Re: a spell in the German RQ-edition (fwd)

From: John Leske <J.Leske_at_ctin.adelaide.edu.au>
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 11:36:56 +1030


Hi Timo,

'Entseelen' in english seems to be 'Sever Spirit' AS such it is a Death God spell, and in our campaign only priests of Humakt have it reusable. Other death cults can sometimes obtain it but only on a one-use basis. (I'm not quoting from Gods of Glorantha here, so there may be some other cults using it). I have no problem with this spell being used on anything with a soul (POW).

As to being too powerful: Lunars have 'Mindblast' which only costs 2 POW and is re-usable. And that takes out foes just as effectively in combat.

Defences for your big nasty opponents against this sort of thing: - High POWs (they have to make a POWvPOW roll which usually makes their chances less than 50%)
- - Countermagic, or better yet sorcerous magic resist, so
any attack spells have to make an additional roll to penetrate.
- - Multiple opponent groups and multiple dramatic highs.

This last was discussed in some detail a few months ago, with lots of useful suggestions. Basically, any ONE USE attacks like divine magic (which cannot be reagained until prayer in a temple) can be drawn out in earlier encounters which seem desperate or critical, but are not the final encounter yet. The flip side of this is to use multiple encounters with LOTS of average opponents, so that there is no one big taget to aim the high powered magic at, but multiple opponents are just as deadly.

My philosophy is to make the bad guys clever, rather than super-powerful. And keep the players guessing.

Hope this is some help,

John


End of Glorantha Digest V2 #393


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