Possession
- Thread starter PhilHibbs
- Start date
gamesmeister
Banded Mongoose
PhilHibbs said:
Not much, unless the target can cast Spirit Screen or a similar spell
Some but not all spirits are tied to an area/object, so moving away from that will usually prevent the spirit from following. Other than that, you're in big trouble.
gamesmeister
Banded Mongoose
Vadrus said:
Well to be fair, it's always been the case that you couldn't run from a spirit, so if you couldn't defeat it through spirit combat, you ended up possessed.
But at least you could lower its chances of defeating you by reducing its MPs, whereas in MRQ you need to physically defeat it, not easy at the best of times.
I have to say, the jury's still out on the new Spirit Combat rules, and I'm not really sure why they changed them.
GbajiTheDeceiver
Mongoose
Yee-haw, thar'll be a hangin' :lol:
I don't like them either...
I don't like them either...
RosenMcStern
Mongoose
Maybe these rules aren't the best they could devise, but RQ3 spirit combat was rather colorless and boring, so I will not miss it. I think we should wait until someone has had the opportunity to play some major scenario involving spirits before bringing the rope in.
Besides, doesn't it take some soap,too?
Besides, doesn't it take some soap,too?
RosenMcStern said:
I liked the fact that in RQ3 you had three completely seperate axes of attack/defence : Physical combat, magical attacks and spirit combat. You also has sperate magic to augment or protect against these types of attack. It made for a very interesting set of tactics and character development options.
Having magical defences against spirits uses exactly the same magic (protection/Shild spells) as against swords and arrows just feels wrong, IMHO.
Maybe there will be more to it than that. Untill we see the full rules for Shamanism, we'll just have to wait and see. As with Divine Magic, it may be that we're missing an essential piece of the puzzle.
RosenMcStern
Mongoose
You still have spirit-specific defense spells. Old good Spirit Screen and Spirit Block spells are still there.
Note that most spirits will not attack with their spirit weapons but attempt possession. Wraith is an exception, but it used to cause physical damage in RQ3, too.
Durand Durand
Banded Mongoose
I'd agree with the colourless bit, certainly. The down to the wire fights were never really boring though. Well, not always.RosenMcStern said:
I'd like to see perhaps a few more skills involved in spiritworld dealings. Perhaps a Spirit combat skill if we're going to get down to that, and a few things more specific to the spirit world. Certainly a Spirit Lore skill, some influence, and other skills that should see a lot of use. We really have to wait to see the further developments of the magic and world books.
DD
RosenMcStern said:
And you find one single opposed persistence roll colorful and exciting?
I like the old system, but even if you didn't (which is of course your right) most spirits will possess, which boils down to one roll - blah.
Spirit combat on the other hand is just like mundane combat. Except that if a character has no magic damage capabilities he is pretty much dead once attacked.
RosenMcStern
Mongoose
Well, at least it keeps you on your toes
Mind me, I did not say I find it good, I simply meant the previous system wasn't any better.
Trifletraxor
Mongoose
RQ3 spirit combat was based on willpower for both parties.
MRQ spirit combat is based on persistence rolls & weapon skills (if you have damage-enhancing spells, otherwise you're toast).
The RQ3 rules sounds much, much more natural to me.
I can't really understand how someone thought the RQ3 rules where boring. If you got posessed by a ghost, you where usually dead. I ran one MP vs. MP roll every SR, so the spirit combat didn't take a lot of game time. My players have always been extremely afraid of ghosts.
SGL.
MRQ spirit combat is based on persistence rolls & weapon skills (if you have damage-enhancing spells, otherwise you're toast).
The RQ3 rules sounds much, much more natural to me.
I can't really understand how someone thought the RQ3 rules where boring. If you got posessed by a ghost, you where usually dead. I ran one MP vs. MP roll every SR, so the spirit combat didn't take a lot of game time. My players have always been extremely afraid of ghosts.
SGL.
Trifletraxor said:
I can't disagree with anything you said there.
However I think it would be hard to just go back to the old way of doing spirit combat - the changes to the MRQ system are more far reaching than they seem on the surface and a lot of re-working would need to be done (at which point you might as well stick with RQ3 IMHO).
I had considered a hybrid system where you could do a series of opposed persistence rolls and the loser loses MPs much like in RQ2/3 - but I think this doesn't work with the new divine magic rules.
Currently I am considering having a possession attempt cost the spirit MP - the question is how many? MP equal to the (unmodified) POW of the target - seems high and would pretty much limit the spirit to one attempt. 1/2 POW maybe? The other option would be a roll - say 1d6 or 1d8 MP per attempt or something like that.
The other option would be to say if a spirit fails it's possession attempt it cannot attempt to possess the same target for that targets POW in rounds or minutes or hours or whatever the GM sees fit.
It just does not seem right that the spirit can attempt once per CA until it succeeds, even a low Persistence spirit can keep trying against a high Persistence target until it gets lucky.
RosenMcStern
Mongoose
Because you never ran battles between a POW 15-fetch 30 PC shaman and a POW 30 spirit, that required a 05% roll on the part of BOTH contestants to do damage. My, we even found ourselves in the need to recast Spirit Screen 'cause the 25 round duration had expired. And the time when the shaman was engaged by five spirits, each with a 01% or 05% chance to hit, and we had to run the entire combat, that was another nightmare. And in case you wondered, the shaman did not want to flee the combat, even though it was allowed by the rules, and I could not rule an automatic win because the spirit had some chance of success.
Of course having to roll each SR speeds the thing a little, but this is unfair because the PCs have less time to use magic to fight back. If they know Befuddle or Demoralize or whatever, they can turn the tides of battle this way.
Rurik's idea of "wasting" MPs per possession attempt is nice, BTW. Maybe 1d6? Half POW would be contrary to the "use the least maths possible" principle of MRQ.
Trifletraxor
Mongoose
RosenMcStern said:
Hehehehehe!!! Well that's true, I never did that!
(You could have sent the spirits on somebody else in the party though)
SGL.
RosenMcStern said:
Are you happier with the current system where the spirit just walks up and possesses you with a single roll?
Or as is likely once you have resists over 100% just keeps trying and trying until it gets lucky or the group gets bored of all the rolling and goes off to play something else?
RQ3 was far from perfect but has MRQ's solution really improved the situation?
Vadrus
simonh said:
Agreed. I thought RQ2/3 spirit combat was pretty boring. I liked the ideas presented in the RQ4 draft with attack and defense skills and the ability to do different amounts of "damage", so it mirrored the combat system. It was a little complicated but may have been cleaned up after what I saw.
In big battles like this, I've tended to go a couple of ways. Our group plays infrequently, but has a continual email dialogue going to advance play. A lot of times I'll time big spirit combats to be done via email where I can handle everything quickly in a spread sheet and then just narrate the results, allowing players to make decisions at key points. That's worked out suprisingly well and my players much prefer it to rolling endlessly on the resistance table. The other is that we did a simple lowest die roll wins (when both sides have a 5% chance), doing damage each round. The battle is even, so it's all random anyway. This moves it along.
