From: owner-rq-rules-digest To: rq-rules-digest@hops.wharton.upenn.edu Subject: RQ Rules Digest: V3 #64 Reply-To: rq-rules Errors-To: owner-rq-rules-digest Precedence: bulk Content-Return: Prohibited Return-Path: owner-rq-rules-digest RQ Rules Digest: Thursday, 12 September 1996 Volume 03 : Number 064 TABLE OF CONTENTS Alain RAMEAU Armor vs Critical Paolo Guccione RQ demo in Italy Teri & Jon mdrstu@westga.edu RQ Psionics Nigel Smith Sorcery Nigel Smith Fireblade Harry Bowman Criticals, Game Balance, Shield Harry Bowman Partial successes Frederic J-M Moulin Sorcery Frederic J-M Moulin The ROOLZ lawer's corner Frederic J-M Moulin Partial successes albert@emerald.cybergate.com RQ Rules Digest: V3 #61 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. When paraphrasing you demonstrate exactly how well you understand the point someone was trying to make. 4. There is no number 4. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Alain_RAMEAU@total.fr (Alain RAMEAU) Date: Thu, 12 Sep 1996 09:15:59 +0200 Subject: Armor vs Critical I was happy to see other people (Frederic Moulin for exemple), played the critical/armor protection rule the same way as I do, i.e magical armor protects against critical too. That means that the rules are not clear on that point and can be understood different ways ! I agree with Davis Cake that the balance of the game is important and that his rule (critical goes through magical protection) avoid too powerful fighters. On the other hand, it is always possible to cast a Dspel or Dismiss Magic on the adversary during fighting. The rule used by David could be extended to say that a critical of spell casting could allow a disruption, palsy, ... and the like spells to hit even against a high level Shield or Countermagic. Why not ? Even if everybody can use the rule he likes, I'd like to know (if someone can answer) what was the essence of such rule at the beginning of RQ. ------------------------------ From: Paolo Guccione Date: Thu, 12 Sep 1996 11:08:42 +0200 Subject: RQ demo in Italy A RuneQuest/Glorantha demo will be run in Rome on Saturday, September 14, during the annual gaming Convention sponsored by Federgiochi. It will feature: - - Safelstran setting excerpted from my campaign - - Rokari, Henotheist and Orlanthi PCs - - full colored adventure maps drawn by the well-known "Tales of the Reaching Moon" artist, Dario Corallo I hope this can attract the (few ?) Gloranthaphiles and RQ-fans in Italy. - -- [ Paolo Guccione ] ------------------------------ From: Teri & Jon Date: Thu, 12 Sep 1996 08:49:37 -0400 Subject: RQ Psionics Does anyone know where I can find the RQ Psionics rules that were here a while back? I haven't gotten a response and this is my third post about them, thanks in advance. ------------------------------ From: ns10005@cam.ac.uk (Nigel Smith) Date: Thu, 12 Sep 1996 14:06:13 +0100 Subject: Re: Sorcery Albert wrote: >The duration of sorcery spells is the biggest problem with the >sorcery system. Becuase of it, everyone in the party ends up with a >Damage Boosting on almost every weapon they own and everyone has >damage resistence up at all times. Granted, because of the duration, >they can only put a few points of these speels up, but it is still >unbalancing. Damage Res isn't too much of a problem because of the "if overcome, all damage hurts" rule. Damage Boosting - "Sorry, can't let you into our town/inn/temple/whatever while such obviously offensive magic is present" or "You pretend to be a follower of our lord while openly displaying the gifts of the godless - ha! No runespells for you, matey!" etc, etc. Those who are always tooled up for trouble will be treated as trouble-makers. I'd apply this to magic, as well. Nigel ------------------------------ From: ns10005@cam.ac.uk (Nigel Smith) Date: Thu, 12 Sep 1996 14:06:11 +0100 Subject: Re: Fireblade I kept meaning to ask this: > Amd while I was at it, I checked up about Fireblade and Truesword. >It says that Fireblade 'replaces the normal damage' and Truesword 'doubles >the normal damage'. I take this to mean that Fireblade makes Truesword >useless, but I guess you could interpret it differently. Depends if it means "Replace 1D8 with 3D6, but carry on as normal" which I, unfortunately, did. Now one party member does 18+3D6+damage bonus on an impale with a dagger - whoops. The problem being that, while Firearrow states that impales are not possible, Fireblade does not. I forgot the golden rule - if in doubt, always plump for the lowest possible effect. Now I've got to break it gently to the player :-) Nigel ------------------------------ From: Harry Bowman Date: Thu, 12 Sep 1996 09:10:30 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Criticals, Game Balance, Shield Thanks, all for pointing out my bad error in reading the Shield rules. I try to imagine how the spells work, and had conceived of shield and protection as force fields, sort of. Anyway, my rules variant has been that these protect against criticals, and I have had little problem with game balance. Here's why: 1. Damage boosting magic. Bladesharp, True Weapon, etc. add damage, even to little weapons, so my experience is that a person with a few points of shield is still vulnerable to damage. (Magic point boosting allows for cracking through shield with spells.) Ex: 1d8+1+1d4 broadsword swung by my Orlanthi farmer PC - averages 8 points of damage. A person with 5 pt armor would have 3 points get through, a pretty serious hit. Protection 3 or shield 2 would completely stop the shot. But, add Bladesharp 3, and the balance is restored. Truesword adds a mean of 5.5 damage, and would balance shield 2 (almost shield 3). 2. Dispel/Dismiss/Neutralize Magic. If I understand this correctly, 1 point of the spirit version (dispel?) will counteract 1 point of protection. 2 points will take out 1 point of shield. 1 point of Dismiss will remove 2 pts of protection, or 1 pt of shield. So, if stuff is bouncing off your opponent, you can target his defensive magic at equal cost. 3. Creativity. I ran my PC's against a human sized opponent who was invulnerable to fire, electricity, all types of blows, etc. In the end my PC's suffocated the enemy, by tackling and then holding their foe's head underwater. In a similar case, a PC netted a foe and glued the net to the bottom of a grotto. (PC's could breath water.) Even with large amounts of protective magic, my PC's and their foes routinely get chopped, so I don't mind. My players have learned such lessons as: Ganging up and tackling foes, sticking together to avoid this happening to them, going for mounts instead of well protected riders, and learning dispel magic. Thanks, and I'm sure I'm wrong, but we all have fun. Hal Bowman hbowman@morgan.edu ------------------------------ From: Harry Bowman Date: Thu, 12 Sep 1996 09:31:11 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Partial successes Hello, The glorantha list has gotten onto a rules thread, on partial successes. This really means differing levels of success. The most obvious form would be in some sort of artistic situation, in which a "success" might mean playing a tune on a pipe decently well. But how to differentiate the performance of a beginner who gets the notes and cadence correct from that of a master, who moves the audience to tears. One possibility is the use of specials and criticals. I mean, maestro might practice 3 hours a day, 7 days a week. At 21 hours a week, maestro would get a research check every 5 weeks. With a skill bonus of 10%, the way I understand it, maestro would succeed every 50 weeks or so, even after reaching 100%. Year by year, maestro would get better, and the chance of a special gets bigger. But! the rules don't allow this, as active skills can't be increased beyond 75% through research. I challenge this, and argue that practicing one's flute is at least as valuable as playing in public. I offer as evidence the fact that RW flautists practice, even though they are really very good. I know what these rules were intended to do, but for art I just disagree. Personally, I think that using specials and criticals to do this is too hard and does not work to show differences in quality. Another possibility is by using chance modifiers. To play a simple tune decently well, use the straight chance. The player might take penalties in an attempt to be more expressive, or a piece might be assigned a penalty for difficulty. A third possibility is to use the amount the PC succeeded by or failed by as a measure. Joe the novice with a Play Pipe of 20% succeeds by rolling an 18. He succeeded by 2 points and did OK. On a really good day, the player rolls a 2, and succeeds by 18 points. Joe sounds pretty good. The fact that this is a special, and that a 1 is a critical is a problem, maybe, so we'll skip it for now. Maestro Matt, with a skill of 97, rolls a 51% and succeeds by 46%. Matt's success sounds much greater than Joe's, even when Joe rolls a 2. The problem with this approach is that the linear probability system used in RQ makes for lousy quality control. Just some thoughts. I've run into this issue in lots of situation where my PC's are using mundane skillls. Thanks, Hal Bowman hbowman@morgan.edu ------------------------------ From: Frederic J-M Moulin Date: Thu, 12 Sep 1996 10:31:05 -0400 Subject: Re: Sorcery >The duration of sorcery spells is the biggest problem with the >sorcery system. Becuase of it, everyone in the party ends up with a >Damage Boosting on almost every weapon they own and everyone has >damage resistence up at all times. Granted, because of the duration, >they can only put a few points of these speels up, but it is still >unbalancing. Sandy's system solve that problem. The way I personnally used to do before it wasto make each point of duration use free INT for as long as the spell was running. For example a duration 6 spell effectively reduced the free INT of the sorcerer by 6 for the time of the spell. But I like the vows system better: it's a lot more fun to have really weird sorcerers, and it gives magician a sort of equivalent to the gift/gease system that in my experience was very appreciated by players. Frederic ------------------------------ From: Frederic J-M Moulin Date: Thu, 12 Sep 1996 12:32:16 -0400 Subject: The ROOLZ lawer's corner >>>>3. Shield: Can one critical past it (and how?) ? >>> Yep. Criticals ignore Shield. And Protection. And almost all other >>>defensive magics and armour >>Could I have references for that statement: is this a local rule or did I >>miss something... In the case of Cake versus Moulin: In view of page 55 of the RQ3 player's book: "If a player rolls a critical success....past any armor or other protection the target has and do damage to what the protection should have guarded" and page 21 of the RQ3 Magic book:"Protection...It acts IN EVERY WAY like normal armor" It appears clear to the court that the spell protection should only be envisioned as the magical hardening of a piece of armor and not in anyway as a protective field surrounding the character. Therefore the court sentence Frederic Moulin to a public apology toward the honorable David Cake, the immediate information of all the players affiliated with his campaign of his misinterpretation of The Roolz, correction of the aforementioned mistake, and due compensation to all the monsters unduly deprived of their righteous kill by the aforementioned mistake. In view of the page 36 of the RQ3 magic book: "...Each point of Shield gives the wearer 2 points of MAGICAL ARMOR..." It appears clear to us that the spell Shield should fall under the same court ruling as the spell Protection. (I should have settle out of court ;-) ------------------------------ From: Frederic J-M Moulin Date: Thu, 12 Sep 1996 12:50:00 -0400 Subject: Re: Partial successes >One possibility is the use of specials and criticals. I mean, maestro >might practice 3 hours a day, 7 days a week. At 21 hours a week, maestro >would get a research check every 5 weeks. With a skill bonus of 10%, >the way I understand it, maestro would succeed every 50 weeks or so, even >after reaching 100%. Year by year, maestro would get better, and the >chance of a special gets bigger. But! the rules don't allow this, as >active skills can't be increased beyond 75% through research. I >challenge this.... The RQ3 player's Book, page 38, says "...Any skill listed on the character sheet with an experience check box has a TRAINING limit of 75%..." However, there is nowhere mention of such a limitation in the Research sections. As a matter of fact, the same page precise that "...For skills on the adventurer sheet which have no experience-check box: They are academic and informational in nature...and can be learned only through training and research..." If your hypothesis was right, these academic skills could never exceed 75%, since experience is not allowed for them. I suspect that the 75% limitation is for training only and does not apply to research, which implies actual practice of the skill and an attempt to learn from that practice, much in the same way as experience works. There is apparently no need to challenge this part of the Holy Roolz ;-) Frederic ------------------------------ From: albert@emerald.cybergate.com Date: Thu, 12 Sep 1996 09:49:41 +0000 Subject: Re: RQ Rules Digest: V3 #61 > Date: Thu, 12 Sep 1996 22:53:00 +0800 > To: RQ-Rules@hops.wharton.upenn.edu > From: davidc@cs.uwa.edu.au (David Cake) > Subject: Re: RQ Rules Digest: V3 #61 > Reply-to: RQ-Rules@hops.wharton.upenn.edu > >>>3. Shield: Can one critical past it (and how?) ? > >> > >> Yep. Criticals ignore Shield. And Protection. And almost all other > >>defensive magics and armour > >Could I have references for that statement: is this a local rule or did I > >miss something... > > You missed something. In RQ3 in the players book magical armour > protection is described as being equivalent to armour. I can't find my > Players book offhand (so I guess its conceivable I'll be wrong and look > like an idiot, but I don't think so), but I am pretty sure that it is in > the doing damage section of that book. > In RQ2, the spell description of Protection specifically states > that it does not protect vs. criticals. Shield is described as giving two > points of Protection. Don't they indicate that criticals ignore protection spells in one of the combat examples? > Amd while I was at it, I checked up about Fireblade and Truesword. > It says that Fireblade 'replaces the normal damage' and Truesword 'doubles > the normal damage'. I take this to mean that Fireblade makes Truesword > useless, but I guess you could interpret it differently. Or truesword could double the fireblade damage since fireblade replaces the normal damage and truesword doulbles the normal damage. > >I my campaign, criticals do not ignore magical spells, > >which form a complete if invisible barrier around the caster, and thus have > >no "weak points". > > > In your campaign you can do whatever you want. However, may I urge > you to look at this issue not from the point of view of (very subjective) > reasoning about how magic might work and its possible abscence of 'weak > points' etc., and think about game balance? If magic does not protect > against criticals, everyone (well, except heroes and iron mostali) needs to > worry about attacks from any opponent. I think this is an excellent feature > of RQ. I agree. A bunch of trollkin slinging stones at a runelord can injure him if they get lucky. This is a great feature of RQ and is one of the things I hated about AD&D. Players were immune to orcs at certain AC's. > >> The sole exceptions that I know of are - > >>a) the Mostali spell Stabilise Armour (?) is specially designed to make > >>armour protect against criticals. > >The mostali spell allows a material armor, which normally is ignored by a > >critical, to become insensitive to criticals, possibly by magically > >"sealing" the weak spots. > > It does not appear to have any physical effect on the armour in the > spell description - I would think it is simply an enchantment which causes > it to always perform its job perfectly, which means getting in the way of > incoming weapons. > > >Note that a normally enchanted armor does still > >have joints or articulations where a blade can find a non-protected spot. > > > Actually, most Gloranthan armour being a far cry from full Gothic > plate, it generally has great gaping holes in it. Greaves protect on side > of the arm only, helmets are open faced in general, and 'joints' are > usually gaps. The difference between such armour and articulated plate is > averaged out to a higher AP value in part, and largely ignored. > > >>b) in RQ:AIG, Damage Resistance worked against criticals. However, as most > >>criticals are always specials and thus do lots of damage, the chances are > >>that criticals would blow through Damage Resistance unhindered anyway. > > >True for most other spells: I do not have in my campaign any Runelord with > >shield 27 ;-) and so since most protections are around 4-6, they are of > >little help against a "maximum possible damages plus rolled strenght bonus". > > No. You misunderstand - unhindered means exactly that. A Shield 4 > would still stop 8 points of AP by your rules - a Damage Resistance that > fails stops nothing at all. > Think about this from game balance. If Shield worked against > criticals, then someone with Shield 4 can afford to ignore any attack that > does less than 8 points completely. But even if someone has a good suit of > armour and a Damage Resist 10 (a very good combination in RQ:AIG, though > difficult to get), they still need to worry about criticals from someone > with an 8 point attack - its got a 40% chance of sailing straight through, > doing 8 points of damage, and taking out a location. > And as for it not being an issue in your game - its much better to > make the situation clear before it becomes an issue than at a later point > when people have invested POW in the spells and rely on the way they work. > > > > > >> Actually, I suspect the Dragonnewt magic of Draconic Armour also > >>protects against criticals, but as all it does is transfer damage from HPs > >>to MPs, its of limited use. Its also virtually unavailable to PCs, of > >>course. > >Here we go, another bunch of incredible NPCs "a la Dorastor" ;-) > > I mention it only because I intend to introduce my PCs to some > Dragon Magic quite soon, when they plunder an EWF tomb (one of the players > has an unusual magic item which will help them decipher things). It will > indeed give them some nifty powers, and also subtly degrade their > personality until they become useless drones, if overused. And also attract > much unwelcome attention. I like to throw this sort of temptation at my > players. > > Cheers > > David > > > Albert Ramirez, J.D. : Deep Space Nine: To boldly stay where albert@cybergate.com : no one has stayed before. "Trucha con la lucha" : ------------------------------ End of RQ Rules Digest: V3 #64 ****************************** This is the bottom of the RuneQuest Rules Digest. RuneQuest is a trademark of Avalon Hill, and Glorantha is a trademark of Chaosium. 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