To fight a racist animagic field

[VertDeLion]

Our DM threw us into a massive war, between all the continents and nations of the world, and gave each nation a superweapon of sorts. Being the human supremist that he is, he gave Albion (the human nation), among other things, antimagic fields that do not affect the human mages' magic using bulls**t radio signals and bracelets of sorts.
Any tips or ideas how to beat this?

[dejarnjc]

What powers the anti magic fields and how big are they?

[Kane0]

Fake human magic, or fake being a human. The field must have some way of differentiating human from non-human, so fool it.
If that doesn't work you could try the opposite, scrambling it so it thinks everybody is human (or nobody is).

[Flashy]

Don't be a caster, I guess?

Honestly, it's an 8th level spell written to be hard to get rid of, your DM has given an even stronger version to a particular group of people with the clear intention of making them overpowered, and it's all just a nasty combination of not-gonna-win-here.

[Slipperychicken]

I'm assuming the humans need to be wearing their bracelets to not be affected by the fields.


-Take their bracelets and make them work for your own people. If they change the frequency or something, find out how they get updates out and copy it. Ideally see if you can reproduce the bracelets and fit your people with them so they're also excepted from the fields.

-Shoot to destroy the bracelets of the human mages smirking in their fields, then slam them down as they stand impotent in the auras that once sheltered them.

-Do a thing to jam radio signals.

-Turn your casters into humans so the AMFs are cool with them.

-Polymorph big scary monsters into little ones, have them run into the fields (that 10ft radius), and by the AMF transform back into big scary monsters that eat the caster.

-Transmute big huge objects into tiny ones by magic, throw them to the tops of the fields, and the AMF will suppress the effect, turning it into an enormous weight that crushes the smirking mages.

[EvilAnagram]

Two of my sixth level players just took out a CR 6 Mage from the MM with a bit of rope and a burlap sack. They jumped the mage, grabbed his hands, gagged him, put a sack over his head, and knocked him prone in a single round. Now what they had was a guy with a +2 to acrobatics and no combat abilities.

I think a similar tactic would be a good way to get a bracelet.

[mgshamster]

Our DM threw us into a massive war, between all the continents and nations of the world, and gave each nation a superweapon of sorts. Being the human supremist that he is, he gave Albion (the human nation), among other things, antimagic fields that do not affect the human mages' magic using bulls**t radio signals and bracelets of sorts.
Any tips or ideas how to beat this?

That sounds *really* familiar, but I can't place it. Where is your GM stealing his story ideas?

[Kane0]

It might be because 'Albion' is pretty much shorthand for 'Fantasy Britain'

[mgshamster]

I was more talking about the anti magic fields and the bracelets protecting the humans from the field. That's what sounds familiar.

Albion is just a name used all over the place in fantasy. It's like the Joe of countries.

[SharkForce]

Our DM threw us into a massive war, between all the continents and nations of the world, and gave each nation a superweapon of sorts. Being the human supremist that he is, he gave Albion (the human nation), among other things, antimagic fields that do not affect the human mages' magic using bulls**t radio signals and bracelets of sorts.
Any tips or ideas how to beat this?

shoot them with nonmagical arrows. preferrably from someplace they cannot see clearly, and therefore can't cast spells at.

optionally, you can even just use regular antimagic fields that are not discriminatory at all. i mean, if they've got antimagic field devices all over the place, just unsync one, give it to the fighter, and start laughing.

[VertDeLion]

DM refuses to say how the AMF are powered or generated so im assuming its powered by dreams and bull**it and "because the DM says so"

[Kane0]

Well that's always helpful.

Definitely worth nabbing a bracelet and reverse-engineering them, then hijacking the existing fields.
That or start R&D on developing anti-antimagic magic.

[Foxhound438]

cast reincarnate on someone repeatedly until they come out human.




On a more serious note, just hit them a lot




on an actually serious note this time, what super-weapon do you/ your people have? you might be able to use that to some effect.

[Regitnui]

OK... He's mixing magic and science... You know what you need? Go in with a bunch of mages wearing mithril chain armour and claim that the Faraday cage formed by the mithril insulates that individual caster from the field. Call it a mundane method of the bracelets the Albany Bread Mages are using, and let your DM shoot himself in the foot.

He's using radio waves as the phlebotnium. You can set up a counter-spell; it doesn't wipe out the field, but cancels it in a limited area. Signal interference. In a similar vein, call lightning or control weather would disrupt the fields if cast between transmitter and field.

Thirdly, use half-elf and half-orc casters. They are, genetically and magically speaking, half-human as well, so they should have a 50% chance of being able to cast in that area.

[Battlebooze]

Humans? Use poison arrows and so on to kill their mages. Lots of poison arrows.

[VertDeLion]

As far as I know, the AMF is not being cast by a mage. It's just produced.

[VertDeLion]

cast reincarnate on someone repeatedly until they come out human.




On a more serious note, just hit them a lot




on an actually serious note this time, what super-weapon do you/ your people have? you might be able to use that to some effect.


Vorsir (dark elves)

Darkness surrounds the island, covering all its landmass, plus 20 000 of airspace above it. While outside this zone of effect, the island looks normal. Within the zone, creatures with no attachment to fey ancestry are blinded by thick darkness. Magical light and other sources of dark vision cannot penetrate this darkness.
In addition, krytari (the subrace of darkelves my people are) warriors and mages may use an action to summon an elf shadow (following the rules of summoning an elfshadow using a moonblade).
This effect lasts or up to 3 days, and has a cooldown of double the time it was active.

Also, its not being human that negates the field. The humans "are technologically superior" so they have the bracelets that respond to radio frequencies that cancel out the AMF.
Oh also they have Mana Bombs (nukes). Possibly a dragon? Airship armada, etc.

[Giant2005]

Train your nation to specialize in martial combat.
That way when you eventually change the frequency of their anti magic generator so the bracelets no longer offer immunity to the humans, your nation will easily be able to destroy the neutered humans. Their reliance on their super-weapon is their primary weakness.

[Blue Lantern]

Punch your DM in the face.

[VertDeLion]

Punch your DM in the face.

I assure you, there are many days when I feel that way.

[Flashy]

Darkness surrounds the island, covering all its landmass, plus 20 000 of airspace above it. While outside this zone of effect, the island looks normal. Within the zone, creatures with no attachment to fey ancestry are blinded by thick darkness. Magical light and other sources of dark vision cannot penetrate this darkness.

Wait, so why can the humans see? Are they just stumbling around in the dark?

[Blue Lantern]

I assure you, there are many days when I feel that way.

Well, jokes aside if that is how you really feel the real question becomes why you play with a DM that you are clearly frustrated with?

Maybe you should consider having a talk with him and/or the rest of the group to see if anyone else is having issues and if it can be solved, honestly entering in a in game arm wrestling contest with the DM is never a good idea and only bound to generate more frustrations.

[TheFlyingCleric]

If you needed to turn into a creature to be treated as that creature by magical effects, wizards would not have been given Nystul's Magic Aura. If when you get one of those bracelets, your DM calls some bull**** of 'it doesn't work on non-humans', then you have that available.

The real issue is that their are no counters for Antimagic fields in the game (except for whacking the caster upside the head, which has already been shut down by your DM). Uncounterable weapons are not much fun for anyone; especially him once you work out a way to turn the tables, and he needs to figure out how to counter it without making a plot pretzel.

You should ask him if he's going to introduce some world-specific counter to his world-specific superweapon at some later stage in the game. At the very least their opponents should be developing ways to counter the fields; that's the sort of thing you do in wars. Sounds like a really good plot hook in fact.

Otherwise, it could be your DM has a misplaced idea that magic is somehow 'cheating', and that you need to solve problems without using what is the biggest class feature of half the classes in the game.

[Slipperychicken]

Also, its not being human that negates the field. The humans "are technologically superior" so they have the bracelets that respond to radio frequencies that cancel out the AMF.
Oh also they have Mana Bombs (nukes). Possibly a dragon? Airship armada, etc.

That actually looks like it has some reasonable countermeasures. I would have tried nicking some of the bracelets and reverse-engineering it (ideally take human mages alive to make them tell you how to use it). And jamming or other interference is also a possibility, since it uses radio signals. You could also do quests to assemble teams of nonhuman scientists to work on the problem, and kidnap humans to make them spill hints to the technology.


I dunno, I guess it depends on the quality of the DM, whether or not I'd immediately go into "DM is doing a bad thing, now browbeat him OOC into not doing it" mode. I think there might be some hope in this one, but I could be wrong.

[The Zoat]

I think the simplest solution is to get rid of your mages and put in some rogues. High stealth and sleight of hand etc to smack their mages to death before they can do too much to you.

[thepsyker]

DM refuses to say how the AMF are powered or generated so im assuming its powered by dreams and bull**it and "because the DM says so"
Did you just ask him how they worked or have you taken in-game steps (infiltrating human magical research facilities, kidnapping human mage/scientists) to find out without success? It is possible figuring out how the human superweapon works is suppose to be an in-game mystery you are expected to tackle as part of the plot.



Vorsir (dark elves)

Darkness surrounds the island, covering all its landmass, plus 20 000 of airspace above it. While outside this zone of effect, the island looks normal. Within the zone, creatures with no attachment to fey ancestry are blinded by thick darkness. Magical light and other sources of dark vision cannot penetrate this darkness.
In addition, krytari (the subrace of darkelves my people are) warriors and mages may use an action to summon an elf shadow (following the rules of summoning an elfshadow using a moonblade).
This effect lasts or up to 3 days, and has a cooldown of double the time it was active.


So you (the Dark Elves that is) can still see in this magical darkness? Do the humans have allies with Fey Ancestry? If not a defensive weapon that is able to shut-down an invading enemy force's everything sounds pretty on par with an offensive weapon that just shuts down enemy magic. Simply lure their army into the area of effect of your weapon, trigger the weapon blinding them, and then slaughter the army at your leisure.

[The Zoat]

It isn't a surprise weapon. The darkness is just kind of there.

[thepsyker]

It isn't a surprise weapon. The darkness is just kind of there.




This effect lasts or up to 3 days, and has a cooldown of double the time it was active.


That it last for up to 3 days and has a cooldown period seems to imply some sort of ability to turn it on and off and if you can turn it on and off you can wait to turn it on until the enemy is where you want them for your trap. Even if there is a warm up period of some sorts to activating it, unless it is randomized somehow, you should be able to take that into account in deciding when to spring your trap.

[Blue Lantern]

That it last for up to 3 days and has a cooldown period seems to imply some sort of ability to turn it on and off and if you can turn it on and off you can wait to turn it on until the enemy is where you want them for your trap. Even if there is a warm up period of some sorts to activating it, unless it is randomized somehow, you should be able to take that into account in deciding when to spring your trap.

That cooldown if for the create shadow specific ability of his elven sub-race, if I understand correctly.

[Temperjoke]

Time to build tactical ballistae that fling huge bolts from a mile away, armed with barrels of alchemists fire.

Also, it sounds like your DM is a jerk who has decided that he wants to play against you guys instead of with you.

[thepsyker]

That cooldown if for the create shadow specific ability of his elven sub-race, if I understand correctly.

Ahh, okay. The magical darkness always being there would reduce the effects usefulness for bait and switch style traps, but even as an always on defensive effect "anyone without Fay Ancestry can't invade you without being blinded" seems on par with the anti-magic field the humans have.

I suppose it could depend on the details a little, the op says the humans have airships and that the island looks normal outside of the effect. The op also says the effect covers 20,000(feet meters?) of airspace, so if the humans' airships work at that altitude and if they have weapons that would be effective against targets on the ground from that position that would reduce the effectiveness of the darkness as a defense.

Of course the effectiveness of a bombing campaign would also be impacted by if these are underground dwelling Dark Elves or surface dwellers. Even if they are surface dwellers it would be hindered by the fact that the only intelligence on targets the humans would be able to gather would be what they can't see from outside the effect of the darkness and in the end they still wouldn't be able to follow the bombing campaign up with ground-forces capable of taking and holding territory.

[Daishain]

Identify the source and drop something big from orbit on top of said source. You can use magic outside the field to set up an entirely mundane chunky salsa situation inside of it.

[Knaight]

It sounds like you should quit, because this sounds like a severe player incompatibility issue. The DM uses heavy home brew in service of a unique setting, you're looking for a game that hews much more closely to RAW. Neither of these styles is better than the other (though I'll admit a bias towards the DM here), but they don't mix well together.

If you don't want to do that, then it's worth observing that the darkness effect of the dark elf superweapon is also extremely potent, and tactics involving surprise attacks with poison weapons at great range (preferably during what is broad daylight for you) can work beautifully. Antimagic fields are also pretty limited in area most of the time, which can make magic near them effective, such as summoning spells for things with ranged attacks.

[manny2510]

Magic cardboard mousetrap. Make a chokepoint bridge. Make the far support a magical construct. The first anti magic sphere to cut that support dooms that squad. That means that the humans will need to shut off their anti magics at some point in time, creating more opportunities for ambush. This can be adapted for smaller traps as well.

[Shining Wrath]

A grappling fighter ought to be able to grab the smirking mages and drag them out of the AMF.
You're dark elves, you ought to be able to have some high level rogues that can steal stuff. Such as the secret plans for the AMF field and / or the bracelets. The bracelets ought to be something you can steal.
Someone somewhere builds these gadgets - kidnap and enslave them. Behind every smirking mage are a few dozen hardworking artisans building their toys.
A monk's Ki is not technically magic. Water Whip them and drag them out.
Or just send in fast people who kill them in melee combat.

[dickerson76]

“A victorious army first wins and then seeks battle. A defeated army first battles and then seeks victory.” ~Sun Tzu

Try working with the DM before just assuming that he's trying to screw the party over. If he IS trying to screw you over, there is nothing you can do about it, and you shouldn't bother playing - unless you enjoy that. I wouldn't, and I'd make it known that I'm not interested in an adversarial game.

But I don't think that's what is going on. I suspect that defeating the AMF is part of the DM's plot. Other races likely have other advantages that will need to be nullified for your team to complete it's genocidal mission.

You never did mention whether your race is currently on offense or defense. It sounds like the world is in a defensive stalemate. Perhaps more details about the campaign to this point can help us identify the DM's goals. EDIT: Also, is the AMF nation-wide, like the elves' darkness?

For the AMF: Melee strike/recon force. Leave the mages home. If some of the PCs are mages, swap them out with alternate characters for this mission. If the DM doesn't allow that, my personality goes the passive aggressive route. As a mage, I'd be, "I'm a liability on this mission. Call me on my cell if the team makes it back. Peace out." Again, I don't expect the DM to act that way.

The DM likely has a way in his mind that he wants this to go down. You can try some things on your own and see what he allows and what gets shot down, pester him for clues (consult the elders/gods for guidance), or refuse to play. I'd approach them in that order.

[VertDeLion]

The Vorsir darkness weapon is that level of magical darkness BECAUSE i needed to create a counter measure against his OP weapon. Plus, it has non-elf allies so it hinders them as well as the foes, whereas the AMF just hinders whomever is against them. It also affects only the area of the island so its a defensive weapon at best.

It is also worth noting that the darkness can only be held up to 72 hrs straight and has a CD of double that to recharge. His AMF can be mobile, has no cooldown, and can be turned on for as long as it needs to be on.

The back story for my people are the krytari (dark elves) are endangered. After events of a previous campaign that lead to a cataclysm that damaged the island, less than 2500 krytari exist now.

I've been battling to balance this game for months now, working with the DM because he doesn't do math, balance or counterplay very well. For those of you whom haven't seen my previous posts, I took role of rule lawyer, appointed by DM and half the group after he gave our lvl 6 ranger (hunter archtype) a dire wolf companion and a 1d12+10 composite bow.

[Sigreid]

So you pick your battle fields and use magic to manipulate the environment to crush the field. Cause avalanches, divert rivers, etc.

[RulesJD]

Step 1: Cast Prismatic Wall

Step 2: Grapple + Shove the Wizard/AMF into the Prismatic Wall.

Step 3: Laugh at your DM for forgetting that AMF doesn't affect all spells.

[Beleriphon]

-Polymorph big scary monsters into little ones, have them run into the fields (that 10ft radius), and by the AMF transform back into big scary monsters that eat the caster.

"Hey, what's with all the rabbi..." *dragon eating wizard commences*