I thought I would post some notes regarding the new edition of RQ and what our group found worked and did not work. We've played this new version for over a month now. Keep in mind this is from a Gloranthan perspective and 3rd age at that. Noes are organized by chapter.
Character Creation
Overall we liked the system for creating characters. While being similar to the somewhat broken AH rules it's actually pretty balanced as long as you adjust/ignore the starting money disparity between Nobles and.. well everyone else.
Skills
Merging of similar old skills seemed a little odd at first though it's useful given how much slower development is. We found two problem area's with the skills though. When creating characters of different racial or cultural backgrounds we found it neccesary to give the characters an additional 'free' language at +50 just so they'd have a common language. Otherwise we ended up with some characters speaking Aldryami, Mostali, Esrolian, Sartarite, etc and not being able to converse with others. Secondly the rule for opposed skill tests with pc's with a skill over 100% doesn't work well. Someone with a 40% skill should never lose to someone with a 140% skill, but with the halving rule it's quite possible. Either just make the rule of whoever succeeds by the most wins, or reduce both skills by the amount that exceeds 100.
Equipment
Aside from the errors and holes in the armor table and the Potions table being mislabelled Crystals this section works fairly well. One major change we made was to halve the armor penalty on attacks and parries. In retrospect we probably should have negated it for those altogether. Our group had both active and former SCA members and a professional armorer so we didn't find this particular game mechanic very feasible, nor did ti really add anything to the game.
Combat
We opted for the one-roll system and not having to declare your reaction until an attack was to succeed. The mechanic of actions & reactions was well recieved and is a good improvement over the old Strike Rank method of combat in RQ 2/3.
The 'Charge' action seemed somewhat broken, allowing you to essetially combine 3 actions in one (a double move and an attack) plus a damage boost all with no apparent penalty. We toyed with the idea of allowing this to 'provoke' a free attack from the charge recepient. Something else that may work is to have Charge also consume some or all of your reactions.
Flurry was a popular tactic and if we had not been using the rule allowing declaration of reactions till after a successful hit I could see this being very problematic, allowing one pc to rush in and swing a hissy fit at the monster to expend all thier reactions and leave them defenseless for his comrades.
Critical hits came out rather weak, while we never implemented any changes to them in our play test I think a reversion to the 'ignore armor' version in RQ 2/3 would be preferable. Or perhaps max damage and ignore half armor.
Magic
Easily the area in which the new RQ fails the most. The idea of integrating runes for an effect is a good one but tying it to 'Battle Magic' dramatically changes the flavor of the game. In previous editions even your lowly farmer might know a few points of Battle Magic, particularly Healing or Xenohealing. Now this commonplace event is highly unlikely as they would need to find a rune to attune first.
The rules seem to indicate needing a Runecasting skill for each separate rune. This seemed excessive to us and we opted for a single Runecasting skill. As it was we still had pc's with casting skills in the 40% who had multiple runes. One pc had focused into casting with an 80%.
Another unpopular point against spellcasting via runes only was the way Spirit Binding now worked. One of the things players looked forward to in previous editions was the opportunity to bind a spirit into a crystal or familiar. This was an integral part of Glorantha and the new changes forced players to seek out a Spirit rune that would allow them access to the spirit spells needed for the enchanting or to go without altogether. We also changed the method of binding to a Runecasting skill check once the spirit was defeated. We imposed a modifier to this check by5% for every point of power difference. IE if a 10 POW pc tried to bind a 15 POW spirit they would have -25% to thier Runecasting skill check.
Multimissile dealing magical damage was negated as this would allow a pc to gun down a Gorp or Elemental with too much alacrity.
Speedart was reverted to it's original RQ 2/3 values though we did toy with the idea of making it -10% parry/dodge, +1 damage per Magnitude.
Overcharging and Magical Defense expenditures were limited to the original POW of the pc regardless of how much stored POW they had.
Cults
We didn't much care for this section either, and just stuck with Cults of Prax/Terror. No DI for initiates did make things a little more interesting.
Adventuring
Pretty good area for the most part though the Poison section is pretty toothless, it's hard to see how anyone would ever die or even be close to death from being poisoned. Using a similar mechanic to Disease, where the effect triggers repeatedly every so often unless someone succeeds at halting it with a Healing check or Heal 8 would be ideal.
Improving Adventurers
Improving skills in the new RQ is now painfully slow in comparison. The rules seem to indicate that you spend your improvements during Practice or Research. At the end of a long adventure one of out pc's spent his 4 improvements and his skills increased a grand total of 6%, having failed 3 of the rolls. Compared to the system of getting 'ticks' in RQ 2/3 this is a snails pace. Allowing pc's to Practice and Research in ADDITION to getting improvements would make character advancement more in tune with the original game.
The system for Mentor's was modified. As the rule stands your Mentor must have twice your skill in order to teach you. This means that a Mentor can never teach you up to or even close to thier level of skill. Makes you wonder what sort of skill roll your English or Math teacher had in High School or University eh? We opted for requiring a '90' to teach as that was considered the 'Master' level in previous editions.
Creatures All in all, including this section and the Monsters book a pretty good section. Though some of the art is a little 'off' (pig snouted Dark Trolls??) One MAJOR item missing from here is Treasure Factors or any other way of generating loot for defeated foes.
Spirit Combat
An interesting take on the mechanic though if they players are on the ball and are looking for guardian spirits they can buff themselves and just go to town on the poor spirit with thier Sprirt Screen and Spirit Bane spells. Though it isn't mentioned in the Companion we allowed parrying a spirit's attack if the parrying item had Spirit Bane cast on it. Giving the sprit some extra damage via a 'spirit weapon' might be a good idea, they just aren't dealing any damage to pc's when buffed up. The flavor of Spirit Combat being something very challenging and sometimes frightening has diminished substantially.
Character Creation
Overall we liked the system for creating characters. While being similar to the somewhat broken AH rules it's actually pretty balanced as long as you adjust/ignore the starting money disparity between Nobles and.. well everyone else.
Skills
Merging of similar old skills seemed a little odd at first though it's useful given how much slower development is. We found two problem area's with the skills though. When creating characters of different racial or cultural backgrounds we found it neccesary to give the characters an additional 'free' language at +50 just so they'd have a common language. Otherwise we ended up with some characters speaking Aldryami, Mostali, Esrolian, Sartarite, etc and not being able to converse with others. Secondly the rule for opposed skill tests with pc's with a skill over 100% doesn't work well. Someone with a 40% skill should never lose to someone with a 140% skill, but with the halving rule it's quite possible. Either just make the rule of whoever succeeds by the most wins, or reduce both skills by the amount that exceeds 100.
Equipment
Aside from the errors and holes in the armor table and the Potions table being mislabelled Crystals this section works fairly well. One major change we made was to halve the armor penalty on attacks and parries. In retrospect we probably should have negated it for those altogether. Our group had both active and former SCA members and a professional armorer so we didn't find this particular game mechanic very feasible, nor did ti really add anything to the game.
Combat
We opted for the one-roll system and not having to declare your reaction until an attack was to succeed. The mechanic of actions & reactions was well recieved and is a good improvement over the old Strike Rank method of combat in RQ 2/3.
The 'Charge' action seemed somewhat broken, allowing you to essetially combine 3 actions in one (a double move and an attack) plus a damage boost all with no apparent penalty. We toyed with the idea of allowing this to 'provoke' a free attack from the charge recepient. Something else that may work is to have Charge also consume some or all of your reactions.
Flurry was a popular tactic and if we had not been using the rule allowing declaration of reactions till after a successful hit I could see this being very problematic, allowing one pc to rush in and swing a hissy fit at the monster to expend all thier reactions and leave them defenseless for his comrades.
Critical hits came out rather weak, while we never implemented any changes to them in our play test I think a reversion to the 'ignore armor' version in RQ 2/3 would be preferable. Or perhaps max damage and ignore half armor.
Magic
Easily the area in which the new RQ fails the most. The idea of integrating runes for an effect is a good one but tying it to 'Battle Magic' dramatically changes the flavor of the game. In previous editions even your lowly farmer might know a few points of Battle Magic, particularly Healing or Xenohealing. Now this commonplace event is highly unlikely as they would need to find a rune to attune first.
The rules seem to indicate needing a Runecasting skill for each separate rune. This seemed excessive to us and we opted for a single Runecasting skill. As it was we still had pc's with casting skills in the 40% who had multiple runes. One pc had focused into casting with an 80%.
Another unpopular point against spellcasting via runes only was the way Spirit Binding now worked. One of the things players looked forward to in previous editions was the opportunity to bind a spirit into a crystal or familiar. This was an integral part of Glorantha and the new changes forced players to seek out a Spirit rune that would allow them access to the spirit spells needed for the enchanting or to go without altogether. We also changed the method of binding to a Runecasting skill check once the spirit was defeated. We imposed a modifier to this check by5% for every point of power difference. IE if a 10 POW pc tried to bind a 15 POW spirit they would have -25% to thier Runecasting skill check.
Multimissile dealing magical damage was negated as this would allow a pc to gun down a Gorp or Elemental with too much alacrity.
Speedart was reverted to it's original RQ 2/3 values though we did toy with the idea of making it -10% parry/dodge, +1 damage per Magnitude.
Overcharging and Magical Defense expenditures were limited to the original POW of the pc regardless of how much stored POW they had.
Cults
We didn't much care for this section either, and just stuck with Cults of Prax/Terror. No DI for initiates did make things a little more interesting.
Adventuring
Pretty good area for the most part though the Poison section is pretty toothless, it's hard to see how anyone would ever die or even be close to death from being poisoned. Using a similar mechanic to Disease, where the effect triggers repeatedly every so often unless someone succeeds at halting it with a Healing check or Heal 8 would be ideal.
Improving Adventurers
Improving skills in the new RQ is now painfully slow in comparison. The rules seem to indicate that you spend your improvements during Practice or Research. At the end of a long adventure one of out pc's spent his 4 improvements and his skills increased a grand total of 6%, having failed 3 of the rolls. Compared to the system of getting 'ticks' in RQ 2/3 this is a snails pace. Allowing pc's to Practice and Research in ADDITION to getting improvements would make character advancement more in tune with the original game.
The system for Mentor's was modified. As the rule stands your Mentor must have twice your skill in order to teach you. This means that a Mentor can never teach you up to or even close to thier level of skill. Makes you wonder what sort of skill roll your English or Math teacher had in High School or University eh? We opted for requiring a '90' to teach as that was considered the 'Master' level in previous editions.
Creatures All in all, including this section and the Monsters book a pretty good section. Though some of the art is a little 'off' (pig snouted Dark Trolls??) One MAJOR item missing from here is Treasure Factors or any other way of generating loot for defeated foes.
Spirit Combat
An interesting take on the mechanic though if they players are on the ball and are looking for guardian spirits they can buff themselves and just go to town on the poor spirit with thier Sprirt Screen and Spirit Bane spells. Though it isn't mentioned in the Companion we allowed parrying a spirit's attack if the parrying item had Spirit Bane cast on it. Giving the sprit some extra damage via a 'spirit weapon' might be a good idea, they just aren't dealing any damage to pc's when buffed up. The flavor of Spirit Combat being something very challenging and sometimes frightening has diminished substantially.
