[RQ-Rules] The Trouble With Shamans

[Peter Maranci]

I've been re-reading some of those great old RQ2 supplements (they still
amaze me) and catching up on some old email, when I had to answer a
question. I'd written years ago that the shaman rules in RQIII were more
broken than the sorcery rules, and now I had to defend that.

The funny thing is that it's not that hard to find the point where the
rules broke down. I don't have access to the rulebook this minute, so my
recollection may be a bit off, but when I did have the book I clearly
remember seeing this problem.

According to the rules the shaman has a chance of being encountered by a
randomly-determined spirit which is (if I recall correctly) equal to the
combined POW of himself and his fetch. A shaman of more than a year or two
of experience is likely to have a combined POW of 25 at least, meaning
that there is a 25% chance each day of being approached or attacked by a
random spirit.

But on the random spirit table, there is a 1% chance of encountering a
being of godlike power. Which means that for the average shaman, in 400
days the chances are excellent that they will meet one of these
overwhelming spirit entities.

So either A) most shamans don't live very long, or B) beings of godlike
power tend to be fairly easy to deal with.

Apart from that, I remember that GMing a shaman was really pretty
annoying. We spent a grossly disproportional amount of time resolving his
frequent random encounters with spirits.

What sorts of experiences have other people had roleplaying or GMing
shamans? I'm curious.

                                                              ->Peter
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Peter Maranci             peter at maranci.net             Woonsocket, RI
Come to Pete's RuneQuest & Roleplaying!: http://www.maranci.net/rq.htm