Topic: Lofty bridges

[jps]

I'm about to launch a new RM campaign set in the scarred lands (sword & sorcery's) and I was thinking about the world and how it would operate under RM rules. I'm considering that 20% of the population has spellcasting abilities ( 5% are pure spellcasters 15% semi) so magic is not  that scarce. That means that you do come accross people who have spells like Long Door, Leaving or Teleport. And I was wondering how a nation, a kingdom, a lord could handle these things. I know the question is quite basic but how the average lord could prevent a level 10 spellcaster from teleporting into his castle and killing him? how he could put under arreste people who can "Long Door" away from his militia? how he could spot invisible spies or, worse, assassins? what he could do about scrying spells etc ? There are a lot of spells which seem pretty harmless in a dungeon but which are really nasty outside when you think about political or intelligence power.

I will use Magic Ritual to allow spellcaster to protect places against teleport/scrying/diplacement spells but it's a home rule there's nothing "official" here. I know the armsmaster can prevent teleport but it's a specific class against a specific spell. So here is my questions, how do you handle the following situations:

1- Someone scrying an average lord (let's say a lvl 12 lord in a small city, not the king in his palace ^^)
2- Someone using long door himself in a fancy shop to steal some valuable goods and then teleporting himself safely back home
3- Someone using long door, leaving or teleporting to esacape from his enemies every time so he is impossible to "pin down"

These are just a couple of situations I could think of on the top of my hat but no doubt there are many more 

[vroomfogle]

Have you ever taken a look at Castles & Ruins?   It's a great book and covers exactly these sorts of issues.   There are several spell lists in it too...Perimeter Wardings and Structure Wardings being two that deal with preventing scrying/teleportation.   

You can now get the PDF from the Guild Companion and it's a whopper - nearly 200 pages.  You certainly get your money's worth.

[jps]

argh castle and ruins is one of the very few RMFRP supplement I don't own and you just sold it to me 

[markc]

 I agreee on the RMSS Castle and Ruins book having the info that you need.

 Also do not forget about the craftsmen with magic to help them do the little things in life. If you have a copy of the SUC for RM2 they have prosaic [sp?] spell lists such as baker, brewer, etc that would be a great help to the community. Now that I think about it in RMSS Mentalism Comp they have some spell lists to aid ships as well as a couple of physcian spell lists.

MDC

[yammahoper]

Castle and Ruins IS a great book, but all ya eneed to know iis that it provides spell list that allow any building to be constructed with built in wards, be thay against specific spells (teleport), all spells of a type (movement) or just ALL magic.

So assign your buildings in game a level for purposes to resist attempts to use warded magics in the area of or when passing the plane of the ward.  Additionally, a ward can be keyed so that spell users in the know can bypass them, or if they have items, etc.   In my games, I use "worded keys", which are just simple cammand words that if known any spell user can use with no additional skill to bypass a ward, and "enhanced weave wards", which require spell mastery checks to shape the spell to bypass the ward.

One of the most sophisticated defensive wards I use are called Teleport Matrixes.  All transport spells within the area of effect require "shaped" spells via spell mastery, some times also spell artistry.  Failure rusults in being bounced into a nice prison cell with additional magical defenses, like kregora or area effect dispells, with lots of nice crossbow weilding soldiers behind arrow slots.

In a high magic world, magic defenses are essential.  I ofeten have command centers within castles were all a castles magic defenses can be accessed at a crystal podium, or whatever, by mundanes who are taught the secret command words.  This guarantees future rulers will have full access to the castles defenses.

Take a close look at the Essence Companion.  The Runemage has some of the best spells for defending a building.  The Armsmaster is pretty cool too.

lynn

[Fidoric]

Besides you could introduce magic materials that could be coated on mundane stone or even used in construction which are resistant to such magic. Once I used a material that can soak up magic but only so much before exploding. You can conceive a prison with that material charged up to its maximum and if a spell user use magic, it blows up.
It can even have an impact on architecture as places have to be specifically designed to counter such risks (an antimagic dome within a castle...)
Anyway, if magic is that common, it must be taken into account for any efficient defense (or attack by the way). It will surely imply that most decent military units will have mages in its ranks.

[markc]

 I also use a ward stone or ward stones to activate or deactivate a buildings spell wards. So sometimes it requires a thief to get in and get the stones so other can get in. Also the thief better have some magic ability to make the ward guards think that the fake stones are the real stones. This can be done by mind magic, illusion or other magic depnding on how the ward stones are set up.

 But that above is my house rule.

MDC

[Arioch]

Yes, wards from castles & ruins are cool, and remember that you can also get the same/similar effect by magic ritual skill. Against scrying there are also spells in Seer's base lists.
BTW: if magic in a setting is relatively common it will be easy for people with money/power to get magical protection. Lords will probably have at least one magic user at their service (probably more, and very important ones will probably have hosts of mages, seers, etc to protect them), merchant guilds will probably offer magical protection to those that join them. In reality historical kings and emperors employed mages, priests and others "magic users" to protect themselves against spiritual forces, so why they shouldn't use them in a setting where the presence of magic is much more evident?
Also, in reality many cities and palaces where built according to magical/mystical patterns, to protect the inhabitants from evil influences. In China and in Japan, for example, capital cities were built in special places and following celestial schemes, to ward off evil spirits and protect the emperor (and also to increase his magical powers...).
You can use the same ideas in a fantasy setting: want to teleport into the lord's palace? It's not that easy: it's built upon an ancient sacred ground, following arcane schemes to prevent evil-doers to enter by magical means...

[gandalf970]

Another idea I have used is to make the spell lists illegal and to use them they must be registered.  They all must be registered with the government and maybe even tracked.  Along with the Castle & Ruins wards and such this might be enough of a deterrant to make using these spells dangerous. 

For me this created a cool witch hunter and chaotics from Arcane Law were fun.  Wild Mages were fun, because they couldn't be tracked.  Good luck and enjoy.

[yammahoper]

Grab the old RMC II for the Conjuror profession.  The circle list provide great offences and defences.

lynn

[jps]

Thanks to your advice I'm reading Castle &ruins right now ^^(still in process    )

This supplement's really nifty, I like it a lot. I guess it adresses all my issues while you're trying to break into a castle.
Still, pinning down a mage "long door-ing" away from his pursuers still seems a bit tricky to say the least.,

[markc]

jps,
 I think you will find that C&R will help a lot in castle construction or destruction no matter what game system you are using.

MDC

[Marc R]

I think the Witch Hunter class was designed to chase down pesky mages. . . .in a high magic world, they make perfect sense. . .you'd need some dedicated folks working the anti-magic crime taskforce.

[Arioch]

Still, pinning down a mage "long door-ing" away from his pursuers still seems a bit tricky to say the least.,

Arcane Companion Magehunter has spell to track down magic users and prevent them from casting and teleporting; from the same companion the Wizard is a profession focused on enhancing and distrupting magical effects.
I think that also a Dispel XXX Sphere would work, as it should dispel any spell from the right realm cast in the area of effect for the duration, right?

[Dreven1]

Here are some of my simple defenses for such things:

1) Merchants hire low level Mentalists to simply cast "Presence" to guard a place.  Like hiring out a town guard to "guard" something.
2) Magic weaved into the structures (but only higher end ones) like the wards mentioned in Castles and Ruins...
3) Illusion and mind speech spells used to communicate with people within a fortified structure (like a bank) that way there are no "real" people to attack LOL just illusions and voices in the PC's heads! 
4) Have low level magicians cast invisibility on a heavy crossbowman/tank in the corner of a shop, sitting, waiting there for something to happen... this is just like having someone guard a "post" all night... and remember, invisibility (or Unseen) lasts for 24 hours
5) Another really NASTY town merchant trick is to have a ward on large cash reserves... in a vault. The wards dont activate until some trigger inside (which was set by the merchant when they left hte vault)... then when the trigger even happens (say touching of money,gems,items other than the merchant) the wards "arm" and dont allow anyone to escape...preventing spell casting through them or alltogether. Now THAT is fun watching how the party deteorates once they are caught by something like that... I have never SEEN such backstabbing! LOL!  The old scenario that you let the thieves in, but you dont let them out!   

If a crime has already taken place:
1) Ranger tracking spells
2) Dabbler tracking spells used in conjunction with Intuitions and Rangers lists (massive combo)
3) Seer's spells ? ?Past Visions? are AWESOME for this?
4) Scrying spells
5) Open Mentalism ? Delving ?Deaths Memory? for tracking down or identifying the killer of a merchant, shop owner, peasant, noble or public official (guard)? I use this spell only in big cities because most small towns wouldn?t have someone 15th level hanging out to cast it within 24 hours.

Also, in the RM Companion III three is the ?Sleuth? class.  Might want to dig up this info and use it  a class specifically designed to ?hunt? people down.

Check out this post, it?s for when someone or a witness is interrogated?

http://www.ironcrown.com/ICEforums/index.php?topic=4900.msg71313#msg71313

1)   Soul Destruction ? Essence ? Question ? 1st
2)   Mind Merge ? Mentalist ? Read Emotions ? 2nd
3)   Mind Merge ? Mentalist ? Thoughts
4)   Mind Control ? Mentalist ? Question ? 1st
5)   Mind control ? Mentalist ? Charm Kind 3rd
6)   Spirit Mastery ? Essence ? Charm Kind 2nd
7)   Spirit Mastery ? Essence ? Suggestion 5th
Just to name a few?

[markc]

 I like the idea of warding spaces after some event happens. Like modern day alarms in reverse and you have to breal out instead of in.

MDC

[Justin]

My suggestion would to not fret about it. If the books don't have exaclty what you need, make it.

[jps]

Thanks for all the ideas. Actually it's the first time I'll run a campaign where magic is quite commun (especially Channeling since Essence users are usually frown upon). Castle & ruins did an incredible job at describing all the minutae of building and living in a castle.

If someone is about to get arrested I guess a Cancel essence/mentalism/Channeling should prevent him from escaping using lofty bridges or whatever, especially if the spellcaster using cancelling is readying a dispelling spell just in case. Sure the power of a 5th lvl spellcaster won't do much against a lvl 15 trespasser but that's fair enough.

Many patrols have one cleric or some other semi spell users and clerics ain't bad for conducting investigation either, their death's tale and Dream spell can provide them with crucial clues.

Moreover I'm planning to have quite an extensive use of Magic Rituals to add some flexibility on spells : for instance if you can get your hands on the personnal possession of someone, it could help passing his magical defense when you cast a spell using magic rituals (the more personnal it is the higher the bonus of course). Plus magic ritual can help you defend a place against movement and scrying spells it won't do an amazing job (essentially, your roll would indicate the malus an intruder will get) but it might help.

[Justin]

good plans. sounds like you've got a handle on things.

I bought and read C&R quite a while ago, I don't remember so much on the spell defense. Probably good for me to go back and read again.

[jeff]

I love some of the ideas in here and I'm sure my players wont. HAHAHA