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THE SORCERY RULES YOU NEED TO REMEMBER FOR RQ:RiG !


Darius West

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1 hour ago, davecake said:

I think you reductio ad absurdum your own argument there. 

No, I think that there is a difference between All-Knowing Lhankor Mhy and All-Deducting Zzabur. Lhankor Mhy keeps collecting even meaningless trivia, whereas Zzabur regards everything and everyone as instances of parent phenomena and doesn't care much about individual differences.

 

2 hours ago, davecake said:

Yes. And there are probably a few other historical and obscure weirdoes, but its rare and associated with Illumination at least. It is quite likely a hero thing for most cultures - probably the most common way for a Malkioni sorcerer to experience the Spirit World is by becoming a 'kaelith' through returning from the Underworld with the ability to discorporate. 

Does the Kaelith (i.e. hero with backdoor from Hell or major resurrectee) necessitate discorporation? And even when discorporating by means of spells, this doesn't convey the shamanic dual presence which is IMO the crucial element in being able to capture spirits in the Fetch, and other such abilities.

 

2 hours ago, davecake said:

The Lunar magicians almost certainly have developed the combination of sorcerery, shamanism and rune magic - but it is a uniquely Lunar form, quite possibly only works with Lunar sorcery and Lunar shamanism, and almost certainly requires Illumination.

Basically, it looks like they are using sorcery or shamanism when they really work in the Lunar Glamour, a state of superimposed Lunar reality on the Surface World reality.

2 hours ago, davecake said:

And, of course, madness inducing goes without saying, at least as far as non-Lunars would claim. But I don't think it would be that uncommon for a Major Class magician. 

This Madness is reacting to stimuli and experiences unavailable to other people (as I recently had the difficult opportunity to find out in the real world with a tenant). When the observable facts and the personal experience differ and personal experiences override facts, you find yourself in a denial of reality. 

2 hours ago, davecake said:

The really interesting question is what combinations of magic have been mastered by Argraths Warlocks. 

I am not even sure that each warlock needs to know such a combination. Each might provide their trick pony to the group awareness (the wyter), and have the group awareness act through the individual. A different sort of madness, maybe, and definitely a different form of enlightenment.

 

Telling how it is excessive verbis

 

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1 minute ago, Joerg said:

No, I think that there is a difference between All-Knowing Lhankor Mhy and All-Deducting Zzabur. Lhankor Mhy keeps collecting even meaningless trivia, whereas Zzabur regards everything and everyone as instances of parent phenomena and doesn't care much about individual differences.

And I think regarding a god who is entirely about the value of learning as being 'irrational' because they aren't making the same sort of epistemological distinctions as, say, a 20th century logical positivist is absurd. It would be a pretty ridiculous stance to take even to a 20th century philosopher, but it is so far from being era appropriate as to be ridiculous. 

6 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Does the Kaelith (i.e. hero with backdoor from Hell or major resurrectee) necessitate discorporation?

It is clearly described a power they have in the Xeotam dialogue. On the other hand, kaelith are mentioned nowhere else, and are also said to be a able to change their shape, and we have few records of the known kaelith heroes doing this, so it is suspect. 

8 minutes ago, Joerg said:

And even when discorporating by means of spells, this doesn't convey the shamanic dual presence which is IMO the crucial element in being able to capture spirits in the Fetch, and other such abilities.

I was just trying to make the point that I think any abilities resembling shamanism are extremely rare even among the most magically renowned Westerners. Full shamanism is strictly not even a real possibility except for weirdoes that have drifted into both mysticism and foreign heresy. 

[Lunars]

10 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Basically, it looks like they are using sorcery or shamanism when they really work in the Lunar Glamour, a state of superimposed Lunar reality on the Surface World reality.

Well, that makes it *magically* possible, but I think it is still psychologically difficult for Lunars that are not Illuminated. I think Lunar sorcery resembles Western sorcery in form (rituals, formulae, tables of correspondences and complex conceptual relationships, etc) but always has a self-referential, fundamentally non-rational, core symbolism. But it still requires you to take a cool, logical, approach to puzzling it out, which is psychologically somewhat incompatible with journeying through the spirit world adrift in a sea of sensation and emotion. 

FWIW, though, IIRC Jakaleel shamans are not restricted to the Lunar otherworld, but may journey into the normal Spirit World as well, typically the underworld to contact spirits of the dead. 

[Warlocks]

19 minutes ago, Joerg said:

I am not even sure that each warlock needs to know such a combination. Each might provide their trick pony to the group awareness (the wyter), and have the group awareness act through the individual. A different sort of madness, maybe, and definitely a different form of enlightenment.

Nor am I. The collective achievement is the point. But I think even experiencing other magic through that group awareness is sanity threatening (to the unIlluminated, anyway - with the usual caveat that many would claim Illumination is already evidence of sanity slipping). 

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8 minutes ago, davecake said:

And I think regarding a god who is entirely about the value of learning as being 'irrational' because they aren't making the same sort of epistemological distinctions as, say, a 20th century logical positivist is absurd. It would be a pretty ridiculous stance to take even to a 20th century philosopher, but it is so far from being era appropriate as to be ridiculous. 

Lhankor Mhy is rote learning - like knowing all the dates of history, but having no idea how those events are linked, being able to name every single bone in a human body but having no idea about how they interact in force distribution, etc.

Knowing all the precendences in a legal conflict, as opposed to knowing the exact terms of a law regulating such exchanges.

 

 

30 minutes ago, davecake said:

It requires a degree of centralised control that is alien to the bronze age societies we discuss.

I had the impression that centralized control is the defining feature of the Bronze Age high culture, like e.g. the lords of Glauberg or Heuneburg, the (Alpine-born) master of Stonehenge and similar. Pretty much everything Dara Happa stands for, and also the Grandmothers of Esrolia.

 

30 minutes ago, davecake said:

Besides, we've already been there - there was a period when the Malkioni understood the Runequest rules and reorganised themselves accordingly, and they ultimately chose to Learn about the Gods. 😁

First and foremost they learned about the Invisible God, and most of the God Learner era Malkioni stuck to those principles, with only a variant minority doing the (in hindsight blasphemous) subversion of deities. The fires that destroyed most of the Vralos forest have nothing to do with Malkioneranism but all with driving sorcery to new perfections shown by the Abiding Book.

 

30 minutes ago, davecake said:

Your average Orlanthi can just cast a little spirit magic before battle for the same effect as a long duration spell. And has far more flexibility. 

Burning two points of rune magic (Extension, Bless Champion) for each spell meant to last him through the battle?

The theist gets the option to switch briefly to spell casting in the middle of battle, but only with personal magic. The sorcerous soldier goes into the battle with specific runic protection to avoid that kind of harm.

 

 

 

Telling how it is excessive verbis

 

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1 minute ago, Joerg said:

Lhankor Mhy is rote learning - like knowing all the dates of history, but having no idea how those events are linked, being able to name every single bone in a human body but having no idea about how they interact in force distribution, etc.

We might reasonably say that Lhankor Mhy is more Aristotle than Plato or similar. But jumping from that to 'so, it's irrational' is wildly anachronistic. And, FWIW, I don't think it is very representative of LM either, as LM obviously is interested in sorcery, alchemy, and investigation of the true nature of things. 

4 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Knowing all the precendences in a legal conflict, as opposed to knowing the exact terms of a law regulating such exchanges.

I think LM knows both, to the extent that Heortling law works that way. But if we had to choose between the two, that LM lawspeakers literally recite the exact terms of the law before each moot would tend to indicate that they know them. 

6 minutes ago, Joerg said:

I had the impression that centralized control is the defining feature of the Bronze Age high culture

You are not distinguishing between command and control, maybe? Esrolia and Dara Happa have centralised command, but they exercise command over a broad collection of independent authorities, who have their own privileges usually enabling them to control their own internal organisation.

They can't, for example, demand the Granite Phalanx retrain as peltasts. I specifically think the Talars can order the zzaburi to help them defend against a threat, or even join them in a way, but I don't think the Talars can, for example, demand all the Debaldan school switch to learning Furlandan magic, no matter how terrifically handy it would be. 

I think even the implied central bureaucracy of the Lunar Empire, with its professional Buserians and giant logistics chain, is a bit idealistic, and is a continual struggle to make it work in practice. Mostly units struggle into town with a chest full of cash and begin buying and extorting what they need individually. Everything is a lot more devolved than the idea that the talars can order up a carefully balanced package of sorcery experts would imply. Often, control over an organisation is illusory - it relies on accepting that you can command what they have without expecting to change it, and knowing that there are many commands they will not obey, and might cause them to leave if you try. 

29 minutes ago, Joerg said:

First and foremost they learned about the Invisible God, and most of the God Learner era Malkioni stuck to those principles, with only a variant minority doing the (in hindsight blasphemous) subversion of deities.

The God Learners had not one dubious, in hind sight heretical or unwise, idea, but multiple. 

I do not think the only God Learners that used some divine magic were the Malkioneranists, but that there were quite a few henotheists (largely those who combined worship of 'accepted' gods like Issaries or Lhankor Mhy), or others who interacted with Pagan deities. The Emanationalists in Pamaltela were not Malkioneranists, but they did deal with pagan deities, although only a few became full blown pure pagans (the Inflamers). There are plenty of Emanationalists following such marginally acceptable deities as Issaries and Lhankor Mhy throughout the Middle Sea Empire. 

30 minutes ago, Joerg said:

The theist gets the option to switch briefly to spell casting in the middle of battle, but only with personal magic. The sorcerous soldier goes into the battle with specific runic protection to avoid that kind of harm.

It works excellently as long as the enemy doesn't do anything unexpected. Which they will be trying very hard to do. Specific Runic Protection is particularly fragile - it relies strongly on having a very good idea of your enemies magical resources, so one bunch of unexpected allies can be devastating. 

And any explanation of battlefield magic that doesn't include wyters as a major factor is going to be way off, especially for the Orlanthi. 

Plus we are simply dragging the rules into territory they are not expected to cover in detail. Push the rules into a corner case, they stop working well, especially when important rules are missing. For example, we literally do not have rules to cover how organised, coordinated long range magical attacks work from a rules point of view - and yet, here we are, arguing about the effects of magic on mass warfare, ignoring literally most of the evidence we have on how large scale mass warfare works in Glorantha! We *know* the Lunars and the SMU focus their magical efforts on long range coordinated magical attack. Maintaining big combat buffs on your front line troops does nothing at all to protect you from otherworldly long range bombardment - and for every sorcerer who has specialised in buffing your troops, that is one sorcerer less to work on magical defences. 

What really happens with our hypothetical unit of sorcerers with big Boon of Kargan Tor buffs and Neutralise Storm? Well, they might end up meeting a bunch of Orlanthi warriors in straight combat, and chew threw them. Or they might have a group of Windlords fly/teleport into their sorcerers stashed behind the lines and slaughter them. Or they might have the Snakepipe Dancers drop a horde of spirits on them from 20 km away. Or get an earthquake dropped on them. 

Sorcerers are absolutely great at developing perfect plans, as we have had several times explained. How often those perfect plans survive contact with the enemy is another thing entirely. 

 

 

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2 hours ago, davecake said:

I literally just pointed out the in the line above that the reason they are old is because it takes years to master a spell. We clearly are not longer meaningfully arguing if we are just ignoring arguments that don't support our thesis. 

Mastery is irrelevant. Spam it or take a day if you want to be parsimonious with your MP. You're completely ignoring that. So maybe I'm just going to make this my last post.

This argument is productive for me, because it's making me find things: I retract my statement previously that implied that 'army sorcerors' had to be old and wizened. Army sorcerors need a Rune, a Technique and POW, and they can get 3 points of POW a year by organised POW training.

2 hours ago, davecake said:

Indeed, but the point is it rapidly fails to scale...

Um? This, bud, is wilful disregard of facts: Rune and Spirit Magic don't even begin to 'scale' with numbers. Sorcery absolutely does.

2 hours ago, davecake said:

...If the other magicians learn to get similarly organised (which is precisely what the Sartar Magical Union is), sorcerers are in trouble. 

Sartar Magical Union-grade stuff is also available to Sorcerous Hero Bands. Wyter Abilities crimp your sorcery style not one whit. And, they're emphatically not Rune Magic or Spirit Magic. I've shied away from including them in the discussion because they're available to both and will, naturally, synergise with whatever magic style the Wyter's Initiates use. One possible Wyter Power: Multispell for Sorcerors.

2 hours ago, davecake said:

You are imagining a version of sorcery that is supported neither by...or by the rules. As your putative soldiers have not mastered their runes...

If they hadn't mastered the runes of their spell, they couldn't cast it at all.

2 hours ago, davecake said:

...casting at max Free INT (so 12 for the average soldier, presuming they know one single spell) takes twice as many magic points as they have, and is wildly unreliable...

Or 14 for one point of POW into their Inscription. Three seasons training and they have a Rune, a Technique, a Spell, and an Inscription. They only have the spell(s) that match their Runes and Techniques: their buddies know different Runes, Techniques and cast the other spells. And reliability is moot. After the first year they're casting at season-plus-7 Intensity. A second year in the ranks and they're on +3d6 effect for a year. They don't even have to be able write beyond basics, as their spell skill cap is irrelevant. Maybe they take the three years to get that good, since the Wyter needs feeding.

2 hours ago, davecake said:

...if they cast at a duration of hours or more reduces it to a level of potency that is about on a par with normal spirit magic levels. If they cast at short time, higher level, they are vulnerable to magic and all the enemy commander has to do is delay. And it is highly unreliable to cast (to boost it being reliable would require your opponents letting you wait around). 

You are significantly underestimating the utility of Inscriptions.

 

2 hours ago, davecake said:

Your average Orlanthi can just cast a little spirit magic before battle for the same effect as a long duration spell. And has far more flexibility. 

You also appear to be significantly overestimating the duration of spirit magic. If :

2 hours ago, davecake said:

all the enemy commander has to do is delay.

to neutralise Sorcery (which actually doesn't help), how much easier is the job of the general opposing a Spirit or Rune Magic-fuelled force?

2 hours ago, davecake said:

Sorcerers don't have multispell any more - if you are talking about a strength 12 Boon of Kargan Tor, you aren't able to cast it on many people, you probably have a tiny number of sorcerers able to reliably cast it in your army, and those sorcerers are quite limited in the number of people they can cast it on.

Absolutely not the case. All your senior troopers (with average or better INT) will be able to pop something like that with season or better duration. At which point they can cast it on all their squadmates before heading out on campaign.

2 hours ago, davecake said:

It really IS about one to one, because the number of people you will be able to buff like that will be a comparable percentage of your army to the number of rune levels (maybe) on the other side, and that is probably if you have spent literally decades training war wizards. 

A decades-trained War Wizard is an entirely other thing to a sorcery-organised army. The levels of buffing are dependent entirely on the rate of POW acquisition, which can be fast, not training in spells, which is slow. Your War Wizard is the one doing the flashy, obvious 'war magic'. The rest are just quietly getting on with their job. 7/12ths of the population are capable of getting to Strength 12 for a year at x1 casting cost with a single Rune-Technique combo inside 3 years given the proper environment.

Edited by womble
Punctuation.
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On 12/17/2018 at 11:22 PM, Kloster said:

I have rolled a 16 and added 2 of the 3 additional points to it, going up to 18 (I was below 92 total points).

Professions are chosen, not rolled, so it is sufficient to say 'Hey, I am a philosopher'. I did it to try the sorcery rules.

Kloster

In that case you need to recalculate your Boon of Kargan Tor.  It requires a minimum of 8 Strength  to get to +2d6 Damage bonus, and 17 Duration to have the spell last a year.  8+17-2=23.  You would need an Enhance INT of Strength 24 to get the +6 INT you would need (remember that the spell itself subtracts 1 from Free INT). You don't have the necessary requirements.  It is also highly unlikely that you can cast an Enhance INT that high without a major inscription.

Edited by Darius West
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3 hours ago, Darius West said:

In that case you need to recalculate your Boon of Kargan Tor.  It requires a minimum of 8 Strength  to get to +2d6 Damage bonus, and 17 Duration to have the spell last a year.  8+17-2=23.  You would need an Enhance INT of Strength 24 to get the +6 INT you would need (remember that the spell itself subtracts 1 from Free INT). You don't have the necessary requirements.  It is also highly unlikely that you can cast an Enhance INT that high without a major inscription.

I was only pointing that it is not so difficult, nor so hard to be with high INT if you want to play a sorceror, not that my character is able to cast BoKT at +2D6 for 1 year: He is not, if only because even with a 20 INT (I also choose Fire/Sky as primary rune), my free INT is much lower because of an Aeolian Orlanthi that also learnt Spirit magic. Please note that it is a personal choice, fully knowing that it would cost me some efficiency in sorcery, and that I am not complaining.

Kloster

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Kloster and Darius,

I think you both need to take a step back and cool off for a bit. This shouldn't go down the road of personal attacks.

I'm not positive what is actually going on here, but the conversation is heading in a bad direction.

Hope that Helps,
Rick Meints - Chaosium, Inc.

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On 12/20/2018 at 5:31 AM, Rick Meints said:

Kloster and Darius,

I think you both need to take a step back and cool off for a bit. This shouldn't go down the road of personal attacks.

I'm not positive what is actually going on here, but the conversation is heading in a bad direction.

Moderator Hat: this thread is now closed.

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