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Extension and disspel/dismiss magic


Luxus

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Moving this conversation here. If earth shield with extension runespells have been cast on a shield, how it is determined which spell is dispelled first?

 

EDIT: since the post I originally quoted has been removed, I have changed the quote to Scottys answer.

Edited by Luxus
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18 minutes ago, Luxus said:

Moving this conversation here. If earth shield with extension runespells have been cast on a shield, how it is determined which spell is dispelled first?

there is only one spell to dispell: earth shield.

don't see extension as a "true" spell , see it more than a "manipulation" of the spell you want to extend. Here if you put extension 10 on earth shield, that means you have an earth shield with a long duration, and nothing else

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Let's assume (as I think is reasonable but not obvious) that the Extension spell is cast on the shield (it could conceivably be cast on the Earthshield spell instead and be only secondarily connected to the physical shield). At this point, "Dispel first destroys defensive spells, beginning with the most powerful spell that it can affect." Earthshield is clearly a defensive spell. Is Extension? I would argue that it's not inherently a defensive spell, but that it makes sense to treat it as one when it extends a defensive spell.

So: 

  1. Is Extension cast on the actual shield? If not, Earthshield gets targeted (if the dispel is big enough).
  2. Assuming point 1, is Extension a defensive spell in this context? If not, Earthshield gets targeted (if the dispel is big enough).
  3. Assuming points 1 and 2, the dispel now goes for the larger out of Earthshield and Extension that it can affect (Extension might or might not be larger than Earth shield, depending). 

If the caster wants to be tricky, MP boosting can be used to manipulate the defensive strength of each or both spells. 

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7 minutes ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

there is only one spell to dispell: earth shield.

don't see extension as a "true" spell , see it more than a "manipulation" of the spell you want to extend. Here if you put extension 10 on earth shield, that means you have an earth shield with a long duration, and nothing else

I don't think this would be an unreasonable rule or ruling, but it's not in the rules text.

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9 minutes ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

there is only one spell to dispell: earth shield.

don't see extension as a "true" spell , see it more than a "manipulation" of the spell you want to extend. Here if you put extension 10 on earth shield, that means you have an earth shield with a long duration, and nothing else

But if it is not an independent spell, but manipulation of the earth shield spell to be extented, does it mean they are one spell? Does one need to cast the runespell dismiss magic with 5 runepoints in order to dismiss Earth shield 3 and extension 2 ?

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7 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

Let's assume (as I think is reasonable but not obvious) that the Extension spell is cast on the shield (it could conceivably be cast on the Earthshield spell instead and be only secondarily connected to the physical shield). At this point, "Dispel first destroys defensive spells, beginning with the most powerful spell that it can affect." Earthshield is clearly a defensive spell. Is Extension? I would argue that it's not inherently a defensive spell, but that it makes sense to treat it as one when it extends a defensive spell.

So: 

  1. Is Extension cast on the actual shield? If not, Earthshield gets targeted (if the dispel is big enough).
  2. Assuming point 1, is Extension a defensive spell in this context? If not, Earthshield gets targeted (if the dispel is big enough).
  3. Assuming points 1 and 2, the dispel now goes for the larger out of Earthshield and Extension that it can affect (Extension might or might not be larger than Earth shield, depending). 

If the caster wants to be tricky, MP boosting can be used to manipulate the defensive strength of each or both spells. 

I think "defensive spells" in the spell description means countermagic, shield and similar spells which protect against magic because it would be reasonable that disspell/dismiss first targets the defenses it encounters.. Not spells like protection or earth shield.

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3 minutes ago, Luxus said:

I think "defensive spells" in the spell description means countermagic, shield and similar spells which protect against magic because it would be reasonable that disspell/dismiss first targets the defenses it encounters.. Not spells like protection or earth shield.

If even Earth Shield isn’t a defensive spell, then it doesn’t matter in this particular context at least.

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29 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

I don't think this would be an unreasonable rule or ruling, but it's not in the rules text.

well as I m not very confident on my own interpretation, I checked after your answer ;)

page 275

Quote

Common Rune Magic  (...)

These spells can easily be divided into three categories:

Spells About the Cult: (...) 

Spells About Spells: Dismiss Magic, Extension, and Multispell. These spells modify other spells.

Generic Spells: (...)

so for me (after your answer 😛  ) I consider extension modify the "true" spell (earth shield in our example), not the target of the "true" spell (the shield)

27 minutes ago, Luxus said:

But if it is not an independent spell, but manipulation of the earth shield spell to be extented, does it mean they are one spell? Does one need to cast the runespell dismiss magic with 5 runepoints in order to dismiss Earth shield 3 and extension 2 ?

Note that I didn't answer about this :). It was intentional : I don't know if my rule is home rule or not. I manage for any magic (spirit, sorcery, rune), the amout to dispell is the strength of the spell, not the duration. So for me, dismiss magic with 3 rune points is enough to dismiss earth shield 3 (with extension 1 ,2 or 12).

 

 

It avoids issue like:

Rurick cast the spell is extended with 3 points (1week) more than 6 days ago and the spell will expire in 25 minutes.

Argrath cast the same spell just now with 1 point so the spell will expire in 30 minutes.

 

And now, bad guys try to dismiss both spells

Why Rurick's spell would be harder to dissmiss than Argrath's one ?

 

But I can understand than other people will use the full amount of runepoints (included extension, in my example Rurick's spell is 3+3= 6 rp spell  ), or some, why not, calculate the "now"-like spell (in my example, Rurick's spell is now a 3+1 = 4 rp spell)

 

 

 

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It probably makes the most sense (if you’re house-ruling, which perhaps you should here) to define Extension not as a Temporal spell with its own separate existence, but as an Instantaneous spell which modifies the primary spell as it’s being cast but doesn’t exist after that.

Edited by Akhôrahil
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19 minutes ago, Luxus said:

Scotty has answered to this question, although I disagree with him (I think extension should be treated as a separate spell):

If you want an official answer to a rules question and then want to disagree with the answer with it that's fine. Please read the Q&A before asking future questions.

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29 minutes ago, Scotty said:

If you want an official answer to a rules question and then want to disagree with the answer with it that's fine. Please read the Q&A before asking future questions.

Yes I have read it, but for some reason I couldn't find the part where it says that extension doesn't exist as a separate spell after casting.

I hope that in the future Runequest rulebooks are properly playtested and proofread before publishing. So all necessary rules with complete info are in the actual rulebooks, and not in some forum, Q&A, Facebook group etc.
I also hope that Chaosium learns from this and does a better job next time.

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