New Runequest - what to expect

[atgxtg]

Well I have to admit that I never was in Glorantha that far to think about Heroquests. And HQ heroes do have 200% or more? Where is the limit? 1.000%? 10.000? I cannot see much sense in these high stats. Its sounds a little bit like playing D&D powergaming to me. Everybody has super skills and is super good. The normal trained and equipped soldiers will be squashed like an ant.

For me a hero is rather a titel which one human gives another human, not a objective feature. A hero could be a policeman who saves another human from drowning in a wild river. Or it could be the young but inexperienced tough guy with STR18 which is sent out to combat the monster in the local woods which eat the miller yesterday.
Or a hero is also a the french revolutionary and demagogue Robbespierre. (at least before he was hanged in 1794)

I guess you just aren't very familar with Glorantha. In a typical Gloranthan camoaign, there are postions such as Rune Lord and Rune Priest where your character becomes a significant leader in the cult. JUst to qualify for those postions requires having serveral skills at 90%+ (and/or a lot of RUne MAgic for the priests).

Hitting Rune status essentially changes the nature of the game. Like someone else has already posted "You can't go chasing Whyeye forever".

Glorantha uses a more traditial model for Hero, as in according to the orginal Heroes presented in the Greek myths: a hero is a man or woman (the latter often called a heroine), traditionally the protagonist of a story, legend or saga, who commonly possesses abilities or character far greater than that of a typical person, which enable him or her to perform some truly extraordinary, beneficial deed (a "heroic deed") for which he or she is famous. These powers are sometimes not only of the body but also of the mind. Heroes are typically opposed by villains.


Rune LEvel characters are very powerful, but so are the sorts of aventures they go on. For example, the last RQ tournament event I ran (waaaay back in the 80s) involved a group of RUne LEvel characters from differnet cults working together in Dorastor (a place that people have no business being in without at leasat one Rune LEvel character in the group).

THe thing about skill % over 100 is that the improvement isn't as signifincant as improvement below 100%. In RQ the chance to hit capps off at 95%, no matter wwhat your skill is. Higher skill is good for dealing with penalties, and also for increasing the chances of of getting a critical or impale result. So a character with 150% skill (which at that point could be 120% skill plus Bladesharp 6), only has a 95% chance of hitting, but an 08% chance of getting a critical, and a 30% chance of a special success/ impale.

Splitting attack percentages can only be done against mutiple foes, so you can't split a 150% attack skill to get two attacks on the same foe at 75%, but you can do it to attack two differnet foes at 75%. The game rational was that any attack on an opponent typical constitutes mutiple swings, thrusts, and fients of the weapon anyway. In general, splitting attacks is a bad idea, since it severely reduces the RUne Lord's advantage in combat. He might fihgt as good as two men, but two men have a good chance of beating him.

Since the requirments for Rune LEvel are high, the cult doesn't want to risk losing such a powerful/useful figure, and provides the Rune Level character with a retinute who provide support-inclduing making sure that the RUne Lord doesn't get double teamed, so he fight 1-on-1 battles.

THe big problem I see with the take a -40% penalty to avoid armor is that practically any and every Rune Lord character would be doing it all the time. It is worth losing a few % points off of the critical and special success chances to bypass armor and technically, as worded it also avoids parry effects, shince they use the weapon/shields APs, and the rule doesn't not excude parry armor. IMO that is gonna suck and ruin the game. By passing armor is already factored in with the critical and special scucess rules, and the new rule just gives a massive benefit for what would be a realtively minor penalty.


I has me wondering if any of the people Mongoose has doing MRQ have any experience with the RQ system-especially at Rune Level.

 

[Lord Twig]

Things to keep in mind with the new RuneQuest.

Criticals do not ignore armor. A critical is 10% of your skill (so a skill of 80% has an 8% chance to critical) and if you do critical it is for full weapon damage. If you have an impaling weapon it will also impale. What the effect is of an impale is unknown (probably not double damage, but it might be).

We do not know what the abilities of the parry skill is. Maybe you can take negatives to get extra armor or prevent someone from making a called shot. Maybe under the parry skill it says that called shots do not ignore parry armor. We don't know.

So, while I am a little concerned about the -40% to ignore armor, I am hoping that there is still something to counter it.

 

[GbajiTheDeceiver]

So, while I am a little concerned about the -40% to ignore armor, I am hoping that there is still something to counter it.

Fortunately it's the kind of rule that's easy to discard without risking breaking something else. :mrgreen:

 

[atgxtg]

Things to keep in mind with the new RuneQuest.

Criticals do not ignore armor. A critical is 10% of your skill (so a skill of 80% has an 8% chance to critical) and if you do critical it is for full weapon damage. If you have an impaling weapon it will also impale. What the effect is of an impale is unknown (probably not double damage, but it might be).

Yuk! I hope that there is more to this that what we have seen. THe old critical bypass armor for max damage rule was one of the things that kept RQ dangerous. Even the Rune Lords, with thier allied spirts, ehcnated iron armor, and excellent parry % got worried when the foe rooled an 01. Even if it was a Trollkin.

We do not know what the abilities of the parry skill is. Maybe you can take negatives to get extra armor or prevent someone from making a called shot. Maybe under the parry skill it says that called shots do not ignore parry armor. We don't know.

So, while I am a little concerned about the -40% to ignore armor, I am hoping that there is still something to counter it.

True, we really know precious little about the game. A lot of us have made speculations or assumptions-in some cases quite good ones-but mostly we've been extrapolating things from past version of RQ. That might not be accurate.

 

[Urox]

Things to keep in mind with the new RuneQuest.

Criticals do not ignore armor.

How does one bypass armor then?

 

[Mikko Leho]

in RQ, after a certain point, it is actually better for a Rune Lord to fight in the dark. THe -75% penalty doesn't hurt him as much as his opponents.

I like that, kind of reminds me the scene of Big Fish where Ewan McGregor has to fight two chinese soldiers 8)

I don't believe this concern about rune level balance issues. In fact this is the first time I have ever heard about rune level characters. RQ has always striken me as extremely deadly game with over 100% skill levels being the stuff of legends.

My current D&D group has kept records about characters since the 90's and no character has ever gained greater level than 8. The average life expectancy is about two weeks game time with couple of poor bastards dying during their first session. And this is heroic roleplaying unlike WHFRP, in which my latest character killed himself by running to a door (luckily he had fate points left to change this). Maybe we are just doing it wrong.

 

[Lord Twig]

Things to keep in mind with the new RuneQuest.

Criticals do not ignore armor.

How does one bypass armor then?

Make a called shot with -40% to your skill I guess.

 

[Lord Twig]

in RQ, after a certain point, it is actually better for a Rune Lord to fight in the dark. THe -75% penalty doesn't hurt him as much as his opponents.

I like that, kind of reminds me the scene of Big Fish where Ewan McGregor has to fight two chinese soldiers 8)

I don't believe this concern about rune level balance issues. In fact this is the first time I have ever heard about rune level characters. RQ has always striken me as extremely deadly game with over 100% skill levels being the stuff of legends.

My current D&D group has kept records about characters since the 90's and no character has ever gained greater level than 8. The average life expectancy is about two weeks game time with couple of poor bastards dying during their first session. And this is heroic roleplaying unlike WHFRP, in which my latest character killed himself by running to a door (luckily he had fate points left to change this). Maybe we are just doing it wrong.

I would not say you are doing it "wrong" if you are having fun. But you are certainly running a very deadly game.

Our long running RQ game saw characters last the entire time (20 years game time) and they gained skills in the 200% range, though most were just in the 100%+ range. As for D&D, in the latest incarnation we started with 1st level characters and played them up to 17th. That took about 5 years real time.

Character's have certainly died over that time, but that is what Resurrection is for!

 

[Enpeze]

Since the requirments for Rune LEvel are high, the cult doesn't want to risk losing such a powerful/useful figure, and provides the Rune Level character with a retinute who provide support-inclduing making sure that the RUne Lord doesn't get double teamed, so he fight 1-on-1 battles.

A combat 1vs1 is quite easier to handle for such a character than a combat vs. multiple enemies. Additional he has a bodyguard in his background. I dont think that he can learn much from such a combat. So I would not allow the full amount of skill improvement checkboxes for him. (of course an arbitrary decision)

IMO that is gonna suck and ruin the game. By passing armor is already factored in with the critical and special scucess rules, and the new rule just gives a massive benefit for what would be a realtively minor penalty.

I can see the problem you have with it. But I think that high skills are the reason which break the system and not the system as such. IMO RQ is not really designed for such high powered skills. Originally it was developed by practical man which know something about medieval combat and not romantic storytellers. Maybe this was one of reasons Stafford developed HeroQuest which seems to be better suited for heroic tales.

Of course I have read about the cult requirements of 90% for Runelords. This is ok for the elite fighters of a game world which should Runelords be. But 90% are not 200%. 90-110% would be enough for a Runelord, at least in my games.

Rune LEvel characters are very powerful, but so are the sorts of aventures they go on.

Progressing 110% from 90% to 200% should last very long. Due to the rules its maybe possible but who lives so long in a combat environment and with deadly RQ rules? Especially if the adventures are also dangerous too.

So either the enemies are not so powerful or they are so powerful and the suvival of your heroes depends on divine intervention (or GMs good will )

The whole 200% thing sounds very odd to me. Is this the way many people out there are playing RQ?

I know that stormbringer has unearthly high skills but its new for me that RQ has the same.

 

[Urox]

Well... This is a bolt out of the blue.... There I am idly pointing and clicking and I find this - effectively RQ4!

I think the community has adopted MRQ (for Mongoose RuneQuest) over the numeral four. That other moniker somewhat refers to an aborted pre-HeroWars project.

 

[burdock]

The whole 200% thing sounds very odd to me. Is this the way many people out there are playing RQ?

It takes quite a long time but it can happen. When characters advance into Rune level, things start getting a little weird....the veils that separate them from the god realm begin to dissipate. The connection with their deity becames incredibly intimate. Characters begin to Heroquest and interact with the fundamental principles of the universe....there are more sources of character advancement than experience rolls!!

 

[SwordSage]

The whole 200% thing sounds very odd to me. Is this the way many people out there are playing RQ?

It takes quite a long time but it can happen.

Yep. I've run or played in 5 major RQ campaigns over the last 30 (OMG) years. I have one character that moved between a few of them and his best skill is at 193% (Greatsword attack). And he's a Humakti, so he's especially long lived. Offsetting that, he also had something like +30% skill from gifts.

Most of the campaigns ran until the characters got into at least the low 100+ skill range. In order to do this, you have to...

Start the characters with a significant amount of previous xp (in one RQ3 campaign, we started as 10 year veterans, which yeilds around 80% starting skills with cultural weapons)

Play a lot (we used to play 2-3 times a month)

Be fairly easy going about DI ("Humakt, make that last strike miss me.")

The result is pretty powerful characters within a few years of play. Now, this is probably not everyone's cup of tea, but my friends and I like more high-powered campaigns, even though we've run our share of low level stuff too. It's all a matter of taste, really.

 

[atgxtg]

I don't believe this concern about rune level balance issues. In fact this is the first time I have ever heard about rune level characters. RQ has always striken me as extremely deadly game with over 100% skill levels being the stuff of legends.

It mioght be the first time you have heard of Rune Level characters, but they have been a part of the RQ rules for nearly 30 years. Reach Rune Status was actually one of the reasons why the game was called RuneQuest.

Essentailly is has been an intregral and central part of the RQ game. I'm surprised that you haven't heard of it. What RQ stuff do you own?

 

[atgxtg]

A combat 1vs1 is quite easier to handle for such a character than a combat vs. multiple enemies. Additional he has a bodyguard in his background. I dont think that he can learn much from such a combat. So I would not allow the full amount of skill improvement checkboxes for him. (of course an arbitrary decision)

Very arbirary, and probably not very fair. Chances are, as a GM you haven't been slightling people on skill checks when they have been

adventuing with other players as a party. Why penaltize them now? Seondly, while 1-on-1 fights are easier than fighting multiple foes, the character hasn't been penalites for one-on-ones in the past.

Besides, the Rune LEvel character also has the dubious honor of being "numero uno" as far as the oppostuion is concerned. THey are going to be the targets of the nasties fighters the enemy has, boosted with thier best magic. MAybe you are fighting a "wimpy" guy who is 70% with his weapon-or at least he was before the bladesharp 6 kicked in.

I can see the problem you have with it. But I think that high skills are the reason which break the system and not the system as such. IMO RQ is not really designed for such high powered skills. Originally it was developed by practical man which know something about medieval combat and not romantic storytellers. Maybe this was one of reasons Stafford developed HeroQuest which seems to be better suited for heroic tales.

No, the problem is with the recently made rule-not the 30 year old system. Take if fronm the people who have played with the 100%+ skill levels-it works just fine. One thing that I used to love about RQ was that it played well at high levels, where many other games did not. Many of the published adventures amd setting in RQ are actually geared towards such skill levels. Practically all the "fight chaos" type adventures require rune level characters.

Of course I have read about the cult requirements of 90% for Runelords. This is ok for the elite fighters of a game world which should Runelords be. But 90% are not 200%. 90-110% would be enough for a Runelord, at least in my games.

Progressing 110% from 90% to 200% should last very long. Due to the rules its maybe possible but who lives so long in a combat environment and with deadly RQ rules? Especially if the adventures are also dangerous too.

People who know what they are doing. If players know how to play the game and use thier battle an rune magic, have allied spirts and iron weapons and armor (all standard stuff for a Rune Level character), use intelligence, coordinated tactics, amd teamwork- the game gets much easier.

I get the impression that you've played a non-Glorantah low magic version of RQ. I also suspect the players are more used to playering in a different system and use tactics that aren't correct for RQ. THat can make the game very deadly.

I had a D&D group that thinks charging the archers is a good idea. It works great for them in AD&D, and even in 3E. It gets them killed everytime in RQ. Rather than taking 1 or 2 dice of hit point damage, they take a crippling injury and are out of the fight.

RQ is a campaign game, characters are expected to live and develop.

So either the enemies are not so powerful or they are so powerful and the suvival of your heroes depends on divine intervention (or GMs good will )

Well, DI is a resuable spell for Rune Priests and an Inate Ability for Rune Lords. But in all honesty the survival of the group depends on if they can play intelligently and work as a team. A lot of high level RQ is based around knowing how to use your magic correctly.

There was an RQ2 supplement, RunemAstrers that gacve writeups for each of the cults listed in Cults of Prax, along with notes for creating retinues and how to use them effectievly. THere were a lot of nasty trick too. Stuff like casting countermagic on a foe to prevent his buddies from healing him before he bled to death (invisibility was good for that too), or casting bladesharp on a foe's weapon to prevent him from casting a fireblade.




They are in Glorantha. Keep in mind that the magic can make a big differnece in combat ability. Hal the Death Sword of Humakt might have a Greatsword skill that is only 94%, but after casting Beserk Song he is up to 188%. Toss in a 4 point Bladesharp spell, and he is now at 208%. Note that for Rune LOrds, these sort of modifications and not uncommon.

Actually Strombringer inherited them FROM RQ. Orignally, Stormbringer capped skills at 100% (plus magic). THe open ended skill scores were incoprated to help make skills more viable in Stormbringer.


What is surpring me is that all this stuff was once common knowledge, and know to RQ players far and wide. At least it was when I was doing tournaments. I guess no one has been keeping the flame alive.

 

[RMS]

Yuk! I hope that there is more to this that what we have seen. THe old critical bypass armor for max damage rule was one of the things that kept RQ dangerous.

In RQII, you only bypassed armor, but still rolled damage on a critical, if I recall correctly. It worked just fine.

 

[RMS]

I can see the problem you have with it. But I think that high skills are the reason which break the system and not the system as such. IMO RQ is not really designed for such high powered skills. Originally it was developed by practical man which know something about medieval combat and not romantic storytellers.

I don't think this is the case. RQ actually handles the higher skills quite well IMO. In fact if you don't know it, RQII allows higher skills much easier than RQIII. First, there's the bit I mentioned earlier about always having INT chance of increasing a skill. Then there's the fact that skills always increase by 5%, rather than 1d6%, so they move farther when you succeed with a skill check. (OTOH, you have to be a Rune Lord to even attempt to move skills past 100% don't you?)

Maybe this was one of reasons Stafford developed HeroQuest which seems to be better suited for heroic tales.

That could be part of it. I sense that Staffords been moving towards a system like this for a long time. After all, we've all been waiting for Heroquest since 1980!

Of course I have read about the cult requirements of 90% for Runelords. This is ok for the elite fighters of a game world which should Runelords be. But 90% are not 200%. 90-110% would be enough for a Runelord, at least in my games.

It's enough for a Rune Lord, but there's a big difference between a beginning Rune Lord that's just made it and one who's been around for several years actively adventuring as a Rune Lord.

Progressing 110% from 90% to 200% should last very long. Due to the rules its maybe possible but who lives so long in a combat environment and with deadly RQ rules? Especially if the adventures are also dangerous too.

They're dangerous, but then so is any character with 100%+ combat skills and all the magic that a combat deity provides, plus the iron armor, etc.

So either the enemies are not so powerful or they are so powerful and the suvival of your heroes depends on divine intervention (or GMs good will )

Remember that Rune Lords always succeed in their Divine Intervention (for all practical purposes), so this part is correct. The character I mentioned earlier has probably called on his god over a dozen times over the years. The POW hit can be nasty, but having that ability to always succeed with DI is huge for survivability.

The whole 200% thing sounds very odd to me. Is this the way many people out there are playing RQ?

I'll reiterate that the one character I've mentioned is the only one I've seen with it, but low 100s and even mid 100s is fairly common for characters that have played for a while. Many RQ supplements have NPCs with skills in this range, so you need PCs to be there to challenge them.

I know that stormbringer has unearthly high skills but its new for me that RQ has the same.

I know a lot of people who use Stormbringer character creation for RQ in recent years. I haven't tried it myself, but I like the idea. RQIII character creation is a bit underpowered compared to what it should be IMO: crossreferencing with NPCs and how characters progress after created vs. before.

 

[SwordSage]

They are in Glorantha. Keep in mind that the magic can make a big differnece in combat ability. Hal the Death Sword of Humakt might have a Greatsword skill that is only 94%, but after casting Beserk Song he is up to 188%. Toss in a 4 point Bladesharp spell, and he is now at 208%. Note that for Rune LOrds, these sort of modifications and not uncommon.

Far from it. In fact, it can often be quite worse. My Death Sword can get well over 400%. 193x2 = 386 when Berserk. Bladesharp 8 is +40%. So that's 426. If it's only -40% to autocrit... err... die now, kthnx, bye. He can pretty much autokill a couple people a round.

That being said, RQ2-3 handled him just fine. If he wasn't very careful and part of a solid team, he could still get into way more trouble than he could deal with.

My hope is that when I convert him to pressure test the system, that won't change.

The -40% thing is easy enough to handle actually. Either junk it, or allow -40% to defense skills to neutralize it. Then it just becomes a mechanism for scragging the red shirts.

 

[Mikko Leho]

It mioght be the first time you have heard of Rune Level characters, but they have been a part of the RQ rules for nearly 30 years. Reach Rune Status was actually one of the reasons why the game was called RuneQuest.

Essentailly is has been an intregral and central part of the RQ game. I'm surprised that you haven't heard of it. What RQ stuff do you own?

Let me rephrase that: I have never heard anyone reaching rune level. That goal was always miles ahead of our characters.

I would not say you are doing it "wrong" if you are having fun. But you are certainly running a very deadly game.

It not just that characters die, but sometimes the whole world seems to agains them. Like when planning an optimum route we have to note which cities do not have death threat for us. Or when planning to cross a desert our calculations reveal that we can't carry enough water and we had only couple of coins in our pockets (stealing camels resulted in a party reduction).

In our current D&D campaign is at a point where we are running as fast as we can out of a village, which population is considering lynching us. If they decide not to there is always the local garrison, whose leader we just killed in front of a two guards (sounding alarm as we speak). If we reach the near forest, then we have to deal with the bandits living in there and their friends who make pacts with demons. Before reaching them there is always the chance to bump into an orc or more as they seem to be roaming in the area. O, did I mention we are escaping on a cart, that is pulled by half dead horse, our wizard has run out of useful spells for the day, our barbarian is incapacitated and we have to carry the body of the dead garrison leader with us.

 

[JohnLokiBeard]

How about: each -10% to your attack allows you to bypass 1AP? That way even novice characters can improve their penetration [ stop sniggering you Broos at the back!] and better armour is still more protective against any given strike.

 

[atgxtg]

It mioght be the first time you have heard of Rune Level characters, but they have been a part of the RQ rules for nearly 30 years. Reach Rune Status was actually one of the reasons why the game was called RuneQuest.

Essentailly is has been an intregral and central part of the RQ game. I'm surprised that you haven't heard of it. What RQ stuff do you own?

Let me rephrase that: I have never heard anyone reaching rune level. That goal was always miles ahead of our characters.

I could see that being the case for beginning adventurers, but as the campaign progresses the goals should begin to appear more atainable. JUst wondering, how long did character last in your RQ groups?

It not just that characters die, but sometimes the whole world seems to agains them. Like when planning an optimum route we have to note which cities do not have death threat for us. Or when planning to cross a desert our calculations reveal that we can't carry enough water and we had only couple of coins in our pockets (stealing camels resulted in a party reduction).

Is there a reason why the population of your game world is so hostile to the player characters? Is it just bad luck, or have the PCs been ticking people off, or is the GM just running a hostile setting. I seems sort of perculair to me that your group is under threat of death is so many cities that it becuase a major part of your travel plans.

In our current D&D campaign is at a point where we are running as fast as we can out of a village, which population is considering lynching us. If they decide not to there is always the local garrison, whose leader we just killed in front of a two guards (sounding alarm as we speak). If we reach the near forest, then we have to deal with the bandits living in there and their friends who make pacts with demons. Before reaching them there is always the chance to bump into an orc or more as they seem to be roaming in the area. O, did I mention we are escaping on a cart, that is pulled by half dead horse, our wizard has run out of useful spells for the day, our barbarian is incapacitated and we have to carry the body of the dead garrison leader with us.

Okay, so why do the locals want to lynch your group? ANd why did the group kill the leader of the local garrison? Unless you got a very good reason, it is not something that you want to do.