Spirit Combat

Lord Twig

Mongoose
I have been holding off on this for a while, but I really wanted to hear what people thought.

First, the system looks fairly solid. That is to say, it works. The only sticking point is possession, and even that works if you don't mind characters being taken over with relative ease.

That said, I really don't like the fact that spirits now do real damage and can be attacked (and parried!) with "magic weapons". This is so D&D that it makes me cringe.

Mongoose put in perfectly good rules for figuring out a "Spirit damage bonus" why not use it for characters as well? Remove magic weapons from damaging spirits altogether and make it a battle of wills again. Damage can be done to MP instead of HPs and if you lose you are unconscious and can be possessed. This seems to be tons simpler to me and would have the RQ feel.

Thoughts?
 
I don't out and out hate D&D, nor am I a one-true-wayist about older versions of RQ, so it doesn't bother me at all. Truth be told, I can't see a little D&D in my RQ as a bad thing -- it is the most popular fantasy RPG *ever*.

That said, RuneQuest is an open system -- the Companion SRD should be coming out soon based on what msprange told me. If you prefer spirit combat as a battle of wills, why not just make it one?
 
Yes I can house rule and I will, but this is just one more thing.

Actually I like D&D3.x quite a bit. I have a regular game every 1st and 3rd Sunday of the month. But if I wanted to play D&D, I would. If I want to play RuneQuest, I would like it to be RuneQuest.

Please note that I never said the rules don't work in this case. I just asked what people thought of them. I personally don't like the direction they went in. Now what about everyone else?
 
Lord Twig said:
Please note that I never said the rules don't work in this case.

Never said you did.

I just asked what people thought of them.

And I gave you my opinion.

I don't know why the defensive sounding response, though. I certainly wouldn't mind seeing a set of will-based spirit combat rules.

*shrug*
 
iamtim said:
I don't out and out hate D&D, nor am I a one-true-wayist about older versions of RQ, so it doesn't bother me at all. Truth be told, I can't see a little D&D in my RQ as a bad thing -- it is the most popular fantasy RPG *ever*.

Even if you only think profit, RQ can not compete with AD&D on their terms. What for a time made RQ the second most popular fantasy RPG "ever", was the different and more realistic feel RQ had, while still having magic and spirits in the system.

SGL.
 
Mongoose put in perfectly good rules for figuring out a "Spirit damage bonus" why not use it for characters as well? Remove magic weapons from damaging spirits altogether and make it a battle of wills again. Damage can be done to MP instead of HPs and if you lose you are unconscious and can be possessed. This seems to be tons simpler to me and would have the RQ feel.

I was thinking along similar line, but the restrictions the new Divine magic imposes and other unseen rules that may surface later may make its application (ie MP damage) difficult.

The internal workings that underpin the new rules are such that if you try tweaking, you end up breaking something - This isn't a flaw it just shows that they seemed to have taken the system as a whole when redesigning it.

Its a shame the concept of POW+CHA for MP damage was implemented in RQ3.

In general the MP damage of the old system lent to an otherworld feel to ghosts and spirits, rather than another group of stats to bash over the head with your +1 lead Maul.

Paul
 
Sorry, POW + APP (or POW x2 or INT+POW) for MP damage in RQ3 rather than the fixed roll.

Would have make going for that Bladesharp 10 more interesting :)

Erm... Spirits wth APP, doesnt sound right... INT is Probably a better trait to use.
 
Exubae said:
Sorry, POW + APP (or POW x2 or INT+POW) for MP damage in RQ3 rather than the fixed roll.

Would have make going for that Bladesharp 10 more interesting :)

Erm... Spirits wth APP, doesnt sound right... INT is Probably a better trait to use.

I'm still not sure I follow you. I've always played spirit combat with according to the rules from RuneQuest Delixe Edition. Are you saying the RQ3 changed those rules from MP loss being 1D3 to POW+APP?

SGL.
 
What I was trying say (poorly- apologies) it would have been cool to apply the idea to RQ3. Using thedamage bonus instead of just a d3.
 
Ah well, Internet Explorer crashed after I sent the last reply, so let's try again.

I agree that it is a shame that spirit combat has been downgraded.

You can attack spirits with magical weapons and spells, an idea that first appeared in Wyrms Footnotes longer ago than I care to remember, we didn't like it then and I don't like it now.

RQ2/3 Spirit Combat was weak because it didn't favour powerful spirits enough. I'd have liked to have seen a powerful version of spirit combat in RQM. Instead, we have rules where spirits can be ripped apart with Bladesharp, no rules for shamans, Spirit Block seems to block spirits out with ease, but not with the simplicity of RQ3 Spirit Block.

Spirits seem to be very powerful when trying to possess people, with an opposed roll, but again this doesn't take into account their POW, u8nless they try to overpower the roll, in which case a high POW (i.e. lots of Magic Points) is useful.

I'd have liked to see some rules that were well thought out and consistent, with rules for shamans, better spirit combat and spirit contact tables. Perhaps they'll appear later on, but it would have been nice to see a set of rules in one volume rather than splitn across multiple volumes.

I know the Companion is only a guideline and we can all use whatever rules we want, but the point is we shouldn't have to. We should be able to take the rules from the Companion and use them.

Still, there are apparently more spirits in RQ Monsters and they might have other rules.

For someone who likes Spirits and Shamans, the rules in ther Companion were disappointing.
 
Exubae said:
What I was trying say (poorly- apologies) it would have been cool to apply the idea to RQ3. Using thedamage bonus instead of just a d3.

Yes, I like the idea of more powerful spirits doing more damage. At the moment, my current RQ campaign has spirits doing 1D3 + Might daamge, where you have 1 Might per 10 POW or part thereof, so POW 1-10 = 1 Might, POW 11-20 = 2 Might, POW 21-30 = 3 Might and so on. Shamans include their fetch's POW, of course.
 
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