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Spell Economics

Posted on May 12, 2021

As an aside, the economics of spell cost in RuneQuest is player and significant NPC oriented. 3 point spells are really rarely cast outside of those groups (and one-use spells are almost never cast without a imperative reason!). So for example, Resurrection exists for two main reasons:

  1. To give beloved player characters a chance to return from the dead;
  2. To give the GM an excuse for bringing dead NPCs back into the game.

Outside of these two situations, Resurrection should be pretty rare, and the CA cult prefers to use their magic for Cure Disease, Heal Wound, and so on. Resurrection is not something commonly used as part of criminal investigations, etc. Any more than an Orlanthi clan skirmish involves dozens of Thunderbolt spells!

As a further aside, the RuneQuest rules are intended to model a player character’s interaction with the setting – they are rules for a ROLEPLAYING GAME. They are not intended to be a Newtonian cosmic mechanicism that you wind up and watch the NPCs interact with each other without further GM direction!

Remember RQ is the rules system for a heroic fantasy RPG. It is not intended to be SimGlorantha.

So if a Player Character casts Resurrection all the time – that’s fine! Or Thunderbolt. Or True Sword. Or whatever. They are player characters and the protagonists in their story.Same thing if Halcyon var Enkorth keeps getting Resurrected.

it is totally fine when a player joins CA, or if the players decide to have strong connections to the CA temple so that they can get Resurrected – that’s what the rules are for.What I am warning against is assuming the NPCs of the CA cult happily casts Resurrection on another NPC in order to further an investigation. Or that the CA Healers “hold back” their Rune points until near a Holy Day so that they can minimax their Rune Point replenishment. Those are all valid strategies for minimaxing Player Characters – but don’t assume NPCs operate like that.

The CA cult tried to Resurrect Kallyr, but every attempt failed. And Broyan there was nothing left to Resurrect.

Jeff Richard

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