Sorcery spell Tap(Characteristic) from Companion

[Gnarsh]

Actually. Having given this some thought. I've got a couple ideas:

1) Create a table similar to the old RQ3 table. Different stats provide different quantities of mps to the caster. Make it so at a minimum the caster results in one mp more then it took to cast the spell.

The problem with this is that the power for increasing personal magic points just isn't there in MRQ. There's no resistance table. It's all skill based. So this would potentially allow the evil sorc to cast more spells, but that's about it. Maybe not the most useful thing...

Which brings me to a second idea:

2) Forget magic points. The MRQ equivalent to increasing personal magic points in RQ is increasing manipulation (or related) skills. So. Make it always tap one point of stat, and have it add 10% to any one manipulation skill the caster chooses. You might have to play around with the exact amount it increases, and whether or not it *also* gives back a magic point or two, but the point of the spell is returned to the idea of using it ritually to make the caster more powerful for a period of time after using the tap.

I'd have to play around with idea number 2, but I just had the idea 2 minutes ago... It looks like it would be a better replacement of the original in terms of the MRQ rules.

 

[weasel_fierce]

What was the loss in RQ3 anyways ? I seem to recall 1D6

 

[Gnarsh]

What was the loss in RQ3 anyways ? I seem to recall 1D6

Gah. I can't remember either. I *think* that you gained 1d6 magic points for every point of stat you tapped, but it cost different amounts of intensity to tap different stats. Tap power was the most efficient, requiring 1 intensity per point of power tapped (and thus each d6 of magic points gained). Tap intelligence was the least efficient, requiring 5 intensity per point of INT tapped (which meant you got less magic points out then you put in typically, although those could come from items and went into your personal points).

The basic idea was that it wasn't really about tapping the stat as an end goal, but gaining the personal magic points (or fatigue points). This then granted you extra magic points for purposes of overcomming people with spells. A potentially nasty combination for a sorc who knows a group of adventurers is coming for him. He'll tap a couple minions, and suddenly they're getting hit by spells from a guy with a power in the 30 range. Makes it a lot easier for him to take them out with stuff like palsy, stupify, venom (although that's a pretty inefficient spell itself), drain, etc.

The big thing was that the points when to personal magic points. Not the magic points themselves. Any wizard worth his salt likely had a boatload of bound pow spirits available to use to cast spells. That typically wasn't the problem in RQ3. Tap was all about giving a wizard with time to prepare some pretty nasty capabilities (sorcs in RQ3 were basically unbeatable if they were the ones taking you on instead of the other way around). Hence why I suggested the idea of having tap increase your manipulation skills in some way. That duplicates the ability for a sorc to improve his ability to affect folks with magic by using tap.

 

[GbajiTheDeceiver]

I remember similar to Gnarsh. There was a writeup of all the various schools indicating which were allowed to Tap, and who they could and couldn't Tap. Obviously, a Malkioni who broke those rules would be outcast from his school pretty quick, which would not be a good thing.

I always imagined some of the nastier types living in the centers of run-down villages populated by dull-eyed and dull-witted folks, just treating them as natural resources to be exploited. Sinister stuff.

 

[ninthcouncil]

I always imagined some of the nastier types living in the centers of run-down villages populated by dull-eyed and dull-witted folks, just treating them as natural resources to be exploited. Sinister stuff.

I seem to remember something in the RQ3 Glorantha box set about areas in the Third Age where habitual tapping had not only reduced the peasants to shuffling quasi-zombies, but even, to outsiders, made the very landscape look washed out, grey and lifeless. It's nasty stuff, and even more so in the Second Age, where the religious injunctions against its use appear to be much less severe.

Damn, I must get my RQ2/3 stuff out of storage. It's been such a long time!

 

[JohnLokiBeard]

As Magnitude covers who can be drained, how about making it 1 point per round [or per action or per minute, depending how fast you want the sucking to be] and then to drain more than 1 point you have to Manipulate Duration?
Maybe the RQ version of Blofeld isn't just stroking a cat, he's Tapping it.

 

[simonh]

I remember similar to Gnarsh. There was a writeup of all the various schools indicating which were allowed to Tap, and who they could and couldn't Tap. Obviously, a Malkioni who broke those rules would be outcast from his school pretty quick, which would not be a good thing.

Except they're not schools, they're rival sects of the Malkioni religion. In the 3rd age most Malkioni believe that all tapping is heretical and an offence against God. Certain sects came up with tortuous theological justifications for it being ok to tap evil beings because they are enemies of god, but disagreed about how evil the enemy had to be, and what counted. Some believed only Chaotic beings should be tapped, others believe it is ok to tap pagans, but that's pretty extreme.

I'm not sure what the 3rd age attitude is, but I'd guess it's similar since the 3rd age Malkioni religion is based on the Abiding Book of the God Learners and their theology is still based to a large extent on GL beliefs. Most westerners will probably believe it's wrong to tap at all but some extremists and heretics will dabble with it.

Tap is based on the principle that the created world is 'made of' magic - i.e. it is a magical creation by god. It's a spell. Therefore you can draw off some of the magical energy from reality for you're own purposes. This is considered blasphemy because you're weakening the spell cast by god for you're own ends - which is extreme hubris. The Brithini tap willy nilly because they're true atheists and so don't see any moral implications for doing so.

 

[Voriof]

Fast and dirty:

If you're part of the Malkioni True Church, you don't tap. If you're from a God Learner influenced sect, you might tap. If you're a God Leaner, you tap six things before breakfast. Afterall, you're turning bad non-sorcery magic into sorcery magic and that's a GOOD thing.



On the whole, its considered bad and bad form to tap.

Jeff

P.S. One might consider the primary intent of the Machine City as an attempt to tap the Divine Plane and turn it all into sorcery.

 

[weasel_fierce]

allright, pulled out my avalon hill box, and tapping is indeed 1D6 points, converted into same number of magic points or fatigue points.

Intensity required depends on the stat in question.

 

[soltakss]

Just a thing.. you cant combine a spell with itself, so no tapping multiple targets.

Since the loss is permanent, Im highly tempted to make it just a single point, 2 on a critical. The MP recovery just makes it "free" essentially.

You just use the Manipulation (Targets) for multiple targets. You could Combine Tap (STR) and Tap (CON) to tap both charcteristics, then use Manipulation (Targets) to smash more than one pesky opponent.

 

[CharlieMonster]

The way I interpret the spell is that for every point of Magnitude over and above that required to overcome the tapped characteristic, the target loses a point. So if you are tapping someone with Dex 12, and use a Mag 15 spell they lose 3 pts of Dex. Of course next time you only need a 9pt spell, etc...

There are two obvious factors which relate to this spell which I think do a pretty good job of limiting it without making it a complete lemon. (But only if my interpretation is right)

1. This spell is pretty much useless unless you manipulation skill is in 90% level (minimum) unless you intend to go around STR & SIZ tapping ducks (a worthy pastime in and of itself) which means only the heavy hitters are going to use it.

2. This is a touch spell with a casting time of 3, giving a potential victim 2 combat actions to attempt to break the Sorceror's hold / concentration / filthy-rotten-scrawny-meldek neck!

In all probability it is not primarily a combat spell, but more a torture spell which the Sorceror can use to power up his MP storage device using chained victims on his weekend off. Also quite a nifty GM device: Can you rescue the damsel in distress before she is tapped into a passable likeness of "Morph"?! :twisted:

 

[Voriof]

In all probability it is not primarily a combat spell, but more a torture spell which the Sorceror can use to power up his MP storage device using chained victims on his weekend off. Also quite a nifty GM device: Can you rescue the damsel in distress before she is tapped into a passable likeness of "Morph"?! :twisted:

Hey, that reminds me. My God Learner sorcerer is going to start turning out a line of "Pocket Princesses" for sale to the noble knight-adventurer on the go.

Jeff

P.S. Tapping has always been a weapon of terror. At least as far as I've ever seen the game run. Just think of the Princess Bride.

 

[barasawa]

I've been thinking about this for a while, and went back and looked at it again. I found the stuff I think we were all missing. Tap spells have a duration of concentration. That's the solution.

Ok, first it has a range of touch. The target has to be touched for the entire duration. Well, that easily limits it to willing or unresisting victims. So it's not a combat spell. (At least not under normal combat conditions.)

Second, it's duration of concentration means you have to concentrate from round to round to maintain it. Well, if it just sucked off all your points in one blast, there's no reason to do that. And if it only drains 1 point period, why bother with a duration... It finally struck me (duh!) it drains one point from the affected characteristic per round as long as concentration is maintained. (Assuming of course it's magnitude is high enough.) So to fully drain someone, it's going to take a while. Again, not a combat spell.

Third, it can be multispelled! I know you can't multispell the same spell, but Tap is actually seven different spells! That's one for each characteristic. So even though you can't do a Tap(pow) + Tap(pow) you CAN do a Tap(pow) + Tap(str). Though it's probably a better idea to do them one at a time to get the best maximize you can.

Probably a lot of people would consider the use of Tap spells as an evil act, but then again, they might be part of a culture that cuts off body parts of criminals and other vicious things. So they might find Tap spells a more 'humane' punishment for crimes and other things.

Some possible examples:
A beast trainer/rancher using Tap(pow) to make some obstinant willful critter a bit more tractable.
A military officer punished for not following orders during a battle by having his commission revoded and partial Tap(cha) done to him.
An example is made of a criminal or heretic by using a Tap(cha) to drain him to 1 so that he will be shunned by society. (He's ugly, and his leadership ability is damaged, especially if they also Tap(pow) on him.)
Tap everything to really low levels to punish someone without making them a martyr. After all, it's kinda hard to punish a dead guy.

Oh yes, don't forget that Tap(siz) doesn't necessarily make them smaller, it can just make them less substantial, after all it is Fantasy and Magic.

You can use your imagination with the uses, those were just a few of the ones that popped up in a couple minutes after I realized how the tap mechanics were supposed to work. Even though it's probably intended game purpose was to give bad guys a way to buff up when the PCs come after them.

Now I think I can make this sucker available for PCs. And if they want to drain livestock and such, go for it. Just be careful or you'll get the nickname of goatsucker...

 

[Gnarsh]

I've been thinking about this for a while, and went back and looked at it again. I found the stuff I think we were all missing. Tap spells have a duration of concentration. That's the solution.

A duration of "concentration" means that the spell requires concentration for its full duration and can be interrupted at any time, not just when being cast. It does not imply any sort of growing or increasing effect over time.

In the case of tap, it's presumably related to the benefit the caster gains, not the effect on the target. Unfortunately, I have a feeling this was yet another of those spells that just wasn't translated from RQ3 to MRQ very well. In RQ3, the "active" status of tap was very very logical. The magic points gained went to personal magic points, and could exceed the caster's maximum, effectively allowing him to cast spells with a greater chance of overcoming any target (for most spells anyway). Requiring him to have to maintain concentration for the duration of this effect prevented sorcerors from running around with 30+ magic points all the time. You used it only when you knew you'd need it.

MRQ does not have a resistance table, so this aspect of tap has disappeared. This is why I recommended that the effect of tap should be to increase the effective manipulation skill(s) of the caster while concentration is maintained. Otherwise, it simply makes no sense at all. Why need to concentrate on the spell after casting? Magic points simply don't have the value they did in RQ3 in this case, and as several people have pointed out, the gains aren't well defined anyway.

While the concentration over time for more gain idea has some merit, I don't think that was the intent of the spell. Again. I *really* don't think the primary purpose of tap should be to blow stats off someone. There's a number of reasons why this is a bad justification for a spell in a RPG (imbalance of effect on PCs versus NPCs for one and potential for silly abuse for another). It's fixing the wrong problem with the spell IMO. I don't think we need to "fix" the method for destroying more stat points. We need to fix the gain that the spell generates. Because that's the side of the equation that's going to determine when and why the spell will be used in your game. It's important, given the potential for annoyance a spell like Tap has, to make sure this component is self limiting like it was in RQ3.

 

[simonh]

...Requiring him to have to maintain concentration for the duration of this effect prevented sorcerors from running around with 30+ magic points all the time. You used it only when you knew you'd need it.

MRQ does not have a resistance table, so this aspect of tap has disappeared. This is why I recommended that the effect of tap should be to increase the effective manipulation skill(s) of the caster while concentration is maintained. ...

Having extra MPs in MRQ is still very valuable though, because while merely having more MPs doesn't improve your chance of overcoming a target's resistance, expending them to boost the spell does.

Still, as with many spells in MRQ it's a bit of a mess of a spell description. It reminds me of the Multispell description cockup in RQ3. The sooner we get well considered revisions of some of these points the better.

 

[Gnarsh]

Still, as with many spells in MRQ it's a bit of a mess of a spell description. It reminds me of the Multispell description cockup in RQ3. The sooner we get well considered revisions of some of these points the better.

Hah! Yeah. That was the one atrocious bit in that ruleset. Not even sure what they were thinking when they wrote that...

 

[simonh]

Still, as with many spells in MRQ it's a bit of a mess of a spell description. It reminds me of the Multispell description cockup in RQ3. The sooner we get well considered revisions of some of these points the better.

Hah! Yeah. That was the one atrocious bit in that ruleset. Not even sure what they were thinking when they wrote that...

Most likely it was a cockup in editing, or an old draft being printed instead of the latest version. The corrected version was made available pretty quickly though (quickly for the pre-internet era, anyway).

 

[Gnarsh]

Hah! Yeah. That was the one atrocious bit in that ruleset. Not even sure what they were thinking when they wrote that...

Most likely it was a cockup in editing, or an old draft being printed instead of the latest version. The corrected version was made available pretty quickly though (quickly for the pre-internet era, anyway).

Eh... The corrected version was just about as bad as the original though (assuming it's the same as the one that eventually appeared in Strangers in Prax). The original was just useless. The corrected one wasn't a "multispell" at all (implying the ability to cast multiple spells at the same time).

I believed at the time and still believe that the state of the sorcery rules in RQ3 had a lot to do with conflicts among the principles involved in writing the rules. AH wanted sorcery rules. The Chaosium folks didn't see it fitting into Glorantha and so didn't really care for them. The result was a somewhat deliberately "broken" set of rules. Kinda like why Mostal has always been a screwed up "cult" in RQ. Certain individuals who shall remain unamed hate dwarves and never wanted them in Glorantha to begin with so they got "the treatment". Sometimes it really is that simple...

 

[simonh]

I believed at the time and still believe that the state of the sorcery rules in RQ3 had a lot to do with conflicts among the principles involved in writing the rules. ... Certain individuals who shall remain unamed hate dwarves and never wanted them in Glorantha to begin with so they got "the treatment". Sometimes it really is that simple...

I have personally heard Greg and Sandy, several times, state that AH had no say or influence in the contents of RuneQuest 3. AH didn't even ask them to make it a generic system, with Glorantha as an add-on. That was a Chaosium decision as they'd already decided to work on some historical sourcebooks which became Land of Ninja and Vikings. There's no way the Chaosium authors would have worked on those projects just because AH wanted them to, they had a genuine interest in the material.

Sorry, nice theory but the evidence is against it. As for Mostali - you really think that the people hostile to them were taking time away from projects they actually liked and deliberately screwed it up (what's wrong with it anyway?). What were the 'pro' Mostal people doing all this time? Presumably working on the projects the anti-Mostali people liked and deliberately screwing those up instead because you know, everybody much prefers working on projects they hate and screwing them up instead of actually, you know, working on the things they like. What a bizzare world view you've got there.

 

[Exubae]

Haven't looked at Chaosiums WOW for years but wasn't RQ3 sorcery just Worlds of Wonder magic system polished up for Glorantha.

Sandy perterson did some rather cool addtions to the sorcery rules for the various orders of the west which seemed to fix a lot of the bugettes in the old sorcery, well worth a look if you can find them.

Land of Ninja was a quality product, hopefully when mongoose do their tweaking on the lands of Rising Sun they'll keep some of the original flavour...

Kind of feel sorry for the dudes at Chaosium they always seem to mess up on the timing... launching a quality card game just as card games when there popularity was dropping (couldn't have picked a worse time to launch a card game)