From: owner-runequest-rules@ (RuneQuest-Rules-Digest) To: runequest-rules-digest@lists.MPGN.COM Subject: RuneQuest-Rules-Digest V1 #38 Reply-To: runequest-rules@mpgn.com Sender: owner-runequest-rules@ Errors-To: owner-runequest-rules@ Precedence: bulk RuneQuest-Rules-Digest Thursday, March 12 1998 Volume 01 : Number 038 RuneQuest is a trademark of Avalon Hill Games. All Rights Reserved. TABLE OF CONTENTS Re: [RQ-RULES] RQ4 damage &HP [RQ-RULES] Re: Familiars Re: [RQ-RULES] RQ4 damage &HP [RQ-RULES] FW: Glorantha Weekly [RQ-RULES] Re: Runic Mastery [RQ-RULES] Re; Mastering Rune Powers [RQ-RULES] raising stats, RQIV shamens Re: [RQ-RULES] Fetch / Allied Spirit / Magic Spiri [RQ-RULES] Teleport [RQ-RULES] Mastery of Runes RULES OF THE ROAD 1. Do not include large sections of a message in your reply. Especially not to add "Yeah, I agree" or "No, I disagree." Or be excoriated. If someone writes something good and you want to say "good show" please do. But don't include the whole message you praise. 2. Use an appropriate Subject line. 3. Learn the art of paraphrasing: Don't just quote and comment on a point-by-point basis. 4. No anonymous posting, please. Don't say something unless you're ready to stand by it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 20:18:41 -0500 From: Tal Meta Subject: Re: [RQ-RULES] RQ4 damage &HP Hibbs, Philip wrote: > > A less extreme possibility would be to allow people to go to minus > their chest location hit points. Perhaps, but then the guys bleeding to death from leg and arm wounds will argue that they aren't even hurt there! Leon Kirshtein wrote: > That is the point of role playing in a group. Your friends are > there to save you then things go bad (and to argue with then the > treasure is split up). Unconsciousness is the greatest life > savior in most campaings. Being unconsious, in most cases, meens > you are no longer being atacked and a quick Heal 2 will guaranty > that you will not bleed to death. Ah yes, the glories of being unconscious! I used to go out for a cigarette when my character was unconscious. Too many GMs (IME) are afraid of killing characters off when they get in over their heads. My current GM pegs the toughness of our opposition to how many HP my character has left... if they get too low, the enemy stops coming fresh. Choinski, Burt wrote: > I dunno, I do like the positive/negative break of unconsiousness > even though if you go the RQ4 route and die at -HP you are > effectively "doubling". Depends on the caliber of your game, I guess. The characters in my last game only ever died of their own stupidity (targetting a sorcerer they had good reason to suspect had a spell called "Reverse Missile" with gunfire, running into traps they'd set themselves, that sort of thing.) *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe runequest-rules' as the body of the message. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 22:22:37 -0600 (CST) From: Kevin Rose Subject: [RQ-RULES] Re: Familiars Bob said: > You can also coerce a nymph of some kind, though they can't >travel. Actually, no, that isn't what the rules say. It says "and any restrictions they may have posessed formerly (such as being bound to a specific locale) are removed." Naiads make really spiffy familiars. The trick is to get them to agree, as I would bet that anyone as fast, strong and bright as an naiad could make your life "interesting" if you had neglected that little detail. Kevin *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe runequest-rules' as the body of the message. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 00:07:51 EST From: JULIAKIR Subject: Re: [RQ-RULES] RQ4 damage &HP In a message dated 98-03-11 20:35:20 EST, you write: << Too many GMs (IME) are afraid of killing characters off when they get in over their heads. My current GM pegs the toughness of our opposition to how many HP my character has left... if they get too low, the enemy stops coming fresh >> I usually judge on how well I did at GMing by how much POW the party lost during the evening. If it went really well I can get some where between 5-7. More than what and I was too tough. Less ... , well I 'll get them next time. Leon Kirshtein *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe runequest-rules' as the body of the message. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 08:35:01 -0000 From: "Hibbs, Philip" Subject: [RQ-RULES] FW: Glorantha Weekly Doyle Wayne Ramos-Tavener has taken me up on my offer of looking through the Rules list for useable articles for the Glorantha Weekly. For those of you who don't know, this is a fortnightly collection of the best, most complete, and useable articles from the Glorantha Digest. Subscribers to the Gloratha Digest get it by default, but it can be requested separately: * The Glorantha Weekly will be mirrored to www.glorantha.com and to rec.games.frp.archives, though the mechanisms are still pending. * If you decide you *just* want to get the new Weekly list, and not the old Glorantha Digest, you need to talk to majordomo@chaosium.com. Send it the following commands, in the body of a message: unsubscribe glorantha-digest subscribe glorantha-weekly So far, the only items that I have seen that I would have selected are the spells, and the Liche stats, although I didn't read them very closely. I will take a closer look at anything that looks like it might warrant inclusion in future. My role will be to pick out articles and forward them to Doyle for *consideration*, he remains the final arbiter and will contact the author before inclusion. This will allow the author some time to consider peoples comments and suggestions. > philip.hibbs@tnt.co.uk or phibbs@compuserve.com > http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/phibbs > +--------------+ > | Philip Hibbs +---------------------------------------------+ > | What immortal hand or eye dare frame thy perfect symmetry? | > +------------------------------------------------------------+ > *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe runequest-rules' as the body of the message. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 01:00:22 -0800 (PST) From: Erik Nolander Subject: [RQ-RULES] Re: Runic Mastery Hi all, Tal Meta wrote: > Has anyone worked out exactly what it means to have mastered a rune? RQ2 > sort of had a requirement for this, but I'm looking for effects / > immunities / powers gained by mastery of a particular rune. I think you get these HeroQuest powers which had been hinted at all through the RQ3 rulebooks (f'rex, the Mistress Race Troll description in Trollpak). I don't have any specifics on what kind of effect you get, except that it has to be linked to the mastered Rune, but I found, on Nikk Effingham's brilliant pages, his set of HQ-rules, which seems to have some kind of rationale for this. > Frex: Fred Parker has mastered the Death Rune. Does this: > Make him immune to death? > Give him the power to kill with a glance? > Do his POW in damage? If you want him to, I suppose. Although the two last ones sound more likely to me. > Give him the right to wear a nifty tatoo? Definitely!!! > And does the mastery of multiple runes create effects in and of > themselves? (i.e. mastering death and spirit allows you to kill spirits > with a glance?) Would you have to have mastered multiple runes to get an > effect at all? (mastery & spirit gives you the ability to automatically > command spirits you can see with pow vs. pow). Sounds reasonable, at first glance. Cheers, Erik Nolander _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe runequest-rules' as the body of the message. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 10:23:01 GMT From: "Nikk Effingham" Subject: [RQ-RULES] Re; Mastering Rune Powers >Has anyone worked out exactly what it means to have mastered a rune? >RQ2 sort of had a requirement for this, but I'm looking for effects >/ immunities / powers gained by mastery of a particular rune. > >Frex: Fred Parker has mastered the Death Rune. Does this: >Make him immune to death? >Give him the power to kill with a glance? >Do his POW in damage? >Give him the right to wear a nifty tatoo? Yeah! A HeroQuest style question! Whiel other people might think Rune Mastery is all outdated, I loved the RQII idea and kept it for my HeroQuest system (available now at all good websites : ) In it I stole completley from Sandy Petersen's Draft HQ rules. You have a Rune rating of between 1-100. When you get over 20 you get an "effect point", as you increase your rune ratings you gain more effect points at a rapidly increasing rate. So once you get 31 in a rune rating you have 3, 41 in a rune rating you have 6 etc... The effect points can be spent on all rune related magic. So someone with the Death Rune and one measly effect point might have a permenant bladesharp 1. For 2 they can cast a disrupt every round as an extra action and for no MP cost. For 12 effect points they can do likewise with a Sever Spirit. And I'm sure he gets the tatoo for free : ) Son the powers vary from person to person and you can never tell just when someone's "mastered" a rune. I remember that Maurer's Runes allowed people on the Mundane Plane to use his version of Hero Magic, but at a -100 penalty. But once you got your Death percentage up to a high level, such as Allied, you could do really cool effects back off the Hero Plane at very little cost. Nikk E. Nikk Effingham eng7nje@leeds.ac.uk http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Lair/7556/ "If absolute power corrupts absolutely Where does that leave God?" -- George Daacon *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe runequest-rules' as the body of the message. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 08:13:06 -0500 From: stancliff@commnections.com Subject: [RQ-RULES] raising stats, RQIV shamens RU>On another note, I was very interested in the RQ IV weapon and armour RU>revamp as it was very useful for those who never saw a copy of the playtest RU>rules and I heard that RQ IV shamens were quite different to the previous RU>rules with varying special skills and abilities, could someone please RU>explain these things for me Hi Cory, You can see most of the shaman changes in my edited version of RQ4 at (http://commnections.com/upgrades/campaign). I dropped a skill called Spirit Travel that made it much harder for spirits to move, on the physical and spirit planes. I also rewrote Discorporation, so you might want to ignore that. Bob Stancliff *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe runequest-rules' as the body of the message. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 08:50:58 -0500 From: stancliff@commnections.com Subject: Re: [RQ-RULES] Fetch / Allied Spirit / Magic Spiri RU>> In my game, the fetch can throw Visibility to appear as a ghost RU>> around the shaman. It can then fight any and all ghosts that try ... RU>This is an interesting rule, but doesn't that tend to make the shaman a RU>lot more powerful? Normally the fetch is only visable on the Mundane RU>when the shaman is discorporate, but this effectively doubles the RU>shaman's firepower in a spellfest. It does add one more spirit in the fight, but my players use them already for distracting the foe. This rule has a built-in trade-off; the shaman gives up defensive Pow for increased flexibility. I used to allow the fetch to wander around, but with my change in Discorporation I think I should restrict the fetch to the shaman's immediate position. RU>On the converse, have you ever let a shaman go discorporate, manifest RU>someplace, engage who they found there in spirit combat, possess them, RU>and have them open the gate / release the prisoners / cut their own RU>throats? The player shaman has never tried. The spirit combat would be visible, so the guards would likely be warned. RU>> I have recently added that Discorporation frees the fetch portion RU>> of the shaman to wander the spirit and physical planes instead of RU>> the flesh portion. This makes the fetch/shaman combination much ... RU>This isn't unreasonable, but the fetches in my game have tended to be RU>recycled animal spirits, and haven't been big on wandering too far away. RU>But I have to ask; what happens to a fetch in the deep spirit plane that RU>encounters something malign? Does it "get eaten", or come back at all? The rules describe the fetch as a part of the shaman's soul that takes the form of a sacred animal or object. This rule is much more powerful than the one above, but doesn't affect combat. It changes the Int/Pow of the part of the shaman that travels (all shamans over a certain age have fetches bigger than they are), but the rest of the discorporation rules are unchanged (the wandering spirit returns immediately if the ritual stops). RU>For that matter, how do y'all handle escape and evasion on the spirit RU>plane? (i.e. getting away from something you "found" that you don't care RU>to engage in spirit combat). The rules state that the shaman can return instantly by breaking the ritual. RU>> I have seen published material such as 'Strangers in Prax' RU>> where the adept and familiar can access Pow sources on the other's RU>> body. I am not sure this is legal under MindLink, but it is a ... RU>With sufficiently high Intensty telepathy, mindlink-like effects become RU>possible, but don't feel in too much of a rush to grant a familiar RU>Mindlink with it's creator. One of the recurring themes in my last RU>campaign was threats to the sorcerer's familiar, which were impossible RU>to make story-worthy without collaboration with the player, due to the RU>mindlink-like abilities I gave his. Being held prisoner? Easy... see the RU>spot I'm looking at and teleport there. (There were times I wanted the RU>familiar to be able to describe his surroundings, but not escape from RU>them; letting the two of them see thru one another's eyes spoiled that RU>soundly). Reread teleport, it must have a homing circle in range to work. Only Orlanth/Mastakos have line of sight teleport. My campaign is debating whether a sorcerer can use someone else's homing circle or must they make it themselves because it is personalized/attuned. I was probably mistaken to describe a familiar as Mindlink, they share spells and MP's, but I don't remember if spells that affect one affect the other. I'll look it up tonight. RU>> A spirit in a bind must have Second Sight to target spells, RU>> but if released, a ghost may become visible at will and target RU>> spells or enter spirit combat. RU>Actually, this is something I'd forgotten all about. ;( Next time, I'm RU>going to make them bring those spirits out to fight (and risk their RU>loss!). Remember that you need to cast a Command spell on the spirit before letting it out of the bind, the spell works automatically if cast, even though the spirit still has MP's. Use them against the players and see how they react. Let them lose a couple if they forget the Command. RU>> I play that magic spirits are souls ready to be (re)born, they RU>> have no personality or memory, while ghosts are souls that have RU>> already lived a life and have knowledge, spells, and skills left RU>> over from their past. RU>I like this idea, but it begs the question: when the spirit is reborn, RU>what happens to the spells it knew? Nearly all of the cult writeups say that the ghost returns to the god until it forgets it's past life, then it is reborn. I wrote a house rule that everyone loses 1% off every skill each year. I am going to delete it because it is too much trouble to implement, not because I don't believe in it. Bob Stancliff *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe runequest-rules' as the body of the message. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 13:57:30 -0000 From: "Hibbs, Philip" Subject: [RQ-RULES] Teleport >Reread teleport, it must have a homing circle in range to work. Not in Sandy's, it doesn't. philip.hibbs@tnt.co.uk or phibbs@compuserve.com http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/phibbs +--------------+ | Philip Hibbs +---------------------------------------------+ | What immortal hand or eye dare frame thy perfect symmetry? | +------------------------------------------------------------+ *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe runequest-rules' as the body of the message. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 09:42:22 -0500 From: stancliff@commnections.com Subject: [RQ-RULES] Mastery of Runes RU>Has anyone worked out exactly what it means to have mastered a rune? RQ2 RU>sort of had a requirement for this, but I'm looking for effects / RU>immunities / powers gained by mastery of a particular rune. RU>This is kinda/sorta what I'm hoping RQ: Slayers will have an answer for, RU>as they describe similar stuff in their "what the game will be" blurbs. There has never been officially published material on this subject. It is all included under the subject of Heroquesting, and there are at least five very different sets of rules for it. If Slayers has a good way of handling this it will probably pay for itself, but the same can probably be said for Adv. in Glorantha. Most people are assigning a runic skill value based on things like cult advancement and/or type and number of spells known. Throw in rune experience based on Heroquesting and you have a new rule system. If you want guidelines on power descriptions, read Champions by Hero Systems. A point of spirit magic should be about 10-15 active pts, a point of divine magic should be about 20-30 active pts. Since most spells stack, the effects can get quite strong, but are usually temporary. A heroic power is marked by the fact that it is usually permanent and strong, say 60-100 active pts plus permanence if appropriate. I have been making notes for a Hero System translation of Runequest, but I am not giving it much time. RU>And does the mastery of multiple runes create effects in and of RU>themselves? (i.e. mastering death and spirit allows you to kill spirits RU>with a glance?) Would you have to have mastered multiple runes to get an RU>effect at all? (mastery & spirit gives you the ability to automatically RU>command spirits you can see with pow vs. pow). Spirits are immortal, flesh is not, only Chaos destroys souls. Mastering Death would allow Humakt effects like Sever Spirit as natural abilities (by spending MP's or something). Mastering Spirit would allow Daka Fal style abilities. Mastering the rune bypasses the need to learn a spell to get the effect. Note that every spell a god has as special divine magic is supposed to use the nature of one of that god's runes to derive it's power (not associated spells, they come from other gods). This was the source of my recent suggestion to swap Fertility and Harmony for Uleria and Chalana Arroy, the primary spell focus of these dieties do not match the stated powers of their primary rune. Sartar was said to have mastered the Mobility/Change rune and look at what he managed (King of Sartar). He didn't use the power often, but it had bizarre effects. He eventually became a city (nation) god. *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe runequest-rules' as the body of the message. ------------------------------ End of RuneQuest-Rules-Digest V1 #38 ************************************ *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe runequest-rules' as the body of the message. RuneQuest is a Trademark of Avalon Hill Games. With the exception of previously copyrighted material, unless specified otherwise all text in this digest is copyright by the author or authors, with rights granted to copy for personal use, to excerpt in reviews and replies, and to archive unchanged for electronic retrieval.