Author Topic: Blocking Magic Internally - Help  (Read 32599 times)

Offline Lavecki121

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Re: Blocking Magic Internally - Help
« Reply #30 on: November 23, 2012, 02:46:23 PM »
I dont believe thats right. Its the mechanical backing for the narrative effect. It makes sense mechanically because it will still mimic what I am going for narratively.

Either way I have decided to go with a block anyway so it is moot.

Offline Sanctaphrax

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Re: Blocking Magic Internally - Help
« Reply #31 on: November 23, 2012, 11:13:04 PM »
I dont believe that it is unfair.

Doesn't matter whether you believe it. It remains true.

Mental stress bypasses worn armour and pretty much all defensive Powers. It more or less does what All Creatures Are Equal Before God does, plus it changes around the skills used to defend.

Take a look at Our World, and think about how each character would handle a mental evocation. You'll notice that many of them, including supposedly tough characters like Sue and the Loup-Garou, get crushed.

As for the narrative thing, normally inflicting psychological trauma with Spirit is reasonable enough. But not if your spell is narrated as a pressure point jab.

Offline Taran

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Re: Blocking Magic Internally - Help
« Reply #32 on: November 23, 2012, 11:22:29 PM »
It's more than a pressure point jab.  It's evocation through fists.  It's disrupting the flow of energy that the wizard draws on to cast his spells.

There are many physical things that have a spiritual aspect to them: acupuncture, Tai CHi, meditation.  All these things are done to manipulate the energy around and in a person.

Cutting off a wizards source of power is mental stress.  It's affecting the wizards very being, their sense of identity- their magic.

I see it working fine in a narrative sense.  I like it because, narratively, this couldn't affect Sue or the Loup-Garou because it could only be used on casters.

Offline Sanctaphrax

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Re: Blocking Magic Internally - Help
« Reply #33 on: November 23, 2012, 11:37:17 PM »
Actually, that's just another problem. Having Powers swing massively in power based on narrative conceits is generally a bad idea. That's what Compels are for.

If you really must write a narratively limited Power, use Limitation or another source of game-by-game costing.

Oh, and even if you accept the extremely-sketchy claim that you can damage people psychologically with acupuncture, you still have the pretty serious issue that inflicting mental stress doesn't really prevent spellcasting.

So you filled my third stress box and gave me a mild consequence, huh? Guess I'll have to cast my spell exactly the way I was planning to anyway, since I still have three empty stress boxes.

Offline Taran

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Re: Blocking Magic Internally - Help
« Reply #34 on: November 24, 2012, 12:21:05 AM »
One of the sample spells in YS requires you to tag a "tree aspect" in order to entangle people and prevent  movement.  So without that narrative aspect you can't cast the spell.

This spell requires a spell casting aspect.  If we want to get technical, we can make it the same as above and say that the person has to make an assessment on the target to tag an aspect that relates to their casting ability.

Filling the 3rd stress box doesn't prevent spell casting, it hampers spell casting.  Now instead of using a box, the caster has to use a consequence.  It's requiring more and more effort on the spellcasters part to cast each spell.  He has less boxes to choose from, that hampers casting.

I also don't think I'm making sketchy claims.  By that token were-wolves running around is sketchy.  It's a game about the supernatural where mundane things have extraordinary connetations.

I have a friend who suffers migranes.  They affect her mood, her personality, make her tired and unable to do the typical things most people do, like go out on a sunny day.  That affects a person on an emotional level.  She's tried medications and a lot of other things but the only thing she says works is her weekly visit to have someone do reike.

Take it for whatever you want it to be.  Maybe it's a placebo, but in a game where magic exists, things like that are magic.

EDIT:  I left the computer and thought about it some more.

IF you require an aspect to tag (by declaring/guessing/assessing) - an aspect indicating that your target is a spell caster - then it limits how much you can attack doing mental stress.  The first one would be a free tag, but every attack after that would require a FP.

It certainly makes it a lot less OP, if that's your concern.

« Last Edit: November 24, 2012, 12:35:12 AM by Taran »

Offline sinker

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Re: Blocking Magic Internally - Help
« Reply #35 on: November 24, 2012, 02:30:46 AM »
I'm with sancta here. I have a really hard time with a punch altering how I see myself or the world (on its own anyway). And if you cause a consequence, someone needs to go to a councilor or psychiatrist to fix it? You have to admit that is a bit off.

Offline Taran

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Re: Blocking Magic Internally - Help
« Reply #36 on: November 24, 2012, 02:46:42 AM »
I'm with sancta here. I have a really hard time with a punch altering how I see myself or the world (on its own anyway). And if you cause a consequence, someone needs to go to a councilor or psychiatrist to fix it? You have to admit that is a bit off.

You're looking at it the wrong way.  You don't need a psychiatrist, you need someone who can re-adjust your energy so that you have access to your magic.  You have the consequence "misaligned chakra's" or something that a GM can compel to make you screw up spells.  It's a spirit evocation.  How does blasting someone with your mind make any more narrative sense?  I want to play a psionisist.  I use spirit evocations and deal mental stress.  It makes sense because it's "mind magic"?  It's a pretty common trope but makes less sense to me than what 's been suggested already.

Anyways, I know people's hang-ups on dealing mental stress, so I don't even want to get into it. 

EDIT:  Since I'm not insane
http://avatar.wikia.com/wiki/Chi_blocking

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PressurePoint
« Last Edit: November 24, 2012, 03:09:21 AM by Taran »

Offline sinker

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Re: Blocking Magic Internally - Help
« Reply #37 on: November 24, 2012, 03:27:02 AM »
I totally understand the concept and it's one I've played with myself, but mental stress isn't chi or any kind of energy for that matter. Mental stress is one's concept of self. You damage someone's mental stress track by changing who they are, not how they behave or what they can do physically, but what they believe. Mental stress is dealt by torture, mental trauma or spells that alter the very psyche of a person. Mental consequences are almost always repaired in the care of a psychologist. It just doesn't fit to me.

You're doing something physical that alters someone's physical body and the energy running through it. In the same way that a sleep spell deals physical stress or suffocation deals physical stress, so too would this.

As for the issue that the defender makes the consequence, they must make a consequence that fits the attack. If they make a consequence that is not related to energy disruption, then you didn't hit them. That's how it works, and it's fine.

Offline Taran

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Re: Blocking Magic Internally - Help
« Reply #38 on: November 24, 2012, 03:34:33 AM »
I don't understand how one's sense of self does not translate to a spiritual nature, ie: their soul or life energy.  Why does it have to be a psychiatrist?  Why not a priest or shaman?

*sigh*  It's just one of these debates I don't want to be having.  I concede.  I actually conceded in my last post, then edited it.  :P

Offline sinker

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Re: Blocking Magic Internally - Help
« Reply #39 on: November 24, 2012, 03:51:34 AM »
Conceding never leads to good discourse. Please, fully explain your side so that I may understand it (even if I disagree).

To be honest I've simply always seen chi as a physical concept. Linked to the spiritual to be sure, but ultimately actual physical energy like light or heat. To repair one's chi one must heal or see a doctor who will physically repair it (albeit a different kind of doctor). Thants a significant part of my problem with this.

Offline Taran

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Re: Blocking Magic Internally - Help
« Reply #40 on: November 24, 2012, 04:11:52 AM »
I see chi as spiritual energy so it's tied to the soul.  When the body dies, that energy is released.  The spirit goes wherever it's gonna go...spiritually speaking, to heaven or wherever.  I don't see magic as an intellectual thing I see it as a more emotional/spiritual thing (from how it's explained in the novels).

Psychological damage, to me, is more of an intellectual thing.  It's the brain/chemicals coping with trauma - physical or emotional.

So while I see torture causing mental stress and therfore requiring a psychologist helping someone to work through their problems, I also see spiritual damage being caused by things that can manipulate that spiritual energy(which could also be torture).  But you'd need magical/spiritual council to heal those consequences.  They are 2 sides of the same coin, and that coin is the mental stress track.

It seems like the biggest wall here is the delivery system.  If I said that I pointed my finger and delivered an 3 shift mental evocation using spirit from 2 zones away, which is implied (I don't want to get into that debate) to be legal in the rules, then many people would be fine with that.  The fact that the character is delivering that exact same evocation through a fist attack makes it seem less "realistic".  And the only reason he can use fists instead of discipline is because he took a stunt.
 
I don't see how staring at someone and making their brain bleed is any more realistic.

Offline Tedronai

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Re: Blocking Magic Internally - Help
« Reply #41 on: November 24, 2012, 05:29:17 AM »
If someone says to me that they 'fire off a mental evocation', or whatever, I'd be asking them what that evocation is trying to DO.  And 'deal mental stress' doesn't qualify as an appropriate answer, here.

It's not the fact that it's being delivered 'through a fists attack' that makes it seem 'less realistic' to me, it's the explanation of HOW it's dealing the stress: by interfering with the flow of energies.  Such interference, to me, does not seem to justify mental stress.
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Offline Sanctaphrax

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Re: Blocking Magic Internally - Help
« Reply #42 on: November 24, 2012, 08:51:32 PM »
So far as I'm concerned, the whole connection between chi and mental health sounds like a religion I don't follow. Therefore, sketchy.

One of the sample spells in YS requires you to tag a "tree aspect" in order to entangle people and prevent  movement.  So without that narrative aspect you can't cast the spell.

...

EDIT:  I left the computer and thought about it some more.

IF you require an aspect to tag (by declaring/guessing/assessing) - an aspect indicating that your target is a spell caster - then it limits how much you can attack doing mental stress.  The first one would be a free tag, but every attack after that would require a FP.

It certainly makes it a lot less OP, if that's your concern.

The tree spell is a single rote. It's not a whole class of spells. If you don't have a tree handy you can just cast a different spell.

This is different. It makes spellcasting way more powerful against spellcasters than against anyone else. That's not good.

Offline UmbraLux

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Re: Blocking Magic Internally - Help
« Reply #43 on: November 24, 2012, 09:54:39 PM »
So far as I'm concerned, the whole connection between chi and mental health sounds like a religion I don't follow. Therefore, sketchy.
Not relevant.  We're talking about a setting with wizards, werewolves, fomor, dragons, vampires, and even mythical gods.  Adding the concept of chi isn't exactly a stretch.
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Offline Mrmdubois

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Re: Blocking Magic Internally - Help
« Reply #44 on: November 24, 2012, 10:02:25 PM »
Adding any concept about chi isn't really a stretch either because magic can do anything you believe it can.