02-18-2018, 12:13 PM | #41 | |
Join Date: Jan 2018
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Re: How Do You Imprison TFT Wizards?
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Also a wise use of the ordinary items can make a powerful wizard absolutely harmless. I remember a powerful and dangerous wizard-thief carried in front of a judge. Iron everywhere on his body, legs and hands binded, but also - as extra security measure - he was been artificially held at ST around 5, just to talk and stand up in front of the court. Some time later the hangman that used his tools against him to lower his ST points at a safe level, experimented an ugly death... |
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02-20-2018, 10:27 AM | #42 | |
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: How Do You Imprison TFT Wizards?
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Essentially steel is the more widespread Germanic word, while iron seems to have been first been used for this sort of material only later in Old English (and probably meant something like holy or raging metal, cognates likely include irate, estrus, and the Greek stem hiero-)
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-- MA Lloyd |
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02-20-2018, 11:30 AM | #43 | |
Join Date: May 2015
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Re: How Do You Imprison TFT Wizards?
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I've used (and seen others e.g. on the TFT email list create) house rules where the amount of metal determines the penalty, in which case adding more metal could increase the DX penalty over -4. Of course armor & encumbrance and other physical issues can give a DX penalty. The Rope spell adds -2 DX per turn indefinitely, implying that just trussing up a wizard could reduce their DX to zero. Except that Advanced Wizard page 9 specifically mentions a wizard tied to a tree, and suggests that having 5 IQ more than a spell requires gets around that. Even having 2 IQ more than a spell requires lets a wizard cast by speaking or making a gesture with one hand... (though logically that implies to me that a wizard also wouldn't suffer most DX penalties for casting such spells either (i.e. shouldn't they be able to ignore armor penalties if they can ignore being tied up?), which isn't mentioned). |
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03-03-2018, 06:10 PM | #44 | |
Banned
Join Date: Mar 2018
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Re: How Do You Imprison TFT Wizards?
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WHAT IF, the wizard's cell contained upon a marbled pedestal, a faintly-glowing and softly humming orb of perpetual casting of a Sleep spell,,,, AND this magical artifact draws it's power not just from the wizard himself, but also from the ALL the other prisoners also under lock-and-key within an area-effect zone? - "donating" their ST in the interest of the common-good; as it were. Perhaps then, the wizard could be kept in coma, remaining barely-alive while kept in slumber upon a dias, being 'fed' by limited Aid spells; keeping him at ST-1 over time and not starving to death while in stir. Hmmm,... it's a real puzzler; and without a pre-published "turn to statue in suspended-animation" type-spell already available, obviously a legal and satisfying solution requires some real research and TFT rules cross-checking. One great thing that was reiterated in both TFT:ITL and TSG articles of the day, was that each GM is the absolute master of his own part of Cidri, and the real final authority of what is and is not "workable" within his/her TFT domain - especially in these cases where the rules do not readily inform with a pre-packaged solution. I think sometimes, we forget that. For their Game-World, Champions addressed this same quandary of how to design and create special containment prison cells for super-powered super-villains in their adventure module #2: 'Escape From Stronghold', Peterson/MacDonald, 1981 Hero Games. Perhaps a serviceable and adaptable clue might be found therein to meet Cidri's penological needs. Last edited by Jim Kane; 03-03-2018 at 06:47 PM. Reason: Typo |
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03-03-2018, 06:32 PM | #45 | |
Join Date: Jun 2012
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Re: How Do You Imprison TFT Wizards?
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Even old fashioned wrought iron, which has very little carbon in it is still smelted from ore. The big problem with "cold iron" is that there is no universally accepted definition for the stuff. I have seen it cited as cast (as opposed to forged) iron, wrought iron (as opposed to steel), meteoric iron, bog iron, and even simply iron or steel which is physically cold. If "cold iron" is going to have game mechanical effects distinct to "ordinary" iron and steel it would be well to provide a definition of what for game purposes constitutes "cold iron". Of course one could just as well say that large quantities of iron (or steel) in close proximity are disruptive to magic, so shackling a wizard in iron chains would suffice. |
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03-04-2018, 12:28 PM | #46 |
Join Date: May 2015
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Re: How Do You Imprison TFT Wizards?
Advanced Wizard lists iron, steel, nickel and cobalt weapons or armor as giving a -4 DX penalty to spellcasting.
Cidri Silver alloy (or gold, bronze, copper, etc) gets around this for extra cost and/or reduced weapon/armor performance. We never really needed more detail than this for game purposes. But -4 DX handcuffs alone aren't enough to stop a particularly dangerous wizard. |
03-04-2018, 12:46 PM | #47 | |
Join Date: Nov 2010
Location: Arizona
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Re: How Do You Imprison TFT Wizards?
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Equally obviously, this has little to do with how Steve envisioned Cidri -- he's got his own rules there, and probably had something in mind when he wrote them. All I'm trying to do is help answer Steve's original question; that is, what makes "cold iron" what it is? I chose to answer from a "folklore" perspective, not a "scientific" perspective. |
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03-04-2018, 01:36 PM | #48 |
Join Date: Jun 2012
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Re: How Do You Imprison TFT Wizards?
Even scouring folklore has not provided a definitive answer. I have seen references to people fending off magics by carrying a cold iron nail in their pocket. I have made nails, and they are forged not cast.
However steel seems not to have the same property. So I fall back on cold iron being what blacksmiths call wroght iron, that is a soft, fibrous iron without the added carbon that forms steel. I would include most old cast iron as cold iron as well. Meteoric iron comes from the stars and that makes it magical. Never mind that meteoric iron is often a natural alloy containing carbon, nickel and other stuff besides pure iron, that's scientific metallurgy and we're talking magic here. Perhaps Cidri has particular veins of ore that yeild cold iron when refined as opposed to most normal ores which yield normal iron? That would work for me. It also would allow for the possibility of finding objects that had unknowingly been crafted from "cold" iron ore. |
03-05-2018, 03:43 PM | #49 |
Banned
Join Date: Mar 2018
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Re: How Do You Imprison TFT Wizards?
Regarding the OP's question, I had given my personal answer back in post #44 (q.v.); where I should have also added some classic citations of answers to the same quandary of: 'How to Imprison a Wizard'. (for Fun & Profit)
For those interested: Again, citing Robert E. Howard's Conan-Tale of: 'The Tower of the Elephant': Yara, the evil Sorcerer-Priest, after being magically reduced to sub-atomic size, is eventually sucked into, and consequently trapped inside of a magic gem; which then serves as a prison. The idea of a character (or entity) being trapped into some form of a gem, crystal, or glass object is a classic troupe of fantasy literature; redressed many times over, and put to use as a confinement device for purposes other than justice-based. The writer's of classic Star Trek had to solve this type of dynamic in many disguised forms. How many times did we see a character pushed through some form of a "Magic-Portal", and 'imprisoned" into another dimension, locale, time, plane of reality, etc., and thereby effectively isolating them from interacting with the World-at-Large for a duration of time? And if YOUR version of Cidri lacks analogous functioning Gates within the control of the local Magistrate, simply transmute that law-breaking wizard into a Styrofoam D20, and put him on the shelf for safe-keeping until his sentence is up - that answer worked for Roddenberry. Perhaps for TFT it should properly be a set of three Styrofoam d6's, instead of a single D20 ;-) Frankly, I prefer to "imprison" an antagonistic wizard squarely between the scarred and bloodied stump of a felled oak tree, and the business-end of a sharp and fast moving battle-axe head; somewhere between right between the shoulder and the chin ought to get it,... just right,.... Spring-boarding: IF in your TFT-world, wizards were indeed imprisoned into magic gems and kept in a secured vault deep within the catacombs beneath the place where trials are conducted, would this also not possibly invite some enterprising Adventurers to hatch a plan to loot those same gems; and thereby liberate them right out from under the noses of the ruling authority and the guardsmen-on-post therein? In a Hegelian manner, solving these types of wonderful problems as posed by the OP (hypothesis), and reacting in order to find a working solution to the quandary (antithesis), can lead to not just a viable solution (synthesis) - but as an adjunct benefit - often bears additional seed for future gaming adventures and role-play opportunities. Last edited by Jim Kane; 03-10-2018 at 01:42 AM. |
03-06-2018, 01:21 PM | #50 |
Join Date: Mar 2018
Location: New England
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Re: How Do You Imprison TFT Wizards?
Perhaps the more interesting solution is to be found in the society, not game mechanics?
In most pre- and early-modern societies, there was no long-term prison. There was execution, exile, maiming, marking (tattoo, brand, disfigurement), shunning or fines. A person with sufficient power might be imprisoned: but it was more akin to house arrest even if housed as a "guest" of the king. The exception were extremely high-ranking political prisoners or hostages. But think about it: they were retained by someone MORE powerful than they. So perhaps, in a magical society where Wizards are effectively immune from punishment, the only control on them is a more powerful Wizard. The question isn't how to jail a Sorcerer. The question is what does a society of Sorcerer-kings look like? Cheers! |
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