Sword beats Spell: Non-magic Anti-magic

[Cluedrew]

There is a certain irony in anti-magic zone type spells. Because they are usually described as turning off magic in an area, while being a bit of magic operating in that area. I'm sure you can explain it in a way that makes more sense than that (I have two off the top of my head), but it got me thinking about magic, magic counters and not-magic effecting magic.

Although wizards* have a lot of ways to stop fighter**, tricks a fighter might have to stop a wizard are much rarer. In fact I can't think of any popular ones (besides destroy the delicate magical apparatus, great for rituals not so much for a head on fight). So I decided to try and think of some. I very quickly realized that most magic systems actually don't talk about this sort of thing, which creates an almost circular problem where I can't talk about how non-magic could beat out magic because people don't talk about how non-magic could beat out magic. So I am resorting to theory crafting.

For instance it is very reasonable to me that a quick fighter should be able to intercept a D&D fireball, have it go off on the outside of a shield say so the blast does not go behind them. Perhaps they could even deflect it and send it back at the caster, that would depend on how the blast part of it is triggered. If it is triggered by a contact, could an archer set it off with an arrow?

There are also tricky thing you could do. You have an opponent who can teleport people? Tie yourself to a large rock or tree with a long rope, can't teleport you because there is no line you can draw between you and your articles (after all, your clothes go with you) and something too big for them to move. Counter magically spying by transferring messages in a cramped space (no good viewing angle) by letter (but they have to use sight anyways).

Actually the last is probably the most significant, because it gets into a strategic space as well, so we see the same thing repeated at a different level. Divination is blocked by special wards and other wards can stop any intrusion unless you dispel them with more magic. Ones like these I am drawing an even larger blank on, I can't think of a single case where some major magical strategic advantage was overthrown by a mundane trick, like fact soldiers on the walls or something like that (and I could totally see that working, maybe with a bit magical resistance to blur it and make them not realize this is where you want them to be looking, not entirely magic but still a large part of the plan).

So those are my thoughts on the matter. Do you know of any good examples of these? Where a magic hits a limit you don't have to be a wizard to set up or take advantage of? (And for the purposes of this discussion, simply not being able to bring enough magic to bare doesn't count unless you are being actively hindered.)

* Not just D&D wizards, the broader archetype of studios and inventive magic user the class represents.
** Again broader archetype.

Spoiler: Sword beats Spell

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If you know my other Sword beats Spell threads, this one is really a spin off. It is not about the idea of a God-Martial but still about giving cool stuff to the supposedly mundane (aka boring).

[Lord Raziere]

Well first, your probably looking at the wrong fiction.

Try looking for fiction where casters are ALWAYS evil. where the protagonists are ALWAYS magicless people. like Conan. or inquisitors hunting witches, or things like that. there are worlds out there where normal people kill mages, they're just not ones where magic is an inherently neutral or good thing, or worlds where the mages can just take over and change everything. Behold, The Trope Itself. probably a good place to start, since working within that confines of all magic being evil, you have to design it so that its beatable by a party of good non-magic people.

[Cluedrew]

To Lord Raziere: There might be some I've not read that much of that kind of story. But in my experience those tend to be even harder to overcome directly, serving give the villain a major edge for most of the story and collapsing only when the villain is overcome as a person by the hero. That is kind of hard to encode into a game system.

[awa]

so if i understand correctly you are looking for system neutral ways that non magical people could beat magical foes?

Make casting a bit slower, casting is complicated and requires concentration try not stuttering when some one takes a swing at you. It should be really easy to interfere with any real spell if you are close to it, get rid of those 5ft steps, concentration checks, and spells that can be cast with a single action. This obviously pushes wizards into a support role rather than a combat role.

In some settings iron has anti magic properties. Depending on how common iron is and how big an effect it is this could be a massive liability to a wizard.

In one rpg i saw, normal humans had a small degree of magic resistance so enough of them who either did not believe in magic or were angry at the witch could disable their magic, making a decent sized mob of peasants with pitchfork and torches a deadly threat to a witch.

In some stories magic (or sometimes just strong magic) makes you obsessed and crazy, interfering with your ability to make rational choices causing you to do stuff like monologue about their evil plan, or you know have evil plans.

[Xuc Xac]

Counter magically spying by transferring messages in a cramped space (no good viewing angle) by letter (but they have to use sight anyways).

Use messengers trained in sign language like Helen Keller. If they can read another person's signs by feeling them, they can pass messages and hold conversations by signing into each other's palms in a dark room. Clairvoyance sees nothing and clairaudience hears nothing. And if some wizard tries to research a spell that would allow "clairtactility" (e.g. Bigby's Groping Hands), it would be more obvious than a little wizard eye.

[Psikerlord]

I prefer older editions solution for fighters - if the mage takes damage before he casts teh spell, it is interrupted and the spell lost. LFG uses a less harsh version, if damaged before his turn, caster can't cast (but can do other things).

[DaveOTN]

It's tricky in D&D because spells generally work on a "target" and we don't get a lot of information on how they work. In a lot of stories, there's a bit more explanation as to how they work which can allow a clever warrior to subvert them, by swapping out material components so they blow up in the wizard's face, for instance, or by "accidentally" dropping divination clues that are connected to someone else so that the wizards scrys on the wrong person.

One classic example is the old "bag of flour" trick for dealing with invisibility. In the old 2nd edition version of stoneskin, the spell just blocked a number of "attacks" completely, so enterprising players would sometimes throw, say, a cloud of sand in the warded wizard's face in the hopes the DM would interpret each grain of sand as an individual "attack." Psions and telepaths can be beat in fiction by filling your mind up with horrible or distracting images and learning to deal with them - the intruding wizard tries to get into your head and then rapidly wishes he wasn't there. And of course D&D's Protection from Evil spells are magical energy barriers, but in fiction they tend to be literal chalk lines on the floor - often clever warriors find it better to remove the wizard's protections and let whatever evil thing he was summoning do the dirty work.

The problem is that such things tend to be ultimate moments of awesomeness in books, where the evil wizard is attempting to steal the fighter's soul and then it turns out he's actually just stolen the soul of a mouse named Fighter in the fighter's pocket. They work well in a prewritten plot where they happen at the climax, but in a long-running campaign you've just completely invalidated magic jar and before long every fighter in the world walks around with half a dozen mice on his person from then on. :)

[Hand_of_Vecna]

, your probably looking at the wrong fiction.

Try looking for fiction where casters are ALWAYS evil. where the protagonists are ALWAYS magicless people. like Conan. or inquisitors hunting witches, or things like that. there are worlds out there where normal people kill mages, they're just not ones where magic is an inherently neutral or good thing, or worlds where the mages can just take over and change everything.

Hey I agree with the principal of what your saying here, but I just want to point out that Conan doesn't actually kill many wizards in the Howard stories. Also magic or at least wizards are not always evil.

In two stories Phoenix on the Sword and Beyond the Black River he kills creatures summoned by a calling spell which have some sort of life-link which kills the caster when the called creature is killed. In PotS he can only do this because a spell was cast on his sword.

In a story I'll edit in the name later, happens in India like country. He battles a cabal of what what amount to D&D warlocks their main abilities being a magical blast they seem to be able to repeat a lot like Eldritch blast and a charm ability like devil's tounge. Conan is victorious largely because he is given an anti Eldritch blast item just before the battle.

In Rogues in the House and The Scarlet Citadel his "wizardry" enemies actually just have access to science and alchemy from before the Hyborian Age (The Hyborian Age was Howard's world which takes place between the fall of Atlantis and the beginning of the human history we know from archaeology.) One was defeated by being faster and one shorting, the other with the aid of a real wizard.

[Darth Ultron]

A lot of fiction does have the mundane beating magic with just mundane stuff. It is in just about all mythology, where the foe has massive magic and the hero has sticks and rocks...and their wits.

The Comic Conan, as well as plenty of super heroes, are a good example. Spider Man really does stand out here as he very often fights a super powered villain and defeats them with mundane science. The Doctor, in all media, also does this. Though maybe the best, classic, example is found more in sci-fi then fantasy. Tons of classic sci fi stories have 'magical monsters' attacking Earth, and a scientist defeating them with mundane science.

The Hercules and Xena TV shows do have a good, if goofy, fantasy type here. The heroes can always 'block a fireball' or such, with a thrown rock or dinner plate.

This is nearly impossible to put in a game though. The book keeping to keep track of everything a mundane to use to block or effect magic would be cumbersome at best. And you need a way to not make magic useless, but some how also have it be effected. And a great way is to have 'blocked' magic half 'half effect'.

And this takes you full circle right back to the RPG basic: The Saving Throw. Most games have something like this: A character can 'resist' magic or any other effect. Though most games just keep it vague.

[Tvtyrant]

Easy enough to do; make magic take hours of prep time writing runes and arcane designs, lighting candles and flicking holy water. Casting becomes a purely out of combat choice, and is so expensive it is often cheaper to accomplish the same thing with hired workers/soldiers.

If you used such a system I would suggest making magic open to everyone and get rid of the idea of a casting class.

[Florian]

For instance it is very reasonable to me that a quick fighter should be able to intercept a D&D fireball, have it go off on the outside of a shield say so the blast does not go behind them. Perhaps they could even deflect it and send it back at the caster, that would depend on how the blast part of it is triggered. If it is triggered by a contact, could an archer set it off with an arrow?

You can look at some of the tools Pathfinder martial classes have received late in the edition.

There's a feat chain that uses a shield to block missiles, then rays, then blasts, another one does the same with weapons and goes from missiles, to spells in general, to normally unblockable things, like giant folders or dragon breath.

Another feat chain shuts down the ability to cast defensively, so magic will always trigger an AoO, which has a great chance to cancel the spell, AD&D-style. For Barbarians, this is also available as part of the Witch Killer rage power chain, which also opens up the option to see, target and sunder ongoing spells and caps with Eater of Magic.

[Mr Beer]

It's a longass time since I read a Conan novel but I seem to recall he beat magic a few times via the Hulk method i.e. by being just too damn indomitable to reliably mind control. So he'd get sort of hypnotized or paralyzed or charmed or whatever, then his preternatural barbarian willpower would kick in and he'd suddenly run the wizard through with three foot of honest sharp steel. And then he'd totally bone the girl he rescued from vile servitude. Stabbing solved a lot of Conan's problems, is what I'm saying.

[Kaptin Keen]

This is nearly impossible to put in a game though.

I can do it in five seconds.

Feat: Heroic Save - on a succesful save vs a spell, you gain the ability to cancel the spell entirely.

Not saying it's the ideal solution - or the ideal wording for the effect I'm aiming for - but it's in no way difficult to implement. Whether it's balanced or not is debatable, but balance is something you can fiddle with, maybe imposing a -2 or -4 to the DC, but granting the cancellation on a succes.

[Elanasaurus]

Feat: Heroic Save - on a succesful save vs a spell, you gain the ability to cancel the spell entirely.

You typed that in five seconds? Dang, that's fast.

[Cluedrew]

The problem is that such things tend to be ultimate moments of awesomeness in books, [...] but in a long-running campaign you've just completely invalidated magic jar and before long every fighter in the world walks around with half a dozen mice on his person from then on. :)

Yeah, I did think about that. Ideally we would find a way that it comes down to the particular characters involved right off the bat. Baring that going too far might be the next best solution, because then we just have to find the next middle point from the two extremes. Honestly I can remember the last time I saw a setting where casters were helpless before the tricks and martial strength of warriors. If one exists, it would probably be a good reference.

On Inconvenience: Making magic less convenient to use is one solution, but it has one major draw back, the characters can't be on screen together and in conflict (or it is harder to do so). Because either the wizard has cast their spells and they have advantage, or the warrior is interrupting the ritual and they have advantage.

To Xuc Xac: I like that one. It is a trick that would work as is in most settings with magic (mind reading is the only counter amount common powers I can think of) and I bet if divination was a problem, people would have actually thought of it. Yet I have never seen it once.

To Florian & Kaptin Keen: Those would definitely work as the combat examples. If I was building a fresh system I might try to make them closer to core (ex. Heroic Save is an option you can always try for, but it is much harder to accomplish), but as part of existing systems that sounds about right.

[Kaptin Keen]

You typed that in five seconds? Dang, that's fast.

No.

Frankly, if your typing speed is decent, you can easily type a sentence like that in five seconds. But ... I did not say I typed it in five. Frankly, I'd say how long it takes to type is irrelevant.

I came up with it in five seconds.

[Darth Ultron]

Feat: Heroic Save - on a succesful save vs a spell, you gain the ability to cancel the spell entirely.

Except most games already have this: the saving throw(or whatever they want to call it).

[Elanasaurus]

No.

Frankly, if your typing speed is decent, you can easily type a sentence like that in five seconds.

I came up with it in five seconds.

The concept or the Houserule Feat? Because just a concept can't be "put in a game".

[Kaptin Keen]

Except most games already have this: the saving throw(or whatever they want to call it).

Really? I'm pretty sure 'cancels the spell' isn't part of what a saving throw does. You could argue that it is, if it's a single target spell like Charm. But saving against a fireball doesn't generally cancel it.

The concept or the Houserule Feat? Because just a concept can't be "put in a game".

They're sort of the same? Getting the idea for the houserule feat was simply marginally faster than typing it out.

Also, I'm not suggesting it's useable or finished as it stands. It might require level 6, for instance, and include something about having a shield or thrown item to intercept - so to speak - the spell effect. There might be better ways to balance it than a simple dice modifier. Maybe it would require an action, forcing the character to match initiative with the caster.

All I'm saying is: Coming up with something that let's the fighter battle the wizard on a more even footing isn't that hard.

In my games, barbarian rage can be spent to break charms and compulsions. That's another way of doing it (but that house rule isn't one I just came up with, that's been the case for ages).

[Maryring]

Honestly, I personally think that the question should be that mundanes can beat wizards, not specifically the fighter archetype. It's okay for Wizards to defeat Fighters nine out of ten times, as long as Fighters can defeat Rogues nine out of ten times, and Rogues can defeat Wizards nine out of ten times.

In other words, I'll argue that the solution is to make Rogue type characters, and I count Monks as one of these types of characters, better able to disrupt spellcasting. Making spellcasting take longer is one solution, another would be to give the Rogue ways to bypass magical protections and to avoid magical detection. In 3.5 they seem to have intended Monks to be a mage-killer type of character with high saves and spell resistance. So to develop them into proper counters, you need to look into ways to give these archetypes proper tools to bypass the most common "you lose" defenses, like misschance and flight.

[Durkoala]

This topic reminds me of the childrens'/YA series The Wardstone Chronicles. As the central concept of that is the adventures of an order mostly ordinary men, the Spooks, trying to keep the country safe from dark magic forces, their anti-magic measures are discussed and used frequently. Most magic has a weakness in the series and the Spooks have generations-long records of what does and doesn't work.
For example:

• Witches cannot cross running water and are vulnerable to other items of nature, such as rowan wood. However, because a dead witch can rise again and can only die to having her heart eaten, most troublesome witches are imprisoned. The witches themselves have an assassin who keeps a dog to eat the hearts of her victims.
• Hunger helps stave off mind control, so canny spooks fast before confronting something that can or might be able to control them. As a lot of them are grim and believe that a bit of hardship is good for you, spooks frequently insist on fasting anyway.
• Most spirits are bound to leylines, so obstructing the lines with menhirs imprisons them. It may have also required a specific construction to the stone, but the details are fuzzy.
• Spook candidates are chosen for their mental fortitude and ability to see through glamour, which varies among mundane humans.

The best way to emulate this would probably be to have school specific mundane counters or things that at least give a bonus or an advantage to certain schools or types of magic? It's too late for me to give specific examples, but I'll try and remedy that later. Until then, have a look into various folklore, that's got some good examples.

[Lord Raziere]

This topic reminds me of the childrens'/YA series The Wardstone Chronicles. As the central concept of that is the adventures of an order mostly ordinary men, the Spooks, trying to keep the country safe from dark magic forces, their anti-magic measures are discussed and used frequently. Most magic has a weakness in the series and the Spooks have generations-long records of what does and doesn't work.
For example:

• Witches cannot cross running water and are vulnerable to other items of nature, such as rowan wood. However, because a dead witch can rise again and can only die to having her heart eaten, most troublesome witches are imprisoned. The witches themselves have an assassin who keeps a dog to eat the hearts of her victims.
• Hunger helps stave off mind control, so canny spooks fast before confronting something that can or might be able to control them. As a lot of them are grim and believe that a bit of hardship is good for you, spooks frequently insist on fasting anyway.
• Most spirits are bound to leylines, so obstructing the lines with menhirs imprisons them. It may have also required a specific construction to the stone, but the details are fuzzy.
• Spook candidates are chosen for their mental fortitude and ability to see through glamour, which varies among mundane humans.

The best way to emulate this would probably be to have school specific mundane counters or things that at least give a bonus or an advantage to certain schools or types of magic? It's too late for me to give specific examples, but I'll try and remedy that later. Until then, have a look into various folklore, that's got some good examples.

well first lets start with simple situations and work our way up:
whats considered the least optimal wizard? a evocation wizard, a blaster mage. yet that still is pretty powerful compared to mr. sword and board, since blasting things with explosions as the real world has shown, is still a more deadly level of warfare than hitting things with a metal stick.

so how can we counter the most basic and common of wizard types: the one that can just throw a fireball at the warrior and cook him alive? its basically the raw brute force archetype of wizardry, so you've got to counter that first before getting into anything more sophisticated, because if they can just take you out by brute forcing it, they don't NEED to use anything more sophisticated.

[Mechalich]

well first lets start with simple situations and work our way up:
whats considered the least optimal wizard? a evocation wizard, a blaster mage. yet that still is pretty powerful compared to mr. sword and board, since blasting things with explosions as the real world has shown, is still a more deadly level of warfare than hitting things with a metal stick.

Not necessarily, its a matter of damage values. In Skyrim, blasting things with explosions does significantly less damage than hitting things with a (properly upgraded) metal stick and runs out of fuel very fast. In fact, it's surprisingly common in various heroic adventure media for energy blasts to mostly just throw people around, but die instantly from being stabbed pretty much anywhere in the torso (even though belly wounds may take hours or days to kill).

So this sort of thing depends heavily on how you set up the math.

D&D overvalues ranged damage in general - archery is far more powerful than it has any right to be - and so many low-level spells. This happens in part because AC combines ability to avoid damage with the ability to absorb damage, which means that spells which auto hit bypass both when they properly should bypass only one. This is a mechanical issue that overvalues spell damage.

Balancing a blaster wizard against a martial isn't that hard. The central problem is that magic is almost never limited to just blasting even in video games. Getting better at your 'magic' stat tends to make you not only a better blaster, but better at everything else magic does - which has a disturbing tendency to be 'everything you want.'

[Poiuytrewq]

Make magic unable to afect metal. This way swirds and shields can parry and deflect spells.

[Florian]

As this seems to be a more general topic, not exactly D&D related, the first question will always be what magic is and how it should be modeled. Let´s take a look at the very classic Magic Circle Against Evil and also the Yellow Sign and warding gestures against the Evil Eye. Basic decision making time: Can you pull that off with just a bag of salt, chalk and the gesture and have it be effective magic, or do you need to use something like spell slots, mana, power point, whatever?

D&D-style magic, also MtG-style magic, is such a shore to talk about, not because it´s not grounded in science, which would kill magic, but because it lacks an "interface" level connecting it to the "real world" to work with.

[Cluedrew]

This topic reminds me of the childrens'/YA series The Wardstone Chronicles.

You know I might of read the first book in the series. Although I didn't really enjoy the writing style it did have some good ideas in it. I had forgotten it.

since blasting things with explosions as the real world has shown, is still a more deadly level of warfare than hitting things with a metal stick.

Well if you assume that a fireball or burning hands or whatever is the strength of a modern explosives (which considering the amount of collateral damage they do, is probably false). Considering the size and intensity many fire-based attacks are displayed at, I think I would rather get hit with your generic fireball than stabbed with your average sword.

Plus if wizards can out power fighters, than finding tricks around them is even more important.

D&D-style magic, also MtG-style magic, is such a shore to talk about, not because it´s not grounded in science, which would kill magic, but because it lacks an "interface" level connecting it to the "real world" to work with.

I hadn't thought of it in that way. The one I go for is that magic isn't bound by the same logic* as science, but it should be bound by its own logic. "Yes" doesn't count.

* It is not technically logic, but I use the word because it is not about individual rules, but the larger patterns.

[Durkoala]

well first lets start with simple situations and work our way up:
whats considered the least optimal wizard? a evocation wizard, a blaster mage. yet that still is pretty powerful compared to mr. sword and board, since blasting things with explosions as the real world has shown, is still a more deadly level of warfare than hitting things with a metal stick.

so how can we counter the most basic and common of wizard types: the one that can just throw a fireball at the warrior and cook him alive? its basically the raw brute force archetype of wizardry, so you've got to counter that first before getting into anything more sophisticated, because if they can just take you out by brute forcing it, they don't NEED to use anything more sophisticated.

I don't understand how this connects to my post? I was talking about how you could, for example, carry salt to create barriers or wear your clothes inside out to help resist confusion, along with other tales of resisting magic through mundane effects.

[LudicSavant]

It's really a shame that we don't see more "non-magic anti-magic" in D&D, because not only is it a huge part of the fiction which inspires D&D, and not only would it make for better and more balanced game mechanics, but it's even a huge part of the non-mechanical depictions of martials in D&D itself.

For example, here's a picture of pretty much exactly one of the things an OP described: Blocking an AoE with a shield.


What really hurts is that this is supposed to be a picture of what a certain feat in Complete Divine does. Spoilers: The feat does not in fact allow you to do anything like this.

[Frozen_Feet]

How you can employ anti-magic depends on what the rules of magic. The four rules that underlie most of classic magic either implicitly or explicitly are:

1) rule of symbols. Like effects like: you can use symbol of a thing to affect the thing. Most obviously: words, specifically names, are symbols. Hence the concept of True Names and spelling to control reality.

2) rule of contagion. Things which have once been in contact will remain connected. You can use part to affect the whole. Hence the concept of material components and potions, of using or consuming a piece of a thing to gain that thing's power.

3) mind over matter. The thoughts, emotions and beliefs of a person can have direct impact over reality. Hence concept of psychic powers, of soul being more important than the body, of a person's intelligence, wisdom and charisma governing over reality.

4) rule of impermanence. Things created with magic are not wholly real, they lack ontological inertia. Combined with the other three rules, this means that magic can only work when the magician is focusing on it, when people around them believe in it, when the symbols and material components are intact.

So what can one do to counter magic, without magic? Destroy or render useless the symbols used, destroy, steal or replace the material components, disbelieve magic in its entirety and have others do so too, undermine the magician's self-confidence, beliefs and concentration untill it fails.

Most of these are possible and codified in D&D, if they don't work, it's because of a chorus of people who cried "hey, it's no fair my magician can lose!" and the game developers catered to them by giving them more and more ways to circumvent the above rules.

[LudicSavant]

Most of these are possible and codified in D&D, if they don't work, it's because of a chorus of people who cried "hey, it's no fair my magician can lose!" and the game developers catered to them by giving them more and more ways to circumvent the above rules.

You're probably giving the game designers too much credit. They probably just didn't think much about counterplay when designing spells.