Why do you lose spellcasting if you hit an Artifact with MD and fail a will-save?

[DevonH]

I was paging through the old rule books due to the ageless art of battling DM's with rulebooks(He is a good friend and mostly good DM, but not the best...). Then I saw the Mage's Disjunction spell... I never understood why casting this spell on artifacts caused this effect on the Caster if they failed their will-save. Maybe I got a book that just doesn't detail it more in-depth....

Is it a backlash that is caused by some of the energy of the spell re-bounding from the Artifact? the characters choice to quit casting after destroying a powerful item of wonder? A mad Deity or some other power directly draining the power from the casters body(or stealing their possibly powerful magical soul) to use in the making of the new Artifact?

The game is so vague sometimes.

Oh well, being a brutish Chaotic-Neutral Barbarian/Druid scaring random Bandits and Hunters at night by acting like a Were-beast(watching them run 100 miles an hour to the nearest city is fun!), I probably have no reason to worry about it.

[Bad Wolf]

I kinda equate it as being the same as throwing water on a grease fire. It sounds like it should work, but it's a terrible idea.

[DevonH]

I kinda equate it as being the same as throwing water on a grease fire. It sounds like it should work, but it's a terrible idea.

and then the wrath of the angry deity is comparable to having that angry onlooker nearly singed by the fire slap the person responsible for intensifying the flames.... only about infinitely more painful. Sounds about right.

[Crake]

Considering the spell itself says that destroying an artifact in this way has a 95% (and not 100%) chance to attract the attention of a deity related to the artifact, I'd say the loss of spellcasting is not related to a deity taking it away or anything. If it was, the DC would probably be higher than 25, let's be honest. I've personally always seen it as a backlash effect, artifacts are incredibly powerful magic items, with magic so condensed that when you unravel it, there's something of a magical explosion, that channels back right through you, resulting in it possibly stripping away your ability to cast magic.

At first glance, you look at it and think "how does that stop a wizard from casting spells? He doesn't have innate magic, it's all learned". To that I say, think of it like a disjunction "fallout". Your body and very essence is unravelled from the fabric of magic itself, to the point where, even if you know HOW to cast magic, you and raw magic are now like oil and water, you cannot manipulate it. Note the "raw" magic, part, because you can still be affected by spells, you simply cannot cast them yourself.

That gets a little iffy when you start bringing SLAs and supernatural abilities into the mix, because then you have to question how those continue to function, but you can just easily say they work by accessing magic in some other way, or even by utilizing magic from some other source than whatever the "standard" source of magic is in your setting.

[Gruftzwerg]

That gets a little iffy when you start bringing SLAs and supernatural abilities into the mix, because then you have to question how those continue to function, but you can just easily say they work by accessing magic in some other way, or even by utilizing magic from some other source than whatever the "standard" source of magic is in your setting.

Well, I guess that would turn Warlocks into perfect Artifact Destroyer?^^
And as you say, his source of magic is some kind of evil daemon and not the regular way to cast spells.

[Zaq]

Why? Because some dev insisted on Disjunction being able to work on ANY magic item, but some other dev was uncomfortable with that and really didn't want players to be able to mess with artifacts, so we have this weird compromise of "you can technically do it, but it has a chance of turning you into a glorified Commoner, because that's good game design or something."

I mean, at least that's what makes sense to me. But Disjunction has many problems anyway. This is merely one of them.

[Crake]

Well, I guess that would turn Warlocks into perfect Artifact Destroyer?^^
And as you say, his source of magic is some kind of evil daemon and not the regular way to cast spells.

Well, warlocks don't have spellcasting in the first place, so they wouldn't actually lose anything, so you're kinda right. But warlocks don't have access to disjunction, and if you're talking about just using a scroll or something, then you could say the same for any class with UMD that isn't a spellcaster :smalltongue:

[Telok]

It goes back into D&D history to a time when artifacts were more than just magic items (usually they were plot items or the focus of the whole campaign) and high level spells weren't just low level spells with more dice or targets. Essentially magic wasn't considered tame, safe, automatic back then and a number of spells were rather more powerful but also risky if you used them injuduciously. The artifacts were also basically chunks of divine will or ability made manifest. So if you ended up with Vecna's left nut and threw around powerful magic without any safeguards you risked nuking part of a god.

[Gullintanni]

Why? Because some dev insisted on Disjunction being able to work on ANY magic item, but some other dev was uncomfortable with that and really didn't want players to be able to mess with artifacts, so we have this weird compromise of "you can technically do it, but it has a chance of turning you into a glorified Commoner, because that's good game design or something."

I mean, at least that's what makes sense to me. But Disjunction has many problems anyway. This is merely one of them.

I don't know that it's so much a question of game design, as much as the devs felt that Artifacts were intended to be plot devices, and the destruction of such an Artifact ought to be an event of such significance that it ends the campaign. The last time my players destroyed an Artifact, the entire party was destroyed, and it ended a war between five nations that would've otherwise left the land barren.

[Zaq]

I don't know that it's so much a question of game design, as much as the devs felt that Artifacts were intended to be plot devices, and the destruction of such an Artifact ought to be an event of such significance that it ends the campaign. The last time my players destroyed an Artifact, the entire party was destroyed, and it ended a war between five nations that would've otherwise left the land barren.

I'm pretty much okay with MDJ not being able to zap artifacts at all (the whole point of artifacts is to be plot items, like you said). But apparently someone wanted it to have the chance of working on capital-A Any items, and someone else disagreed but didn't have the clout to veto the decision entirely.

I think it's much cleaner if it just doesn't work on artifacts rather than the weird hybrid "you can technically do it, but you'll regret it forever" setup we actually have. Which, come to think of it, kind of reminds me of monster races, once you deal with the LA/RHD. You can technically do it, but you'll regret it forever.

[Crake]

I'm pretty much okay with MDJ not being able to zap artifacts at all (the whole point of artifacts is to be plot items, like you said). But apparently someone wanted it to have the chance of working on capital-A Any items, and someone else disagreed but didn't have the clout to veto the decision entirely.

I think it's much cleaner if it just doesn't work on artifacts rather than the weird hybrid "you can technically do it, but you'll regret it forever" setup we actually have. Which, come to think of it, kind of reminds me of monster races, once you deal with the LA/RHD. You can technically do it, but you'll regret it forever.

To be fair, if you're doing it in a controlled environment, there are plenty of ways to guarantee success on the save, the simplest of which is just using a scroll of surge of fortune on yourself before disjoining the artifact. The only time it becomes a real issue is when you're disjoining artifacts mid combat, and if you're doing that, then, well... something's gone wrong somewhere along the line I guess.