Divine Items: What the Duck went wrong here?

[riordan]

Either I'm looking at them cross-eyed and upside-down or the Divine Items rules don't make much godsforsaken sense, and the examples given ignore them completely (and rightfully so). I've looked far and wide through these sage and knowledgable forums (lurking around here since discovering MRQII a month ago), but while the general failures of A&E and the particulars of sorcery enchantments have been talked about, divine enchantments seem to have Ignore Rulesnag cast over them. Some brave souls saw partway through it, uncovering a tiny part of the web, but their threads got lost with never an answer.

I fear that this was also missed in the A&E errata.

Let's look at them, shall we?

According to the Divine Item Attributes table on page 97 of A&E, the cost ratio of common magic to divine magic for temporary spell bindings is a steep 1:6 (while each point of magnitude of common magic costs only half a point of mythic resonance/10, each point of divine magic costs 3), while for permanent divine items the ratio is 1:4.

But what does a cult with Mythic Resonance 55% get in the examples? 6 uses of Bladesharp 3 or 6 uses of Heal Body 3.
Seems to me that all four of those numbers are wrong.

According to both table and text, 55% mythic resonance would bring either
3 uses (not 6 as stated in the example) of (common) Protection 12 (not 3 as stated in the Bladesharp example) = 12 armor points per location
or
2 (instead of 6) uses of (divine) Shield with a magnitude of 2, resulting in a whooping 2 armor points per location.

Now in my campaign world the gods are weak and dying, but this is ridiculous. Sure, there are divine spells more potent as any common magic spell, but Shield does just the same that Protection does (for a longer duration - but see below). Part of the problem here: judging the value/cost of a spell on its magnitude works well for common magic but not so well for divine spells, where cult rank would perhaps have been a better indicator.

Am i completely off the track? Do i overlook something relating to the different use of magnitude in common and divine magic? Is my reading comprehension befuddled?

Another strangeness is the cost difference for permanent instead of temporary items: for common magic, costs are doubled, but the ratio for divine magic is only 3:4. So for a myth resonance of 55% this means that the cost for the permanent Shield (6/4 rounded up) is exactly the same as for the meager 2-use temporary variant (6/3 rounded up).

The examples seem to disregard the rules completely and make no difference between a common or divine spell. The examples both for Bladespell and for Heal Body have half the cult's Myth Resonance/10 in magnitude and a number of uses equal to Myth Resonance/10. This seems more reasonable than the values that would result if one followed the table.

There is a questionable point in the examples as well: the duration of a bound spell of Bladesharp is given as 15 minutes instead of 5. I guess one could argue that the common spell is bound in a divide item, thereby giving it divine duration, but right there it says "for the duration of the governing spell as per the spell description" - which would be 5, not 15.

Turning the page while scratching my head I come across this fine quote:
"The rules for divine enchantments allow for the creation of some spectacularly powerful and versatile magical items".
Oh yes, provided the cult uses common magic.

10 uses of Bladesharp 20 anyone?**

regards,
riordan (coming back to RQ after 15 years in the wilderness)

** The Befuddled Brotherhood (Mythic Resonance 99%) will fall upon you with their Butterknives and then we will see which side the bread, if fallen, will have landed.

 

[Dan True]

Yep, there are some issues. That's why I decided to completely re-write magic item creation for my conversion.

I don't righly know what can be done with the existing, but a debate about it would be good - since A&E is probably going to be massively changed to Legend anyway - because of all the errors, if not rewritten completely.

- Dan

 

[Simulacrum]

I'd never gone through those rules in detail, largely because I steer clear of anything with references to Mythic Resonance in it which seems completely unnecessary and founded in a gloranthan world view (and a specific take on glorantha at that). I wasn't aware they are also broken.

I have had reason to go through the pricing again recently, and my take is pretty much the only thing really worth preserving in arms and equipment are the crafting and extended task rules. The rest may as well just be binned.

 

[riordan]

Yes, that mixture of Gloranthan world-view and point-by-point bookkeeping is another strangeness right there.

To be fair, the rest of the enchantment chapter seems ok after a first skim, it's just the Divine Items rules that are obviously broken (and neither needed nor helpful for creating powerful cult artefacts anyway).

The reason I inspected them closely: I intend to run a Griffin Island campaign and need a replacement for high-duration sorcery without topping the isle's power balance. In AH-RQ 3, NPCs (citadel guards and local powers) were loaded up with high duration protective spells that are no longer possible in MRQII/Legend - which is good (1-week duration degraded sorcerors to living power batteries), but I need something to replace them for balance. Or do I?

Do any of you have hands-on experience with A&E type (sorcery) enchantments? Any house rules?

Or even better yet: an alternative idea for keeping citadel power structure intact without magically buffed-up bodyguards?

 

[Simulacrum]

If you are adapting Griffin Island, the real headache are the stats for characters like Egu Gah and Halcyon Var Enkorth, who rely on the long duration sorcery spells - to lose those would downgrade them considerably. A couple of thoughts here:

1) allow the long durations, but make sure that magic points for the spell cannot begin to be recovered until the duration expires or the spell is cancelled. Then look closely at how the MPs are provided and seek your balance there. A wizard shouldn't be wondering about with hardly any magic points to draw on in an emergency, so may not in fact keep spells running unless absolutely fundamental to their security and power.

2) Have the Orcs (and Halcyon) as the sole traders in long duration spells, based on magical rites unearthed from Skull Ruins (or somesuch) and powered by sentient sacrifice or specialised Tap spells, e.g.:

Megaera's Tithe (Characteristic); Sorcery Ritual:

This spell acts like a normal Tap (characteristic) spell, however its sole purpose is to steal characteristic points from a sentient (i.e. possessing variable INT and CHA) creature to fuel an enchantment, and so must be Combined with another spell. For each characteristic point tithed, the sorcerer can increase the duration of an autonomous spell by [insert your preferred scale here]

This admittedly untested suggestion gives good reason to want to put a stop to Halcyon Var Enkorth and his obscene magical rites, and a back story to what the Orcs are up to in Ockless and Skull Ruins. For good measure you may want to have this rite effected by consuming the body of the victim rather than simply as a specialised Tap spell - replacing the "itty bitties" running around Ockless with secretly-disposed-of piles of gnawed humanoid bones.

 

[riordan]

I like that very much.

Keeping the long duration spells (and the buffed-up mercenaries) for Halcyon exclusively gives 'civilized' Ockless an extra bitter aftertaste that separates it from the other citadels.

I'd already planned replacing the itty-bittization with the wasting effect the new Tap rules propose, and your Sorcery Ritual fits perfectly.

I guess the other citadels' elite warriors will have to be content with 'regular' prowess, and Maugre's Three Spears can have some enchantments put on them by Gladstone.

Thanks

 

[Deleriad]

There's quite a long thread by Tgryph (I think) on rpg net giving an account of a Griffin Island campaign under RQII. A search should find it. RQII sorcery makes the campaign much easier to run as a GM compared to RQ3. Back in the day when I ran it I pretty much winged all the sorcery stuff because my head would have exploded otherwise.

 

[Richard]

Running Griffin Island using the old RQ3 sorcery stats was a bit of a headache! Long duration spells were a major feature of sorcery. It took a long time to get good enough to use long duration but it was a major 'build' when sorcerers got there. Also the enormously powerful NPCs in Griffin Island (And elsewhere in many Glorathan Third Age setttings - Dorastor! ) were utterly ridiculous, they rather ignored their own rules. I slashed their powers by removing most magic items, deleting spells and limiting %s to around 100 -150 for the truly mighty. Made the whole thing much more playable, interactive and enjoyable.

For Divine Magic items I'd simply say they are given out by divine favour after a quest or for a particular divine purpose. Keep the enchantments in keeping with the God's mythic nature and leave it at that. They should likely be rather rare anyway. That way you don't have to worry about game mechanics, which seem kind of unnecessary in this case anyway, and have control over the power of magic items loose in your game.

 

[riordan]

Deleriad,
TGryphs 101 Days is already part of my reading list - and a huge inspiration.

Richard,
so instead of looking for a replacement for the RAW power of RQ3 sorcery I ought to just shove it aside and be glad to be rid of it?
hm....
Done!

As to the divine items, I agree. Gifts from the gods ought to be rare and full of wonder, and are just about the worst place for nitpicking calculation and juggling resource costs. Had I not tried to use the RQ3 stats in a too literal way I would never have looked at those rules twice.