Multispell will render Protection obsolete.

[jongjom]

4 minutes ago, Pentallion said:

Yeah, but isn't that pretty standard operating procedure anyways?

The enemy will focus on *that PC* as opposed to whoever. You're going into battle with a Gang Up And Kill Me First signal to the opposition (or for everyone to run away fast)

Edited June 20, 2018 by jongjom

[Pentallion]

The player in my group who is coming up with all the broken ideas to abuse things is very excited and looking forward to playing.  So there's that.  The player in my group who always comes up with the ACTUAL broken ideas - like the infamous hula hoop of death or the whirling spear of massive bludgeoning - hasn't gotten a copy of the rules yet. 

[jongjom]

2 minutes ago, Pentallion said:

The player in my group who is coming up with all the broken ideas to abuse things is very excited and looking forward to playing.  So there's that.  The player in my group who always comes up with the ACTUAL broken ideas - like the infamous hula hoop of death or the whirling spear of massive bludgeoning - hasn't gotten a copy of the rules yet. 

I will salute their adventurers who will have short but glorious careers. 

[Pentallion]

Just now, jongjom said:

I will salute their adventurers who will have short but glorious careers. 

That's why I'm concerned about this.  Certain players get all excited.  I see this as nuclear escalation.  The bosses have to have access to the same abusable spells that they do.  I guess time will tell.  We will just have to play it out and see.  It's like in our M-Space Pirates of Drinax campaign.  They all wanted Gauss Rifles until I actually began shooting back with them, then they all admitted the gun was OP.

[jongjom]

6 minutes ago, Pentallion said:

That's why I'm concerned about this.  Certain players get all excited.  I see this as nuclear escalation.  The bosses have to have access to the same abusable spells that they do.  I guess time will tell.  We will just have to play it out and see.  It's like in our M-Space Pirates of Drinax campaign.  They all wanted Gauss Rifles until I actually began shooting back with them, then they all admitted the gun was OP.

That's one approach. Another maybe the Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid approach. Let them wreak havoc at first. Then then opposition wises up and comes at them in an organised way, i.e. most of them with Countermagic 3 to 6 (requiring time and an uncertain amount of extra MP to get through), and a few hired mercenary Lunars with Reflection. And of course, their PC is Target Number 1.

[Jeff]

Well also, adventurers start with 3 Rune Points. It takes 5 Rune Points to Extend something for a year, so they need a minimum of 6 Rune Points. By then, they've probably learned that this is not a nearly such a clever plan (particularly if something is happening every season and they have no Rune Points to use).

[Atgxtg]

2 hours ago, Pentallion said:

Meanwhile, countermagic is limited to Issaries and Waha. 

Is that true? That bothers me a lot more than multispell or extension. Without countermagic no one else has any magical defenses. 

[PhilHibbs]

It's not limited to them, it's just that those are the only cults that teach it at discounted rates to initiates. Only those cults or their associate cults can start with it at character generation time. Plus shamans, of course, they can get pretty much whatever they like.

Edited June 20, 2018 by PhilHibbs

[Atgxtg]

17 minutes ago, PhilHibbs said:

It's not limited to them, it's just that those are the only cults that teach it at discounted rates to initiates. Only those cults or their associate cults can start with it at character generation time. Plus shamans, of course, they can get pretty much whatever they like.

Oh, okay. Not starting with it is  or having a discount is one thing. Not having access to it at all is something else. Plus the associated cults things would expand that list to include all the Lightbrigers and most of the Praxian cults. So the Humakti has to pay full price for it, but they get Bladesharp 4, for free. 

[Pentallion]

33 minutes ago, PhilHibbs said:

It's not limited to them, it's just that those are the only cults that teach it at discounted rates to initiates. Only those cults or their associate cults can start with it at character generation time. Plus shamans, of course, they can get pretty much whatever they like.

Oh.  Thanks for clearing that up.  I'd misunderstood.

[Atgxtg]

6 minutes ago, Pentallion said:

Oh.  Thanks for clearing that up.  I'd misunderstood.

LOL! No Countermagic would have had me throwing in the towel on RQG. 

[Ian_W]

What Im more concerned with is that, because this is a rules set that tries to integrate Glorantha into the rules, it means long-duration magic - the Wizards blessing the Knight and their equipment with a spell that will last through their whole quest - is no longer solely a Western thing.

In My Glorantha, Orlanthi cultures should be about ritual preparation by, for example, the Arming of Orlanth (ie wife ties a ribbon in your hair, best friend gives you a shield, uncle gives you a weapon etc). If the Rules As Written allows stacked Extentions to run to the next Holy Day, at which point worship ceremonies can allow them to be renewed, then we are dealing with something else.

Dammit, if you are going to have game-breaking superpowers, at least heroquest for said superpowers and put them into a tattoo or something.

[Atgxtg]

On the bright side, it all seems to come down to Extension. So it should be easy to houserule (if you don't like it) or fix (if everybody doesn't like it). 

[simonh]

18 minutes ago, Ian_W said:

In My Glorantha, Orlanthi cultures should be about ritual preparation by, for example, the Arming of Orlanth (ie wife ties a ribbon in your hair, best friend gives you a shield, uncle gives you a weapon etc).

Otherwise known as the Ernaldan rune spell Bless Champion.

I think the magic we have is precisely what you are talking about, just expressed in game mechanical terms. If you asked an Ernaldan priestess casting Bless Champion, or a Humakti uncle casting extended Truesword what they were doing, they would describe it exactly as you do. None of them would give names of spells, and may not even have recognisable names for those spells to give you. Any names they did use would likely be descriptive, inconsistent and vary locally.

Edited June 20, 2018 by simonh

[Ian_W]

23 minutes ago, simonh said:

Otherwise known as the Ernaldan rune spell Bless Champion.

I think the magic we have is precisely what you are talking about, just expressed in game mechanical terms. If you asked an Ernaldan priestess casting Bless Champion, or a Humakti uncle casting extended Truesword what they were doing, they would describe it exactly as you do. None of them would give names of spells, and may not even have recognisable names for those spells to give you. Any names they did use would likely be descriptive, inconsistent and vary locally.

Yes, but it shouldn't last until the next High Holy Day ... it should be so that you can Go Do The Thing.

[simonh]

3 hours ago, Ian_W said:

Yes, but it shouldn't last until the next High Holy Day ... it should be so that you can Go Do The Thing.

Back to rules, your characters put in enough extension, or boost Bless Champion with enough rune points for the magic to last long enough to do the thing.

You then narrate how this looks in-world, describing the ritual preparations and prayers offered to the gods, to identify the champion with Orlanth and invoke divine favour.

[Furry Fella]

12 hours ago, Pentallion said:

Meanwhile, countermagic is limited to Issaries and Waha.  So only merchants and Praxians are likely to have defenses.  And they would either have to have a higher Dex SR or have previously cast it because those 8 disruptions go off as if they were a single 1 pt spell.  So while there are answers, those answers aren't likely to be in effect when the disruptions come whizzing in. 

I'll have to do more reading on this to be sure it isn't like Shattering, where it all hits one location.  I'm thinking it's 8 random hits, but something I read above makes me think I better double check that.

Spirit magic can be got from Cults and Shaman. Indeed to relevant chapter is clear a Rune level can teach any spell they know. The listed spells are those "favoured / promoted" by the cult. The ones that characters can get as there Free points per x time of Spirit Magic. That initiates are likely to get at a discount etc.

Page 335 says

Multispell
1 Point
Self, Temporal, Stackable
This spell allows the caster to combine two spirit magic spells
and cast them at once. These are resolved as separate attacks.
The only exception to this is the Disruption spell, which can
be combined with itself and resolved as one attack doing
2D3 damage to one hit location

However the point still being missed is range and time. Range is about half that of sling or bow. Time taken is such that a reasonably quick character may well be able to trot up to you and hit you with h-hander before you finish casting. Remember while casting you have serious limitations.

The other missing point is power storage crystals have to be filled, PC's magic points don't regenerate all the fast, A good fight and then days or more hiding to rebuild the  stored magic points

[Furry Fella]

7 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

On the bright side, it all seems to come down to Extension. So it should be easy to houserule (if you don't like it) or fix (if everybody doesn't like it). 

I can't see any need for fixing, plenty of other ways to deal with this issue. Turn up to Town / Fort /Clan holding gate all glow with piles of magic (remember the disturbing bit about sorcery is it's not visible) get promptly told "your not coming in here until that lot's taken down" cause your not behaving friendly like! Have people be wary and passively hostile because this is a display of hostility or veiled threat. Would you as a shop keeper deal with someone who insisted on carrying a rocket launcher all the time (even if it was legal)? How is the Clan Ring or Thegn etc going to react? Characters are part of society so do have to deal with social pressure. Alternatively exclude them from the local society because of how the behave - see how long they like or survive that.

[Jeff]

There is a tremendous amount of discussion about "potential" abuse of a rule by players without actually trying it out in play. Extension is an EXPENSIVE spell - it requires quite a few Rune points. Rune Points that aren't available for whatever other situations the players might need them in. In playing out a campaign game, my players are very cautious about expending Rune points - they like the option of using their cult speciality spells for special circumstances, summoning and controlling elementals, and making sure they can Heal Wound. And that's not even raising the social implications of those actions. 

Rules minimaxing in the abstract tends to be very misleading as to how rules play out in practice.

[Furry Fella]

7 hours ago, Ian_W said:

Yes, but it shouldn't last until the next High Holy Day ... it should be so that you can Go Do The Thing.

Play the consequences and the characters will take it down. Buffed with shield 6 for a year - problem a spell is spell to shield so suddenly 14 magic points to heal any injury - bugger!! Put on Charisma for a year have the Wife, girlfriend get insanely jealous, Or somebody else's partner get insanely jealous cause their squeeze is now not paying attention. Put up Dark walk for a year and become the forgotten person and go hungry as the servers never see you at night in the ill lit hall / tavern etc.

[Atgxtg]

19 minutes ago, Furry Fella said:

I can't see any need for fixing, plenty of other ways to deal with this issue.

It all boils down to if people think that 6 points for a year is too cheap or not. It's certainly much more powerful than things were before. In fact, the whole game seems much more high powered magically than it was before.  But that might be a better fit for Glorantha. 

[Jeff]

1 hour ago, Atgxtg said:

It all boils down to if people think that 6 points for a year is too cheap or not. It's certainly much more powerful than things were before. In fact, the whole game seems much more high powered magically than it was before.  But that might be a better fit for Glorantha. 

There is better access to Rune Magic for player characters (since in previous editions reusable Rune Magic was restricted to Rune Masters - and the rules actually provided incentives not to become a Rune Master). The rules now are much more in harmony with the setting.

But honestly, the worries about Multispell and Extension expressed on this thread are very much overstated. Even my rules minimaxer dismisses the tactic as a waste of Rune Points. 

[Joerg]

If players start going around with huge amounts of extension, there is the possibility to have enemies start using strong Dismiss Magic on their magic.

What are the rules on this, btw? Do points in Extension etc. count towards the intensity needed to dispell the effect?

If a character could almost read by the light emitted by his protective magic, opponents would surely start using such tactics.

[Jeff]

6 minutes ago, Joerg said:

If players start going around with huge amounts of extension, there is the possibility to have enemies start using strong Dismiss Magic on their magic.

What are the rules on this, btw? Do points in Extension etc. count towards the intensity needed to dispell the effect?

If a character could almost read by the light emitted by his protective magic, opponents would surely start using such tactics.

Again, my suggestion is to see how this actually comes up in play. My minimaxers think this is a very wasteful tactic in practice.

[Atgxtg]

20 minutes ago, Jeff said:

But honestly, the worries about Multispell and Extension expressed on this thread are very much overstated. Even my rules minimaxer dismisses the tactic as a waste of Rune Points. 

I think most people agree. If I wanted to keep a spell up for a whole year it would probably be something defensive like Protection, or something more generally useful like Bladesharp , Vigor, or even Mobility. Something that will be useful for more than the first round. Stuff that even if someone spends a lot of MPs to blow down, is still worth it because it made them spend those MPs blowing don your spells as opposed to casting powerful offensive magic of their own. 

 

BTW, I take if from your posting then that the Rune Points are locked up as long as the Extension is running, right? So someone can't extend a spell for a year, then pray to regain rune points, and repeat the process. Good.  Locking up the 6 RPs in Extension go a long way towards the cost. 

Edited June 21, 2018 by Atgxtg