 

It might be I missed something from the rules - will need to read more. 

[PhilHibbs]

1 hour ago, hkokko said:

Extension is significantly more powerful than in RQ2 with very long times at high levels. This can create very strong combinations. Should there be a limit of how many extensions you can have open at one time... For example some fighting and protection spells are forever on with extension 4. 

Maybe it needs a rule that you can't get the rune points back until the spell expires.

Quote

About stacking: "There may be a ceiling to the maximum allowed to be cast together."  It seems pretty much none of the spells have mentioned any limit (I noticed only two extension is capped at 5 and warding at 4). are there some limits to how high version you can learn?

The ceiling referred to may only be the Summon Elemental size. You don't learn points in rune spells, you just gain access to the spell and then you can spend as many Rune Points as you want

Edited June 8, 2018 by PhilHibbs

[Col_D]

2 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

Maybe it needs a rule that you can't get the rune points back until the spell expires.

If my Players noticed this and went overboard, that is a good hotfix.

[Joerg]

7 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

Maybe it needs a rule that you can't get the rune points back until the spell expires.

Given the RQ3 rules for Spell Trading, I thought that was a given?

In  a materialist point of view the spell point pool is made up from potential energy leads from the divine realm to the mundane realm, and while the spell is active these leads are active, too. Once the spell duration is through (whether through the course of time or through dispelling) , this lead has fallen out of tune with the divine realm, and requires re-attuning at a place and time when the connection to the divine realm is auspicious. At least this is what I would expect to be the result of a God Learner applying RuneQuest Sight to a user of divine magic.

 

7 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

The ceiling referred to may only be the Summon Elemental size. You don't learn points in rune spells, you just gain access to the spell and then you can spend as many Rune Points as you want

The spell pool is something I haven't made my mind up about yet whether I like it or not. Back in 1994 or 95 the spell pool mechanic was promoted, and for myself I came to the result that only those spells that a priest/initiate had specifically sacrificed for would end up in the spell pool. This house-rule (an empowering one for RQ3) would mean that to be able to cast shield 3, the character would have had to sacrifice three points of POW for shield. Unless the spell was traded away, the character could repeatedly use those points of shield.

If you traded away spell knowledge, then this trade would deduct that spell from your casting ability. A wind lord with lightning 4 who traded 2 points of lightning for something else would be able to cast only lightning 2 until that trading partner had used the two points of lightning. There was a grey area what would happen if the trading partner died before using the spell.

Issaries' Spell Trading is even worse in this regard under RQ2 or 3. The Issaries priest blocks the use of this point of spell trading until both trading parties have used up their traded spell. What happens to traded spells when:

one of the partners in the trade dies (and doesn't return from the dead within 7 days)?

one of the partners gets lost on a heroquest?

one of the partners in the trade is being made into a Thanatari head?

one of the partners gets into contact with raw Truestone and loses control over his remaining spell points? 

 

An initiate who has spent 3 POW on his spell pool can cast any special or common divine spell available to his cult/subcult. In case of one-use spells (like Sever Spirit or Resurrection) the spell pool is permanently reduced by that amount.

Does this extend to associate spells, or do these require a point of POW sacrificed to that cult rather than one's own?

 

 

[simonh]

3 hours ago, Joerg said:

An initiate who has spent 3 POW on his spell pool can cast any special or common divine spell available to his cult/subcult. 

The first point of POW you sacrifice gives access to all common rune spells, then each point you sacrifice after that grants access to one special cult spell. See page 313 and the first paragraph of page 314.

[Yelm's Light]

You could always maintain the old spell limits (4 pts. for most variable spells, 6 for Healing, 2 for Shield, restrictions on Spirit Block/Absorption/Shield/Reflection, etc.).

[PhilHibbs]

On 6/9/2018 at 11:48 AM, simonh said:

The first point of POW you sacrifice gives access to all common rune spells, then each point you sacrifice after that grants access to one special cult spell. See page 313 and the first paragraph of page 314.

Personally I think that is excessive. I think characters should have to pick common divine spells. Maybe you should get access to one of each (common and cult special) per point of POW you add to your Rune Points pool, but having virtually every character (apart from my trickster, of course) having Warding, Spirit Block, Extension, Find Enemy, Sanctify, Multispell, that's a huge range of fairly obscure niche spells that ought to be specialisms. "You can do a Warding? Perfect, we could use that right now, good call!"

[Jeff]

7 minutes ago, PhilHibbs said:

Personally I think that is excessive. I think characters should have to pick common divine spells. Maybe you should get access to one of each (common and cult special) per point of POW you add to your Rune Points pool, but having virtually every character (apart from my trickster, of course) having Warding, Spirit Block, Extension, Find Enemy, Sanctify, Multispell, that's a huge range of fairly obscure niche spells that ought to be specialisms. "You can do a Warding? Perfect, we could use that right now, good call!"

You can house rule it that way, but that is not the intent. The intent of the "choosing special Rune specials" is not game balance at all - it is to let keep the players from being initially overwhelmed by options. Common spells tend to be pretty uninteresting but useful and are nearly universal so there is no harm in consulting a table of common spells (and other players often remind others that "hey, Heal Wound is a common spell and you could cast that"). Special spells are all pretty cool and usually-pretty cult specific so it is important that the player isnÄt overloaded with options. 

[PhilHibbs]

11 minutes ago, Jeff said:

The intent of the "choosing special Rune specials" is not game balance at all - it is to let keep the players from being initially overwhelmed by options.

I see, and I do now recall that some of the cults have tremendous spell lists! When I did character creation with a friend, she ended up in Eiritha, who I think gets 4 spells so only having access to 3 made little difference. Ernalda has...18, not including enchantments?

[styopa]

1 hour ago, PhilHibbs said:

I see, and I do now recall that some of the cults have tremendous spell lists! When I did character creation with a friend, she ended up in Eiritha, who I think gets 4 spells so only having access to 3 made little difference. Ernalda has...18, not including enchantments?

Yeah, there's really little to no balance in the cult lists.  It was less of an issue in previous iterations, as Rune Spells were expensive, so people only sacrificed for the worthwhile ones..thus having 2 good ones and 14 crappy ones was meaninglessly different than 2 good ones and 1 crappy one available.  Now, of course, there's going to be far more critical focus on the breadth of the spell lists (or lack thereof).

[PhilHibbs]

22 minutes ago, styopa said:

Yeah, there's really little to no balance in the cult lists.  It was less of an issue in previous iterations, as Rune Spells were expensive, so people only sacrificed for the worthwhile ones..thus having 2 good ones and 14 crappy ones was meaninglessly different than 2 good ones and 1 crappy one available.  Now, of course, there's going to be far more critical focus on the breadth of the spell lists (or lack thereof).

Associate cults boost Eiritha's numbers a bit (more than double, actually) but I didn't count them as you can't choose them with a basic starting character with 3 Rune Points.

[Atgxtg]

1 hour ago, styopa said:

Yeah, there's really little to no balance in the cult lists.  It was less of an issue in previous iterations, as Rune Spells were expensive, so people only sacrificed for the worthwhile ones..thus having 2 good ones and 14 crappy ones was meaninglessly different than 2 good ones and 1 crappy one available.  Now, of course, there's going to be far more critical focus on the breadth of the spell lists (or lack thereof).

Because while no one in old RQ would have sacrificed POW to learn Repel Mosquitoes or Peaceful Cookout , they would certainly use them if they went camping on vacation, knew them anyway, and were going to get the points back?.   

[PhilHibbs]

12 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

Because while no one in old RQ would have sacrificed POW to learn Repel Mosquitoes or Peaceful Cookout , they would certainly use them if they went camping on vacation, knew them anyway, and were going to get the points back?.   

Exactly right. I can see that happening a lot.

[Atgxtg]

Yeah it's what happens in D&D when DM run that Clerics (or any other spellcaster for that matter) don't have to pick their spells in advance. So the limitation is going to be in how many Rune Points they have, and how easy and how long it will take to get them back. And with everyone starting with 3 (?) points of Rune Magic it is going to be a significant change in how RQG plays compared to previous editions. 

[styopa]

2 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Because while no one in old RQ would have sacrificed POW to learn Repel Mosquitoes or Peaceful Cookout , they would certainly use them if they went camping on vacation, knew them anyway, and were going to get the points back?.   

I *like* the change to rune points a lot, for exactly the reasons Jeff laid out in one of his blogs.  I like that Repel Mosquitoes might actually see use, and think it will make the game way more interesting. 

I do think that such a large change to the rune spell paradigm required a little more cogitation to the spell lists available than what seems to be a pretty-near copy+paste of buckets of spells from older editions. (Shrug) 

Then again, their paradigm was based on adventuring once per season, meaning essentially every session would start with a full roster of points recovered.  My game will be much faster paced, so rune point recovery will be a major balance factor I have to work out.  I also will think about some mechanic to gate npc use of their rune points, to throttle (outside of my gm arbitrary control) the natural tendency of npcs to blow their points in every encounter to the detriment of players (npcs often have no tomorrow).

[Helliwell]

I think in our games I'm going to have to nerf Extension to six hours, I don't mind six hours of True Blade etc, that's heroic, a year is asking for trouble !

 

[Atgxtg]

20 minutes ago, styopa said:

I *like* the change to rune points a lot, for exactly the reasons Jeff laid out in one of his blogs.  I like that Repel Mosquitoes might actually see use, and think it will make the game way more interesting. 

It's a big change, that's for sure. I don't know yet if I like it or not. It does shift the game over a bit to how Glorantha feels in HeroQuest, with characters having access to powers that they can use regularly as opposed to hoarding them for the big fights. But it does mean an average group is going to be walking around with 15-20 points of Rune Magic that they will be using regularly. I hope they tone that down for other settings. I thought there was too much Rune Magic in RQ3 Fantasy Earth. 

20 minutes ago, styopa said:

I do think that such a large change to the rune spell paradigm required a little more cogitation to the spell lists available than what seems to be a pretty-near copy+paste of buckets of spells from older editions. (Shrug) 

Yeah, I think in the long run the available spell lists might  require a bit of revision. Or maybe associated cults could address it? If an allied cult has a better common spell list you can mooch the minor spell off of them. That could make cults like Elmal more useful and popular. 

[Jeff]

8 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

Associate cults boost Eiritha's numbers a bit (more than double, actually) but I didn't count them as you can't choose them with a basic starting character with 3 Rune Points.

The goddess of cattle just does not have the same cosmic importance or magical breadth as the Earth Mother. Imagine that!

[Psullie]

8 hours ago, styopa said:

Then again, their paradigm was based on adventuring once per season, meaning essentially every session would start with a full roster of points recovered.  My game will be much faster paced, so rune point recovery will be a major balance factor I have to work out.  I also will think about some mechanic to gate npc use of their rune points, to throttle (outside of my gm arbitrary control) the natural tendency of npcs to blow their points in every encounter to the detriment of players (npcs often have no tomorrow).

This is a good point and one I hope gets significant treatment the GM's book

[David Scott]

18 hours ago, Helliwell said:

I think in our games I'm going to have to nerf Extension to six hours, I don't mind six hours of True Blade etc, that's heroic, a year is asking for trouble !

I don’t actually think this as a problem, by the time any adventurer has extension 5, along with truesword and they need to be casting 6 points of rune magic they are going to be pretty powerful. It’s only Yanafal Tarnils and Humakt.

[simonh]

19 hours ago, styopa said:

Then again, their paradigm was based on adventuring once per season, meaning essentially every session would start with a full roster of points recovered.  My game will be much faster paced, so rune point recovery will be a major balance factor I have to work out.

I suppose the default situation would be similar to RQ2 and RQ3, in that for practical medium term purposes rune spells will be one use, but with more flexibility about what spells the characters can cast. That’s not a terrible position for the characters to be in. They will be better off than their old RQ2/3 counterparts and no worse off and when they do get a refresh or have some points left and a refresh coming up soon, they can have some real fun!

However it might be useful to think about what options might exist for shorter term rune point refreshes. After all your game might default to a faster pace, but any game might do that from time to time. You’re not the only person that might have this issue.

One option might be holy objects, people or places that can offer a one off or occasional rune point refresh for friendly cults.

Maybe the standard rules apply if you always worship at the same temple all the time, but if you travel to a different temple and perform a rite you can get a special ‘pilgrimage’ bonus refresh of a few points depending on the size of the temple. That actually gives an incentive to do something religious characters should really want to do anyway.

[Atgxtg]

Wasn't there a spell in RQ2, Sanctify, or Sacred Ground or something (it's been a long time) that turned where you were at into a temple for purposes of regaining Rune Magic?

[jajagappa]

5 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Wasn't there a spell in RQ2, Sanctify, or Sacred Ground or something (it's been a long time) that turned where you were at into a temple for purposes of regaining Rune Magic?

Yes, Sanctify.  And it's still there.

[Atgxtg]

Thanks. I can't believe I remembered that after all these years. 

Edited June 13, 2018 by Atgxtg

[Hteph]

In my bygone 

9 hours ago, simonh said:

I suppose the default situation would be similar to RQ2 and RQ3, in that for practical medium term purposes rune spells will be one use, but with more flexibility about what spells the characters can cast. That’s not a terrible position for the characters to be in. They will be better off than their old RQ2/3 counterparts and no worse off and when they do get a refresh or have some points left and a refresh coming up soon, they can have some real fun!

However it might be useful to think about what options might exist for shorter term rune point refreshes. After all your game might default to a faster pace, but any game might do that from time to time. You’re not the only person that might have this issue.

One option might be holy objects, people or places that can offer a one off or occasional rune point refresh for friendly cults.

Maybe the standard rules apply if you always worship at the same temple all the time, but if you travel to a different temple and perform a rite you can get a special ‘pilgrimage’ bonus refresh of a few points depending on the size of the temple. That actually gives an incentive to do something religious characters should really want to do anyway.

In my bygone RQ6 campaign I had a similar system that also incorporated MP (as we all didn't like the count hours to figure out how many MP you get back). Instead MP got refreshed by perfforming mundane actions in the spirit of gods you belonged to, Y/elmalites by greeting the sun, Erumals by being annoying and pranking etc etc , A bit more by doing stuff a bit more sacred related, cleaing a shrine or creating a tiki or repaint a tiki already in place.

The Runepoints you got back a bit by observe holy days and everything in sacred time. A bit more that the oneshots of RQ2, but still to precious use up at a whim.