YT: Priests & Lords

From: DBLIZZARD_at_delphi.com
Date: Thu, 09 Feb 1995 19:15:36 -0500 (EST)

>
> Section #1
>
> Dennis Hoover takes me to task for basing much of my arguments on
> Cults of Prax, a charge which I gladly acknowledge; I said so in the
> first place. What should I base my arguments upon, Gods of Glorantha?
> This too is out of date, and my limited experience with it showed it
> to be broader but shallower than CoP. The fact that I am using an old
> source doesn't lessen the value of the ideas expressed within.
>
> I will now quote from page 7 of COP ((C)/Chaosium):

...Quotes about differences between Rune Lords & Priest for CoP..

>
> To continue, Nick Eden states:
>
> "... These days all these warrior cults don't have Rune Lords and Rune
> Priests. They have Rune Lords, who are effectively RLPs.
>
> I was rather shocked by this when I first realised that this was what
> had been done, but it makes a lot more sense really. ..."
>
>
> I don't see the sense of this from the game-mechanics angle.
> Lords anf Priests had different advantages in the areas of Divine
> Intervention & re-usable Rune Magic. A Humakt write-up sent to me
> via a net inquiry showed the Sword with Lord-type DI, and Rune spells
> that were one-use and some that were re-usable. This seems to me to

     To my knowledge no RQIII cults without Rune Priests have spells that aren't reusable (except maybe when gained from another cult).

> make such a character much more potent than an old Rune type. Even
> an old RLP had the priest's more difficult DI. I also observed the
> the new Sword also needed 6 skils at 90+, not five. This just goes
> to make Rune types less common. Getting a character's POW up to 18
> is easier than getting 5/6 skills to 90%. Isn't this one of the
> reasons some players opt for priest instead of lord? CoP says that
> Humakt priests all aspire to become Swords as well, what's wrong
> with using the priesthood as a milestone along the way? It confers
> status & prestige, if not that of a lord. It would certainly open
> doors that might be closed to an initiate with the same long term
> goal. (The role of priest would also be open to a lord that had been
> maimed in some unalterable way.)
>

     I've always liked the way RQIII handled the differences between priests and lords. For some cults the function of priest is so intertwined with the role of priest the separation in senseless (as Humakt & YT). Whereas other cults seemed to be stretched to even have a role for 'Rune Lord' (Chanala Arroy & Issaries).

     I think it cheapens the place of the priest to make it a part of the cult as a 'milestone' on the way to Scimitar. While it is true that the Scimitar's power may be increased in RQIII it is not significantly so. I am not even convinced that they necessarily have the 1d10 DI. True Swords do, but they have the major prohibition of non-resurrectability to balance that. Most cults with 1d10 DI are all 'Source' cults. Everything else is the same as a Sword/Priest combination, with about the same difficulty in obtaining (or perhaps even slightly harder).

                    David A Blizzard

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