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Old 07-28-2020, 03:30 PM   #1
Plane
 
Join Date: Aug 2018
Default would Spell Shield protect Powerstone from being degraded by Charge Powerstone fail?

M124 "Resist any spell cast through it at the Spell Shield’s Endurance"
M14 (Resisted Spells) "Compare the subject’s resistance roll to your skill roll in a Quick Contest. If you win, your spell affects the subject. If you lose or tie, the spell has no effect"

The quote from 14 is only in the context of successful spell rolls, so it's not worded as if to apply to apply to failures, because they're assumed to have 'no effect' anyway.

But failures DO have effects if you use Charge Powerstone (M126), either causing quirks (normal fail) or explosions (crit fail).

Since spell shield is supposed to represent stopping spells from getting through, it would seem weird that failures somehow get through...

So I was wondering, perhaps a similar rule might be adopted somehow? IE you still keep track of the margin of failure for Charge Powerstone and if there is a margin of success for Spell Shield it would protect the failed Charge Powerstone from quirking the Powerstone?

If the resist roll failed then the MoF would need to be less than the MoF of the Charge spell to stop it?

This seems like a good countermeasure for the dreaded "cast charge powestone at skill 3 to flaw enemy powerstones on purpose" attack.

Another option (kind of exploiting the RAW here) since "This spell does not work on Manastones" is to make an object simultaneously both a manastone and a powerstone (store 1 energy that won't recharge, and 1+ energy which will recharge) and just never used your non-rechargeable energy which will sit there to block unnatural charging attempts.

Or: could it be assumed that one requirement of casting Charge Powerstone on a Powerstone is that the caster is an authorized user of the powerstone? IE if M68 "Limit" prevents everyone except Merlin from drawing upon the powerstone's energy then by default only Merlin is able to cast Charge Powerstone on it as well?

Or possibly that might be 2 separate kinds of limits you could cast on an item: "ability to draw upon energy" and "ability to restore energy" could be limited to two different classes of users by two castings of the Limit enchantment?

That opens up a whole other can of worms (M68 Remove Enchantment "A failed attempt to
remove a Limiting Enchantment removes all enchantments") but at least that's less exploitable since:

1) takes at least 1 hour to cast instead of 10 minutes or less
2) costs 100 energy instead of 3
3) just unenchants the item instead of quirking it or exploding the valuable root object
4) enchantments require skill 15 to attempt so failures are not likely unless using Thaumatology's option allowing ceremonial magic attempts at less than skill 15[
Suspend Enchantment could undo the Link temporarily for merely 25 to make it vulnerable to Charge Powerstone attacks, but at least it doesn't remove all enchantments on a failure like Remove.

You could protect against Remove/Suspend attempts via Resist Enchantment reducing effective skill below 15.

Another option might be to try and stop Charge Manastone directly (perhaps the ONLY option if using Limit can't prevent it's use) by using M122 Ward/Reflect/Great Ward which would require Charge Manastone to successfully resist to work despite that.

Aside from Blocking spells the only passive/prep duration might be Spell Wall (M124) if Spell Shield doesn't work? In either case you're creating a Quick Contest to see which spell wins... only difference seems to be who is technically the 'defender'.
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