The Gaming Den

The difference is so absurdly huge that I'm not sure that the Strike Eagle can actually engage the wizard. It isn't exactly designed to fight human-sized targets that are effectively standing still. It's 20mm canon should be effective, but the huge relative velocity means that the pilot won't have much time to line up a shot. An AIM-120 might be more effective, but I'm honestly not certain if one could get a lock on such a low-velocity human-sized target. It might be possible, I don't know.

So? Send a VTOL Harrier or even better, a fucking attack helicopter. An attack helicopter can hover slow enough to engage and slug it out with a wizard.

That said...both Shadowrun and HERO System do these kinds of fights much better than d20. IMHO, HERO System is awesome for these kinds of wacky what-if scenarios.

In shadowrun, the Mages fire Stun Balls at the pilot and win

Koumei wrote:

JigokuBosatsu wrote:All those crazy chain bindings and XP loops and stuff? We did that.

So the Den figure out how to get the magic going, we all become chain-binding balor-farming phoenix-duplicators and then take over both worlds, until the schism over (small unimportant thing) results in a war that obliterates both worlds.

Who am I kidding? Upon getting just enough wizard power, we'd each fuck off to a separate "Energy Drain doesn't work here" plane of succubi. For ever. Occasionally scrying on other people's mothers, asking the succubi to shapechange for a moment, taking a photo and sending it to the offspring of said mother.

Since this thread popped back up, I'd just like to say that after the great FantasyLand/MundaneLand War I'd become an immortal epic-level Pornomancer who wandered the infinite planes having NC-17 adventures where the fate of sexy worlds would hang in the balance, and I would not fuck off to a demi-plane of Succubi concubines.

K wrote:

Koumei wrote:

JigokuBosatsu wrote:All those crazy chain bindings and XP loops and stuff? We did that.

So the Den figure out how to get the magic going, we all become chain-binding balor-farming phoenix-duplicators and then take over both worlds, until the schism over (small unimportant thing) results in a war that obliterates both worlds.

Who am I kidding? Upon getting just enough wizard power, we'd each fuck off to a separate "Energy Drain doesn't work here" plane of succubi. For ever. Occasionally scrying on other people's mothers, asking the succubi to shapechange for a moment, taking a photo and sending it to the offspring of said mother.

Since this thread popped back up, I'd just like to say that after the great FantasyLand/MundaneLand War I'd become an immortal epic-level Pornomancer who wandered the infinite planes having NC-17 adventures where the fate of sexy worlds would hang in the balance, and I would not fuck off to a demi-plane of Succubi concubines.

Cool. As long as you have everything under control, everyone else can chill in their demi-plane.

sabs wrote:In shadowrun, the Mages fire Stun Balls at the pilot and win

No, since any vehicle, especially a military one, has windows you can only see through from inside, not outside the vehicle, and therefore the stunball won't work since the mage needs to see the target.

Hicks wrote:O RLY?

Ia R'lyeh.

Shadowrun posits mirrored windows that are cheap and desirable enough to be standard on all vehicles. And since people are walking around with the evil eye and can slay anyone they can see - mirrored windows are obviously extremely desirable.

In any case though, the ability to put everyone you can see in a 6m radius sphere to sleep is suitably impressive, but considerably less impressive than a tomahawk missile (lethal radius 28 meters, fires at unseen targets). Shadowrun magic is just extremely bad at overcoming modern militaries. It's super impressive, and incredibly useful for spies, but on the battlefield a mage is basically just a guy who happens to get nose bleeds when he uses his rocket propelled grenade.

-Username17

I should have added "in Shadowrun". But yes, there it is standard. Just as there are (likely) standard procedures to counter or at least hinder magic mind control of officers (such as double checking orders, matrix-communication, etc.) in addition to magical counter measures.

Fuchs wrote:I should have added "in Shadowrun".

Yes, you should have done that. I thought that for a second there that you were stipulating what shadowrun magicians would do to a modern military.

Fun fact: while shadowrun magicians require line-of-sight, D&D wizards require line-of-effect, which is blocked by clear glass.

FrankTrollman wrote:It's super impressive, and incredibly useful for spies

Yeah, I've had a few arguments with players and dumpshockers over the years that pretty much go like this:

Some Dude: "Wait, what do you mean the military doesn't use magicians that much?"

Me: "I said they wouldn't be on the front lines, not that they don't use magicians. Magicians are too busy casting Mind Probe"

Some Dude: "But-"

Me: "No buts! The mages are too busy casting Mind Probe, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars."

I can never remember if stick-n-shock counts as a normal weapon or not for the purposes of killing high-force spirits- if it doesn't, then especially if you're up against Amazonians or any kind of spirit-heavy force, it might be a good idea to have a few combat mages handy, even if you just use them as a reserve to deal with high-force spirits if/when they pop up. Even if stick-n-shock does overwhelm ItNW, 6+net hits won't be able to deal with force 5+ spirits.

AFAIK, SnS has never been clearly defined to either work or not. It's a GM call per game. I think it's dumb that it would work, but spirits are so overpowered I understand why people want it to work.

Actually, it's really straightforward and the wishful thinking behind the "maybe stick and shock doesn't work after all" camp doesn't really have a leg to stand on. Immunity to Normal Weapons applies to all weapons that are not magical. That includes stick and shock. It just so happens that stick and shock then goes ahead and halves the armor it faces by virtue of dealing electrical damage. The rule may piss people off and inspire people to call it stupid, but the interactions are not actually outright contradictory.

Hicks wrote: Fun fact: while shadowrun magicians require line-of-sight, D&D wizards require line-of-effect, which is blocked by clear glass.

By that same rule you can't fire a gun at someone on the far side of a window. You have to take a separate action to shoot the glass first. You could probably convince the DM to chalk that rule up to writer error (although he might replace it with "projectiles go through glass but spells that originate at their target don't").

I would probably houserule that to say that glass, or other materials, between the attacker and their target basically provide hardness to the target, so that attack roll spells can go through glass just as well as projectiles.

Area spells like fireball and lightning bolt don't care about glass; sure they do half damage to objects, but glass has bullshit HP anyway that's blown through and the fireball does full damage to whatever is behind it. It's spells like sleep and single target attacks that are nullified by standing behind a pane of glass.

Projectiles are also weird in 3.5 because, with the exception of water, attacks don't "travel through" any material interposed between the attacker and their target, fragile or not; standing behind 10 impossibly thin panes of glass stacked would nullify 10 arrows, or 10 spears, or 10 trebuchet stones, but would provide no defence from a 1d4 burning hands spell.

Hence houserule. Also a standard fireball has no explosive force, it only penetrates barriers it can burn.

So I was going over some old books while my internet connection was out, and low and behold I found a rule (1st edition, but still) that states fire does double damage to incorporeal undead, so that can prevent a wraithpocolypse.

I've also been giving more thought to the teleporting hit-squads and the end result is no. They just cause too many problems, even if they are necessary to achieve detent.

It ultimately comes down to problem of FTL, Causality, Relativity: pick two. Now, D&D has magical time travel, canonically, so we can potentially throw out causality, but that causes a fuckton of headaches in any setting that's not time-travel centric.

More immediately, I was thinking about Elimister's secret moonbase and realized that teleport doesn't just change your position, it also changes your vector. You can, for example, teleport onto the deck of a moving ship and not go kersplat.

The ability to arbitrarily change your inertial reference frame with a set finite energy cost doesn't just mean that you can go anywhere, it also means that that RKKVs are cheap and effective. Seriously, you could just teleport to an inertial Reference Frame one light minute out in space, that's moving toward Earth at arbitrarily close to the speed of light. Then you just take a copper coin out of your pocket, let it go, and teleport to some safe planetoid, preferably in Alpha Centauri

Because you're moving arbitrarily fast towards Earth, that coin you dropped is going to have an arbitrary relativistic mass from Earth's perspective. Let's be a bit conservative and say it's mearly 8 billion solar masses worth so you've got an impact energy equivilant to eight billion supernovas or so.

In that case, you don't need to aim your copper piece at Earth. You could hit pluto and the explosion would still be big enough to mass scatter the planet.

A hyper-intelligent Archmage can figure this out from one physics textbook or a short perusal of wikipedia.

Also, teleportation to Alpha Centauri and beyond. Greater teleport has no range limit, so you can totally hit the edge of the observable universe. The setting quickly goes from modern meet traditional fantasy to fantasy spacepunk.

@Prak: Houseruling the game to make the mundane side weaker, are you?

TBH, it's sensible enough that I don't particularly care in this case. Indirect spells are fucking terrible and letting them at least behave like a normal projectile--which, really, is the only dubious "advantage" they ostensibly have--is a pretty logical buff.

Foxwarrior wrote:@Prak: Houseruling the game to make the mundane side weaker, are you?

Houseruling the game so that magic doesn't have even more non-logical arbitrary aspects.

sabs wrote:In shadowrun, the Mages fire Stun Balls at the pilot and win

nope. pilot is either moving too fast for LOS to be established or more likely has polarized windows that can't be seen through.

polarized/tinted windows = fuck you to mages.

No, since any vehicle, especially a military one, has windows you can only see through from inside, not outside the vehicle, and therefore the stunball won't work since the mage needs to see the target.

Completely false IRL, completely true in Shadowrun where mages exist.

"Yeah, I've had a few arguments with players and dumpshockers over the years that pretty much go like this:

Some Dude: "Wait, what do you mean the military doesn't use magicians that much?"

Me: "I said they wouldn't be on the front lines, not that they don't use magicians. Magicians are too busy casting Mind Probe"

Some Dude: "But-"

Me: "No buts! The mages are too busy casting Mind Probe, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars.""

Remember that SR Magicians also have plenty of "fuck you you don't see me", "I am protected by a hoard of summoned dudes", and "astral recon" as well as "LOS you die".

I think it's much more interesting to discuss what'd happen if the mundane and magical worlds came into conflict but it wasn't an outright war.

Think about it.

In the real world most security works on personal identifiers or some sort of private information. Retina scans, finger prints, passwords...

Detect Thoughts and some disguise/shapechange magic later, you have the ultimate identity thieves (divinations also work). They could replace people and live their lives as if they were them and no one would know any better.

Do you have a dog? Cat? Look at me. Back to your pet. Your pet is now Druids!

Is there an invisible demon waiting to eat your soul right behind you? No? Are you sure? In such a situation, you can't be.

What's that? You want to have sex with the hooker? What does level loss taste like?

Oh hey, see that Jesus over there? 5th level Cleric.

"Puppet leader" has a whole new meaning.

And that's just the low and mid level stuff.

hyzmarca wrote:I've also been giving more thought to the teleporting hit-squads and the end result is no. They just cause too many problems, even if they are necessary to achieve detent.

It ultimately comes down to problem of FTL, Causality, Relativity: pick two. Now, D&D has magical time travel, canonically, so we can potentially throw out causality, but that causes a fuckton of headaches in any setting that's not time-travel centric.

That is one of the stupidest reasons I've ever heard for doing anything. First of all: we don't live in a causal universe. People who try to rescue causality are forced to invent "secret, undetectable causes that are impossible to predict or prevent that operate in all observable ways like random events" in order to explain quantum movement and radioactive decay. It's bullshit. Secondly: teleportation in D&D operates by shunting you into the Astral Plane, moving you over really fast, and then shunting you back into the material plane. There's no reason to believe that movement via teleportation is any faster than light is (portals and planeshift are, but that's a whole different issue).

But even if you were really concerned with preventing time travel and you insisted on teleportation being literally instant instead of effectively instant as it is canonically, it still wouldn't be an issue. Within the boundaries of the solar system, there just isn't space to build up enough of a time differential to get even a whole second or even a quarter second into the past. And even "fast" teleportation systems require that you say a word (Word of Recall) or take a step (Tree Stride). Which means that even if you had a space probe and an Earthbound station with word of recall sanctuaries at both ends and spent the next ten years accelerating the space probe to maximize the time differential... you still wouldn't have enough time difference built up to make up the time it takes to say the word and get recalled.

Yes, in an abstract sense, instantaneous communication or transportation implies the ability to send information into the past. But the distance into the past we're talking about is really not very much at all. We're talking about something that is going to maybe be a workable prognostication engine after decades of magic/science collaboration. And there's no way it's going to be as interesting to modern science as the fact that Golems and Skeletons literally run on zero point energy. Or you know, actual divinations.

The ability to arbitrarily change your inertial reference frame with a set finite energy cost doesn't just mean that you can go anywhere, it also means that that RKKVs are cheap and effective. Seriously, you could just teleport to an inertial Reference Frame one light minute out in space, that's moving toward Earth at arbitrarily close to the speed of light. Then you just take a copper coin out of your pocket, let it go, and teleport to some safe planetoid, preferably in Alpha Centauri

Lolwut. Teleportation doesn't let you choose an arbitrary inertial reference frame. It gives you the consensus inertial reference frame of the place you are going. In order to teleport an object to a location and vector where it will do any harm, you already have to have an object at that location and vector. Meaning that teleport is literally 100% useless for the task you are complaining about.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:But even if you were really concerned with preventing time travel and you insisted on teleportation being literally instant instead of effectively instant as it is canonically, it still wouldn't be an issue. Within the boundaries of the solar system, there just isn't space to build up enough of a time differential to get even a whole second or even a quarter second into the past.

I just checked Wikipedia, but it says one AU is ~149.5 billion meters and the speed of light is ~299 million meters per second. (I rounded both down.)

(149,500 Mm) / (299 Mm/s) = 500 seconds from the Sun to the Earth

(Yes, it's an even result. It surprised me too.)

8 minutes * 60 seconds/minute = 480 seconds

So, there's more than eight light-minutes from the Sun to the Earth on average.