From: Joerg Baumgartner (rq4@sartar.toppoint.de)
Date: Tue 17 Aug 1993 - 01:09:12 EEST
In <76C37ED65FC@marketing.wharton.upenn.edu>, Graeme Lindsell writes:
> Wayne writes:
> I'm more interested in a completely re-written sorcery system than a
>> Well...I'd say SOME kind of patch on sorcery would be a Really Good Idea.
>> And the Easy/Medium/Hard thing would be nice. Past that...
> patch, ie something like Paul's presence system. Your point is well
> taken though: if the Companion is meant to provide patches to broken
> rules without needing to change the character sheet, then sorcery
> is an obvious candidate for fixing.
Not even the PRE-system is a complete rewrite; it keeps most of the
> The Easy/Medium/Hard is interesting, but I don't see it as essential,
I have to disagree: Without the difficulty system, there is no need for
spells we know from the current version and thus keeps up
compatibility.
> and I'm worried about the way it's implemented: almost all of the
> cults judge progression by skill level, and cults with Easy cult
> skills will suddenly become much easier to advance in.
a point system, and that's no need for the templates as offered. Most
of the sense the current draft makes would be cancelled.
>>>> extension, but under the current rules, it's pretty unlikely that mages
>>>> will be travelling around with constant high Intensity, long Duration
>>>> spells on them,
>>> In fact none of them will if we use the current RQIV sorcery draft,
>>> successfully making sorcerers as dull as possible.
>> I'm not sure what you mean by "Dull" in this context. My bitch with the
> I think both versions are useless: I can't see a sorcerer ever blowing
> overpowered thing as well). The draft RQIV sorcerers just seem to have a
And a less reliable, to top it. Compare protection with damage
One way I have come up with to handle long- or medium-time Duration is
Opinions?
>> I just generally thought it was a mess, personally. While I understand
> Yes, but I think that the low death rate is more due to the new
>> current draft is that the ritual Duration/Range extension might as well
>> not be there, since the POW based version is still too good, and the time
>> based version is useless.
> power to get a temporary spell. This is why I called it dull: the interesting
> thing about RQII sorcerers was the long duration spells (OK, the grossly
^^
Nice typo. RQ2 (why the roman numerals?) did know long-time spells;
anything stacked with Extension 3 would last a week. For runetypes with
reusable Extension no problem, just power yourself up before the
adventure, and have a quasi-permanent Bladesharp 4, protection 4 (or
was 6 the limit?), etc. What's the difference between a week or a year
in adventuring?
> different variety of spirit magic. There's nothing unique about them.
resistance, and you'll find that a Protection 3 will cancel out more
damage from a swordfighter with 1D4 damage bonus than a 3-point Damage
Resistance, and probably (I didn't calculate that) more than a 6-point
Damage Resistance.
to make the use of a progressive table (not necessarily the current 2^X
table) dependent on ritual casting, i.e. long-time casting. My idea was
to use the ceremony-time-to-skill table with casting time one step (one
D6 in the table) per extra point of Duration.
>> some of the problems with the current version, I didn't like a number of
>> features about it, including what seemed like some irrational values for
>> some weapons, loss of distinction between armor types, and a reduction in
>> the already low chance of actually ever killing someone in the game.
> death at neagtive max HP rule and the prevalence of Heal spells, rather
> than the lethality of the weapons. I think Heal is the real culprit:
> there are very few wounds that kill you instantly in reality. I think
> most combat fatalities are the result of shock.
Lethality is always a problem. I'd like to see a system that allows
wounds which cannot be healed at once, maybe only stilled - something
like False Healing in Troll Gods. Only a low percentage actually died
within five minutes from a lethal blow, other than having their throats
slit. Healing magic and First Aid skill ought to be able to stop
immediate death, but there are enough examples of people slowly dying
from a wound, allowing them even to act heroically in the meantime - at
least in fiction. To really heal a lethal wound, I'd expect some ritual
healing magic as so nicely depicted in the Conan movie.
This would also go nicely with Greg Staffords statement that
I like the sorcerous Treat Wounds, by the way: no immediate effect
Finally a note about the future of this list:
I don't know the copyright situation for the draft and our thoughts
So keep on producing ideas and presenting them here.
distribution of healing magic is about ten times overrated among
RQ-PCs, or in RQ in general.
except stopping the bleeding. If one plays the variant as used by the
German translation (I think taken from the RQ3 Errata), only
apprentices or higher sorcerous ranks could do more than that because
noone else may know Duration, which has to be one hour per point to be
healed.
upon it, but I advocate to continue our discussions to a point of
producing new drafts. Some day there will be the need for a new edition
of RQ, if it survives, and whosoever will hold the rights by then will
have to take an existing, playtested version into account.
--
Joerg Baumgartner rq4@sartar.toppoint.de
0,,
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