Background (skip this rabbling paragraph if you don't care where I am coming from):
I have recently picked up MRQ2 and mostly like what I see. I don't know how soon I can get one of my groups to try it out, but I am chomping at the bit. I ran RQ for about 20 years (RQ2 from Chaosium and RQ3 from Avalon Hill), a couple of Glorantha games and a couple of home-brewed worlds with lots borrowed from Glorantha. More recently I was running a PenDragon Pass game using David Dunham's Pendragon + RQ rules. It takes place early in the 3rd Age during the resettling of Dragon Pass (think King of Dragon Pass computer game). That game has been on hiatus for a about 18 months as I alternate GMing with a friend who is running a d20 game (After Ragnarok). I am thinking of converting their characters to MRQ2 and see if I can get them fired up about it again. (This will be the second conversion as I created a d20 Glorantha game to replace Pendragon because we were all playing d20 games and had a lot of trouble switching back to the Pendragon rules when we only played once every 4-6 weeks.)
Real start of thread:
I have some serious concerns with the spirit combat rules, particularly as they work with the Divine Magic Practitioners (DMP). It just FEELS wrong to me. A Rune Lord or Rune Priest with most of their POW dedicated to their god would be extremely vulnerable to spirit attacks, unless they go around with Extended Spirit Block on them all the time. Their strong relationship with their god should give them some advantage or help against attacks by spirits. They take a double whammy from probably having a low number of MPs and from only getting to fight in spirit combat with half their Persistence skill value.
I have been tinkering with some ideas to get back the feel that I want. Two ways to handle this have occurrd to me so far. In both cases, the defending DMP adds the number of dedicated POW to her current MPs as temporary MPs or phantom MPs or whatever we want to call them. These temporary MPs are lost before any of her real or personal MPs are lost.
The first and simplest way to represent the spirit combat strength of a DMP is to use the greater of his Pact(diety) skill or half his persistence skill. Pact(diety) represents the strength of his connection with his diety, so this works to give the feel of the diety's aiding the worshipper to fend off the hostile spirit.
Or instead of using Pact(Diety), the second option I am considering is adding "Dedicated POW times 5" to half her persistence skill for spirit combat. Her Dedicated POW is essentially her god's POW, so this too gives the feel of her god aiding her to fend off the hostile spirit.
Another "feels wrong thing" is being yanked out of your body to the spirit world to fight the spirit combat. This would be a *serious change* to the way the world works for my players. I will likely stick with the current system which has the embodied soul attacked by the spirit in the material world. The embodied soul has the option to fight back against the spirit or not. If they don't fight back, the spirit gets to make an unopposed attack roll. If they fight back it will cost a CA. If they ignore the spirit, they can do physical actions in the natural world like attack and parry. I would still require the spirit to have the discorporate skill to launch an attack, but I am not sure if I would require it to have to do an opposed check against persistance. The spirit is already at a disadvantage being in the material world instead of the spirit world. I will probably just use the discorporate skill to identify those spirits capable of initiating spirit combat in the material world.
If I actually start an MRQ2 game from scratch, I will leave the discorporate and fight in the spirit world rule as is to see how it actually plays.
Anyone see any serious problems with these options? (Other than breaking the "if you ain't tried it, don't knock it" rule. :wink: )
Any other rule conflicts I might encounter using these options?
Has anyone else come up with house rules they are willing to share in regards to Divine Magic Practitioners and spirit combat?
I am interested to see what others have come up with. There might be a third or fourth or fifth option out there I like better. Judging from some of the posts in other threads there seems to be a fair amount of discomfort with spirit combat as it exists in MRQ2.
I have recently picked up MRQ2 and mostly like what I see. I don't know how soon I can get one of my groups to try it out, but I am chomping at the bit. I ran RQ for about 20 years (RQ2 from Chaosium and RQ3 from Avalon Hill), a couple of Glorantha games and a couple of home-brewed worlds with lots borrowed from Glorantha. More recently I was running a PenDragon Pass game using David Dunham's Pendragon + RQ rules. It takes place early in the 3rd Age during the resettling of Dragon Pass (think King of Dragon Pass computer game). That game has been on hiatus for a about 18 months as I alternate GMing with a friend who is running a d20 game (After Ragnarok). I am thinking of converting their characters to MRQ2 and see if I can get them fired up about it again. (This will be the second conversion as I created a d20 Glorantha game to replace Pendragon because we were all playing d20 games and had a lot of trouble switching back to the Pendragon rules when we only played once every 4-6 weeks.)
Real start of thread:
I have some serious concerns with the spirit combat rules, particularly as they work with the Divine Magic Practitioners (DMP). It just FEELS wrong to me. A Rune Lord or Rune Priest with most of their POW dedicated to their god would be extremely vulnerable to spirit attacks, unless they go around with Extended Spirit Block on them all the time. Their strong relationship with their god should give them some advantage or help against attacks by spirits. They take a double whammy from probably having a low number of MPs and from only getting to fight in spirit combat with half their Persistence skill value.
I have been tinkering with some ideas to get back the feel that I want. Two ways to handle this have occurrd to me so far. In both cases, the defending DMP adds the number of dedicated POW to her current MPs as temporary MPs or phantom MPs or whatever we want to call them. These temporary MPs are lost before any of her real or personal MPs are lost.
The first and simplest way to represent the spirit combat strength of a DMP is to use the greater of his Pact(diety) skill or half his persistence skill. Pact(diety) represents the strength of his connection with his diety, so this works to give the feel of the diety's aiding the worshipper to fend off the hostile spirit.
Or instead of using Pact(Diety), the second option I am considering is adding "Dedicated POW times 5" to half her persistence skill for spirit combat. Her Dedicated POW is essentially her god's POW, so this too gives the feel of her god aiding her to fend off the hostile spirit.
Another "feels wrong thing" is being yanked out of your body to the spirit world to fight the spirit combat. This would be a *serious change* to the way the world works for my players. I will likely stick with the current system which has the embodied soul attacked by the spirit in the material world. The embodied soul has the option to fight back against the spirit or not. If they don't fight back, the spirit gets to make an unopposed attack roll. If they fight back it will cost a CA. If they ignore the spirit, they can do physical actions in the natural world like attack and parry. I would still require the spirit to have the discorporate skill to launch an attack, but I am not sure if I would require it to have to do an opposed check against persistance. The spirit is already at a disadvantage being in the material world instead of the spirit world. I will probably just use the discorporate skill to identify those spirits capable of initiating spirit combat in the material world.
If I actually start an MRQ2 game from scratch, I will leave the discorporate and fight in the spirit world rule as is to see how it actually plays.
Anyone see any serious problems with these options? (Other than breaking the "if you ain't tried it, don't knock it" rule. :wink: )
Any other rule conflicts I might encounter using these options?
Has anyone else come up with house rules they are willing to share in regards to Divine Magic Practitioners and spirit combat?
I am interested to see what others have come up with. There might be a third or fourth or fifth option out there I like better. Judging from some of the posts in other threads there seems to be a fair amount of discomfort with spirit combat as it exists in MRQ2.