Dare I ask?

[Nightshade]

Originally Posted by RMS

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

How so? As far as I know, whether bound into an object or a fetch, your bound spirits still can't act other than they can act. Were you assuming Magic Spirits perhaps?

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,

Possibly true, though he's also got a lot more risk accessing them than they do, though over time his fetch will help protect against that.

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.

Probably true; as I recall, I only saw one that lasted any length of time during the entire time I ran RQ3.


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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

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As far as I know, if one or more targets has the right magic sense up (Second Sight, Mystic Vision or the divine version who's name escapes me, he should be detectable and be able to be attacked with power attacks or directed spirits. Mind you, he's got considerable home court advantage, but he's not invulnerable.

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.

Do you have some cite to indicate they can break things out of bindings that way? Because its not my reading of the rules as written. He could certainly do it to ones released to do things, but some of the types under discussion don't have to be released to act (such as the aforementioned Int and Power spirits).

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.

Without it, it only has limited applicability to the matter at hand, as there's no guarentee he knows in advance he needs to do so, nor where to find his targets.

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.

There's nothing in the rules that even suggests there's a limit on the range of the summon spells I can find, and the discussion of summoning magic in the ritual chapter would surely do so if there was.

And what you think should be the case has, bluntly, nothing to do with what the rules say.

[Nightshade]

Originally Posted by Kloster

I have written "almost immune". But please cite me 1 sorcery attack spell that does not require a MP vs MP roll. In the core rules, 2 Divine are doing the trick, I agree (plus several in GoG).

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

I did earlier: Form/Set Substance. Its got a fairly mediocre to-hit chance, but does not care about the power of the target, and can be quite dangerous at higher intensities. And you can almost always use the rock one offensively.

[Nightshade]

Originally Posted by Kloster

Damage boost 4 on 1 weapon of 1 player is not

I did not say on one player; I said on the whole party. That _does_ change the balance, especially since it can stack with spirit spells typically known by most characters.

overpowering and does not change the balance. The shift of balance comes when (if I understand well your point) all the members are boosted, and to do that, you need more than 1 month duration just to have the time to cast the spells.

Why? You can do it all in one day quite trivially once you have a reasonable amount of power points available; even modest levels will let it be done in two or three.

[Nightshade]

Originally Posted by Kloster

I agree here.



As your sorceror has "only" 1 spell per year of preliminary experience, 3 are already taken on the average 7. With only 4 useful spells, your guy is almost useless.

You forgot the D3 he gets initially, and you're assuming the character walked in knowing all these spells; most were usually learned after the fact. Since Ritual magic uses the Ritual skill rather than its own percentage, its in fact a particularly efficient thing to do later (though you have to increase your Summoning and Enchantment skills to get the most out of it, of course).

I agree, but this still a cost. And as a sorceror, I don't like sacrificing INT, which reduces considerably the choice of potential familiar: which freely intelligent creature will willingly accept to be transformed in a familiar?

You usually end up just having to bite the bullet and sacrifice one Int point. That was at least the case in all the cases I saw.

Yes ceremony can and does help, but as it is ceremonies, it uses days, not rounds, which is a problem in itself because of the cost of those needed days, and of the endurance problem.

Not according to my book, which says hours. That can still add up to days in extreme cases, but you can still end up getting about 17-18% extra within one day, and 28% at 34 hours is doable.

And doing the summon, but failing the control can have dire consequences, like a possession.

Sure. But that's true of most spirit binding, and it never stops people; they just take precautions.

Yes, this is my deal, and I have explained why: losing a Intellect spirit fully loaded in spells is costly, to say the least.

And if I had much belief that its particularly easy to do or likely to occur, I'd consider that important.

As I have already explained, no he hasn't. On the average, he has 7 spells to start with. To be usable like you say, he need at least 4, so it is a minimum of 18 hard to gain spells.

Except he doesn't need them at higher skill ranks, because ritual magic doesn't care about individual skills, so all he has to do is get them at all.

Not my experience.

Then we're at an impasse. I've explained how I've seen it done; you've not explained why its not possible.

[Nightshade]

Originally Posted by Kloster

For a shaman, 1 round is sufficient to have all the effects up. It is not very long, but I agree it is not up full time. The 19 POW is not a problem for a spirit, that the shaman has no trouble to find.

How? He has to cast them one at a time, just like everyone else, and there's only ten strike ranks in a round. Even with his fetch casting half of them, that's considerably more than one round.

No problem for the typo.
Considering the number of spells needed, I disagree on the 2nd point.

Since one will likely be in a matrix, and the others don't need to be anywhere but in a book when he's not using them, I don't consider that disagreement proves much.

Why doing it IN combat. Do it BEFORE the combat. I am not taking the risk.

Do potential enemies make it a habit of standing around and letting you cast at them without starting combat? Do you always even know you need to do this in advance? If so, no wonder you think this is easy.

In combat, true. Done before the comabt begins is another story.

And if I thought that opportunity occurred outside of combat particularly frequently, I'd find that more relevant.

Agreed here, even if I think that for a shaman, the full value is not a problem.

I can't agree; even a shaman has to find a spirit with the size of spell he wants, and he still needs to put it somewhere; as you noted, Int spirits can't hold very large spells, so he's limited to himself, his fetch, or matrices.

You're right, downtime has always been tight. And in my case, finding the

That's certainly part of it, then. In the campaigns I ever saw, there were usually as much as weeks of possible downtime on occasion. I'm suprised anyone could get in any training time at all if time was that tight; that must hurt lore types quite a bit.

spells had to be roleplayed: you can't just tell I'm learning this spell, but you (or at least I) have to find either a teacher or a grimoire. That makes day

That's true here too, but assuming large cities, and given how generally useful some of the spells involved were, that didn't mean it was particularly difficult. Finding someone with Summon (Hellion) might be work, but Summon (Int Spirit)? Not so much.

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long ceremonies very impracticle (aggravated by the fatigue problem) to impossible, and very costly, because you can't do the training others are doing and you can't learn new spells (assuming you have access to them).

Different players, different experiences. In the last campaign, I was the only one NOT having them (because I used my POW for bindings and matrix).

Part of it might be because there was a strong culture of avoiding self-enchantment (that is to say, enchanting your body) locally, as it tended to cause rather grisly results if you got captured.

[soltakss]

Hmmmm, it seems to me as though the discussion is about the merits of RQ3 sorcery/spirit magic and RQ3 sorcerers/shamans.

While it is possible to port the RQ3 magic system across to BRP it is not essential. I like RQ magic but I would think of it as just one of many types of magic available to BRP. Whilst not being particularly keen on the multiple-level style of magic in the BRP playtest, it is a valid alternative to RQ magic. Hopefully, when settings come out we will get many different magic systems, several for each magical setting.

So, although RQ is a good game, and is still my favourite game, an in-depth discussion of the power levels of the magic is not that intersting to me on a BRP Forum.

Perhaps some discussion on how RQ-style magic could be used in BRP would be useful.

But, that's just me being grumpy

[Nightshade]

Originally Posted by soltakss

So, although RQ is a good game, and is still my favourite game, an in-depth discussion of the power levels of the magic is not that intersting to me on a BRP Forum.

Perhaps some discussion on how RQ-style magic could be used in BRP would be useful.

But, that's just me being grumpy

Its a fair enough cop, but thread drift happens, and a lot of us come to BRP through RQ and still, fundamentally, think of it that way.

And honestly, I'm not sure much needs to be changed to use most RQ magic in BRP; other than the lack of locational damage and strike ranks, they aren't different in ways that will impact it much.

[RMS]

Originally Posted by Nightshade

Given that the spells I allowed you to mention supported _your_ point, not mine, I'd lose the self-righteousness here.

I just wanted to say that this one had me rolling with laughter, so thanks. I've certainly been called lots of things, but I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've ever been called self-righteous. You either criticaled or fumbled your Orate here and I'm not sure which it is...take a skill check either way.

Btw, I didn't quote the rest of these couple of posts, but I could just as easily have demonstrated the same point using just the basic rules. You can still build a Humakti-like mega warrior out of the basic rules that will completely dominate the power level if that's the desire. However, I'm honestly bored with this whole thing. It's very obvious that your interest in the minutia level discussion is much higher than mine (not a surprise from past discussions), and I'd rather do something more constructive than this. For example, if you want to look at ways to balance things out differently, I'd be happy to contribute. You aren't the first person to complain about sorcery being unbalanced, and I'm actually a bit surprised that the weight of opinion has been squarely on my side here, but having run a lot of high level RQ without any kind of blanket balance issues I'm very positive of my position so debating it is pointless.

The first time I'd heard of complaining about sorcery had a houserule that the MP used in a spell were unavailable until the spell went down. It made a lot of sense if you think of magical energy as a conservation problem. It allows characters to get just as powerful, but forces them to work much longer, harder at it.

Originally Posted by Nightshade

And what you think should be the case has, bluntly, nothing to do with what the rules say.

I'll just note here that it's not that simple. The rules can't exist in a vaccuum, so how any individual GM interrupts them is an essential ingredient into how they actually function. What I think has everything to do with how the rules are actually interpreted and used at the table. It doesn't violate any rule if I decide that only shaman have access to spirits in my world, for example, and it has a huge impact on how the different magic levels interact. A more common example is how individual cults balance out and those have to be custom made per world too.

[RMS]

Originally Posted by soltakss

So, although RQ is a good game, and is still my favourite game, an in-depth discussion of the power levels of the magic is not that intersting to me on a BRP Forum.

Perhaps some discussion on how RQ-style magic could be used in BRP would be useful.

Well to be fair nobodies forcing you to participate. There are several threads here that don't interest me, so I skip them. Having said that, I'm with you despite contributing a couple of posts. I just find anymore discussion to be pointless. If other's disagree, I can skim or skip, or even get back involved if it starts to interest me.

One of the things I'm really looking forward to in the new game is the magic system. I've never used WoW, though I've read it, and I'm pretty sure that it will appeal to me more than RQ sorcerey, which is way too fiddly for my tastes.

Originally Posted by Nightshade

And honestly, I'm not sure much needs to be changed to use most RQ magic in BRP; other than the lack of locational damage and strike ranks, they aren't different in ways that will impact it much.

Strike ranks and hit locations are both options, correct? So you could use it straight with those options.

If not using hit locations, I can't think of any damage spells that couldn't just have the current damage applied to general HP. That's one of the beauties of BRP IMO.

The default initiative system is SB/Elric!, correct? An easy way to do it, would be to figure SR to cast a spell and use that to reduce DEX to see when a spell goes off in the round.

[Kloster]

Originally Posted by Nightshade

I did earlier: Form/Set Substance. Its got a fairly mediocre to-hit chance, but does not care about the power of the target, and can be quite dangerous at higher intensities. And you can almost always use the rock one offensively.

I understand. We are not considering it a magical attack, but a physical one. That's why we disagree. But considering this, you're right, this one counts.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster