Re: magical vs.mundane resistance

From: David Dunham <david_at_...>
Date: Tue, 2 Mar 2004 18:02:12 -0800


Simon

>I've ahd a thought about "Decapitate Foe" that I'd like to toss out.
>
>Clearly we want it to be a useful ability. Magic has increased costs
>relative to munadne abilities, and because it's, well magic, it
>shoudl allow you to do amazing things more easily than munane
>abilities. The tradeoff is that it's more specific in it's
>application.

The really amazing thing that most feats can do is kill at a distance. You can stand in the back, safely behind the shield wall, and decapitate someone.

>In the case of Decapitate Foe we want to be able to chop people's
>heads off with it, but we don't want to completely unbalance the
>game.

The best way not to unbalance is to make it work essentially the same as any other magic.

>From the rules it seems like the resistance for this feat
>should be 14

I don't see why, because it's never done against the universe.

>, except that a special rule says that characters can
>defend against magical attacks with their best magical abaility. This
>means most characters will defend against it about as well as they
>would a physical attack, since almost all characters will have some
>vaguely appropriate magical ability they can use for a defence.

Not in our games!

>Decapitate Foe sounds to me like Dificult Magic, so why not use those
>rules?

It doesn't sound difficult compared to a number of other kill-at-a-distance feats, none of which are considered difficult. Arguably, killing at a distance can be a plot destroyer, but if it's normal magic, that problem pretty much goes away, since you need to defeat your opponent.

-- 

David Dunham
Glorantha/HQ/RQ page: http://www.pensee.com/dunham/glorantha.html
Imagination is more important than knowledge. -- Albert Einstein

Powered by hypermail