Countermagic complications

[womble]

9 hours ago, Pentallion said:

EDIT:  Just read the offending text.  You guys are misunderstanding it.  CM will stop anyone casting Detection spells ON YOU.  ie, if you have CM up and someone wants you to be able to detect something and cast a detection spell on you so you can, for example, detect enemies, then the CM will block it.

Nope. In none of the Detect spells does it allow the caster to use the spell on anyone else. They all say "...from the caster..." Not "from the target".

 

 

[PhilHibbs]

7 hours ago, womble said:

Nope. In none of the Detect spells does it allow the caster to use the spell on anyone else. They all say "...from the caster..." Not "from the target".

I think you used to be able to cast it in RQ2 with someone else as the detection target, but not in RQG.

[womble]

14 minutes ago, PhilHibbs said:

I think you used to be able to cast it in RQ2 with someone else as the detection target, but not in RQG.

Ar. Mebbee. Given the historical lack of clarity, I'm not sure delving into older versions (and unearthing any contradictions between them to add to the confustications) is necessarily helpful. For one, the intents may have changed (as they did with Healing/Xenohealing between v2 and v3).

[Pentallion]

9 hours ago, womble said:

Nope. In none of the Detect spells does it allow the caster to use the spell on anyone else. They all say "...from the caster..." Not "from the target".

 

 

Regardless, CM only stops spells being cast on YOU.  Detection cast on the caster isn't blocked by CM.  So the caster can detect you are an enemy and there is nothing CM can do about it.

[womble]

3 hours ago, Pentallion said:

Regardless, CM only stops spells being cast on YOU.  Detection cast on the caster isn't blocked by CM.  So the caster can detect you are an enemy and there is nothing CM can do about it.

Except it specifically says in the CM description that CM protects you from (amongst other things) Detect spells. You can choose to discount that, obviously, but it's no more 'correct' than discounting the other copypasta inconsistencies in the spell rules relating to Detect. There are a limited number of spells which don't have a target, just have effects in an area. The subset of those where the effect is 'magical' (as opposed to the consequence of the physical presence of something, like fire) is smaller, and the subset of that subset where the effects affect 'beings' (rather than the environment) is smaller yet. There are no Spirit Magic spells I could see other than the Detects where there's an area effect affecting beings with magic, and I can't see any at all in Sorcery. In Rune Magic, you have:

• Command Worshippers
• Create [Great] Market
• Group Laughter
• Harmony. This one is especially interesting because it explicitly says it " can be boosted with magic points...to blast through Countermagic and other defensive spells." From the reading of the general rules, I'd've said it would be the case for all spells that are trying to cause an effect on beings. The existence of one explicit allowance of this doesn't, to my mind, constitute evidence that other spells cannot be defended against with Countermagic; there are spells which do exclude defensive spells of one kind or another, and the existence of those demonstrates that, in general, protective magic, well, y'know, protects.
  It stands, instead, as a testament to inconsistent editing.
• Peace
• Path Watch (a long duration, large AE "Detect Enemies")
• Summons of Evil
• Warding

Warding and the Market spells are examples of where having CM protect you from Det Enemies while still having the protection registered by the caster would be useful (and provide a further case where Detection Blank would be superior to CM). The Warding doesn't detect you as an enemy (that's an inference made by the caster), so the damaging and alarm effects do not trigger (and a strong enough Detection Blank would mean even the caster doesn't know an enemy has slipped within their defenses).

Command Worshippers, Group Laughter, Harmony, Peace and Summons of Evil are all 'offensive mind affecting spells' that the target may not wish to have affect them. As such, sufficient Countermagic, for long enough, should block these spells' effects. In practice, this probably means Extended Shield spells for most of those.

I'd say sufficient Countermagic effect would protect against any of these spells area effects, even though none of them even mention "Target".

[Pentallion]

3 hours ago, womble said:

Except it specifically says in the CM description that CM protects you from (amongst other things) Detect spells. You can choose to discount that, obviously, but it's no more 'correct' than discounting the other copypasta inconsistencies in the spell rules relating to Detect. There are a limited number of spells which don't have a target, just have effects in an area. The subset of those where the effect is 'magical' (as opposed to the consequence of the physical presence of something, like fire) is smaller, and the subset of that subset where the effects affect 'beings' (rather than the environment) is smaller yet. There are no Spirit Magic spells I could see other than the Detects where there's an area effect affecting beings with magic, and I can't see any at all in Sorcery. In Rune Magic, you have:

• Command Worshippers
• Create [Great] Market
• Group Laughter
• Harmony. This one is especially interesting because it explicitly says it " can be boosted with magic points...to blast through Countermagic and other defensive spells." From the reading of the general rules, I'd've said it would be the case for all spells that are trying to cause an effect on beings. The existence of one explicit allowance of this doesn't, to my mind, constitute evidence that other spells cannot be defended against with Countermagic; there are spells which do exclude defensive spells of one kind or another, and the existence of those demonstrates that, in general, protective magic, well, y'know, protects.
  It stands, instead, as a testament to inconsistent editing.
• Peace
• Path Watch (a long duration, large AE "Detect Enemies")
• Summons of Evil
• Warding

Warding and the Market spells are examples of where having CM protect you from Det Enemies while still having the protection registered by the caster would be useful (and provide a further case where Detection Blank would be superior to CM). The Warding doesn't detect you as an enemy (that's an inference made by the caster), so the damaging and alarm effects do not trigger (and a strong enough Detection Blank would mean even the caster doesn't know an enemy has slipped within their defenses).

Command Worshippers, Group Laughter, Harmony, Peace and Summons of Evil are all 'offensive mind affecting spells' that the target may not wish to have affect them. As such, sufficient Countermagic, for long enough, should block these spells' effects. In practice, this probably means Extended Shield spells for most of those.

I'd say sufficient Countermagic effect would protect against any of these spells area effects, even though none of them even mention "Target".

I'm not discounting it, you're misreading it.  CM will block YOU from having a detection spell cast on YOU.  YOUR CM won't block ME from casting a detection spell on ME.  Nor will YOUR CM prevent ME from detecting your intent.  Because MY detection spell never targets YOU and CM doesn't affect it.

That's all the text is saying under CM.  It will prevent spells from being CAST on YOU such as Healing, Detect, etc.  Even if you cast them on yourself.

It says NOTHING about someone else with CM blocking your ability to detect enemies because CM doesn't do that anymore than it blocks your Bladesharp 3.

Edited September 16, 2018 by Pentallion

[Zozotroll]

That is kind of silly if that is the intent.  You put up CM so your opponent cant cast detect on you to help you understand that they are your opponent.  Did the author think this was going to happen so often that it needed to b explicitly listed as OK?  Even though that is the wording, I can in no way see how that ca be the intent.

Edited September 17, 2018 by Zozotroll
kid spilled soda on keyboard

[PhilHibbs]

Detect Enemies also says "or it detects and locates a specific individual on whom the caster concentrates". Maybe that is what Countermagic is referring to - if you use it as a "Detect Bob" spell, and Bob has Countermagic up, then it interacts as usual, potentially knocking down Bob's Countermagic. Or maybe when Countermagic says "any other incoming spell, including those such as Detection, Protection, and even Healing" it is meant to say, "sorry, if you have Countermagic up, you can't cast Detect, Protection, or even Healing on yourself".

The counter to either of these theories, of course, is historical - in the description of the Detection Blank spell. A tabula rasa reading of the current rules could lead to either of the theories posted above. A reading with RQ2 taken into consideration would not necessarily lead to the same.

Edited September 17, 2018 by PhilHibbs

[simonh]

We've been looking at this all wrong. Countermagic says this:

"This defensive spell protects the target it is cast upon against any other incoming spell, including those such as Detection, Protection and Healing." Note that in this case protection and Healing are clearly spells being cast directly on the person protected by the Countermagic. I think Detection is being referred to in the same sense,

It is not talking about people being detected by a detection spell being protected by Countermagic. It's talking about the person the caster is casting the detection spell on. Those are not the same thing. The confusion is because the detection spells talk about direction and distance etc from the caster. If there's an inconsistency in the spell descriptions it's this, not the details of the detection effect on people with countermagic.

My character Bob has a friend Alice with him who has 2 points of Countermagic on her. A bunch of strangers are approaching and Alice is worried they might be a mob coming to lynch her. Bob wants to cast Detect Enemies on Alice so she can see if they are after her. He has to boost the Detect Magic with 3 Ms to get through Alice's Countermagic, which is eliminated in the process. Alice then uses the detection effect to see if the approaching strangers mean her harm. It doesn't matter if they have countermagic up or not. Nobody is casting a spell on them, so for them the detect Enemies is not an 'incoming spell'.

So in my view the detection effect is not an 'incoming spell', it is merely a peripheral side effect of the spell, in the same way that the illumination cast by a Light spell isn't itself a spell. Detection allows you to perceive and see things you could not otherwise see, but you are not casting spells on the things you perceive. I don't care what other editions said about countermagic blocking the detection effect, even if it does that's a separate issue. RQG does not actually take a position on that in my view. It's just talking about when someone casts detection on somebody, it's just that doing so doesn't make much sense in the context of the detection spell descriptions.

REVISED for clarity.

Edited September 17, 2018 by simonh

[PhilHibbs]

2 hours ago, simonh said:

We've been looking at this all wrong... It's talking about the person the caster is casting the detection spell on. Those are not the same thing.

As I said, a no-precedents reading of RQG could conclude that. Biut given that RQ2 made it explicitly clear that that is NOT what was meant, and RQG is touted as being derived from and compatible with RQ2, I have my doubts that this is the intention. Or, maybe the RQ2 rules themselves were muddled and written by more than one author with conflicting intentions. The person who wrote Countermagic might have been thinking this way that you and I just proposed, but the Detection Blank author might have entirely misread the Countermagic rule when they wrote that spell. Stranger things have happened.

2 hours ago, simonh said:

My character Bob has a friend Alice with him who has 2 points of Countermagic on her. A bunch of strangers are approaching and Alice is worried they might be a mob coming to lynch her. Bob wants to cast Detect Enemies on Alice so she can see if they are after her.

You can't do that in RQG. It's caster-only.

Edited September 17, 2018 by PhilHibbs

[womble]

The only thing that is abundantly clear about all this is that the RAW are abundantly murky about how Detect Enemies (and the like) are meant to interact with Countermagic.

[Pentallion]

10 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

Detect Enemies also says "or it detects and locates a specific individual on whom the caster concentrates". Maybe that is what Countermagic is referring to - if you use it as a "Detect Bob" spell, and Bob has Countermagic up, then it interacts as usual, potentially knocking down Bob's Countermagic. Or maybe when Countermagic says "any other incoming spell, including those such as Detection, Protection, and even Healing" it is meant to say, "sorry, if you have Countermagic up, you can't cast Detect, Protection, or even Healing on yourself".

The counter to either of these theories, of course, is historical - in the description of the Detection Blank spell. A tabula rasa reading of the current rules could lead to either of the theories posted above. A reading with RQ2 taken into consideration would not necessarily lead to the same.

No, Detect Bob example is not at all how CM  works.  CM does NOTHING to prevent a person who has detect YOU from detecting you.  The misunderstanding here is thinking of the detection spell as an "incoming spell".  It is not.

Yes.  What the rules description is saying and it really shouldn't have to be rewritten it seems perfectly clear, is that if you have CM up you can't cast Detect, protection or even healing on yourself.

Edited September 17, 2018 by Pentallion

[simonh]

1 hour ago, PhilHibbs said:

As I said, a no-precedents reading of RQG could conclude that. Biut given that RQ2 made it explicitly clear that that is NOT what was meant, and RQG is touted as being derived from and compatible with RQ2, I have my doubts that this is the intention.

The countermagic spell descriptions in RQ2 and RQ3 don't make any such distinction. In RQ2 it doesn't mention detection at all, and in RQ3 it's just as ambiguous as in RQG and doesn't clarify anything. In fact we could be having exactly the same argument in RQ3 terms, all the same elements are there just very slightly differently phrased. I just checked both. The old Detection Blank spell might muddy things but I don't know where to find it, that must be where the ambiguity in RQ2 comes in, the core rulebook is silent on this.

Quote

You can't do that in RQG. It's caster-only.

I realise that, but I think that is the scenario the author of Countermagic mentioning Detection was imagining. I probably muddied my argument with that example.

Edited September 17, 2018 by simonh

[PhilHibbs]

2 minutes ago, simonh said:

The old Detection Blank spell might muddy things but I don't know where to find it.

RQ2 Classic Edition page 39 - did you get the RQ2 kickstarter?

[simonh]

24 minutes ago, Pentallion said:

No, Detect Bob example is not at all how CM  works.  CM does NOTHING to prevent a person who has detect YOU from detecting you.  The misunderstanding here is thinking of the detection spell as an "incoming spell".  It is not.

Exactly, the detection effect is purely passive with respect to the thing being detected IMHO. Viewing it this way eliminates most of the ambiguity and all of the ridiculous side effects.

All that remains is the concept of casting a detection spell on somebody, whether that's possible and how it might work. I think it doesn't work and the reference to Detection should simply be removed from the countermagic spell description as it was put there in error (in RQ3 originally). Doing that, removing one word and a comma, would remove the whole basis for this entire discussion.

Edited September 17, 2018 by simonh

[simonh]

9 minutes ago, PhilHibbs said:

RQ2 Classic Edition page 39 - did you get the RQ2 kickstarter?

Right, as I said I didn't know where to find detection blank. Thanks.

RQG doesn't have detection blank, so I just think it isn't relevant to this discussion, however...

From an RQ2 perspective, detection blank's description is just a mess. It implies all sorts of of things about how Countermagic works that are not supported by the spell description itself and is completely dysfunctional in that respect. I just don't think it's useful to deduce all sorts of complicated, inconsistent implications about countermagic from  that. If RQ2 countermagic protects you from being detected, the spell should say so, but it doesn't

Edited September 17, 2018 by simonh

[Joerg]

More complications: Warding.

Each point of Warding provides 2 points of (presumably Shield- or Berserk-like) Countermagic effect towards spells cast on anyone inside the Warding (i.e. blocking exactly that amount of magic points in an offensive spell, letting anything above through, and remaining in effect). 

So our player character stands there ready to take the enemy charge. He has Shield 2 and Countermagic 4. A helpful supporter provides a Warding 3 for the 20m long frontline of the shieldwall, with 3 m occupied by the waiting warriors and 2 m before them, to weaken the enemies as they approach.

 

Do the Countermagic effects stack, do they interfere with one another, or are they sequential obstacles? Will they whittle down MP used for boosting, or will the boost carry through the entire magical attack?

Say an enemy priest casts a Lightning 2 boosted with 6 MP, enough to overcome your personal magic if there was no warding. Does the Warding 3 eat up 2 of the boosting MP?

 

[PhilHibbs]

27 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Say an enemy priest casts a Lightning 2 boosted with 6 MP, enough to overcome your personal magic if there was no warding. Does the Warding 3 eat up 2 of the boosting MP?

Seems to me it should eat all 6, and the base Lightning takes down the Countermagic but bounces off the Shield.

Edited September 22, 2018 by PhilHibbs

[simonh]

I don’t understand why boosting MPs should be eaten by anything. They are part of the spell. It either all goes through or none of it goes through.

In the example the Lightning has a total of 10 points, so it goes through the 6 points of countermagic effect in the warding when it crosses the boundary, then the 10 points go through the 8 points of total countermagic effect on the (shield 2 plus countermagic 4) taking both down in the process. The protection points of the Shield spell don’t take effect because it’s down already.

Edited September 22, 2018 by simonh

[Joerg]

54 minutes ago, simonh said:

I don’t understand why boosting MPs should be eaten by anything. They are part of the spell. It either all goes through or none of it goes through.

In the example the Lightning has a total of 10 points, so it goes through the 6 points of countermagic effect in the warding when it crosses the boundary, then the 10 points go through the 8 points of total countermagic effect on the (shield 2 plus countermagic 4) taking both down in the process. The protection points of the Shield spell don’t take effect because it’s down already.

I can see the argument that boost and spell are a single entity which either get cancelled or not, but why should the protection effect of the shield not count? Shield doesn't disappear just because a spell overcomes the Countermagic effect, not even the Countermagic effect of it. Only the spirit magic part of the stack goes away (along with the 1-point extra effect which would have stopped a 9 point spell, leaving the Warding as the better Countermagic effect).

[simonh]

23 minutes ago, Joerg said:

I can see the argument that boost and spell are a single entity which either get cancelled or not, but why should the protection effect of the shield not count? Shield doesn't disappear just because a spell overcomes the Countermagic effect, not even the Countermagic effect of it. Only the spirit magic part of the stack goes away (along with the 1-point extra effect which would have stopped a 9 point spell, leaving the Warding as the better Countermagic effect).

Fair point, the shield stays and blocks 4 points of damage.

[soltakss]

6 hours ago, Joerg said:

More complications: Warding.

Each point of Warding provides 2 points of (presumably Shield- or Berserk-like) Countermagic effect towards spells cast on anyone inside the Warding (i.e. blocking exactly that amount of magic points in an offensive spell, letting anything above through, and remaining in effect). 

So our player character stands there ready to take the enemy charge. He has Shield 2 and Countermagic 4. A helpful supporter provides a Warding 3 for the 20m long frontline of the shieldwall, with 3 m occupied by the waiting warriors and 2 m before them, to weaken the enemies as they approach.

 

Do the Countermagic effects stack, do they interfere with one another, or are they sequential obstacles? Will they whittle down MP used for boosting, or will the boost carry through the entire magical attack?

Shield Countermagic stacks, so we always played that Warding Countermagic also stacked.

So, the example would have a Countermagic 14 effect, 4 from the Shield, 6 from the Warding and 4 from the Countermagic. A 10 point spell would bounce, a 14 point spell would bounce and blow down the Countermagic 4, leaving Countermagic 10 and a 120 point spell would blow through the Countermagic, have an effect and would leave the Countermagic 10 effect running.

[Joerg]

Three replies so far, three different outcomes.

Does the Countermagic of a Warding inside a Market stack?

[soltakss]

23 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Three replies so far, three different outcomes.

Does the Countermagic of a Warding inside a Market stack?

Yes. All Countermagic effects from Runespells stack with themselves and Countermagic.

So, someone with Countermagic,  Shield and Berserker inside a Warding inside a Market spell gains the effects of all the Countermagics.

 

[Joerg]

31 minutes ago, soltakss said:

Yes. All Countermagic effects from Runespells stack with themselves and Countermagic.

So, someone with Countermagic,  Shield and Berserker inside a Warding inside a Market spell gains the effects of all the Countermagics.

I have a few doubts whether anybody with an active Berserker spell will be protected by Market/Neutral Ground, as Berserker is the essence of hostile intent.