From: owner-rq-rules-digest To: rq-rules-digest@hops.wharton.upenn.edu Subject: RQ Rules Digest: V1 #31 Reply-To: rq-rules Errors-To: owner-rq-rules-digest Precedence: bulk Content-Return: Prohibited Return-Path: owner-rq-rules-digest RQ Rules Digest: Tuesday, 29 November 1994 Volume 01 : Number 031 RULES OF THE ROAD 1. Do not include large sections of a message in your reply. Especially not to say "Yeah, I agree." Those who do will be lynched. 2. Use an appropriate Subject line. RQR: will be prepended to it. 3. Do not engage in a point-by-point analysis or rebuttal of another person's message. It is too confusing for others to follow, qualifies as nit-picking, and it usually leads to flame wars. 4. There is no number 4. TABLE OF CONTENTS Andre de Oliveira Fernandes RQR: Why do they have so much POW? Bryan J. Maloney RQR: Why do published NPCs always have obs David Cake RQR: Mounted combat & Enchantments ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Andre de Oliveira Fernandes Date: Mon, 28 Nov 1994 21:40:40 -0200 Subject: RQR: Why do they have so much POW? Here is something that has always bothered me... If the POW gain rules [(max possible POW rolled + min possible POW rolled - actual POW) * 5%, as I recall] clearly limit tha maximum POW of an adventurer, why do the NPCs always have huge POW? How can a PC achieve such power? Does he always have a 5% success chance, or that can only come from a Heroquest? See ya. Goroh ------------------------------ From: jacobus@sonata.cc.purdue.edu (Bryan J. Maloney) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 94 19:11:11 -0500 Subject: RQR: Why do published NPCs always have obscene POW? I can tell you why published NPCs tend to have such obscene POW levels: They are not designed by the rules. They are just written up with whatever numbers the writer wants. The reason that their POW levels seem so inordinately high is that the POW gain mechanic doesn't jibe with what it appears that writers of published NPCs think is a reasonable rate of POW gain. ------------------------------ From: davidc@cs.uwa.edu.au (David Cake) Date: Tue, 29 Nov 1994 10:08:52 +0800 Subject: Re: RQR: Mounted combat & Enchantments >>>And can yo string a bow while riding (right now, only on a stopped horse).<< > >Now, then, there's a good idea for a nice, useful, impressive but not >world-breaking spell, giving flavour to your hose nomads. My Yench could do >with >it - thanks! Just OTH: > [quite well done spell write up deleted] > >Not an immense combat edge but adds to the flavour ? Comments please but be >gentle - it's a purely OTH idea. > My problem with this is nothing in the spell description at all, but the idea of using a spell for it at all. I level a similar criticism at the Granite Phalanx writeup in TOTRM, which is simply that we should avoid using spells to explain what can be explained by skills or techniques. I understand that skill proliferation is a problem, but the answer is not to replace it with spell proliferation. For one thing, it emphasises magic abilities over non-magic training, which seems to me to be going against the strengths of RQ. It also decreases realism a little. For an example of a cult who does the right thing (a counter-example to Granite Phalanx), look at Yelmalio, which expresses most of the special cult fighting abilities as skills, rather than spells. Of course, Yelmalio needs the skills a lot because the magic sucks a great deal, but I think it balances out, at least if you are willing to live with a few geases. Assuming that stringing a bow on a horse is actually possible (which probably depends partly on the bow), possibly requiring a particular sort of saddle or whatever, then I would rather just leave it as a tactic that the nomads are familiar with but others will not know until taught. Maybe a STR vs STR roll against the bows nominal STR, with a minus for attempting to do it on a horse, and a larger minus if the Horse is moving. A nomad that wants to increase his chances magically can just use Strength. Or maybe it is just subsumed in the Horse Archery skill, so people with Horse Archery are assumed to have at least that chance of doing it, with minuses for horses movement. BTW I assume that the Horse Archery skill exists outside of the Yelmalio cult (it seems too good for the various nomads to not have it). Perhaps other cults that own the horse archery skill also treat it as a cult secret, though. The description could be taken as implying that the process of learning the skill is somehow magical, as it requires a geas, but the geas could also be assumed to be simply the requirement of entry to the Kuschile cult (and swapping geases for skill knowledge occurs with almost all skills the Yelmalio cult teaches anyway). The description of horse archery in Sun County has the rules for horse archery as a separate roll against horse archery skill before each arrow shot, if you succeed then the arrow shot is at Bow % rather than minimum of Bow % and Riding %. This is a little cumbersome (as it requires two rolls for each shot) but makes a reasonable amount of sense. I seem to remember that in RQ2 horse archery was treated simply as bow skill when on a horse, which could lead to the odd situation where you were worse with a bow off a horse. Cheers David Cake ------------------------------ End of RQ Rules Digest: V1 #31 ****************************** This is the bottom of the RuneQuest Rules Digest. RuneQuest is a trademark of Avalon Hill, and Glorantha is a trademark of Chaosium. 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. Send electronic mail to Majordomo@hops.wharton.upenn.edu with "help" in the body of the message for subscription information on this and other mailing lists.