03-16-2012, 10:09 AM | #41 | |
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Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
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Re: How has Ceremonial Magic not destroyed your game world?
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Incidentally, I looked up a few battles from Hellenic times through the Middle Ages. It seems that battlefields ranged from 1,000 to 2,000 yards deep, from camp to camp. So the ranges at which your wizards need to operate are on the order of 500 to 1,000 yards. Smaller distances certainly weren't unknown, but these were typically hasty encounter battles (where wizards with 100 assistants can't easily pitch camp and work magic) and/or small, local skirmishes (meaning that 100 assistants might be the whole of the force, and needed for fighting, and that there may be no budget to hire a wizard). That doesn't shut down the possibility, but it does suggest that wizards would fill a role more like specialist siege engines in huge pitched battles involving wealthy states. Frankly, the real challeges of battlefield magic reside in predicting where and when things will happen; in communicating what will happen to your own men without giving Frank the Weak-Willed Spear Carrier intelligence that any enemy wizard can mind-read from him; and in keeping your own men from charging or retreating onto your carefully prepared spell areas (you'll need a legendary commander to convince troops to hold that still!). Magic needs a level of spatial and temporal precision that battle tends to deny. Using divinations to achieve this is a double-edged sword, given how divinations interfere with other divinations. And conditional linking spells can backfire badly, as broad wording can result in friendly fire accidents, while conditions circumscribed with lawyer-like precision risk never being met. Also, I'm with Apache on critical failures: The unpleasantness of these things goes up with the energy involved. I'm not sure I want the wizardly equivalent of Oppenheimer and Teller back there behind me, doing their thaumatology project and promising me that everything should be fine, but warning that there is a slight risk. Or worse yet, being all snobby and technical, and not warning that there's a risk. You just know that smart enemies will be looking for mundane ways to mess up the casting at the last instant, giving big skill penalties that make critical failure very likely. None of which utterly militates against using ceremonial magic on the battlefield, but all of which might explain why it isn't as easy as it sounds.
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Sean "Dr. Kromm" Punch <kromm@sjgames.com> GURPS Line Editor, Steve Jackson Games My DreamWidth [Just GURPS News] |
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03-16-2012, 12:33 PM | #42 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: How has Ceremonial Magic not destroyed your game world?
Yeah, I've never been enamored with throw spell. The easiest way to do ritual casting area spells is by working out moving the spell, either because the spell is naturally mobile (e.g. Windstorm), attaches to an object (e.g. Wind) or by casting a second spell to move the first spell (e.g. Shape Fire). Windstorm is an excellent choice in general, a 25 yard radius strong windstorm picks up objects weighing up to 750 lb and moves at 50 yards per second.
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03-16-2012, 12:50 PM | #43 |
Join Date: Dec 2010
Location: Seattle
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Re: How has Ceremonial Magic not destroyed your game world?
Throw spell is excellent for Deathtouch...
----- Even assuming that you could manage ritual magic castings from 3 ranks deep in the line (which I don't think is practical, though might be at the edge of possible), finding wizards with the skill necessary (15) is going to be tough when combined with the bowels of iron and sense of patriotism/adventure/what-have-you to enable them to make it. Unless high magery is common in a game world, the old standby IQ-14 Magery-3 characters WILL be rare. Which means that there will be several prerequisites (at 1 point) followed by the main spell(s) at several more points. That represents quite a bit of training for a very specialized activity. It may be justified, but I don't think that it will be easily obtained in quantity. (This is along the line of finding someone with an M.D. and a Ph.D. in something like Physics who is also willing and able to function on the battlefield. I'm sure there are people out there like this -- heck, I actually know someone like this -- but they're VERY rare.)
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03-16-2012, 01:14 PM | #44 |
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Kentucky, USA
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Re: How has Ceremonial Magic not destroyed your game world?
Ceremonial Magic would probably work best in a siege situation, where you have two large groups camped out and not moving much. Endless amounts of clean food, water and healing and easy fortification repairs. Plus plenty of cover to keep those mages safe.
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03-16-2012, 02:48 PM | #45 |
Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: Oregon
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Re: How has Ceremonial Magic not destroyed your game world?
That's actually a good point. Besieging a fotress suddenly becomes a much lengthier project if those bottled up inside have an indefinite supply of magically-provided sustenance and envigoration. The trick would be using your own mages to blast through all at once, or find a way to "poison the well" - Drain Mana for example, or summoning up a swarm of Mana-eating spirits.
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03-16-2012, 03:06 PM | #46 | |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: How has Ceremonial Magic not destroyed your game world?
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03-16-2012, 03:43 PM | #47 |
GURPS Line Editor
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
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Re: How has Ceremonial Magic not destroyed your game world?
Magic overwhelmingly privileges the defender in a siege. Any sensible magic-using defender will situate his fortress on a mana spring or similar resource; is very likely to have a site that has received years to millennia of permanent and enchanted magical defenses; can count on the support of everyone inside his walls, including frail technical experts who could never travel with an army; can safeguard a stockpile of magic items (if only Powerstones) that would be serious targets for brigandry and supply-chain pilferage in a traveling army; will have the bonuses for familiarity with the area in the case of spells that assess them; and can very likely look down over his walls at his foes to establish line of sight in a way that the enemy must risk an overflight to accomplish. If using Magical Styles, perks like Sanctum and Super-Sympathy amplify this.
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Sean "Dr. Kromm" Punch <kromm@sjgames.com> GURPS Line Editor, Steve Jackson Games My DreamWidth [Just GURPS News] |
03-16-2012, 03:58 PM | #48 | |
Join Date: Dec 2010
Location: Seattle
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Re: How has Ceremonial Magic not destroyed your game world?
Quote:
The Wizard's Tower watches from above the town Unseen eyes never blinking sun up or sun down Witnessing all for good or for ill, unassailable upon the hill.
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Seven Kingdoms, MH (as yet unnamed), and my "pick-up" DF game war stories, characters, and other ruminations can be found here. |
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03-16-2012, 08:26 PM | #49 |
Join Date: Oct 2008
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Re: How has Ceremonial Magic not destroyed your game world?
As to the original question: "How has Ceremonial Magic not destroyed your game world?"
In my world: It has destroyed, even if not the whole physical world, the whole base of civilization several times plunging the world into dark ages. So far it is known to have happened a minimum of five times, each time killing 90%+ of world population and all the major cities and similar. |
03-16-2012, 09:17 PM | #50 | |
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Join Date: Apr 2008
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Re: How has Ceremonial Magic not destroyed your game world?
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kromm answer, magic |
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