What Happened to Shimmer?

[Ultor]

I'm converting a few old Runequest 2, err, Chaosium Runequest 2 scenarios and was wondering what happened to the old Battle Magic spell Shimmer. It was there in MRQ1, adding 5% to Dodge skill per point of magnitude but has disappeared in the latest edition. Why? It was an excellent spell for combat-oriented characters that didn't want to act as meat shields (for whom Protection and Parry are still there). Combined with a few points of Coordination, it seems it would make for an effective slippery customer. So I'd love to hear why it has gone.

 

[ThatGuy]

I've been using bound Sylphs to mimic the Shimmer effect.

But that's not a Common Magic solution. I was also wondering the same thing.

 

[Mongoose Pete]

I'm converting a few old Runequest 2, err, Chaosium Runequest 2 scenarios and was wondering what happened to the old Battle Magic spell Shimmer. It was there in MRQ1, adding 5% to Dodge skill per point of magnitude but has disappeared in the latest edition. Why? It was an excellent spell for combat-oriented characters that didn't want to act as meat shields (for whom Protection and Parry are still there). Combined with a few points of Coordination, it seems it would make for an effective slippery customer. So I'd love to hear why it has gone.

1) Because parrying/dodging/blocking have been blended into a single skill for HtH combat. So its all called Parry now.

2) If trying to avoid missile weapons then the 'Parry' spell will still improve your ability to block an arrow with a shield.

3) The only case left was for shield-less characters who wanted to Evade better. However I had problems rationalising a magical heat haze that improves your chance to dive and roll into cover.

4) In addition a spell which only augmented evading would have been less versatile than the Parry spell, so I guessed most folks wouldn't have bothered using it.

5) Last but by no means least we had a very tight page count and had to drop lots of other things we wanted to shoehorn it.

I think that's all of them... :wink:

 

[Ultor]

Thanks for the response and that all makes sense. Before this, I hadn't really appreciated that Evade wasn't the same thing as Dodge, so this is doubly useful.

A pity, though. Shimmer strikes me as a very Gloranthan spell. Perhaps I'll just merge the special effects of Shimmer into Parry.

 

[Titus]

You could just add the Shimmer common magic spell to your game.

Here are a couple ways to have it work that popped into my head while reading this post.

Shimmer makes it difficult to hit the shimmer protected target. This is caused by <<your effect here>>. (The RQ3 version was a visual effect so if you want it to work against other senses like darksense or earth sense, you would need to add effects which would mess with them.)

1) Each point of magnitude subtracts 5% from the attackers chance to hit. So a 4 point Shimmer spell would provide the same bonus as fighting in partial darkness of -20% to attackers skill. (This is how it worked in RQ3.)

2) Make it a fixed cost spell that makes it difficult (-20%) to hit the target.

I like #1 because it makes it easier to convert those old RQ2 & RQ3 materials to MRQ2. Both of these have the advantage of keeping Shimmer a passive defense like it was in the older RQs. That means it doesn't require burning a CA to have it work.

You would have to decide whether an effect that allowed Resist(Evade) was affected by a shimmer spell. If you allowed it, then it would be a positive modifier to the evade skill.

 

[ThatGuy]

I've been using bound Sylphs in games to mimic solution #1 above. 5% per cubic meter.

So a 3 meter bound sylph could be commanded to swirl around the binder (make the light bend around him, push attacks off course, etc) at a -15% defensive penalty to hit.

Seemed simplest. And made sense. I can see the desire for a common magic spell though.

 

[Titus]

... Seemed simplest. And made sense. I can see the desire for a common magic spell though.

I have a lot of pre-Mongoose RQ materials and having a shimmer spell that works like the old Battle Magic/Spirit Magic spell is highly desirable.