From: Graeme A Lindsell (gal502@cscgpo.anu.edu.au)
Date: Sat 21 Aug 1993 - 22:37:26 EEST
>
This is Graeme replying to Joerg replying to Graeme replying to Wayne
who was replying to ????
> In <76C37ED65FC@marketing.wharton.upenn.edu>, Graeme Lindsell writes:
>
> > Wayne writes:
> >> 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...
>
> > I'm more interested in a completely re-written sorcery system than a
> > patch, ie something like Paul's presence system. Your point is well
Joerg writes:
> Not even the PRE-system is a complete rewrite; it keeps most of the
> spells we know from the current version and thus keeps up
> compatibility.
Well I liked Burton's rewritten sorcery skill system as well: the spell
plus knowledge system that was posted a couple of months ago
>
> > The Easy/Medium/Hard is interesting, but I don't see it as essential,
> > 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.
>
> I have to disagree: Without the difficulty system, there is no need for
> a point system, and that's no need for the templates as offered. Most
> of the sense the current draft makes would be cancelled.
>
I'd like to see your reasoning on this. The points system is useful
for optional skills, and for skills that aren't primary to your
career. I don't see removing easy/medium/hard as destroying the ectire
draft. My complaint with the Easy/Medium/Hard is more the way it has
been implemented than the idea: I can see easy skills racing away from
all the other skills at a great rate. I think they could be implemented
using the task difficulty system rather than the experience system. RQ
does have modifiers for different levels of difficulty of tasks, though
it is really only defined well for combat skills. All that has to be
done is say that Easy skills are actually easy tasks ie you get +20%
to your chance of success when attempting to use it. Instead of saying
"2-H Spear is an easy skill: you get a +2d6 increase rather than +1d6"
you can say "2-H Spear is an easy weapon to use: you get +20% to using
it in most circumstances". The question is: is something easy because
it is easy to learn, or because it is easy to do?
>
> > I think both versions are useless: I can't see a sorcerer ever blowing
> > 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;
^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^
just my notation: if it's confusing to people,
I'll use digits instead.
> 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?
Not much if you live next door to the local dungeon ie Pavis. In a
journey/quest style adventure, the difference is greater. In fact it's
in quests that sorcerers and shamans have a big advantage over priests,
since they can get all their magic back in a day, or a few days if they
need to fill storage or binding matrices. The priest is limited by his
access to his temple. I think 4 was the limit for most spells apart
from Heal.
>
> > overpowered thing as well). The draft RQIV sorcerers just seem to have a
> > different variety of spirit magic. There's nothing unique about them.
>
> And a less reliable, to top it. Compare protection with damage
> 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.
I once did a table that compared the average damage taken by a target
with 10 point Damage Resistance to a target with 10 points of protection
by twenty blows with damage from 1 to 20 (ie 1,2,3,4,5...20 point hits).
The target with Damage Resistance would take (on average) 7.125 points
of damage, the Protected target 2.75 (ignoring criticals, which would
bypass both spells). Not being a statistician I doubt my methodology
was correct, but I think the comparison was adequate.
>
> One way I have come up with to handle long- or medium-time Duration is
> 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.
>
> Opinions?
>
It has more flavour than the current draft system, but most long duration
spells are cast back at base anyway: I think the table is more important
to balancing the system.
> > 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
Damage to the brain, neck (spine and arteries), heart, lungs and kidneys
will kill in less than five minutes, I think. Gruesome topic :-(
> 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
> distribution of healing magic is about ten times overrated among
> RQ-PCs, or in RQ in general.
His other comment hasn't been addressed nearly as much: that the
effect of most spells are not instantaneous. I haven't been able
to think of an elegant way of implementing this; has anyone else
had any bright ideas? From Greg's comments in the TOTRM interview,
he seems to think magical powers should be rather more ambiguous than
in the current RQ draft.
>
> I like the sorcerous Treat Wounds, by the way: no immediate effect
> except stopping the bleeding. If one plays the variant as used by the
There are a couple of other tricks you can do with heal to make it
less effective. I think both of these have been discussed on the list
before:
i) "Healsharp": make Heal into a spell that boosts First Aid just like
ii) "Dispel Magic" style Heals: in order to heal a wound, a spell must
Bladesharp does Attack ie each point of Heal adds 5% to chance of succes
and 1 extra point of damage healed. This combines the effect of two other
proposals: Healing will take 5 rounds, since thats how long First Aid
takes, and only one Heal per wound will work.
equal or exceed the damage entirely. ie a 2 point heal doesn't effect
a 3 point wound at all, but can heal 1 and 2 point wounds. You would
need to keep track of individual wounds ie: a limb incapacitated by
3x2 point wounds could be healed using 3 Heal 2's; a limb incapacitated
by 1x6point wound would need Heal 6 or better. This makes dedicated
Healers with big Heal spells more important, as well as enhancing
Divine and Sorcery spells. (Actually, did someone propose this
recently?)
Damage Notation in RQ: I find the way locational damage is written
on character sheets to be a bit opaque. Take a typical arm for
example
Arm: 3
and damage is used to reduce this value. At zero HP the arm is useless,
Arm: 3/6/9
would be more useful. As damage was taken, the player could note it
Comments?
One of Greg's other comments about RQ damage is that it doesn't address
and at -3 it is crippled. Using the new rules, at -6 it can be permanently
maimed or even chopped off. My complaint with the notation is that none
of this is obvious from the sheet. I think a notation like:
down next to the location: when he takes 3 points of accumulated damage,
it is useless, 6 crippled, 9 destroyed.
pain: everything either works or doesn't, there is no reduction in ability
with wounds. Does anyone have any ideas about how this shoud be addressed?
>
> Finally a note about the future of this list:
>
> I don't know the copyright situation for the draft and our thoughts
> 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.
>
> So keep on producing ideas and presenting them here.
>
Agreed: I think the discussions here have been very useful.
> Joerg Baumgartner rq4@sartar.toppoint.de
Graeme Lindsell a.k.a gal502@huxley.anu.edu.au
0,,
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