From: owner-rq-rules-digest To: rq-rules-digest@hops.wharton.upenn.edu Subject: RQ Rules Digest: V2 #30 Reply-To: rq-rules Errors-To: owner-rq-rules-digest Precedence: bulk Content-Return: Prohibited Return-Path: owner-rq-rules-digest RQ Rules Digest: Wednesday, 9 August 1995 Volume 02 : Number 030 TABLE OF CONTENTS nickh@compans.com Capture in Glorantha: Suggested Spirit S Brian Tickler 200% skills... Graydon Capture in Glorantha: Suggested Spirit S Graydon HQ, Runic POW (Graydon) David Cake Capture in Glorantha: Suggested Spirit S David Cake 200% skills... RULES OF THE ROAD 1. Do not include large sections of a message in your reply. Especially not to add "Yeah, I agree" or "No, I disagree." Or be excoriated. If someone writes something good and you want to say "good show" please do. But don't include the whole message you praise. 2. Use an appropriate Subject line. 3. Learn the art of paraphrasing: Don't just quote and comment on a point-by-point basis. When paraphrasing you demonstrate exactly how well you understand the point someone was trying to make. 4. There is no number 4. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: nickh@compans.com Date: Wed, 9 Aug 1995 22:10:37 GMT0B Subject: Capture in Glorantha: Suggested Spirit S One or two people have commented on the fact that the easy access to healin= g makes Gloranthans more blood thirsty. In a similar way there are a number o= f things about Glorantha that make it difficult it to capture someone. I have found this frustrating many a time, both as a player and as a ref. Firstly there is divine intervention. With RQ3 the number of initiates=20 seemed to increase dramatically. I dont know if most people find this but it is unusual for us to encounter any group of people, in a hostile situation, in which the vast majority are not initiates. Fight a dozen initiates and the chances are that one will get his DI granted and take them all to the=20 nearest temple. Put a Rune Lord (or two) in the group and there is practically no chance of the loosers still being around after the fight. Secondly there is the ease with which gloranthans, being magic users to a=20 one, can escape again. If you take a prisoner you have to be very carefull. So=20 carefull that it is impractical. You can take their weapons away but you can not sto= p them from casting spells. Take away their focii and tie their hands and the= y have to add 5 strike ranks as they are unprepared (see footnote).=20 Blindfolding them makes it a bit harder for them to target you, but if you have to take someone across country for a week I for one would be nervous about it=20 slipping and copping a Harmonize in the back at an inopportune moment. Futhermore we allow spells to be targetted on the back of a detect life though it is=20 tricky so for us blindfolds are even less reliable. Now you may argue that we already have a mechanism to deal with this - the slave bracelet. Well yes we have but, 1: I dont think they are commonly=20 available to the average warrior. 2: most items are unusual and reflect some=20 incarnation of a force or power from earlier ages. 3: it smacks of a game fix. Who is=20 making them. As a common item they should be a bog standard every day spell=20 available to the initiate-in-the-street but made into some sort of matrix. 4: its a magi= c=20 item with a dial on it for crying out loud. What other reason do I need to give. The upshot of all this is that the best tactic is to go for the kill quick.= =20 Wound someone badly and they will just zap off home. Not only is it unsatisfying to be unable to take captives but it does not fit well with the things we know about Glorantha - where slaves are taken i= n raids and where it is common practice for tribes to take and ransom=20 hostages. What I want is a way to bind a captive that stops him from DIing or casting= =20 magic. I want it to be commonly available to any with an interest in obtaining it.= =20 I want it to be usable on as many people as you can capture. It must stop the=20 victim from casting magic. Nor can he do DI. It would have to stop the prisoner from=20 being affected by DIs from his comrades. You should have to get the victim=20 powerless first, you cant cast it at someone in a crowd or before you defeat them. It= =20 should feel like the real world in terms of tactics and risks. Once in effect the=20 victim cant try to overcome it, otherwise anyone with a decent power will escape=20 within a few minutes. I think a spell exists, and I think it has to be battle/spirit magic to be=20 as widely available as it must be. Call it Captivate (someone please suggest a= =20 better name - Binding would be good but its already gone). I see it working like this. You defeat someone, drug them, sap them or=20 similarly get them at your mercy. Then tie them up. As you tie the rope, chains or=20 manacles you cast Captivate onto the rope not the captive. You dont have to overcome= =20 their Pow. (I could be convinced that the victims Pow must be overcome. After all= =20 you could try holding a knife at their throat and asking them not to resist). The victim may not cast any magic, anything they try is interupted=20 instantly. This flows down to allied and bound spirits. Shamens cant escape to the=20 spirit plane. POW cant be sacrificed (or regained)? DI wont work. Connection with=20 the God cant be made so information about whereabouts cant be passed on. Justification for the effect: It makes the victims connection to the spirit plane unstable? The effect is on the bonds. So the spell only works while the bonds hold th= e victim. Which means that the spell is only as good as your tie knots skill. This leaves room for uncertainty as they could still slip their bonds or be= =20 freed by others. But it makes it more controllable and hence makes capture more o= f=20 an reasonable option. Yes my DI argument is self defeating to a certain extent. However there is=20= a difference. Once you defeat one person its possible to incapacitate them.=20 Once you have done this the rest of the group can DI out but cant take him. This=20 should make a painfull choice for characters. It takes a few rounds to tie someone. Leading to more choices to make in a=20 combat when every round counts. You could tie someones hands in one round and this= =20 would be good enough for the spell - but that sort of knot is going to be the=20 easiest to escape, and the victim can probably crawl to friends for help. Or you could= =20 do a good job of it but this could take ages. And yes its hard to get a rope on a RuneLord and tie him. But so it should=20 be. There is an unresolved point still. This allows you to capture hostages and= =20 so on but not slaves. You have to untie a slave or he's not very usefull. I cant=20 believe that there are a significant number of slaves wearing slave bracelets. This= =20 might for the slave traders who have a high turnover of captives but what is the=20 point of spending more on the bracelets than the slave is worth. It would be easier=20 to pay someone to do the job. Perhaps the spell could be cast on a wrist manacle. This would not have to restrain the slave but its magic bonds would apply which would make escape=20 very difficult. Would you walk into the wilds of prax on your own with no magic=20 to protect you? Footnote 1: We have assumed that it is possible to cast a spell without being able to speak, move or have access to your focuses. It just takes longer. We are confident that this is the case because: otherwise no spell casting by humans would be possible in the dark; The blind would never be able to use magic; Your ally would not be able to heal you if you were knocked unconcious; there are examples in the books that imply it. We have also assumed that you dont have to say anything to cast a spell.=20 Again it just makes it slower if you dont. If this was not the case then spirits=20 could not cast spells. Arguable spirits can speak and thus might say the words unknow= n=20 to observers - but if this were true a character could say the words with his=20 spirit too which brings us back to where we started. Nick H :---------------------------------------------------: : Nick Hollingsworth, UK: B90 2RA : : Birmingham - Land of the Free, Home of the Balti. : :---------------------------------------------------: ------------------------------ From: tickler@netcom.com (Brian Tickler) Date: Wed, 9 Aug 1995 15:22:59 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Re: 200% skills... How do you get a character with 200% skills? 1. Play RQ2 (5% increase per successful check roll) 2. Play it for 15 years 3. Don't retire your PCs 4. Play in a reasonable campaign with a death rate of WAY less than 10% (Are you telling me that in your game a 5-player party has a dead character every 2 adventures? And your players come back for this week after week? This is a game. It is no fun if people die in realistic percentages.) I have a character (yes, only one) with a 200% Pole Axe. I run a Humakti in my game with a 200% Broadsword (although that includes about 20% of magical enhancements). It is not that tough to do if you played 4-5 times a week all through high school and into college, and several times a month thereafter. These characters are veterans of (by a quick and grossly inaccurate estimate) about a thousand adventures apiece. Since they probably started at around 75%, that's 125% in skill gain. Considering Resurrection (and the like) and Divine Intervention, it is not nearly as difficult to survive as you claim: and the longer you DO survive, the less likely you are to be killed as your skills/power increase. Now, I have *heard* of PCs with 400%+ skills: THIS I do not believe, knowing how often I had to play to reach 200%. Of course, there are "Monty Haul" GMs in RQ, so it possible that these PCs got where they are by getting large "gifts" of skill percentage increases...come to think of it, the 400% PC I heard about also supposedly carried around a Greatsword that did 8d6 damage, so I don't think I'm far off the mark. - -- Brian T. Tickler E-Mail: tickler@netcom.com ------------------------------ From: Graydon Date: Wed, 9 Aug 1995 20:26:21 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Re: Capture in Glorantha: Suggested Spirit S I think there are two big problems with the 'captivate' spell proposed. Firstly, it is clearly God-learner lore - you're going to break someone's connection to their God with *spirit* magic? Simple, *common* spirit magic? This is, to use the local dialect, a hose, of both the game mechanics and of the general feel of Glorantha. Secondly, clearly, it's a solution to a problem you've created for yourself. Most gods *cannot* teleport anyone; the only gods who can have a connection to the motion rune, and not all of them. Characters really cannot cast spirit spells if they cannot talk or do not have their foci or do not have the use of their hands. I don't know why you consider that spirits not being able to talk means that characters don't have to - spirits are incomplete creatures, and their use of magic is necessarily different from that of complete creatures. I'm also quite baffled as to why you think being in the dark means you can't cast spells - - touch the focus is what's required, not seeing it. Also note that tangible bad things will happen to you if you break an oath in Glorantha, and that most gods aren't into sophistry about coercion - if you surrender on terms, you're stuck. I think you've got yourself into a corner by being too lenient with PCs in sticky situations, particularly with the teleportation stuff. The solution is to sit down and discuss ceasing the excessive kindnesses, not introducing a ridiculously powerful spell. saundrsg@qlink.queensu.ca | Monete me si non anglice loquobar. ------------------------------ From: Graydon Date: Wed, 9 Aug 1995 20:44:24 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Re: HQ, Runic POW (re: Graydon) Further cogitation sugguests to me that the analogy for heroquest results is appropriately neither spells nor skills, but _treasure_. It varies widely, you have to do some checking to figure out just precisely what it's worth, you can make it more valuable by doing specific careful things to or with it, and it's an entity, which is important, since the results of a heroquest seem to be presented as _things_, rather than as something you get better at. So, basically, a heroquest needs to be described by the each in terms of what it allows that character to do, and how the experience changes the character. The first is pretty easy - let's say a brand new Sword goes off on the Quest of the Mostali's Whetstone, achieves it, and come back to the temple. They've now got a hunk of truestone, .5 ENC, that can be used to sharpen edged weapons (or just _their_ edged weapons, or just Humakti cult weapons, or just _their_ Humakti cult weapons affected by gift/geases; probably not the same restrictions for everyone who's gone on the quest) so that they do an extra d6 base damage. The sharpening is a ceremony ritual that fills up 1 point of INT and requires 1 MP and 15 minutes per ENC of weapon sharpened; the sharpening lasts until the end of the next fight that weapon is used in, or until that weapon is fumbled with, or whatever. No big deal as Heroquests go, but useful. Much more interesting is the question of 'what did it do to the Sword?' Since it's a Humakti quest, and since it does involve truestone, it probably involves acquiring a connection to the Death and Truth runes. However, it's much, much too wide to say that this little quest connects you to *all* of either rune, and that leaves the vexed question of what the damn connection *means*, anyway. Well, in this case, what it means is that the Sword as acquired the ability to raise up the aspect of the Sword-Sharpener; they have a mystic understanding of how to make edged-weapons-with-hilts sharp. I'd express this as a percentage bonus (about 20%, say) to Craft(bladesmith), Evaluate when used on edged weapons, and anything else where the aspect would apear to apply. In order to manifest that aspect, the character has to do *something*; in this case, I'd say they have to concentrate - make an INT x 3 roll - and if it doesn't work, that's it; the extent of their understanding is imperfect, and that particular edged weapon doesn't make sense to them in that way. This is addition to the knack for sharpening things. And that's it; you can't get any better at this without going back to see the Sharpening Mostali and undertaking a deeper aspect of the quest. In quantification terms, it's a +d6 base damage, touch, temporal(special), non-stackable, reusable; that's about a 1 point divine spell. Because the thing is usable as many times as you're willing to sit down and sharpen, I'd say it goes up to being worth about 3 points of Death-Truth connection. This connection is what changed about you to get the increased skills, and it doesn't much matter unless you go back on to the Heroplane, where your connections benefit you. In my earlier Voria example, what she can *do* is make flowers; how it changes her is the youngness and persistent virginity. So let's say she can raise up an aspect as the Bringer of Spring, and, by going barefoot, singing (gotta make the sing roll), and starting by ritually washing her feet in free flowing water, she can have flowers sprout where her feet touch for as long as she cares to keep singing. (I get a nifty image of this person singing in a forest and a spreading pool of wildflowers expanding away from her feet.) In quantification terms, this one is a good deal harder; it's a skill-dependent version of a Voria divine spell that costs a magic point per flower, so it's using up the equivalent of a lot of magic points. Or, alternatively, it's replaced the need for a magic point (to open the individual connections to that facet of the fertility rune) with the connection to the rune. Because it can't be used to kill anyone, I'm inclined to go for the later, considering it a rather less extreme power than something that leaks magic points all over the landscape. So it's touch, temporal, non-stackable, re-usable, on a 1 point base, constrained mostly by fatigue. So again, it's worth about 3 points, this time connection to the Fertility Rune. The affects on the quester are more pronounced; two significant changes from the human norm. I'd say that a significant change is worth about 3 points (that being what shapechange costs), in this case connections to a fertility-infinity pair, so our Voria maiden not has 3 points worth of connection to the Fertility Rune and 6 points worth of connection to the Fertility Rune-Infinity Rune pair. In general, I'd say contesting heroquestors compare the points of magnitude in their powers on the resistance table when they're trying to affect each other; note that our Humakti sword would have no direct defense against someone trying to affect him with anything other than a death-truth rune pair. I'd sugguest that this is what the mastery rune is good for - general defence against the powers of other heroquesters, no matter which rune(s) they power is based on, and probably also allowing you to combine heroquest powers (of magnitudes up to that of your magnitude of connection with the mastery rune.) I'd also sugguest that you can't get a heroquest connection to a rune without some connection already - being the innitiate of a god who owns the rune, having a rune spell from a god who owns the rune, _something_. Comments? saundrsg@qlink.queensu.ca | Monete me si non anglice loquobar. ------------------------------ From: davidc@cs.uwa.edu.au (David Cake) Date: Thu, 10 Aug 1995 09:58:15 +0800 Subject: Re: Capture in Glorantha: Suggested Spirit S >Now you may argue that we already have a mechanism to deal with this - the >slave bracelet. Well yes we have but, 1: I dont think they are commonly >available to the average warrior. No. > 2: most items are unusual and reflect some >incarnation >of a force or power from earlier ages. No. The majority of magic items are things made by some magician, frequently quite recently. Some of the really powerful items might be incarnations of a power from past ages. >3: it smacks of a game fix. Who is >making them. As a common item they should be a bog standard every day spell >available to the initiate-in-the-street but made into some sort of matrix. They are created by a divine magic known to the Danfive Xaron cult, and probably Ikadz the torturer as well, at least as far as I know. They are not that common outside these cults - but this means they are common as far as the Lunar authorities are concerned, and enough people have stolen them from them for them to be available in areas that have had Lunar contact. They are not that common though. 4: its a magic >item >with a dial on it for crying out loud. What other reason do I need to give. > I don't know where you got the dial from! They do not have any such thing. You can adjust the effects somewhat, as they come in a set (bracelets and collar) and the different parts have different effects. Cults of Prax is the reference for these things. Read the description there, and the part where Biturian mentions them in the narrative. While I think you have some misconceptions about slave bracelets, the general point (that capturing people is a problem) is true to some extent. Never found it that much of a problem, though, myself. Perhaps because most of the people captured in my games are enslaved, ransomed, or interrogated or whatever, and they are happier to do this than to attempt to escape and probably get killed. Cheers David ------------------------------ From: davidc@cs.uwa.edu.au (David Cake) Date: Thu, 10 Aug 1995 10:26:40 +0800 Subject: Re: 200% skills... I have a PC who attacks at around 180% when really amped up (that includes spells, though). He got his skill up a bit over 100%, and then got it up to 140% or so using Humakti geases. Plus bonus, plus Bladesharp, and he is within sight of 200%. With magical enhancements, it is easy to have attack %ages in that range. Even ignoring the horror that is Axe Trance, there are things like Zorak Zorani with Crush 4 and Bludgeon 4 (for +60%, added to an attack %age that is over 100% anyway). And it is easy to have people that attack at 200% when you consider Fanaticism and Berserk, so the rules have to cope with it anyway. And that is ignoring Monty Haulisms - we did have the one infamous campaign that got to such absurd heights that 400% would have been average... Notable anecdote - rolls dice 'I slash' - spectator 'you slash on a 37!' - player 'No, I slash on a 73.' (meaning at least 365%). And yes, they got there by bad GMing, not good play or a long campaign. Cheer David ------------------------------ End of RQ Rules Digest: V2 #30 ****************************** This is the bottom of the RuneQuest Rules Digest. RuneQuest is a trademark of Avalon Hill, and Glorantha is a trademark of Chaosium. With the exception of previously copyrighted material, unless specified otherwise all text in this digest is copyright by the author or authors, with rights granted to copy for personal use, to excerpt in reviews and replies, and to archive unchanged for electronic retrieval. Send electronic mail to Majordomo@hops.wharton.upenn.edu with "help" in the body of the message for subscription information on this and other mailing lists. WWW material at http://hops.wharton.upenn.edu/~loren/rolegame.html