My problems are thus:
* You start off quite powerful, in a combat sense. A starting character with an average STR and DEX of 13 each (not unreasonable given 4d6 drop the lowest and stick your scores wherever you fancy) get's 26 base in 2H Sword, be a noble and get +15, be a solider and get +10, bung in 30 points on top and you're got 81% 2H Sword. Sounds a bit powerful for a starting character to me. A few lucky rolls and you'll nearly be at 90. And what self repsecting warrior would desire other than this level of skill? But I always found the fun part of RQ the lower levels when hitting and missing were both realistic options. I think starting at about 50% would've been better, maybe 60.
*Rune Integration looks costly, 1 POW just for the privelage of casting magic? Runecasting is insanely difficult. If I start off I might get 25% chance to cast a spell. Youch. I can see the thinking here - high level characters in old RQ bandied about with silly amounts of magic, and by demanding POW and the increasing of a low skill it slows down the increase in power so very few people will have access to a wide variety of very powerful spells. But it does remove some of the RQ feel. Not every warrior has a bladesharp, not every healer has Heal, and so on and so forth. I'm not certain that this can be avoided on a campaign by campaign basis unless the Glorantha book has the rule that all Runecasting starts at double starting percentage or something along those lines, but I think that that's a major rule change that would have unwanted consequences elsewhere.
* High level spells are too easy to get hold of. Imagine a priest or rune lord. They can get any spell at magnitude 8, it costs half price if it's a cult spell. So if your cult has bladesharp then it'll cost 6,400 SP which is dead easy to find because you can flog the plate mail you take off of dead opponents for four and a half grand. Two suits of platemail and you're away. That's not going to be a unique occurence IMO. It won't constantly occur, but any rune lord or rune priest should be able to rake up that amount of cash. Moreover, it looks as if power crystals aren't that rare either. You should aim to pick up a POW 3 power crystal by rune lord hood. Hence, a Bladesharp 11. Or protection 11 or so on and so forth. That sounds a bit powerful to me. I also reckon an inventive acolyte (who can also get magnitude 8 cult spells) can probably do the same trick. Even if it's not a cult spell, then when they nick a POW 3 power crystal of the corpse of a dead foe (which will surely happen at some point on the road to acolytehood) then for a mere 800 silver you're bangning out your choice of magnitude 7 spells, from Pierce to Bladesharp, whether it's a cult spell or not. Ouch.
* You might say that the GM just has to make sure power crystals never go in the game, or at least not POW 3. Here a flaw from original RQ has still found it's cancerous little home - the problem of magical item economy. Once your PCs get a few magical items their enemies will likewise need magical items (enchantments, crystals so forth). Unless you want every broo attack party to have gross chaos features to make up for lack of magical items, and every elf to have "Married to the elven god" as a HeroQuest power giving them access to a resevoir of magic points instead of carrying around crystals, then when your PCs bump them off they're going to nick all the items. Now there're more powerful, and the next set of enemies will need more items. And so on and so forth. Any reasonably long term campaign will become a nightmare of the GM trying to justify enemies that face the characters without those enemies (once defeated) resulting in a power bump to the group that makes the problem worse.
*Fireblade is naff as it only increases your weapon to 1d10. Why choose that rather than a Bladesharp 4? Even if you cast Fireblade on the weakest weapon, a dagger (why bother on a bigger weapon, the increase will only be marginal!) you only do 1d10 whereas with Bladesharp 4 you'd do 1d4+5, which is a lower maximum but a far higher minimum and average roll. Fireblade is pointless, the Yelmlaions just got shafted.
* Pierce is more problematic. It's underpowered. Why take one point of armour ignoring, when Bladesharp gives you 1 point of damage (which is better than pierce and gets you an extra 5% to hit). I can see one upside is that you can stack them, so a Bladesharp (11) plus a Pierce (11) would be a possible combo. But should Pierce really play second fiddle to Bladesharp? I'd recommend it ignoring two points of armour for balance.
* All this pales in comparison to Skybolt. 3d6 through armour without a to hit roll? That's going to be 75 metres at 15 POW. 75 metres that I can blast you whilst you cover it to get close to me. I reckon that's about 9 combat actions. So I get to blast you 9 times (magic point permitting, but you can get off at least 4 with your normal POW, and presumably you can pick up magic point crystals to help you). Sure, I need to make that Runecasting roll but it's worth getting that skill up as soon as possible. Even at 50% I'm going to hit four or five times, and that dodge roll is going to be failed at some point (especially if you overcharge it with 10 magic points!). 3d6 through armour will annhilate a foe. And it can be done, unlike original RQ's Thunderbolt, as often as you like because you don't need to repray for it. At first I thought this was balanced because the rune was 'Chaos', but I now take it that's a misprint because the Storm King has it as a cult spell, and his enemy is specifically chaos.
