What the heck... Check that out!

[Bill the barbarian]

Time to create a new thread and this time I blame soltakks and PhilHibbs for it. A while back in another thread a couple of comments caught my attention and made me go, " huh, I did not see that at all. Wow, this needs to be further explored".The thread is not relevant— the following...

2 hours ago, Bill the barbarian said:

6 hours ago, soltakss said:

Ooh, thank you for pointing that out. I hadn't noticed that the Resistance Table stopped capping out at 95, but has chances above 95. That is a big, big improvement.

In which case, the spell is not poorly written and works just fine. Either +5 POW or +25 chance, both work just as well on the modified Resistance Table.

I wonder what other vast improvements they have slipped in without me noticing. 

No kidding, mind if I make a new thread..?

The table that made  soltakss* so excited that I quote him and start a new thread was

11 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:



and damn, it got me excited and wondering else what I have missed as well.You know, forest for the trees and all that.

Time to hit the books to see what I can find, but first to the Forums to post this bad boy! So what of it? Anything catch your eye and make you take a 2nd look like soltakss** did? Post it here for us all to marvel over. Remember, tell them Soltak soltakk Tell them Frank sent ya.

Cheers

* (all right I officially hat the spel chekr monster thingie... try to type soltakss I dare ya)
** Arghh!!!!

Edited April 13, 2019 by Bill the barbarian
dam spel chekr

[PhilHibbs]

Limbs now need to take 3x damage before being severed or maimed, rather than the old 2x. Makes critical hits much more survivable.

[Bill the barbarian]

Major difference indeed!

[Bill the barbarian]

Digging deep and have yet to find anything as earthshaking as the expanded resistance table but thought I better take a break and put a caveat on this discussion.

Let's leave the obvious combat notes on skills over 100% and other well discussed topics for the other places they're being discussed. If the topic is well taken care of elsewhere leave it there. Let's try to keep the new factor here. Like the resistance table (I can't believe I missed that).

Cheers

[soltakss]

I am easily excited and soltakss is very easy to spell. The long version is Soltak StormSpear, which spellcheckers really struggle with. Thanks for the thread.

 

Rune Pools being available to everyone is a new and improved thing.

Runes themselves are newish for RuneQuest.

[Bill the barbarian]

I have no problems with soltakss but every now and again the so-called spl chckr (A foul demon from some vague and unwholesome lunar hell) goes berserk when I type to in. Ah well... Thanks for giving me the idea soltakss, so I should contribute p'raps...

Loving the new 2nd attempt at skills rolls...

Reattempting Ability Rolls
An adventurer failing an ability roll may still be in a situation where they could potentially try again. The gamemaster may permit a follow-up attempt if it is justified, but at a –25% penalty.
If this second attempt fails, the adventurer cannot make any further reattempts without the passage of time or change in circumstances.

[PhilHibbs]

An Issaries character (or NPC) can help avoid the group "wasting" unspent Rune Points by Spell Trading them.

[g33k]

1 hour ago, PhilHibbs said:

An Issaries character (or NPC) can help avoid the group "wasting" unspent Rune Points by Spell Trading them.

Can you clarify/expand upon this?  What exactly is "wasting" the RP's, and how does Spell Trading avoid this?

[PhilHibbs]

12 hours ago, g33k said:

Can you clarify/expand upon this?  What exactly is "wasting" the RP's, and how does Spell Trading avoid this?

Picture the scene. I'ts Windsday, Movement Week, Sea Season, Orlanth's seasonal holy day. You've used two of your five Rune Points. You are guaranteed to get all your Rune Points back, n matter what you roll on 2D6, you still only get 2 Rune Points back.

Harmast says to you, "Hey, I've still got 3 Rune Points. I'll cast Spell Trading with two of them, I'll give you one point of Heal Wound, if you give me three points of Shield."

You agree, so now you and Harmast are out of Rune Points. You participate in the ceremony, and you roll a 3 and a 1, and Harmast rolls a 6. So now you're back to 4 Rune Points, plus one casting of Heal Wound. Well, you could have had all 5 Rune Points, so you're no better off really. Never mind, it's the Issaries holy day the day after tomorrow, another D6, so that guarantees to get you back up to 5 Rune Points... but wth an extra one-use Heal Wound spell! Harmast has all his Rune Points, plus Shield 3. He probably pulled the same trick with someone else on the day in between, so now he's probably got all 3 Rune Points plus Flight 2.

I just asked for clarification on the rules questions thread as to whether "Shield 3" counts as "one use of a rune spell" for the purposes of spell trading.

It has been suggested that this is too generous, and that the old RQ2/RQ3 mechanism where you can't regain the spell until the recipient has cast it should be restored by not being able to get the Rune Points back. Being down on Rune Points for potentially a very long time is a huge commitment that not many people will undertake, though. It's a trade that you cannot know will be fair at the time of making it - you might use that Heal Body spell the very next day, but the Chalana Arroy might be holding on to that Path Watch spell for years.

Edited April 15, 2019 by PhilHibbs

[Joerg]

Sorry, but I don't subscribe to this reading of the Spell Trading results. To me, it sounds like you remove a number of your rune points from your pool of flexible rune points until your trading partner cast that spell he traded for with you. Likewise for your trading partner.

Trading for a common spell makes only sense for members of spirit cults who don't get these.

And yes, Spell Trading is a potentially very long commitment, especially with the rune point pool runes that allow the person who traded for the magic to do something else. I suppose the rune points traded away do return when the trading partner dies, even if the magic remains unused, but the mechanism you propose let's you load up with the equivalent of divine scrolls for just the cost of the Spell Trading spell.

 

On another tangent, blowing off all of your rune points before a holy day is an invitation for outside interference with those rites, as e.g. in the Paps episode of Biturian's travels.

[Shiningbrow]

42 minutes ago, Joerg said:

On another tangent, blowing off all of your rune points before a holy day is an invitation for outside interference with those rites, as e.g. in the Paps episode of Biturian's travels.

A) blowing off all your rune points before a holy day is what almost every Rune Lord will do to up their stats.. or, if GM allows, up the stat of an Initiate or God Speaker (bah - I much preferred the term 'alcolyte') as a reward.

b) Holy Days are also when you know most of the people will be at one place at the same time. So, depending on cult affiliations, it might be a *really* bad time to attack!

[Joerg]

1 minute ago, Shiningbrow said:

A) blowing off all your rune points before a holy day is what almost every Rune Lord will do to up their stats.. or, if GM allows, up the stat of an Initiate or God Speaker (bah - I much preferred the term 'alcolyte') as a reward.

I actually prefer the Anglo-Saxonism/Icelandic form godi to acolyte. Easier to spell and to pronounce, too.

You can min-max and ruleplay to get through this, but with me as a GM, there would be an object lesson lurking somewhere.

1 minute ago, Shiningbrow said:

b) Holy Days are also when you know most of the people will be at one place at the same time. So, depending on cult affiliations, it might be a *really* bad time to attack!

If all of them are drained of both MP (given to the rites) and rune points, a target-rich environment with moderate difficulty,

[Shiningbrow]

3 minutes ago, Joerg said:

I actually prefer the Anglo-Saxonism/Icelandic form godi to acolyte. Easier to spell and to pronounce, too.

You can min-max and ruleplay to get through this, but with me as a GM, there would be an object lesson lurking somewhere.

If all of them are drained of both MP (given to the rites) and rune points, a target-rich environment with moderate difficulty,

I always took "godi" to be a priest level.

I wouldn't call it min-maxing... just a normal part of life. Gods want the best out of their chosen followers.

Unlikely to have everyone drained of both MP and RP... only need 2 MP to do a Worship (plus a couple more to up the skill - which would really only be for the lower tiers, because the GS, Priest and RL (and many initiates) would already have a high enough level to not need it (nor would they need to blow the MPs to get their RPs back). Granted, if it's a small temple or shrine, it might be worth attacking (but that damn wyter will be watching out!) - but attacking something major would be just silly (or daring).

[PhilHibbs]

59 minutes ago, Joerg said:

...but the mechanism you propose let's you load up with the equivalent of divine scrolls for just the cost of the Spell Trading spell.

Yes, each spell traded requires 2 Rune Points from the Issaries priest, and it has to be done at a sanctified Market. If two non-Issaries want to swap spells, that's 4 RP from an Issaries that have to be paid for.

59 minutes ago, Joerg said:

On another tangent, blowing off all of your rune points before a holy day is an invitation for outside interference with those rites, as e.g. in the Paps episode of Biturian's travels.

Very few people will actually be doing this, for the reason I just mentioned. And those spells that they traded are still available to them, it's only the Issaries that is 2 RP down.

[Mechashef]

This has been mentioned in another thread but I think it is worth bringing attention to again:

P161

Quote

Each point of wind STR greater than 10 reduces the accuracy of missiles by 5%

Of course the rule may be too crunchy for most groups to use.

A wind STR of 7-12 blows out a candle and a STR of 12 gives a 10% penalty to missile attacks.  A light wind is STR 13 to 18 (15% to 40% penalty and a moderate wind is 19-24 (45% to 70% penalty).  Considering that the Dragon Pass area is the windiest on the continent, wind penalties to missile fire should be really common.  

 

The other "What the Heck" moment for me came from this forum not the manual.  In the "RuneQuest Core Rules Questions" thread Jason, when responding to a question on Statement of Intent (SoI) wrote:

Quote

Similarly, my experience playing pretty much every BRP-based game over the last 35 years is that most of the time groups (my own included) don't generally follow the formal statement of intent phase of combat, usually just allowing players to announce their actions as their strike ranks are called.

So one of the quite contentious rules of RQ, one that seems strange to players of many other games and causes much debate amongst experienced RQ people isn't actually used by one of the authors of the rules!  

 

 

 

 

[Jeff]

11 minutes ago, Mechashef said:

This has been mentioned in another thread but I think it is worth bringing attention to again:

P161

Of course the rule may be too crunchy for most groups to use.

A wind STR of 7-12 blows out a candle and a STR of 12 gives a 10% penalty to missile attacks.  A light wind is STR 13 to 18 (15% to 40% penalty and a moderate wind is 19-24 (45% to 70% penalty).  Considering that the Dragon Pass area is the windiest on the continent, wind penalties to missile fire should be really common.  

 

The other "What the Heck" moment for me came from this forum not the manual.  In the "RuneQuest Core Rules Questions" thread Jason, when responding to a question on Statement of Intent (SoI) wrote:

So one of the quite contentious rules of RQ, one that seems strange to players of many other games and causes much debate amongst experienced RQ people isn't actually used by one of the authors of the rules!  

 

 

 

 

Jason doesn't use it but I do. As described on page 192, I find the the Statement of Intent phase EXTREMELY helpful in running combat. Players say what they intend to do, which makes it much easier for me to work around that. It helps defuse potential arguments and carry the combat along.

[PhilHibbs]

4 hours ago, Mechashef said:

So one of the quite contentious rules of RQ, one that seems strange to players of many other games and causes much debate amongst experienced RQ people isn't actually used by one of the authors of the rules!

I can see how that would seem odd, but the rules are there to give a general structure, and from my memory of playing RQ as a teen-ager we ran it pretty strictly. Let's face it: a lot of kids cheat. They bend or break the rules as much as they can get away with, and fiddle their dice rolls. The original RQ rules were very much aimed at a teen-age audience, and that audience needs structure. Us grognards in our 40s and 50s, maybe not so much, so it's fine for Jason and Jeff and my group to play fast and loose with the rules.

Perhaps there should be a line in the rules saying that SOI can be skipped if your group is comfortable with a more free-flowing combat system.

Update: aploogies for the broad brush, correction inserted.

Edited April 16, 2019 by PhilHibbs

[Richard S.]

3 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

I can see how that would seem odd, but the rules are there to give a general structure, and from my memory of playing RQ as a teen-ager we ran it pretty strictly. Let's face it: kids cheat. They bend or break the rules as much as they can get away with, and fiddle their dice rolls. The original RQ rules were very much aimed at a teen-age audience, and that audience needs structure. Us grognards in our 40s and 50s, maybe not so much, so it's fine for Jason and Jeff and my group to play fast and loose with the rules.

Speaking as teenager right now, I honestly can't remember the last time my group actually followed combat to the letter. It just feels really clunky and slow in some parts, especially for those of us who play CRPGs in which combat is a noticeably quick affair. And no, I don't think there's ever been an instance of any of us cheating.

[PhilHibbs]

5 minutes ago, Richard S. said:

Speaking as teenager right now, I honestly can't remember the last time my group actually followed combat to the letter. It just feels really clunky and slow in some parts, especially for those of us who play CRPGs in which combat is a noticeably quick affair. And no, I don't think there's ever been an instance of any of us cheating.

Yeah, I apologize, that was unfair of me to paint that in such a broad brush. I started roleplaying at the age of 12, by my later teens I was more mature. Apologies also for derailing this thread!

Edited April 16, 2019 by PhilHibbs

[The God Learner]

Depends on the group and social setting. Some configurations are more adversarial than others and there you may want strict application of the rules. There is also the case of pickup games, including where players (want to) bring in new rulebooks, characters, items and whatnot. Literal application can be needed then. Others have extensive house ruling and the GM as overall judge, which I prefer but sometimes requires a lot of GM preparation.

In my case, regardless of system, we normally after a while quietly dropped the less functional or too clunky parts of systems. (Assuming the group didn't break up or moved to something else.)

 

[Joerg]

5 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

Yes, each spell traded requires 2 Rune Points from the Issaries priest, and it has to be done at a sanctified Market. If two non-Issaries want to swap spells, that's 4 RP from an Issaries that have to be paid for.

A market is often found at a high holy day festival ground, see Biturian's visit to the Paps. There will be a shrine to Issaries, too, so these cost have already been taken care of by the cult or clan conducting the festival.

The actual trading needs to be paid, yes.

 

5 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

Very few people will actually be doing this, for the reason I just mentioned.

More likely because the GM tends to think "if they still have rune points after the adventure, I was way too soft!"

If rune points are renewed seasonally, then there is a greater likelihood that everybody who has any spends a good deal of them under the season.

5 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

And those spells that they traded are still available to them, it's only the Issaries that is 2 RP down.

True - I said so myself when I made the argument for making those rune points non-regenerable. The recipient of the spell may choose to cast one of his own spells instead.

I still think that blocking those rune points is fair - the deity did not grant Path Watch to that Zorak Zorani, after all. While I wouldn't block the person who provided the spell to use some of their other rune points for the same spell, since in earlier incarnations of RQ you could sacrifice for multiple uses of that spell and Spell Trading only gave away one of those  uses, I'd still maintain that the non-reusable nature of the spell for some other cultist will affect the donor.

 

[PhilHibbs]

1 minute ago, Joerg said:

I still think that blocking those rune points is fair - the deity did not grant Path Watch to that Zorak Zorani, after all. While I wouldn't block the person who provided the spell to use some of their other rune points for the same spell, since in earlier incarnations of RQ you could sacrifice for multiple uses of that spell and Spell Trading only gave away one of those  uses, I'd still maintain that the non-reusable nature of the spell for some other cultist will affect the donor.

I think I agree with you, actually. I certainly would not be offended if a GM ruled that this was not possible. And it could lead to some great drama between players, where one character has used up their spell, but the other has not. "No fair, you got your Rune Points back when I healed you, but I won't get mine back until you use my Flight spell!"

Maybe you should get your own RP back when you've used the spell you got, rather than when the other person uses yours? That still would leave the loop hole where "you give me a 1 point spell, which I'll use right away. I'll give you Charisma plus Extension 5, leaving you down 1 RP."

Actually, that helps answer it: if you accept Jason's ruling that you shouldn't be able to get RP back until Extension expires, then the same really has to apply to Spell Trading.

[Bill the barbarian]

8 hours ago, Joerg said:

I actually prefer the Anglo-Saxonism/Icelandic form godi to acolyte. Easier to spell and to pronounce, too.

 

me too. not being germanic it sounds exotic yet familiar as well

 

8 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

Yes, each spell traded requires 2 Rune Points from the Issaries priest, and it has to be done at a sanctified Market. If two non-Issaries want to swap spells, that's 4 RP from an Issaries that have to be paid for.

Quote

Damn, I will have to go to the books again. I am afraid I am not seeing the advantage you have mentioned here. Too much work not enough sleep or it is just to slick for me to comprehend. Let me give it a read and I have a feeing I will be getting back to you with questions after.

Cheers

[Bill the barbarian]

Contribution to the thread time again:

The Chalana Arroy cult never asks for payment. However, it is a custom enforced by the gods themselves that if a healer revives a person, the beneficiary must immediately pay a sum equal to their Ransom to the healer’s temple. The cults enforce this among their followers. Rune levels have this amount paid by their own temples. 

Page 150 RQ RiG

Not a rule per se, but I like how it gives a real world flavour to my Dragon Pass experiences; the trade of a life for a life's worth (weregild) . It seems to have its etymology in HQ and in specific Sartar Kingdom of Heroes, and there it expands this to all curing and rich folk even building a temple to Chalana in return for major healing or resurrection.

[Bill the barbarian]

Purloined from a variety of people in the thread RQ with Less Theism, Thanks fro finding this Kloster!

RQG p 418 Power Gain Roll through Spirit Combat

Yes, in addition to the (new) gains with worship and battle.

Posted 8 hours ago

   10 hours ago,  Kloster said: 

Yes, in addition to the (new) gains with worship and battle.

Battle? I can't find that!

   8 hours ago,  PhilHibbs said: 

Battle? I can't find that!

Special and critical results on Battle Results table p176

Edited April 16, 2019 by Bill the barbarian