RE: (TFT) Wizards at War

["Pasha and Rick Smith" <pnrsmith@istar.ca>]

Hi all,
	My comments interleaved below:

-----Original Message-----
From: tft-owner@brainiac.com [mailto:tft-owner@brainiac.com]On Behalf Of
John Paul Bakshoian
Sent: Saturday, October 20, 2001 11:49 AM
To: tft@brainiac.com
Subject: Re: (TFT) Wizards at War


>From: Stan <srydzews@ix.netcom.com>
>Subject: Re: (TFT) Wizards at War
>Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2001 08:58:15 -0400

>Really though (now I'm rambling) even if you have the wizards permanently
>on your payroll during peacetime, I guess you have the choice of either
>having them do WA enchantments to prepare for war, or having them train
>to get their IQ up to 15+ in time for the war.  So there still really
>is a choice.
>
>
>Finally, not to treat the real world situation lightly, or suggest that
>blowing up any one 'evildoer' is really a major goal, but merely as an
>example of the power of repeated Trance spells...
>
>"Is binLaden currently in Afghanistan?"
>"Yes he is."
>Get out a map of the Afghanistan.
>"Is bin Laden in this half of the country?"
>"No."
>"Okay, is he is in this half of the other half?"
>"Yes."
>"Okay, is he..."
>(thirteen wizards later you're down to two square miles)
>Get out satellite map.
>"Okay is he in this square mile or this one?"
>(eight wizards later)
>"Okay is he in this building or this one?"
>
>Now yeah, that's 20 16 IQ wizards to do this, but it only
>took each of them a moment, they didn't have to go anywhere,
>and it cost nothing other than their pay.  And if you started
>with a few educated guesses as to the answer, it would take a
>lot less than 20 guys.

	***
	This actually happened in my campaign. Bob was playing
Melderon, Freer of the Free provinces (currently enslaved).
The evil empire Quathe used 6 wizards with trance to keep finding
his winter hide outs.  This experience convinced me that the
trance spell was too powerful.
	***

This is very good direction for the use of these kinds of information
spells, if a little to short-circuiting of some of the campaign the GM might
have set up.  Perhaps the answers get a little more vague as the questions
are answered.

Clever is the player who forces the GM to answer yes or no questions.  If a
GM has to answer yes or no questions truthfully, he can still be obtuse.  If
you find your players consistenly forcing your hand in this matter and
becoming a real pain with trances, find out the Souix word for Yes, or
perhaps morse code for Yes, or draw some historical or mathematical symbol
that means Yes.  Now you've answered truthfully and it becomes a puzzle for
the players to solve.  If the GM feels inclined, he can give hints on where
to find the translation.

Are there any counters-spells to these kind of detection spells?
Are Trailtwister or Conceal the only ones?

	***
	No there are no counterspells, tho I allow someone with a self
powering spell shield to be a good defence against magical spying and
you could always hide inside a pentagram.
	***

I would say that the Advanced Wizard spellbook is probably just a primer
that is available in the general libraries of Cidri.  The Royal Order of
Magic User's must have a tome triple the size for specialized fields and
another for cantrips.

I belieive there are other magical tomes that are from the other Mnoren
universes.  The magical physics on these other worlds might be different (or
the physics are the same, but the manipulation of magic is different), thus
the seemingly overly powerful magics of Diyandi, or the various ritual
styled magics of Siennes, or the seemingly similar incremental style magics
of GrrrPs.

Because these are not Cidri originated magics, they are hard to translate
and be effective.  It has been found that using some of the Diyandi magics
(once some translation has been done) was so overwhelming that it created an
unbalance and the mages and the campaign area that it was used in became
non-existant (that game stopped).  It has been suggested that the DIEMs
might allow some of these Diyandi magics to be performed in the Cidri
universe, but with great penalties to the user or his immediate environment.

Hail Melee,
John Paul

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