Bladesharp

[Mechashef]

51 minutes ago, Russ Massey said:

Yeah, the basic problem with DB is that there are much more efficient ways to affect an enemy for the same MP cost. Maybe if it removed the chance for a special damage result it would be more worthwhile.

That appears to be a great suggestion. I really like it.  

[Atgxtg]

7 hours ago, Russ Massey said:

Yeah, the basic problem with DB is that there are much more efficient ways to affect an enemy for the same MP cost. Maybe if it removed the chance for a special damage result it would be more worthwhile.

No maybe about it. It would be more worthwhile. But that probably swings the pendulum too far in the other direction. Removing special chances for 1 MP. Plus, once again, the net effect would probably be to get the opponent to switch weapons.  

[Darius West]

My copy of RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha arrived today, and there on page 261 is Dullblade.  Deities who provide it include Chalana Arroy and Maran Gor.

[Pentallion]

On 11/21/2018 at 12:05 PM, Jakob said:

I'd interpret it as "The weapon becomes perfectly balanced and might also seem to actually want to hit it's target." I wouldn't see it as the spell magically increasing the blade's sharpness and the user's skill, because that way, one spell would target to different entities with two different effects, which seems strange. Just making a weapon "better" in pretty much every regard and also giving it a slight "will to hit" makes more sense to me.

IMO, it's a carryover from D&D that they didn't think through.  A +1 sword in D&D increases the chance to hit and do damage.  But that's because part of "hitting" in D&D is this abstract notion that getting past armor is factored into your chance to hit.  The +1 "to hit" is actually the swords ability to slice through armor.  When they made up Bladesharp in the early days they were probably not thinking it all the way through and just said, +5% to hit and +1 damage, voila!  +1 sword.  But the +1 damage the sword does IS it's ability to slice through armor.  So in RQ any edition, that part of the spell hasn't ever really made sense.

You can make up any reason for why it makes you better to hit, but in the end, you're just like the spouse making up a reason why things aren't so bad really, giving a + to hit and a + to damage is a bad marriage between D&D and RQ and doesn't really belong in RQG.  But hey, that's always been a part of the game and it's easy for D&D players to grasp if they don't think very hard on it and really, why think very hard on it in the first place right?

It's only when people start puzzling over rules like this that the quesion "hey, why does Bladesharp give bonuses to hit?" ever come up.

[Atgxtg]

5 minutes ago, Pentallion said:

IMO, it's a carryover from D&D that they didn't think through

I think you're right on the money with that assessment. I wonder if it is about time that somebody addressed that? Maybe limit the bonus for such spells to damage and either have another spell that improves skill (or attack and parry) or not and  make Coordination much more useful. 

[Pentallion]

2 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

I think you're right on the money with that assessment. I wonder if it is about time that somebody addressed that? Maybe limit the bonus for such spells to damage and either have another spell that improves skill (or attack and parry) or not and  make Coordination much more useful. 

My personal opinion:  it's not worth addressing.  Just rationalize it and move on.  To use my previous analogy, it's not worth getting a divorce over.

[Mugen]

10 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

I think you're right on the money with that assessment. I wonder if it is about time that somebody addressed that? Maybe limit the bonus for such spells to damage and either have another spell that improves skill (or attack and parry) or not and  make Coordination much more useful. 

In a way, equivalent spells in Elric! and Mythras can be seen as fixes to Bladesharp.

I don't remember the spell's name in Elric!, but I remember it adds X (= MP spent, max 4) to weapon damage, but it can't make it go beyond weapon's maximum rolled damage (that is, if you cast it with 4 points on a 1d8+1 weapon, it would deal 1d8+5 (+db) with a maximum of 9 (+db).

Mythras' Bladesharp bumps by 1 the weapon's damage die, and, as all Folk Magic spells, is a 1 MP spell.

[womble]

How would that affect the 'attractiveness' of the spell as a Spirit Magic choice? Would it make it unviable compared to, say Fireblade (assuming the character could have either)? How would it stack up against Speedart and Multimissile (Speedart 'should' give benefits to hit, as a shorter flight time makes shooting easier)? Protection and Shimmer were always different things: making Bladesharp just damage, and adding a 'to-hit booster' spell would be kinda consistent.

[Joerg]

13 hours ago, Pentallion said:

IMO, it's a carryover from D&D that they didn't think through.  A +1 sword in D&D increases the chance to hit and do damage.  But that's because part of "hitting" in D&D is this abstract notion that getting past armor is factored into your chance to hit.  The +1 "to hit" is actually the swords ability to slice through armor.  When they made up Bladesharp in the early days they were probably not thinking it all the way through and just said, +5% to hit and +1 damage, voila!  +1 sword.  But the +1 damage the sword does IS it's ability to slice through armor.  So in RQ any edition, that part of the spell hasn't ever really made sense.

I don't quite agree, but that's because I have always regarded D&D as rather dull with its armor class.

My own formative GMing experiences came from games where you had an attack roll, the opponent made a parry roll, and in case the parry failed he took full damage minus armor protection. My game actually had to kinds of hit points - steady life points that were derived from the stats and stayed the same, much like BRP, and endurance points which could be trained up by leveling up (training enough skills to manifest the experience points received in adventuring), and even if the parry or armor avoided hit point damage, endurance points would be lost, and a person left without endurance points was more or less prone. In this system, there were all manner of ways to have magical weapons, and the Bladesharp corresponded to a +1 to attack +1 to damage magic. Other possible combinations could be anything, so +0 +2 would be a sword only dealing magical damage but didn't aid to hit chance, and vice versa. Even negative points were possible, like a bulky sword with -2 to hit but +5 to damage.

In my interpretation, the Bladesharp spell projects a sharpness even beyond its physical blade, making it easier to interact with whatever you were slashing at, and cutting a bit deeper.

 

But then I guess "growing up" outside of the D&D ecology used to be rare in that early decade, and only caught on in the later eighties when the number of available and popular systems exploded.

[womble]

Yeah. DnD's AC/HP construct, vague and primitive though it is, involves a level of parrying as part of the abstractions, so the +1 to-hit involves some bypassing active defenses, which in RQ means bonuses to attack skill. Still, it'd be simpler if it were just a flat magic damage add... I think I'll see what my table think of it...

[soltakss]

I've used the +n Sword in RuneQuest and it works really well. Basically the sword is enchanted with a Bladesharp N permanent effect, that is compatible with Bladesharp and other weapon-enhancing spells. So, a +2 Broadsword would do 1D8+3 and have +10% to hit, RQ2 Truesword would double rolled damage, so rolling 5 gives 8, doubled to 11 (max sword damage), but RQ3 Truesword would do 2D8+6 damage.

SlimeSlicer was a +4 Bastard Sword that did double penetrating damage against Chaos, in RQ2, so it did 1D10+5 damage, RQ2 Truesword meant the damage was doubled, up to 15, so rolling anything higher than 2 meant it did 15 damage, so everyone said it was too powerful, but nobody wanted it removed from the game.

[Atgxtg]

1 hour ago, soltakss said:

I've used the +n Sword in RuneQuest and it works really well.

It should. About the only worry I would have would be with stacking, especially from RQ3 onwards. 

[womble]

28 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

It should. About the only worry I would have would be with stacking, especially from RQ3 onwards. 

I think people fret overmuch on stacking. There's almost always an opportunity cost which can inhibit it, and the 'fear of spending all your consumables and it not being necessary or useful' is a good rein.

And the balance for it is the opposition can do it too... A bit like the balance for "crits" isn't "fumbles", it's "the other side getting to have equitable chances to crit".

[Atgxtg]

1 hour ago, womble said:

I think people fret overmuch on stacking. There's almost always an opportunity cost which can inhibit it, and the 'fear of spending all your consumables and it not being necessary or useful' is a good rein.

LOL! I think I might have posted the first, or at least one of few posts about stacking in RQ. Generally it's a non-issue in RQ, and more a D&D thing.

My concern though is that the Bladesharp can't be stacked by RAW, so I don't think it should stack with a "sword is enchanted with a Bladesharp N permanent effect." Now if the sword had some other thing on it that gave it its pluses it would be two different effect, and I'd be okay with. 

Although casting Bladesharp on, say, Exacalibur, seems a little greedy. 

Quote

And the balance for it is the opposition can do it too... A bit like the balance for "crits" isn't "fumbles", it's "the other side getting to have equitable chances to crit".

Umm, no,  I think that just makes things worse.  First off the opposition would have to have another, similar sword. It could end up in the PCs possession, thereby giving them two such swords. The GM would then have to give the opposition two such sword to balance, and the PCs could end up with four, magic sword. That can easily lead to rampant escalation. I think there are better ways to deal with things, f indeed they need to be dealt with. 

Edited November 30, 2018 by Atgxtg

[womble]

14 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

LOL! I think I might have posted the first, or at least one of few posts about stacking in RQ. Generally it's a non-issue in RQ, and more a D&D thing.

The paranoia about stacking starts in the rules in RQG: No augment stacking; restrictions on frequency; spell combination limits (countermagic/protection/shimmer; bladesharp/fireblade; speedart/multimissile/firearrow).

14 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Umm, no,  I think that just makes things worse.  First off the opposition would have to have another, similar sword. It could end up in the PCs possession, thereby giving them two such swords. The GM would then have to give the opposition two such sword to balance, and the PCs could end up with four, magic sword. That can easily lead to rampant escalation. I think there are better ways to deal with things, f indeed they need to be dealt with. 

I was making a more general point, rather than saying the bad guys should have exactly the same gear: they'll have abilities that should stack and 'synergise'. The argument not to give the opposition Nice Things because the players might get hold of them doesn't hold water. You can easily have 'powerful' enchanted things restricted to a subset of user which will exclude the party, or have the special maguffin be a thing that the players would have to work so hard at being able to use that they'd rather keep using what they're already good at, because the new thing will never catch up (how many Wind Lords would trade in using their 120% broadsword/shield combo for a +20% maul with a total chance to hit of about 40%?)

[Atgxtg]

2 hours ago, womble said:

The paranoia about stacking starts in the rules in RQG: No augment stacking; restrictions on frequency; spell combination limits (countermagic/protection/shimmer; bladesharp/fireblade; speedart/multimissile/firearrow).

I think paranoia is going a bit too far. They are restrictions and something that needs to be looked at tactically. 

 

2 hours ago, womble said:

I was making a more general point, rather than saying the bad guys should have exactly the same gear: they'll have abilities that should stack and 'synergise'. The argument not to give the opposition Nice Things because the players might get hold of them doesn't hold water.

It does it you don't want to have runaway escalation.

2 hours ago, womble said:

You can easily have 'powerful' enchanted things restricted to a subset of user which will exclude the party, or have the special maguffin be a thing that the players would have to work so hard at being able to use that they'd rather keep using what they're already good at, because the new thing will never catch up

Yes, but if every powerful item that the PCs run across is something that they cannot use, you lose verisimilitude. And frankly, you don't need such powerful items, and if you have them they should be fairly rare. Otherwise they become standard items, not powerful ones. If everybody has a +3 sword then +3 swords are the norm. If everybody else has a +3 sword then that's a  problem with the GM. 

2 hours ago, womble said:

 

(how many Wind Lords would trade in using their 120% broadsword/shield combo for a +20% maul with a total chance to hit of about 40%?)

About the same number who toss that maul away, none. But I'm sure all those Wind Lord will find a way to get somethin gout of that maul, Perhaps give it to an ally or trade or sell it. 

[soltakss]

22 hours ago, womble said:

I was making a more general point, rather than saying the bad guys should have exactly the same gear: they'll have abilities that should stack and 'synergise'. The argument not to give the opposition Nice Things because the players might get hold of them doesn't hold water. You can easily have 'powerful' enchanted things restricted to a subset of user which will exclude the party, or have the special maguffin be a thing that the players would have to work so hard at being able to use that they'd rather keep using what they're already good at, because the new thing will never catch up (how many Wind Lords would trade in using their 120% broadsword/shield combo for a +20% maul with a total chance to hit of about 40%?)

Troll Wind Lords would probably like that Maul.

But, it is a good point. It makes no sense for a bunch of trolls, that you have killed, to have a +10% Sword, where a +10% Maul would make more sense. Sure, you could throw it away, or you could go to the local market and swap the +10% Maul for a +10% Bastard Sword that a troll Rune Lord has got. Neither of you ask any difficult questions about where they got the weapons and everyone walks away happy. Alternatively, you just give those spare magic items to your cult, who give them out to people who can use them, lock them away in a vault or go down to the market and swap with other cults doing the same thing.

[soltakss]

22 hours ago, womble said:

The paranoia about stacking starts in the rules in RQG: No augment stacking; restrictions on frequency; spell combination limits (countermagic/protection/shimmer; bladesharp/fireblade; speedart/multimissile/firearrow).

I can see some of them making sense, for example Bladesharp and Fireblade, but perhaps the skill-boost of Bladesharp might work with the Firebladed weapon. Countermagic/Protection.Shimmer make no real sense to me, to be honest. Speedart/Firearrow probably should behave as Bladesharp/Fireblade if you allowed that combination. Firearrow/Multimissile might make the arrow burn but the multimissiles as normal arrows, again I have no real problem with that. Yelorna has the Shooting Star spell that provides a Firearrow/Multimissile combination where the Multimissiles have Firearrow, but that is fine as it is a Runespell, but I wouldn't want that to be available as a Spirit Magic option, as it devalues the Runespell.