Learning sorcery

[Shiningbrow]

RAW, if you want to learn a new spell, you have 2 options (3 if you include making it up yourself) - you can be taught by someone who already knows, or you can find it written down and you can study it from that. Also RAW, either takes a season (about 3 months)

What other ways would ppl (or upcoming books) allow?

Such as - will spirits know sorcery, such that once defeated, sorcery spells can be learned the same way that spirit magic spells can be?

Heroquests probably would - but how easy would it be to HQ for a spell? Would it always be the same spell? And what would it take to have access to those HQs (money/influence)?

If learning from a book (and perhaps even from a teacher), what should be the effect of the Total Recall spell? What about Logical Clarity (so you don't get distracted by superfluous crap in life)? Logician?

Shouldn't one's INT have an effect on learning time? The higher the INT, the faster you get the understanding required? (Could also argue that POW, CHA and even DEX have a similar effect)

Is there a "Sorcery Plane"?

Theoretically, a DI should also grant one the instant knowledge of a sorcery spell...

Any other options I've missed? (not including Chaotic stealing of skills, spells etc from someone's mind...)

 

On different tangent, is all sorcery "sorcery"? Many cults aren't happy with the idea of sorcery, as it's seen as "godless" or Lunar (looking at the Storm Pantheon). But, we English users are using this one word to describe one particular thing... surely there would be different words, that might differentiate... ie, Lhankor Mhy initiates might use a different word for their sorcery than Westerners. Since most in Dragon Pass and surrounds have never even seen real western sorcery, are they likely to know the difference between what the LM initiate is doing and western sorcery? And, being LM initiates, wouldn't they just presume that it's merely a cult secret they haven't seen before? (ie, NPC's haven't seen the  RQ books to know what's what in their world) Is it widely known that LM (and similar cults) use this 'sorcery' thing that is, mechanically in the RQG, the same as 'sorcery' used by others?

Related to this - is it a one size fits all? Or, will there be mechanical differences such that one school, type, whatever of sorcery is incompatible with other types, schools, etc?

[Kloster]

21 minutes ago, Shiningbrow said:

Theoretically, a DI should also grant one the instant knowledge of a sorcery spell...

If the god knows the spell, yes. Otherwise, I would say no.

[PhilHibbs]

2 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

What other ways would ppl (or upcoming books) allow?

Such as - will spirits know sorcery, such that once defeated, sorcery spells can be learned the same way that spirit magic spells can be?

I'd say definitely not, you can't learn spirit spells this way any more either. Creating a focus takes a week, IIRC.

2 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

Heroquests probably would - but how easy would it be to HQ for a spell? Would it always be the same spell? And what would it take to have access to those HQs (money/influence)?

Yes, I think heroquests can do pretty much anything.

2 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

 

 

[The God Learner]

13 minutes ago, PhilHibbs said:

Yes, I think heroquests can do pretty much anything.

I haven't kept up to date with how things are structured nowadays, so take this question for what it's worth, but we may ask what sort of heroquest results in godless atheist sorcery spells? Well, I might possibly allow for intrepid students to find the Hidden Wing of the local Lhankor Mhy or Irrippi Ontor Library and see if they can locate some interesting lost ancient tomes there. Perhaps a trader god heroquest can swap in some extraordinarily valuable scrolls. Could be there is some forbidden knowledge still to be found in certain God Learner outposts on the Hero Plane too. And finally, one could probably through heroquesting locate a Sorcerous Master to learn from, like Zzabur if you're good or one of his underlings if you're more of an undergraduate. (If you fail the quest, you get somebody bad.)

This also reminds me of a related question, when did sorcery first appear? 

[Shiningbrow]

1 hour ago, PhilHibbs said:

you can't learn spirit spells this way any more either

??  p368 - "Any adventurer defeating a spirit in combat may gain one of its spirit magic spells (player’s pick). If the spirit possesses a variable point spell, the adventurer may gain possession of as many points in the spell as the spirit possesses."

[Shiningbrow]

44 minutes ago, The God Learner said:

but we may ask what sort of heroquest results in godless atheist sorcery spells?

Lhankor Mhy  allows/teaches sorcery now.. and a few of the others are quite content with it. So, doesn't need to be "godless atheist" spells.

[Kloster]

2 hours ago, The God Learner said:

I haven't kept up to date with how things are structured nowadays, so take this question for what it's worth, but we may ask what sort of heroquest results in godless atheist sorcery spells?

Why would heroquest be limited to theists? As far as I have understood, Malkioni are able to heroquest.

[PhilHibbs]

3 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

??  p368 - "Any adventurer defeating a spirit in combat may gain one of its spirit magic spells (player’s pick). If the spirit possesses a variable point spell, the adventurer may gain possession of as many points in the spell as the spirit possesses."

Hm. I thought that was gone... but surely you still need a focus, where does that come from? It takes a week to make the focus when you learn a spell from a Rune Master.

[HreshtIronBorne]

Upon defeating any spirit in spirit combat a PC may have them teach one spell. Still in the rules in RQG. It is why I have some questions about spirit magic and its intended rarity, especially as spells get higher levels. Can I just keep summoning or searching for a kind of spirit with Bladesharp til I get a Bladesharp 10 or 12? 

[Shiningbrow]

16 minutes ago, PhilHibbs said:

Hm. I thought that was gone... but surely you still need a focus, where does that come from? It takes a week to make the focus when you learn a spell from a Rune Master.

No idea. That's why I questioned the time/cost of learning Spirit magic in a different thread.

[PhilHibbs]

41 minutes ago, Shiningbrow said:

No idea. That's why I questioned the time/cost of learning Spirit magic in a different thread.

Good point - spirit magic is off topic here. I will just say, and this is equally applicable to sorcery, that if the rules are a little vague and even contradictory about the various ways of learning spells, then that may well be deliberate. I think it's up to each group to settle on options that they like. Different gaming groups have different pace, in my experience. I cringed overhearing a DM at a club saying "Learning a new spell will cost you one hundred gold pieces per level", that kind of ruleism is anathema in the RuneQuest tradition!

[David Scott]

4 hours ago, The God Learner said:

but we may ask what sort of heroquest results in godless atheist sorcery spells?

Sorcery is something you know - a defined set of actions results in known magical effect. Learning what action produces an effect while on a HeroQuest seems pretty straightforward to me. Sorcerers understand the complex interaction of runes and their devolved forms (Srvuali, Burtae, etc), By applying a technique to one of these forms and seeing what the result is allows the sorcerer to learn a new spell (action / result). Many would have to be done on a HeroQuest as these forms may not exist within the Compromise. It would seem to me that the purpose of sorcerous heroquesting is to do just that - act directly on the gods and bring back that knowledge. See the Xeotam Dialogues in the Glorantha Sourcebook page 74 or here:

https://www.glorantha.com/glorantha/the-xeotam-dialogues/

[David Scott]

8 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

Related to this - is it a one size fits all? Or, will there be mechanical differences such that one school, type, whatever of sorcery is incompatible with other types, schools, etc?

Starting with the definition of Theism is something you are, Spirit Magic is something you have and Sorcery is something you know, there's clearly different ways of knowing. Just looking at magicial practices amongst a single historical group can show different ways of knowing: Viking magical practices can be broadly split into three types - Seidr (divinatory and manipulatory singing practice), Galdr (spells and words usually sung) and Runes (inscribed spells and divination). Just applying those to Glorantha would give us three different approaches to sorcery. These three practices produce different results, are technically different ways of knowing. Knowing one doesn't grant you understanding of the other or the ability to do it, although there were likely people who knew two of the practices.

In my mind this is straightforward model for sorcery - lots of different ways of producing magical effects, many appear similar, but the techniques differ. A tiny percentage of sorcerous polymaths at the pinnacle of their career could combine some of these techniques to produce synergistic effects. Fortunately God Learners of this magnitude were rare and ultimately "retired", their students not fully able to comprehend the ramifications of these techniques caused mayhem.

In RQG & HQG this is just background colour, it's the same % roll or Keyword.

[Kloster]

31 minutes ago, David Scott said:

In RQG & HQG this is just background colour, it's the same % roll or Keyword.

This I like.

[Shiningbrow]

7 hours ago, David Scott said:

In RQG & HQG this is just background colour, it's the same % roll or Keyword

You're implying that the different sorcerous traditions are incompatible, and therefore LM sorcery would be a completely different skill to, say, Western sorcery (and perhaps even different branches - Brithini, Hrestoli, etc). And thus, having mastered a Rune through one tradition, you still couldn't learn spells from a different one... (completely unlike Spirit magic)

[Joerg]

36 minutes ago, Shiningbrow said:

You're implying that the different sorcerous traditions are incompatible, and therefore LM sorcery would be a completely different skill to, say, Western sorcery (and perhaps even different branches - Brithini, Hrestoli, etc). And thus, having mastered a Rune through one tradition, you still couldn't learn spells from a different one... (completely unlike Spirit magic)

After the God Learners made use of the knowledge collected by the Lhankor Mhy libraries, I don't think that the magics are that incompatible, and they may never have been - both Issaries and Lhankor Mhy were "collected" on the Westfaring. Issaries is tied to the Kachasti/Kachisti Speaking Tour, and Lhankor Mhy is connected to the Tadeniti inventors of writing on skin and other materials. Vithelan sorcery ultimately comes from the West, too.

Runes are universal in Glorantha, and so should be the understanding of those runes. The manipulation techniques might be altered by other approaches.

Mostali sorcery may have compatibility issues with western sorcery, but that may be part of the technique aspect. The Mostali approach to Tap appears to be bi-directional or anti-parallel to the Brithini and Vadeli version of Tap.

[PhilHibbs]

4 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

You're implying that the different sorcerous traditions are incompatible, and therefore LM sorcery would be a completely different skill to, say, Western sorcery (and perhaps even different branches - Brithini, Hrestoli, etc). And thus, having mastered a Rune through one tradition, you still couldn't learn spells from a different one... (completely unlike Spirit magic)

I think that's probably correct, although I don't think the game system needs to enforce it. I'd probably rule that the character needs to spend extra time learning the basics of the new system.

[David Scott]

8 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

You're implying that the different sorcerous traditions are incompatible, and therefore LM sorcery would be a completely different skill to, say, Western sorcery (and perhaps even different branches - Brithini, Hrestoli, etc). And thus, having mastered a Rune through one tradition, you still couldn't learn spells from a different one... (completely unlike Spirit magic)

No, I'm just saying that they would need researching and transcribing maybe. As I said it's just colour and the skills remain the same under the systems. We don't have a sorcery book yet, but I would add research / learning modifiers to cross-cultural spells. That's not including the fact that if written, you might not know the language. In Pavis:GtA page 371, I made the secrets of stone grimoire out of mica to be projected. Then it's dwarven ideograms to understand. To get the spell you need not only the equipment, but the language too.

[Shiningbrow]

I love the above 3 responses... A yes, a no, and a maybe  😛

As for the language issue - it's a bit of a non-issue with Logician, as Read/Write is a Knowledge skill that can be enhanced by it.

[Kloster]

47 minutes ago, Shiningbrow said:

As for the language issue - it's a bit of a non-issue with Logician, as Read/Write is a Knowledge skill that can be enhanced by it.

It is still, because as far as I have understood, Logician does not apply to 00% skills. You still need at least 01% to be able to apply logician bonus (my character has Logician but does not know anything in dwarven ideograms, to stay with David's example).

[Shiningbrow]

4 hours ago, Kloster said:

It is still, because as far as I have understood, Logician does not apply to 00% skills. You still need at least 01% to be able to apply logician bonus (my character has Logician but does not know anything in dwarven ideograms, to stay with David's example).

My obvious question is - where does your understanding come from? There's nothing written in the RQG about it... Has there been a "Rune Fix" for this? Or some other official statement on the subject? I brought the Logician topic up in the Munchkinnery thread, and it wasn't mentioned there...

[Kloster]

1 hour ago, Shiningbrow said:

My obvious question is - where does your understanding come from? There's nothing written in the RQG about it... Has there been a "Rune Fix" for this? Or some other official statement on the subject? I brought the Logician topic up in the Munchkinnery thread, and it wasn't mentioned there...

It is just (for me) because you can not attempt to use a skill if your base value is not at least 01%. At 00%, even category modifier does not apply, so it seems logical to not apply situational modifiers.

[PhilHibbs]

 

2 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

My obvious question is - where does your understanding come from? There's nothing written in the RQG about it... Has there been a "Rune Fix" for this? Or some other official statement on the subject? I brought the Logician topic up in the Munchkinnery thread, and it wasn't mentioned there...

Good question.

Quote

p57:

An adventurer’s skills category modifiers do not apply to
a skill with a 00% base chance until they have gained the
ability, either through cultural, occupation, or cult bonuses,
allocating skill points to it, or through training.

This comes close. It says that you don't get your category modifier on a 00 base skill.  However it still does not make it clear that you don't have an automatic 5% chance of success.

It appears that this is not explicitly stated. I think that that is an omission, and that is why the "no category modifier" rule is there.

Page 200 refers to "the default 5% minimum chance of success", so clearly that is intended to be a thing.

Quote

p45:

A Rune affinity
with a rating of 0% has no chance of success

Close, but only applies to Runes....

Quote

p142:

A roll of 1–5 on D100 is always a success, even if
the ability rating is lower.

Yep, no mention of zero-rated skills.

I'm pretty sure that that is supposed to be a rule, since the "no category modifier" thing doesn't make much sense without it, but it looks like it got missed out.

[Kloster]

Agreed. That's why I wrote 'As far as I have understood'. But I am ready to accept any contrary arguments.

[Shiningbrow]

Neither suggests that magic can't (over-)compensate for that...

If a character (e.g., young child) picked up a sword for the first time, and somebody cast Bladesharp, what would their skill be like?