Undocumented techniques

PhilHibbs

Mongoose
There's plenty of stuff in Glorantha, that is described in the Mongoose books, that simply can't be done with the rules as written. I'm interested in closing that gap. Of course, a lot of stuff could be waved away as "It happened because of a HeroQuest", especially if the God Learners were involved. So, Tanien's Victory could be just God Learners calling in their HeroQuest rewards.

The main example that I can think of is a ship that is boosted by Sylphs or Undines. How are they controlled? None of the Grimoires detailed so far have Dominate Sylph. Even if they did, there would have to be a sorceror there re-casting the Dominate spell every couple of hours, and as soon as he gets a good night's sleep, the sylphs are gone. Maybe the mast has a binding enchantment, which in A&E rules could be an Enchanting Ritual (Dominate (Sylph)) spell, but even that requires re-casting every 1D4 hours. A ship would need many such enchantments to get enough sylphs to make a difference, and would need a 24 hour rota constantly re-Dominating the sylphs. Binding Enchantment would be of little use as it only gives one hour's control over the bound creature once it is released and commanded to do something useful, after which it is free.

Here's a first-draft off-the-cuff technique that might help cross this last gap.

Synchronisation
Two or more sorcerors, up to 1 per 10% of the lowest Grimoire skill of the participants, must cast this spell together, using Combine with any additional spells. Other spells may be Combined into the cast, as long as they are compatible with the spells that the other Synchronised sorcerors are casting. The manipulations of all the sorcerors in the group are added together, and the spells cast have the sum of the Range, Duration, Targets, and Magnitude that the sorcerors individually added.

For example, one might cast Enhance STR, Enhance CON and Enhance Dex with 1 point of Range and 3 points of Duration. The second might cast Enhance INT and Enhance POW with 2 points of Duration and 3 points of Targets. A third might cast just the Synchronisation, but put in 4 points of Duration and 4 points of Targets. The final spell affects 8 targets, enhances all the characteristics by the amount based on the Grimoire skills of the first two sorcerors, and a Duration of 10 times the average POW of the sorcerors.

Second example, first sorceror casts Dominate Sylph, with 2 points of Range and 4 points of Duration. Second adds in 7 Targets, third adds in 7 points of Duration, and the final spell is cast into an Enchanting Ritual (Dominate Sylph) on the mast of a ship. This gives the power to control 8 sylphs for a Duration of on average nearly an hour and a half based on the POW of the person activating the matrix. A fourth sorceror could bump this up to three hours, a fifth would make it four and a half hours, etc. The cost of the enchantment in MPs as normal plus one per additional sorceror involved in the casting, and is paid by the enchanter who must be one of the casters. Realistically, this would take 6 or more sorcerors to make a useful enchantment on a ship that only needs to be re-cast three or four times a day.


Even with this last example, some of the sylphs are going to make their Persistence roll and escape every now and then, so the caster needs to find replacements somehow.
 
Maybe the cost should be higher. Maybe each sorceror should have to contribute a portion of the enchantment that covers their entire contribution, so the three sorcerors in the second example each invest 3, 2, and 2 MPs each (Combine+Range+Duration, Combine+Targets, Combine+Duration). Also it could be toned down by requiring a point of Combine manipulation per sorceror in the pool, so there comes a point where adding more sorcerors just makes it harder for everyone. That would rather cripple it though.

Oh, and another thing I have found that is not possible, I've seen at least one published NPC with a Magic Point matrix. No rules for them. Damn thing even had a condition on it so the PCs couldn't even use it. This kind of thing just makes players thing that they are being treated unfairly, the NPCs always get to do all the fun stuff.
 
I think you may find that the scenario in question has a few rules errors in it. The MP matrix looks like a hold-over. That said, with the new spirit magic system being the primary (almost exclusive) means of controlling and binding spirits and the confusion over whether the enchantment rules in A&E II are meant to be used in Glorantha there is some uncertainty around.

Naturally our Gloranthas may vary so I realise that I can do whatever's most fun and makes sense for me, but in a world where magic is available to everyone I don't like seeing NPCs routinely having plot device magic with no obvious grounding in the rules.
 
PhilHibbs said:
For example, one might cast Enhance STR, Enhance CON and Enhance Dex with 1 point of Range and 3 points of Duration. The second might cast Enhance INT and Enhance POW with 2 points of Duration and 3 points of Targets. A third might cast just the Synchronisation, but put in 4 points of Duration and 4 points of Targets. The final spell affects 8 targets, enhances all the characteristics by the amount based on the Grimoire skills of the first two sorcerors, and a Duration of 10 times the average POW of the sorcerors.


I don't like this example - it seems overly powerful to allow a group of magicians to each cast different spells and then apply all the modifications to all of them...

Maybe a "Combine" for each manipulation, which can only be used if all the other elements are the same (so if two sorcerors cast "Enhance Str" and want to combine the Durations, they must both provide the same amount of targets & range)
 
PhilHibbs said:
Also it could be toned down by requiring a point of Combine manipulation per sorceror in the pool, so there comes a point where adding more sorcerors just makes it harder for everyone. That would rather cripple it though.

There is already a limit of 1 sorceror per 10% of the lowest Grimoire skill (according to your original post), so yes, this would seem to be an unnessecarily harsh restriction, unless you have sorcerors who regularly have Grimoire skills in the hundreds...

You could increase the cost of combining more than x sorcerors if it is too easily abused (eg +1mp for every 4 sorcerors combining in this manner)

The trick is in striking the balance between the magic lasting long enough to be useful, without it becoming a case of the Church Wizards congregating at Sacred Time and casting all their spells on the whole kingdom for a year...
 
duncan_disorderly said:
The trick is in striking the balance between the magic lasting long enough to be useful, without it becoming a case of the Church Wizards congregating at Sacred Time and casting all their spells on the whole kingdom for a year...
That's never on the cards, a year would take 200 sorcerors all with 2000% in Grimoire and Manipulation. Well, an Earth year would, a Gloranthan year would only need 180 sorcerors with 1800% skills.
 
I agree that maybe it is too powerful allowing sorcerors to add in ad hoc combinations of spells, maybe each one should have to cast all the spells. So three Bardan's Book sorcerors with 61-70% skill and POW 15 might all cast Enhance STR, Enhance INT, and Enhance DEX, one adding 4 points of Targets, and the other two adding in 4 points of Duration each giving 45 mintues duration on 5 people. Or, they could team up with up to 7 sorcerors with three adding 6 Targets, three adding 6 Range, and one adding 6 Magnitude to Wrack 19 people at a range of 135 meters. Not too shabby.
 
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