The Beast Cult of Hykim & Mikyh

[styopa]

While the primitive Hsunchen tribes of Glorantha are the primary worshippers of Hykim & Mikyh, their focus is solely through their one totemic animal. However, some barbarian cultures have continued to worship the Animal Father and Mother in a more general, ritualistic, and organized fashion offering their Shamans an alternative path of development.

The Beast Cult of Hykim & Mikyh is a variant path for worshippers who have reached the level of Shaman.  Upon completing the normal requirements to become a Hykim & Mikyh Shaman, if the candidate also knows Craft (Butcher) at 50% and the Spirit Magic Spell Peaceful Cut, they may choose to become a Beast Shaman (instead of the usual Spirit Shaman).

As explained in more detail in the attachment, it's not immediately an exclusive choice.  An existing Shaman may choose to walk the path of the Beast, or a shaman who formerly chose the Beast way may choose to abandon it to become a more canonical 'standard' Spirit Shaman.  This "respeccing"  then becomes exclusive - the character only gets to change their mind once.  Once a shaman has actually turned away from either the path of Spirit or the path of Beast, they cannot go back to it.

Comments and notes: We had a player that wanted the possibility of a character that could change forms, and while we'd actually first tried to script sorcerous rules for it, it just neither worked (requiring silly amounts of mp available) nor felt right thematically.  So this is version 2 and it worked astonishingly well.  Characters start out with limited forms and the limited uses/long transform time lowers the early-game utility substantially.  However, with frequent use (I limit the amount of form-changing to 8 hours total a day in down time) accumulated familiarity mitigates a lot of the early-form constraints. 

Ultimately while the changes, frequency, and duration of forms can pretty much go away as constraints, the ultimate limiting factor is that at their toughest, they're still mundane animals.  By the time (likely) their party helps them kill something massive and scary like a Triceratops - the other party members themselves will probably be of a comparable power level and in any case there's a question of "how many contexts - really - is it useful to be a Triceratops"?  A bar brawl?  Not really.  In a tomb?  Nope.  On a ship?  Ha ha ha.  Now, again with familiarity buildup they can keep getting re-rolls of the 'version' of the beast form they inhabit (we have a rq3 monster generator in excel, so rerolling and printing a half-dozen new bear forms takes about that many seconds).  Coupled with some strategic enhancements/spells like STR, they can be comparable to other 'seasoned' Rune Lords.

In our play experience now of several months, I think everyone at the table - from me as a GM, to other non-shaman players, to the player who's using this now - we all feel it's rather surprisingly well balanced, with a pretty interesting set of choices for the player in terms of ongoing character development.  He enjoys it a lot, and the other players don't feel it's OP...so for me as the GM it's a success.

 

Note: this was designed and written in the context of our heavily houseruled RQ3 game; I was holding this back in case we'd decided to shift straight over to RQG but since we've decided to stick with our own rules for now, there's no reason not to put it out there.  In any case it should be trivial to correct to/for any other RQ/BRP variant including RQG.

Enjoy.  Questions or comments to Styopa1(at)gmail.com

In BRP downloads at 

 

Also at https://drive.google.com/open?id=1nvLbhyvijknnUKvU-Jvepx8XvWDf-t6R

 

Note to Chaosium, really, the "downloads" section is sort of a mess.  It's hard to find anything, there isn't even (as far as I could see) an RQG section for files, etc.

Edited October 1, 2018 by styopa

[PhilHibbs]

I've created a House Rules page on the wiki and added this thread as the inaugural entry. Maybe until the files section is sorted out, the wiki can act as an index.

[styopa]

24 minutes ago, PhilHibbs said:

I've created a House Rules page on the wiki and added this thread as the inaugural entry. Maybe until the files section is sorted out, the wiki can act as an index.

Thanks Phil, that's a good idea.

[BWP]

> we have a rq3 monster generator in excel

Would you care to share?

 

[styopa]

3 hours ago, BWP said:

> we have a rq3 monster generator in excel

Would you care to share?

 

Sure, here's a few (keeping them locally as I update frequently)

RQ Roller https://drive.google.com/open?id=1j0pMay1q0rJlLgu6R0arvYy2S5XtmHHS

RQ Roller FAQ: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1KRzS3SbDPwUf0a0zx-A-xRbcQL_4A3Ij (how to use/modify it)

RQ Roller creates creatures in generally RQ3 format; Tabs Refsheets 1-2-3 are references for armors and for weapons, attacks, all sorts of details.  Tab Charsheet is a RQ3 character sheet (not integrated with anything, just handy), Chaos Features is just that again not integrated with anyhting, Tab Places is random place name generator.

Training minigame https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B018uRj3WEzoS1o3UmtrYVIweUk makes downtime interesting.  Training has broader variability (it can be rushed or careful), costs, and potential for injury/risk if intrinsically dangerous.

Game Notes and Houserules https://drive.google.com/open?id=1mTuyPgn-gDJkA8j2_JS5r7Lc2kTBTjRg basically, the way we play.  

Enjoy; these are mostly for my reference so they might be occasionally cryptic - feel free to ask any questions, or comment if you think something's particularly stupid.

[Austin]

Thanks for sharing, it's much appreciated. I'm in your son's playgroup and we've been trying to figure out if the houserules were written up anywhere for some time.

Also, the Beast Shaman has sounded totally sick. Looking forward to reading it after finishing my re-read of RQG.

[styopa]

9 hours ago, Crel said:

Thanks for sharing, it's much appreciated. I'm in your son's playgroup and we've been trying to figure out if the houserules were written up anywhere for some time.

Also, the Beast Shaman has sounded totally sick. Looking forward to reading it after finishing my re-read of RQG.

Ha ha, thanks.

Yeah, RQG had really put me in a bind.  I was aware that our rules set was in practical terms unavailable to anyone outside our group.  That's why I had such high hopes for RQG to be the "new" core, living rule set for which I could write a new set of houserules.  Then people who enjoy it could get it.  After consideration, I'm not going to bother.

It's either: spend a large amount of time rewriting the fairly large amount of stuff I'm not happy about in RQG (to basically get the game back to what we play today, with perhaps some changes)...and then with each RQG adventure/setting, have to then still put in a lot of work adapting it to our game.  Or...

Just keep playing our current game, and then with each RQG adventure/setting, put in a lot of work adapting it to our game.

I'm not conceited enough to believe that our way is particularly better, it just works well for what we want out of the game.  So I think if anyone's interested in RQ generally, we DO have RQG to point them at and say "there's your new beautiful rule set, make it your own'.  

[Richard S.]

Hm, looks interesting. I know there's gonna be an official H&M cult in the GoG book, so I wonder how similar it'll be to your idea.

[styopa]

1 hour ago, Richard S. said:

Hm, looks interesting. I know there's gonna be an official H&M cult in the GoG book, so I wonder how similar it'll be to your idea.

*VERY* different but thematically consistent (IMO).    

H&M in RQ3 GoG are MUCH narrower, ie the Basmoli can get Rune Spells to transform their head, body, limbs (separate spells) into their Lion totem animal.  Sofals can turn piecemeal into turtles, etc.  But these are solely Hsunchen - ie primitive - cultures, focused on a single totem animal. 

My write up doesn't deep dive into it, but mentions "...barbarian cultures have continued to worship the Animal Father and Mother in a more general, ritualistic, and organized fashion offering their Shamans an alternative path of development....", so presupposing a more sophisticated, polyanimalistic, utilitarian approach by larger Barbarian communities that might consist of many tribes.

Edit; more of a meta comment would be that this is meant to be a fairly-exclusive PATH for a shaman; we have been using something close to RQG's shaman pick-your-ability method for probably 5+ years, it's pretty much a direct copy of Sandy Petersen's Shaman Rules.  From that my players gleaned there were really three paths for a shaman who wanted to be the most effective, and to be the best at each would require a fair amount of exclusivity and focus in ability selection:

1) a buff shaman, using all sorts of sustained STR, Coordination, etc spells to become practically superheroic

2) a spell-shotgun shaman with the shaman ability to cast waves of disrupts simultaneously

3) a spirit-shaman (what we laughingly refer to as a poke-ball shaman - "Disease Spirit, I choose you!") that focuses on capturing and employing pets

...to this we simply add a 4th option where the shaman still has the  rudimentary functions common to all shamans (they still have a fetch, for instance) but the available additional abilities basically preclude getting any of the other "good ones" available.

Edited October 2, 2018 by styopa

[Richard S.]

2 hours ago, Richard S. said:

Hm, looks interesting. I know there's gonna be an official H&M cult in the GoG book, so I wonder how similar it'll be to your idea.

*In the upcoming RQG GoG.

[Austin]

16 hours ago, styopa said:

Ha ha, thanks.

Yeah, RQG had really put me in a bind.  I was aware that our rules set was in practical terms unavailable to anyone outside our group.  That's why I had such high hopes for RQG to be the "new" core, living rule set for which I could write a new set of houserules.  Then people who enjoy it could get it.  After consideration, I'm not going to bother.

It's either: spend a large amount of time rewriting the fairly large amount of stuff I'm not happy about in RQG (to basically get the game back to what we play today, with perhaps some changes)...and then with each RQG adventure/setting, have to then still put in a lot of work adapting it to our game.  Or...

Just keep playing our current game, and then with each RQG adventure/setting, put in a lot of work adapting it to our game.

I'm not conceited enough to believe that our way is particularly better, it just works well for what we want out of the game.  So I think if anyone's interested in RQ generally, we DO have RQG to point them at and say "there's your new beautiful rule set, make it your own'.  

That makes a lot of sense. TBH I'm not entirely sure what we play is strictly "RQ3" anyway. It's more... RQL? Heh. But I do like it, a lot. I find I like a lot of RQG's concepts and ideas, and as I'm reading my print copy I'm falling in love with the system again--the new Rune magic system and sorcery systems are delightfully on-point, theme-wise. Even if I'm less cheerful about the execution.