Detect Magic spell

[Brootse]

Will the spell detect items that have spells cast on them? Say Boon of Kargan Tor or Bladesharp cast on a sword? Or are those spells visible to everyone in your Glorantha?

[PhilHibbs]

"enchantments and similar magically potent objects", doesn't sound like spells to me.

[Shiningbrow]

Compare it to the phrasing for Soul Sight and Pierce Veil...

[soltakss]

We played that it did.

Soltak Stormspear won several games of the Shell Game by casting Farsee on the pea and then using Detect Magic, including the one where the pea ended up in the chappie's pocket.

[Shiningbrow]

2 hours ago, soltakss said:

We played that it did.

Soltak Stormspear won several games of the Shell Game by casting Farsee on the pea and then using Detect Magic, including the one where the pea ended up in the chappie's pocket.

I"m totally confused... what's the point of casting Farsee on the pea??? Wouldn't Bludgeon be bettet

[soltakss]

6 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

I"m totally confused... what's the point of casting Farsee on the pea??? Wouldn't Bludgeon be bettet

Farsee lasts 4 hours and he played several games of the Shell Game, longer than 10 melee rounds, so another spell would have gone down. Detect Magic showed where the magical pea was, so he could tell which cup the pea was in. After the chappie cheated several times, he started either putting his hand on the cup with the pea or removing the cups without the pea, allowing the chappie to admit the pea wasn't in any of the cups. He got very annoyed after a few games.

 

[Joerg]

17 minutes ago, soltakss said:

Farsee lasts 4 hours

What kind of house rule is that?

[soltakss]

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

What kind of house rule is that?

RQ2 Rules, I think. 

[Anunnaki]

4 hours ago, soltakss said:

RQ2 Rules, I think. 

From the RQ2 rulebook spell description for Farsee. Last setence. "Note that this is the only battle magic spell with a duration of four hours."

Not the case in RQG (two minutes, like other Spirit Magic spells), where it has the characteristics of the RQ3 version.

Edited May 12, 2019 by Anunnaki

[soltakss]

10 hours ago, Anunnaki said:

From the RQ2 rulebook spell description for Farsee. Last setence. "Note that this is the only battle magic spell with a duration of four hours."

Thanks, that saves me looking it up. Soltak Stormspear was an RQ2 PC, so all reminiscences about him use the RQ2 rules. 

[Shiningbrow]

17 hours ago, soltakss said:

Farsee lasts 4 hours and he played several games of the Shell Game, longer than 10 melee rounds, so another spell would have gone down. Detect Magic showed where the magical pea was, so he could tell which cup the pea was in. After the chappie cheated several times, he started either putting his hand on the cup with the pea or removing the cups without the pea, allowing the chappie to admit the pea wasn't in any of the cups. He got very annoyed after a few games.

 

But, can you imagine what a Bludgeon 4 or higher would do to his shell game??

[soltakss]

13 minutes ago, Shiningbrow said:

But, can you imagine what a Bludgeon 4 or higher would do to his shell game??

One of our PCs had a Speedart 4 matrix, a special version of the spell, cast it on one of the peas and used it to take down a foe (Critical in head, does double damage as they didn't have any armour, so 8 points in the head). It was in a circus scenario. I think it was the one with the were-goldfish assassins, but can't really remember.

[Shiningbrow]

38 minutes ago, soltakss said:

One of our PCs had a Speedart 4 matrix, a special version of the spell, cast it on one of the peas and used it to take down a foe (Critical in head, does double damage as they didn't have any armour, so 8 points in the head). It was in a circus scenario. I think it was the one with the were-goldfish assassins, but can't really remember.

Were-goldfish...??????

[soltakss]

4 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

Were-goldfish...??????

Well, since you asked ... 🙂

The scenario was that there was a bunch of unexplained assassinations of Orlanthi leaders, nobody could work out how the assassins got into heavily fortified houses, so the PCs were sent to investigate. After some investigation and checking around, we noticed that the killings roughly corresponded to the passing of a carnival or fun fair, so we went in disguise. Now, we weren't allowed to show ourselves as Rune Levels of Lunar-Enemy cults, so we had no weapons on us, no armour and were dressed in normal clothes, or as normal as we could be. We investigated all the stalls, but found nobody who was an enemy. Of course, being ultra-competitive, we threw balls at coconuts, fired crossbow bolts at moving targets, played the Shell Game and so on, basically having a really good time. We also won prizes, mainly goldfishes in little bags.

Now, for everyone in the UK of a certain age, you will remember that fun fairs used to offer goldfish as prizes, they came in little plastic bags full of water and, if you were lucky you could get them home without them dying and could put them in a goldfish bowl, of you were really lucky, they would actually survive for a while, we had Nuts and Bolts, two goldfish from a fair and Bolts died, leaving a pet goldfish called Nuts who survived for a good few years.

Anyway, back to the scenario, We ended up with half a dozen goldfish in bags, so took them to the heavily defended villa where we were staying, tipped them into a fish pool and went to sleep. In the middle of the night, we heard some strange noises and discovered half a dozen naked men, dripping wet, some walking across the villa floor, others clambering out of the fish pool. It turns out that the assassins were were-goldfish, won by their targets, or their children, who transformed at night, picked up whatever weapons they had handy and killed their targets in their sleep.

The scenario was memorable for several reasons:

• The idea of were-goldfish assassins is cool
• We had a lot of fun at each stand
• We survived a carnival/fun fair of tricksters

One of the attractions was a Hall of Mirrors that made you look short and fat or tall and thin, but one of the PCs found they stayed that way, so lost a hot pint from his arms and legs and gained a hot point on chest and abdomen.

 

[soltakss]

By the way, many apologies for completely threadcrapping the Detect Magic thread.

[Brootse]

58 minutes ago, soltakss said:

By the way, many apologies for completely threadcrapping the Detect Magic thread.

Hah, no need for apologies, I liked the story

[Austin]

12 hours ago, soltakss said:

By the way, many apologies for completely threadcrapping the Detect Magic thread.

As someone with at least twenty fewer years of RQ experience than most folks on this forum, I love when threads get derailed. Gives me material to steal for my own game .

[Jose-san]

On 5/10/2019 at 3:43 PM, Brootse said:

Will the spell detect items that have spells cast on them? Say Boon of Kargan Tor or Bladesharp cast on a sword? Or are those spells visible to everyone in your Glorantha?

I don't know, my players asked me this very question yesterday.

On 5/10/2019 at 3:49 PM, PhilHibbs said:

"enchantments and similar magically potent objects", doesn't sound like spells to me.

I agree with this. As written, I think it doesn't detect active spells.

On the other hand. In The Red Book of Magic, page 105 "How Does Spirit Magic Appear, Sound and Feel?" says "It's is noticeable when spirit magic has been cast. For example a sword with Bladesharp cast upon it might have a supernatural sheen or a person with Protection cast might glow dully".

I don't know what to make out of it. Is there any other method to identify individual active spells on a target?

Sorry for the necrothread!

[Godlearner]

On 5/10/2019 at 9:49 AM, PhilHibbs said:

"enchantments and similar magically potent objects", doesn't sound like spells to me.

To me, spells are enchantments. A difference between Bludgeon and a Binding Enchantment is duration. On page 247 Enchantments are called spells "Enchantment: These spells create a permanent magical effect"

[Steve]

18 hours ago, Godlearner said:

To me, spells are enchantments. A difference between Bludgeon and a Binding Enchantment is duration. On page 247 Enchantments are called spells "Enchantment: These spells create a permanent magical effect"

Enchantments are a special type of spell. Most spells aren't Enchantments.

[Godlearner]

6 hours ago, Steve said:

Enchantments are a special type of spell. Most spells aren't Enchantments.

And I say otherwise. All magic is a type of enchantment. Its a matter of definition. To my Detect Magic should actually detect magic including all spells with duration.

[Scotty]

I've answered this over on the Q&A: