Dare I ask?

[Nightshade]

Originally Posted by NickMiddleton

Sorry, but that's utter nonsense - I've been running and playing RQIII for twenty years and, until a couple of years ago, none of those games had been set in Glorantha (and precious few of the RQII games I played or ran prior to that were Gloranthan either). The rules as described in the RQIII deluxe Boxed set or soft back book (or now in the BRP monographs) assume the default setting of mythic earth and I mostly used them for homebrew settings - but I've played and run a fair bit of Sorcery "by the book"...

Yup. The Glorantha book wasn't even close to enough to run Glorantha from, and it in no way defined the game.

[Nightshade]

Originally Posted by RMS

Nice attempt to change the situation after the fact! I always find it amusing when people go for that tact on the internet... Since Glorantha is the default world and the only one with any details, you pretty much have to stick with it when discussing RQ rules. If you want to go off on a tangent for

No, we don't. We have to stick with what came in the RQ3 deluxe box, which was the magic rules, and a few stripped down cult writeups (which _were_ in there to the degree the rules needed them; they gave the spirit magic taught, the special divine magic taught, and the necessary skills.)

The Gloranthan material has nothing to do with anyone not running Glorantha, and is not part of the core rules of RQ3 (edit: barring the very limited material in the Glorantha book, which gives no extra spells, cult writeups nor any of the Gloranthan-specific sorcery addenda); I was willing to give a few non-core spells for the sake of argument, but I'm in no way required to assume other Gloranthaisms that are irrelevant to the way many people ran the game, and I'd kindly suggest if you think I'm goalpost moving to refuse to do so that you take your attitude to someone else.

[Kloster]

Originally Posted by Nightshade

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.

To be able to reach 1 year duration, you need 16 Free INT. At that level, INTensity is at least 5 to count. With a 18 INT, entirely free, you need to have spent 4 points to the matrix (1 for the spell plus 3 for the 3 points of manipulation). The case described counts 2 characteristics, plus damage boosting and 1 or 2 others.
To get that, you need a 18 INT and 20 points of POW spent on matrix, plus the stored MP (by creating matrix, around 10 more POW spent). And your sorcerer will not be using POW only for that.
According my experience, he will begin to be active at that level of efficiency when having spent around 50 POW, but I agree that, by concentrating, he could start at 30.
With 30 points of divine magic, a priest is also quite versatile and powerful.
With 50 points, he is very powerful.
And the shaman can also be monstruous with such amount of POW spent.
He can:
- spend 2 POW for creating a Magic spirit binding matrix.
- fill the matrix with a spirit of at least 10 INT.
- order the spirit to forget his known spells.
- teach it bladesharp 10.
- add a condition that allows only him to control the spirit and orders the spirit to cast bladesharp when a certain word is pronounced.
- start again with strength 10, protection 10 and coordination 10.
- spend 30 POW to increase his fetch and becoming by the way quite immune to most magical attacks.
- spend 8 points on various matrix.
- fill up his fetch with spirits.

When the command word is spoken, wait 1 MR and the shaman gets +30 STR, +10 DEX, 10 points of armor in each location, +50% to his attacks and +10 to his damage inflicted. Who said the sorceror is overpowered?

As I already told, all 3 systems have their advantages and their disadvantages, but the sorcery is not overpowered.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

[Kloster]

Originally Posted by Nightshade

Yup. The Glorantha book wasn't even close to enough to run Glorantha from, and it in no way defined the game.

Agreed here.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

[Kloster]

Originally Posted by Nightshade

No, we don't. We have to stick with what came in the RQ3 deluxe box, which was the magic rules, and a few stripped down cult writeups (which _were_ in there to the degree the rules needed them; they gave the spirit magic taught, the special divine magic taught, and the necessary skills.)

The Gloranthan material has nothing to do with anyone not running Glorantha, and is not part of the core rules of RQ3 (edit: barring the very limited material in the Glorantha book, which gives no extra spells, cult writeups nor any of the Gloranthan-specific sorcery addenda); I was willing to give a few non-core spells for the sake of argument, but I'm in no way required to assume other Gloranthaisms that are irrelevant to the way many people ran the game, and I'd kindly suggest if you think I'm goalpost moving to refuse to do so that you take your attitude to someone else.

Even if using only RQIII deluxe, sorcerers are not overpowered compared to the 2 other magic systems when a similar amount of time, money and POW points have been spent. Characters will be different, have different strength and weaknesses, but none will change the balance of the game by his sole presence.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

[Kloster]

Originally Posted by Atgxtg

My players usually weren't savvy enough to figure out neat stuff like that too. Once I had someone who was going into the desert shell out some money for a long lasting spell.

BTW, I didn't catch this before, but a long term Haste spell in RQ3 is a great way to disable someone. A INT2 spell would knock someone out in under 10 minutes. And keep them out for the duration!

So that's how Yrkoon did it!

Yes, haste is one of my favorite weapons.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

[Nightshade]

Originally Posted by Kloster

To be able to reach 1 year duration, you need 16 Free

A year is usually overkill; a month is usually more than sufficient to get everything set up. That requires a 12 Int.

INT. At that level, INTensity is at least 5 to count. With a 18 INT, entirely free, you need to have spent 4 points to the matrix (1 for the spell plus 3 for the 3 points of manipulation). The case described counts 2 characteristics, plus damage boosting and 1 or 2 others.

You've assumed a longer duration than needed; you've also forgotten the ability to apply Intensity and/or Duration to enchantments.

As I already told, all 3 systems have their advantages and their disadvantages, but the sorcery is not overpowered.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

I think you're not looking at all the options, honestly. I wasn't speaking hypothetically when I said this started being a problem quite early; all it requires is someone who gets Int and Power spirits early on; once he also gets to the point where he can do Enchantments it ramps up quite quickly. And since a sorcerer doesn't have a lot he needs to do with Power sacrifices otherwise (unlike a priest or shaman) there's nothing much stopping him from doing that.

As I've said before, either the spirits or the enchantments by themselves would have been problematic; the combination was quickly overpowering with the system.

[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 my experience. We never saw sorcerors being dominant. We even never saw sorcerors being the major source of augmentation magic.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

[Kloster]

Originally Posted by deleriad

...
I played in a Dwarf campaign adapted from the ICE Moria sourcebooks where our use of sorcery broke the campaign. Effectively perpetual damage boost and damage resistance plus Skin of Life and a lot of armoring and strengthening enchantments meant that dwarfs just marched underwater. The GM had not thought through just what sorcery would do. I also ran Griffen Island and had great fun with Halcyon. After a while, I realised that real sorcerors were, basically, best as NPCs.
...

Except that armoring and strengthening enchantments are available for the same cost to all magic users.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

[Kloster]

Originally Posted by Lord Twig

...
As for powerful sorcerers in RQ3. We found the best way to deal with them was to hit them with a sword. Preferably with a Truesword and bladesharp, backed with a Strength spell. If you had a sorcerer of your own, a little Damage Boost goes a long way. Usually it could do enough to overcome the sorcerer's Damage Resistance, and if it wasn't a critical hit would finish him. (Or just about anyone else for that matter.)

The massive range on sorcery spells wasn't useful unless you could somehow see the target. So you cast Sight Projection. The problem there is that a simple detect spell let you know it was there. Long duration Mystic Vision usually covered that, but if someone suddenly started choking for no reason Detect Magic, or better yet, Find Enemy was the first spell cast. Then a quick magic attack at the sensor went directly to the head of the offending sorcerer.

Oh, I guess one house rule we had helped with things. You could add additional magic points for defeating Counterspell, Spell Resistance, Shield and such at no extra time. So if said Smother spell was directed at a Sword of Humakt the sorcerer could expect a Sever Spirit backed with a crap ton of magic points to come flying his way almost immediately.

It would work something like, Surprise Round cast Smother. Round two Strike Rank 1, Sword's allied spirit casts Find Enemy, Strike Rank 2, Sword cast Sever Spirit backed by 30 or 40 magic points. This would usually have a 50/50 chance of killing the sorcerer outright. If the Smother had too much Intensity for the Sword's Dismiss Magic to overcome, there was always a DI. It should be noted that sorcerers, godless heathens that they are, do not get to DI.

Completely true.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster