It was in reference to Jeff's post about Spell Resistances without quoting him. His comment was only a few posts previous and seemed easy to associate through context.

Anyway, "Unstoppability" due to lack of "martial counter," and "Infinite" due to "I need mage pew pew power... I hate sullying my hands with weapons," are the two biggest glaring RAW issues. Noticed it and said so right at release here on theRPGSite, confirmed it through RAW play, still stick to my initial opinion. IMHO TSR got it right the first time, among several other things about magic, still think so today.

Three editions into it WotC still can't figure out why it was there in the first place. What can you do, besides fix it for your home game? Their paradigm here is setting inflexible and breaks the power curve too early, again and again and again, yet they keep ramming their head into the same wall. Whatever, let them enjoy their fun, just not at my table because that paradigm disrespects my settings.

So the upshot of this that only rules can fix this. That a world existed with the D&D 5e assumptions on how magic works it automatically positively leads to a world where there is a magical revolution with mages dominating within the first century of civilization's existance.

That there are absolutely no plausible way at any point in time in this world history for a vaguely feudal medieval society with technology, economics, and culture on par with that of western europe circa the 13th century. That prior to the fully realized "magical" revolution people were prey to any tom, dick, and harry with a spell or magic item.

Come on folks you can do better than this without adding a bunch of new rules.

Quote from: Doom;920587As someone else said, straight up iron is good enough. As long as it's bloody common, that could work, but I think it's better to just make it part of the rules system for spellcasting than add a foozle-screws-you item.

There's one fantasy series - Thomas Harlan's Oath of Empire - where the antimagic metal is lead.
Roman lead pipes -> inherent magic resistance for Roman troops -> victories in the field over magic-driven enemy armies.
Roman lead pipes -> can't rely on magic in the city -> engineering emerging faster in Rome than anywhere else.
Roman lead javelins -> disrupting enemy battlemagics just before the lines meet.
Also, slingers with lead bullets become the stock anti-wizard battlefield troop.

Entirely consistent with the real world, no?

Heh, that's pretty cool Naburimannu.

Estar, Opaopa, what do you think of my grappling solution? Open to anyone, perhaps with this caveat: You must first grapple the caster, then spend a bonus action to suppress either their line of sight, somatic component, or verbal component.

I don't think it would adversely affect clerics too much, as the ones likely to be on the front lines will have decent Strength or Dexterity to escape with.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;920674Estar, Opaopa, what do you think of my grappling solution? Open to anyone, perhaps with this caveat: You must first grapple the caster, then spend a bonus action to suppress either their line of sight, somatic component, or verbal component.

Reasonable, I am all for rulings that reflect what character can plausibly do in the setting. It makes sense that if I am grappling a mage that my goal can be to keep his mouth shut, or his hands immobile in order to prevent the casting of certain spells. It says point blank in the spell description that spells can either have a verbal, somatic, and/or a material component.

The expenditure of a bonus action is reasonable because grappling in a real life is not a optimal tactic in melee combat. It is a situational tactic used when the circumstances are right. Granted is more common than D&D makes it out to be. (Just look at the old German fighting manual or the youtube video showing the style), but in the end the primary goal is sitll Arya Stark's first lesson, stick them with the pointy end.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;920674I don't think it would adversely affect clerics too much, as the ones likely to be on the front lines will have decent Strength or Dexterity to escape with.

If they are in the front lines, then clerics already have their hands full with trying prevent the other guy from killing them. Opponents grappling clerics doesn't not add much of anything to that scenario. It just one more thing that may or may not be the right thing to do given the circumstance.

Remember in RPGs, you figure out the rules after the players states what his character is trying to do. If it impossible then it is because that how the setting works not how the rules. If the character does something that is allowed by the setting but not covered by the rules then you will have to make a ruling. Taking advantage of the fact that spells have verbal, somatic, and material components in melee is not something covered by the rules. Your ruling looks reasonable, try it and be prepared to modify it if it doesn't feel right.

Me, as the Paladin Endless Star, tackling you as Bargle the really bad wizard, and clamping my hand over your mouth to stop you from uttering a spell with a verbal component is something allowed by the default setting. I am going to suffer some negative consequences for doing that instead of focusing on "sticking them with the pointy end". But if i judge the circumstance warrant it then I should be able to attempt it.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;919124I'm actually thinking of statting up two types of specialized NPCs in the future to deal with this arms race. The first would be some kind of witch finder, and they would be about as common as sheriffs or guard captains. Their entire function would be to watch for magical crimes and prevent them if possible. They wouldn't be combat monsters necessarily, but would be trained to resist mental subversion, be highly sensitive to signs of alter-self style magic, and possess a few low level spells to make caster trickery difficult, like Detect Magic or the Magic Alert spell I put up for consideration.

The other type, more controversial, would be spell-breakers, elite soldiers who can use Dispel/Counterspell once per day. Aside from that one trick they would otherwise be regular fighters. Their function would be to make medieval style warfare plausible in a world of nuclear flying/teleporting PC mages.

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There was actually something like this in the d20 Blackmoor book. I am travelling or I'd check it and provide some more details. Might have been a base class or a prestige class.
There was also a concept of needing to be a member of the wizards cabal in good standing, or you'd be at a minimum treated qith suspicion and hostility if you do any spellcasting.

Quote from: estar;920665So the upshot of this that only rules can fix this. That a world existed with the D&D 5e assumptions on how magic works it automatically positively leads to a world where there is a magical revolution with mages dominating within the first century of civilization's existance.

That there are absolutely no plausible way at any point in time in this world history for a vaguely feudal medieval society with technology, economics, and culture on par with that of western europe circa the 13th century. That prior to the fully realized "magical" revolution people were prey to any tom, dick, and harry with a spell or magic item.

Come on folks you can do better than this without adding a bunch of new rules.

Infinite Mending and the like does indeed preclude this (and many other cantrips do similar things,). The amount of labor hours saved in every 6 second spell is as great (possibly greater) than our industrial revolution. Throw in undefined magical automation through enchantment and the setting is done.

Infinite does mean infinite. It is a real thing. And no, I don't think you've really grasped those ramifications yet. You're still trying to mitigate it through demographics — that's just a negligible delay, like the goofy childhood: "infinity+1!" "nuh-uh, infinity+2!"

Either the setting reflects itself in the system, or the system will reflect itself upon the setting. That means, yes, you must adjust system to your setting if you are wanting to retain your setting as priority over the system during conflicts. Lord Vreeg has always been right about this.

You could just have a SPELLPLAGUE that kills off all Arcane magic and wrecks the world only to have it all come back like 1e!!!!

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;920674Heh, that's pretty cool Naburimannu.

Estar, Opaopa, what do you think of my grappling solution? Open to anyone, perhaps with this caveat: You must first grapple the caster, then spend a bonus action to suppress either their line of sight, somatic component, or verbal component.

I don't think it would adversely affect clerics too much, as the ones likely to be on the front lines will have decent Strength or Dexterity to escape with.

Easier to Improvised Action - Grapple "Cover their Mouth." Knocks out upwards of 85% of their spells. Still, martial counter and re-writing the needlessly permissive VSM rules would be better. (One-handed juggling of material and somatic? are you kidding me? :rolleyes: )

Really, TSR had the easier solutions from the beginning; we're dancing in circles at this point. Go wuxia warriors, swap systems, or port back in the older paradigm (which given 5e chassis is dirt easy to do,). Notice how two of those solutions reject the WotC paradigm, whereas the third goes into its logical conclusion (Fantasy Craft,).

You can't do half-assed and expect soft tethers (setting) do the heavy lifting of hard tethers (mechanics) and end up with an unwarped setting resistant to exploitative thinking. Life exploits, that's what it does; to say otherwise in order to maintain an untenable ecosystem vacuum is to freeze your world in amber and denude it of the breath of life. The nature of soft tethers to give and stretch will naturally mean a warping stretch once the hard tethers are removed.

Pick your paradigm openly and without reservation — and then follow through.

Quote from: Opaopajr;920711Infinite Mending and the like does indeed preclude this (and many other cantrips do similar things,). The amount of labor hours saved in every 6 second spell is as great (possibly greater) than our industrial revolution. Throw in undefined magical automation through enchantment and the setting is done.

Challenge accepted!

You postulated the challenge and so get the pick the initial time period.

So when in this alt-fantasy earth analogue is the Mending Cantrip discovered? From the dawn of sentience? The Neolithic period. In alt-sumeria/alt-egypt or the alt-Persian analogue or perhap their version of 5th Century Greece.

Quote from: estar;920716Challenge accepted!

You postulated the challenge and so get the pick the initial time period.

So when in this alt-fantasy earth analogue is the Mending Cantrip discovered? From the dawn of sentience? The Neolithic period. In alt-sumeria/alt-egypt or the alt-Persian analogue or perhap their version of 5th Century Greece.

The discovery of braided & woven fabric, such as cloth & rope. Now you don't stress about supplemental rope fray or snaps in the middle of construction. Nets are trivial to repair. Go.

(And don't cheat now! No, "and the magic froze experimentation and discovery, thus subsequent technologies were never invented!" Life never stops in its never ending quest of exploitation, for survival and peak laziness and comfort.)

Quote from: Opaopajr;920719The discovery of braided & woven fabric, such as cloth & rope. Now you don't stress about supplemental rope fray or snaps in the middle of construction. Nets are trivial to repair. Go.

Sure, no impact other than life is 20% better for the temples and the elite. The spell is restricted to cleric, druids, and sorcerers as woven cloth developed before writing. Linen, felt, wool, and silk are all developed as in OTL due to local conditions.  

Due to the fact there is less loss due to tools breaking, temples are more elaborate and better maintained due to the fact more tribute can devoted to expansion rather than maintenance. But there will come a point where the improved durability will go as far as it can.

As for nets it doesn't make a difference as the spell is not widespread enough to make a difference to the peasantry. Sorcerer distribution is random, clerics are centered in a central temple. There are no parish church as every region with a radius of a half day walk has center town and temple. Druid have more of an impact on the cultures that are still Neolithic/Nomadic/Pastoral but those cultures have vastly lower population density compared to the various cradles of civilization.

Plus it took time to spread to the druids i.e. they think to weave the forces of the natural world into a mending spell. As you said it was discovered with woven cloth which was first developed in the cradles of civilization during the late Neolithic.

Also no spellcaster dependent on the written word exist yet.

Just to interject two thoughts:

1. I don't think it's much of a stretch to apply Exhaustion rules for excessive casting of cantrips, so that's how I solve that issue in my games.

2. There is an optional Disarm attack option in the DMG on page 271 that could be made available to all creatures. It can target any item, not just weapons, so if you set up a minor house rule that only magic focus items are being used (in place of the 0gp material components they can normally substitute for), then that's a lot of spells that can be shut down by mundanes.

You can disarm spell components too.

Grapple needs more rules to be playable RAW.  But if you make some rulings.  It will be very difficult to shoot a bow while grappled.  But you might get a shot with a crossbow, but hard to reload it.  

It will be hard to swing a pole arm or great axe at anyone, but a shortsword or dagger should be ok.  Especially if you target your grappler.  

Spell casting with somatic components should be difficult, verbal should be ok.  Material might get dropped. If it requires line of sight that might be troublesome as well.  

I will point out if you go the grappler route you have made the moon Druid grapple build even stronger (my character) and I seem to remember you saying your biggest problem was shape shifting Druids.  


Any way you have TONNEZ of suggestions.  Time for play test.  Let us know what you use and how it goes.

Some thoughts.

1 Grappling casters: This came up in a thread last year. RAW basic grapple is just short of useless. All it does is allow you to control the targets movement. Thats it. The Grappler feat allows you to restrain a target. Which also does about jack nothing. Ive pointed this out for a while now. Someone didnt just drop the ball on this. The dropped it and punted it over the fence into traffic.

Instead look at things like a STR(Athletics) check to attempt or resist. Also DMG pg 228 STR has a little bit on saves to resist a force attempting to physically move or bind you. But in general stat checks and some on the fly adjudication can cover alot of odd situations as per RAW.

Also there is the Disarm option on page 271. Using that to try and disrupt a caster by knocking their hand or focus to spoil a spell. Weapon Master fighters and that maneuver feat both have a maneuver to disarm and one to knock prone. And everyone else can make moves like that as well, just not with the added oomph.

2: How to incarcerate wizards: Was discussing this and one suggestion was... Level Drain. A player described a spectre that acted as law enforcement. Punishment for crimes was level draining. Someone reduced to level 0 but not killed became a peasant effectively, even cantrips cut off from access.