Any way to reduce a target's Magic Resistance?

[AlexanderHowl]

What really hurts is when an enemy possesses Magery and Magic Resistance (Improved).

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by SolemnGolem

I'm happy to houserule my own arcane time-consuming workarounds

Consider reinterpreting the Rule of 16 as the "Rule of +6". As usual with Contests, scale the lower score (the target's Will) down to 10, reducing the attacker's skill by the same amount. Then cap the attacker's skill at 16. In other words, for purposes of resistances, caster skill can exceed the targets resistance by no more than 6.

The presumption here is that the Rule of 16 was invented based on typical normal human defenses of 10. It's meant to always give someone at least some chance to resist. But if you're comparing the super-resistant with the super-skillful, you don't want a hard cap that's not itself based in the super-scale of skills routinely being beyond 20. This version still gives an advantage to superior skill, without removing any chance of resistance from the poor mundanes.

[SolemnGolem]

Thanks to everybody who responded. This is for a villain NPC (the BBEG of the dungeon) who is a very accomplished arcane spellcaster, so part of the question of populating the dungeon will also concern how such a spellcasting lich could have gotten the magic-resistant inhabitants under control in the first place.

Conclusions thus far:

1. It seems that my understanding of Magic Resistance is correct: given that it not only penalizes the attacker's roll (as many posters here have illustrated), but also boosts the target's resistance roll (as is apparently less obvious), that means my BBEG atheist lich is going to have to rely primarily on spells that don't trigger MR (missile spells being a good example since they create the missile in your hand and you then throw it at the target more-or-less naturally).

2. Rule of 16 (or 17 with relevant perk) does mean that the majority of spells at approximately MR 4 will whiff regardless of attacker's spell level. With thanks to Anaraxes for the nod, a possible solution to this scenario is contemplated in the Basic Set Campaigns book at BS349 under Extreme Scores, albeit normally this only applies to Regular Contests - which a Resistance Roll usually is a Quick Contest and thus outside of this rule treatment. I could pump up the lich's IQ to 25 and Magery to 6 for effective casting skill of 28 for known spells and then pour more Skill points into it. Given that this is an NPC main villain, this does have merit as the path of least resistance to the DFRPG rules as written (if not necessarily the path of greatest CP efficiency, but for villains CPs hardly matter). This would not bypass the problem of the target having an unchanged high chance of resistance, however - but it might allow the BBEG to throw many instances of spells in the hope that one of the dozens will get through. Not my favorite solution.

3. Affliction with Negated Advantage as Coronatiger suggests is a very interesting option, thanks for the pointer! I may go with this because, although it's not a native rule for DFRPG, the boxed set does state that devious GMs are likely to create villains who have advantages, spells, and other effects not found in the DFRPG rulebooks. This is nonetheless RAW for standard GURPS, so I'd consider it a reasonably balanced exercise of such GM discretion.

[SolemnGolem]

Going with option 3 above, this was what I came up with. All from Basic Set:

Affliction 10 [152]: Negated Advantage +12% (removes up to Magic Resistance 6), Malediction as per spell distance and Will QC +100%, Preparation Required (8 hours) –60%

This replicates the flavor of a researcher who prepares ahead of time by researching the exact nature of the exotic Magic Resistant foe, and then faces it in battle with numerous preparations. The user gets one single shot at this - if they don't succeed then they're stuck in battle against a foe using its full MR, unless they can disengage and put in another 8 hours of research.

The caster still needs to succeed on a Will QC in order for this to work (albeit the target gets a –9 penalty), and even then it only means the target's MR gets reduced to minimum of zero, for a duration of 1 minute per margin of failure (often enough to last for an entire fight). With a zero MR, the target can still roll usual Resistances, but it means that likelihood of failure on either Will or HT will usually be less farfetched if MR did apply.

[AlexanderHowl]

Wouldn't the Affliction need to be Magical though?

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by SolemnGolem

Thanks to everybody who responded. This is for a villain NPC (the BBEG of the dungeon) who is a very accomplished arcane spellcaster, so part of the question of populating the dungeon will also concern how such a spellcasting lich could have gotten the magic-resistant inhabitants under control in the first place.

Conclusions thus far:

1. It seems that my understanding of Magic Resistance is correct: given that it not only penalizes the attacker's roll (as many posters here have illustrated), but also boosts the target's resistance roll (as is apparently less obvious), that means my BBEG atheist lich is going to have to rely primarily on spells that don't trigger MR (missile spells being a good example since they create the missile in your hand and you then throw it at the target more-or-less naturally).

2. Rule of 16 (or 17 with relevant perk) does mean that the majority of spells at approximately MR 4 will whiff regardless of attacker's spell level. .

The resistance roll is in fact a contest. Which is admittedly kind of a clunky way to do it.

[SolemnGolem]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

No it doesn't. The rule of 16 only applies to the initial spell casting. The resistance roll is in fact a contest. Which is admittedly kind of a clunky way to do it.

So the effective contest comes down to a slightly-higher-than-even chance of defender winning, assuming that Rule of 16 (or 17 or 18) kicks in?

Because on re-reading, it seems like both the caster and the subject are essentially rolling 3d6 against the same target number, with defender winning ties.

If this is the case, then you're right - this is actually a lot better odds than I initially thought.

Originally Posted by My Guesswork

MR handicaps caster's effective skill. Check to see if it's over 16 (or 17 or 18, what have you).

Then MR acts as a bonus to subject's effective resistance score. Check to see if it's over 16.

Rule of 16 then would apply and presumably flatten both sides out to the same number.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Wouldn't the Affliction need to be Magical though?

Up to the GM, and since this is an NPC...

[Gnome]

In my DF game I've written a lot of spells that open up possibilities for mages who want to focus on various kinds of threats. Here are two of the relevant ones to this thread:

Pierce Magic Resistance
Regular
This spell is cast on another spell, allowing it to ignore some or all of its target’s Magic Resistance. The spells are cast one after the other, with no delays between castings. Pierce Magic Resistance is cast first, and counts as a spell “on” for determining the effective skill for the second spell. The second spell’s subject has reduced Magic Resistance equal to half the energy put into this spell.
Duration: Equal to target spell.
Cost: 2 to 10. Subject spell’s target has Magic Resistance reduced by 1 for every 2 energy points put into this spell.
Prerequisite: Spellguard.

Pierce Resistance
Regular
This spell is cast on another spell, making that spell more difficult to resist. The spells are cast one after the other, with no delays between castings. Pierce Resistance is cast first, and counts as a spell “on” for determining the effective skill for the second spell. The second spell gains a resistance penalty equal to half the energy put into the spell.
Cost: 2 to 10. Subject spell gains -1 to resist per 2 points of energy. Prerequisite: Pierce Magic Resistance or Evil 6.


These two have not seen very much use in play, PCs haven't taken them and I've only had a few NPCs try them, so not much playtesting. However, the few times they have been used they have not caused much trouble, probably due to being a bit slow and expensive for just a chance at getting through with another spell.

[Crystalline_Entity]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Wouldn't the Affliction need to be Magical though?

I wouldn't require anti-magic countermeasures to take a -10% magical power modifier for the same reason anti-psi doesn't take a -10% psionic power modifier - unless there's some sort of anti-anti-magic ability, anyway. This should probably be "Magical, +0%".