[3.P] How do you feel about the concept of antimagic?

[true_shinken]

"Antimagic" in this case is not counterspelling. Instead, it's a means of removing all or almost all magic from you briefly (antimagic field) or permanently (disjunction on a creature with an artifact).

I greatly dislike it. It's a binary switch that says, "Casters get benched" or "Things work as normal."

Seriously, Endarire, I think I'm not alone when I say I strongly disagree of your 'casters rule and noncasters can't get nice things' view.

[oxybe]

It depends if you like simulationism or gamism, I guess. I mean, if the D&D universe is real, it makes sense that sometime you're going to wind up a grunt being carpet-bombed from 60,000 feet by an untouchable stealth bomber. Or locked in a room that you can't get out of because no one builds a prison for magic users without being able to turn their magic off, just like no one builds a prison without walls since you could just walk away.

i honestly don't give a rat's ass about simulationism or gamism or whatever.

i care about the fact that i have only 7 days a week to do stuff. i care that i have 24 hours a day to do stuff in which most of it is spent sleeping and working.

what i care about is having fun in my limited allowed free time. my real life is pretty boring. i get up at 8, take the bus at 9, get at work for 10, sit at a computer all day answering tech support calls, go home, "free time", sleep. my RPG time is pure escapism and since it's a 30 minute walk to the game store should i miss the hourly bus into town, i don't want to waste that time.

sitting about at a game table twiddling my thumbs for the majority of a 4-5 hour session is not my idea of fun. which is why i play casters: they have options built in outside "i hit it with an axe" and don't require me to metagame by using player skill to succeed outside of scenarios where "i hit it with an axe" is not a good idea.

any mechanics that tell a player "sorry but your character is effectively useless for this encounter/session/dungeon" is bad design. i could care less if the character is a wizard, a cleric, a fighter or a rogue. telling a player to find something else to do is bad design.

[Callos_DeTerran]

any mechanics that tell a player "sorry but your character is effectively useless for this encounter/session/dungeon" is bad design. i could care less if the character is a wizard, a cleric, a fighter or a rogue. telling a player to find something else to do is bad design.

So...you commonly play spellcasters because 'non-spellcasters don't get enough options' and are upset at options that take away a given classes strengths, but particularly anti-magic from the looks of it? A little suspicious dude. Nor is anti-magic 'your character is effectively useless'. It's 'you need to think outside the box' if anything. Unless you get hit with anti-magic and decide to just placidly wait within it's bounds because you've somehow forsaken walking for some magical equivalent (And if you play spellcasters alot, this could be your problem, I don't know).

Or, and here's a thought, just play outside of your strengths for a little bit. Manuever to get around the anti-magic field, use physical weapons (cause you SHOULD still have a back-up weapon just for these circumstances), or, if the way is blocked by the anti-magic's source, take a risk and try to get past it.

Honestly, it amazes me when I hear IC stories about wizards who will never approach closer then 30 ft. to the enemy, even if magic is turned off, just because they might get hit once. Or go to obscene measures to protect themselves. Where's the risk/fun in that?

EDIT: Oh, right. Disjunction. I see uses behind it as a player and a DM. For a player it's always useful to depower a bad guy who's proving particularly troublesome (loot be damned), though I may only think this way since a majority of the enemies I fight keep their loot in 'lairs' that aren't actually anywhere close by. Or as a counter-spell. Believe me, I've yet to see the case where disjunction isn't considered an universal counter-spell and it comes in handy when battling enemy spellcasters getting ready to do something crazy like opening gates or casting wish.

As a DM, it's more of a sign to my players that they may have taken things too far. Players trying to stack a ridiculous number of buffs/debuffs on themselves/disjunction-capable enemy to make an important encounter abosolutely trivial? Well it's going to act intelligently and hit the reset button on all the buffs. Accidentally gave the party a broken magical item that they like to spam? Targeted disjunction to remove it from play....And of course as a counter-spell.

[Psyren]

Deep breath guys, it's just a game

AMF is useful in moderation, because it makes casters step outside their toolbox for a minute and solve problems with lateral thinking instead. Even if it's something as simple as "I need to stay 15 feet away from that guy at all times, and most of my spells won't work on him" - it adds tactical complexity. Now you have to save your orbs for that guy instead of the winged archer peppering your party from above, or ask the meatshield to keep him away from you while you concentrate on the monsters not so protected.

I am not in favor of constantly shutting casters down, but the occasional monster with AMF or SR spices things up.

[MickJay]

any mechanics that tell a player "sorry but your character is effectively useless for this encounter/session/dungeon" is bad design. i could care less if the character is a wizard, a cleric, a fighter or a rogue. telling a player to find something else to do is bad design.

This would also mean that the DMs should never use spells and effects against players that are not pure damage spells, since a significant majority of the remaining combat spells also tends to make characters useless (or force them to do something else than they intended) for a period of time. And if your character dies, that really makes it useless until resurrection is available.

[lesser_minion]

mechanics that totally turn off a PC is bad design. period. i mean, it's not like the guys came over to play a game with their friends, right? surely you wouldn't complain if your fighter just lost all his gear. he can still pickup a club.

mechanics that tell a player "sorry but your character is effectively useless for this encounter/session/dungeon" is bad design. i could care less if the character is a wizard, a cleric, a fighter or a rogue. telling a player to find something else to do is bad design.

Those mechanics are called 'losing' and 'setbacks'. Without them, you simply do not have a game. You have someone explaining how you steadily grow in power, invincibly slaughtering your way through endless hordes of enemies, only pausing to ask whether you'd like to brutally slaughter a tribe of orcs or perform a perfect heart bypass with a pencil sharpener next. If you like that, fine. Not really my cup of tea though.

Yes, the game is unbalanced. But that's a separate problem. You're just complaining about play styles you don't like here.

Moreover, anti-magic fields don't switch off casters at all -- they just introduce a complication. You can still work around an anti-magic field. If it's a monster with an AMF? Wall them into it and moonwalk past them.

If it's a monster with an AMF who managed to grapple you? Well, any circumstance where that's not just 'GG' is a problem in its own right.

[oxybe]

the BBEG getting away after you've bested his plan is a setback.

the dragon eating the princess you were supposed to rescue is losing.

AMF is neither of these.

either way i'm done with this thread. you asked how i felt about it, i gave you my answer: it's a bad mechanic meant to turn off characters.

wether you agree with me or not is no skin off my back, just don't ask me to game with you if you ever plan on using it.

[Golden-Esque]

Make it more interesting then, curse the bracers to not come off unless certain conditions are met. Or change it up and have the spellbook stolen, if you want to see how creative the wizard gets when he's limited to what he had memorized that day until he finds his book again.

"Guys ... has anyone seen my spellbook?"
"%#^#^%@, Varsuvius! That's the seventh time this dungeon that you let someone steal your spellbook!"

That scenario will happen VERY quickly if all you ever do is let the Wizard prepare once and then never let them prepare again. If anything, that's a larger cop-out then Disjunction or Antimagic Field. It's not hard to counter an Antimagic Field at all; oh no! A 10 foot radius! AAAAAAAAAH! A simple 5 foot step gets you half of the way out of the field while a standard move from any race; even movement impaired races like the Dwarf, get you out of there AND still able to cast spells.

In Pathfinder, you don't see Antimagic Field until 12th level, and even then it's only Sorcerers and Wizards that are using it on you. Oh hey, squishy is nullifying all of his defenses to stop your mage / Cleric's? My level 14 Sorcerer has 56 hit points and an AC of 17; I wonder how long he'll last against that Fighter that's now beating on him. Oh, and healing magic / escape magic won't work, because the squishy Wizard is in his own bubble after all.

At 16th level, you start seeing the same thing with the Cleric, who can JUST start casting Antimagic Field. While in their bubble, they can't use Channel Positive Energy, unarguably one of the most powerful healing abilities in Pathfinder, and all of their spells are shut down as well. A Cleric has slightly more hit points and armor then a Wizard or Sorcerer, but they're still shutting themselves down for a penalty that can be nullified with a move action.

Now of course, Antimagic Field becomes much more useful when you work with your party members. Have a Monk grapple the mage maybe and cast Antimagic Field on top of the two of them so that Mage is pretty much dead; yeah, that's a little cheesey, but it's something you did with two separate characters working together and I'd call it good use of tactics.

I agree that Disjunction might be a little too powerful, but it's also a 9th level spell; we're talking about the levels where you can instantly slay almost anything, defy reality, and summon Meteor-ish fireballs to incinerate foes. It's gonna be powerful.

[Marnath]

"Guys ... has anyone seen my spellbook?"
"%#^#^%@, Varsuvius! That's the seventh time this dungeon that you let someone steal your spellbook!"

That scenario will happen VERY quickly if all you ever do is let the Wizard prepare once and then never let them prepare again.

"That day" refers to day 1 of the book being missing for days or however long, not "book gets stolen every day."