Quote from: Anglachel;429707Sounds fine to me. OTOH I am no expert concerning MRQ II or any other RQ Version. I just started reading through MRQ II ... so I might not see what problems there are with generating another POW BL score :idunno:

I'm in the same boat. Hopefully some of the MRQII vets will chime in. I've decided to use the cult mechanics to simulate bloodlines, with the bloodline derivation being a cult of the dead god. This works within the MRQII rules to allow scions to have access to heroic abilities and divine magic and sorcery. The bloodline strength can perhaps be simulated by the cult rank. The only stumbling block for me so far is allowing for bloodtheft, but I'm thinking it can somehow work with the POW dedicated to a cult by pacts, however I'm loathe to have a character's permanent POW stolen, although it's not yet off the table. For the MRQII vets, is there a way in any of the RQ books for POW to be stolen?

I'm going to assign spirit magic to elves, with being blooded the only way elves can get access to divine magic or sorcery. This would jive with why elves, despite being so long-lived, have gotten repeatedly defeated by humans in war. I'm thinking of stealing Glorantha's Mostali for the dwarves, since Cerilian dwarves are rock-like anyway.

Quote from: Sigmund;429716I'm going to assign spirit magic to elves, with being blooded the only way elves can get access to divine magic or sorcery. This would jive with why elves, despite being so long-lived, have gotten repeatedly defeated by humans in war. I'm thinking of stealing Glorantha's Mostali for the dwarves, since Cerilian dwarves are rock-like anyway.

It isn't like they'll be using it, as if I remember correctly bloodtheft requires that the opponent be killed with the final blow striking them through the heart.

Quote from: Silverlion;429774It isn't like they'll be using it, as if I remember correctly bloodtheft requires that the opponent be killed with the final blow striking them through the heart.

That is true enough. It's only a mechanism really for villains, but especially with MRQII's hit locations, I'd like to have a mechanism in case it happens in the game. I'm thinking it's going to grant a bonus to POW, specifically to the POW dedicated to the bloodline cult pact. I think I've ditched the idea of adding a POW bonus, the POW required to be dedicated to the bloodline's pact can be a limiting factor on the starting strength a player is going to be willing to assign a character, which the more POW dedicated to the pact the stronger the bloodline. Then, the only way to change it after character creation is through in-game means. The flip side is, the more POW dedicated the bloodline pact the less is available for pacts with the cults of living gods and for using with sorcery. The next hurdle is to determine the way blooded characters can refresh their divine spells they gain through their bloodline cult, since the gods of those cults are dead and have no temples or shrines at which scions can renew their dedication. Might just do it the old D&D way and have the powers only be usable 1/day, 1/week, or even all the time depending on the power. I can just try to match the BR rule book in that regard.

Another consideration that has arised in reading through and comparing BR and MRQII is the concept in BR of how the regents are invested magically in their realm. I can either try to build an adaption, or basically ignore it and make blooded scions rulers through tradition/social convention rather than through game mechanics.

I don't care for either runequest or birthright.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;430575I don't care for either runequest or birthright.

RPGPundit

How unfortunate, because they both rock.

Quote from: RPGPundit;430575I don't care for either runequest or birthright.

I'm just going to necro this thread rather than start a new one for this topic, hope nobody minds. I've determined/decided making each bloodline derivation it's own cult will work well and allow me to assign different runes, customise spell lists, add heroic abilities, and use gifts and compulsions (especially for Azrai derivations) for the different derivations. I think this will work fine to model the scions and their abilities. This works at the character level just fine, but it's at the realm level that I'm kinda stumped. I have a decent system for wizards I think. Scions who study and use sorcery are going to be handicapped slightly as they must assign POW to their bloodline cult in order to be scions and use sorcery at all, so their available magic points for sorcery will be reduced, and at first it seems  they'd prefer less dedicated POW for their bloodline pact, thereby having weaker bloodline lines (from a pure metagame perspective of course). I figure, though, that at the realm level wizards can use their magical holdings to draw magic points from the land to fuel their magic with, offsetting the POW dedicated to the bloodline pact. In a break from BR I might limit the amount of MPs a sorcerer can draw from magical holdings based on their bloodline strength (POW dedicated to bloodline pact). Additionally, the limiting factor of POW dedicated to bloodline is similar to the Birthright.net team making being blooded a level-adjusted template like they did for the 3.x conversion (at least the last time I looked around over there). Of course the MRQII magic system is superior to D&Ds anyway and RQ BR wizards can also just make themselves nice magic point stores I still have to hammer out how many dedicated POW each bloodline strength level needs, but that shouldn't be too difficult. I don't want ot make it too onerous, because scions still need to be highly ranked religious leaders and decent sorcerers, maybe every 2 dedicated POW would equal a bloodline strength level.

Anyway, do any of ya'all MRQII authors and gurus out there have any ideas about how to approach the problem of BR's realm level components, namely modelling the law, guild, and temple holdings? I'm thinking I might be able to do something similar for the temple holdings as I've been thinking of doing for the magic holdings... giving divine casters more POW based on their temple holdings. The guild holdings I could live with not actually having as part of the system, but if it can be done, the guild holdings provide a nice counterpoint to the law holdings and drive some in-game behavior at both the meta and roleplay levels, so if I can figure a way I'd still like to use 'em. Also, while I have the basics of the magic and possibly the temple holdings systems in mind, I still need to determine an actual system with the numbers, otherwise I would just try to port the system as stock as possible from BR, but that won't work because if I convert magic holding numbers straight to MPs, they'd have too many. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

I also haven't even started on the awnshei/ershei yet. I'm thinking many will just be exceptionally powerful examples of whatever critter they're the progenitors of, but for certain ones (Gorgon, Spider, Raven, etc.) this won't work. Of course they're not too high a priority because characters won't be facing them right away. With MRQII's more gritty system, I would like to try to make them powerful, but not so powerful that they could never be defeated. Any guidance here would be appreciated as well.

The last thing I've been thinking about is bloodtheft. It's of course going to deal with stealing the POW a scion has dedicated to their bloodline pact. I might actuaally be able to port that rather easily, just saying that through bloodtheft a scion can take part or all of the bloodline POW of the scion they are killing, but I don't think a 1 to 1 conversion would be appropriate (or the Gorgon would be a nuclear power plant of POW), so some sort of ratio is what I'm thinking... 1 for every 3 or 5 or something added to the thief's own POW, which is automatically dedicated to the bloodline pact. Maybe 1:3 would be fine, or even 1:2. What do ya'all think, would 1:2 be too much? I'd think any at the tail end that wouldn't make a whole unit (i.e. 2 POW in a 1:3 ratio) would just be lost.

Quote from: Sigmund;435033Anyway, do any of ya'all MRQII authors and gurus out there have any ideas about how to approach the problem of BR's realm level components, namely modelling the law, guild, and temple holdings?

Well I'd offer to help but I have no idea about Birthright or its bloodline/social mechanisms. So I'm completely in the dark when you talk about realms and so on.

If you could explain the principles of the setting perhaps I could offer more constructive suggestions.

-wrongthread

The basics are that all the gods and their followers had this big apocalyptic battle hundreds of years ago. The gods exploded, and their followers absorbed the power. The closer you were to the god, the more you absorbed, and you pass that power onto your kids. This became the foundation of the noble families that arose afterwards.

So you've got two kinds of people - blooded and peasants. The blooded are able to link with the land to enable them to do things that others couldn't. Wizards and clerics can cast certain super-powerful "realm" spells, fighters and thieves could do something else (I can't remember what), and all blooded got magic powers (the usual D&D gamut from regeneration to detect magic).

If you wanted to upgrade your blooded type, from say, a minor bloodline to a major one, you could go around killing other blooded people with a certain kind of magic weapon. IIRC, there might be some way to do it through your link with the land as well that was more laborious.

Sigmund> I'd just use a variation of the cult rules. So you dedicate whatever amount of POW and this gives you magic spells like you were a priest of whatever level of initiation. Each holding you possess counts as a level of initiation. More holdings = more advanced spells.

In order to increase your POW, you need to have a blooded link with a holding for each point of increase, and if you ever lose the link, you lose the POW.

Quote from: Pete Nash;435134Well I'd offer to help but I have no idea about Birthright or its bloodline/social mechanisms. So I'm completely in the dark when you talk about realms and so on.

If you could explain the principles of the setting perhaps I could offer more constructive suggestions.

For any of ya'all that care to look and have the time, Birthright.net has loads of info about the setting if ya wanted an overview of it. I know ya'all writers are pretty busy though.