Re: (TFT) Magic in combat and TFT...

[Ed Thorn <prophesor@yahoo.com>]

Rick Smith asked:

  But in TFT there are rules for making new spells.
What would people come up with when an Evil Empire
spends $$$ making a 60 fST ubber combat spell?



I skipped 300 years past this question once, creating a setting where the PCs, descended from those who had fled a continent wracked by a 'MageWar', suddenly found themselves _back_ on that continent, back in 'The Old World'.

I didn't have to do the accounting for 60fST spells, but I did try to stay true to TFT as a source, while equipping the Magi of old with the power to destroy their world.  (This is rather the OPPOSITE of what a GM normally strives to do.  It was oddly cathartic.  :)  )

Some of the magic recorded as having been loosed in the MageWar:

A 600-foot fire elemental, in the guise of a king of that age.  I estimated a 'foot print' of around 10 hexes, and a 'Fire Elemental can set fire to a hex just by spending movement points' area of effect of about a megahex.

The Rrusth, or Rust, or the 'Wheat Fire', a fungus that contaminates wheatfields so quickly observers compared it to flames.  It was discovered when wheat planting was attempted on a gate-available world.  'Rrusth' is the native goblin term for 'red hair'.  It was only a minor nuisance to their native crops of yams and citrus.  But their masters, who fed on rice and barley, set the goblins to harvesting the red stuff for use against the breadbasket lands of their enemies.  It worked too well.

Goblin slaves from the same world.  Gargoyles from another.  The Hounds of Beklor (detailed earlier on this list as 'Rapine') from a third.  Hymenopterans.  Goo.  (Pretty much all the gonzo stuff, came from Someplace Else, in this retcon of TFT.)  I added Kelmain, still claiming possession of the battlefields they'd fought over centuries before, because that's just too cool.

The flying ships of Windlane let them carve an empire.  And then when Windlane was Disjuncted, the flying ships helped the survivors flee the Old World.

Disjunction is an expansion of the Gate Technomagy, it allows the transportation of a thing from a 'there' which is very near to a 'here' (which is usually the caster), to another 'there', which is in theory both computable and choosable, but which in practice is actually left at 'someplace else'.  Disjunction originated from an investigation of some similarities in the magical energies of Gate and Open Tunnel.

Reading back over the above, it appears that the central 'issue' is Gate.  Combine Gate and Astral, with either hoards of apprentices or merely legions of apprentices and Aid-leveraging technomagy, remove moral and societal limits on magical ambition, and your empires will seek out the seeds of thier own destruction.

And eventually find them.
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