Topic: Misfeels, Feels, Presence, Unfeel, Unpresence... confused yet?

[Marc R]

Also, this depends on overall gameworld power levels. . . if a 50th level nightblade is the most powerful being around, then they should be a walking menace that scares the bajibberdy jabber out of everyone. . . .if there's a few score 50th level beings around, and a dozen or more 100+. . . .then the 50th level nightblade might not have complete freedom of motion.

I've found, that with a good GM, going up levels, is much like getting promoted at work, here have some more authority, sufficient power to make all your old issues casually solvable, and oh yeah, here's a whole new plate of problems to deal with. . .when a PC is the 50th level nightblade, a good GM will be scaling problems to make them challenging. . .

All the 25+ level spells are super high end. . .I'd recommended starting by killing the 50+ level astrologer, to stop them from going:

"God, who killed the king and why?"
"This nightblade, who is he and where did he grow up?"
"What's a nightblade, and why did he kill the king?"
"What is this master-student pairing of nightblades going down through the ages?"
"Who was the master before this one?"
"When and where did he meet the one he trained up who later killed the king?"
"Interesting. . ."
"OK, I go back in time and kill the elderly nightblade master the day before he recruits the nightblade when he was laying wounded and unconscious in the cave where he'd be found the next day by the boy who would have become the nightblade who killed the king."

It's hard to top the over the top nature of "I retcon that event out of existence." combined with another 50th level spell that lets you get detailed answers from your god before you take the plunge backward into the time stream.

A 50th level character looks like they get some big toys to play with? I agree, bring on the Reavers, Ordainers and Ancient Dragons.

[Zat]

I agree here, a 50th level Nightblade is very high end and so, if your campaign is at such a power level, then said King will also have powerful resources.

"What's that? Someone killed the King? Again? Better go fetch the healers, raise the King, bring in those fellas with their 'Death Tale' spells and get the Mages to teleport our death squad to the infidel's location....."

With great power comes great repercussions

[Zat]

Your game, your rules.
I don't understand why any physical activity, like "being obvious" would have an effect on Presence/Unpresence. These aren't obvious physical states.
I do like the Invisibility reference.

Presence for checking the..well...presence of sentient, thinking beings. Making yourself out to be such a thing by say, holding a conversation with the (Presence) caster in plain site would be, in my opinion, pretty obvious, assuming you're not interacting with an illusion that can somehow pass the Turing test 

[Zedul]

Right Marc, I understand what you are saying.  Adding a few of your notes to my scrapbook.  In fact I don't dismiss out of hand any comment made in these threads... I write them down with question marks and apply it to situations.  Very helpful so thank you.

I have 6 binders full of GM notes, approximately 500 pages of handwritten material on top of our 75,000 word customized RM Campaign Law I wrote.

I have employed methods like this before but my party tends to find loopholes,  time travel especially becomes troublesome and all those things you have mentioned are also readily available to players as well!   I have developed a race of time travel watchers who protect the history of my world... otherwise it would be a nightmare.

The party I am currently writing adventures for:  1 Cleric, 1 Warrior Monk, 1 Ranger, 1 Astrologer, 1 Archmage, 1 Mage, 1 Magus (CIII), 1 Nightblade

To say the Magus alone can be a GM headache is an understatement.  Even someone like me who has done this most of his life almost to excess...

My gaming group is age 38 to 57 years old.  We have scientists (phd's), engineers (software, electrical, and mechanical), a doctor, a lawyer, and so forth. A few of us have served as high end supervisors or manufacturing managers in high tech firms.  Their combined gaming experience starts with D&D in the 1970's and put together amasses about 200 years.

They spend several thousand dollars per year in airfare and hotels to attend my gaming sessions and they plot via text and email beforehand.

The challenge before me is writing good stories and having an airtight framework in my world to keep them in line.  Some of these fellows are forces of nature personality wise.  I cannot fall into certain GM traps or they see right through it.  The current campaign has hit that level 50 range with their characters and you can well imagine what a potent level 50 party full of experienced players can do!

The disadvantage to any GM is playing all these NPC's and Monsters at once - while the players get to focus on just one character with one set of abilities they can fine tune.  Our sessions run 3-4 days, 16 hours per day - the amount of prep work I have to do is nothing short of insanity.  Usually by the end of our gaming sessions you can see burnt black brain fluid leaking out of my ears...





 

[Marc R]

What level are they at?

[Zedul]

The current party runs from a low of 48 to a high of 56.

Only the 3rd time in 27 years of the RM system I have had a party this high level.  I presents some real challenges... last adventure they chewed through 20 Greater Black Reavers.  Never seen anything like it in the history of RM.  Some of the most creative movement and use of long door and terrain...  They have good characters and they play well as a team.

[GrumpyOldFart]

And really, do all the kings in your worlds campaign have a gaggle of high level Archmages to follow them around and protect them with triggers 24/7 ?

Well, no... but the ones worthy of the attentions of a 50th level Nightblade probably do.

 

My gaming group is age 38 to 57 years old.  We have scientists (phd's), engineers (software, electrical, and mechanical), a doctor, a lawyer, and so forth. A few of us have served as high end supervisors or manufacturing managers in high tech firms.  Their combined gaming experience starts with D&D in the 1970's and put together amasses about 200 years.

Sounds like my bunch. It used to be fairly easy to hand them fun little handicaps in the way of terrain and weather... until I got a geologist and a meteorologist in my gaming group.

 

[providence13]

Your game, your rules.
I don't understand why any physical activity, like "being obvious" would have an effect on Presence/Unpresence. These aren't obvious physical states.
I do like the Invisibility reference.

Presence for checking the..well...presence of sentient, thinking beings. Making yourself out to be such a thing by say, holding a conversation with the (Presence) caster in plain site would be, in my opinion, pretty obvious, assuming you're not interacting with an illusion that can somehow pass the Turing test 

Yeah, maybe we're saying the same thing. I could see someone thinking that the person they're talking too is an illusion or projection, dream, hallucination, etc if they don't detect a Presence. I'm not trying to be pedantic, but I don't think that would affect the actual Presence detection especially if it is masked. YGMV.
New Skill/Talent: Presence Awareness; Master of Hide and Seek!

The Turing test does get me thinking...

[Marc R]

Black Reavers are persistent, but kinda easy to trap, like Michael Meyers or Jason Voorhees. Assuming you have that much firepower to back it up, of course.

The worst villains are the really smart ones, like my personal worst high level nemesis was a high level evil priest of the god of death, who had the "Ambassador's Cloak". . . a constant artifact of non-detect and misfeel. . .which allowed said priest to sit on the cardinal's council of the god of order, and run his evil plots from the very heart of warded and defended friendly territory. . . .last place you'd ever look for the supervillian, eh, one of the guys sitting in the room inside the building that's warded so heavily that evil demons and evil priests burst into flame before they get there?

So I've had painful personal experience with the core concept behind this thread, and via magic items it doesn't just rest in the hands of nightblades.

Your party sounds super powerful, and it gets hard to challenge such a group, especially in a combat sense, without crossing the line into permadeath. . . .nobody likes to spend so much time developing a character to then lose them, and to really challenge this group, you need to put them on the razor's edge from dying vs some really nasty foes. . . I suspect nobody would end up happy from a TPK here.

The last game I played in with a group going into levels like the GM really needed to focus us onto non combat oriented problems, or "Save the lemmings" issues. . .i.e. get into a fight with a dragon in an urban area, so the PCs (assuming they have the values to feel compelled to) spend more effort trying to save innocents than directly fighting, and hold back a lot to stop from killing people themselves.

Also, more subtle, corrupting problems, like high level evil mentalist Greater Vampires who want set the PCs up to commit evil acts then deal with the consequences. (Between him, and killing paladins sent on orders from the evil priest up top, heroes rapidly destroy their reputations and become hated, hard to fight a bad reputation with martial prowess.)

The GM in that particular game was also quite happy to use our divergent goals to put us into opposition with each other, though we often found compromises, and some players will get very unhappy with the GM "Encouraging intra party strife".

It's a tough road, such a high level group, with a game that runs rarely for intensive sessions, since as you're discovering, it's very hard to come up with challenges on the table, coming at them in the open, that they can't step on via some combination of their powers.

[Zedul]

Your party sounds super powerful, and it gets hard to challenge such a group, especially in a combat sense, without crossing the line into permadeath. . . .nobody likes to spend so much time developing a character to then lose them, and to really challenge this group, you need to put them on the razor's edge from dying vs some really nasty foes. . . I suspect nobody would end up happy from a TPK here.

Exactly, truer words have never been spoken.  Always appreciate your insight.

The storyline I have is very strong... and there will actually be more content when they get a little bit higher but I cannot send the demi-gods and higher end demons after them yet.  They are in that tricky "in between" area of being too powerful for classic FRP and not quite ready for immortal levels.

It helps that my world has 33 years in the making.  In fact I am set to send my first novel out for publication this fall.   *crossing fingers*  I'd love to make a living writing my books.  My eyesight is failing so my photography career is winding down.

[Zedul]

Sounds like my bunch. It used to be fairly easy to hand them fun little handicaps in the way of terrain and weather... until I got a geologist and a meteorologist in my gaming group.

 

No doubt you have essence streams or something to get around the teleportation issue.  I've had to put some rules into place to limit easy long distance travel.  A smart essence caster with Lofty Bridge and Extensions can really get around.

[GrumpyOldFart]

I never had a problem with that, actually. I mean sure, in theory you can move across a continent in a few minutes. But your accuracy is limited by how well you know your landing area, and even if everything comes out perfect, you're still hundreds or thousands of miles from your "support network", the shops where they know you, the places where your credit is good, the towns where the local law enforcement is all folks you've known for years. All it takes to make a party cautious about such things is to have the one who does the teleport be the one who takes a hit and needs to be taken back to a hospital or something.

And even that is nicer than, "Oops, you arrived 70' above where you intended".... which is nicer than, "Oops, you arrived 70' below where you intended." I made it clear to my players at the outset that teleporting to a place you don't know well is volunteering for a possible TPK, as determined by a single random die roll.

My gamers considered teleport to be nice for beating an emergency retreat... but outbound trips into new areas are still something you'd rather do on foot.

 

[pastaav]

Invisiblity? Should that have a RR too?

I can't see why ordinary vision should have a RR. There is difference between opposing spell effects and conflicting senses. If we are speaking about a being with magical vision I say it depends on the circumstances. Magical vision that allow to see the invisible would trimumph over a ordinary invisibility spell. On the other hand if the invisibility spell is some kind of invisible true effect or artifact then I would be inclined to resolve it as a RR.

Surely, if I am reading correctly, Unpresence makes Presence useless (including similar spells), just as Invisibility makes sight (next to) useless or the various Quiet/Silence spells make audio detection useless. Isn't presence just another 'sense', albeit a magical one?

It might very well be just another 'sense' in your setting, but does it hold for everyones game? Where in the RM books are this rule written down?

No. In my games the spells do what they say on the tin. There are no RRs for these situations in my games and I am yet to have someone exploit these spells beyond my ability to cope...and 25+ years is a long time.

Seems you have never had encountered the situation of a mentalist being unable to use his mentalist spells to find another mentalist. Perhaps not big issue, but I find that automatic success for unpresence remove lots of flavor from the mentalist profession.

[Marc R]

"Hiding" Level 15 "Unpresence"

"Caster has no "Presence" (for purposes of presence detection spells)"

That reads as nerf, not RR for a nerf.

I never had any issue with a 15th level spell stepping on a 1st level one.

[Zedul]

"Hiding" Level 15 "Unpresence"

"Caster has no "Presence" (for purposes of presence detection spells)"

That reads as nerf, not RR for a nerf.

I never had any issue with a 15th level spell stepping on a 1st level one.

The framework of the rules clearly implies that most spells can be increased in potency by increasing the PP.  It's written into the system pretty specifically and states it on many spell descriptions.  Firebolts can be doubled in damage by doubling the PP's and so forth...  Hence many magic items are enchanted with x3 dmg bolts and so on.

It stands to reason that Presence could be boosted don't you think?  That was my initial thought on option one.

[Usdrothek]

The increasing of (hits only) damage with increased use of PPs is an optional rule for elemental attack spells.

I think being able to boost the effect of any spell with additional PPs would really open up a big can of worms, quickly throwing inbuilt balance out of whack.

[providence13]

I had to check which RM forum this is. But for general RM, where is the rule, optional or not, that describes increasing hits/potency by increasing PP?
IIRC, there may be a few spells that affect RR by increasing PP, affecting more undead, healing... I'll have to look these up.

If it's a house rule, I'm not saying it's a bad one, but increasing damage... That rule might be too much for our game.

Currently, we house rule that your Rank in the spell List is the "caster's level", but you only get the 1st "/lvl increase" if the spell has one. Then, if you want additional "/lvl increase", you have to pay 1PP/lvl increase.
So if you're 3rd lvl and have 7 ranks in a spell List, you cast that List  at 7th lvl for SCSM. Now you can actually cast spells with a much less chance of them blowing up in your face. (Also, the 10th lvl Fighter who picks up a rank in a List, doesn't cast it at 10th lvl.) Then only if the spell has a "/lvl" it now reads "/PP". This doesn't allow increasing damage from Firebolts because it isn't in the spell description. For our campaign, not every spell is scalable.

[Zedul]

It's an option on one of the Companions, it's implied and even written in certain lists, its also explained quite well in the Alchemy Companion which deals with the enchantment of items with "X"dmg elemental attacks.

There are even entire Lists themselves which boost the potency of spells to X factor without having to expend the actual amount of power points suggested.  There are booster lists all over Spell Law itself which are actually much more efficient than just doing a raw PP dump.   The Elemental Companion has a whole bevy of Enhancement Lists that can pump up Radius, Duration, Range, Critical, and Damage by use of an additional spell.

For example you could expend 50 power points in Fire Law to get a x5 Fireball but if you have the 4.2.17 List (Enhance Elemental Potency) you can get that x5 Fireball by expending only 30 PP!!!!  For 60 PP you get a whopping x10 dmg!!!

To say that it is implied and worked into the framework of the spell system is a vast understatement and I don't see how you can miss it!  It's a big red fire engine running down the street going WOOOO WOOOO WOOOO!   



 

[providence13]

Talking on the death of kings;
When the king dies, someone might be next in line for ascension.
What do the laws state in the area? Maybe the next person in line is automatic. The Nightblade might not care if the king is raised, just that the person on the throne has changed.

Even if the king is raised, someone might want to verify his identity. There's a caster somewhere in the royal court that has him Mind Typed/Stored, whatever. If someone casts Unpressence on the king, it would be harder to positively ID him.
"This isn't the real king!"   

[Marc R]

Red cover 1989 RM2 spell law, or RMC Spell law.