Possession

[Rurik]

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?

Actually, once your Persistance goes over 100 your chances of winning go down. :twisted:

 

[Rurik]

The RQ3 system was far from ideal, but that't not necesserily a reason to toss out the whole concept and go to physical combat for spirits. It's a good rason to fix the system. Let's see what they come up with for Shamans.

Once the high level design decision to do away with the resistance table and stat rolls was made the spirit combat system had to change. The 'Spirits have HP and can only be hurt by Magic Weapons' approach certainly reeks of D&D but will appeal to many players from that background. Hence the changing of Fireblade. Seemed totally cocked when the core rules came out but makes sense now.

Once POW vs. POW rolls and hence POW gain rolls were removed magic had to change. POW sacrifices cannot be as common as they once were, which makes the changes to Divine Magic make more sense - after all, nothing directly attacks your POW or MP any more, and it makes it easier for initiates to use Divine Magic - it just limits Rune level characters. As has been discussed, even without house rules, the limitations can be overcome using the enchanting rules and stored MP and Spirits (though I still plan on house-ruling).

I really think the game was playtested and balanced better than it seemed at first* - it is just that the game is actually much more different than it seems at first. I used to tell people that it was a lot like RQ2/3 with a few (mostly bad) changes. I have completely changed my view of it - it is a very different game that on the surface looks very similar.

I liked the Resistance table and Spirit combat from earlier editions just fine, and think the high level decision to remove them was a bad decision IMHO. That being said, from what I've played of it, the game seems to work well as what it is.


*disclaimer for Skybolt and Spirits being able to make unlimited posession attempts once per CA.

 

[soltakss]

I can't really understand how someone thought the RQ3 rules where boring.

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.

Well, I got around the POW 15 Shaman POW 30 Fetch vs POW 30 Spirit by saying that when the shaman was discorporate, his fetch went awandering and he stayed behind drumming/dancing/singing. So it was then POW 30 vs 30 which is far more interesting. Of course, with Spirit Block a shaman quickly becomes virtually immune to spirit combat anyway.

In that kind of combat, we quickly found that we could roll a round of spirit combat in about 5 seconds - both roll dice together, both roll damage if attack succeeded, mark losses, roll again. So, a 25 round combat takes about 2 minutes.

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.

The problem with spirit combat, in my opinion, is that anyone can be good at it. All you need is an enchanted weapon or the Spirit Bane spell and some spells and most spirits are toast. Why become a shaman to defend against spirits?

I know RQ2/3 Spirit combat suffered from similar problems, where everyone had the same ability for spirit combat, POW vs POW, but at least shamans could resist with higehr POW and could do something with the spirits once they defeated them.

That's why I used house rules for spirit combat to make it more exciting and skill-dependent.

Even making Spirit Combat an Opposed Persistence Test with damage coming off Magic Points would be better then the current situation. In fact, that would probably work really well. Use the same damage bonus for corporeal characters as spirits (Based on POW+CHA), call in Spirit Damage Bonus, use opposed Persistence Rolls and anyone falling to 0 MPs goes unconscious. That makes it compatible with the Exorcism spell, to a certain extent, makes spirit combat different from normal combat and has a certain amount of similarity with RQ3 but keeps it in line with RQM.

Possession would work the same way, but with MPs reduced through spirit combat, it would be easier or harder to defend against, depending on who is winning the fight.

 

[Rurik]

Even making Spirit Combat an Opposed Persistence Test with damage coming off Magic Points would be better then the current situation. In fact, that would probably work really well. Use the same damage bonus for corporeal characters as spirits (Based on POW+CHA), call in Spirit Damage Bonus, use opposed Persistence Rolls and anyone falling to 0 MPs goes unconscious. That makes it compatible with the Exorcism spell, to a certain extent, makes spirit combat different from normal combat and has a certain amount of similarity with RQ3 but keeps it in line with RQM.

The problem with this approach is the MRQ Divine Magic rules. Divine Magicians would be sitting ducks for Spirits compared to all other characters - the rules as written depend on the fact that nothing attacks your MP directly.

Other than that opposed persistance tests work very well - they certainly solve the problem of both sides having an 05% chance and rolling forever.

 

[soltakss]

Well, Spirit Block seems to help against spirits, although nowhere near as well as it used to at low pointages, at least until it wears off and the spirit that couldn't interact with you now can. Add to that the fact that Spirit Screen and Spirit Bane are available as Runemagic to Divine Magicians as well and they aren't too badly off.

 

[simonh]

One change that's not been directly alluded to here yet, but which touches on all of this, is the way that Magic Point resource management has changed.

In MRQ it seems there are no ways to store Magic Points, either in enchantments or in spirits. This is huge. It means the Magic Points you have due to your POW are all you have. Combined with the fact that Divine Magic seems only marginaly more powerful per point than Rune Magic, and much less powerful than RQ3 Divine Magic and this drasticaly reduces the power of just about all magicians.

When I read the basic rules I liked the rules on overcharging spells to punch through defences, and blowing MPs to enchance Persistance rolls agains incoming magical attacks. I still do, but the extreme scarcity of MPs in this system compared to RQ3 makes magicians in this system seem crippled to an old RQ hand like me. Glorantha just became a LOT less magical.

This is very far from what I was expecting. The rules give examples of opponents with skills in the hundreds of percent range. It seemed liekl they wanted a lightweight scalable system that allowed truly powerful characters, yet the system just doesn't support any of that.

The system is reasonably well ballanced overall, with just a few areas that seem a bit loose but are either fixable with minimal houseruling or creative use of advanced rules from later supplements. Ballance isn't the issue here. The issue is that magicians in this game will have a handfull of spells, and only be able to cast any of them a handfull of times, and that's it. Maybe you could tacticaly boost a spell by a couple of points, to marginaly increase your chance to get your spell through and deal a few dice of damage. Whoop. Not exactly living on the edge.

Where are the Shield 8 spells (16 magical APs and 16 points of Countermagic baby!), Befuddle backed with 15 MPs to blow through defences, attack Ghosts baked up with heavy Spirit Block to take down troublesome enemies. Yopu can kidn of do it, but the zap - pow of awesome magic and terrifying combat attacks followed by epic healing powers are going to be severely muted. The best magicians even possible under th system as I see it today get 1, maybe 2 half-decent spells off and then they're done for the day. Some of the magic augmenting enchantments help, but they're very generic and effect all spells and basicaly everyone will have them so they're not going to give much differentiation.

It looks like an ok system, and fun to play at started and intermediate levels. You could play this game for a good few adventures, even a short campaign and have a lot of fun, but eventualy you're going to hit some pretty hard limitations.

Maybe further supplements will take of some of the caps and work around some limitations, but that's getting to be a very old tune very fast. I don't know. I like a lot of this, and it's well thought out, but hard limits like this on magic just aren't RuneQuesty. Not at all.

Maybe Legendary Abilities for magic are the way out of this.

 

[Rurik]

I think you are missing a couple of things. MP storage crystals are in the Core Rules (Crystals of the Dead - in the Equipment Section) and you can use the MP of a spirit you sucessfully bind using the Enchantment rules from the Companion.

To me this it what makes the Dedicated POW for Divine Magic work at all. Since nothing directly attacks your MP any more (refering to old spirit combat) there is no real difference between a Priest having only 3 'personal' MP and 15 'stored' MP and just having 18 'personal' MP.

It has also been stated in the thread on Cults Book One that there is an equivilent to Allied Spirits for Rune Levels - though it has a different name (I can't remember at the moment).

EDIT: Divine Companions is the new name for Allied Spirits.

 

[soltakss]

I think you are missing a couple of things. MP storage crystals are in the Core Rules (Crystals of the Dead - in the Equipment Section) and you can use the MP of a spirit you sucessfully bind using the Enchantment rules from the Companion.

That's right. And there's nothing to stop you making up new enchantments, replicating the ones from RQ3.

To me this it what makes the Dedicated POW for Divine Magic work at all. Since nothing directly attacks your MP any more (refering to old spirit combat) there is no real difference between a Priest having only 3 'personal' MP and 15 'stored' MP and just having 18 'personal' MP.

But, Dedicated POW severely restricts the amount of Divine Magic you can get. There is nothing like the Rune Priests of RQ2/3 with 50 or 60 points of Divine Magic. This is the main problem with Dedicated POW, in my opinion.

 

[soltakss]

Maybe further supplements will take of some of the caps and work around some limitations, but that's getting to be a very old tune very fast. I don't know. I like a lot of this, and it's well thought out, but hard limits like this on magic just aren't RuneQuesty. Not at all.

Except that RQ2 had a limit of 4 points of variable Battle Magic, except for a few spells, and 4 points of Rune Magic (Divine Magic in RQ3/RQM).

But, yes, I agree that limits on anything are bad. Get rid of all the limits and you're starting to get useful rules for high level/powerful play.

Maybe Legendary Abilities for magic are the way out of this.

Maybe Legendary Heroes will have some good stuff in at the top end. Unless the top end is 100%.

 

[RosenMcStern]

When I read the basic rules I liked the rules on overcharging spells to punch through defences, and blowing MPs to enchance Persistance rolls agains incoming magical attacks. I still do, but the extreme scarcity of MPs in this system compared to RQ3 makes magicians in this system seem crippled to an old RQ hand like me. Glorantha just became a LOT less magical.

This is very far from what I was expecting. The rules give examples of opponents with skills in the hundreds of percent range. It seemed liekl they wanted a lightweight scalable system that allowed truly powerful characters, yet the system just doesn't support any of that.

The system is reasonably well ballanced overall, with just a few areas that seem a bit loose but are either fixable with minimal houseruling or creative use of advanced rules from later supplements. Ballance isn't the issue here. The issue is that magicians in this game will have a handfull of spells, and only be able to cast any of them a handfull of times, and that's it. Maybe you could tacticaly boost a spell by a couple of points, to marginaly increase your chance to get your spell through and deal a few dice of damage. Whoop. Not exactly living on the edge.

Where are the Shield 8 spells (16 magical APs and 16 points of Countermagic baby!), Befuddle backed with 15 MPs to blow through defences, attack Ghosts baked up with heavy Spirit Block to take down troublesome enemies. Yopu can kidn of do it, but the zap - pow of awesome magic and terrifying combat attacks followed by epic healing powers are going to be severely muted. The best magicians even possible under th system as I see it today get 1, maybe 2 half-decent spells off and then they're done for the day. Some of the magic augmenting enchantments help, but they're very generic and effect all spells and basicaly everyone will have them so they're not going to give much differentiation.

It looks like an ok system, and fun to play at started and intermediate levels. You could play this game for a good few adventures, even a short campaign and have a lot of fun, but eventualy you're going to hit some pretty hard limitations.

I believe it is the exact opposite, Simon!

First of all, the real limitation to stored MPs available is the GM, not the rules. Give each villain gang leader a Dead Crystal, and you'll have MP-rich PCs in a few sessions' time, even though they do not use Enchantment for MP matrices (not yet explained in the rules).

Second, the real problem with magic usage in MRQ is actually skill. A RQ3 magician at rune level that had just enchanted/DIed or acquired divine spells was weak in a contest of magic, because a 15-MP rookie was likely to resist his spells. Not to mention that a spirit magic user had his casting skill lowered by 6% each time he used up some POW. Sheesh!

This is the exact opposite in MRQ. With high skill, you can afford heavy overcharging (with a skill of, say, 60%, you have a 60% chance of simply wasting 5 MPs if you overcharge a Disruption by 4 points, so son't try it).

Now suppose your seasoned 16-POW magician is at 150% Runecasting skill with an attack rune (Disorder, Fire, whatever) and has a minimal Enchanting skill. He also as 20 stored MPs.

Ok, he now creates a Runestaff to focus his magic and puts 3pt Power Enhancer and 4pt Spell enhancer in it. Almost no risk of wasting POW with the new enchantment rules. He is now POW 9, but this only subtracts 7% from his Runecasting and Persistence skills, whereas a RQ3 Spirit Magician would have been -42% to casting and -35% to resist spells (not to mention attack with spells).

Ok, now he is 143% at Runecasting (can cast in armor) and his, say, Befuddle spell counts as a 9-pt spell for counterspelling it, with any foe resisting at -40% to Persistence. If he still wants to overcharge himself, he can use up to 9 MPs without going significantly under 100% casting skill, and for the expenditure of 11 MPs (remember that he does no take extra time to overcharge, as in RQ3, where boosting made you vulnerable) he gets a Befuddle that is 18-pt to counterspell (Shield 9 anyone?) and -130% to resist, barring criticals. Pity that it does not work on Wyrms, 'cause they only have 70% Persistence and not enough magic points to boost their Resist roll to more than 5%. And he has used up no more than 1/3 of his 29 MP magic reserve.

Do THIS with previous edition magicians. :twisted:

The usual result would have been "You failed the MP Resistance roll" after wasting five to seven MR to get the boosted spell going due to reduced casting %. And the cost would have been 18 MP, not 11.

And I do not think a guy with Runecasting 150%, one Enchantment and a couple of crystals should be considered an immensely powerful wizard.

 

[simonh]

And I do not think a guy with Runecasting 150%, one Enchantment and a couple of crystals should be considered an immensely powerful wizard.

Ok, but to get to 150% skill will take a huge ammount of time. In that time, an RQ3 magician would ahve accumulated dozens of POW worth of POW gains to expend on enchantments and/or Divine Magic. There's now way he'd still be suffering from the effects of, early in his career, spending a few POW on enchantments. So his POW is likely to be well up towards 21, with 18 or 19 being typical for a powerful magician, giving about a 70% chance of beating a POW 15 target. As a result of the massively increased POW gain rate in RQ3 he'll probably have more like 50 or more MPs of storage to blow on boosting spells.

However I see you're point. The availability of MP storage does change things, though in my experience crystals are generaly pretty rare. POW spirits and MP storage enchantments being mroe common in RQ3 simply because characetrs can create them, rather than relying on GM generosity.

If Divine Companions can carry Divine Magic, then the limitation there will be mainly eliminated so things are looking better, gradualy, piece by piece.

 

[RosenMcStern]

Ok, but to get to 150% skill will take a huge ammount of time.

..

As a result of the massively increased POW gain rate in RQ3 he'll probably have more like 50 or more MPs of storage to blow on boosting spells.

...

If Divine Companions can carry Divine Magic, then the limitation there will be mainly eliminated so things are looking better, gradualy, piece by piece.

You can start at rather high levels with Runecasting if you go all-out at character generation. I think some 60% without requiring a Seasoned level of experience. Going up to 100% is not that difficult, given that you get at least one roll per adventure, plus research (one roll per two weeks or so once you are very high level). The worst thing that can happen is that you go up 1% at a time, but that is better than not going up due to bad rolls as in RQ 3. Going from 100% to 150% takes 50 x 2,5 weeks, i.e 125 weeks, aka three Gloranthan years, not counting temple service. A RQ3 character was not so likely to go up faster.

50 MPs of storage yelds the same effects of 25 MPs in MRQ (remember that boosting in RQ2/3 did not guarantee you could overcome your target's MPs). In my example I assumed the sorcere had 20pt worth of crystals (2-3 crystals, which is fairly average for a PC after 3 game-time years). So it is roughly the same.

A sorcerer is at a disadvantage here because he has far more skills to learn, but the disadvantage is offset by the nasty 1-pt-per-manipulation rule. In the above example the rune magician can overcome one wyrm with ease, but a skill-level equivalent sorcerer could overcome a Wyrm nest from 1Km with Manipulation(Targets) and Manipulation(Range).:shock:

And I am with you in assuming that some ways to store more divine spells than your POW are required for priests/RLs. Let's wait and see the next Cult Books.