Topic: RMC "I" Informational Spells

[Marc R]

Or, you could just cast "Cancel Power" and hope the RR challenge breaks off the magical trail.

How would this work?  I understand how using a seer to trail a person back in time from the event could work but how would cancel power do it?  To me it would make it a 'waiting spell' in case people were using a seer to follow you around but then you run into Start Trek problems if for instance you used past visions twice, would the cancel power work for each or just once as it has cancelled the spell so would dissipate.

Actually the seer would be the easiest to avoid mundanely as you are only using vision to track not a magical one like various study spells so a simple hide in shadows should work.  But that also depends on how the vision is done - is it from a bird's eye, that of a person walking along or do you get Matrix-like rotating 3D?

I'll take a look at the Magent and Nightblade lists later.

The logic lays thus:

"I" spells have a whole new logic and table for resolution, involving RRs vs targets, it's involved, so lets just leave it at "I spells on targets provoke RR conflict to resolve."

Problem lay with indirect I spells, the formerly "P" spells mostly, like "Visions Behind" or "Death's Tale". So I cast VB on a room you were in yesterday, it makes no sense to give you an RR now, it just works. Same with DT, I cast DT on a body of a guy you killed last month, so it's not like you get an RR now. . .so the caster vs target logic of I spells breaks down and cannot apply.

We added a sub set of rules for spells that instead affect "traces in the essence field". . . .like these. . .the "target" is the room, and the residual traces in it, not the people who were in it yesterday, etc. etc.

So, if you want to prevent someone from reading the residual essence fields in an area. . . .cancel them. Realm specific to block specific tracing, or generic "Cancel Power" to zap the whole spectrum. . .scramble the residual traces in the room (or on the object), make it hard to read them.

As was, almost every casting profession has access to forms of residual essence reading spells, this means that almost every casting profession now has a way to screw with those spells also.

It would all make a lot more sense out of the book, with the I spell table and the rest to look at. That make enough sense? (You could always purchase RMC SL heheh).

[markc]

  So the "cancel" spells reset the "essence trace" of past events?

MDC

[Marc R]

More like it stirs the soup, making it harder to pull out details. . .the cancel makes it harder, not impossible.

I'm thinking the only way to totally blank an area would be to somehow remove the essence field and then put it back. . . .get your arcane ritual out. (Kregora Cage match to the death?)

[markc]

  So the "cancel" allows the area a save vs the casters level? or the rank of the "cancel"? or modified rank of cancel by using spell mastery?

[To me this seams like a MtG instant vs interrupt deal in which only the rule lawyers win. But hopfully that will change.]

MDC

[Marc R]

more like, if you do something and you don't want anyone to see it, you cancel the area and leave. someone who looks back and fails to get past the cancel, all they see is you standing there, and leaving, anything at or before the cancel is trashed as far as "I" spells work. If you can cancel at a distance, all they get is "At this point, someone garbled the essence field in this area."

Resolves under "Conflicting Spell Effects" rules per all versions of SL.

The whole resolution of I casting is different though, this it just a little tag on at the end. The I resolution rules, in my mind, add in the right levels of uncertainty, and resolve cleanly if the target knows they've been scryed on or not, which was never completely clear before.

[markc]

  IYO how would LotR's; rings of power work in this type of effect? Would they block the casters viewing and provide a bonus if the caster was "the big guy" or would they be completly invisable? Would thier actions be edited out?

  I hope this line of Q's is ok and I am not trying to give you a hard time but it has been one of those areas that has caused problems in my game in the past. As a player read the rules one way and I read them another.

MDC

[Marc R]

Depends on how you built the item, I'm not sure how it would tie into the "disrupting the essence traces" issue.

[mocking bird]

But would not there still be a gap between the initial event and when the cancel power is cast?  The seer can 'bookmark' events and could concievably move back & forth making the cancelling effect moot - unless they could somehow be simultaneous.  You also have to think as to how long the scrambling would be effective.  For instance what if you just went back a few seconds after and were snooping around.  Would the cancel still be working?

[Rasyr-Mjolnir]

Not sure you are understanding how the scrambling of the essence traces works...

Time Point 1 -- Something happens in Room A
Time Point 4 - Somebody casts Cancel Essence in Room A
Time Point 10 - Seer caster Past Visions.

Now, the Seer will be able to view everything from Time Point 10 on down to Time Point 5. Then when he gets to Time Point 4, he hits the scrambling. The RR versus the conflicting spells is then made to see whether or not he can see anything before Time Point 5. It is a yes or no answer.

If the answer is no, then he gets nothing from Time Point 4 or before it. If the answer is yes, then he has broken through the scrambling and doesn't have to worry about it anymore.

The thing is, he has to break through that scrambling in the first place. He cannot 'bookmark' Time Points before the scrambling without first breaking through the scrambling.

Is that making any sense?

[mocking bird]

What if you went before the scramble and went forward rather than after trying to go backward?  Or, how far back does it scramble?  Could you start in a different location and 'move in'? 

For example casting at time point -10 and going forward to 3.  At that point there were potentially no essence traces to cancel. 

Also depending on how the scrying is done it could be done you could avoid the scrambled room all together - walking in prior to casting.  What is the radius of effect on the cancel spell?

Another potential problem, if cancel power could scramble the traces, could you also case cancel channeling to scramble incoming death's tales? 

[Marc R]

the cancel effect is affecting the room, not that moment in time. . .it's sort of like smashing all traces of everything up to that moment. . .Or trying to.

Like, completely unrelated, another seer is doing a research paper on the victim's grandfather, and tries to look back. . .annoyingly that one room is a pain in the arse to look at for any time previous to Tim's cancel event time point 10 (even 20 years previous, you still need to get past that Jam point.)

The cancel screws up any "past visions" attempts from the moment of spell effect, backward to the beginning of time.

Use that time travel spell to go before the event or the cancel, then use future visions to look at it, and yes, you would be able to look at the murder from that angle without an RR challenge. . .that's a 50th level astrologer spell though. It would probably be more likely that you could just purchase another rank in that list, and make another RR vs RR attempt, and just keep doing it to try to get through. (The recurring plot hook). . . .of course, if the cancel was a 300th level arcane ritual, you may never get through.

Cancel channeling would screw up DT. . .I consider that a feature, not a problem. 

As to radius, say it's 20'. . . .if you fail on the RR challenge, you can observe all you want outside that radius, but inside it would just be a sphere of nothing in any attempt until you beat the RR challenge. So the use of the cancel is limited, in two ways, first, it's limited by the level of the effect in the RR challenge, and second, it's limited in range. . .you can't peek into the range from outside, but you could infer all sorts of things by observing outside the cancelled area. Like "Two men enter, one man leaves". . . .and the one who stays, you later find as a dead body. . .that doesn't proove the man who arrived and left is the killer, but it's rather suspicious.

[Rasyr-Mjolnir]

The scramble is a wall, it is not an area effect of some sort.

If you try to cast to get to Time Point -10, you will still hit the wall at Time Point 4, at which point you either get past it or you don't. And actually, I think that you would need a Dispel Essence, as it has a 10' radius (and higher levels have larger radii). Cancel Essence is s self only spell, but for practical purposes, I would give it a 5' radius.

The Death's Tale spells are on the Cleric base list, Communing Ways, which kinda implies that they they are getting the information from their deity, not from temporal traces. So, no, I don't think it would work, but that is just my opinion. Officially, I would leave it up to the GM to decide.

Of course, Death's Tales DOES require a corpse and does require the caster to be within 10' of that corpse. Destroy the corpse, you destroy the ability to use those spells (lime pits, fires, acids, etc.. are ALL your friends here).

[Marc R]

I would say that the Dispell Channeling on the corpse would have the effect of making it hard for the priest to make the reference to their god.

Cleric "Who killed this guy"

Fail RR challenge of Death's tale vs Dispel Channeling.

God "Which Guy?"

more seriously "Spell fails as it cannot locate a body within 10 feet"

i.e. the RR challenge is not that the Dispel is fooling a god, it's making it hard for the DT to link to the body. . .causing the cleric to be at less than the requirements of the spell for it to function. DT is not Commune. . .if a god is manifesting in the room, presumptively the situation will not be coverable with a dispell.

[mocking bird]

The cancel screws up any "past visions" attempts from the moment of spell effect, backward to the beginning of time.

This is one of those 'it just doesn't feel right' interpretations.  Consider the effects of this on a long term scale.  There would be so many dots around the area - both for cover up purposes and casting such spells in general - that it would limit scrying even further.

Also, what other 'essence trace' spells would be affected?  Presence spells?  Power perception?  Detect realm spells in general?  Cancel power seems to be creating a permanent void area which to me goes far above & beyond its intent.

[Marc R]

The void only exists from the round of casting backward, so if someone killed someone on round 6 of tim's example, the cancel on round 4 would have no effect.

This is only for Caster vs environment spells, and then, only for informational spells that are trying to glean information from before the cancel was cast.

Presence would be a caster vs target spell, as would detect realm if used on a person. Those spells operate in the NOW, so they would be unnefected by a previous casting of dispell in the area. (They would only need to do a spell vs spell RR conflict if you cancelled on them right NOW.)

BTW, do you have the book? It might make all this more explicable if you read the section on I spells.

[Old Man]

The cancel screws up any "past visions" attempts from the moment of spell effect, backward to the beginning of time.

This is one of those 'it just doesn't feel right' interpretations.  Consider the effects of this on a long term scale.  There would be so many dots around the area - both for cover up purposes and casting such spells in general - that it would limit scrying even further.

Also, what other 'essence trace' spells would be affected?  Presence spells?  Power perception?  Detect realm spells in general?  Cancel power seems to be creating a permanent void area which to me goes far above & beyond its intent.

Yeah, based on my quick read of all this (and the related topic, but not having RMC), and my thoughts on vision spells, this wouldn't work. Those Vision spells look back into time via time itself and I could see the Cancel's casting and effect being shown (other spells crumbling) but not affecting the Vision.

I see the Cancel as breaking spells in play in realspace at that time. But it would not affect investigation via Time, Spirit planes or other venues.

Ciao,
Old Man

[Rasyr-Mjolnir]

mocking bird -- it isn't creating a void. It creates a temporal wall. That wall can be broken through by a seer, but it does not obliterate what is beyond that wall.

Look at the following image:

Lordmiller - what you are describing is a wall, not a void.

[Marc R]

The chapter heading is "Traces in the Essence", on the presumption that this information is stored in the local essence field in some manner, and that these spells are a form of psychometry, teasing information out of the essence field based on the residual remains left behind by all activity on this "field". . . .does that and tim's diagram make sense of this?

Remember, this is just a scrambling. . .if you make the RR, you proceed normally past the cancel. . .it's not destroying information, it's just garbling the local field up to make it harder to read.

Think of the local essence field as a continuously recording videotape. . . .I hit it with a magnet (dispel) and walk away. . .now, the information already recorded is distorted, but not destroyed, it's just harder to read, you need to make an RR vs RR challenge or you just get static. . . .but if you can get the adjuments right (make the RR) then you can still watch the tape. . . .and anything recorded since the dispel is unnefected and easy to see (no rr needed).

That make more sense? If not, I'll leave it to tim, as two explainations at once is probably just making it more confusing.

[mocking bird]

Don't have RMC Spell Law, will check RMSS one.

OK, so there are various 'walls' floating arount there in, well, nowhere really.  Speed bumps on the scrying highway so to speak. 

However, why would cancelling still allow an RR to get through?  By cancelling, are you not essentially wiping the slate clean?  Or does this still leave what amounts to a trace of a trace?  Meaning in some contexts cancelling is really just fuzzing.

But in general it would seem teleporting, or longdooring for that matter, would sever the ties for a quick escape. 

[Old Man]

The chapter heading is "Traces in the Essence", on the presumption that this information is stored in the local essence field in some manner, and that these spells are a form of psychometry, teasing information out of the essence field based on the residual remains left behind by all activity on this "field". . . .does that and tim's diagram make sense of this?
...

Interesting (that and the picture), but doesn't pass the "sniff test" for me. I would say the information is always there, in the 3 (or more) dimensions of time and can not be altered in that manner. The key is preventing the information from getting into the fabric (via disguise, unpresence etc.) -or- preventing the scrying from seeing the information (scrying guards, etc.). The information can be mangled but not destroyed (paraphasing Hawking).

Ciao,
Old Man