Dare I ask?

[Kloster]

Originally Posted by Rurik

The free int loophole involved storing all your spells in bound spirits so you had massive ammounts of free int, therefore being able to to cast spells with huge durations and magnitudes - usually to cast powerful buffs on the entire party that lasted months or years.
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It is not a loophole. That is still a max Free INT of 18 (19 if the character is also Humakti). And with max 19 points of manipulation, you can have long duration OR high intensities OR high ranges, but not more.


Runequestement votre,

Kloster

[Kloster]

Originally Posted by Nightshade

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But the net effect was that sorcery was completely lobsided, in the same way that original D&D magic was, and unlike either of the other two RQ3 magic systems; at the bottom end it was next to useless and at the top end it was such a generic force multiplier that it mattered more than almost anything anyone else in the party could do.

No, because to reach the level of power needed to reach such effects, divine magic users will have sacrified for 50 or 100 POW worth of reusable divine magic, and are equally powerful.
In my group, I am the Sorcery user (because I'm the only one with the GM which ever bothered to read the rules), and I'm not by far the more powerful magic user or buffer, even after several years of play.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

[Kloster]

Originally Posted by Rurik

I think we are pretty much arguing the same point here, but hey, what is that to stop me.

Sorcerers in RQ3 did become dominant, but not totally though - dispel magic works just as well on 20 year duration spells as shorter ones, and Divine casters could easily access 5 or 6 point Dispel Magic spells (I may have the precise spell name wrong - but you get the idea).

But in the end high level sorcerery is not that much fun. All the augmenting and so on a chore - and as a GM you need to specifically go after the sorcerer(s), and design your combats around them (making sure you have enough counter magic cababilities and then peeling away the magical defenses). I rarely had sorcerers in the 90% + range in a bunch of their skills, but even at that level they become the focal point of the game in many ways. Not unsurmountable, but the dominant factor.

Not for us. We found that it is easier to buff up with, guess what, spirit magic. You need a magic spirit, a few INT spirit, and hop. And Strength gives 3 points of STR per point. Sorcery can be used to buff up, and can be abused, but all the magical systems can.


Runequestement votre,

Kloster

[Kloster]

Originally Posted by RMS

While I accept that Sorcery definitely had it's issues (mostly to do with being too much accounting IMO), I disagree about this point. Divine Magic still trumps it on the top end, at least for overall power at "the point of attack". Sorcery has the advantage of being up long term, but it's upper end is nowhere near what a loaded up Divine user can get with unlimited Shields, Spirit Blocks, Dispel Magics, Extensions (negating the longterm advantages), and especially infinitely stackable damage boosting spells, like Slash and Crush. Of course, none of it balances out completely, but RQ is that way across the board, which is one of its charms IMO.
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Completely agree here.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

[Kloster]

Originally Posted by RMS

Sure Slash, Crush, True Sword, etc. weren't available to everyone, but that isn't the point. The point is that they completely trump anything available to a sorcery user, straight up. Yes, the sorcerer has some flexibility but the fact is that they can't stand up in a straight fight against such characters. Also, the fact that anyone with a fair amount of those divine spells has an automatic divine intervention that the sorcerer completely lacks can't be underestimated. Also, while those spells aren't available to everyone, they're available to a disproportionate number of PC types. Heck, I don't even think those are the most powerful spell users in the game. The divine followers who also get to become a shaman, getting all the advantages of both can get truly gross pretty easily, but they're still fun. Even a basic shaman can wander around picking up some pretty power divine spells from various spirit cults, not to mention unparalleled access to very powerful otherworld creatures.

In addition, it's not like every sect has every single boosting spell (or similar deal) available. Those are as restricted to certain sects as spirit and divine magic is to certain cults. It's a GM/world problem, not a game problem, if sorcerers are allowed to pick up any and every spell listed without restrictions.



Of course they can't cause identical results, which is exactly the point of having different magic types. Sure it requires a lot of divine magic, but since it's against a sorcerer (apparently) with a lot of very high skills it seems like a wash there: same time and effort to get to that point. I'm not arguing that the sorcerer isn't powerful, isn't going to most likely be very broad in ability with a lot of options to bring to the table. However, the fact is (from a lot of experience here) that straight up a good number of divine magic users are more powerful. A sorcerer is inherently limited by their INT (max 18 for a human) in manipulations of a spell. A divine magic user has no limits to spell power outside of POW gain. In general, the sorcerer can trade off about 8/10 into intensity and duration to get the best longterm to level tradeoff. It's very easy to get divine magic that trumps that.



I can think of a dozen or so cults off the top of my head that can easily generate the list of divine magic to do this. That's just combat oriented cults. On a practical level, for the average person in the game world, there are a whole lot of nature affecting cults with very powerful magic that affect large areas or day-to-day lives in a way sorcery has no ability to affect at all. You shouldn't have to do anything special to create powerful divine users to challenge sorcerers. Of course, they shouldn't be the only challenges either. Powerful creatures, other sorcerers, etc. are also threats. In my longterm RQ campaigns (w/ very powerful characters), the threats and scale has generally escalated so that the characters are either being challenged by other "heroes", the characters are dealing with numbers, or often the character have ended up dealing more with political/leadership issues rather than one-on-one combats. However, we've had several very powerful sorcerers with significant support in the games, and in each case powerful divine users were able to deal with them. The only real issue at that kind of level is that combat tends to turn into "all or nothing": whoever penetrates the other's defenses first, deals a killing blow. (I'll reiterate here that the ability to get 1d10 DI is absolutely huge at this point.)

Completely agreed here. I have the same experience.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

[Kloster]

Originally Posted by Nightshade

Actually, he can, because in practice even most such characters don't have enough of those spells to trump him. Yeah, if someone happens to have Shield 10 up, nobody much is getting past him short of a crit, damage boosting or not, but most people don't have Shield 10, even most rune priests. As such, it doesn't matter what its theoretical capability is if you never see it, and even if you do see it, it doesn't matter that one character can do it as much as it is that six or eight characters all have Damage Boost 10 in addition to whatever else they have on them. And by the time you're seeing equivelents to anyone who is even vaguely likely to have Shield 10, that's what you're probably talking about.

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I'm using RQIII in Glorantha, but is not world specific. And in my experience, Shield 10 is far from rare, when (or even before) your sorcerer reach that kind of level. And a shaman can easily have a strength 20 launched. Sure, it will not be up full time, but will be launched by a bound spirit (with over 100% casting chance) and provide +60 STR. For the same cost, your shaman is launching a bladesharp 20.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

[Rurik]

Wow. Take a weekend away and I miss like a gazillion pages of sorcery love hate (including an appearance by Ray himself ). Lots to respond to, but I'll pick up where I left off...

Originally Posted by Rurik

And honestly I've held that belief until a few weeks ago, when due to this interweb thingy people started telling me it was all borked up. But the fact is I played with it, and used it, and calculated costs and strike ranks and durations, and even liked it. I schemed to abuse it as a player, and worked hard as a GM to challenge players who got good at it, but I'd accepted that was how it was. I know people griped about it (too complex, too weak then powerful), but always dealt with it, and it never broke any games - though in the end it did make them a bit of a chore (but hey, that is roleplaying a sorcerer for you - numbers and logic and study and preperation, all work and no play...).

Originally Posted by Nightshade

Well, I have to point out that part of that is that you don't seem to consider having to bend over backwards to deal with it breaking a game. That's almost the definition of it, to me.

I don't think that is a fair criticism of sorcery. I can't think of any game where as a GM I don't have to do more work to challenge characters once they become powerful - especially with spellcasters. I don't just declare a game broken when characters get powerful - I work harder to come up with good challenges that are not too easy but not impossible to overcome. I'd always managed to do that with RQ3 Sorcery. Admittedly it was more work than dealing with a powerful Divine caster because the underlying mechanics are simpler with Divine magic, but I considered it part of my 'job' as a GM, and was well worth the effort when the result was exciting gameplay.

So again, for fear of sounding like a broken record, I prefer MRQ Sorcery for its' balance, easier to use mechanics and bookeeping (i.e. playability), and the fact that it makes the laborious long term augmentation process pretty much obsolete, I don't by any means consider RQ3 sorcery unplayable.

[Rurik]

Originally Posted by Rurik

The free int loophole involved storing all your spells in bound spirits so you had massive ammounts of free int, therefore being able to to cast spells with huge durations and magnitudes - usually to cast powerful buffs on the entire party that lasted months or years.

Originally Posted by Kloster

It is not a loophole. That is still a max Free INT of 18 (19 if the character is also Humakti). And with max 19 points of manipulation, you can have long duration OR high intensities OR high ranges, but not more.

Well, as I've said I always considered it a feature, not a bug (to use a software analogy), but people who have gamed with/worked for the game designers keep saying it otherwise. I have no problem conceptually with powerful sorcerers walking around with a bunch of spells up.

It is only really Duration and Magnitude you have to divide your free INT between to do the long term augments, so you can cast at a decent magnitude for a decent amount of time. Players will waste the time doing it - I've seen it first hand and seen it complained about a LOT online lately (recently on RPG.net, now here, and it seems to be starting over at Mongoose).

[Nightshade]

Originally Posted by Kloster

No, because to reach the level of power needed to reach such effects, divine magic users will have sacrified for 50 or 100 POW worth of reusable divine magic, and are equally powerful.

Not really. I saw sorcerers able to do this at the point where most divine mages had perthaps a dozen points in sacrificed power. You didn't need that much power to make it work at the sorcery end (a few enchantments and bindings) and even the skills didn't have to be overwhelminly high 70-80% were plenty.

[Nightshade]

Originally Posted by Rurik

I don't think that is a fair criticism of sorcery. I can't think of any game where as a GM I don't have to do more work to challenge characters once they become powerful - especially with spellcasters. I don't just declare a game

It isn't doing more work that's the issue; its doing _specific_ work, that was needed for sorcerers and not groups without them, _including_ groups that had rather powerful priests and one or two with shaman. That's exactly what told me something was wrong; that I didn't have the same issues with practioners of the other two magic systems.