From: B Mason (aiblm%AIPNA.ED.AC.UK@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU)
Date: Thu 15 Jun 1989 - 09:56:33 EEST
Element Bolt. Surely this spell is just form/set under another name? The
rules changes in RQIII1/2 state that using form set to attack is only
meaningful if the substance has a potential for damgae. It does differ in that
you don't need to carry your ammo around with you unlike form/set. This is the
main problem. The spell is horrendously unbalanced. It would destroy most
Gloranthan campaigns as it allows creation of something out of nothing. A
sorceror with the inclination can slowly turn the world to chaos by building
a matrix, teaching all his students Chaos bolt and casting long duration
spells.
Really can't see any reason to include this in a campaign when form/set already exists and provides for much more interesting magic. If you want to set up a chaos mage then said mage should have to go get some himself and then look after it - nice bit of a chaos farming going on. From one spell you can build up a pretty fun scenario.
The RQ without rounds system seems pretty unmanageable. I experimented with a fairly similar set up myself and found it made running fight scenes horrendously complicated. People seem to consistently misunderstand that RQ is an *interpreted* combat system in much the same way as the D&D family. ie the emphasis is on explaining what happened rather than taking second by second control of the character. To run RQ as a blow-by-blow system would require full scale revision of the combat system in order to make any sense out of it and I really can't see the point in that - the current set up is good fun.
Apologise for the rather intemperate sound of this mailer. It's hard to criticise and not sound offensive. But these are the problems I see and I would be glad to hear of any defences.
Bruce.
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