Quote:
Originally Posted by Nightshade
I'm not particularly convinced this is true when compared to many post 4th level spells, honestly. The limitation usually is the fact that there's a functional cap on most rune magic in that there's no fixed power spells about 3 points; that means unless you're writing your rune magic to no common standard, there's a cap beyond how powerful a rune spell can go, and given that the exemplars here tend to be things like Slay Living (its been a while so I may be confusing the name with a spell from another system--the spell that's usually only reusable by Humakti in Glorantha) or Sunspear, those are functionally the top end of the power level, and those aren't compareable to 6th or higher level spells in D&D, or some of the more potent magic that can be found in other systems.
|
You lost me in your logic above, but I'll try to answer what I understand. Severe Spirit is the spell you're looking for and it's hard to imagine anything much more powerful. A single POW vs. POW roll leads to automatic death for someone at a range outside of any physical attack. Even if the caster fails to overcome POW, the target takes 1d6 damage, enough to drop human sized creatures.
Sunspear and Thunderbolt have tremendous power. You don't even get a Saving Throw in RQ. A Thunderbolt can be stacked, there's no armor protection, no magical protection that works against it. It can be use on one target or split between multiple targets. There's no upper limit on it. I don't recall if Sunspear has the same ability.
If you want large area effect, there are Earthquake spells, Cloud Call, etc. They're hard to build to enough power to have large scale effects, but it can be done.
I understand how someone can mistake those as lacking in power, but I don't buy that they actually are lacking power. In many ways they're more powerful than most D&D spells because there's no ability for the target to resist the spell at all in many cases. In D&D you always get some sort of Saving Throw and it's not reduced by the caster's power.
I think the biggest problem is just that the divine magic is spread out and is a very different take on magic than learning a bunch of discrete spells ala D&D. Also, I don't necessarily expect everyone to prefer to RQ take on magic either, but I don't buy that it's less powerful, especially in regard to the physical power level of PCs and NPCs in the game.