Sword beats Spell: Non-magic Anti-magic

[Jay R]

In Larry Niven's stories about magic, he postulates that there is raw manna in the world, which spells use up. Therefore where there were once great, powerful wizards, then is now a magic-dead or magic-weak area, since all the manna has been used up. [He presumes that Atlantis was once a great empire, on land raised up out of the sea by powerful magics, and it sank back into the sea when all its magic was used up.]

One wizard created an item which is just a spinning disc, which has exponentially increasing speed. Start it, and it will use up more and more manna, at an ever-increasing rate, until all the local manna is gone in a few rounds, and the area becomes an anti-magic area. This is obviously a great tool for a battle in which you knew that magic will soon not work, but your enemy did not.

I have occasionally considered putting a magic-dead area with a disc in the middle of it in my world somewhere. If you approach it carrying magic items, it will start spinning, and very quickly, your items have no magic.

[I posit that continuous items will work again as soon as you leave the area, charged items are out of charges, and all per-day uses are gone for the day. One-time items like potions and scrolls would be dead.]

[Xuc Xac]

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.

This also leads to the fantasy trope of the "load-bearing boss". After you kill the evil wizard, you have to evacuate his tower immediately because it's going to fall down without his magic to maintain it.

[Frozen_Feet]

Aye, that is one result of the fourth law.

Related: whenever going against a magician, always bribe or kill their familiar first. One of the reasons why classic familiars are night animals is so that they would be awake when the magician is not. They hold guard and upkeep their spells while the master sleeps. By gaining a familiar's favor or getting rid of it, you can create an opening when the magician is at their most vulnerable.

[Satinavian]

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:

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.

While i understand that you personally like those rules, they very much don't underline most of classical magic. You can find examples for all of them, yes. But they are not actually that common.

1) Yes, symbols are often used. But you are wrong about the word and true name thing. The true name thing comes from a completely different concept, one guarding the "immutable true nature of things" which no magic can ever change. And the thing with words as power is another separate concept that can be found both in words as divine tools of creation and the once common belief that any written thing is inherently magical.

2) Your rule of contagion is actually pretty rare in myth. And then it is either a simplified version of the concept of Qualia or it is part the the symbol rule where a part of a things gets to be a standin for the thing.

3) Mind over matter ? That is not even rare, it is nearly absent from anything before the 18th century. To connect the supernatural so strongly with the mind only ever happened after natural science had driven most magical explainations from the realm of matter. Psychic power is a really new concept.

4) Nope, basically absent in myth. Yes, you will find magic that lasts only as long as X condition is met. That is a pretty common theme. But the condition X has nothing to do with belief and focus. Just the opposite, there are far more tales where the magic and the condition is long forgotten by everyone and then someone braks the magic by accident.
Not only that, but magic that is never broken and stays intact after the conclusion of the story is far from uncommon.


I really don't like those rules. Magic rules that don't even cover common late medieval alchemy (violating 2-4 and following only a twisted version of 1) and are as useless for most other magic themes seem unsuited to me. And certainly not only because they might weaken D&D wizards.

[Cluedrew]

To Satinavian: You may not like those rules* but I think that having rules that explain how magic works is important; especially in a role-playing game. Simply put, it lets people figure out what would happen if you mixed in one thing or another and to figure out what happens in situations that the rules don't cover. For things that happen in reality we have experience to draw on to make that call, but not so for magic. It relates to the topic because usually rules only cover magic in normal operation (without interference) so it is hard to say what effects various bits of interference would have, and all to often people seem to assume none.

* Which don't really match what I know of the classical models that explained magic either.

[Satinavian]

Oh, i very much agree with having rules that explain how magic works is important.

I just don't like those rules in particular. And i strongly object to the notion that this set really captures the fluff of magic from tales and myths or magic belief systems for most cases.

[Psyren]

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.

Pathfinder kinda has this. Personally though I would think all bonuses to the shield should apply to stuff like that.

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.

Don't saving throws usually already do this though?

(The exception being partial/half saves, but that's where Evasion and Mettle come into play.)

But even if you made Evasion and Mettle available to everyone in exchange for a feat (I think you can already do this too), that wouldn't do anything about the no-save spells that casters would gravitate to.

[LudicSavant]

Pathfinder kinda has this.

Uh, not really. You got a bonus to your reflex saves. You didn't protect things behind you from the area of effect.

[Spore]

Uh, not really. You got a bonus to your reflex saves. You didn't protect things behind you from the area of effect.

There is a fighter archetype that can use tower shields to create hard cover however.

[Doorhandle]

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.

I was about to suggest something things like this: allowing fighters to cut apart spells with pure martial skill. Might be an idea for a homebrew class or feat chain.

[TeChameleon]

There's always the old standbys, too- the Taltos method of "No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulder blades will seriously cramp his style.", or the Rincewind method of 'all the magic in the world is no match for an unexpected half-brick in a sock, smartly applied to the base of the skull.'

Which both tend to fall under the 'damage = spell failure', I guess.

I would say that these arguments seem to focus extremely heavily on hyperoptimized, high-level caster builds, and a lot of the suggested counters feel like they'd make low-level casters unplayable, or at least a miserable slog to play.

Anyhow, my usual response to a lot of these is that plain-vanilla casters 'pay' for their combat potency by being extremely vulnerable. They can't avoid as much damage as their more martially-inclined counterparts, nor can they survive anywhere near as much damage. A simple expedient in games to enforce that 'payment' would be to make any method they could use to improve their survivability prohibitively expensive in either materials or time. The Odinsleep clause, as it were. The longer a caster spends being awesome in whatever fashion, the more time they have to spend recuperating.

Even a 5:1 ratio of awesome-to-crash could get interesting quickly, depending on how they use the awesome, especially if their enchantments require them to be conscious to function. That flying castle isn't going to stay airborne very well if the enchanter goes into a coma and stops sustaining the spells, now is it?

[Anymage]

Anyhow, my usual response to a lot of these is that plain-vanilla casters 'pay' for their combat potency by being extremely vulnerable. They can't avoid as much damage as their more martially-inclined counterparts, nor can they survive anywhere near as much damage. A simple expedient in games to enforce that 'payment' would be to make any method they could use to improve their survivability prohibitively expensive in either materials or time. The Odinsleep clause, as it were. The longer a caster spends being awesome in whatever fashion, the more time they have to spend recuperating.

Forcing downtime after a big nova just leads to the five minute adventuring day. Making casters even more glass cannony only reinforces the idea that they need to build impervious sanctums and only step out when they have a full suite of invulnerability buffs. This only serves to reinforce existing problems.

More important, though, this isn't a nerf casters thread. It's a muggle buffing one. And while casters do need a handful of nerfs (most notably, severely downplaying the omnimancer trope), the biggest relevant one tends to be most prevalent in D&D and games that are clear knockoffs of it.

Specifically, every spell is an exceptional case. Most of these special cases can only be countered or negated by other special cases, i.e. spells. (A handful of class features or feats may exist, but overwhelmingly spells.) Create a more robust system for mundane task resolution, have spells and spell effects engage that system better instead of having multiple subrules each of which allows its own way to succeed, and each of which requires its own special case (again, this means spells) to counter. Otherwise, mundanes will always be playing catch up.

Unfortunately, giving muggles a more robust way of interacting with the world beyond "roll this one dice, hope to meet a binary target number check"* would require a deep and probably unwelcome overhaul to D&D.

(Edit footnote: *and requiring casters to also engage that system instead of automatically doing something cool.)

[TeChameleon]

Forcing downtime after a big nova just leads to the five minute adventuring day. Making casters even more glass cannony only reinforces the idea that they need to build impervious sanctums and only step out when they have a full suite of invulnerability buffs. This only serves to reinforce existing problems.

Unfortunately, this is a PEBCAK situation. That particular problem lies squarely with the players, not the mechanics.

More important, though, this isn't a nerf casters thread. It's a muggle buffing one.

Buffing muggles specifically against casters. The end result is the same.

Although I do agree that the omnimancer thing needs to go die in a deep hole someplace, alongside such fellow stupidities as the omnidisciplinary scientist and the drive-or-pilot-anything-expertly ability (because a motorcycle handles exactly like an 18-wheeler, and if you can pilot a single-engine light aircraft, of course you can fly this 300m dirigible... ). Er, anyways, just... I dunno. Be nice if there was some way to do this without hamstringing casters so badly at lower levels that you end up with a Discworld situation (i.e. "That's what's so stupid about the whole magic thing, you know. You spend twenty years learning the spell that makes nude virgins appear in your bedroom, and then you're so poisoned by quicksilver fumes and half-blind from reading old grimoires that you can't remember what happens next." Rincewind, The Colour of Magic).

If there isn't a payoff to the decades of study that's at least roughly equivalent to spending nine months learning how to stick sharpened bits of metal into people who do not necessarily wish to have bits of sharpened metal inserted into their persons, there really isn't a lot of point in spending decades studying.

... hah. This'd probably get rid of a lot of the powergaming twits on the magical end of things... just make magic-use require strict celibacy and sobriety. Ale and whores? Nope, sorry, not for you, spanky

[Satinavian]

The main problem comes from the idea that a generalist wizard or one specialised for completely different things regularly is in fight as as actor with the same effect on the fight as a martial.

That is basically demanded, fights between fighter and wizard are supposed to be interesting and are staple of lots of fiction to simulate. But the problem is that the mundane one in each of those scenarios is specialized for fighting, but the wizard is not. The wizard is usually more about doing other wizardly stuff. That is especcialy true for antagonists who are usually busy to do [evil magic plan] and must be stopped or punished.
But if a generalist wizard is on par with a fighting specialized mundane, what happens with a fighting specialist wizard ? Well, he should be far better in fights than his genealist colleage leading to being far better in fights than very mundane. It also means that the non-fighting wizard is as good as a martial in combat but far more utility whereever his real expertise is.

That is basically what happened. Some people wanted regular wizards to be dangerous instead of being regular civillians. And they wanted those wizards to use spells in fights instead of grapping a weapen, thus demanding that spells are better than weapons for wizards.

Everything else is just a system specific take on the problem.

[King of Nowhere]

There are a few tricks I employ in my campaign world where mundane means beat magic. Some of them hang on homebrew, albeit mostly slightly.

To commit a deed without being detectable by divination, hire someone else to do it without him knowing the hirer. In fact, disguise one of your underlings, have him deliver a message to a random person in the street with instructions to give the message to the person you want to hire. the message itself was written by someone hired for the occasion, by another disguised underling. Now the best divination can only say that the guy was hired by somebody he does not know, on a message written by a random person who does not know who hired him. And even if you contact ther planes, can you really tell me the powers that be were looking at a random street kid in the chances he may be used as intermediary on this kind of deal?
Does not work with 100% RAW, but works with some RAI interpretations. Even with 100% RAW, it helps a lot

when you think you may be spied by a wizard, have everyone go at meetings disguised (with mundane disguises, illusions can be seen through). that way, the wizard scrying on you cannot form enough of a connection with the people you meet to scry on them too. During the meetings, write on pieces of paper that you keep covered.
Should work with RAW, unless you want to decide that seeing a shrouded, masked figure is enough to have a connection

I ruled that for teleportation, being connected to a place means having a good idea of where that place actually is. If you could not find the place by fliying/going ethereal, then you can't teleport there. Under that constrain, simply not giving any reference point prevents a wizard from teleporting on your position. Just keep your window closed, and the wizard has no flippin idea where your house may be, and so can't teleport in it.
Does not work with 100% RAW, but works under a small and mostly incospicuous houserule

Wear a mundane disguise under your illusory disguise. Most wizards will congratulate themselves for piercing your not-so-clever illusion, without realizing you're still fooling them. That also goes for mundane hiding, it beats invisibility in many occasions
Works with RAW, although at high op it is rendered moot

Leave your magical equipment at home, and go spying without any spell on you. there's a good chance nobody will take you for anything more than just another commoner. Everyone knows powerful people allways have powerful magic with them, after all.
Works with RAW, although it is risky if you get caught

Most times you can make educated guesses at secret informations. for example, you can figure out the king's secret agenda based on his policies. You can do that even if the king speaks of his plans with nobody and is protected by mind blank. Basically, a high gather information check is more effective than divinations (although you can gather data with divinations and then use a high gather information on those, getting the best of both worlds)
works with RAW

IF you dominate a guard into revealing informations or letting you in, the magic on the guard will be soon discovered. Even if you erase his memory, there are ways to find out somebody has been fiddling. If, on the other hand, you can get the guard in a talkative mood, he may reveal sensitive informations without even realizing it, and it won't trigger any alarm.
Works by RAW, depending on specific countermeasures taken

Basically, in my campaign world, the whole spying business is mostly nonmagical. Divinations are an important piece of the puzzle, but it's mid-level experts with lots of skill points in social and sneaky skills that do most of the job, simply because they are more difficult to block or discover with magic.

[Psyren]

Uh, not really. You got a bonus to your reflex saves. You didn't protect things behind you from the area of effect.

Ah right. But you do protect yourself.

(Also, what Sporeegg said)

[Cluedrew]

Buffing muggles specifically against casters. The end result is the same.

It is in terms that balance between the two is reached, but there is a lot of fallout regarding what power & versatile levels you balance them around. So in a broader context, no the end result is not the same, chess and checkers might both start with symmetric armies, but they are absolutely not the same game.

The main problem comes from the idea that a generalist wizard or one specialised for completely different things regularly is in fight as as actor with the same effect on the fight as a martial.

I'm not sure if it is the main problem*, but that makes sense. A whole host of reasons has created a kind of double standard. Here though, I'm just pecking away at one part of it, roughly: Magic is above nature and cannot be effected by natural things. So if you are going to counter magic, you need more magic.

Mostly tricks where spells just aren't so useful, like King of Nowere's list. There hasn't been much true anti-magic here. Effectively there isn't much of a difference, but it got me thinking. I wonder if building construction could turn aside divination, or weapons made to disrupt spells. Say put an arrow made of something just magic enough through an ongoing spell and it could make it fizzle. Or pop. Maybe.

* For me the main problem is people who accept whatever convenient solution you give the wizard "because magic".

[Kadzar]

Although I do agree that the omnimancer thing needs to go die in a deep hole someplace, alongside such fellow stupidities as the omnidisciplinary scientist and the drive-or-pilot-anything-expertly ability (because a motorcycle handles exactly like an 18-wheeler, and if you can pilot a single-engine light aircraft, of course you can fly this 300m dirigible... ).

Well, to be fair, such things exist in games because it kind of sucks when your character's thing is being the scientist, but, since your specialty is millipedes the current adventure is about centipedes, you're SOL (this could be helped by a system that allows you to use some of your skill in one thing for a related thing, though such a thing is hard to do in such a way that is satisfactory or that doesn't require a lot of GM adjudication). So it helps, when your character's basic shtick doesn't come up much in gameplay, that it be more broadly applicable.

The problem with the omnimancer is that, not only are they good at magic, their magic also makes them good at other aspects of the game, such as combat or lockpicking, and often just as good or better than people who specialize in those areas.