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Cluedrew
2018-05-24, 01:07 PM
There is a certain irony in anti-magic zone type spells. Because they are usually described as turning off magic in an area, while being a bit of magic operating in that area. I'm sure you can explain it in a way that makes more sense than that (I have two off the top of my head), but it got me thinking about magic, magic counters and not-magic effecting magic.

Although wizards* have a lot of ways to stop fighter**, tricks a fighter might have to stop a wizard are much rarer. In fact I can't think of any popular ones (besides destroy the delicate magical apparatus, great for rituals not so much for a head on fight). So I decided to try and think of some. I very quickly realized that most magic systems actually don't talk about this sort of thing, which creates an almost circular problem where I can't talk about how non-magic could beat out magic because people don't talk about how non-magic could beat out magic. So I am resorting to theory crafting.

For instance it is very reasonable to me that a quick fighter should be able to intercept a D&D fireball, have it go off on the outside of a shield say so the blast does not go behind them. Perhaps they could even deflect it and send it back at the caster, that would depend on how the blast part of it is triggered. If it is triggered by a contact, could an archer set it off with an arrow?

There are also tricky thing you could do. You have an opponent who can teleport people? Tie yourself to a large rock or tree with a long rope, can't teleport you because there is no line you can draw between you and your articles (after all, your clothes go with you) and something too big for them to move. Counter magically spying by transferring messages in a cramped space (no good viewing angle) by letter (but they have to use sight anyways).

Actually the last is probably the most significant, because it gets into a strategic space as well, so we see the same thing repeated at a different level. Divination is blocked by special wards and other wards can stop any intrusion unless you dispel them with more magic. Ones like these I am drawing an even larger blank on, I can't think of a single case where some major magical strategic advantage was overthrown by a mundane trick, like fact soldiers on the walls or something like that (and I could totally see that working, maybe with a bit magical resistance to blur it and make them not realize this is where you want them to be looking, not entirely magic but still a large part of the plan).

So those are my thoughts on the matter. Do you know of any good examples of these? Where a magic hits a limit you don't have to be a wizard to set up or take advantage of? (And for the purposes of this discussion, simply not being able to bring enough magic to bare doesn't count unless you are being actively hindered.)

* Not just D&D wizards, the broader archetype of studios and inventive magic user the class represents.
** Again broader archetype.

If you know my other Sword beats Spell threads, this one is really a spin off. It is not about the idea of a God-Martial but still about giving cool stuff to the supposedly mundane (aka boring).

Lord Raziere
2018-05-24, 01:20 PM
Well first, your probably looking at the wrong fiction.

Try looking for fiction where casters are ALWAYS evil. where the protagonists are ALWAYS magicless people. like Conan. or inquisitors hunting witches, or things like that. there are worlds out there where normal people kill mages, they're just not ones where magic is an inherently neutral or good thing, or worlds where the mages can just take over and change everything. Behold, The Trope Itself (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MagicIsEvil). probably a good place to start, since working within that confines of all magic being evil, you have to design it so that its beatable by a party of good non-magic people.

Cluedrew
2018-05-24, 02:06 PM
To Lord Raziere: There might be some I've not read that much of that kind of story. But in my experience those tend to be even harder to overcome directly, serving give the villain a major edge for most of the story and collapsing only when the villain is overcome as a person by the hero. That is kind of hard to encode into a game system.

awa
2018-05-24, 02:24 PM
so if i understand correctly you are looking for system neutral ways that non magical people could beat magical foes?

Make casting a bit slower, casting is complicated and requires concentration try not stuttering when some one takes a swing at you. It should be really easy to interfere with any real spell if you are close to it, get rid of those 5ft steps, concentration checks, and spells that can be cast with a single action. This obviously pushes wizards into a support role rather than a combat role.

In some settings iron has anti magic properties. Depending on how common iron is and how big an effect it is this could be a massive liability to a wizard.

In one rpg i saw, normal humans had a small degree of magic resistance so enough of them who either did not believe in magic or were angry at the witch could disable their magic, making a decent sized mob of peasants with pitchfork and torches a deadly threat to a witch.

In some stories magic (or sometimes just strong magic) makes you obsessed and crazy, interfering with your ability to make rational choices causing you to do stuff like monologue about their evil plan, or you know have evil plans.

Xuc Xac
2018-05-24, 02:55 PM
Counter magically spying by transferring messages in a cramped space (no good viewing angle) by letter (but they have to use sight anyways).


Use messengers trained in sign language like Helen Keller. If they can read another person's signs by feeling them, they can pass messages and hold conversations by signing into each other's palms in a dark room. Clairvoyance sees nothing and clairaudience hears nothing. And if some wizard tries to research a spell that would allow "clairtactility" (e.g. Bigby's Groping Hands), it would be more obvious than a little wizard eye.

Psikerlord
2018-05-24, 03:23 PM
I prefer older editions solution for fighters - if the mage takes damage before he casts teh spell, it is interrupted and the spell lost. LFG uses a less harsh version, if damaged before his turn, caster can't cast (but can do other things).

DaveOTN
2018-05-24, 03:56 PM
It's tricky in D&D because spells generally work on a "target" and we don't get a lot of information on how they work. In a lot of stories, there's a bit more explanation as to how they work which can allow a clever warrior to subvert them, by swapping out material components so they blow up in the wizard's face, for instance, or by "accidentally" dropping divination clues that are connected to someone else so that the wizards scrys on the wrong person.

One classic example is the old "bag of flour" trick for dealing with invisibility. In the old 2nd edition version of stoneskin, the spell just blocked a number of "attacks" completely, so enterprising players would sometimes throw, say, a cloud of sand in the warded wizard's face in the hopes the DM would interpret each grain of sand as an individual "attack." Psions and telepaths can be beat in fiction by filling your mind up with horrible or distracting images and learning to deal with them - the intruding wizard tries to get into your head and then rapidly wishes he wasn't there. And of course D&D's Protection from Evil spells are magical energy barriers, but in fiction they tend to be literal chalk lines on the floor - often clever warriors find it better to remove the wizard's protections and let whatever evil thing he was summoning do the dirty work.

The problem is that such things tend to be ultimate moments of awesomeness in books, where the evil wizard is attempting to steal the fighter's soul and then it turns out he's actually just stolen the soul of a mouse named Fighter in the fighter's pocket. They work well in a prewritten plot where they happen at the climax, but in a long-running campaign you've just completely invalidated magic jar and before long every fighter in the world walks around with half a dozen mice on his person from then on. :)

Hand_of_Vecna
2018-05-24, 06:10 PM
, your probably looking at the wrong fiction.

Try looking for fiction where casters are ALWAYS evil. where the protagonists are ALWAYS magicless people. like Conan. or inquisitors hunting witches, or things like that. there are worlds out there where normal people kill mages, they're just not ones where magic is an inherently neutral or good thing, or worlds where the mages can just take over and change everything.

Hey I agree with the principal of what your saying here, but I just want to point out that Conan doesn't actually kill many wizards in the Howard stories. Also magic or at least wizards are not always evil.

In two stories Phoenix on the Sword and Beyond the Black River he kills creatures summoned by a calling spell which have some sort of life-link which kills the caster when the called creature is killed. In PotS he can only do this because a spell was cast on his sword.

In a story I'll edit in the name later, happens in India like country. He battles a cabal of what what amount to D&D warlocks their main abilities being a magical blast they seem to be able to repeat a lot like Eldritch blast and a charm ability like devil's tounge. Conan is victorious largely because he is given an anti Eldritch blast item just before the battle.

In Rogues in the House and The Scarlet Citadel his "wizardry" enemies actually just have access to science and alchemy from before the Hyborian Age (The Hyborian Age was Howard's world which takes place between the fall of Atlantis and the beginning of the human history we know from archaeology.) One was defeated by being faster and one shorting, the other with the aid of a real wizard.

Darth Ultron
2018-05-24, 09:31 PM
A lot of fiction does have the mundane beating magic with just mundane stuff. It is in just about all mythology, where the foe has massive magic and the hero has sticks and rocks...and their wits.

The Comic Conan, as well as plenty of super heroes, are a good example. Spider Man really does stand out here as he very often fights a super powered villain and defeats them with mundane science. The Doctor, in all media, also does this. Though maybe the best, classic, example is found more in sci-fi then fantasy. Tons of classic sci fi stories have 'magical monsters' attacking Earth, and a scientist defeating them with mundane science.

The Hercules and Xena TV shows do have a good, if goofy, fantasy type here. The heroes can always 'block a fireball' or such, with a thrown rock or dinner plate.

This is nearly impossible to put in a game though. The book keeping to keep track of everything a mundane to use to block or effect magic would be cumbersome at best. And you need a way to not make magic useless, but some how also have it be effected. And a great way is to have 'blocked' magic half 'half effect'.

And this takes you full circle right back to the RPG basic: The Saving Throw. Most games have something like this: A character can 'resist' magic or any other effect. Though most games just keep it vague.

Tvtyrant
2018-05-24, 10:28 PM
Easy enough to do; make magic take hours of prep time writing runes and arcane designs, lighting candles and flicking holy water. Casting becomes a purely out of combat choice, and is so expensive it is often cheaper to accomplish the same thing with hired workers/soldiers.

If you used such a system I would suggest making magic open to everyone and get rid of the idea of a casting class.

Florian
2018-05-25, 12:23 AM
For instance it is very reasonable to me that a quick fighter should be able to intercept a D&D fireball, have it go off on the outside of a shield say so the blast does not go behind them. Perhaps they could even deflect it and send it back at the caster, that would depend on how the blast part of it is triggered. If it is triggered by a contact, could an archer set it off with an arrow?

You can look at some of the tools Pathfinder martial classes have received late in the edition.

There's a feat chain that uses a shield to block missiles, then rays, then blasts, another one does the same with weapons and goes from missiles, to spells in general, to normally unblockable things, like giant folders or dragon breath.

Another feat chain shuts down the ability to cast defensively, so magic will always trigger an AoO, which has a great chance to cancel the spell, AD&D-style. For Barbarians, this is also available as part of the Witch Killer rage power chain, which also opens up the option to see, target and sunder ongoing spells and caps with Eater of Magic.

Mr Beer
2018-05-25, 12:26 AM
It's a longass time since I read a Conan novel but I seem to recall he beat magic a few times via the Hulk method i.e. by being just too damn indomitable to reliably mind control. So he'd get sort of hypnotized or paralyzed or charmed or whatever, then his preternatural barbarian willpower would kick in and he'd suddenly run the wizard through with three foot of honest sharp steel. And then he'd totally bone the girl he rescued from vile servitude. Stabbing solved a lot of Conan's problems, is what I'm saying.

Kaptin Keen
2018-05-25, 12:49 AM
This is nearly impossible to put in a game though.

I can do it in five seconds.

Feat: Heroic Save - on a succesful save vs a spell, you gain the ability to cancel the spell entirely.

Not saying it's the ideal solution - or the ideal wording for the effect I'm aiming for - but it's in no way difficult to implement. Whether it's balanced or not is debatable, but balance is something you can fiddle with, maybe imposing a -2 or -4 to the DC, but granting the cancellation on a succes.

Elanasaurus
2018-05-25, 03:03 AM
Feat: Heroic Save - on a succesful save vs a spell, you gain the ability to cancel the spell entirely.You typed that in five seconds? Dang, that's fast.

Cluedrew
2018-05-25, 11:55 AM
The problem is that such things tend to be ultimate moments of awesomeness in books, [...] but in a long-running campaign you've just completely invalidated magic jar and before long every fighter in the world walks around with half a dozen mice on his person from then on. :)Yeah, I did think about that. Ideally we would find a way that it comes down to the particular characters involved right off the bat. Baring that going too far might be the next best solution, because then we just have to find the next middle point from the two extremes. Honestly I can remember the last time I saw a setting where casters were helpless before the tricks and martial strength of warriors. If one exists, it would probably be a good reference.

On Inconvenience: Making magic less convenient to use is one solution, but it has one major draw back, the characters can't be on screen together and in conflict (or it is harder to do so). Because either the wizard has cast their spells and they have advantage, or the warrior is interrupting the ritual and they have advantage.

To Xuc Xac: I like that one. It is a trick that would work as is in most settings with magic (mind reading is the only counter amount common powers I can think of) and I bet if divination was a problem, people would have actually thought of it. Yet I have never seen it once.

To Florian & Kaptin Keen: Those would definitely work as the combat examples. If I was building a fresh system I might try to make them closer to core (ex. Heroic Save is an option you can always try for, but it is much harder to accomplish), but as part of existing systems that sounds about right.

Kaptin Keen
2018-05-25, 12:55 PM
You typed that in five seconds? Dang, that's fast.

No.

Frankly, if your typing speed is decent, you can easily type a sentence like that in five seconds. But ... I did not say I typed it in five. Frankly, I'd say how long it takes to type is irrelevant.

I came up with it in five seconds.

Darth Ultron
2018-05-25, 06:21 PM
Feat: Heroic Save - on a succesful save vs a spell, you gain the ability to cancel the spell entirely.


Except most games already have this: the saving throw(or whatever they want to call it).

Elanasaurus
2018-05-25, 06:30 PM
No.

Frankly, if your typing speed is decent, you can easily type a sentence like that in five seconds.:frown:
I came up with it in five seconds.The concept or the Houserule Feat? Because just a concept can't be "put in a game".

Kaptin Keen
2018-05-26, 12:09 AM
Except most games already have this: the saving throw(or whatever they want to call it).

Really? I'm pretty sure 'cancels the spell' isn't part of what a saving throw does. You could argue that it is, if it's a single target spell like Charm. But saving against a fireball doesn't generally cancel it.


:frown:The concept or the Houserule Feat? Because just a concept can't be "put in a game".

They're sort of the same? Getting the idea for the houserule feat was simply marginally faster than typing it out.

Also, I'm not suggesting it's useable or finished as it stands. It might require level 6, for instance, and include something about having a shield or thrown item to intercept - so to speak - the spell effect. There might be better ways to balance it than a simple dice modifier. Maybe it would require an action, forcing the character to match initiative with the caster.

All I'm saying is: Coming up with something that let's the fighter battle the wizard on a more even footing isn't that hard.

In my games, barbarian rage can be spent to break charms and compulsions. That's another way of doing it (but that house rule isn't one I just came up with, that's been the case for ages).

Maryring
2018-05-26, 04:06 AM
Honestly, I personally think that the question should be that mundanes can beat wizards, not specifically the fighter archetype. It's okay for Wizards to defeat Fighters nine out of ten times, as long as Fighters can defeat Rogues nine out of ten times, and Rogues can defeat Wizards nine out of ten times.

In other words, I'll argue that the solution is to make Rogue type characters, and I count Monks as one of these types of characters, better able to disrupt spellcasting. Making spellcasting take longer is one solution, another would be to give the Rogue ways to bypass magical protections and to avoid magical detection. In 3.5 they seem to have intended Monks to be a mage-killer type of character with high saves and spell resistance. So to develop them into proper counters, you need to look into ways to give these archetypes proper tools to bypass the most common "you lose" defenses, like misschance and flight.

Durkoala
2018-05-26, 10:04 PM
This topic reminds me of the childrens'/YA series The Wardstone Chronicles. As the central concept of that is the adventures of an order mostly ordinary men, the Spooks, trying to keep the country safe from dark magic forces, their anti-magic measures are discussed and used frequently. Most magic has a weakness in the series and the Spooks have generations-long records of what does and doesn't work.
For example:

Witches cannot cross running water and are vulnerable to other items of nature, such as rowan wood. However, because a dead witch can rise again and can only die to having her heart eaten, most troublesome witches are imprisoned. The witches themselves have an assassin who keeps a dog to eat the hearts of her victims.
Hunger helps stave off mind control, so canny spooks fast before confronting something that can or might be able to control them. As a lot of them are grim and believe that a bit of hardship is good for you, spooks frequently insist on fasting anyway.
Most spirits are bound to leylines, so obstructing the lines with menhirs imprisons them. It may have also required a specific construction to the stone, but the details are fuzzy.
Spook candidates are chosen for their mental fortitude and ability to see through glamour, which varies among mundane humans.


The best way to emulate this would probably be to have school specific mundane counters or things that at least give a bonus or an advantage to certain schools or types of magic? It's too late for me to give specific examples, but I'll try and remedy that later. Until then, have a look into various folklore, that's got some good examples.

Lord Raziere
2018-05-26, 10:48 PM
This topic reminds me of the childrens'/YA series The Wardstone Chronicles. As the central concept of that is the adventures of an order mostly ordinary men, the Spooks, trying to keep the country safe from dark magic forces, their anti-magic measures are discussed and used frequently. Most magic has a weakness in the series and the Spooks have generations-long records of what does and doesn't work.
For example:

Witches cannot cross running water and are vulnerable to other items of nature, such as rowan wood. However, because a dead witch can rise again and can only die to having her heart eaten, most troublesome witches are imprisoned. The witches themselves have an assassin who keeps a dog to eat the hearts of her victims.
Hunger helps stave off mind control, so canny spooks fast before confronting something that can or might be able to control them. As a lot of them are grim and believe that a bit of hardship is good for you, spooks frequently insist on fasting anyway.
Most spirits are bound to leylines, so obstructing the lines with menhirs imprisons them. It may have also required a specific construction to the stone, but the details are fuzzy.
Spook candidates are chosen for their mental fortitude and ability to see through glamour, which varies among mundane humans.


The best way to emulate this would probably be to have school specific mundane counters or things that at least give a bonus or an advantage to certain schools or types of magic? It's too late for me to give specific examples, but I'll try and remedy that later. Until then, have a look into various folklore, that's got some good examples.

well first lets start with simple situations and work our way up:
whats considered the least optimal wizard? a evocation wizard, a blaster mage. yet that still is pretty powerful compared to mr. sword and board, since blasting things with explosions as the real world has shown, is still a more deadly level of warfare than hitting things with a metal stick.

so how can we counter the most basic and common of wizard types: the one that can just throw a fireball at the warrior and cook him alive? its basically the raw brute force archetype of wizardry, so you've got to counter that first before getting into anything more sophisticated, because if they can just take you out by brute forcing it, they don't NEED to use anything more sophisticated.

Mechalich
2018-05-27, 12:43 AM
well first lets start with simple situations and work our way up:
whats considered the least optimal wizard? a evocation wizard, a blaster mage. yet that still is pretty powerful compared to mr. sword and board, since blasting things with explosions as the real world has shown, is still a more deadly level of warfare than hitting things with a metal stick.

Not necessarily, its a matter of damage values. In Skyrim, blasting things with explosions does significantly less damage than hitting things with a (properly upgraded) metal stick and runs out of fuel very fast. In fact, it's surprisingly common in various heroic adventure media for energy blasts to mostly just throw people around, but die instantly from being stabbed pretty much anywhere in the torso (even though belly wounds may take hours or days to kill).

So this sort of thing depends heavily on how you set up the math.

D&D overvalues ranged damage in general - archery is far more powerful than it has any right to be - and so many low-level spells. This happens in part because AC combines ability to avoid damage with the ability to absorb damage, which means that spells which auto hit bypass both when they properly should bypass only one. This is a mechanical issue that overvalues spell damage.

Balancing a blaster wizard against a martial isn't that hard. The central problem is that magic is almost never limited to just blasting even in video games. Getting better at your 'magic' stat tends to make you not only a better blaster, but better at everything else magic does - which has a disturbing tendency to be 'everything you want.'

Poiuytrewq
2018-05-27, 01:34 AM
Make magic unable to afect metal. This way swirds and shields can parry and deflect spells.

Florian
2018-05-27, 03:00 AM
As this seems to be a more general topic, not exactly D&D related, the first question will always be what magic is and how it should be modeled. Letīs take a look at the very classic Magic Circle Against Evil and also the Yellow Sign and warding gestures against the Evil Eye. Basic decision making time: Can you pull that off with just a bag of salt, chalk and the gesture and have it be effective magic, or do you need to use something like spell slots, mana, power point, whatever?

D&D-style magic, also MtG-style magic, is such a shore to talk about, not because itīs not grounded in science, which would kill magic, but because it lacks an "interface" level connecting it to the "real world" to work with.

Cluedrew
2018-05-27, 07:25 AM
This topic reminds me of the childrens'/YA series The Wardstone Chronicles.You know I might of read the first book in the series. Although I didn't really enjoy the writing style it did have some good ideas in it. I had forgotten it.


since blasting things with explosions as the real world has shown, is still a more deadly level of warfare than hitting things with a metal stick.Well if you assume that a fireball or burning hands or whatever is the strength of a modern explosives (which considering the amount of collateral damage they do, is probably false). Considering the size and intensity many fire-based attacks are displayed at, I think I would rather get hit with your generic fireball than stabbed with your average sword.

Plus if wizards can out power fighters, than finding tricks around them is even more important.


D&D-style magic, also MtG-style magic, is such a shore to talk about, not because itīs not grounded in science, which would kill magic, but because it lacks an "interface" level connecting it to the "real world" to work with.I hadn't thought of it in that way. The one I go for is that magic isn't bound by the same logic* as science, but it should be bound by its own logic. "Yes" doesn't count.

* It is not technically logic, but I use the word because it is not about individual rules, but the larger patterns.

Durkoala
2018-05-27, 07:50 AM
well first lets start with simple situations and work our way up:
whats considered the least optimal wizard? a evocation wizard, a blaster mage. yet that still is pretty powerful compared to mr. sword and board, since blasting things with explosions as the real world has shown, is still a more deadly level of warfare than hitting things with a metal stick.

so how can we counter the most basic and common of wizard types: the one that can just throw a fireball at the warrior and cook him alive? its basically the raw brute force archetype of wizardry, so you've got to counter that first before getting into anything more sophisticated, because if they can just take you out by brute forcing it, they don't NEED to use anything more sophisticated.

I don't understand how this connects to my post? I was talking about how you could, for example, carry salt to create barriers or wear your clothes inside out to help resist confusion, along with other tales of resisting magic through mundane effects.

LudicSavant
2018-05-27, 08:21 AM
It's really a shame that we don't see more "non-magic anti-magic" in D&D, because not only is it a huge part of the fiction which inspires D&D, and not only would it make for better and more balanced game mechanics, but it's even a huge part of the non-mechanical depictions of martials in D&D itself.

For example, here's a picture of pretty much exactly one of the things an OP described: Blocking an AoE with a shield.

http://archive.wizards.com/dnd/images/cw_ag/75436.jpg
What really hurts is that this is supposed to be a picture of what a certain feat in Complete Divine does. Spoilers: The feat does not in fact allow you to do anything like this.

Frozen_Feet
2018-05-27, 09:12 AM
How you can employ anti-magic depends on what the rules of magic. The four rules that underlie most of classic magic either implicitly or explicitly are:

1) rule of symbols. Like effects like: you can use symbol of a thing to affect the thing. Most obviously: words, specifically names, are symbols. Hence the concept of True Names and spelling to control reality.

2) rule of contagion. Things which have once been in contact will remain connected. You can use part to affect the whole. Hence the concept of material components and potions, of using or consuming a piece of a thing to gain that thing's power.

3) mind over matter. The thoughts, emotions and beliefs of a person can have direct impact over reality. Hence concept of psychic powers, of soul being more important than the body, of a person's intelligence, wisdom and charisma governing over reality.

4) rule of impermanence. Things created with magic are not wholly real, they lack ontological inertia. Combined with the other three rules, this means that magic can only work when the magician is focusing on it, when people around them believe in it, when the symbols and material components are intact.

So what can one do to counter magic, without magic? Destroy or render useless the symbols used, destroy, steal or replace the material components, disbelieve magic in its entirety and have others do so too, undermine the magician's self-confidence, beliefs and concentration untill it fails.

Most of these are possible and codified in D&D, if they don't work, it's because of a chorus of people who cried "hey, it's no fair my magician can lose!" and the game developers catered to them by giving them more and more ways to circumvent the above rules.

LudicSavant
2018-05-27, 09:21 AM
Most of these are possible and codified in D&D, if they don't work, it's because of a chorus of people who cried "hey, it's no fair my magician can lose!" and the game developers catered to them by giving them more and more ways to circumvent the above rules.

You're probably giving the game designers too much credit. They probably just didn't think much about counterplay (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRBcjsOt0_g) when designing spells.

Jay R
2018-05-27, 12:52 PM
In Larry Niven's stories about magic, he postulates that there is raw manna in the world, which spells use up. Therefore where there were once great, powerful wizards, then is now a magic-dead or magic-weak area, since all the manna has been used up. [He presumes that Atlantis was once a great empire, on land raised up out of the sea by powerful magics, and it sank back into the sea when all its magic was used up.]

One wizard created an item which is just a spinning disc, which has exponentially increasing speed. Start it, and it will use up more and more manna, at an ever-increasing rate, until all the local manna is gone in a few rounds, and the area becomes an anti-magic area. This is obviously a great tool for a battle in which you knew that magic will soon not work, but your enemy did not.

I have occasionally considered putting a magic-dead area with a disc in the middle of it in my world somewhere. If you approach it carrying magic items, it will start spinning, and very quickly, your items have no magic.

[I posit that continuous items will work again as soon as you leave the area, charged items are out of charges, and all per-day uses are gone for the day. One-time items like potions and scrolls would be dead.]

Xuc Xac
2018-05-27, 03:01 PM
4) rule of impermanence. Things created with magic are not wholly real, they lack ontological inertia. Combined with the other three rules, this means that magic can only work when the magician is focusing on it, when people around them believe in it, when the symbols and material components are intact.

This also leads to the fantasy trope of the "load-bearing boss". After you kill the evil wizard, you have to evacuate his tower immediately because it's going to fall down without his magic to maintain it.

Frozen_Feet
2018-05-27, 03:46 PM
Aye, that is one result of the fourth law.

Related: whenever going against a magician, always bribe or kill their familiar first. One of the reasons why classic familiars are night animals is so that they would be awake when the magician is not. They hold guard and upkeep their spells while the master sleeps. By gaining a familiar's favor or getting rid of it, you can create an opening when the magician is at their most vulnerable.

Satinavian
2018-05-28, 06:45 AM
How you can employ anti-magic depends on what the rules of magic. The four rules that underlie most of classic magic either implicitly or explicitly are:

Most of these are possible and codified in D&D, if they don't work, it's because of a chorus of people who cried "hey, it's no fair my magician can lose!" and the game developers catered to them by giving them more and more ways to circumvent the above rules.
While i understand that you personally like those rules, they very much don't underline most of classical magic. You can find examples for all of them, yes. But they are not actually that common.

1) Yes, symbols are often used. But you are wrong about the word and true name thing. The true name thing comes from a completely different concept, one guarding the "immutable true nature of things" which no magic can ever change. And the thing with words as power is another separate concept that can be found both in words as divine tools of creation and the once common belief that any written thing is inherently magical.

2) Your rule of contagion is actually pretty rare in myth. And then it is either a simplified version of the concept of Qualia or it is part the the symbol rule where a part of a things gets to be a standin for the thing.

3) Mind over matter ? That is not even rare, it is nearly absent from anything before the 18th century. To connect the supernatural so strongly with the mind only ever happened after natural science had driven most magical explainations from the realm of matter. Psychic power is a really new concept.

4) Nope, basically absent in myth. Yes, you will find magic that lasts only as long as X condition is met. That is a pretty common theme. But the condition X has nothing to do with belief and focus. Just the opposite, there are far more tales where the magic and the condition is long forgotten by everyone and then someone braks the magic by accident.
Not only that, but magic that is never broken and stays intact after the conclusion of the story is far from uncommon.


I really don't like those rules. Magic rules that don't even cover common late medieval alchemy (violating 2-4 and following only a twisted version of 1) and are as useless for most other magic themes seem unsuited to me. And certainly not only because they might weaken D&D wizards.

Cluedrew
2018-05-28, 06:33 PM
To Satinavian: You may not like those rules* but I think that having rules that explain how magic works is important; especially in a role-playing game. Simply put, it lets people figure out what would happen if you mixed in one thing or another and to figure out what happens in situations that the rules don't cover. For things that happen in reality we have experience to draw on to make that call, but not so for magic. It relates to the topic because usually rules only cover magic in normal operation (without interference) so it is hard to say what effects various bits of interference would have, and all to often people seem to assume none.

* Which don't really match what I know of the classical models that explained magic either.

Satinavian
2018-05-30, 04:07 AM
Oh, i very much agree with having rules that explain how magic works is important.

I just don't like those rules in particular. And i strongly object to the notion that this set really captures the fluff of magic from tales and myths or magic belief systems for most cases.

Psyren
2018-05-31, 12:31 PM
It's really a shame that we don't see more "non-magic anti-magic" in D&D, because not only is it a huge part of the fiction which inspires D&D, and not only would it make for better and more balanced game mechanics, but it's even a huge part of the non-mechanical depictions of martials in D&D itself.

For example, here's a picture of pretty much exactly one of the things an OP described: Blocking an AoE with a shield.

http://archive.wizards.com/dnd/images/cw_ag/75436.jpg
What really hurts is that this is supposed to be a picture of what a certain feat in Complete Divine does. Spoilers: The feat does not in fact allow you to do anything like this.

Pathfinder kinda has this. (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/combat-feats/covering-shield/) Personally though I would think all bonuses to the shield should apply to stuff like that.


I can do it in five seconds.

Feat: Heroic Save - on a succesful save vs a spell, you gain the ability to cancel the spell entirely.

Not saying it's the ideal solution - or the ideal wording for the effect I'm aiming for - but it's in no way difficult to implement. Whether it's balanced or not is debatable, but balance is something you can fiddle with, maybe imposing a -2 or -4 to the DC, but granting the cancellation on a succes.

Don't saving throws usually already do this though?

(The exception being partial/half saves, but that's where Evasion and Mettle come into play.)

But even if you made Evasion and Mettle available to everyone in exchange for a feat (I think you can already do this too), that wouldn't do anything about the no-save spells that casters would gravitate to.

LudicSavant
2018-05-31, 12:42 PM
Pathfinder kinda has this. (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/combat-feats/covering-shield/)

Uh, not really. You got a bonus to your reflex saves. You didn't protect things behind you from the area of effect.

Spore
2018-05-31, 12:44 PM
Uh, not really. You got a bonus to your reflex saves. You didn't protect things behind you from the area of effect.

There is a fighter archetype that can use tower shields to create hard cover however.

Doorhandle
2018-05-31, 05:53 PM
It's really a shame that we don't see more "non-magic anti-magic" in D&D, because not only is it a huge part of the fiction which inspires D&D, and not only would it make for better and more balanced game mechanics, but it's even a huge part of the non-mechanical depictions of martials in D&D itself.

For example, here's a picture of pretty much exactly one of the things an OP described: Blocking an AoE with a shield.

http://archive.wizards.com/dnd/images/cw_ag/75436.jpg
What really hurts is that this is supposed to be a picture of what a certain feat in Complete Divine does. Spoilers: The feat does not in fact allow you to do anything like this.

I was about to suggest something things like this: allowing fighters to cut apart spells with pure martial skill. Might be an idea for a homebrew class or feat chain.

TeChameleon
2018-06-01, 11:57 PM
There's always the old standbys, too- the Taltos method of "No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulder blades will seriously cramp his style.", or the Rincewind method of 'all the magic in the world is no match for an unexpected half-brick in a sock, smartly applied to the base of the skull.'

Which both tend to fall under the 'damage = spell failure', I guess.

I would say that these arguments seem to focus extremely heavily on hyperoptimized, high-level caster builds, and a lot of the suggested counters feel like they'd make low-level casters unplayable, or at least a miserable slog to play.

Anyhow, my usual response to a lot of these is that plain-vanilla casters 'pay' for their combat potency by being extremely vulnerable. They can't avoid as much damage as their more martially-inclined counterparts, nor can they survive anywhere near as much damage. A simple expedient in games to enforce that 'payment' would be to make any method they could use to improve their survivability prohibitively expensive in either materials or time. The Odinsleep clause, as it were. The longer a caster spends being awesome in whatever fashion, the more time they have to spend recuperating.

Even a 5:1 ratio of awesome-to-crash could get interesting quickly, depending on how they use the awesome, especially if their enchantments require them to be conscious to function. That flying castle isn't going to stay airborne very well if the enchanter goes into a coma and stops sustaining the spells, now is it?

Anymage
2018-06-02, 11:39 AM
Anyhow, my usual response to a lot of these is that plain-vanilla casters 'pay' for their combat potency by being extremely vulnerable. They can't avoid as much damage as their more martially-inclined counterparts, nor can they survive anywhere near as much damage. A simple expedient in games to enforce that 'payment' would be to make any method they could use to improve their survivability prohibitively expensive in either materials or time. The Odinsleep clause, as it were. The longer a caster spends being awesome in whatever fashion, the more time they have to spend recuperating.

Forcing downtime after a big nova just leads to the five minute adventuring day. Making casters even more glass cannony only reinforces the idea that they need to build impervious sanctums and only step out when they have a full suite of invulnerability buffs. This only serves to reinforce existing problems.

More important, though, this isn't a nerf casters thread. It's a muggle buffing one. And while casters do need a handful of nerfs (most notably, severely downplaying the omnimancer trope), the biggest relevant one tends to be most prevalent in D&D and games that are clear knockoffs of it.

Specifically, every spell is an exceptional case. Most of these special cases can only be countered or negated by other special cases, i.e. spells. (A handful of class features or feats may exist, but overwhelmingly spells.) Create a more robust system for mundane task resolution, have spells and spell effects engage that system better instead of having multiple subrules each of which allows its own way to succeed, and each of which requires its own special case (again, this means spells) to counter. Otherwise, mundanes will always be playing catch up.

Unfortunately, giving muggles a more robust way of interacting with the world beyond "roll this one dice, hope to meet a binary target number check"* would require a deep and probably unwelcome overhaul to D&D.

(Edit footnote: *and requiring casters to also engage that system instead of automatically doing something cool.)

TeChameleon
2018-06-03, 04:06 AM
Forcing downtime after a big nova just leads to the five minute adventuring day. Making casters even more glass cannony only reinforces the idea that they need to build impervious sanctums and only step out when they have a full suite of invulnerability buffs. This only serves to reinforce existing problems.
Unfortunately, this is a PEBCAK situation. That particular problem lies squarely with the players, not the mechanics.


More important, though, this isn't a nerf casters thread. It's a muggle buffing one.
Buffing muggles specifically against casters. The end result is the same.

Although I do agree that the omnimancer thing needs to go die in a deep hole someplace, alongside such fellow stupidities as the omnidisciplinary scientist and the drive-or-pilot-anything-expertly ability (because a motorcycle handles exactly like an 18-wheeler, and if you can pilot a single-engine light aircraft, of course you can fly this 300m dirigible... :smallconfused:). Er, anyways, just... I dunno. Be nice if there was some way to do this without hamstringing casters so badly at lower levels that you end up with a Discworld situation (i.e. "That's what's so stupid about the whole magic thing, you know. You spend twenty years learning the spell that makes nude virgins appear in your bedroom, and then you're so poisoned by quicksilver fumes and half-blind from reading old grimoires that you can't remember what happens next." Rincewind, The Colour of Magic).

If there isn't a payoff to the decades of study that's at least roughly equivalent to spending nine months learning how to stick sharpened bits of metal into people who do not necessarily wish to have bits of sharpened metal inserted into their persons, there really isn't a lot of point in spending decades studying.

... hah. This'd probably get rid of a lot of the powergaming twits on the magical end of things... just make magic-use require strict celibacy and sobriety. Ale and whores? Nope, sorry, not for you, spanky :smallamused:

Satinavian
2018-06-03, 07:40 AM
The main problem comes from the idea that a generalist wizard or one specialised for completely different things regularly is in fight as as actor with the same effect on the fight as a martial.

That is basically demanded, fights between fighter and wizard are supposed to be interesting and are staple of lots of fiction to simulate. But the problem is that the mundane one in each of those scenarios is specialized for fighting, but the wizard is not. The wizard is usually more about doing other wizardly stuff. That is especcialy true for antagonists who are usually busy to do [evil magic plan] and must be stopped or punished.
But if a generalist wizard is on par with a fighting specialized mundane, what happens with a fighting specialist wizard ? Well, he should be far better in fights than his genealist colleage leading to being far better in fights than very mundane. It also means that the non-fighting wizard is as good as a martial in combat but far more utility whereever his real expertise is.

That is basically what happened. Some people wanted regular wizards to be dangerous instead of being regular civillians. And they wanted those wizards to use spells in fights instead of grapping a weapen, thus demanding that spells are better than weapons for wizards.

Everything else is just a system specific take on the problem.

King of Nowhere
2018-06-03, 11:16 AM
There are a few tricks I employ in my campaign world where mundane means beat magic. Some of them hang on homebrew, albeit mostly slightly.

To commit a deed without being detectable by divination, hire someone else to do it without him knowing the hirer. In fact, disguise one of your underlings, have him deliver a message to a random person in the street with instructions to give the message to the person you want to hire. the message itself was written by someone hired for the occasion, by another disguised underling. Now the best divination can only say that the guy was hired by somebody he does not know, on a message written by a random person who does not know who hired him. And even if you contact ther planes, can you really tell me the powers that be were looking at a random street kid in the chances he may be used as intermediary on this kind of deal?
Does not work with 100% RAW, but works with some RAI interpretations. Even with 100% RAW, it helps a lot

when you think you may be spied by a wizard, have everyone go at meetings disguised (with mundane disguises, illusions can be seen through). that way, the wizard scrying on you cannot form enough of a connection with the people you meet to scry on them too. During the meetings, write on pieces of paper that you keep covered.
Should work with RAW, unless you want to decide that seeing a shrouded, masked figure is enough to have a connection

I ruled that for teleportation, being connected to a place means having a good idea of where that place actually is. If you could not find the place by fliying/going ethereal, then you can't teleport there. Under that constrain, simply not giving any reference point prevents a wizard from teleporting on your position. Just keep your window closed, and the wizard has no flippin idea where your house may be, and so can't teleport in it.
Does not work with 100% RAW, but works under a small and mostly incospicuous houserule

Wear a mundane disguise under your illusory disguise. Most wizards will congratulate themselves for piercing your not-so-clever illusion, without realizing you're still fooling them. That also goes for mundane hiding, it beats invisibility in many occasions
Works with RAW, although at high op it is rendered moot

Leave your magical equipment at home, and go spying without any spell on you. there's a good chance nobody will take you for anything more than just another commoner. Everyone knows powerful people allways have powerful magic with them, after all.
Works with RAW, although it is risky if you get caught

Most times you can make educated guesses at secret informations. for example, you can figure out the king's secret agenda based on his policies. You can do that even if the king speaks of his plans with nobody and is protected by mind blank. Basically, a high gather information check is more effective than divinations (although you can gather data with divinations and then use a high gather information on those, getting the best of both worlds)
works with RAW

IF you dominate a guard into revealing informations or letting you in, the magic on the guard will be soon discovered. Even if you erase his memory, there are ways to find out somebody has been fiddling. If, on the other hand, you can get the guard in a talkative mood, he may reveal sensitive informations without even realizing it, and it won't trigger any alarm.
Works by RAW, depending on specific countermeasures taken

Basically, in my campaign world, the whole spying business is mostly nonmagical. Divinations are an important piece of the puzzle, but it's mid-level experts with lots of skill points in social and sneaky skills that do most of the job, simply because they are more difficult to block or discover with magic.

Psyren
2018-06-03, 03:09 PM
Uh, not really. You got a bonus to your reflex saves. You didn't protect things behind you from the area of effect.

Ah right. But you do protect yourself.

(Also, what Sporeegg said)

Cluedrew
2018-06-03, 04:28 PM
Buffing muggles specifically against casters. The end result is the same.It is in terms that balance between the two is reached, but there is a lot of fallout regarding what power & versatile levels you balance them around. So in a broader context, no the end result is not the same, chess and checkers might both start with symmetric armies, but they are absolutely not the same game.


The main problem comes from the idea that a generalist wizard or one specialised for completely different things regularly is in fight as as actor with the same effect on the fight as a martial.I'm not sure if it is the main problem*, but that makes sense. A whole host of reasons has created a kind of double standard. Here though, I'm just pecking away at one part of it, roughly: Magic is above nature and cannot be effected by natural things. So if you are going to counter magic, you need more magic.

Mostly tricks where spells just aren't so useful, like King of Nowere's list. There hasn't been much true anti-magic here. Effectively there isn't much of a difference, but it got me thinking. I wonder if building construction could turn aside divination, or weapons made to disrupt spells. Say put an arrow made of something just magic enough through an ongoing spell and it could make it fizzle. Or pop. Maybe.

* For me the main problem is people who accept whatever convenient solution you give the wizard "because magic".

Kadzar
2018-06-04, 01:01 AM
Although I do agree that the omnimancer thing needs to go die in a deep hole someplace, alongside such fellow stupidities as the omnidisciplinary scientist and the drive-or-pilot-anything-expertly ability (because a motorcycle handles exactly like an 18-wheeler, and if you can pilot a single-engine light aircraft, of course you can fly this 300m dirigible... :smallconfused:). Well, to be fair, such things exist in games because it kind of sucks when your character's thing is being the scientist, but, since your specialty is millipedes the current adventure is about centipedes, you're SOL (this could be helped by a system that allows you to use some of your skill in one thing for a related thing, though such a thing is hard to do in such a way that is satisfactory or that doesn't require a lot of GM adjudication). So it helps, when your character's basic shtick doesn't come up much in gameplay, that it be more broadly applicable.

The problem with the omnimancer is that, not only are they good at magic, their magic also makes them good at other aspects of the game, such as combat or lockpicking, and often just as good or better than people who specialize in those areas.