Newbie Questions about the Magic System

[Redstone]

I just picked up Runequest at gencon and was impressed both with the character creation and combat system. As I dug further, I became more and more dissapointed in the rune magic. These are my problems with the system, but I am hoping I am just interpreting the rules wrong.

1. You lose power as you integrate the rune.
You dont have that many magic points to begin with (magic points = POW?)
2. An experienced adventurer has essentially the same magic points as a beginnier (max POW is 21?). Not much room for growth.

3. While I like the idea of spells being associated with a rune and the skill roll being driven by that skill, It makes learning new spells very tough considering you only get 1d4+1 points added to a skill per adventure, assuming that you use one of your 3 rolls on that skill.

4. Spell Selection is incredibly poor in the book. My son started creating a character and picked the air rune, the book gives him one spell, extinguish. Very dissapointing

5. I was looking at the online info on the other types of magic. Did not encourage me. Divine magic used the silly idea of memorizing the spells, which is one of the reasons I dont like d20 system. The Sorcery looked more interesting, but you have to learn each spell individually, see number 4 above.

Any help, clarifications, resources, would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

 

[RosenMcStern]

1) The "Lose POW" activity is very common for RQ characters in all editions. Get used to it.

2) Do not worry about high-level characters being unable to cast that many spells. There are plenty of items that provide extra magic points that you can use to fuel spells. If you do not end up carrying a cartload of magic point storage crystals within a few months, then it is not RQ that you are playing

3) AFAIK, the fact that you can only increase via the three increase rolls per session has never been officially confirmed by Mongoose, despite being debated on the forums. My reading of the rules is that training (see the Improving Adventurers chapter of the core book) generates extra improvement rolls at a rate of one per skill/10 days, while others like Rurik think that training uses up the improvement rolls. If you go with my interpretation and you are friendly with your cult (and have plenty of money), you can raise your skills faster, and become a decent magician in a reasonable time, leaving the "free" improvements given by the GM at the end of each session for exotic skills or characteristic increase.

4) Absolutely. Those are the "classic" spells, but the complete list is in the upcoming spellbook. With this new system, there will be many more spells, and many more spell variants per cult, we all hope.

5a) Divine Magic is underpowered in MRQ at present. It is fine for low-magic settings, like my own Stupor Mundi, but not for Glorantha. Once you are starting to grok the idea of Divine Spell = lesser heroquest, however, the concept of casting a spell only once becomes less weird. But you better stick with Rune Magic and Sorcery at the beginning.

5b) Sorcery is impressive. It is what it should have been in RQ3, and more. Having played and GMed several big sorcerers under the old rules, I recommend it to you. However, you are right in assuming that a sorcerer is unplayable at a growth rate of three skill increases per game, so any dedicated sorcerer must be given the opportunity to get extra increases by reading spell books etc. See above.

 

[Rurik]

Quick point on Divine Magic. You are not "Memorising" spells per say as in D&D. You are granted them directly from your god. Hense the one use - pray to get them back bit.

Mechanically it works the same as spell memorization, but the rationalization works better. Well somewhat better.

 

[AKAramis]

Relying upon my knowledge of RQ3, if they are not being intentionally different, MRQ training should be generating additional rolls.

The "only three per session" motif IS an apparently intentional difference, since any "significant" use (or a crit) generally got a check under RQ3.

As to Pow and spells: since you can keep re-raising Pow spent to bind runes and learn non-faith magics, it's not a terribly big issue. 21 MP is quite a bit with the RQ system.

As to spell selection: MRQ really seemed quite incomplete for a core rulebook. I am disappointed.

 

[weasel_fierce]

I thought there was a decent handfull of spells. The 2nd cult companion for glorantha has a butt ton of rune magic spells though, that can be used for any setting