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Old 07-24-2016, 07:37 PM   #1
Mirtai
 
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Default Daze spell vs Daze affliction.

How does the Daze spell (from GURPS Magic) actually work?

The Daze Spell reads: Regular; Resisted by HT The subject looks and acts normal, but does not notice what is going on around him, or remember it later. A dazed guard stands quietly while a thief walks past! Any injury, or successful resistance to a spell, causes the subject to snap out of the daze and return to full alert status.

While the Daze Affliction reads: You are conscious - if you are standing you remain upright - but you can do nothing. If you are struck, slapped, or shaken, you recover on your next turn.

Is the Daze spell different than the affliction? If you're hit by the daze spell, can you then continue to act on the information you had before you were hit by the spell? Say, you see a foe, you rush forward to attack... he uses the daze spell on you... can you attack the person who dazed you? Or run away to report to others that there was an enemy mage?

Last edited by Mirtai; 07-24-2016 at 07:46 PM.
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Old 07-24-2016, 10:13 PM   #2
Lucian
 
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Default Re: Daze spell vs Daze affliction.

Firstly, this is up to the gm
If your the gm treat the daze affliction as the daze spell of you like. For combat purposes they mostly have the same effect.

But strictly speaking the description of the daze affliction does not mention the loss of memory so no, I would not treat them precisely the same say.

If daze was cast on you then no, you can do nothing until the spell is resolved at which long your mental state returns to the moment before the spell was cast.

If you knew the mage was their, than you know he's their when you snap out of it.

The spell has a fairly straight forward description

Understand that a daze spell, is a specific incantation, every mage who knows this spell performs the same rituals.

An affliction by definition is a unique attack, that can be molded in many ways that represent many things.

The affliction advantage is not a single attack,
An affliction with a daze can be a cattle prod or a basilisks stare
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Last edited by Lucian; 07-24-2016 at 10:16 PM.
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Old 07-24-2016, 10:35 PM   #3
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Default Re: Daze spell vs Daze affliction.

I've always interpreted it as like the kind of hypnosis you can fall into when badly fatigued, where you suddenly realize you can't remember the last ten miles of driving, or the last five pages of the book you've been reading. Anything that can't be done in more or less unaware autopilot is impossible.
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Old 07-24-2016, 11:05 PM   #4
Mirtai
 
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Default Re: Daze spell vs Daze affliction.

But the Daze spell CAN be used in combat, right?

I have a rules argument about it... one person thinks that if you Daze someone who's spotted you, that person can keep "acting normally" and attack you or run away, while dazed.

There's no question about what happens after the daze, anything the target saw before the spell would be retained, but I've got someone claiming that the line in the spell about the person acting normally means that they'd keep doing whatever they were going to do anyway... like running over to kill you.
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Old 07-25-2016, 12:10 AM   #5
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Default Re: Daze spell vs Daze affliction.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mirtai View Post
But the Daze spell CAN be used in combat, right?

I have a rules argument about it... one person thinks that if you Daze someone who's spotted you, that person can keep "acting normally" and attack you or run away, while dazed.

There's no question about what happens after the daze, anything the target saw before the spell would be retained, but I've got someone claiming that the line in the spell about the person acting normally means that they'd keep doing whatever they were going to do anyway... like running over to kill you.
Are you the GM?
Squash that, sounds like a player whining to me.
Players don't interpret spells , gms do.

And the purpose of the spell is clear, that's exactly what it does.

Not only does it work in combat but I'd make one roll a will check or be mentally stunned for the duration of the spell.

If you got dazed mid combat, you'd be super disoriented and would have no explanation, why or how you got there.

This wouldn't stop until you got smacked
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Old 07-25-2016, 09:27 AM   #6
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Default Re: Daze spell vs Daze affliction.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mirtai View Post
But the Daze spell CAN be used in combat, right?

I have a rules argument about it... one person thinks that if you Daze someone who's spotted you, that person can keep "acting normally" and attack you or run away, while dazed.

There's no question about what happens after the daze, anything the target saw before the spell would be retained, but I've got someone claiming that the line in the spell about the person acting normally means that they'd keep doing whatever they were going to do anyway... like running over to kill you.
I'd interpret "...does not notice..." as meaning you can't usefully take part in combat. You will "act normally" in the sense that you don't drop to the ground, maybe continue with a simple and ingrained action like route walking, and might even be vaguely responsive (think how a person might act when almost asleep), but reacting within the context of something as complex as combat or even a conversation is against what I see as the spirit of the spell.
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Old 07-25-2016, 09:47 AM   #7
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Default Re: Daze spell vs Daze affliction.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mirtai View Post
But the Daze spell CAN be used in combat, right?

I have a rules argument about it... one person thinks that if you Daze someone who's spotted you, that person can keep "acting normally" and attack you or run away, while dazed.

There's no question about what happens after the daze, anything the target saw before the spell would be retained, but I've got someone claiming that the line in the spell about the person acting normally means that they'd keep doing whatever they were going to do anyway... like running over to kill you.
If someone wants to play semantic games, they need to follow the logical consequences. "Looking and acting normally" as a sentence fragment would render the spell useless except as a memory eraser.
If the effected person is "running over to kill you", they can't act on any new information while dazed. In their mind, they will forever be in their original hex, running on the way to attack you, because they will never process that they've moved. They might run off a cliff, run into a wall, into a line of set spearmen, or just run until the spell wears off or they wear out from fatigue loss. A screaming guard might scream forever. If they were about to swing at a target, they'll continue swinging in the relative direction of the hex they were targeting(usually forward), even if the hex is now empty, they are no longer facing the hex due to terrain modification (or their horse has moved the effected person). An eating person would "eat" even if their hands or plate are now empty or if their plate is refilled, they may eat until and after expelling excess food.
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Old 07-25-2016, 09:59 AM   #8
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Default Re: Daze spell vs Daze affliction.

Zero to creepypasta in one post, good job. I'm going with "stands around Doing Nothing" because that doesn't give me the cold shudders.
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Old 01-02-2018, 11:52 PM   #9
Mirtai
 
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Default Re: Daze spell vs Daze affliction.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Lucian View Post
Are you the GM?
Squash that, sounds like a player whining to me.
Players don't interpret spells , gms do.

And the purpose of the spell is clear, that's exactly what it does.

Not only does it work in combat but I'd make one roll a will check or be mentally stunned for the duration of the spell.

If you got dazed mid combat, you'd be super disoriented and would have no explanation, why or how you got there.

This wouldn't stop until you got smacked
It was the GM who ruled that if you used a Daze on someone after they spotted you it would essentially have no effect because they'd continue 'acting normally'. and continue attacking you... or running to get help or whatever they'd 'normally' do.

So we went with the GM's ruling because they were the GM. The player who'd paid a ton of points to get a Daze spell up to 20 so they could cast it for 1 fatigue was pretty annoyed though... they thought they had a useful ability and it turned out it wasn't.

I don't go around overruling GM's in mid game. I just wanted to be sure I was doing it right for MY games, since we'd had the question come up, and I'd been telling players that Daze was pretty useful up till that point.

It is still pretty useful. Just not in that particular game.
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Old 01-03-2018, 07:27 AM   #10
Anaraxes
 
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Default Re: Daze spell vs Daze affliction.

I've always interpreted "acts normal" to mean the victim guard's appearance to other observers. The phrase means it's not obvious to a casual observer that he's Dazed. He'll stand there looking guard-like. It doesn't mean that he still has goals, conscious processing, selecting Maneuvers in combat. It just means he's not dropping to the floor or standing there gape-jawed, drooling, and reeling. Other the parts where the guard isn't stopping that person walking right past him (which would be "normal" were the guard aware), he looks and "acts normal" if it weren't for all the other stuff happening around him. But his "mind is somewhere else", to use a common idiom.
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