Meteoric Metal vs Magic

[Peter V. Dell'Orto]

Originally Posted by Anthony

No. Meteoric gear cannot be affected by magic, but it does not block magic.

While true, this makes most meteoric armor and shields kind of lame in practice. Unless your opponents routinely attack your armor, and not you, it's not doing much for all that cost.

But it might be fun if it does in fact effectively block spells from passing through the armor.

- Maybe you can't cast a mind control spell on a guy wearing a greathelm, because you can't get through his helm. Or cast it on a guy wearing a pothelm if you're behind him, for the same reason - you need to move to where his face is a valid target.

- It might be impossible to send commands via Enslave to someone wearing meteoric armor, because your telepathic connection is blocked.

- You probably can't cast touch spells though the armor, anyway, but it would be interesting if, say, meteoric gauntlets prevented magic traps from firing or blocked spells cast on your hands.

- Pure magical damage should be blocked entirely (mana bolts from DF11), as should any magical delivery system (Curse-Missile), if it must go through a piece of meteoric armor to reach the target.

Otherwise, it's not so helpful as armor. It's even more useless against spells like Teleport Other (hey, NPCs might have it) or Entombment, where you'll leave your armor behind. I wouldn't try treating it as some kind of anti-magic auto-dispel-er, but I kind of like the idea that meteoric armor might give some limited anti-magical effect merely by being between the caster and the victim. If you view magic as curving around obstacles to get there, not as LOS (and I believe this is the RAW), then it's not going to work, and meteoric armor is back to being of marginal use, IMO.