[RMS]

Originally Posted by Nightshade

Easy. Have a spell that does the same thing but removes objects (such as D&D Disintegrate) or does it in an area. That's more power than some people want in their game, but its still a higher level and what some people expect.

Except there's always that Saving Throw and it's unaffected by the caster's power. (OK, if I'm wrong there, let me know. That's as I recall D&D from way back. I didn't think the magic system had changed significantly in the latest incarnation.) We've had a character running around in our campaign that can pretty much call in a single kill on the other side's most powerful character with a pretty good chance of succeeding. In D&D, it's generally impossible to instant kill another like-leveled PC. You can do lots of collateral damage, kill off lower level and nonlevel PCs with impunity, but the game is carefully balanced so you specifically can't oneshot other experienced PCs and NPCs.

Then we frankly, just disagree. Its not like I haven't run a lot of RQ over the years, but its magic system is clearly _not_ up to handling the upper range of power that a game system like D&D or some others do. That doesn't mean you couldn't make a magic system that would, but the extent one used in RQ isn't it.

It really depends on the world you run in I suspect. Those of us running Glorantha campaigns with lots of magic floating around everywhere tend to see this possibility where others who've run in lower magic worlds (or lower magic takes on Glorantha even) have a different view. That's all a good thing too because RQ handles both pretty darn well - one of it's charms IMO.

Then again, we just disagree. I'm still not seeing much that really even compares to a D&D Fireball (which isn't particularly any less likely to kill someone when first acquired than a Thunderbolt, which wouldn't expect to kill a typical RQ3 PC either (though it'd probably set him up for someone to finish him off)), let alone to things like Chain Lightning, Disintegrate, Meteor Storm and so on. To be honest, I'm a little baffled at your position on it.

My position is that the differences are cosmetic and appearances rather than actual fact. Everything you mention is very deadly to low level creatures*, but not to powerful characters in D&D. In D&D low level characters are essentially background, so spells like you mention above take lots of those out and look impressive to some people's eyes. However, they have far less chance of taking out powerful adversaries (ie. the meat of the conflict) than RQ spells have of doing similar. That's my position.

* Low level is obviously relative to the level of the campaign here.

Edit: Went back and looked, and you're part right: Thunderbolt can be stacked to hit multiple targets (it in fact appears to be essentially unique in that regard for 3 point spells). However, at that point you're still tying up an _enormous_ amount of Divine Magic points to be able to effect more than 2-3 targets.

Luckily I read your whole post before responding to this part. I do have a PC running around in my game with plenty of divine magic to both fill the skys with clouds and call down multiple Thunderbolts. It's true that he can't send them all on one opponent, but he can easily bring two down per round on one opponent doing an average of 21 hp damage which can't be defended against in any way. Sure it's a lot of points, but as I've pointed out before it's very easy to have RQ3 character with 50, 75, even 100+ points of reusable divine magic floating around. Priests can easily get multiple POW increases per year just from leading services. Add in casting magic, fighting spirits, etc. and they can pick up a lot of divine magic in a hurry. Then add in a few bound spirits and an allied spirit and they can become really deadly. (Also, note that since allied spirits have access to a priests magic, you can double up Sun Spear, Thunderbolt, etc. by having the priest and the allied spirit both use one casting at the same time on the same target. That'll kill pretty much any human to troll sized creature in the game in one shot, normal or very powerful.)