Number of spells for a particular religion or cult

[chaindog]

In the standard MRQ game, how many spells would typically be available to divine magic users for a given faith? There are a ton of divine spells between the main rulebook and the spells source book, but I get the impression that cults only offer a few spells which reflect the god who grants them.

I'm a lifelong DnD GM (having had enough of that system) who is trying to get an idea of what the typical priestly powers are. I don't have any of the Cults or Glorantha source books to compare it against.

 

[RosenMcStern]

A seasoned divine magician usually has some 20-30 different divine spells ready for casting ata any moment (most in items, some in memory), plus a plethora of rune magic he collects from various associate cults. It depends on temple availability and size of the cult. Essentially, on the GM. Remember that the priest cannot recharge his spells during adventures, unlike D&D.

 

[soltakss]

If you use the Dedicated POW rules from standard RQM, you will only have up to the character's POW in Divine Magic points.

You have to use some form of Divine Magic Pool, or use RQ2/3-style sacrifice rules, to get 30 points of Divine Magic.

In older versions of RQ, Priests had a lot of Divine Magic, which is how I like it.

As to Rune Magic, to a certain extent you are limited to the number of Runes you have, but I'd expect a competent magician/priest to have 10-20 Rune Spells, especially if you use the RQ Spellbook.

 

[Inspector Zero]

seasoned divine magician usually has some 20-30 different divine spells ready for casting ata any moment

Shome mishtake shurely? I have never played with anything like this amount. Given that each level of magnitude in a spell requires a point of dedicated POW, and even allowing for a generous amount of enchantments (which also require POW sacrifice) and pieces of Truestone this would leave the Rune Priest/Lord/Whatever with a ridiculously low POW and MP.

To be fair of course there is no limit to the amount of Divine Magic a character has but if you assume around 2-3 points for an Initiate, and up to maybe 9-10 points for a Rune Priest or Rune Lord then you're probably in the right kind of area.

What are the norms in other peoples' games?

 

[kintire]

I've certainly never seen anyone with 20-30 different spells. 20 POINTS I've seen, but that was rather special.

Most divine casters in our games work a little like old RQ initiates. The PC who is using divine magic is actually mostly a Rune mage, and has divine spells for extra punch. Of course, he has to cast divine spells from time to time, or he'll run out of MPs. Interesting dynamic, really.

The GM has tinkered with the rules a little however: Divine spells take much less time to recover. The pacing of our game doesn't really allow for days of recovery time.

 

[raymond_turney]

Hi,

The number of divine spells a caster can be expected to have will depend a lot on the campaign, how experienced he is, etc. I would start divine casters with about 5-10 spells and a POW of 10-12.

Obviously, the number of divine spells will increase as the caster's POW increases. In theory, I do not think there is an upper limit.

It should be noted that your question is ambiguous. There are a lot of divine spells available which are not appropriate for most deities. Berserk for example, is inappropriate for most Healing deities. In general, I would assume that spells listed for "All" deities are available, as well as spells listed as appropriate for keywords related to the deity. Traditionally RQ deities are not play balanced. Some might have 25 spells, others 10.

By the way, I was one of the co-authors of RuneQuest I&II, and now offer a system of my own, Fire and Sword. Fire and Sword is available from BRP Central as a free download under an open source license, here:

http://basicroleplaying.com/forum/downloads.php?do=cat&id=12

There is also a sample setting description, City of Tishrei at the same place. The temple descriptions in this setting can be used as a model for what RQ temples offer.

Ray,

 

[Deleriad]

In the standard MRQ game, how many spells would typically be available to divine magic users for a given faith? There are a ton of divine spells between the main rulebook and the spells source book, but I get the impression that cults only offer a few spells which reflect the god who grants them.

You are right. Most major religions get access to the "all" spells most of which are fairly foundational. After that, a deity may have one or two spheres of influence which will provide access to a few more specialist spells. A reasonable assumption going off just the core rules is that a religion may provide access to about 20-25 different spells in total.

Again, if going just off the core and playing the game as written, an initiate of a cult can store a maximum of POW-1 in Magnitude of spells at once. This is a practical maximum of 20 points but would leave the initiate with just one Magic Point of their own.

It is possible to get magic items that hold divine spells.

In previous versions of RQ with a bit of Monty Haul mentality you might get the occasional Rune Priest running around with 30-50 Magnitude in *reusable* divine magic so some older players find MRQ's divine magic limiting at the top end.

 

[soltakss]

You are right. Most major religions get access to the "all" spells most of which are fairly foundational. After that, a deity may have one or two spheres of influence which will provide access to a few more specialist spells. A reasonable assumption going off just the core rules is that a religion may provide access to about 20-25 different spells in total.

There was the idea of Common Divine magic that all cults had, although some cults were very small and only had access to a few of the Common Divine spells.

Having access to 20-25 spells seems a little high to me. Most cults have 2 or 3 cult special Runemagic spells and perhaps the same number of standard runemagic spells plus 3-5 Cult Special Divine Magic spells. I suppose if you included Common Divine Magic then you could get close to 20-25 spells.

Again, if going just off the core and playing the game as written, an initiate of a cult can store a maximum of POW-1 in Magnitude of spells at once. This is a practical maximum of 20 points but would leave the initiate with just one Magic Point of their own.

Which many people think is far too low and is impractical.

In previous versions of RQ with a bit of Monty Haul mentality you might get the occasional Rune Priest running around with 30-50 Magnitude in *reusable* divine magic so some older players find MRQ's divine magic limiting at the top end.

Monty Haul Mentality? Not at all. Such levels could be quite easily reached with a prolonged campaign. If you got all the spells at once in a starting character then yes, but this almost never happened.

The difference between previous versions of RQ and the current version is that Divine Magic has been vastly downgraded, perhaps for reasons of balance, perhaps to model the Imperial Age. It doesn't ring true to me that a powerful priest can do virtually nothing with his few castings.

The old RQ books (Runemasters, RQ3 Trollpack, Dorastor) had well-balanced and reasonably powerful rune level NPCs, something that we haven't really seen yet in RQM.

But, I am an old, fuddy-duddy RQ-fogey, so I would hanker after the glories of yesteryear ...

 

[Deleriad]

The difference between previous versions of RQ and the current version is that Divine Magic has been vastly downgraded, perhaps for reasons of balance, perhaps to model the Imperial Age. It doesn't ring true to me that a powerful priest can do virtually nothing with his few castings.

At the risk of derailing this topic into house rule territory I allow Acolytes and rune lords to store 2 Magnitude of Divine Magic per 1 Dedicated POW and Rune Priests to store 3 Magnitude.

The old RQ books (Runemasters, RQ3 Trollpack, Dorastor) had well-balanced and reasonably powerful rune level NPCs, something that we haven't really seen yet in RQM.

I must admit that I just never liked playing with RQ3 and RQ2 rune level NPCs because I tend to like to run fairly free and easy and the high level NPCs could go on for ages. So I am all for a shallow progression where characters start pretty competent. Though as my house rule shows, as with much of MRQ I'm happier with the ideas than the implementation.

My feeling is that some of what the higher level characters have lost in number of spells is returned to them in the cult special abilities and the fact that magic is far less prevalent by default in MRQ than earlier versions; something which Greg Stafford has long claimed that RQ got wrong about Glorantha.

 

[Deleriad]

Having access to 20-25 spells seems a little high to me. Most cults have 2 or 3 cult special Runemagic spells and perhaps the same number of standard runemagic spells plus 3-5 Cult Special Divine Magic spells. I suppose if you included Common Divine Magic then you could get close to 20-25 spells.

That was roughly where I was coming from. IIRC there about 10-12 common divine spells and then 1-3 for each type of deity. Cults which include rune magic seem to offer 3-6 rune spells. Add in any unique spells to that cult and associated cult spells and you do get a fair few spells to choose from. Clearly if you're prepared to use the RQ Spellbook the amount of divine magic explodes but I've personally banned that book from anything I run.

There are also arguably some common divine magic spells that should have been included, most notably the control (cult spirit and related) spells.