[RQ-Rules] Re: The Trouble With Shamans

[Simon Phipp]

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.

Shamans in RQ3 are quite weak. That's why I beefed them up for my campaign. 
 
> 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.

If you think about it, these encounters are the Shaman attracting spirits
because of his powerful aura. It all depends where the shaman is as to what
spirits he can encounter. A shaman on the Mundane Plane is unlikely to meet a
deity, no matter what the encounter tables say. Even if the GM is strict and
adheres to the letter of the law, it doesn't say what the deity is. A
"Godlike" spirit may be a Hero, demigod, demon, powerful spirit, Temple
Guardian, a Nymph or similar nature spirit, for instance. Not all of these
encounters will be hostile, not all will require roleplay. A shaman walking
through an Aldryami forest will probably encounter dryads or other forest
spirits, one walking through the Marsh will encounter chaos spirits or Waha
spirits, one walking through Boldhome would likely encounter Temple Guardians
or clan spirits.

On the subject of the random encounters with spirits, I would say that a
shaman can ignore encounters with minor spirits - he says "boo" and they run
off. Depending on where the shaman is, the encounters might be run, in case
the spirits are scouts or spies or if the shaman wants to bind them, question
them or make friends with them.

I personally do not like the encounter tables as they are written. They take
no account of the different spirit population of different areas. A spirit
encounter in the middle of an Aldryami forest will be different to one in the
middle of the Upland Marsh or in Pent. What we need is a series of encounter
tables, similar to the ones for different areas in RQ2, but specifically for
spirits.

Simon (Phipp not Hibbs, Philips or Pipp)



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