Rules & Rulings from Session 203

Rules & Rulings from last session!

Can you Wait until someone else's turn ends? Essentially, can you hold your turn until later in the sequence, usually to ensure you get to surpress defenses before someone (or after someone else has done so)? Yes, but the trigger needs to be concrete - after so-and-so attacks is okay, but not "after so-and-so goes" or "just before so-and-so goes." It is also subject to the same rules for Wait as written.

I don't have any real issue with essentially changing your initiative order permanently to later, but GURPS doesn't allow that, and I'm not willing to change that rule just to change it. I'd have to put a lot of thought into NPC turn order to optimize it, and the players would put a lot of time into optimizing their order, too. I don't see an upside to that right now.

Can I shoot down a Missile spell?

Our Scout wants to use Wait and aim at a wizard's held missile spell, to shoot it as soon as it's thrown to either set it off or deflect it off course.

There might be a place for a rule like this, but it feels too much Marvel Comics and not enough DF, especially DF Felltower. Plus I feel like it creates too many edge cases - what kind of missile, does damage matter, can you use missiles to disrupt other attacks, can you throw grenades as an attack to harm a weapon on the way to you, etc.? So I said no.

Like I said, I can see a rule for this - maybe even a Power Up that allows you to do this kind of thing. But as a standard ability with ranged attacks . . . eh, no. Do I really want people hurling meteoric knives at Lightning spells and then claiming this somehow should disrupt the magic or block it or something, or toss Alchemist's Fire at a Fireball to shower an otherwise shielded wizard? No, no I don't want to deal with that. Again, nice idea, but not a DF Felltower kind of idea. Feel free to develop this one yourself for your own games but you won't see it here.

Heads I Win, Tails You Lose - spotted!

The martial artist used Judo to throw opponents for the first time today. So naturally, this question came up - if I Judo Parry and then can throw, does that mean if I attack with Judo and they parry unarmed, I can throw them next turn?

No! There are no "heads I win, tails you lose" effects like that for Judo. That was specifically written up to avoid that.

I was amused how quickly Doug Cole stepped in to say that this was a specifically-blocked case. He's right. Nothing is worse than a system where HIWTYL is in place, especially for the "You" in this equation. Imagine having to fight someone where your attacks lead to bad things for you if you fail, and your defenses lead to the exact same bad things whether you succeed or fail. No one wants to fight where the 4 possible quadrants of results are 3:1 against you - 1:1 on the attack and 2:0 on defense.

This isn't to say that circumstances can't create HIWTYL - unarmed guys punching at armored folks can have this happen, damage to unarmed on parries can make this happen, the Flaming Armor spell is designed to make this happen - but it's not a basic assumption of grappling rules, that's for certain.

Does the Iron Witch cheat?

DF is a game where the monsters might be totally unfair. I always play by the same rules, even if I find ways to give monsters exceptions or powers that PCs couldn't have.

The Iron Witch, well, maybe. She's thrown, that the PCs know of, Shield 6 (base cost 12), Missile Shield (base cost 5), two Explosive Stone Missile spells, at 12 (base cost 24) and 18d (base cost 36), and two Flesh to Stone spells (base cost 10 each). Assuming skill 20 (they know she has Magery 6, and IQ 16 isn't crazy since wizards start with a 15), and my rules for energy reductions on missile spells, this works out to 10, 3, 18, 30, and 16 points of energy. 77 energy. That's a lot.

A standard DF wizard can have ER 20, FP 26, and a power item. Give her a 35 point power item ($18,001 item), and she has 5 energy left. So even without "cheating," and nothing special, she'd be okay if low on FP. Given higher skills on some of the spells, or a larger Power Item, and she's fine even with a lower base FP. Skill 25 on the spells would net back 11 points; it would net back 6 if it's just Stone Missile. That's a lot of money and character points to get there, but you don't always need to bend the rules to get the results. That said, maybe she's just a Cheater McCheaterson and has scads of energy or free spell-like powers. That's possible, too. It's just not the only answer on the table.

And for comparison, Chop has Major Healing-25 and has expended IIRC close to 30 power. He spams out 0-cost spells like Curse a lot, but he's belted out a lot of healing. Duncan has probably spent a bit less but still a lot.

We didn't try Dispel Magic on the golems! No, it hasn't been tried. It won't work. You cannot disrupt an enchantment with Dispel Magic. Only a No Mana Zone or the Suspend Enchantment spell - not available in DF - can do that. You can't "turn off" enchantments in DF Felltower with spells. It makes logical sense to consider it, but the wording of the spells and the underlying assumptions of enchantment vs. temporary magic are very much different than the logic assumes.