Dare I ask?

[Nightshade]

Originally Posted by Kloster

If you are in that case (sorceror AND familiar AND spirits), yes, it is faster. But the sorceror will have to:
- have been an apprenctice long enough.

Since the only people who get anywhere with sorcery usually start with the profession anyway (because the base values anyone who just gets it as a magic type are so low, especially when modified by armor, that its often tantamount to useless to them).

[quote]

- learn 3 spells (create Intelligence spirit binding matrix, summon Intelligence spirit, control Intelligence spirit) and bring them to a sufficient level (with summon and enchant) to avoid risking too much.

That's not nearly as hard to do with a decent Ceremony skill as I think you think it is. And its easy for someone with the sorcerer profession to start with a decent one of those.

Given that the spirit magic control spell is useless in combat, I never saw anyone bother, and never saw it be an issue; taking time to try and control someone's Int spirit when it has its whole power is usually a waste of time for those that can do so (which is to say priests and other sorcerers).

And you probably only need one Int spirit; the Power Spirits are where you need multiples.

- learn the create familiar stats spells.

Almost always started with in the examples that were problems.

- sacrifice some of his own stats (not necessarily POW) to create the familiar.

Not usually that big a deal if you pick the right kind of familiar in the first place.

- learn 3 spells (create power spirit binding matrix, summon power spirit, control power spirit) and bring them to a sufficient level (with summon and enchant) to avoid risking too much.

Actually, the summon and control aren't a big deal if you fail it, other than having to try again. The only one you really don't want to goof up--like all enchantments--is making the matrix. And as I said, Ceremony can help with all of them.

- spend 1 POW per power spirit (I would say 2 to add a condition and avoid having them controlled).

But that's your deal; see my comment above.

That means learning 14 spells (among other things, 14 weeks of study, if the spells are available), spending minimum 20 to 30 POW, and the other stats for his familiar.

Vastly overstated, because I saw it done for far less than 20 to 30 Power. It does require all the spells, but since a sorcerer's all about the spells in the first place, that's not any harder than any other collection he needs to pick up.

This can not be soon in the campaign. And when the sorceror has reached this kind of level, everybody is able to have this kind of trick.

And if he actually needed all that power, or needed all the spells at the level you're claiming, that'd be true. He doesn't. It can be done to a problematic level for as little as about 10 points of Pow (and whatever he needed to spend on his familiar in the first place). And from that point on he's done the heavy lifting part, as all he has to do for the rest is the new spell matrices.

[Nightshade]

Originally Posted by Kloster

This is not a big limit as he can find the spell he wants. The real weakness for the shaman is (compared to the sorceror) the impossibility to have the spells up full time. They can be brought up fast, but not instantly. And yes, I know, the protection works only in case of MP vs MP, but this is most of the attacks.

Really, its not. Its most of the spirit magic attacks, but a number of the more dangerous things to do to someone with divine magic or sorcerery aren't power versus power. Some big ones are (Sever Spirit and its kin), but given out of the three offensive Divine Spells in the core book only one is (Lightning), and its arguably the weakest of the three in terms of value per cost, I really don't think phrasing it as "immune to magical attack" describes the situation well.

[Nightshade]

Originally Posted by Kloster

I'm not contradicting your experience, but mine is completely different. With similar money, time and POW spent, a shaman is as efficient as a team member for buffing the whole team. I have never checked for a priest.

Actually, spirit magic is the _least_ efficient in some ways (in some ways its good because spirit magic tends to have the least overhead and everyone has it); it takes too long to do and lasts too short a time. Sorcery has long duration potential, and divine magic, if you have enough of it, is _very_ quick to put up, since casting time doesn't care about how many points of it you're putting up (I think, though I could be misremembering, they can also cast them on multiple targets at once if they're all within range). In addition, to have spirit magic success chance the same as the Priest's with his divine magic you have to have a 19 power, which is hard to keep if you're regularly reinforcing a fetch or making any enchantments of your own.

By the way, you need 2 POW per INT spirit, and it will store only 1D6 spell points (IIRC), so you need several. And if it is working that way, I presume

I mistyped on the points in my post, and even one Int spirit is enough to hold 3-4 spells, which is sufficient for this to start being a problem.

your GM never took control of your bound spirits (that's why I am putting conditions on my enchantments), taking away the spells stored in it if it is Intelligence spirits.

Keep in mind that the spirit magic control spells are useless in combat, so only the divine or sorcerous ones could even try this, and frankly, there's better things to do with a round that grab at one Power or Int spirit (especially since the latter, which is the more effective one to grab, is going to have its full magic points since its user can't use them). So no, this was not a particularly common tactic (since it required someone to know it was there to grab it in the first place, then get the spell off, then have it work, then have it _matter_. This was particularly unlikely to be useful with Power spirits since once combat started, a sorcerer was extremely unlikely to go through all of the available ones anyway, and you couldn't be sure if you were grabbing an already empty one or a full one).

And I usually _was_ the GM. It was just a waste of time compared to, say, trying to simply take out the sorcerer himself magically, which was about as likely to work and far more effective.

I am not contradicting the fact that a sorceror can be a great improver for the whole team. I am objecting that:
- he is not the only one, because the shaman can also do it.

Not close to as well or consistently, simply because his spells are of too short a duration, and (again, barring lunar magic) because he has to have the full value of any spell he cares to cast.

- this is not early in the campaign, and when he can do it, the other character have also access to it.

That's in part because you're assuming vastly more Power investment than I saw necessary to start creating the problem. You're also being far more conservative (from what I can tell) about the needed skill values.

Let me ask a question: does the RQ campaigns you were in have any significant downtime? If not, I can see some of the reasons why you might think some of the above, as this cripples the ability to study skills and to get much use out of Ceremony for ritual skills.

Last point I am objecting is that armoring and strengthening enchantments are for us much in use, especially because it allows lighter armor, and thus lower ENC, for the same protection. And more HP are always good.

I can only note I never saw it attractive for anyone locally.

[TRose]

One of the reason I have always like shaman , and would gladly take one against a sorcerer , is if you been running him right is that shaman have power to burn because of the fetch. A shaman should have no problem backing up his first spell with enough force to burn through any screen put up by a non shaman. And with double int, his spells may not be as powerful as other types but he should have a versatile list to draw from. Don't forget to use spirit site to pick your targets, and release a few spirits to raise havoc( a wirlvish in a bag a great way to start a fight) and I will do ok. And since my shaman worship Oakfed I had access to fire elementals which always made the bad guys happy.

[Nightshade]

Originally Posted by TRose

One of the reason I have always like shaman , and would gladly take one against a sorcerer , is if you been running him right is that shaman have power to burn because of the fetch. A shaman should have no problem backing up his first spell with enough force to burn through any screen put up by a non shaman. And with double int, his spells may not be as powerful as other types but he should have a versatile list to draw from. Don't forget to use spirit site to pick your targets, and release a few spirits to raise havoc( a wirlvish in a bag a great way to start a fight) and I will do ok. And since my shaman worship Oakfed I had access to fire elementals which always made the bad guys happy.

I'm not badmouthing shaman; I'm just noting that in the particular problem sorcerers created (buffing up the party) they simply weren't in the same running, because spirit magic is not of long enough duration for it to be an issue. And frankly, a shaman isn't able to put up a better countermagic than anyone else, as that's an issue more of what spell's available than how many magic points were; experienced characters of any magical pursuasion willing to pursue Power spirits could have magic points to burn. If anyone was going to win on the countermagic tango, it wasn't likely to be a spirit magician, since both divine and sorcerous characters did not need a specific, high rank spell to do it; sorcerers could do it with manipulation, divine mages by simple stacking (though the former had to have enough skill and the latter enough points, of course).

[RMS]

Get busy at work for a couple of days and this thread takes off...and seems to really drag on the last page or two, but I'll go back and address a couple of these responses.

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"...

Sorry, but it's not nonsense. Glorantha is the only world with any level of detail that has ever been developed with the RQ rules. Fantasy Earth consisted of a single map, and nothing else. Even the Vikings supplement, which one would think would be an expansion for Fantasy Earth, completely remakes the magic system so isn't an implementation of the "rules as written". Whether you actually played in the world, with the maps provided, lists of states provided, etc. is completely beside the point, and I apologize if that wasn't clear to you in my post and that's what you reacted to. I've played tons of RQ outside the "Glorantha" too, but the magic system (as well as the rest of the rules) still work the same, unless someone explicitly changes something. Once someone uses "I'm not talking about Glorantha" as an argument then the natural assumption is that they're taking the rules away from their base and to something else and it's essential to know that if we're going to have any kind of coherent discussion. Hopefully, that's clearer now.

Originally Posted by Enpeze

And of course you are right that Glorantha is the default setting for RQ2. For RQ3 its not so clear because there are 2. And for RQ4 (aka MRQ ) there are several settings. In fact I guess that the most RQ fans use it for their homebrewn settings, because Glorantha in all its glory is not everyones cup of tea.

See above. Yeah, with MRQ I'd agree since there are several developed settings now ,and most importantly, they actually change the core rules around for each setting so there's a real difference between the various settings.

[RMS]

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.)

Why do we have to stick to those? Look, if you wanted to do that, that's fine but it would have really helped to let us know that from the beginning. It's not like a modern large-company-game with dozens of books each containing new rules. In this case, we have exactly two books (well boxes at the time) with all of the rules being discussed. I've never known anyone who ran any RQIII game without a good number, if not all, of the magic rules out of GoG, even if not playing in the world. Most of those came straight out of the RQII core, in some form or another, and so the inclusion seems more evident from that.

Now, we did implement different magic systems in different worlds based on RQ, with good and bad luck balancing them out of the box, but that would be a specific implementation issue, not the core rules themselves.

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.

So, in other words, you want to pick and choose what parts are allowed into the discussion, and only want those that support your point. I don't have an attitude in any way about this. I'm simply amused by the logic, or lack thereof, and pointed it out in an obviously tongue-n-cheek way. Sorry, if it offended you. I'd suggest not getting too offended by someone giving you a good nature ribbing, but that'd probably be lost in the vagaries of the internet too.

[RMS]

Originally Posted by Kloster

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

Ironically, one of the things that I think is overpowered and unbalanced in RQIII as written, and not mentioned in this thread, are exactly those enchantments. They're available to everyone at the same cost, as noted, and can quickly unbalance things if not kept in check. I made strengthening enchantments stop at double HP, similar to how STR, or similar, could only be boosted to double. I never ran into the same problems with armoring enchantments, but I did contemplate making them stiff, so that they reduced DEX while increasing protection, or something similar. For some reason, they only got cast on actual armor, where I did limit them to double or +50% max like I did for strengthening enchantments above.

Originally Posted by Lord Twig

We actually imposed a lot of limits on spells and enchantments. Things like, you can only Armor Enchant something up to double AP. Strengthening Enchantment was limited to double HP, etc. So no one went around with 30 hit point heads or anything silly like that.

Oops...posted too soon.

[RMS]

Originally Posted by Nightshade

I'm not badmouthing shaman; I'm just noting that in the particular problem sorcerers created (buffing up the party) they simply weren't in the same running, because spirit magic is not of long enough duration for it to be an issue. And frankly, a shaman isn't able to put up a better countermagic than anyone else, as that's an issue more of what spell's available than how many magic points were; experienced characters of any magical pursuasion willing to pursue Power spirits could have magic points to burn. If anyone was going to win on the countermagic tango, it wasn't likely to be a spirit magician, since both divine and sorcerous characters did not need a specific, high rank spell to do it; sorcerers could do it with manipulation, divine mages by simple stacking (though the former had to have enough skill and the latter enough points, of course).

The power of a shaman isn't in his direct spirit magic (or usually even in his divine magic, if he has it), but rather should be in his array of various bound spirits: which he can pass off to "buff" up others if he so desires. He's the only one who doesn't need specific magic to go seize a spirit and bend it to his will, and he should have a far wider range of spirit types and powers to choose from than a sorcerer or a divine user. However, I always thought that RQIII did under power starting shamans, to the point were no one wanted to play them, so I went to a mix of RQII and RQIII for starting fetch POW.

I'm not sure that he should be as able in direct confrontation, but he should be completely hell to deal with indirectly. He can wander in on the spirit plane, snipe at someone with spells or spirits and move away without anyone else able to interact with him. Someone mentioned removing spirits from a sorcerer, or anyone else for that matter, and that's something a shaman can do with ease by simply seizing the spirit on the spirit plane and releasing it. There's no need to do that "during combat", and yes it's not productive and also doesn't fit the "picture" of what shamans do so that's a feature for me.

I should note here that I never let sorcerers seize spirits and bind them at their leisure.* They have no access to the spirit plane and so can only do that by very painstaking and inexact methods. It's pretty easy to keep them in check with a little common sense there. (Summon only works for a range, so there's very little chance of having the exact spirit in range unless the GM is nicer than me! ) The same goes for divine users, who should be able to bend certain spirits to their will with ease and have no access to most others IMO.

* This reminds me a bit of discussions about SB1-3 sorcerers who were without argument dominant powers in the game world. We always assumed all those sacrifices were extremely expensive and enforced that, only to realize later that some people never bothered with that and had "demons up to their ears" as it were. (Well, there were some controls due to CHA, but we rarely had even longterm characters approach that max.) Sorcerers still dominated play there, but we had fun anyway, and there did seem to be some sort of cosmic karma in play because sorcerers always seemed to be at the receiving end of 01 rolls by nobody special, while some other less spectacular characters had very long lives in the game.

[TRose]

I did not say shaman had better countermagic then others. I said because they have more power starting at mid level so they can burn through other people defenses more easy . And shaman tend to gain power faster then others if played right. I tended to keep my power around 15 and then feed power to the fetch until I felt the fetch was powerful enough ,as this gave me a good chance for power increase rolls and still enough power to succeed on most spells I cast. This also meant over time my Shaman could have more power to make magic items since I would make more power increase rolls. And in most areas there are plenty of different spirits that can provide shaman with spells to cast. Add to the fact since shaman learn how to summon spell teaching spirits they can easy learn what ever spells they want with no problem , unlike a sorcerer who has to find a teacher or book to learn from.
Might add one big draw back for sorcerers should always be that just because you want to learn a spell does not mean there some body at the local bar that can teach you it. A big restriction on Sorcerers should be on how they learn spells.