> 1) First of all, why not have a non-magical +5 (RQ terms) sword,
> maybe also doing an extra point of damage. These bonuses could just
> be due to fine workmanship.
Why not indeed? There's nothing in the rules to disallow it. In fact, land of Ninja did have explicit rules for this sort of thing. Basicaly, if the craftsman specials or criticals a craftsmanship roll you could resonably expect the product to have enhanced properties and might want to represent that in the game.
> 4) What about "holy" weapons of one sort or another - something with
> a permanent godly blessing which is extra effective against some
> adversary.
Iron was created by mostal as a weapon against Trolls and iron weapons do double damage to them. Some Humakti and Yanafali geases result in the worshiper's sword being blessed with permanent magical properties. I'm sure there are other examples.
Simon Phipp :
>They are called "Swords of Sharpness" and appeared in one of the
>Wyrms Footnotes, although I can't remember which one. Apparently the
>God Learners found a way to churn out enhanced versions of these
>(equivalent to a +4 sword, I think) but this was by all accounts a BAD
>THING (can't see why though).
The machine city God Learners mass produced swords with permanent Bladesharp 3 matrices in them. Aso for why this was a bad thing, all magical power has to come from somewhere!
> After that the ultimate question is whether magical items and
> creatures in Glorantha have to follow prescribed rules. The main one
> that I'm sort of guessing at is that magic comes out of life - only
> living things (including spirits) can do magic. Is that true, and
> are there others?
Spirits are not living things, in fact many of them are explicitly and obviously dead. It realy depends what you mean by living. In Glorantha it seems that anything that is real is either capable of, or susceptible to magic. Except Adamantine. Maybe.
As for following prescribed rules, I realy don't know what you mean by this. Yes there are rules, but not realy in the sense of game rules. There are many kinds of magic in glorantha, based on radicaly different philosophical principles, and they are represented in the game by various sets of magic rules.
Simon Hibbs
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