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Old 03-15-2012, 11:21 AM   #1
Snaps
 
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Default How has Ceremonial Magic not destroyed your game world?

So I was reading Ceremonial Magic again today and a few things clicked together. With those rules alone any game allowing magic should quickly develop some pretty crazy stuff that would put D&D games to shame.

So let's say you have an army about to fight a battle. That army has ONE, decently skilled mage. If the army assigns him 100 assistants, he is now an engine of destruction.

1 mage + 100 supporters = 100 energy for casting the spell.

So a single mage in the army can Create a 500 point Earth Elemental, every hour and a half or so (83.3 minutes).

Create Fire can be used to set whole armies ablaze too. One mage with 100 supporters can cast a 50 area create fire spell every 10 seconds, for no energy cost! (Especially deadly if the mage has telecast or even throw spell.)

A mage and his supporters become like heavy artillery. But there are many other really nasty combos.

A mage with 20 supporters can create a Skull Spirit for free every 10 seconds.

Any corpse on a battlefield becomes a loyal soldier with mass zombie. In fact, any army would want to take the time to stop by every cemetery between them and the site of the battle to "recruit" new troops. With 100 supporters a single Necromancer can cast about a 15 area mass zombie spell. At a Cemetery this should yield over 100 zombies or skeletons.

A 50 area of Devitalize Air can be created every 10 seconds. With Telecast you should be able to wipe out an entire city. If you actually teach your supporters the spell you could pull off a 150 area Devitalize Air every 10 seconds.

There are so many ways that a single mage can just decide the outcome of a large battle with Ceremonial Magic. Even castles can be brought down in short order.

How have you guys dealt with this? Has it come up much in your games? Why hasn't it come up more?
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Old 03-15-2012, 11:42 AM   #2
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Default Re: How has Ceremonial Magic not destroyed your game world?

Considering that this requires loads of supporters and difficult (often illegal) spells, it's not much of a concern. It also requires masterful casters. This would take a high degree of organization. Certainly this could easily be the basis of a powerful empire. But it seems unlikely to be all over the place.

Edit: I also think that it doesn't come up much because it requires a great deal more in the way of organization than most players want to involve themselves in. So this sort of ceremonial casting tends to be in the hands of evil cultists/empires/etc. rather than in the hands of "heroic" PCs. On the other hand, I'd love to see PCs try to exploit these rules -- it could be very interesting!
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Old 03-15-2012, 11:53 AM   #3
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Default Re: How has Ceremonial Magic not destroyed your game world?

Unless I'm missing something all you need is a single caster with a skill of 15 and 100 willing, unskilled supporters.

If you're a general, or any sort of leader, not supplying a mage with 100 assistants would just be idiotic.
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Old 03-15-2012, 12:01 PM   #4
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Default Re: How has Ceremonial Magic not destroyed your game world?

You can't cast anything "for free" with Ceremonial magic, that's one of the rules. I would also rule that however much energy a person supplies to a casting is removed from their FP, as well.

The increased odds of failure and critical failure are another limiting factor.

Finally from a tactical perspective the enemy will focus on that large group of people surrounding the mage. With the longer casting times they'll have every opportunity to do so.
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Old 03-15-2012, 12:01 PM   #5
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Default Re: How has Ceremonial Magic not destroyed your game world?

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Originally Posted by Snaps View Post
Has it come up much in your games?
Nope.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Snaps View Post
Why hasn't it come up more?
Because I don't find the prospect terribly interesting. And if I'm running a fantasy game, the picturesque and romantic beats sensible, logical extrapolation every time.

That said, you could incorporate dueling mass wizardry into your campaigns as a plot point. Assuming it's a tactic which exists in your world, every army will have a batch of wizards doing this sort of thing and will take countermeasures: wizards equipped with Counterspell to neutralize magic directly, assassins assigned to bump off wizards, skirmishers sent to harass and disrupt time-consuming ceremonial castings, spymasters engaged to bribe assistants to be "against" castings (and therefore subtract from available energy), and so on.
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Old 03-15-2012, 01:25 PM   #6
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Default Re: How has Ceremonial Magic not destroyed your game world?

As TBC said. This sort of trick works ONCE for the first group to think of it, then the word gets around and everyone does it. Standard military arms race.

Most fantasy battle will rapidly look like something in the American Revolution - WWII period, depending on exact tactics.

Mages will be able to "shell" other armies with ritual cast area spells, or by Creating or Summoning or just Mind Controlling big monsters that can lob things faster than any seige cannon can.

Large area spells will also resemble poison gas attacks (only better behaved) - for a more direct comparison, the Stench spell is basically one of the WWI gas weapons - with the problems of gas warfare made somewhat easier by the use of other air college spells to keep it from blowing back onto your army... but harder because the other side can do that too.

Aerial combat a-la WWI and WWII is rapidly achieved with Levitate (early WWI balloon observers) through flying monsters with mounted archers (unarmed planes with armed pilots) through flying monsters with their own ranged attacks or spells and dropping bombs or hostile spell/alchemical effects (late WWI through WWII).

However, any large scale use of magic like this is likely to start facing large scale Dispel Magic castings, which has the advantage of being ONE spell to nuke MANY effects.

It's not going to destroy the game world any more than the nuclear bomb has destroyed our world, which does a lot more than 100 energy does. What it will do is CHANGE your game world - it will look MORE like D&D does, or at least high-magic D&D settings like Forgotten Realms and IIRC Eberron do.
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Old 03-15-2012, 01:32 PM   #7
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Default Re: How has Ceremonial Magic not destroyed your game world?

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As TBC said. This sort of trick works ONCE for the first group to think of it, then the word gets around and everyone does it. Standard military arms race.

Most fantasy battle will rapidly look like something in the American Revolution - WWII period, depending on exact tactics.

Mages will be able to "shell" other armies with ritual cast area spells, or by Creating or Summoning or just Mind Controlling big monsters that can lob things faster than any seige cannon can.

Large area spells will also resemble poison gas attacks (only better behaved) - for a more direct comparison, the Stench spell is basically one of the WWI gas weapons - with the problems of gas warfare made somewhat easier by the use of other air college spells to keep it from blowing back onto your army... but harder because the other side can do that too.

Aerial combat a-la WWI and WWII is rapidly achieved with Levitate (early WWI balloon observers) through flying monsters with mounted archers (unarmed planes with armed pilots) through flying monsters with their own ranged attacks or spells and dropping bombs or hostile spell/alchemical effects (late WWI through WWII).

However, any large scale use of magic like this is likely to start facing large scale Dispel Magic castings, which has the advantage of being ONE spell to nuke MANY effects.

It's not going to destroy the game world any more than the nuclear bomb has destroyed our world, which does a lot more than 100 energy does. What it will do is CHANGE your game world - it will look MORE like D&D does, or at least high-magic D&D settings like Forgotten Realms and IIRC Eberron do.
And all of that is dependent upon building an infrastructure to produce battle mages, enchanters, etc., capable of generating these effects. That will tend to change the world, centralizing and standardizing magical training, generally subsidized by ever more centralized governments. It should also end up creating logistical infrastructure to support professional armies.

My initial point was that this isn't going to work on a wide scale in feudal armies. But organized centralized governments can certainly do this. Like I said, kingdoms and empires, quite possibly founded by some of the same wizards who initially generated these battlefield results and gained the resources to maintain their edge. How and why this develops really depends on the game world.
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Old 03-15-2012, 01:40 PM   #8
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Default Re: How has Ceremonial Magic not destroyed your game world?

A pseudo-modern society will be able to produce pseudo-modern warfare with this method. But it takes a modern society to sustain modern warfare anyways - the amount of resources required to do more than just make guns and hand them to men is staggering, never mind making sure those men are trained, disciplined, and loyal, rather than the large-scale equivalent of an armed gang (or don't become little better than an armed gang with particularly fancy gang colours). The modern war vehicles, the specialists required to man them in combat, the logistics to support the modern war vehicles and the modern infantry...

Ceremonial magic has the additional logistical problem that your 100 guys have to actually want to help - they can't be indifferent people who are only there because you paid them, or because their commanding officer will shoot them if they don't. A really big chunk of pre-modern militaries (absent some Empire militaries in some periods) are filled with unhappy peasants - even with professional soldiers you get a lot of not-terribly-thrilled soldiers.
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Old 03-15-2012, 01:45 PM   #9
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Default Re: How has Ceremonial Magic not destroyed your game world?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Snaps View Post
So I was reading Ceremonial Magic again today and a few things clicked together. With those rules alone any game allowing magic should quickly develop some pretty crazy stuff that would put D&D games to shame.

...

There are so many ways that a single mage can just decide the outcome of a large battle with Ceremonial Magic. Even castles can be brought down in short order.

How have you guys dealt with this? Has it come up much in your games? Why hasn't it come up more?
I think this is a very good and little considered question.

I don't think it comes up very often in either fantasy fiction or fantasy gaming for a variety of reasons: (i) it brings a grindingly modern feel, (ii) it doesn't favour character-driven narrative, (iii) it's probably rather difficult to think through and get right when the author or GM is making it up.

All those things said, I find it very interesting and would love to play in a game that elaborated realistic consequences of magic.

I'm also trying to think of good examples from literature. The Malazan books kind of touch on it, but then veer away into low-fantasy.
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Old 03-15-2012, 01:50 PM   #10
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Default Re: How has Ceremonial Magic not destroyed your game world?

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... Ceremonial magic has the additional logistical problem that your 100 guys have to actually want to help - they can't be indifferent people who are only there because you paid them, or because their commanding officer will shoot them if they don't. A really big chunk of pre-modern militaries (absent some Empire militaries in some periods) are filled with unhappy peasants - even with professional soldiers you get a lot of not-terribly-thrilled soldiers.
Not to disagree with your overall remark, but it seems to me that payment could be sufficient reason for them to want to help.
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