Spell: Death Vision [Erratum?]

[Fnord-Fnairlane]

Originally Posted by Lancewholelot

Sounds fair to me. After two turns of casting the mage should at least be able to stun his target.

It's three turns with skill < 20... or every turn with skill 25, which is achievable, if difficult, in a 150 point game.

Originally Posted by Luther

You got the picture. In G4 our warrior, even if he is a powerful hero, with lots of IQ, never get a chance to act, escape, fight the Necro, whatever . . . This is a change from G3. If I'm not wrong, it seems that the original poster's concerns are well founded: even if Death Vision's text is almost identical, the little changes in how GURPS handles stun have a heavy, nasty side effect.

Thank you Luther. This is the exact problem. Any Necromancer with Death Vision 25 can cause any character who is not Immune to take Do Nothing maneuvers forever, and he's at -4 to defend as well.

The only defence is to be immune to magic or stunning. There are many, many spells that let the mage "win" but they generally allow resistance rolls.

Originally Posted by Luther

I dunno if this is by design or if it was overlooked.

Overlooked, for sure. Magic was not properly updated to 4e, it's just a cut and paste of the 3e rules, which is a shame. Magic was crying out for the same clarifications that happened in the core rules. Here's another I'm about to raise: does Resist Fire protect against burn damage? It protects against Fire. What about Lasers? Electrical burns? Blasters?

[roguebfl]

I don't think this is over looked. While the Warroir can only do "Do Nothing" durring this cycle... the only thing the Necromacyer can do is cast Death Vision, to keep the cycle going. [untill he Faills his skill roll or runs out a fatigue.

ALSO this is a Regular spell. so that -1 per yard away that your not touching your target. [admittly as you have to be skill level 25 {which is expensive} you can afford to be 9 yards away]

[Fnord-Fnairlane]

Originally Posted by roguebfl

I don't think this is over looked. While the Warroir can only do "Do Nothing" durring this cycle... the only thing the Necromacyer can do is cast Death Vision, to keep the cycle going. [untill he Faills his skill roll or runs out a fatigue.

ALSO this is a Regular spell. so that -1 per yard away that your not touching your target. [admittly as you have to be skill level 25 {which is expensive} you can afford to be 9 yards away]

Team 1: 150 pt Necromancer, plus his 75 point zobie minion. He has Death Vision at skill 25.

Team 2: 500 point warrior, who happens not to be immune to magic.

Necromancer can cast Death Vision forever (no FP cost at skill 25), for free, at 9 yard range, while the zombie beats on the warrior. Warrior never gets to act, and there is no defence. Even if the warrior wins, and changes into combat with a slam, and knocks the necromancer off his feet, the necromancer can probably get the spell off (high skill, no range).

In 3e, it was OK - the warrior was at -4 to defend against the zombie due to being stunned, but still got to skewer the wizard. In 4e, the Necromancer always wins.

As Luther said, the spell is busted because the stunning rules changed (or were clarified) for 4e and the spell was not adjusted to suit.

[Ze'Manel Cunha]

Originally Posted by Fnord-Fnairlane

Team 1: 150 pt Necromancer, plus his 75 point zombie minion. He has Death Vision at skill 25.

Dude, any one skill or spell at level 25 will dominate, if the 500 point warrior doesn't have initiative over the Necromancer, he's got bigger problems.
Besides, the cheapest model you can have for someone casting Death Vision at skill 25 is going to be about 75 points.
For 75 points I can make upteen attacks which will take out anyone not specifically immune to them.
I can make also a 0 pt Warrior who is immune to magic who in specific circumstances will wallop the 150 pt Necromancer, his zombie minion, and the 500 point warrior while he's at it.
It's all about the situation.

[Fnord-Fnairlane]

Originally Posted by Ze'Manel Cunha

Dude, any one skill or spell at level 25 will dominate, if the 500 point warrior doesn't have initiative over the Necromancer, he's got bigger problems.

Even if he wins, there's a decent chance the Necro will get the spell off once, at which point, bingo, he wins. And at high points totals, spells at 25+ don't dominate. The 150 point example was to point out it matters at low power levels as well. In a 1,000 point game, skills in the mid-20 and up are normal, and the sort of thing you routinely deal with by having really good resistance rolls, and defensive Magic. In our high powered fantasy game it is routine (IE: all PCs have this) Mind Shield 30; Resist Fire, Cold, Acid & Radiation; Missile Shield; the Stong Will spell, etc, etc. This spell bypasses the magical defences as well as the innate ones (high Will).

Originally Posted by Ze'Manel Cunha

It's all about the situation.

The problem is that all the standard defences against magic don't work in this situation. Our victim can have will 16+, various other defences, etc. It is, IMO, unusual (and broken) to have such an absolute attack power in Magic. Show me another offensive combat spell that doesn't allow a resistance roll? No, Curse doesn't count.

[Gudiomen]

First of all, there's no defense agains the lack of update from 3e Magic to 4e, this whole problem comes up from this.

Second, I agree with Zé on this one, in one particular situation, it's all about point management and specific circunstances. At a 1.000cp campaing, you'll get TONS of situations like this, the game becomes very unpredictable, and loopholes create enerving low-powered attacks that render some demi-gods useless.

Third, I've allways thought of Death Vision as nice EXACTLY because it operated differently, it's not just a stun spell, it's like no other spell, it's not resisted. My rationale was allways that Death Vision is mainly a precognitive and benefic spell, but the vision is shocking and has a nasty side effect, thus, it can be used offensively. That's why you don't resist it, just like a healing spell. This is just my particular take on it, and I'm just ilustrating my point of view.

Fourth... you're telling me... that your 1.000 point character has died several times (actually died!), ressurected himself, seen numerous planes of existance, heaven and hell, fought demon princes... and he'd be bothered by Death Vision? Please... getting killed should be old new for him... eventually, it wont even stun him anymore. Just like you get shocked the first time you see someone die, but after years of war you harden your heart and "get used to it." Just beacause there are no printed and chewed up rules, ready to use, doesn't mean you can't use them. GURPS is fairly detailed, and all that, but no system can account for everything. Use your imagination.

I agree with Kromm, just add a resistance roll and be done with it. But that's your option, I like Death Vision like it is (mainly because I run lower powered games, and if I did run high-powered games, this would be the least of the incoherences that would worry me). Death Vision does have elements to keep it balanced, that's the long time to cast and the comparatively high energy cost, social restraints of necromancy,etc... but in a high-fantasy, high-powered campain with no GM intervention on this respect, you kind of blow the locks wide open.

[Ze'Manel Cunha]

Originally Posted by Fnord-Fnairlane

In our high powered fantasy game it is routine (IE: all PCs have this) Mind Shield 30; Resist Fire, Cold, Acid & Radiation; Missile Shield; the Stong Will spell, etc, etc. This spell bypasses the magical defences as well as the innate ones (high Will).

Good, keeps those buggers on their feet, and teaches them to fear Necromancers.*grin*

Originally Posted by Fnord-Fnairlane

Show me another offensive combat spell that doesn't allow a resistance roll? No, Curse doesn't count.

All the area spells, and especially the Rain of spells.
(I like Devitalize Air.)
Deathtouch and all melee spells.
All the missile and jet spells.
Shatter, Explode and Disintegrate, Contract/Extend/Shrink Object.
Distant Blow, Blink Other, Stop Power, Shape Metal.
I'm sure there's more.

[Fnord-Fnairlane]

Originally Posted by Gudiomen

First of all, there's no defense agains the lack of update from 3e Magic to 4e, this whole problem comes up from this.

I tend to complain about this every time yet another "What does this mean?" thread comes up. Our gaming group loves the improvements in 4e and find yet another problem with Magic just about every session.

Originally Posted by Gudiomen

Second, I agree with Zé on this one, in one particular situation, it's all about point management and specific circunstances. At a 1.000cp campaing, you'll get TONS of situations like this, the game becomes very unpredictable, and loopholes create enerving low-powered attacks that render some demi-gods useless.

Actually, we've found 4e to be much better than 3e in this regard. We had many pages of house-rules for 3e, mostly to do with merging all the inconsistent stuff from teh dozen 3e books we were using. 4e in an enormous improvement, especially in high-powered cross-genre games.

Originally Posted by Gudiomen

Third, I've allways thought of Death Vision as nice EXACTLY because it operated differently, it's not just a stun spell, it's like no other spell, it's not resisted. My rationale was allways that Death Vision is mainly a precognitive and benefic spell, but the vision is shocking and has a nasty side effect, thus, it can be used offensively. That's why you don't resist it, just like a healing spell. This is just my particular take on it, and I'm just ilustrating my point of view.

Interesting idea...

Originally Posted by Gudiomen

Fourth... you're telling me... that your 1.000 point character has died several times (actually died!), ressurected himself, seen numerous planes of existance, heaven and hell, fought demon princes... and he'd be bothered by Death Vision? Please... getting killed should be old new for him... eventually, it wont even stun him anymore. Just like you get shocked the first time you see someone die, but after years of war you harden your heart and "get used to it." Just beacause there are no printed and chewed up rules, ready to use, doesn't mean you can't use them. GURPS is fairly detailed, and all that, but no system can account for everything. Use your imagination.

Actually, I think I've only been killed once or twice. Dpends wether you count coming back as a cross between an Angel and a Golem as a death. One other PC is at 6+ deaths. One died, and raised himself as a Ice-Lich (think Frozone from "The Incredibles", but Undead) and has been "discorporated" several times since, but has, to be accurate, only "died" that one time.

One thing we've been resisting strongly is using any house rules - not because we can't, but because we wanted to give bog-standard 4e a real workout before assuming dozens of house rules are required. As of last week, we've had to give up, and start house ruling some spell effects from Magic, which is a shame. Nothing but Magic has required any tweaking, even at 1,000 points. This is a major change from 3e, which starts to break down at 300 - 500 points.

But to get back on track, as we've given up on the "No House rules" idea, we'll have not trouble dealing with it in our game, we're comfortable with altering the rules to suit our play style. I still think that the spell is busted, even at low poer levels. The "Social Control" argument works for avoiding zombie hordes, but Death Vision is subtle (to the non-victims). There should be a defensive spell, or a resistance roll.

Originally Posted by Gudiomen

I agree with Kromm, just add a resistance roll and be done with it. But that's your option, I like Death Vision like it is (mainly because I run lower powered games, and if I did run high-powered games, this would be the least of the incoherences that would worry me). Death Vision does have elements to keep it balanced, that's the long time to cast and the comparatively high energy cost, social restraints of necromancy,etc... but in a high-fantasy, high-powered campain with no GM intervention on this respect, you kind of blow the locks wide open.

Our group has a fairly cooperative play-style (IE: the players and the GM cooperate). We have one munchkin, who is collectively kept in check by both the GM and the players. The rest of us are more interested in the story and the plot. Adversarial play style would not work at this power level - but even so, it is annoying when peoblems like this come up.

[Gudiomen]

Originally Posted by Fnord-Fnairlane

Actually, we've found 4e to be much better than 3e in this regard. We had many pages of house-rules for 3e, mostly to do with merging all the inconsistent stuff from teh dozen 3e books we were using. 4e in an enormous improvement, especially in high-powered cross-genre games.

I got that impression too, to be frank, although I still like 3e better it's not because the system is more consistent, but rather because it's particularly suited for my specific tastes (low-fantasy). A lot of things (like atributes, psi, several advantages/disadvantages) are more cross-campaing compatible.

Magic is not one of these things. We're shooting a dead dog here, but magic suffered no update. Hence, it was not brought up to the new style of GUPRS. You'll likely find a boggling amount of inconsistencies...

However, this is not a problem of the particular Death Vision spell, it was allways meant to work that way, proof of that is the lack of errata. It wasn't a mistake not to have a resistance roll, it was intentional. What was not meant to happen was that it's virtually undefendable.

So what you'll have to do, is what Magic 4e didn't bother to do, you'll have to update the rules. Pure and simple. Basic Set 3e saw this happen with the Compendia, now Magic 4e is badly in need of it (ok, it's much worst with Magic, beacuase Basic was just... basic. And Magic is screw up).

Here's my (helpful) suggestion: you'll have to account for the changes in rules, since you now have to do nothing in order to recover (it's really a clarification, you already did)... you have a few options:
1) allow the character to act normaly or semi-normaly in the first turn (while the vision is occurring). Im not sure I like this one, it's hard to justify, unless the vision is somehow subtle, but then again, it has to be overwhelming.
2) allow a resistance roll versus Will
3) treat it as a fright check, with automatic stun effect instead of rolling
4) allow the warrior to roll on the same turn as the spell, without an action. (ie: he's not recovering from stun, he's checking to see if he get's stunned or not, the spell still doesnt get resisted, but shock isn't automatic).
5) give a cumulative penalty for the spell cast on the same target subsequent times, as other healing spells (-3, -6...) or just (-1, -2...) as you see apropriate.
6) like has been suggested, disallow the spell to have effect when cast various consecutive times (if it's a vision of the future, two imediate castings will probably produce very similar visions, since random factors haven't changed much, the same vision might have no effect).

I like any of the last 3 particularly, there's a number of other possible solutions. You can also re-write the spell, or simply remove it from your worlds spell list if it's troublesome (meaning: don't create a house, rule, just remove a troublesome one).

Hope that helps.

EDIT: on number 4, it's important to remember what the purpose of the spell is, Death Vision does NOT cause stun directly, what it causes (and what cannot be resisted) is the VISION, stunning is a secondary, imediately consecutive effect that is generaly the case, but might not be universal. For instance, a being that cannot be stunned, but can die, would probably get the vision of it's death anyway, but wouldn't be stunned. Anyone imune to stun would be imune do that particular secondary effect of Death Vision, but not the vision itself. IMO.

[Luther]

Originally Posted by Fnord-Fnairlane

Team 1: 150 pt Necromancer, plus his 75 point zobie minion. He has Death Vision at skill 25.

You can get skill 25 even with less CPs.