Subject: Predicate, Volume 4, Number 11 First Distribution: May 30, 1990 This issue: Random Stuff (David Gadbois) RQ III Sorcery (Dirk Walls) Re: RQ III Sorcery (Andrew Bell) Re: Various things and Re: GLORANTHA QUESTIONS (Jeff Okamoto) Sorcery comments (Paul Reilly) --- From: David GadboisSubject: Random stuff I received permission from David Hall to make copies of the first two issues of Tales of the Reaching Moon and sell them. The price is $2.00/issue. (It's just a cheap photocopy of the original.) Please email me if you are interested. I finally got copies of Wyrms Footnotes numbers one through four, which I'll be happy to trade for copies of RQ material. I have everything that's been published by Chaosium, AH, and in Different World and Heroes, but I'd be interested in obscure fanzine articles and homebrew scenarios. I chatted with the nice folks at King's Hobby shop in Austin, and the word from them is that the scenario pack "Eldarad: The Lost City" should be coming out sometime this summer, maybe in August. This appears to be a rewrite of Pavis. David Hall tells me he has been working with Jon Quaife on "Sartarpak," a package of background information on Sartar culture, history, and cults, mostly from Greg Stafford's files. I'm not sure what the publication status of it is, though. Does anyone know about a gaming convention called "Conjunction." It's apparently being held in Germany, and I hear that a copy of "The Glorantha Encyclopaedia" will be auctioned off there. The book is supposed to be a 280-page document written by Greg Stafford in 1980 but never published. I'm going to be in the vicinity this summer and would appreciate any info. --David Gadbois gadbois@cs.utexas.edu --- From: Dirk Walls Subject: RQ III sorcery Does anybody else find the sorcery rules confusing? If an adept with the spell damage resistance or damage increase with a high free intelligence casts one of the spells with, say 5 points on intensity to the increase or resistance and 10 points to the duration he can get the spell to last for quite some time (I don't have the book with me at the moment, so I'm not sure of the specifics). I know it is possible to get the spell to last at least a month. This is nearly a permanent magic item. Can a mage cast another dmg resistance the next day and stack it on top of the week long spell he cast the day before? The spell Treat Wounds is also very confusing In the description, it states that an intensity 2 spell will immediately cure one point of dmg and heal one point per hour until the wound is healed. It also says that a higher intensity spell will automatically extend the time of the spell, which already lasts until the wound is healed. Huh? I really like the idea of having sorcery as a third type of magic, but I don't like any of my players to have it because we can't figure out how it is supposed to work. --- From: bell@cs.unc.edu (Andrew Bell) Subject: Re: RQIII Sorcery In response to the above: The sorcery system as written allows even neophyte sorcerors to cast very powerful skills, with the limit being free int, not casting skill. The simplest set of fixes I've come up with is: A) A sorceror cannot cast a spell with more magic points than his skill in that spell divided by 5%. Example: A sorceror with a 40% skill in a spell can cast this spell with up to 8 magic points: Intensity 1, Duration +7 Intensity 8, no range or duration boosting Intensity 3, Duration +3, Range +2 B) A sorceror cannot cast a spell with more intensity, range, or duration than his skill divided by 5%. Example: A sorceror with a 15% intensity can cast at most a 3 intensity spell. C) Free int is no longer necessary. D) Regardless of skill levels, a 1 intensity, no range or duration boost spell can always be cast. E) If a magic item has intensity, range, or duration built into it, this does not count as part of the strength of the spell. Example: A sorceror with a matrix of a spell he has a 40% skill in, with +2 intensity and +3 duration built into the matrix, can cast a spell of: Intensity 3, Duration +7, Range +3 Intensity 10, Duration +3 and so on The matrix enhancements also do not count against the sorceror's limits in enhancing spells, so a sorceror with a 15% intensity skill could cast an intensity 6 spell with the above matrix. - This change in the rules both weakens and strengthens sorcerors; it removes their world-altering ability to cast lots of long intensity spells on everyone, but compensates by allowing them the full use of their intelligence to store spells. >Can a mage cast another dmg resistance the next day and stack it on top >of the week long spell he cast the day before? Sorcery spell effects are non-stackable, so only the most powerful damage resistance (or the first spell, in the case of a tie) would take effect. Since spell strength is measured solely by intensity, this probably means that a high-intensity, short duration spell probably wipes out a lower intensity version of that spell, but this is debatable. --- From: okamoto@hpccc.hp.com Subject: Re: Various things and Re: GLORANTHA QUESTIONS >Subject: HeroQuesting for Fun and Profit, Volume 4, Number 9 >From: jablow@pilot.njin.net (Eric Jablow) > >Subject: Various things > >One ambiguous point in the rules for both RQ2 and RQ3 is the following: >Gubik the Unruly has 10 points of 1-use Divine Magic Spells. He then >tries to become a Rune Priest of Ex-lax, god of digestion, and he >succeeds. What happens to his Divine Spells? Do they suddenly become >reusable? Or, do they remain one-use, with his future spells being >reusable as usual. In RQ2, when you become a priest, any rune magic that would normally be reusable for a priest becomes reusable by the ex-initiate. In general, priestly one-use spells aren't available to initiates, but if so, then they stay one-use. I'd use the same interpretation in RQ3. [Does this include one-use spells that the initiate used? --ACB] >From: oshaughj@project4.computer-science.manchester.ac.uk > >Subject: GLORANTHA QUESTIONS > >[This one I can handle: When the Storm Bull battled Wakboth (the Devil), >the Storm Bull lay wounded and bleeding. Eiritha (I believe) drained >power from the Earth to help heal him. Actually Storm Bull's Earthpower spell(s) (received from Ernalda) kicked in and gave him both Power and Magic Points. [That's what I get for not looking it up... --ACB] > Last one, Ex in Prax. What the hell is it? I can answer this one. It's where the Block first bounced. If you draw a line from where the Block is now to the circular "Ex", you should also intersect a more oval-ish depression. That's where the Block bounced a second time (and skidded for a bit). [Must have had some backspin or something, considering that the Spike (which the block is a piece of) was where Magasta's Pool now is. --ACB] Might be worth taking an expedition there. Who knows, there may be some truestone fragments lying about! Jeff --- From: paul@bondi.phyast.pitt.edu (Paul Reilly) Subject: Sorcery comments I have been GMing and playing Runequest for over a decade now. When the Sorcery rules came out, our group liked the flexibility of the system, but there are several aspects to the sorcery system which we feel should be changed. We have experimented with different types of changes. From the gaming point of view, some of these are "necessary", others simply add flavor. One of the "necessary" changes we have found is in the matter of (Sense) Projection. The rules as written allow a viewpoint to be used as a point from which to cast spells. This is enormously powerful. One can target an enemy thousands of kilometers away and then hit him with multiple Venom 20's, for example. Suggested changes in rough order of importance to game balance: 1. In order for a spell to be cast through a Sense Projection (either way), the spell must be of lesser Intensity than the Sense Projection. Thus the Range of the sorceror is not tremendously extended, unless he makes a high Intensity or Duration matrix for the Sense Projection. Example: Arcon the Adept wishes to observe an enemy without being seen. He casts a Sight Projection of Intensity 1; no spells may be cast through it. He discovers the enemy's house is empty with lights out. Moving his Sight Projection indoors, he dimly spies a sleeping form in bed. Later, he goes out to within 160 meters of the enemies house, not wishing to come closer because the guard dogs might bark. He remembers his old viewpoint and casts a Sense Projection of Range 4 and Intensity 13. Through this viewpoint he can cast a Smother 12, and he does so. The enemy wakes up choking. Taking two rounds worth of damage, he manages to stagger to the door and wake his dogs before collapsing. His servants and guards start to wake up. Arcon maintains the Smother to make sure the enemy is dead; a guard with Mystic Vision sees the viewpoint and tries to cast a Venom 15 through it. The spell fails because the "hole" isn't "big" enough. 2. The caster must have a good picture of his viewpoint; either he has been there, or has scryed there. "The other side of this door" is insufficient if you don't know what is there. However, you could cast a viewpoint on this side and move it through. If the sorceror can picture his viewpoint (100 meters overhead, for example) or has a painting of the target to look at, he might be able to cast at some skill penalty, like 1/2 skill. 3. Certain natural phenomena interfere with scrying. Traditionally, running water interferes with all magic; one could assess an Intensity penalty for various sizes and power of streams, from -1 for a trickling flow up to -20 or more for a mighty river. Fire should interfere with scrying, particularly Reconstruction or psychometry. Earth already counts as interfering with Sense (Substance) at a penalty of 1 Intensity per meter; I see no reason why this penalty shouldn't apply to (Sense) Projection. A powerful storm could also interfere with scrying. Certain worlds will have special phenomena that block scrying. On Glorantha, for example, a Dead Zone cannot be scryed at all. Scrying over the Gloranthan Ocean should be impossible due to the Closing. (Perhaps an Open Seas ritual would allow such usage.) Scrying the Hidden Greens or other semi-real phenomena might give a result different from what the people who are there see. --- 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: bell@cs.unc.edu ...!mcnc!unc!bell Request old articles by volume number and issue number.