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Old 07-07-2022, 04:39 PM   #3
Plane
 
Join Date: Aug 2018
Default Re: Krait's Summon Wolf vs Yzor's Illusion Wolf

realizing now that 'Dispel Illusions' is a good counter to clustered illusions, so you wouldn't want to have them form a defensive ring around you, but if you spread them out to seek and destroy enemies the DI spell doesn't counter that well

If someone was spamming Wolf Illusion at you, one counter might be to find a natural choke-point in a dungeon and use Create Wall to stop their advance. AFAIK those walls don't have ST to be destroyable by damage, so the only way to make it go away is if the enemy wizard knows the Destroy Creation spell.

Destroy Creation is cheaper but since it is Thrown there is a -1 to DX per hex penalty to destroy the wall from a distance, so it might fail, and failed spells still cost 1 ST.

Lightning is another option if it inflicts 5 hits in a single hit, but you'd need to use a 2 ST one to have good odds of that.

Spell Shield would protect against both of those but it has summon-like ongoing costs (1 per turn) so only benefits if you REALLY need to keep those wolves back because there's no further choke points to fall back to and create a new wall.

Quote:
Originally Posted by hcobb View Post
When you are up against a high IQ foe it's sometimes nice to Illusion duplicate a non-Illusion figure so that your target has a 50/50 chance of wasting her disbelief on something that can't be disbelieved.

For example: https://youtu.be/fHKaUPd9cLk
prob even cheaper to use Image (only costs 1 ST instead of 2 ST) especially since it's an IQ 8 spell available to all wizards

spamming a bunch of Wolf Image could prob put someone on the ropes (they won't know it's not a Wolf Illusion, after all) and you could just mentally command your illusions to miss their targets (since contact will dispel them) with what seems like lucky failed DX checks.

In the example, if Krait has used Image:Wolf then Yzor's 2 ST on Dazzle would put him at a net disadvantage, and actually compound the illusion it was a dangerous wolf ("Lucky I cast Dazzle or it would have bit me!")

Dazzle made a huge diff in that fight since otherwise Krait's wolf would've gotten an attack on Yzor as he Disengaged.

The lack of range penalties on creation spells (unlike thrown spells no -1 per hex) makes creation spells pretty terrifying...

The rationale here is "since they must appear within a limited area anyway" but how limited? "canappear anywhere in the space defined by the wizard's megahex and all
megahexes adjacent to it." (later defined as a "mega-megahex") is pretty versatile! A megahex is anywhere a yard away, while a "mega-megahex" would be anywhere within 3 yards. Personally I don't see the harm in doing a -1 per yard (up to max of -3)

Guess that explains why this mage duel started at about 12 yards distant.

- -

if we assume all wizards at some point (prior to campaign start for those with higher IQs) began at IQ 8 then they could only have 7/8 of the spells their IQ would allow:
1) Blur
2) Disbelieve
3) Drop Weapon
4) Image
5) Magic Fist
6) Slow Movement
7) Staff
Based on that, a wizard NOT knowing these spells would make zero sense to me

It's only at IQ 9 (when 7 options unlock but you only have 2 left) where diverging paths would begin to make sense.

Otherwise it seems prime to start out with an IQ mage who knows the higher-level spells as his allotment, because if you started out as low-IQ you would have to intentionally start out with fewer spells than you're capable of knowing to keep those slots free to learn higher-IQ spells once you buy your IQ up.

If these used prereqs like GURPS it'd also help minimize that weirdness, like if you had to learn 1-hex Fire to learn 3-hex Fire, or 1-hex Image to learn 4-hex Image.
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