Resolving "abuse" of sorcery

[RPGPundit]

One of my players recently came to me with a concern about  Sorcery (note: i'm using the alternate sorcery system mentioned above in the forum, but this could just as likely be applied to the traditional sorcery rules for Amber).  He pointed out that some players are using Sorcery as an answer for everything, and that there seems to be an escalation of the use of sorcery (never mind that this player was probably the FIRST player to start using sorcery for everything and escalating sorcery, and now its somewhat coming back to bite him in the ass).
A particular concern to him is another player, one that has it in for him, going around casting spells that transform a vast area (say a 500ft by 500ft by 500ft cube) into blazing lava, meaning that if you center it on a high-warfare guy, the high-warfare guy shouldn't be able to dodge it no matter how much better he is than magic-abusing guy.

Now, I gave a number of responses to the player who complained about this to me, but I'd like to hear how you would handle the thing if you were GMs.

RPGPundit

[Croaker]

High warfare? Sniper gun. Or crossbow. You incant, you die.

Use pattern to "dodge". At the first sign of such a thing happening, shift shadow. Just a little. A very, very close shadow, reached in a few seconds... But one different from the one where a giant cube of magma just appeared.

Use Power Words to disrupt the spell. This is easy if you know your opponent's name.

Use sorcery to siphon magic, then warfare to kill.

[jibbajibba]

a clever player of a sorcerer can beat a high warefare guy. the high warfare guy has to put himself in a position to be beaten mind.
One of my hangups with Amber is how to make the stupid player of the Warfare Master great at warfare and not dead. A good player will never expose himself to a hostile fully loaded sorcerer cos a clever sorcerer can usually pull somethign out of their arse.
Croaker's pattern, power words etc have a problem in that they are outside the character's warfare. Warfare alone ought to be enough to top a sorcerer. The missile weapon idea is good but throwing a dagger 500 yards or whatever might be an ask...
Personally, if i had a PC who was getting too showy with the magic and seems to overpowerign the other PCs I would set up stuff that played to their strengths. So they all get a chance to shine.
As an aside in game terms and Amber terms sorcery is far too cheap in the game. If you look at the sorcerers in Amber they have all had to work to study and to learn. Sorcerers are not rare in Amber because its ineffectual they are rare in Amber because its hard work. Think could you image a scene in Amber where a well prepared Merlin or Mandor incapacitates Benedict? I certainly can.
I use a partial power system. Getting the ability to use magic costs 10 points. That is entry level you get nothing for it. for the same 10 points you can have Pattern with the ability to do basic shadow walking. If you want sorcery on top of that its an extra 5 for base shadow sorcery etc etc ...
Point is that its not so much that Sorcery is too power its more that its too powerful for the price.

[gabriel_ss4u]

Croaker's pattern, power words etc have a problem in that they are outside the character's warfare. Warfare alone ought to be enough to top a sorcerer. The missile weapon idea is good but throwing a dagger 500 yards or whatever might be an ask...

I don't think any of your 'abilities' are "outside warfare" as they can be utilized within a strategy. I understand what you mean, but tactics are something I always give to that 1st place warfare.
Ofcourse, STUFF has a hand in it.

The hign warfare person has sorcery as stated ? So as Croaker said, power words at the right moment, (which a high warfare would, to me, realize the situation as it was occurring, if not fractions of a moment before), dispell magic, or a protective bubble vs. enegies, heat, fire, whatever. A spell to reverse the effects back to adversary, teleportation, and..... do you give your player time to decide what the character will do, or seconds? As a high warfare person, I'd tend to give some time to think about reaction.

Also... where is the caster? equal & opposite effects apply?
a huge rift spewing out lava over that area may produce an earthquake and damage that could even reach the caster if they are not far enough away.

Construct? Artifact?
The high warfare person may have something set to defend already, which I would suggest if they are getting lava fields erupting underneath them.

[Croaker]

Croaker's pattern, power words etc have a problem in that they are outside the character's warfare.

Take benedict.
But him at a nuclear ground zero, without the ability to use pattern and all. Warfare or not, he's dead. Same for Gerard, Corwin, or Fiona.
This is not because Warfare is innefectual, but because you're crippling him: Warfare needs weapons, and you're taking the appropriate ones away.

When corwin uses pattern against benedict, don't you thing benny also uses pattern to protect himself from harm? If your warfare master never develloped the means to counter or escape sorcery (and Pattern is a basic one for amberites), and is too dumb to have and use the right tools, he's not worthy of his title.

[JongWK]

Hi, I'm the concerned player.

He pointed out that some players are using Sorcery as an answer for everything, and that there seems to be an escalation of the use of sorcery (never mind that this player was probably the FIRST player to start using sorcery for everything and escalating sorcery, and now its somewhat coming back to bite him in the ass).

I take issue with this comment and the backhanded slap included in it, but first...

A particular concern to him is another player, one that has it in for him, going around casting spells that transform a vast area (say a 500ft by 500ft by 500ft cube) into blazing lava, meaning that if you center it on a high-warfare guy, the high-warfare guy shouldn't be able to dodge it no matter how much better he is than magic-abusing guy.

This.

I've been thinking about this for a while, and here's what disturbs me:

The book has the Pressurized Lava spell. It's a short-range weapon that trades power for distance (page 63: "The range is limited by the size, so the biggest chunks travel only a few feet, where a tiny blob can arc out over a couple of hundred feet"), and depends on the caster's Warfare to hit ("Hitting, as with all projectiles, depends on the Warfare of the caster").

So what happened in the campaign?

The top-ranked Warfare character (Morgan) uses Pressurized Lava in a duel with another character (Dietmar). It hurts the target a lot, but doesn't stop him from carrying on the fight (which he did, until multiple-and-incorrectly-named Deadly damage sword hits forced him to flee).

The next time a lava spell pops up in the campaign, it's because a third character (Maximo) creates (from a safe distance!) a giant lava square in a battlefield--the caster doesn't even have to aim with Warfare.

In that particular encounter, Morgan minimized damage to his feet by jumping on a (burning) horse and then as high as he could into the air, where he cast a Dispel Magic spell before landing back on the lava.

After that encounter, Maximo retools the spell to create a cube. A 500 ft. x 500 ft. x 500 ft. cube of lava that effectively prevents any defensive action from within. Even if you escape by shifting shadow, you have crippling lava damage on 100% of your body (I also hope you didn't open your mouth while inside the lava cube). The lava caster only needs to shift shadow with Pattern to finish the job.

What would be the next logical step in this arms race? A shadow-wide lava spell that instantly roasts everyone but the spellcaster in that shadow? In that case, who needs Shadow Storms or WMDs when you have Sorcery?

Seriously, is that the way you want an Amber campaign to go?

I go back to the first quoted text now, where you cheerfully labeled me as the guy who started it all. Let me see the "new" spells I've used:

Illusion: A variant of the Invisibility spell, only that it doesn't alter the light around you but on a fixed point in space. For obvious reasons, you can only trick NPCs or GM-controlled PCs with it most times.

Healing Touch: A spell that was designed to emulate a Paladin's Lay on Hands. The biggest in-game use it had was waking up Flora when Morgan rescued her and Starton.

Flight: Utility spell that makes the battlefield 3d rather than 2d, but cannot win a battle by itself. It's a tool, not a weapon.

Zero-G: Ah, now we are talking, right? Wrong. Gravity stops working in a small area, which might surprise an opponent for a moment. The caster might get a couple of free actions, at least until the opponent figures out how to get rid of it.

Those four spells are what you are comparing the Lava Cube of Doom against.

More later. Maybe.

[jibbajibba]

Take benedict.
But him at a nuclear ground zero, without the ability to use pattern and all. Warfare or not, he's dead. Same for Gerard, Corwin, or Fiona.
This is not because Warfare is innefectual, but because you're crippling him: Warfare needs weapons, and you're taking the appropriate ones away.

When corwin uses pattern against benedict, don't you thing benny also uses pattern to protect himself from harm? If your warfare master never develloped the means to counter or escape sorcery (and Pattern is a basic one for amberites), and is too dumb to have and use the right tools, he's not worthy of his title.

I know what you are saying. I was imagining a scenario where you have a dumb player but the character has great warefare. Imagine a 150 point game one of the Players sticks 140 on warfare. No powers just a huge combat monster. Another player takes sorcery and some other stuff. How do we compensate for the stupid player whose character really should be unbeatable in a fight from getting taken out with a fireball on turn 1 when he isn't looking?
In the books we already know that Benedict can be trapped. Brand did it (this was the first series Benedict who is a lot less Superman than the second series - that fight with the Borrel Logrus ghost really bugs me) with superior pysche.

[jibbajibba]

Hi, I'm the concerned player.


 
I take issue with this comment and the backhanded slap included in it, but first...




This.

I've been thinking about this for a while, and here's what disturbs me:

The book has the Pressurized Lava spell. It's a short-range weapon that trades power for distance (page 63: "The range is limited by the size, so the biggest chunks travel only a few feet, where a tiny blob can arc out over a couple of hundred feet"), and depends on the caster's Warfare to hit ("Hitting, as with all projectiles, depends on the Warfare of the caster").

So what happened in the campaign?

The top-ranked Warfare character (Morgan) uses Pressurized Lava in a duel with another character (Dietmar). It hurts the target a lot, but doesn't stop him from carrying on the fight (which he did, until multiple-and-incorrectly-named Deadly damage sword hits forced him to flee).

The next time a lava spell pops up in the campaign, it's because a third character (Maximo) creates (from a safe distance!) a giant lava square in a battlefield--the caster doesn't even have to aim with Warfare.

In that particular encounter, Morgan minimized damage to his feet by jumping on a (burning) horse and then as high as he could into the air, where he cast a Dispel Magic spell before landing back on the lava.

After that encounter, Maximo retools the spell to create a cube. A 500 ft. x 500 ft. x 500 ft. cube of lava that effectively prevents any defensive action from within. Even if you escape by shifting shadow, you have crippling lava damage on 100% of your body (I also hope you didn't open your mouth while inside the lava cube). The lava caster only needs to shift shadow with Pattern to finish the job.

What would be the next logical step in this arms race? A shadow-wide lava spell that instantly roasts everyone but the spellcaster in that shadow? In that case, who needs Shadow Storms or WMDs when you have Sorcery?

Seriously, is that the way you want an Amber campaign to go?

I go back to the first quoted text now, where you cheerfully labeled me as the guy who started it all. Let me see the "new" spells I've used:

Illusion: A variant of the Invisibility spell, only that it doesn't alter the light around you but on a fixed point in space. For obvious reasons, you can only trick NPCs or GM-controlled PCs with it most times.

Healing Touch: A spell that was designed to emulate a Paladin's Lay on Hands. The biggest in-game use it had was waking up Flora when Morgan rescued her and Starton.

Flight: Utility spell that makes the battlefield 3d rather than 2d, but cannot win a battle by itself. It's a tool, not a weapon.

Zero-G: Ah, now we are talking, right? Wrong. Gravity stops working in a small area, which might surprise an opponent for a moment. The caster might get a couple of free actions, at least until the opponent figures out how to get rid of it.

Those four spells are what you are comparing the Lava Cube of Doom against.

More later. Maybe.

Interesting examples.
What are the triggers on the lava cube spell? Magic of shadow, area and centre point? Personnally I would add more lynchpins advising the user that there would be a risk of them Getting caught in the lava themselves unless they specified their own location for example.

And I think your spells look good.

[moritheil]

It hurts the target a lot, but doesn't stop him from carrying on the fight (which he did, until multiple-and-incorrectly-named Deadly damage sword hits forced him to flee).

That's "deadly" to an average human . . . not a prince of Amber.

The next time a lava spell pops up in the campaign, it's because a third character (Maximo) creates (from a safe distance!) a giant lava square in a battlefield--the caster doesn't even have to aim with Warfare.

The GM should have figured out a way in which Warfare would still enter into the battle.  The base requirement for the lava, lightning, and I think all direct damage spells is that a contest of Warfare must be employed.  Whether the thing used is a square, a cube, etc. and how Warfare enters the picture is the dressing.  This amounts to an end run around the rules, and that's where your problem stems from.  It would be like me saying, "Okay, I'm going to design a spell that lets me brainwash people but doesn't require Psychic superiority."  Right away the GM should step in and say "No.  You absolutely MUST have Psychic superiority.  All types of brainwashing require it."  Similarly the character MUST win at Warfare to hit.

After that encounter, Maximo retools the spell to create a cube. A 500 ft. x 500 ft. x 500 ft. cube of lava that effectively prevents any defensive action from within. Even if you escape by shifting shadow, you have crippling lava damage on 100% of your body (I also hope you didn't open your mouth while inside the lava cube). The lava caster only needs to shift shadow with Pattern to finish the job.

What would be the next logical step in this arms race? A shadow-wide lava spell that instantly roasts everyone but the spellcaster in that shadow? In that case, who needs Shadow Storms or WMDs when you have Sorcery?

The drain on the sorcerer should escalate geometrically and eventually be lethal.  The casting time should increase dramatically.  When you are wiping out worlds with little to no forewarning, that is a good time for the GM to step in and make ad hoc rules to prevent brokenness.  (I have no objection to Dworkin wiping out worlds, but he created the Pattern.  I don't think his "sorcery" is just the beginner level 15-point sorcery.)


If I were the GM I'd rule that yes, you can summon up 500'x500'x500' of lava - but you have to walk around the area in which it is summoned into and set up all the little portal openings in advance, from a relatively close range - and then trigger it right after, as the spell will decay.  Furthermore the thing should require a crazy amount of maintenance time to keep it fresh.  It still lets him do it, but it goes from "unbeatable combat spell" to "inefficient but impressive trap that an idiot (with bad Warfare) might blunder into."

Let me see the "new" spells I've used:

Illusion: A variant of the Invisibility spell, only that it doesn't alter the light around you but on a fixed point in space. For obvious reasons, you can only trick NPCs or GM-controlled PCs with it most times.

Healing Touch: A spell that was designed to emulate a Paladin's Lay on Hands. The biggest in-game use it had was waking up Flora when Morgan rescued her and Starton.

Supported in canon.  Merlin uses Logrus healing techniques at one point.

Flight: Utility spell that makes the battlefield 3d rather than 2d, but cannot win a battle by itself. It's a tool, not a weapon.

Well, this is basically an improvement on Levitation, which we know is possible even for a relatively weak sorcerer (Victor Melman levitated objects.)

Zero-G: Ah, now we are talking, right? Wrong. Gravity stops working in a small area, which might surprise an opponent for a moment. The caster might get a couple of free actions, at least until the opponent figures out how to get rid of it.

Again, an improvement on levitation, though a wide-area one.  

I would not be dismissive of a few free actions given to a sorcerer, incidentally.

[JongWK]

That's "deadly" to an average human . . . not a prince of Amber.

I know, I know. Just joking there...

I would not be dismissive of a few free actions given to a sorcerer, incidentally.

I agree, and took advantage of the surprise it created the first (and only) time I used it against a PC... The point is, the spell itself isn't a silver bullet that solves your problem. It just buys you time to do something else.

[JongWK]

Just in case, let me be clear: I like the alternative Sorcery system. I think it's an improvement over the one in the book. I simply don't like how it's being abused and I believe there is room for improvement in this aspect.

[RPGPundit]

Hi, I'm the concerned player.


 
I take issue with this comment and the backhanded slap included in it, but first...

I don't see it as a "slap". You were the first one to really start using sorcery (Lorelai had it before you, but she didn't really USE it in the sense of being clever with it). You were the first one who was clever with it, who figured out that you could use it to make yourself more dangerous.
The difference is that other players are now using it on a level of escalation beyond what you had originally been doing.

This.

I've been thinking about this for a while, and here's what disturbs me:

The book has the Pressurized Lava spell. It's a short-range weapon that trades power for distance (page 63: "The range is limited by the size, so the biggest chunks travel only a few feet, where a tiny blob can arc out over a couple of hundred feet"), and depends on the caster's Warfare to hit ("Hitting, as with all projectiles, depends on the Warfare of the caster").

So what happened in the campaign?

The top-ranked Warfare character (Morgan) uses Pressurized Lava in a duel with another character (Dietmar). It hurts the target a lot, but doesn't stop him from carrying on the fight (which he did, until multiple-and-incorrectly-named Deadly damage sword hits forced him to flee).

The next time a lava spell pops up in the campaign, it's because a third character (Maximo) creates (from a safe distance!) a giant lava square in a battlefield--the caster doesn't even have to aim with Warfare.

In that particular encounter, Morgan minimized damage to his feet by jumping on a (burning) horse and then as high as he could into the air, where he cast a Dispel Magic spell before landing back on the lava.

After that encounter, Maximo retools the spell to create a cube. A 500 ft. x 500 ft. x 500 ft. cube of lava that effectively prevents any defensive action from within. Even if you escape by shifting shadow, you have crippling lava damage on 100% of your body (I also hope you didn't open your mouth while inside the lava cube). The lava caster only needs to shift shadow with Pattern to finish the job.

What would be the next logical step in this arms race? A shadow-wide lava spell that instantly roasts everyone but the spellcaster in that shadow? In that case, who needs Shadow Storms or WMDs when you have Sorcery?

Seriously, is that the way you want an Amber campaign to go?

I go back to the first quoted text now, where you cheerfully labeled me as the guy who started it all. Let me see the "new" spells I've used:

Illusion: A variant of the Invisibility spell, only that it doesn't alter the light around you but on a fixed point in space. For obvious reasons, you can only trick NPCs or GM-controlled PCs with it most times.

Healing Touch: A spell that was designed to emulate a Paladin's Lay on Hands. The biggest in-game use it had was waking up Flora when Morgan rescued her and Starton.

Flight: Utility spell that makes the battlefield 3d rather than 2d, but cannot win a battle by itself. It's a tool, not a weapon.

Zero-G: Ah, now we are talking, right? Wrong. Gravity stops working in a small area, which might surprise an opponent for a moment. The caster might get a couple of free actions, at least until the opponent figures out how to get rid of it.

Those four spells are what you are comparing the Lava Cube of Doom against.

More later. Maybe.

Ok, here's my thoughts on this since our last conversation:

1. Maximo has decided to try to do this with an "alter" spell, rather than "create", meaning that he's just changing a bunch of air in the space into Lava, right?
Ok, in sorcery as it exists right now, how powerful an effect you can create is limited by your Psyche. So you can, for example, do a "direction" rather than "target" Quell, and put the "direction" as an area of effect, but it will have the disadvantage (aside from the obvious that it will affect EVERYONE, friend or foe, in the area) that how many people you will be able to affect will depend on your psyche.
So, having gone "stupid" with his ranges, Maximo is bound to run into this problem shortly, he will find that, when he tries something on a vast scale like this, either he will outright fail (if he tries something ridiculously big), or the alteration (because he is doing that, TRANSFORMING something into something else) will happen so slowly that someone with superior warfare to his psyche will easily be able to have time to escape the danger. This is essentially what Morgan already did the last time they faced off, his warfare was good enough, and the transformation not instantaneous enough, that Morgan was able to escape serious damage (and a cube will be much harder to do/slower to manifest than a square).

Second, I think there's a little problem with making a "cube" that Maximo hasn't taken into account... its not like we're talking about a gelatinous cube or something like that. He may transform a cube-sized area, but then he's going to be facing a metric fuckton of lava that will quickly start pouring down collapsing and flowing all over the place (possibly on him if he's too close when he casts it).  I get the feeling he hasn't thought this through, but the guy who's 1st ranked in warfare probably would.

Maximo isn't even being smart with his sorcery, he's just being brutish. All this will do is piss people off (not players, I mean IN the game, it makes him look bad to other characters/NPCs); and he's running around acting like this is the solution to everything. But the first time he goes with this up against someone who's competent I think he's going to get his ass kicked, and be stunned that it failed him.

But beyond that, there's another issue at play here, which has to do with who YOUR character is. I'm not going to tell you how you should play Morgan, but I could tell you this, if I was the 1st ranked dude in warfare, I would take sorcery, sure, but mainly to figure out ways to DISABLE magic; in fact, I'd be disabling magic at every opportunity. The whole winning strategy for a guy like this isn't do make "flying" spells, its to disarm his opponents of their best weapon and then beat the shit out of them with his superior warfare.

But that's just me. I think that Sorcery can be enticing, because its got a lot of bells and whistles; for someone who's weak in other areas, it can lead them to get a false sense of security; and for someone who's strong in other areas, it might actually distract them into performing sub-optimally and making things harder for themselves then it really has to be, just because its fancy.

You're playing a game of chess here; Maximo has a Knight, and you've got a Knight and a Queen.  Don't be afraid to sacrifice your knight for his, leaving you with the Queen and him with fuck all.

RPGPundit

[RPGPundit]

The GM should have figured out a way in which Warfare would still enter into the battle.  The base requirement for the lava, lightning, and I think all direct damage spells is that a contest of Warfare must be employed.  Whether the thing used is a square, a cube, etc. and how Warfare enters the picture is the dressing.  This amounts to an end run around the rules, and that's where your problem stems from.  It would be like me saying, "Okay, I'm going to design a spell that lets me brainwash people but doesn't require Psychic superiority."  Right away the GM should step in and say "No.  You absolutely MUST have Psychic superiority.  All types of brainwashing require it."  Similarly the character MUST win at Warfare to hit.

Well, he still must, its just like any other situation. The guy with warfare has to actually do something, obviously, he can't just stand there and say "my warfare will save me!" and then be surprised if he gets his ass kicked. But assuming the warfare guy is trying to react, and thinks of the right way to react to this (like Jong did in his own example), keeping in mind that different attacks require different reactions, it will turn into (in basic terms) a contest of the caster's psyche versus the defender's warfare.

The drain on the sorcerer should escalate geometrically and eventually be lethal.  The casting time should increase dramatically.  

The casting time, in my magic system, depends on the complexity of the spell, and this spell is pretty crude, really. But yes, it is more tiring to make a bigger effect. The magic-abuser in question has a very high endurance, so he's got a lot of leeway, but if he was slugging these spells off en masse, it would tire him out.

RPGPundit

[RPGPundit]

Trust me, Maximo's spell isn't a "magic bullet" either... if he keeps doing things the way he's doing, he's going to get his ass kicked, sooner or later... if not by you then by someone else.

In a fight between him and you, I would bet hard cash on you winning, as long as you weren't stupid (and he wasn't any smarter than he's been thus far). Think of it this way: every time you've faced him so far in absolutely anything, you've beaten him.

RPGPundit

[gabriel_ss4u]

Say... does this 'about to be melted to a crisp' character have a devotee? Someone that, within the game may cause them to be rescued from this 'almost inescapable' threat?