[Rq-rules] Shaman rules [was MRQ "A Real Runequest Game"]

[Peter Maranci]

A lot has been written here on this topic in the past, but the biggest two
problems that I saw both grew out of the rule that the shaman's chance of a
random spirit encounter were equal to his POW plus his fetch's POW as a
percent every day.

This meant that A) on a long trip which was intended to be otherwise
uneventful, the GM would spend a lot of time rolling spirit encounters
unless the GM changed or ignored that rule by fiat, and B) since the spirit
encounter table had the option of meeting a god, over a year or so a shaman
was virtually SURE to meet a hostile god.

Which made it hard to figure out how any shaman managed to survive for long.

->Peter

On 8/1/07, Gary Sturgess <gazza666 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Forgive a "cl00l355 n00b", but what exactly is the problem with the
> RQ3 Shaman rules?
>
> Is it that they are effectively immune to magic (thanks to massive
> POW)? The power of the spirits that they can control? Discorporation?
>
> Looked at purely in RQ3 core rules, it looks to me that Shamans
> compare fairly unfavourably to sorcerers (who can Tap for effectively
> the same magic immunity - once you're down to a 5% chance, it makes
> little difference if I have 10 more or 100 more MP than you), even
> leaving the Duration stuff out of the question - since Sorcerers that
> are Adepts (the equivalent of Shamans) have less time requirements.
> Even Sandy's rules for sorcerers (which are excellent) do not really
> depower the sorcerer, but merely make them less fiddly to play.
>
> Comparing them to priests is trickier. If you follow the rules for
> regaining divine magic strictly then priests really have to ration
> their magic unless they have easy access to a Great Temple. On the
> other hand divine magic is typically a lot stronger than spirit magic
> (compare Spirit Block to Spirit Screen, or Protection to Shield), but
> I can certainly imagine shamans that have enough powerful spirit magic
> available that this becomes a non-issue (and if nothing else they can
> perhaps control spirits that know divine magic).
>
> I'd say that in the core rules Priests < Shamans < Sorcerers. There
> are numerous exceptions, of course, but I'm honestly curious as to
> what the main objection to RQ3 shamans is (power? blandness?)
>
> On 01/08/07, Brad Furst <esoteric2723 at comcast.net> wrote:
> >
> > I've run and played in multiple campaigns that prominently featured
> shamans
> > of the RQ:AiG variety and of the Sandy Petersen shaman rules. We
> universally
> > preferred Sandy's rules. I've found none that I like better.
> >
> >
> >
> > On Jul 31, 2007, at 8:20 PM, Steve Perrin wrote:
> >
> > One other difference between RQI and RQII was, in the words of Steve
> > Henderson, "We exchanged one unplaytested set of Shaman rules for
> another
> > set of unplaytested Shaman rules." :)
> >
> > Steve Perrin, who is still looking for some decent Shaman rules...
> >
> > Brad Furst
> > There are three kinds of people in the world today:
> > those who can count and those who can't.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > RQ-Rules mailing list
> > RQ-Rules at crashbox.com
> > http://crashbox.com/mailman/listinfo/rq-rules
> >
> >
>
>
> --
> GAZZA
> _______________________________________________
> RQ-Rules mailing list
> RQ-Rules at crashbox.com
> http://crashbox.com/mailman/listinfo/rq-rules
>



-- 
Peter Maranci - pmaranci at gmail.com
Pete's RuneQuest & Roleplaying! http://www.runequest.org/rq.htm
The Diary of An Invisible Man: http://bobquasit.livejournal.com/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.thinbits.net/pipermail/rq-rules/attachments/20070801/a1e597a6/attachment.html