How Do You Imprison TFT Wizards?

[tbeard1999]

I posed this question elsewhere, but I’m curious. How can you keep TFT wizards from being able to cast spells? In my dimly remembered youth, I posited pentagram shaped jail cells. Later, I posited that a relatively small magnet would jam spellcasting, so suspected wizards would have a metal bracelet with a magnet inside on their wrists. How’d you guys address it?

[ecz]

Originally Posted by tbeard1999

I posed this question elsewhere, but I’m curious. How can you keep TFT wizards from being able to cast spells? In my dimly remembered youth, I posited pentagram shaped jail cells. Later, I posited that a relatively small magnet would jam spellcasting, so suspected wizards would have a metal bracelet with a magnet inside on their wrists. How’d you guys address it?

it happened in our games.

the wizards were blindfolded, handcuffed (using iron) and gagged.
This way the wizard cannot see (no summon or lllusion or missile or thrown spell), cannot use voice or hands for high level incantations , and is at -4DX for any other -probably useless- spell he could still try.

[Chris Rice]

Originally Posted by ecz

it happened in our games.

the wizards were blindfolded, handcuffed (using iron) and gagged.
This way the wizard cannot see (no summon or lllusion or missile or thrown spell), cannot use voice or hands for high level incantations , and is at -4DX for any other -probably useless- spell he could still try.

Yep, that's the way we did it. Crude, but effective.

[ecz]

TFT is for crude situations!

[Skarg]

If you have a wizard cast a strong Curse on them, that'll tend to make things hard for them.

If you have a wizard with the Geas spell, you can have others cast Confusion and/or Curse on him (to reduce the prisoner's resistance), then Geas him not to cast spells until released.

The Little Death will also do it, at least if the prisoner has some ST left and you only need them to last a few days.

It's also not much of a stretch to invent a variation of Pentagram which would work to block spells coming from inside it, for a cell for a wizard prisoner, possibly even using it on a barred wagon.

[Steve Jackson]

This is an interesting question and not one that I can recall addressing in the Old Days.

For a low-level wizard, just putting him into a deep, deep pit might suffice. He can cast all the spells he likes but he can't reach anything with them. If I were the jailer, I'd want a Reverse Missiles ring just in case.

A high-level wizard is dangerous and hard to hold on to. Perhaps we should just kill him, unless he is a valuable hostage.

But remember the coronet that held Jaggado in Tollenkar's Lair? That would work if you could get him to hold still long enough to put it on him.

[tanksoldier]

Originally Posted by Chris Rice

Yep, that's the way we did it. Crude, but effective.

The problem with keeping a prisoner bound and gagged, unless imprisonment is meant to be a death sentence, is they can’t eat or drink and will also soil themselves. They will also begin to have circulation problems and eventually may lose hands and feet, or even arms and legs... which will putrefy and kill the prisoner that way.

Also it’s easy for someone bound and lying down to suffocate.

Leaving someone tied up for a few hours is uncomfortable but survivable. A few days can kill them.

[malloyd]

I believe the oldest reference to anti-magical properties of iron is Pliny the Elder, who specifies "nails taken from a tomb" rather than "cold iron". You drive them into your threshold to ward off nocturnal spirits. That may or may not be a much older tradition - witness the similarity of nails in the ground to the use of the Tibetan phurba or Sanskrit kila.

[Steve Jackson]

To answer a couple of questions:

(1) What I was thinking in 1980 was just iron.

(2) While there should probably be a healing spell to regrow lost bits, right now nothing short of a Wish would do it.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by malloyd

I believe the oldest reference to anti-magical properties of iron is Pliny the Elder, who specifies "nails taken from a tomb" rather than "cold iron". You drive them into your threshold to ward off nocturnal spirits. That may or may not be a much older tradition - witness the similarity of nails in the ground to the use of the Tibetan phurba or Sanskrit kila.

Yeah, anti-magic properties of iron are certainly very old, but the question was about the 'cold' part.