Differences in Sorcery

[Shaira]

Originally Posted by RosenMcStern

as BRP's Sorcery is the equivalent of Divine Magic in RQ.

Erm... how, exactly? As far as I can see it's nothing like it!

i.) You don't sacrifice permanent POW for BRP Sorcery
ii.) BRP Sorcery spells aren't one-use / need to be prayed for to get back at a temple
iii.) You pay power points to cast a BRP sorcery spell
iv.) You can only have a certain number of BRP sorcery spells in memory
v.) You can cast BRP sorcery spells from a Grimoire

How is that the "equivalent" of RQ Divine Magic?

Cheers,

Sarah

[Shaira]

Originally Posted by RosenMcStern

Mongoose Sorcery: it is by far the best incarnation of RuneQuest Malkioni Magic, if you accept the fact that a half dozen spells are totally botched and need total rewriting. A wizard reacts faster than a theist magician, and once he reaches a good skill with magic he can cast devastating spells at a cost of one or two Power Points, plus cantrips for zero Power Points. This is the first BRP magic system that allows you to have a powerful magician that does not rely on external Power Point sources. This is The Way it was Meant to Be.

You forgot to mention that MRQ sorcery allows you to cast un-Manipulated sorcery spells for ZERO power points. So, after every battle the sorceror can completely heal everybody's wounds, for free! Now that's POWER!

(Sorry, couldn't resist )

[frogspawner]

Originally Posted by soltakss

RQ2 didn't have sorcery.

Yes, just my little joke - sorry!

Originally Posted by RosenMcStern

You were warned. Especially the One who Breeds Amphibians. ... (waits for the people with the tar and feathers)

Don't get me wrong. If a system is good, or has good parts, I'll say so. Or bad. Be they BRP or even MRQ...

Originally Posted by Shaira

... How is that the "equivalent" of RQ Divine Magic?

Of course it isn't, you are right. I suspect he just says stuff like this to cause confusion.

Originally Posted by RosenMcStern

As the "Safelstran man" here, I have played with ALL the versions and can give you a nice account of the four variations...<possibly useful run-down snipped>... Mongoose Sorcery: it is by far the best...

That does sound good. I'll give it a proper look, sometime.

Originally Posted by Shaira

You forgot to mention that MRQ sorcery allows you to cast un-Manipulated sorcery spells for ZERO power points. So, after every battle the sorceror can completely heal everybody's wounds, for free! Now that's POWER!

Nice! Oh dear, NOT "The Way it was Meant to Be", I'd say! Still, maybe it can be fixed (simply "minimum 1pp", perhaps?).

[Shaira]

Originally Posted by frogspawner

Nice! Oh dear, NOT "The Way it was Meant to Be", I'd say! Still, maybe it can be fixed (simply "minimum 1pp", perhaps?).

Actually, in all honesty from what I'm hearing it does sound like MRQ sorcery might be quite a good system when it's fixed. I'm quietly keeping an eye on it from the sidelines - it's clear it does need some pretty extensive rewriting in places, but it does seem like it's a considered and progressive forward step from the RQ3 Sorcery system. You never know!

I appreciate BRP Sorcery is not in the same continuum as the RQ Sorcery systems, but IMHO it's a simple, elegant, and very scalable magic system with some cool summoning rules, and one which I'll be using as my principal BRP magic system. Comparing apples and pears, really, but it's definitely *not* like RQ3 Divine Magic!

Cheers,

Sarah

[RosenMcStern]

Originally Posted by Shaira

How is that the "equivalent" of RQ Divine Magic?

My bad. I was referring to the automatic casting roll only. In any case, it was rather confusing on the part of Chaosium to name it Sorcery, since traditionally RQ Sorcery it skill-based magic while the other magic systems are auto-casting or characteristic-based. But the name was taken from Stormbringer, yes.

[RosenMcStern]

Originally Posted by frogspawner

Nice! Oh dear, NOT "The Way it was Meant to Be", I'd say! Still, maybe it can be fixed (simply "minimum 1pp", perhaps?).

This has been discussed for a long time on the appropriate forum. The fix is already on the MRQ Wiki: if you fail the roll, you pay 1 MP (or PP if you prefer). However, if you took the time to actually test it in play, you would notice that the zero magic point rule is definitely the best improvement, and the system is worth trying even without the fix.

[RosenMcStern]

Originally Posted by Shaira

You forgot to mention that MRQ sorcery allows you to cast un-Manipulated sorcery spells for ZERO power points. So, after every battle the sorceror can completely heal everybody's wounds, for free! Now that's POWER!

On the contrary, I remembered. I mentioned "cantrips at zero PP", and that is one of the improvements in the magic system. Treat wounds is one of the spells that need reworking, because repeated castings have a cumulative effect. Together with Shapechange, Fly and others. But this is the first time we have a Malkioni Magic system that does not make you feel "Sheesh, we should rework it from scratch!"

[Tywyll]

Originally Posted by RosenMcStern

On the contrary, I remembered. I mentioned "cantrips at zero PP", and that is one of the improvements in the magic system. Treat wounds is one of the spells that need reworking, because repeated castings have a cumulative effect. Together with Shapechange, Fly and others. But this is the first time we have a Malkioni Magic system that does not make you feel "Sheesh, we should rework it from scratch!"

Is there a list or errata anywhere that has the spells that need fixing?

I read some complaints on the Mongoose board, especially about the Heal spell, but they mentioned a few others. Anywhere where that's been put together in one place?

I'd think the easiest fix for Heal would be to say that its not cumulative... a wound can only be healed by magic once, so do you want it to be a Heal 12 or a Heal 1? After that, you are left with time and first aid.

[deleriad]

I've played and used RQ sorcery a lot.

RQ3 (after the errata) is book-keeping heavy. Most spell casting is actually done during down time with sorcerors pre-casting long duration spells on themselves. It's not a "plug and play" system as even the weakest spells tend to need multiple Power Points(*) to cast. Once you have a powerful Magus though (e.g. about 50 years of game time) then they're humongously powerful. Summary: High book-keeping, extremely weak at low level, probably over-powered at high levels.

RQ4. This attempted to downgrade the top end of sorcery and adopted some ideas from Sandy Peterson's system. Still requires extremely complex book-keeping.

Sandy's system. A very different beast. Much of the system requires Gloranthan cosmology because sorcerors gain power by taking restrictive vows. You could re-engineer it into other game worlds. Tends to require a lot of book-keeping and downtime.

MRQ. The simplest system. At first glance looks like RQ3 as sorcerors have skills for each spell and each art. However spells cost far fewer PPs to cast. Cast at the base level they cost nothing. Because MRQ makes POW gaining a lot harder than other versions of RQ, MRQ sorcerors can generally make a decent fist at magic using just personal power. MRQ is the strongest sorcery system at the bottom end but progresses in a linear gradient rather than exponentially as does the rest of RQ.

MRQ is my favourite but has one HUGE problem; Mongoose's right hand never knows what their left hand is up to. Thus, the spells have been basically copied from RQ3 without noticing the differences in the system, especially the ability to free cast base level spells. This means that some spells are ludicrously overpowered, some the reverse and some simply don't work. You can't seriously run MRQ sorcery as written because of this.

[Tywyll]

Originally Posted by RosenMcStern

Mongoose Sorcery: it is by far the best incarnation of RuneQuest Malkioni Magic, if you accept the fact that a half dozen spells are totally botched and need total rewriting. A wizard reacts faster than a theist magician, and once he reaches a good skill with magic he can cast devastating spells at a cost of one or two Power Points, plus cantrips for zero Power Points. This is the first BRP magic system that allows you to have a powerful magician that does not rely on external Power Point sources. This is The Way it was Meant to Be.

(waits for the people with the tar and feathers)

Actually, from what I'd read, it definitely appeared to be the simplest of the systems (and in many ways, the most playable).

My concerns with it are the following:
1) As mentioned, I think many spells need to be tweaked so as to prevent abuse.
2) Improvement. The system works in MRQ where you decide which skills go up, but since you activate several skills in a single role, how do you decide to handle improvement rolls in a "use=skill check" system? I was thinking that each time you used meta-magic skills while casting, you'd only get a single check and it could go to any one of the skills involved.
3) Power. I definitely agree that its finally a potent magic. Is it too potent though? Any Sorcerer can through out an Intensity 5 or 6 spell for a single MP, while spirit and even divine mages are struggling. Is this not imbalanced too much? I mean, I guess since I'm not using Glorantha I could ditch Spirit magic full stop, but I'd probably use Divine magic for Priests and I guess Sorcery for Arcane.

Any thoughts or experiences would be appreciated.

Cheers!