Egregious munchkinnery!

[Akhôrahil]

2 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

I'm rather surprised at the ruling. I've discussed it many times with different groups and different GMs and I've never come across anyone who really thought it was a good idea on reflection. But if it is a rule that is adopted in your game, then as a munchkin you should absolutely stack up any long-duration spell with as many MPs as you can possibly muster. You do NOT want that year-long Flight spell to be blown out from under you at 300 feet.

I’m surprised as well - I have maintained that it’s a legit reading of the rules, but I never really thought it was intended, and Jeff shot the idea down hard on Facebook.

I don’t believe the left hand knows what the right is doing until it’s time to get stuff into the actual published erratas. Jason for instance seriously tried to tell us you can’t cast two spells in a round and that SRs isn’t an action economy!

Edited June 27, 2020 by Akhôrahil

[DreadDomain]

2 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

I’m surprised as well - I have maintained that it’s a legit reading of the rules, but I never really thought it was intended, and Jeff shot the idea down hard on Facebook.

And I'm surprised people are surprised 😃 It's was the rule says and I did not realised there was any ambiguity. Then again, I have not seen any conversations on this on FB (how many social media does one need to follow to understand the rules?)

2 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

I don’t believe the left hand knows what the right is doing until it’s time to get stuff into the actual published erratas. Jason for instance seriously tried to tell us you can’t cast two spells in a round and that SRs isn’t an action economy!

Uhh what? Just so I am clear, what is the final answer? Does it depend if you are engaged in melee or not?

[Akhôrahil]

8 minutes ago, DreadDomain said:

Uhh what? Just so I am clear, what is the final answer? Does it depend if you are engaged in melee or not?

In melee, you're highly limited, as per the rules (it's super unclear whether you're allowed multiple spells while in melee). Outside of melee, you can do whatever you can afford within your SRs (and within restrictions like missile weapon reloading times and not mixing Rune and Spirit Magic in a round ). Remember that you have to prep Spirit Magic - no Disruption machine guns!

Quote

And I'm surprised people are surprised 😃 It's was the rule says and I did not realised there was any ambiguity. Then again, I have not seen any conversations on this on FB (how many social media does one need to follow to understand the rules?)

It's ridiculous that a game with this many rules flaws doesn't have an official errata out yet! It honestly makes me angry - it needs to be very high priority!

Edited June 27, 2020 by Akhôrahil

[DreadDomain]

1 hour ago, Akhôrahil said:

In melee, you're highly limited, as per the rules (it's super unclear whether you're allowed multiple spells while in melee). Outside of melee, you can do whatever you can afford within your SRs (and within restrictions like missile weapon reloading times and not mixing Rune and Spirit Magic in a round ). Remember that you have to prep Spirit Magic - no Disruption machine guns!

The ability to cast multiple spells in melee still throw me off. Multiple Activities During Melee is not super helpful but it seems to indicate the once engaged you cannot cast bladesharp on your weapon and then attack in the same round but you can defend and cast spells (note the plural). 

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It's ridiculous that a game with this many rules flaws doesn't have an official errata out yet! It honestly makes me angry - it needs to be very high priority!

As impressive as the game is, RQG suffers from a combination of:

1) being very loosely written (which also leads to areas that are seemingly contradictory)

2) addition of rules that bring complexity for no real benefit. The fact that SR are working differently in or out of melee is confusing for many.

3) official answers that sometimes contradict one another or are not well thought out and make people go "whu?"

Edited June 27, 2020 by DreadDomain

[Bill the barbarian]

Now if this isn’t a set up I don’t know what one looks like...

2 hours ago, DreadDomain said:

(how many social media does one need to follow to understand the rules?)

Two, one to carry the post and the other to share it...
So much better than light bulb jokes!

[DreadDomain]

33 minutes ago, Fred said:

I think it would be a good idea to straighten out a few of those flaws with alternate rules in upcoming books as well. Alternative easier versions of strike ranks. Alternative more dangerous diseases (I would use CONx3% on rolls) etc. Make critical hit damage clearer etc. Straighten out rules for spells and clarify spell descriptions in that upcoming publication. Also I believe parry shouldn’t have to be rolled if someone misses, but I guess I can houserule a thing like that.
I have to say all in all it is a very promising product. Inspiring even.

 

I think the rules as intended work but they would need to be revised/rewritten by someome with good technical writing skills. I don't expect that to happen anytime soon (or ever). Some mistakes are in formatting. They are really obvious and easy to fix which makes it even more surprising that they went through the net. Three examples:

1) The Attack and Parry Results table has the attack component on the side and the defend component (parry) at the top. The Dodge Results table has the defend (dodge) component on the side and the attack component at the top. It's a minor thing but going from one table to the other is confusing especially on the gm screen where you seen both of them. Flip the Dodge table and you fix this.

2) On page 201, we find the Dodge section. Under that section you have; Use of Dodge And Parry Against Missile Weapons, Combat With Skills Above 100%, and, Using Passions And Runes In Combat. It's only a small issue but clearly the last two should not be sub-sections of Dodge but be in the Other Combat Rules section.

3) Except for the possibility of getting stuck, special damage for impaling and slashing weapons work exactly the same but both sections are written differently. They are both perfectly understandable but it leads the reader to believe something must be different.

But bearing that, adding options and alternatives in future rules supplement would be a good option.

[Akhôrahil]

49 minutes ago, DreadDomain said:

 

1) being very loosely written (which also leads to areas that are seemingly contradictory)

2) addition of rules that bring complexity for no real benefit. The fact that SR are working differently in or out of melee is confusing for many.

3) official answers that sometimes contradict one another or are not well thought out and make people go "whu?"

Add to this its two huge writing problems - large amounts of text have just been copied and pasted from earlier texts, and then not edited for consistency. I thought I was going crazy until I realized it’s just bad.

It’s a bit silly that Chaosium has created a game that is so complicated and with so many niche rules that even they themselves can’t get it right in adventures and rules QA. If they can’t handle it, they should have written a simpler game. I think the decision to maintain RQ2 compatibility was a giant mistake.

For a game of this calibre and quality of writing, the rules editing is just awful.

Needs a 1.1 version yesterday, IMO. And someone on the team doing dedicated rules quality assurance, because I can 100% promise you no-one had that job.

Edited June 28, 2020 by Akhôrahil

[DreadDomain]

6 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

For a game of this calibre and quality of writing, the rules editing is just awful.

Which is a shame because there are so many thing in RQG that are done brilliantly but it is often over shadowed by the poor rules editing. But look, the book has been out for two years and I don't believe that anyone at Chaosium ever recognized there was an issue and that they would fix it (with a revised corebook or otherwise).

Instead, we got told in Rune Fixes 2 on March 20 that ... "Two-weapon fighting (dual wielding) is another of those issues that seems clear enough on paper to the designers and yet confounds many players and gamemasters are the rules for two-weapon fighting"

To top it all, reread that sentence (specifically how it starts and how it ends). It is a fine example of the quality of editing in RQG. Oh the irony... they tell us how dumb we are not to understand their brilliant writing... with a badly written sentence.

Edited June 28, 2020 by DreadDomain

[GAZZA]

Can we add in the 1d6 CHA Tusk Riders here, or is that still heretical?

[DreadDomain]

1 hour ago, GAZZA said:

Can we add in the 1d6 CHA Tusk Riders here, or is that still heretical?

It's totally fair game 😉

Edited June 28, 2020 by DreadDomain

[Akhôrahil]

6 hours ago, DreadDomain said:

Instead, we got told in Rune Fixes 2 on March 20 that ... "Two-weapon fighting (dual wielding) is another of those issues that seems clear enough on paper to the designers and yet confounds many players and gamemasters are the rules for two-weapon fighting"

That was a fun one - the "clarification" was that it worked the opposite way the rules text explicitly says. 🙂

6 hours ago, DreadDomain said:

To top it all, reread that sentence (specifically how it starts and how it ends). It is a fine example of the quality of editing in RQG. Oh the irony... they tell us how dumb we are not to understand their brilliant writing... with a badly written sentence.

Agree, it's so weird how they get instantly defensive about these things and try to make up any convoluted explanation of why they didn't make a mistake. Like the initiate percentage thing - instead of admitting a mistake, there was an almost unreal reasoning that there's this big difference between having initiated and being an initiate...

[PhilHibbs]

3 hours ago, GAZZA said:

Can we add in the 1d6 CHA Tusk Riders here, or is that still heretical?

If you can find a munchkinly abuse for that rule, then it's fair game. I think we've drifted away from what is important in that respect recently.

Edited June 28, 2020 by PhilHibbs

[Akhôrahil]

6 minutes ago, PhilHibbs said:

If you can find a munchkinly abuse for that rule, then it's fair game. I think we've drifted away from what is important in that respect recently.

We need to see the cult published first, but if it has no Cha requirements and no Rune Points requirements (because RP reqs also can’t be met with 1d6 Cha), then it could potentially be an unusually easy cult to qualify for Rune Lord membership in? And that kind of thing might be leveraged for munchkinnery.

Edited June 28, 2020 by Akhôrahil

[Bill the barbarian]

On 6/28/2020 at 2:41 AM, PhilHibbs said:

If you can find a munchkinly abuse for that rule, then it's fair game. I think we've drifted away from what is important in that respect recently.

Aye, another round of munchkinerry and egregiousness here at this table, for this barbarian, if ya please!

Edited June 29, 2020 by Bill the barbarian

[Akhôrahil]

Since I mentioned the Rune Point cap, there’s a nice munchkin move if you want to cast the biggest Rune Spell you can and also Extend it. Rune Point caps are per cult, so pick up a second utility cult and get yourself 5 RPs in it. Nothing says that when you extend a spell, the Extend has to come from the same cult, so with 21+5 Rune Points in two different cults, you can cast Shield 21 with year-long Extend. Make it Shield 42 if you have a maxed-out Allied Spirit. Obviously defensive-boost with every MP you can scrape together - at this point, it should be hundreds.

Edited June 29, 2020 by Akhôrahil

[Kloster]

14 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

Since I mentioned the Rune Point cap, there’s a nice munchkin move if you want to cast the biggest Rune Spell you can and also Extend it. Rune Point caps are per cult, so pick up a second utility cult and get yourself 5 RPs in it. Nothing says that when you extend a spell, the Extend has to come from the same cult, so with 21+5 Rune Points in two different cults, you can cast Shield 21 with year-long Extend. Make it Shield 42 if you have a maxed-out Allied Spirit. Obviously defensive-boost with every MP you can scrape together - at this point, it should be hundreds.

This is not so munchkin, because you can not recover the RP before the end of the extended spell (see Runefixes 2). That would mean 21+5 (or 42+5) RP blocked for 1 year.

[Akhôrahil]

8 minutes ago, Kloster said:

This is not so munchkin, because you can not recover the RP before the end of the extended spell (see Runefixes 2). That would mean 21+5 (or 42+5) RP blocked for 1 year.

It's truly excellent even without RP regain. Not much is going to touch you with, say, 84 points of magical armor and 84 points of countermagic...

(Although to be fair, a 42-point Woad is probably more practical in most cases, especially as it allows friendly spells through. Presumably Woad can be defensively boosted as well.)

Edited June 30, 2020 by Akhôrahil

[Austin]

1 hour ago, Akhôrahil said:

Not much is going to touch you with, say, 84 points of magical armor and 84 points of countermagic...

Except a trollkin's 01 crit for 10 damage to the noggin . In my experience, at least, I'd assume something dumb like that's gonna happen at least once in the course of 5 or 6 adventures.

[Akhôrahil]

49 minutes ago, Crel said:

Except a trollkin's 01 crit for 10 damage to the noggin . In my experience, at least, I'd assume something dumb like that's gonna happen at least once in the course of 5 or 6 adventures.

Not like much else helps either. 🙂

[Austin]

7 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

Not like much else helps either. 🙂

Saving all that RP to increase odds of divine intervention? Mostly relevant if you're a Rune Priest rather than Rune Lord, to be fair.

That seems like a great topic for the Munchkins, though: how to defeat a crit headshot? I'll try devoting some thought to it.

[Akhôrahil]

20 minutes ago, Crel said:

That seems like a great topic for the Munchkins, though: how to defeat a crit headshot? I'll try devoting some thought to it.

I believe Ward Against Weapons sorcery works, as it rolls to resist damage rather than work like armor.

Against missile attacks, holding a shield to cover your head while fighting with the weapon works.

Edited June 30, 2020 by Akhôrahil

[Shiningbrow]

4 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

It's truly excellent even without RP regain. Not much is going to touch you with, say, 84 points of magical armor and 84 points of countermagic...

Ummm, any spirit?

[Shiningbrow]

On 6/28/2020 at 6:56 AM, Fred said:

Also I believe parry shouldn’t have to be rolled if someone misses - save time! - but I guess I can houserule a thing like that.

The effects of specials and criticals are too handy to pass up.

Besides, logically, you don't actually know if the attack is actually going to hit or not, and no-one should know until *after* all dice have been rolled. The time saved is negligible.

[Akhôrahil]

3 minutes ago, Shiningbrow said:

Ummm, any spirit?

Yes, Spirit Combat is a nuisance under this set-up. You should probably try to get yourself a Spirit Block matrix at some point. Or cast an extended Spirit Block from another cult. 

[Shiningbrow]

3 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

Yes, Spirit Combat is a nuisance under this set-up. You should probably try to get yourself a Spirit Block matrix at some point. Or cast an extended Spirit Block from another cult. 

Obviously, cast before your Shield, because you'll have to overcome all that Countermagic and boosting 😛