Egregious munchkinnery!

[gochie]

17 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

This makes no sense - there are non-stackable spells in the rules text that talks about being able to be extended. The first I saw was Incarnate Ancestor. It's also hard to see any reason for the ruling. Most of the munchkin ammo comes from extending giant stackable rune spells anyway.

That was exactly what I said on Facebook in response to the ruling... There's zero logical reason for this rule to exist.

Honestly, if I was Chaosium, I probably would've ditched Extension completely. 

[Akhôrahil]

3 minutes ago, gochie said:

That was exactly what I said on Facebook in response to the ruling... There's zero logical reason for this rule to exist.

Honestly, if I was Chaosium, I probably would've ditched Extension completely. 

You might also keep Extension as a pure duration multiplier. 90 minutes for Extension 5 is a lot less than a year.

[Crel]

9 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

You might also keep Extension as a pure duration multiplier. 90 minutes for Extension 5 is a lot less than a year.

IIRC old versions of Extension were +15min per point (I never played RQ2, trying to remember RQ3). But then sorcery would have the only long-term buffs, and we can't have sorcery outshining Rune magic, can we...

[Akhôrahil]

1 minute ago, Crel said:

IIRC old versions of Extension were +15min per point (I never played RQ2, trying to remember RQ3). But then sorcery would have the only long-term buffs, and we can't have sorcery outshining Rune magic, can we...

Hey, there's always Woad...

(A little surprised my players haven't realized that they can make two pots of 9p Woad per season...)

[Crel]

1 minute ago, Akhôrahil said:

Hey, there's always Woad...

(A little surprised my players haven't realized that they can make two pots of 9p Woad per season...)

I'm pretty sure Woad & Thunderstones are High Holy Day only? So, yearly.

[HreshtIronBorne]

3 minutes ago, Crel said:

IIRC old versions of Extension were +15min per point (I never played RQ2, trying to remember RQ3). But then sorcery would have the only long-term buffs, and we can't have sorcery outshining Rune magic, can we...

I remember rq3 extension doubling duration per point? I still remember having charts on the back of my character sheet where i calculated each point of extension i owned and how long it made whatever spell it got stacked with. 

[Crel]

Just now, HreshtIronBorne said:

I remember rq3 extension doubling duration per point? I still remember having charts on the back of my character sheet where i calculated each point of extension i owned and how long it made whatever spell it got stacked with. 

You're probably right. I played a sorcerer-knight so didn't really pay much attention to Rune magic. Read it, but didn't really play it.

[HreshtIronBorne]

Bless Thunderstone and Bless Woad are limited to Storm Voices and Wind Lords respectively. So, Priests, Rune-Lords or Full Rune-Lord-Priests of Orlanth. 

Edited December 22, 2019 by HreshtIronBorne
Clarity

[Akhôrahil]

8 minutes ago, HreshtIronBorne said:

Bless Thunderstone and Bless Woad are limited to Storm Voices and Wind Lords respectively. So, Priests, Rune-Lords or Full Rune-Lord-Priests of Orlanth. 

Yeah, you're right. Same thing with the HHD part.

Since this is the munchkin thread though, a smart PC can get two full castings of Woad or Thunderstone in on a HHD day, though - save up the Rune Points, cast the spell, go to worship to fill up all Rune Points, cast it again.

Interestingly, the Bless Woad bit is one of the very few places where being a full priest is better than being an god-talker.

(Also, one has to wonder just how much Woad and Thunderstones a typical clan has stored up, given that it's a no-brainer to do it as soon as the bigwigs have Rune Points to spend and they last forever.)

Edited December 22, 2019 by Akhôrahil

[HreshtIronBorne]

I kinda think of them like KoDP treasures and stuff. Most of the Thunderstones and Woad would be set aside to be used for important Clan Warfare or Raids, to bless specific Champions and such for HeroQuests and all that. A particularly gifted Initiate on an important quest might be given a Thunderstone or a medium Woad to prorect them. 

I know our old party basically made an item that we used to create big woads and thunderstones every time we could charge it. 

[Akhôrahil]

17 minutes ago, HreshtIronBorne said:

I kinda think of them like KoDP treasures and stuff. Most of the Thunderstones and Woad would be set aside to be used for important Clan Warfare or Raids, to bless specific Champions and such for HeroQuests and all that. A particularly gifted Initiate on an important quest might be given a Thunderstone or a medium Woad to prorect them. 

I know our old party basically made an item that we used to create big woads and thunderstones every time we could charge it. 

I loved the old Storm Tribe Hedkoranth cult so much, where you got your own personal reusable thunderstone.

[Joerg]

11 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

I loved the old Storm Tribe Hedkoranth cult so much, where you got your own personal reusable thunderstone.

No reason not to have this as a heroquest reward. We have a number of Hedkoranth myths that you could put together to mirror the secret that only a devotee (i.e. rune level) of Hedkoranth could access.

The reusable (and returning) Thunderstone probably is an allied spirit rather than just an enchanted item in RQG terms, and might be good only for a low damage without that special rite to enchant it, with the option to activate it once for the big damage.

There might be more quests to increase the power of the allied Thunderstone, while at the same time earning reputation, passions, and hatred by associates of the foes of Hedkoranth.

[Akhôrahil]

39 minutes ago, Joerg said:

No reason not to have this as a heroquest reward. We have a number of Hedkoranth myths that you could put together to mirror the secret that only a devotee (i.e. rune level) of Hedkoranth could access.

The reusable (and returning) Thunderstone probably is an allied spirit rather than just an enchanted item in RQG terms, and might be good only for a low damage without that special rite to enchant it, with the option to activate it once for the big damage.

There might be more quests to increase the power of the allied Thunderstone, while at the same time earning reputation, passions, and hatred by associates of the foes of Hedkoranth.

For instance, you might be able to spend Rune Points to gain the Thunderstone effect on it as a regular spell.

[HreshtIronBorne]

20 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

No reason not to have this as a heroquest reward. We have a number of Hedkoranth myths that you could put together to mirror the secret that only a devotee (i.e. rune level) of Hedkoranth could access.

The reusable (and returning) Thunderstone probably is an allied spirit rather than just an enchanted item in RQG terms, and might be good only for a low damage without that special rite to enchant it, with the option to activate it once for the big damage.

There might be more quests to increase the power of the allied Thunderstone, while at the same time earning reputation, passions, and hatred by associates of the foes of Hedkoranth.

For instance, you might be able to spend Rune Points to gain the Thunderstone effect on it as a regular spell.

Shoot, depending on how successful you were on the HQ and all of the other factors I could see it being permanent ALWAYS, Costing MP to activate Thunderstone, Costing RP to activate Thunderstone, or some other combination depending on how much you want to go crazy with it. I personally think going on Awesome Quests for Awesome Stuff is Awesome, so I am hecka biased. 

[Lordabdul]

2 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

This makes no sense - there are non-stackable spells in the rules text that talks about being able to be extended (like Incarnate Ancestor).

Hard to say what Incarnate Ancestor is -- in both my copy physical book and in the PDF, that spell oddly misses any stackable specifier. I don't see any Rune Fix or Q&A article that specifies what that spell is either way.

[Lordabdul]

3 hours ago, HreshtIronBorne said:

With the ruling that all Non-Stackable spells are incapable of Extension all of the Odaylans lose out on their best magics completely.

Not quite -- Transform Self also doesn't specifically mention being stackable or non-stackable in the rules... so just like with Incarnate Ancestor, I'm not sure what to think. Plus, the fact that it explicitly stacks with nonstackable spells (Bear's Skin, Bear's Strength, etc.) means it's kind of an exception. I would probably rule that you can extend it, especially since there is narrative precedent in Glorantha for an Odayla Runelord spending several seasons in Bear form. The only problem there is the insane RP cost to cast it, something I discussed with potential house rules in this thread (although we haven't reached a very satisfying house rule yet IMHO).

But when it comes to limited shape-shifting spells like, say, Bear Claws, then yeah you apparently can't extend those as per RAW.

Edited December 22, 2019 by lordabdul

[Akhôrahil]

15 minutes ago, lordabdul said:

Hard to say what Incarnate Ancestor is -- in both my copy physical book and in the PDF, that spell oddly misses any stackable specifier. I don't see any Rune Fix or Q&A article that specifies what that spell is either way.

I think it's safe to assume that anything that's not stackable is non-stackable.

[HreshtIronBorne]

Transform self has a Special (1 hour) duration. Extension specifies in the first sentence it works on Temporal spells of 15 minute duration.

[Lordabdul]

7 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

I think it's safe to assume that anything that's not stackable is non-stackable.

I'm not so sure since nonstackable spells are explictly listed as nonstackable. Why would the authors go to the trouble of writing "nonstackable" on spells if, like, not writing anything would have worked?

Plus, when the Q&A on this topic says "non stackable spells can't be extended", but does it mean "spells that don't have the 'stackable' attribute", or "spells that have the 'nonstackable' attribute". You see what I mean? It's hard to map a binary state on a ternary state ("ternary" in this case being "stackable/nonstackable/nothing specified")

Edited December 22, 2019 by lordabdul

[Akhôrahil]

25 minutes ago, lordabdul said:

I'm not so sure since nonstackable spells are explictly listed as nonstackable. Why would the authors go to the trouble of writing "nonstackable" on spells if, like, not writing anything would have worked?

That would mean that we have stackable, non-stackable, and neither-stackable-nor-nonstackable, which seems... weird.

It strikes me as far likelier that this is just a case of weak editing. 

[Lordabdul]

3 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

It strikes me as far likelier that this is just a case of weak editing.

I think so too but... well, who knows. At this point I think I'm looking forward a LOT MORE to seeing a revised RQG rulebook than anything else, including CoG  

[Joerg]

5 minutes ago, HreshtIronBorne said:

Transform self has a Special (1 hour) duration. Extension specifies in the first sentence it works on Temporal spells of 15 minute duration.

Transform Self might be seen as a special version of Extension 1 available to Beast shapechangers.

1 minute ago, lordabdul said:

I'm not so sure since nonstackable spells are explictly listed as nonstackable. Why would the authors go to the trouble of writing "nonstackable" on spells if, like, not writing anything would have worked?

There are a lot of verbatim inheritances from RQ2, unfortunately also in areas where the RQ2 wording (e.g. the POW vs. POW rolls on the Resistance Table) would have been MP vs. MP rolls under RQ3 terminology (which has only partially survived in RQG).

Two spells without either the Stackable or the Nonstackable attribute are Summon Specific Ancestor and Summon Spirit Teacher, both of which must be stacked with Summon Ancestor and may be stacked with one another in addition. Neither can be stacked with itself, though. Not mentioning the stackability attribute appears to be the easiest way to deal with this.

Extension would be applicable only to Summon Ancestor.

1 minute ago, lordabdul said:

Plus, when the Q&A on this topic says "non stackable spells can't be extended", but does it mean "spells that don't have the 'stackable' attribute", or "spells that have the 'nonstackable' attribute". You see what I mean? It's hard to map a binary state on a ternary state

To repeat an earlier statement, I regard the "non-stackable" attribute in the line under the rune point cost as an indication that no additional rune points may be expended on this spell to increase its effect. This is essentially what the paragraph on p.315 says,

For a weird example of a stackable spell with the attribute "Nonstackable", take a look at Teleportation (p.346):

Quote

Each additional Rune point enables one extra living thing to be teleported at the same time, provided they are touching the caster.

Suppress Lodril (on the same page, also a 3 point spell) has the attribute "Stackable" with a ruling very similarly phrased:

Quote

Each additional Rune point used in this spell increases the damage done by 1D6 and the Countermagic effect by 2 points.

 

Some spells have their own rules for extending the duration, for instance Spirit Guardian which extends by stacking another rune point of this spell, rather than using Extension. (I wonder why?)

Duration of rune spells is a fairly jumbled mess. Issaries has several spells with 8 weeks (one full season) duration (Create Market, Safe, Lock, Passage.

Lhankor Mhy's Knowledge (Temporal, Nonstackable) has the caveat

Quote

Any information that cannot be assimilated fully within the 15 minutes of the spell is lost.

which doesn't really make sense to me. Anybody care to explain?

Hide Wealth has a basic duration of one day and doubles the duration of the spell for each point of the Extension stacked with it. For 3 points of Extension, the spell has a duration similar to a normal rune spell with Extension 3. To match a normal rune spell with Extension 5, you'd need to cast Hide Wealth with 9 points or Extension, but unlike other Extended spells Hide Wealth has no upper limit for its Extension (other than the lifetime of the caster and the fact that all of her rune points are blocked by this).

If Accelerate Growth is stackable with Extension, Extension 1 will quadruple the permanent effect, Extension 2 will hundred-fold the permanent effect. Extension 3 would result in a legendary tree as if from the Gods or even Green Age.

 

[Akhôrahil]

18 minutes ago, Joerg said:

For a weird example of a stackable spell with the attribute "Nonstackable", take a look at Teleportation (p.346)

This must be just an error, surely? 

[Akhôrahil]

22 minutes ago, Joerg said:

[Knowledge] which doesn't really make sense to me. Anybody care to explain?

I'm sure this isn't the intended effect, but I would rule it as the player getting up to 15 minutes of play time to hear descriptions and ask about stuff. 🙂

What it probably actually needs, is a rule about what amounts of history in what kind of detail can be absorbed in what amount of time. The intention is supposedly something along the line that the PC can play the history, including fast forwards, reverses, and pauses, for about 15 minutes of character time as though it was a security tape, and then you will simply have to make a GM decision about how much information can be gained in that time.

[Akhôrahil]

27 minutes ago, Joerg said:

If Accelerate Growth is stackable with Extension, Extension 1 will quadruple the permanent effect, Extension 2 will hundred-fold the permanent effect. Extension 3 would result in a legendary tree as if from the Gods or even Green Age.

This doesn't really follow - the strict reading would be that it matures the plant in one year, and that this takes 15 minutes. Any Extension would do nothing - it already has matured its one year by minute 15!