Lunar Magic?

[Thomas Devine]

Will Lunar Magic be like it was in the Avalon Hill days. That is to say, will Lunars be able to do sorcery-like manipulations of Spirit magic?

[David Cake]

I think the answer to that is no. Current thinking is that that was kind of a quick rules hack to represent the way Lunar magic can transcend the normal limits of non-Lunar magic.

The Lunars do, however, possess the relatively unique ability to essentially learn to use their Lunar magic in radical new ways as they explore new moon phases (something possible only to Lunars who are Illuminated, just as you had to be Illuminated to access Lunar Magic in RQ3). This can include Lunars whose magic resembles theism (RQ3 Divine Magic) quickly learning how to use magic that resembles sorcery, resembles animism, or resembles Divine magic that is based on widely different runes. A powerful Lunar magician (say, one of the magicians of the Major Classes of the Lunar College of Magic) could easily appear to be wielding magic that appeared similar to multiple types of Divine magic, sorcery, and spirit magic – though in truth, they are all just different manifestations of Lunar magic.

[David Scott]

@davecake’s correct. The current model for Lunar Magic although not for RuneQuest is found in Pavis – Gateway to Adventure (which will eventually be superseded by HeroQuest Glorantha as the standard model). Lunar Glamours appear in the rules as the other types of magic – Rune, Spirit and Sorcery. But for all intents and purposes are their own type of Magic – Glamours.

[David Cake]

And probably the RuneQuest rules, hypothetical as they might be at this point, will be fairly similar in spirit to the HQ2 ones.

It is worth noting that, even in the official HQ2 rules, that there is more to Lunar magic than that – the Seven Mothers writeup even says so, saying that the full effects of Sevening are beyond that writeup – and there are clearly magical powers that are related to Illumination (such as combining contradictory runes, overcoming cult restrictions, and concealing the taint of Chaos), which is itself part of the broader realm of Mysticism, that the Lunars may be able to use for a few more tricks. Plus they have the ability to invoke Chaos in extremis. But just the ability to access the magic of multiple Lunar phases, including effectively multiple magic systems and Runes, already makes them probably the most flexible and resourceful magicians in Glorantha.

[Olli Kantola]

A couple of ideas.

1) You could let lunars mix magic points and devotion points. They would not be able to convert magic points into devotion points per se, but they could use magic points or devotion points instead of the other. Cost would be 2 MPs for 1 devotion point and vice versa.

2) Lunars who know sorcery could spend points from their devotion pool to buy extra levels of Shaping.

3) With spirit magic I’m a bit unsure. Perhaps devotion could be used to temporarily boost spirit intensity?

4) Worshippers of a lunar immortal could improvise folk magic spells related to their patrons phase of the moon. Cost would be in devotion points. The phase of the moon would effect this so that during the darker phases you could not improvise and during full moon you would not be limited by your patrons phase of the moon and would be able to pick from the other phases magic too.

The phase of the moon would effect MP and devotional point costs.

– Black/dying: If something costs MPs, it costs 2 points more. If something costs devotion points, it costs 1 point more.

– Crescent: If something costs MPs, it costs one point more.

– Half: Normal costs.

– Full: If something costs MPs, it costs 1 point less.

Note how this effects the conversion rates.

I was aiming for flexiblity, but is this too powerful? If so, then the perhaps black/dying and crecent phases could be given harsher penalties. /ul>

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