The insanity of dissing Runequest
Cyberzombie said:
The worst, though, was Runequest. I never saw the later editions of Runequest, but in an early edition, they had spells (about the power level of a 2nd level D&D spell) that cost permanent Constitution drain to cast. And I couldn't find any rules for regaining Con (although I didn't read the whole book). Maybe some people could enjoy that sort of magic, but not me.
Since ENWorld is a nice, family-approved Web forum, I'm going to refrain from flaming you outright for a comment like this. Instead, let me simply "correct your thinking" on this matter, as you are mis-remembering the magic rules from RQ.
Runequest had two forms of magic (three if you want to go as far as 3rd edition, but let's leave that for now).
Battle Magic was basically a point-based system. You could learn a number of spells limited by your INT. Casting these spells cost you Magic Points (based on your POW stat), the cost increasing with the power of the spell. Battle Magic was fairly common and fairly weak.
Divine Magic is what I think you're referring to. Learning Divine Magic required the character to be both a fairly involved member of a cult (a.k.a. religion) and to sacrifice permanent points of POW. However, Divine Magic is really powerful, and works 100% of the time (unless you're heavily encumbered when casting, and even this it's like 90%-99%). However, gaining increased POW was part of the RQ experience system, so the sacrifice could eventually be replaced.
In future, if your memory of a game system you didn't even read all the way through is so spotty, you may wish to refrain from commenting on it at all, much less labeling it "the worst ever."
RQ2 was probably one of the greatest RPGs in the history of the hobby. It was incredibly innovative for its time, and it had one of the most interesting, fleshed out settings the hobby has ever seen. I don't think a less-than-stellar supplement was ever published for it.
Anyway, if you need a magic system that could be termed the worst, you couldn't do better than, imho, 2nd ed. Chivalry & Sorcery. That system took hours of calculations just to create a magician who had the basic tools necessary to play an active role in the game. And then you had these convoluted requisite chians of spells, e.g., to cast a fireball you needed to know Create/Detatch Fire, Move Fire, Direct Fire, BlahThis Fire, BlahSomethingElse Fire, and so on. I've almost never seen a system that did so much to get in the way of actual play as C&S2e.
