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

["Craig W. Barber" <craigwbar@comcast.net>]

Hi Rick and Ed and all;

    Yes!  Exactly on target.  As an ex-enginerd (who installed insulation to
help get through college) I love the idea of someone inventing an insulation
spell.

      One issue: you mentioned my comment about "short spell life".    Sure,
spells last plenty long already for a quick meeting engagement between squads
or companies.  (But we've all run into the problem of having a spell that
works great for the party's needs but will drain the wizard in about 30 turns,
and the encounter is going to last for hours...) I'd agree with your comments
about wizard power in terms of the dungeon adventure, a quest or the like.
What I meant was think in terms of a battle that may last a morning... or
three days... with bouts of intense combat every few minutes... the victory
may go to the guys who spent their time thinking about apprentice DX, Aid
spells and all the things we've been talking about.   I'm not even in favor of
beefing up wizard's power, I guess I'm complaining: when you have a "Flash
Gate" spell and a nuke, well, nobody is safe anymore!   If military planner
spent a few centuries working on military spells... shudder!

    While I was writing, Ed's comments came in, about the Wheat Rust spell
that spreads like fire, and Disjunction.  I think I mentally called it a Flash
One Way Gate, obviously Ed's got that nailed long ago.

>>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 their own
destruction.

>>And eventually find them.

    (This remind you of any planet we live on??)

But I've got an even worse scenario for you guys:

    Wouldn't a dictator spend a lot on his potions to keep himself youthful?
Wouldn't he then spend centuries perfecting population control spells?  Mass
Glamour, Mega-hex Mind Control, Wide Area Mind Control, Mass Telepathy.  Steve
Jackson alluded to it somewhere... "No matter how powerful the wizard kings
become on one continent..."

    Maybe the solution is to assume that if you have to go from say IQ 8 for a
one hex / one person effect, up to IQ 18 for a seven hex effect, then you have
to go to an IQ 28 spell to extend it out one more hex of radius (a CHITIN: I
megahex, that is, 19 hexes), and IQ 38 to make it work one more hex radius
out, etc.  Problem: there are *already* spells in the toolkit of AW which are
not "hex / area / person" based: I still offer you the wizard with a megaphone
and WOC spell!

    Hmm, let's kill this thread before it kills us.

    Craig




  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Rick Smith
  To: tft@brainiac.com
  Sent: Thursday, August 24, 2006 12:29 AM
  Subject: Re: (TFT) Magic in combat and TFT...


  Hi Craig, everyone.

  On Wed, 2006-08-23 at 14:29, Craig W. Barber wrote:
  > Loved the comments.
  > ...  What really struck me on more thought was the
  > combination of Gates, Teleports, etc, and WMD:  Infiltrate a heavy wizard
or
  > two and destroy an enemy city.

    I've created rune lines that divide up areas into
  separate magical zones where spells / gates magical
  creatures can't cross the boundaries.

    As I've watched this list, I'm coming more and
  more to think Gate is just too powerful spell with
  far too low an IQ.

  >  (I also had to give up on TFT:AW as a basis for my magic, due to the
  > problem of short spell life.  Oh well.  I like the "times 5" idea.)  BTW,
for
  > statistical reasons, illusions and images become nearly worthless, even
for
  > scouting duty, when the enemy has a whole army of IQ8 guys on disbelief
duty.
  > "If it moves, disbelieve it, Private!  If it doesn't move, disbelieve it
  > anyway!"

    Short spell life?  I generally find wizards
  keep getting more and more powerful and
  increasing 5 fold their effectiveness is not
  the way I would jump.

    Out of curiosity, why do people feel they
  need to beef up wizard's power so significantly?


    My last campaign put several restrictions on
  wizards and I did a lot to beef up heroes to
  try to keep the two classes about equal at high
  levels.

  >
  > Meta-issue:
  >
  > The real problem here is one that you've all talked about before.  The
TFT
  > rules are clearly laid out for adventurers and small unit meeting
engagements,
  > NOT for military campaign play.  Remember the discussions a few months
ago
  > about unit sizes, LOU, and so on?  It's possible to scale up, but we need
to
  > do a LOT of play-testing.  The comment about mass production of magic
items is
  > an example.

    I'm not sure that we need a lot of scaled up
  spells.  My example was Summon Gargoyle.  Not
  only is it a nifty "scout that counter" spell
  it also can serve as a "get this unit across
  the water faster" spell.  At the wargame level,
  you don't care which trick a wizard uses to
  scout the company, just that it gets scouted.

  >
  > Spells: Mark pointed out that you'd want to make up spells a bit
different
  > than the ones you use when you're planning a trip to the dungeon.  That
is,
  > you wouldn't extrapolate from 1 hex wall to 7 hex wall up to Instant
Great
  > Wall by means of a bunch of wizards in a line: then have the wall poof out
of
  > existence a minute or five later.  Instead, with the resources available
to a
  > nation-state or even a city-state, it wouldn't be tough to come to battle
with
  > a bunch of new tricks every year!  Super long-distance telepathy and mind
  > control, fast spell shield against them, hyper-divination, divination
shield,
  > cloud cover, mass disguise, one way Gate, Gate shield, long-distance Word
of
  > Command, wide-area Word of Command (a wizard with an amplifier?) and so
on...
  > you wouldn't use the tool kit of spells from AW if you had the resources
of a
  > whole nation to do research on specialty military spells against your
enemy
  > and the counter-spells to protect you from your enemy's spells.
  >
  > It'd get nasty, really nasty.

    Yeesh!

    I've invented a LOT of spells for TFT, some up to
  IQ 35.  (No one has ever got close but I like the
  idea that the PC's alway have a reason to want just
  one more IQ...)  And most times my PC's have got
  their hands on long duration spells I've come to
  regret it.

    Some frightening thoughts there.


    I once had my game poo - pooed by another gamer
  because I had invented spells that I felt were
  economically important.  (A spell that helped
  insulation and another that made fires burn slower
  and warmer - needed because I had a campaign with
  long, very cold winters.  Over hundreds of years
  you can darn well bet that wizards would make
  efficient spells for warming people up.)

    He sneered at me.  In HIS game you could only
  get spells that were invented properly: they had
  been written by a fantasy author & published in a
  fantasy novel.  GM invented spells were just lame
  or something.  (Or maybe he didn't like industrial
  magic disease.)


    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.

    Warm  regards, Rick.
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