Divine Magic Houserules

[Rurik]

In an attempt to steer the Cults of Glorantha Errata Threadback on track I have created this thread here in response to the discussion started by this post over there.

To me, who has played much RQ and little HQ, all previous versions of RQ, 1-4, have had initiates at a significant disadvantage to Acolytes and above when it comes to casting Divine Magic. That is why the houserule I mentioned specifically had Acolytes and higher ranks able to learn more Divine Magic than intitiates. I admitted in response to Pucks post that the only drawback I had come across was that starting Initiates had perhaps too little Divine Magic available (typically 2 points), and that you could always use the same scale as priests.

If you are inclined to base the amount of divine Magic available on the Lore(Specific Theology) skill rather than the POW characteristic you certainly could use the 1 point of divine magic per 5 of Theology scale if it suits your vision of the world better.

 

[RosenMcStern]

I'll repeat my POV here, although it has been clarified on the other thread.

First of all, as Simon Bray confirmed, one thing that HQ has established is that Theist Magic User is not equivalent to Priest. We can try and post a question on the Glorantha list and wait for a reply from Greg, but I think he will confirm this. A Priest is a person who leads the cult rituals, i.e. the boring stuff. An Initiate or Devotee is a person who has a deep understanding of the Deity's myth and powers and can use his magic. A Priest is a powerful Initiate or Devotee, but the converse is not always true. It is important to understand this to design a good theist magic system for Glorantha.

Dedicated POW makes no difference between Initiate and Priest. It does, however, limit the amount of magic a cultist can have, since going below POW 10 is unrecommended. Dedicated POW is not broken, and it is fine for low-magic worlds. I have designed priestly characters that use Dedicated POW for Stupor Mundi, and they are not underpowered for the Fantasy Earth Environment. Unfortunately, Dedicated POW does not fit Glorantha very well. Or at least this is a Widespread Opinion.

The best way to handle Divine Magic beyond Dedicated POW is to create a pool of "room for Divine Magic" that can be used to store spells.

There is no reason to consider this pool as an alternative to Dedicated POW. One could store a spell in his Dedicated POW or in his Pool.

I would suggest that the pool can be used only to store spells from your main deity, and that you must use Dedicated POW for spells from associated deities.

There is no reason to limit use of this pool to Priests, although it could be useful to give Priests some slight advantage.

I am not in favour of using Lore(Theology) to determine the size of the pool, because this would create a sort of Divine Sorcery. A cultist should be able to be an average caster and still have a wide array of spells. Think of a priest who knows the principles very very well but does not obey them: is he worth of knowing more magic than a peasant that knows little but obeys all the religious precepts? (all references to RW Catholic priests are merely a coincidence )

I am more in favour of using a model more similar to Sandy's Sorcery and Presence to determine the pool size, with vows/geas that contribute to the pool size. Breaching the vows would cause the pool to shrink.

Finally I am in favour of using Hero Points to create or extend the pool, as they can be considered a measure of how well you made your character adhere to his values and principles, including cult principles.

 

[Rurik]

Two big things had attracted me to MRQ when I first heard about it: It was RuneQuest and it was set in Glorantha, one of all time favorite rules systems in one of my all time favorite settings.

I never took to HeroQuest, actually, I've never read it. I bought Hero Wars when it came out and was pretty disappointed to say the least. I know HQ is much better than HQ, but I always preferred the more gritty approach of the RQ rules. That being said I do own a handful of HW/HQ supplements I purchased as source material, so am not a stranger to the changes to Glorantha in HQ, and I like that many of them have found their way into RQ.

MRQ uses some material from HW/HQ but in other cases goes back to the RQ2/3 way of doing things (the simplified set of core runes for example), and it clearly uses the old Lay Member, Initiate, Acolyte, Rune Priest, Rune Lord model of specific ranks of RQ3 in its' cult descriptions rather than the Initiate, Devotee, Disciple model in HQ.

I'd always believed, rightly or wrongly, that the Dedicated POW rule was developed because in doing away with the Resistance Table and POW vs. POW contests in conjunction with moving to Improvement Rolls they in effect did away with RQ2/3 POW gain rolls. As a result Sacrificing POW for Spells was no longer feasible because in MRQ regaining POW is much, much harder than in earlier editions. Honestly it never once occurred to me that it origin of the rule was an attempt to equalize initiates and priests regarding magic storage. I had also never seen that equalization as anything but a drawback. I still don't believe the intent behind the development of the rule was to make initiates equal to priests in this regard, but do see now that it can be interpreted as an advantage. In this area I still am and Old Way Traditionalist though, and personally like the priest having an advantage here.

The Divine Pool system works, and way back when I used it it was in conjunction with Dedicated POW. I am happy to be done with Dedicated POW altogether though. It is worth mentioning that a Divine Pool could also be used in conjunction with basing Divine Magic storage off of Theology - the two systems are not mutually exclusive.

When I used a divine Pool it worked well, I have no problems with it. My only reservation with Divine Pools systems is indeed the slow progression of POW. If your POW is 10 you spend 3 Improvement Rolls for a 50% chance of increasing your POW. If your POW is 15 that chance goes down to 25%. Increasing POW is very expensive, so sacrificing permanent POW is more expensive than in previous editions (though Divine Magicians as well as Spirit Magicians can better sacrifice POW as they only have 1-2 skills that need improving for their magic, compared to Sorcerers and Runecasters who need lots of Improvement Rolls to get better). I am all in favor of allowing Hero Points to be used to increase Divine Pools considering the cost of POW.

Deleriad's Grace has more 'character' to it, and I am all in favor enhancing Divine pools to have a more realistic and divine flavor to them.

To me though, using Theology is a very simple rule and gets the job done - I have had no problems or complaints about it when I've used it.

And to me, it makes sense in the world. Theology is a measure of how well you understand your gods myths and how you can relate them to the physical world (i.e. blow shit up - sunspear rocks! :wink: ). It also can be seen as a measure of devotion to your god - you have after all typically dedicated more effort to understanding your god and religion the higher your theology skill. This was the reasoning behind justifying tying Divine Magic to the specific theology skill.

Finally, I don't really see the connection between using theology for determining Divine Magic storage and Sorcery. A sorcerer can learn a number of spells based on INT, not any skill. The closest system is Dragon Magic in Magic of Glorantha which uses a combination of the Draconic Mysticism skill and POW.

 

[Quire]

Finally, I don't really see the connection between using theology for determining Divine Magic storage and Sorcery.

Furthermore, Rune Magic uses Runecasting skills, so does that make Rune Magic too much like Sorcery too?

- Q

 

[Puck]

Deleriad said

Ways to use Grace:
dedicate to cult (rune) magic. E.g. you can use it to "store" Bladesharp 2. You still use MPs as normal. Casting cult magic then is a matter of making your specific theology skill (a skill name that I dislike btw) and spending MPs as normal.

Does "store" mean they only only recieve the bladesharp 2 for one casting like a divine magic spell?

or

Does it mean they now know the spell permanently like rune magic and just cast it at their theology skill? I would imagine the later as it would seem to solve a bit of the rune magic for cults problem.


In the old days I used a gimick similar to Deleriad's grace system. My players had a hard time ever sacrificing permanent power for single use divine magic spells(even when pow gain was relatively easy). What I ended up doing was allowing for greater magnitude spells based on where or when characters sacrificed. For instance high holy days, particularly sacred ground, or large temples allowed characters to buy spells for a "bargain" price (for instance: sheild III for the one time low offer of 2 power).
This really added some character to the game as pilgrimages to certain places at certain times often compounded the bargain. Players were often interested as to what season it was and how far it was to the biggest and best temples and holy sites. Pilgrimages had a whole new meaning.

As I remember it, at least in RQ II, Pow used to go up more than one point at a time which also added to the availability of divine spells.

 

[zozotroll]

Yes, you could get up to three points. POW gain has steadily gotten harder.

 

[TRose]

OK like to say interesting ideas here. I had gone back to the Old Runequest 3 ( but allowed them to change spells at temples)rules for priest for lack of something better as I hated the Idea I Priest would have access to only a few points of divine magic.
I do like the idea of Priest spending hero points to increase power but don't think it should be a random roll. I think a system where you could spend x hero points and you get another point in your dedicated power pool for divine spells would be better. Perhaps a a sliding scale system where for the first 3 points in your dedicated pool would cost 1 hero point each , next 3 would cost 2 each, next 3 3 hero points etc. That's just off top of my head.
I also like the idea of theology having some effect on at least learning divine magic but not sure at present what effect I would like.

 

[RosenMcStern]

Finally, I don't really see the connection between using theology for determining Divine Magic storage and Sorcery.

Furthermore, Rune Magic uses Runecasting skills, so does that make Rune Magic too much like Sorcery too?

- Q

In Rune Magic, you can have 25% Runecasting skill and know Bladesharp 8 (better have a big crystal, too, since it will take several castings before you finally manage to get it off). In Rurik's approach, you cannot have Shield 4 if your skill is 30%. This makes it similar to Sorcery. The "flavor" becomes similar.

 

[RosenMcStern]

Rurik, I never suggested that you should use POW to augment your pool. I do not like the Theology / 5%, but my suggestion is to use vows or Hero Points (or both). Vows are the best solution, but must be devised for each cult, whereas Hero Points are the fastest, albeit a bit "colorless".

 

[Rurik]

I do not like the Theology / 5%...

You don't say.

 

[weasel_fierce]

maybe this is off-thread, but I much prefer the current divine magic rules to the 3rd edition version, which made divine magic extremely expensive (and frequently a great risk).

I'd let acolytes and priests get some rune spells without having to have the runes, but thats about the only change I'd worry too much about. In my head a priest is more of a ceremonial position.

 

[RMS]

maybe this is off-thread, but I much prefer the current divine magic rules to the 3rd edition version, which made divine magic extremely expensive (and frequently a great risk).

I'd let acolytes and priests get some rune spells without having to have the runes, but thats about the only change I'd worry too much about. In my head a priest is more of a ceremonial position.

I've mentioned this before but it's been a while. I don't like the new system because it lowers the power level of all theists by a lot. This is especially true of powerful rune lords, priests, etc. (whether we change this to be devotee and leave priest for ceremonial functions is beside the point for me). I just don't like how limited divine magic is now. It used to be very powerful and now it's been neutered: many of the spells are also much less powerful and less deadly too...so powerful theists have less magic, doing less potential harm (or help), while everything else has powered up a bit.

Btw, I do like the idea of divine pool and think that would make up for much of this. I'd be tempted to revert to old style POW gain rolls and then allow POW to be sacrificed into the pool, like RQ3 shamans could do for their fetch.

 

[duncan_disorderly]

There are a couple of issues with divine magic - one is storing it, which limits the total amount you can have, and the other is gaining it, which limits the rate with which you can acquire it. The RQ2/3 approach of sacrificing POW handled both of these issues together. A divine magic user could only learn spells as fast as he was prepared to sacrifice POW (and a priest needed to maintain a POW of at least 18) edit that's 18 ) Bl :!: :?: dy smilies and could only store what he had sacrificed for in total. This meant a new priest would probably only have a couple of points of divine magic, but an experienced priest could have sacrificed for a significant amount of magic.

The MRQ "Dedicated POW" rules suffer as they don't provide this "Power acquisition" curve. The lower chance of a POW gain, and the fact that Dedicated POW is limited to your current POW (and that is limited to your species Maximum) means a new priest can sacrifice for as much magic as he can afford, but is unlikely to ever learn significantly more.

Using the RQ2/3 rules with MRQ would slow down the acquisition of divine magic due to the slower POW gain rate. You might be able to increase the POW gain rate by fiddling with the experience rules, but would need to be careful about unbalancing non-divine users.

Storing spells in a "Divine pool" which does not reduce available POW stops Divine magic users losing access to their POW for other purposes, but you still need a way to control how much you can add into the pool at any time.

There should also be a division between the ranks of divine spell user, whether these use the tems Initiate/Devotee/Disciple or Acolyte/RunePriest/RuneLord.

It may be possible to use HeroPoints as the "currency" for aqcuiring spells and/or "storage capacity"

Off the top of my head, untested thoughts (made without direct reference to the rules or anyone elses house rules).

Non-cultists and lay members :- No ability to learn divine magic
Initiates: May sacrifice 1 HP to gain a "divine pool"
: May increase the divine pool at a rate of 2HP per point
: Maximum size of divine pool = POW/2
: May learn reusable Divine Magic as a one use spell at 2HP/point
Acolytes: Increase "Divine Pool" by 3 (or start at 3 if no divine pool)
: May increase divine pool at a rate of 2HP/point
: Maximum size of divine pool = POW
: May learn reusable Divine Magic at 1HP/Point
: May learn single use Divine Magic at 2HP/Point
RunePriests: Increase Divine Pool by 5 (or start at 5 if no divine pool)
: May increase pool up to POW at 1HP/Point
: may increase pool up to POW*2 at 2HP/Point
: may learn (any) Divine Magic at 1HP/Point

Notes:
(1) - I've not actually played MRQ, so I'm not sure of the rate of growth of HP, so these may need tweaking. The aim is that a player who qualifies for Divine Magic can't immediately Max out, without making it so expensive that no one uses it at all
(2) - "traditionally" you'd have one pool regardless of how many Cults you join. It might make more sense to maintain separate pools for each cult
(3) - Individual cults may, of course amend these rules to better suit their purpose and structure
(4) - In a "full campaign" where characters know what they are doing every day, I might make some increases to the pool and/or spell acquistion directly relate to attending holy day ceremonies in appropriate temples rather than cost related

 

[RosenMcStern]

I am going to submit a paper with my proposals to S&P, anytime between this evening and monday. It is based on the following principles, that have been discussed in this and in other threads. Up to the time I submit it, I can change some points if someone has a better idea, so please comment and rebate. I have also posted a discussion start in WorldofGlorantha, about the priest vs. initiate question, and runes, so thought and contributions posted there are useful to elaborating, too.

Ideas so far:

1) Initiates and Priests use their divine pool in the same way
2) Priests have an advantage in starting pool size
3) Pool grows when HPs are sacrificed to it
4) Each pool increase requires a ritual and a Theology roll
5) Optionally, pool has a cap of Theology / 5 [to make Rurik happy ]
6) If cult has vows/geases, you can take one to increase pool size (a la Sandy's Sorcery)
7) By sacrificing pool points, you can create a Rune
8] A Rune created from the pool is restricted to cultists
9) Separated pools for different cults

Flame at will!

 

[Rurik]

5) Optionally, pool has a cap of Theology / 5 [to make Rurik happy ]

When I offered up the rule of tying the amount of Divine Magic to the Specific Theology skill I mentioned it because well, it works for me. I realise it is a radical departure from how it has ever been handled in the past, but I'm OK with that. It is probably too different for many players, and I realise that. I've never pushed it as 'the way things should be' but as a kind of 'you can always try this if so inclined' kinda rule. It is very simple and works, and characters spellcasting ability grows as they do. In fact, one thing I like is that for Divine Magicians, who most agree are weaker in MRQ than earlier editions, one improvement roll increases both there skill at casting and spell storage.

Flame at will!

Well, if you insist...

It SuXX!

 

[zozotroll]

I dont see any need for flames. We seem to be in agreement that divine casters are to limited, and something should be done about it.

I am certainly going to take a couple of the ideas from this and give them a try. This has been a worthwhile thread. And hopefully it will continue for a bit.

 

[Rurik]

(2) - "traditionally" you'd have one pool regardless of how many Cults you join. It might make more sense to maintain separate pools for each cult

I am in agreement here - I'd always envisioned a divine pool as tied to a specific cult, and that can only be used to store spells from that cult. You are scrificing/offering whatever it is yo are giving up (POW, HP, etc) to a given deity. If you ever get excommunicated from a cult kiss that divine pool bye-bye.

 

[Rurik]

I dont see any need for flames.

That is because you are a darkness worshiping troll. Now as a sun worshipper I would say Flames are a good thing...

...except mine were stolen by a darkness worshipping troll.

 

[zozotroll]

A flameing darkness worshiping troll if yoiu please! That stuff wasnt easy to aquire after all.

And besides, after all the things Beardy Thief took from us, it is only fair that we gett a bit back

 

[weasel_fierce]

A flameing darkness worshiping troll if yoiu please!

that image broke my sanity a little this morning