Price of runes

[Great Cthulhu]

There seems to be no mention in the core rules, companion, or armor & equipment volumes of the price one could expect to pay for magical runes. Players who start with more experienced characters (RQ p103-104) may have one or more runes which they have not integrated but there is no indication of their value if they decide to sell them. Any suggestions?

 

[frogspawner]

It' a campaign decision as to how rare Runes should be (and hence how valuable). I would say that, in a campaign trying to be compatible with Glorantha as previously known, they should be incredibly rare.

In that context, if someone said they had a Rune for sale they'd either be laughed at as a charlatan or pursued by multiple groups of Rune-levellers trying to take it from them (or both)...

 

[ninthcouncil]

It' a campaign decision as to how rare Runes should be (and hence how valuable). I would say that, in a campaign trying to be compatible with Glorantha as previously known, they should be incredibly rare.

The problem with that is that it makes Rune Magic use rare and difficult, which also conflicts with Glorantha as previously known. It also creates a logical problem since, if Runes are very rare, people who can teach Rune magic should be too; the whole practice risks becoming unsustainable.

If the rules as written are to be used, I'd say that having Runes as very common at this time is more desirable, since to a certain extent it allows the problem to be ignored. Personally, though, I won't be using the rules as written.

 

[Rurik]

It' a campaign decision as to how rare Runes should be (and hence how valuable). I would say that, in a campaign trying to be compatible with Glorantha as previously known, they should be incredibly rare.

In that context, if someone said they had a Rune for sale they'd either be laughed at as a charlatan or pursued by multiple groups of Rune-levellers trying to take it from them (or both)...

As a counterpoint, I take the opposite stance on Runes in Glorantha. Since Battle/Spirit magic used to be commonplace, my take is that Runes should be fairly common. If not then runemagic will not be common.

Real point being Runes in Frogspawners world are going to be much more expensive than mine.

 

[frogspawner]

If you prefer Runes to be rare, you can interpret that membership of a cult is enough to allow 'Rune Magic' spells to be learned (i.e. the listed cult spells or perhaps any spells tied to the cult runes). And obviously cult membership is common enough for spells to be as commonplace as you like.

This has been said elsewhere, in other threads and by other people, and this interpretation avoids various problems that can arise if Runes are common.

And if the rules do say that only the more experienced characters are likely to have a spare rune or two (remembering the chance of integrating any given rune is relatively low), then that is perhaps an indication they should hardly ever be found. But I say this is only necessary for Glorantha-style campaigns. Yours could be quite different.

 

[Utgardloki]

Glorantha: I'd say runes cost 100 gp apiece. Runes are common enough that finding a rune is no problem, but finding the exact one you want may be difficult. Perhaps it's like finding a card for Magic - The Gathering. If you want a specific one and it is rare, you may be paying more. Spare runes of "the commons" would be quite common.

Runequest Modern: For this setting, it must be possible for PCs to make their own runes. The hard part is finding out how to do it, and a rune must be made with at least 1/4 ounce of gold for each magnitude of spell that the rune is designed to handle. This puts an effective price on a rune, especially a good one, but finding one is going to be pretty much next to impossible.

Iron Kingdoms: For this setting, I've decided that runes are essentially free. If you lose yours, you can make a new one with a difficult Runecasting check, but you can try once a day. The trick is finding someone to teach you the Runecasting skill for the rune that you want. I think this restriction should also be applied to the other settings (although runecasters in Runequest Modern should have some way to be self-taught).

To avoid too much mischief from extra runes floating around, perhaps Gloranthan characters should have to find a teacher to teach them how to integrate a rune they haven't integrated before.

As an aside, I don't like the way the rules use money as a balancing factor for magic. In many cases, I've found this does not make sense (e.g. for divine magic, did Jesus Christ say "If you have 5,000 gold pieces and the faith of a mustard seed then you can move a mountain"?) or is not balanced because either the PCs have too much money, and can buy any spell they darn well please, or don't have enough money, so that wizards and other spellcasters can not afford to do their work.

One option is to use hero points. If it costs, say, five hero points to integrate a rune, that will limit how many runes a PC can integrate, although there is still the matter of learning the spells. I'd use Intelligence to limit how many spells a character could know, and perhaps hero points to learn a spell.

 

[telsor]

If you want to limit the level of spells, make them a penalty on the skill roll, say -5% per magnitude over 1.


As for the price. The non-spell benefits of them are worth quite a lot in some cases, and prices in our game run from ~300-2000gold.

What price would you put on +1 to INT,DEX&CHA?, or +20% resilience ( ~16 skill checks worth for a high level character ) .

That said, the game seems to be quite money-rich game compared to RQ3.

 

[TRose]

How common runes are I think depend on your cult,the area you where in and the rune itelf. finding an earth rune would be fairly easy as the Earth is all over and same with Earth cults. A heat Rune would be more dificult but they would be common near Volcanos. But finding a water rune if you live in the desert would take some effort.
Also look at how hard Charms and fetishes are to get for spirit users. Make runes too difficult and everyones going to become a spirit user

 

[Licheking]

In my campaign i charge 1000sp per rune if they come up for sale. I have rune magic as common but getting hold of runes is hard work since the Godlearners buy them all up. There is a thriving black market in runes within Ralios where the campaign is set but occassionally a rune will come up in a cult available for sale.

As to how common runes can be, a starting Wizard can potentially start with 3 runes integrated, one for each of his Runecasting skills, admittedly they are limited in choice but 3 to start with!

And as to integrating runes being hard, why? Take 10 times as long and earn the +60% bonus, i have allowed this and my group dosn't appear to be unbalanced within the Gloranthan setting, in fact they are just getting into the Seasoned category of experience and they match up with the proposed runes given there.