Disarming or Destroying weapons in a zone?

[citadel97501]

Sorry, if these questions have been asked my search-fu is weak on this site.

I was helping my players with their rotes, and examples of magical spells, and I wanted to make sure I understood the rules for these two events? 

Destroying items, specifically weapons?
If destroying all the guns, and swords in a zone, lets say as a water spell would this need to be a 5 power spell, 2 for the zone wide effect, and 3 for the maneuver, or would you need an 8 or so 2 for the zone and 6 to break them like they were metal door?

What about disarming?
Would I need to beat an enemies relevant skill by 3, or just power 3 and "hit" them?

[Belial666]

A spell needs more than just the power you put into it to work. You need to justify how that power works. Against guns, it is really easy; 5 shifts of intentional hexing can break most automatic/modern firearms, 7 shifts of hexing can break up to late 19th-century technology. Add 2 shifts for zone-wide and guns, grenades, spy/police/military gadgets, tazers, stunners and all that are gone.

Disarming is done as a maneuver. The effect strength has to be at least 3 or the opponent's relevant defense, whichever is higher for the maneuver to work. So if they got a might of 6 and you're trying to disarm them, then your spell needs a base strength of 6. Ideally, you go for spell types that work against the lowest defense.

To disarm metal weapons like swords and the like, remember that scene from Lord of the Rings and also recall that metal can heat up real well. Use fire (or extreme cold) to justify a disarm of the spell's strength vs Endurance then add 2 shifts for zone-wide. If you are feeling vindictive, add a couple of shifts for duration so if they try to pick up the weapon again while the spell lasts, they realize it is still extremely cold/hot.
Use magnetic pull to justify disarming vs Might. Extra duration does not make sense but extra shifts to throw the weapons several zones further do.
Electricity for the Air element works just as well as fire.
Water is the element of entropy. So to disarm, justify it as a moment of extremely bad luck so they somehow trip up on their own weapons and drop them; a disarm against athletics.
Spirit could disarm with main force (vs Might) or you could "command" them to drop their weapons with subtler mind magic (vs Discipline). Though the latter could be Lawbreaking.


To destroy weapons, you got a big problem. If you make zone-wide spells, how do you target only the weapons and not their wielders or the surrounding objects? The disarming works as zone-wide because the effect would be irrelevant against targets that aren't weapons. But a straight attack might work on everything; try to break weapons zone-wide with main force and you might break their wielders too. To justify a zone-wide attack only working on the weapons, use some effect that would only affect them.
Magnetic force to tear them apart would affect the weapons - and other nearby metal items. Weapons are fairly fragile - even human strength could break a sword or axe if it was swung too hard for too long and firearms are easier to damage. So a strength 6 might effect (plus zone-wide) will break most metal weaponry without breaking bigger, sturdier metal objects.
Heat to melt them or cold to shatter them, again working only on metal. Strength needed to do it would be similar but the damage potential to other metal objects nearby is a bit higher.
Pure force does not work; it would affect everything in the zone (which would be bad)
A rust attack via entropy works just as well as heat or cold.

[citadel97501]

OK, thank you I was thinking about Fire magic, and Water magic for them, but I hadn't thought of using the hexing system, which I admit I had completely ignored except for a basic compel for the wizards. 

I would have thought that since you use a mental image of how you want your spell to work, that you would choose the type of objects that you destroy, with a zone attack and any extra effect would be a compel, or uncontrolled levels of power affecting the zone, for instance a water entropy spell "begins rusting all the nails holding a building up, or melting through your car."  Now I am thinking of a couple Eureka episodes. . .

[EdgeOfDreams]

I would have thought that since you use a mental image of how you want your spell to work, that you would choose the type of objects that you destroy, with a zone attack and any extra effect would be a compel, or uncontrolled levels of power affecting the zone, for instance a water entropy spell "begins rusting all the nails holding a building up, or melting through your car."  Now I am thinking of a couple Eureka episodes. . .

I think you may be over-estimating how precise Evocation is allowed to be.  For a Thaumaturgic spell, sure, you could rust all the nails in a building, but you'd need one of those nails as part of the spell in order to establish the connection.

Go take another read through the basic Evocation rules and the limits on how it works.  You *can* do some pretty tricky stuff with it, but you need to justify how you're working within the limits.

[Belial666]

Rules-wise, if you use the "zonewide" effect for 2 shifts of power, you must hit everything in the zone that can be hit. (including yourself - throwing a fireball at your feet is bad)

If you want to nail individual targets, you must normally split both the Power and the Control of a spell. So if you want to hit 3 targets at Power 3, Control 3, you need Power 9 Control 9 for the initial spell.

[Wolfwood2]

Rules-wise, if you use the "zonewide" effect for 2 shifts of power, you must hit everything in the zone that can be hit. (including yourself - throwing a fireball at your feet is bad)

(Bah, a smart wizard will take the supplementary action to move one zone first and suck up the -1.)

On the other hand, I've done zone wide evocation attacks before and I don't recall that we ever had the weapons of my opponents roll defense.  Techncially according to the rules on breaking objects, they should roll defense with a bonus equal to their quality, and they are unlikely to take consequences if we exceed their stress track.  It probably would have seemed a bit much if I got to not only attack everybody in a zone but destroyed all their weapons as well.  Do other folks generally have the bad guys' weapons roll defense in response to a zone attack?

If not, it seems fair game to do the opposite and have a zone-wide attack that targets only weapons.  In particular, I could see a Fire-based attack that makes all gunpowder in the zone detonate.