Subject: The Zine without a Cause, Volume 2, Number 7 This issue: RQ spell power? (Adrian Joseph) --- Subject: RQ spell power? From: ajoseph@Cs.Ucl.AC.UK (Adrian Joseph) I have recently read a number of comments about the power (no pun) of RQ offensive spells? Someone went as far as to say that the spells became more useful in combat than weapons skills. I find myself more than a little puzzled at this. I have been playing RQ for a number of years, and my old characters are probably capable of hero questing (if only I had a good idea of what hero questing was all about); however, despite this it still seems to us that offensive magic is mostly useful against large numbers of lower powered opponents, and in this case mainly befuddle to reduce the numbers. So, firstly I'm interested in what offensive magic makes the difference and why, also I'll explain the way we run things which may show up why your magic is/'seems to be' more powerful than ours. Right, to start with, let's define what I mean by offensive magic. In our games the actual amount of rune magic around is not very large, the character with the largest amount has about 30 points worth of rune magic. Most rune magic is not offensive and in any case the cost of rune magic and its slowness of recovery doesn't make it general purpose offensive magic in our games. Also since we play mostly in a modified RQII world there is very little sorcery, basically no PC's know any. So, all that's left is battle (spirit) magic. Now there are a number of offensive battle magic spells, and these roughly divide into two classes; those you cast on yourself/items, and those you cast on your opponents. In the first class are such things as strength and bladesharp in the second class things like befuddle and disruption. Right, let's deal with each class. Enhancement spells form the group of spells which can be cast on yourself or items such spells improve on a basic ability; so the better you start, the better you get. Okay, one very important point about battle magic (all magic I think) is that it's visible (at least) when cast. Another important point about battle magic is that it doesn't last very long. So, in general, unless you set up an ambush you will be casting spells either in battle or just before, thus your opponents will get a chance to see what you do. At this point enter another useful general purpose battle magic spell 'dispel magic'. If your opponents see you casting bladesharp, and don't like it they can try to dispel it, especially if they see you hit someone with your sword and not stop your swing! There are, however, two other options open to your opponents: they can also cast the offensive spells, or they can cast defensive spells such as protection or shimmer. So, there exists a balance between offensive battle magic and defensive battle magic, assuming an equal distribution of each type, it simply becomes a power struggle and whoever has the most power or most spell levels ie bladesharp 5 vs dispel 4 wins out, but the point is that unless you're always challenging weaker (spell and powerwise) opponents overall it won't make much difference. At this point I'd like to go into a quick aside about magic in general. As I've said the most common form of magic used in our campaign is battle magic, and probably the most important use of battle magic is healing. In our campaign power storage crystals are RARE, and binding spirits is DANGEROUS, one character trying to bind a spirit got hold of an old heroquester with 30+ power and a score to settle, eventually he/she/it gave the body back with a few modifications, some good, some bad and the emnity of light cults. [I would point out that we assume most cults have a supply of cult spirits willing to try their luck in spirit battle, and when a cult member (ONLY) wants he can request the priest (yup, this is a temple only job) to summon a spirit (we roll on the old RQII spirit encounter table which has everything from total wimps to your favourite deity) and the character and spirit will then engage in spirit combat. The character is on his own; as it's an agreed combat, no one may help in any way once the combat has started, although we do allow others to cast spirit shield prior to the start of combat (we use a modified spirit shield spell which simply increases the characters effective defensive power 3pts per spell pt), the combat continues until either one or other is bound or the spirit runs away (this often happens and increases the cost of the binding since the priests charge to summon spirits) or either of the combatants is reduced to less than four power. This is so that neither will be destroyed; remember both are members of the same cult. If the character wins and successfully binds the spirit he is charged with is protection and may not destroy it by draining all its power.] We tend to try and conserve power from habit and experience. Its no good blasting the 10 bandits with your bladesharp 10, strength and protection 5, if they run away and then the remaing 20 attack you after your magic has worn off. Yes folks in a world in which the major magic lasts two minutes you can bet there are many tactics to get your opponents to shoot their lot too soon, or to make fights last longer, wall of light/darkness and run away, speed etc. Another good point is that casting magic takes time the more powerful the spell and the greater the number of spells the more time it takes, well I don't know about you, but when we see somone casting a nice long powerful spell they have a tendency to get high up on the hit list and finishing the spell can become a real problem. Another point about magic (and this is a very important and subtle point) is that there are three general methods of attack in RQ: physical, magical and spiritual. The way RQ magic is set up it is generally only possible to defend against two of the three at any one time (rune magic can help cover the gaps, but still). Now one thing you can be sure of is that any site of major importance is likely (depending on the cult / social situation) to have spirits to protect it. So, often in attacking situations magical protection is overstretched, and the only physical protection you get is your armour and skill, after all if a spirit gets you you're gone for good (RQII). Well the upshot of all this is that in general most magic is cast in an ambush situation, during combats most magic tends to be healing, and if we are outnumbered we often try to befuddle some of the opponents if their armour is very good. We may use bladesharp or fireblade to increase our cutting edge, and when fighting things that do too much physical damage, such as giants, we use shimmer. I forgot that if we think our opponents are likely to be magic using then countermagic is the order of the day (whats the good of being a Rune Lord/Priest with 120% sword skill if they befuddle you and you end up dribbling over your toes). Anyway this has been a very long and winding comment on magic as we use it, I would be very interested to hear how magic is used in other RQ campaigns. Yours Adrian Name: Adrian Joseph Email: ajoseph@uk.ac.ucl.cs (Americans try ajoseph@cs.ucl.ac.uk) --- The RuneQuest(tm) mailing list is a courtesy of Andrew Bell. All opinions and material above are the responsibility of the originator, and copyrights are held by them. RuneQuest is a trademark of Chaosium, Inc. Send submissions, mailing list changes, requests for old article lists, etc. to: acb@romeo.cs.duke.edu acb@dukeac.ac.duke.edu bell@cs.unc.edu ...!mcnc!duke!romeo!acb ...!mcnc!unc!bell Request old articles by volume number and issue number.