AMIA ARCHIVE • View topic - Magical Damage

I've been poking around and fold on snippets here and there, but I am curious if anything has changed:

Would a fireball potentially cause damage to its surroundings? A hellball? Ice storm or Earthquake? My findings are that they can, but say a fireball's fire is not lasting beyond the initial blast. I'm curious if there has been discussion on this in the last year or so or a DM ruling. I'm loath to operate on old information not posted anywhere official.

Yep they all would, people should be more mindful of where they cast some of the more destructive spells. You'll never see me cast Hellball in a cave, that's for damn sure.

I know a thing or two about collateral damage >.>

WYSIWYG. Our fireballs don't actually cause fires in game, nor do our earthquakes break down fences. Sure, you could say that it's an effect we ought to RP. But I don't think anyone can reasonably be expected to account for it. I mean, it would be inappropriate for a DM or another player to claim that your spell just had destructive consequences you did not expect, because that does not happen consistently. If I've observed other characters lob fireballs at haystacks repeatedly with no effect, I am justified to expect similar results. The same goes for Party PvP, really: AoE spells are thrown around all the time and they don't harm party members, so suddenly confronting a mage with IC consequences for something that did not actually happen ("I have third-degree burns all over and will die of infection soon, you bastard!") is not cool.

We already have a rule for it, actually. You could interpret enivornmental and other non-WYSIWYG effects as "PnP effects" that require consent. If you want your spell to do more than it mechanically does in NWN, you ask for permission. That's how spells like Dominate Person work, too - it just dazes PCs, and the full effects of the domination are up to mutual consent.

I would assume that standard magic is easy enough to shape and control and people have just learned not to hit unintended targets. It's a bit of a cheap answer, but it accounts for the biggest issues.

I think that's a bit of a stretchy interpretation of the P&P-use rule, though I sort of get what you mean.

For me it's easier to consider destructive spells as an ultimately unpredictable force, which is why Guldorand was razed but Ceyren's Mill (which I remember, long long ago took a hellball and some Greater Ruins right in the middle, just to stop an unruly PC) was unaffected. Yes, this is no less a cheap answer than "Well we shaped our spells" (although the two answers can work together) but it's not like we can put every bit of damage in the module, and open the can of worms inherent in turning off party protection vs AoE spells.

As to whether or not a DM shouldn't claim collateral damage was caused - why not? Failing to foresee the consequences of excessive force is a well-worn trope for powerful characters ("I didn't know my own strength!"). If the spell sometimes does nothing unexpected and sometimes just "gets away from you" and blows up a house, well, you probably should've been more careful when you bent the laws of physics. Plus y'know, it creates roleplay opportunities and forces PCs to apply different approaches to problems. Net good over ensuring that magic behaves consistently.

I am a big fan of the WYSIWYG approach to just about anything and in the habit of rejecting your reality and substituting it with my own if someone claims there is something that I can not actually see in the module or something that is not represented by the game's engine.

serbiris wrote:

I think that's a bit of a stretchy interpretation of the P&P-use rule, though I sort of get what you mean.

For me it's easier to consider destructive spells as an ultimately unpredictable force, which is why Guldorand was razed but Ceyren's Mill (which I remember, long long ago took a hellball and some Greater Ruins right in the middle, just to stop an unruly PC) was unaffected. Yes, this is no less a cheap answer than "Well we shaped our spells" (although the two answers can work together) but it's not like we can put every bit of damage in the module, and open the can of worms inherent in turning off party protection vs AoE spells.

As to whether or not a DM shouldn't claim collateral damage was caused - why not? Failing to foresee the consequences of excessive force is a well-worn trope for powerful characters ("I didn't know my own strength!"). If the spell sometimes does nothing unexpected and sometimes just "gets away from you" and blows up a house, well, you probably should've been more careful when you bent the laws of physics. Plus y'know, it creates roleplay opportunities and forces PCs to apply different approaches to problems. Net good over ensuring that magic behaves consistently.

I think the crucial difference is that your answer has someone else arbitrarily deciding when your spell is going to have empirically unprecedented, inconsistent consequences, without your input. It really is no one's business to decide that my spell, out of the hundreds that go unnoticed on the server daily, just happens to have some unhappy consequences that aren't part of the game. It's not that the spells are "unpredictable" either; a DM would not roll a die and decide that 1% of the time a haystack is going to catch fire when you fireball it. You could cast the spell a thousand times on an empty server and nothing would happen, but it is very predictable what a DM would say if you wanted to do that in an event. If it was a scripted element of randomness that applied equally to everyone at every time, it would be fine. Someone just feeling like telling you something is not random.

When your experienced, high-Wis, high-Int wizard applies a strategy he has seen work a hundred times and casts a spell he knows like the back of his hand (to the point where he could have a baby in the party and it wouldn't get burned), suddenly gets told that he blew up a house and killed ten people, that does not generate good RP. That is just plain inconsiderate and not believable. It's not that big of a deal when it's just something immediate and perhaps funny, without long-term implications, but I can imagine something like this ruining a wizard's reputation for good, by no fault of the character or player. You can't say they should have been more careful if, by all evidence possibly available to them, they had no reason to be.

Mind you, I have no issue with players agreeing that a spell is going to have some additional effect, or a DM warning players in advance (either IC or OOC) to consider that their spells might have unwanted consequences in this special context of a DM event. But just deciding, after the fact, that you are going to use against the character and player something that isn't even part of the game is not cool. Especially since no one seems to agree just what the exact power of the spells should be.

I don't think applying the PnP rule is much a stretch, because igniting objects is a feature explicitly mentioned in the PnP description of Fireball but not in the NWN version. That's how we apply the rule to every other NWN spell with additional PnP effects: you are going to need consent to use Legend Lore for anything other than a skill bonus, Dominate Person/Monster for more effect than a daze, Gate to travel between planes (to escape a PvP situation, for example), Magic Circle against Alignment to block summons, etc. Why should environmental damage spells be any different?

Agreed. Suddenly being accused of trying to murder my team by throwing a fireball in front of the party members while they are fighting is so arbitrary. They are killign the same beasts again and again without getting into it at all in IC perspective, getting into maegs spells suddenly feels very much like finger pointing.

However, in some cases under DM supervision, I've utilized spells to cause collateral damage. First by letting have them know what I intent and most cases they've been fine. If DM lets me know in the begining that my AoE spells suddenly will have collateral damage as well, then I know to be more mindful than blasting off all I can. I think it is only fair to let both parties know that spells that work usually are now working a bit differently.

If DMs take more of an effort to keep players informed of the potential for collateral, will you consider it to be more fair? In standard hunting trips it's really not going to matter in the vast majority of cases anyway, but in special events I think the requirement for a bit more finesse isn't unreasonable. So basically if there was more of a standard for collateral in special cases, and DMs warning in advance some sort of "unexpected collateral is in effect" or maybe even asking the player's permission if it's alright that a spell goes out of control? I'd rather have the option for collateral, unexpected or otherwise, for what it can bring, over no collateral. Besides, Good-aligned PCs are supposed to be prepared to not swing their power around like a cudgel for the very reason that they might harm innocents etc. That's one of the big advantages of Evil PCs - you just need to worry about the job at hand, not the way you do it.

I still disagree that the spells which are observed to function as you like should always be like that because I consider it an engine limitation which we should strive to overcome rather than accept, but that's just a matter of opinion. Magic is always going to be a bit of an unpredictable force in my eyes, even though it behaves fairly well in Forgotten Realms/D&D.

I am fine with consequences in the terms of the PnP rule, meaning if agreed upon beforehand.

Anything else is just blatant godgaming, and people who try to godgame get no sympathy from me. I have seen people do that a lot on Amia, and I have never gone with it. One example that is old enough to give is a certain someone I am not very fond of as a player pulling a soul gem or something like that out of this pocket and going "look, the souls of the dead from Benwick's Hollow are screaming that you are wrong, so you are wrong" during an argument with Gagis. NOPE. Telling me that the 2309273973th Horrid WIlting I cast suddenly killed a baby, a puppy and a crippled old woman they just imagined next to us would be equally bad bullshit.

Well I certainly wouldn't be happy if players had that sort of power, no, but DMs are kind of expected to run at a higher operating standard - which is just as well, because while a player's RP, if dodgy, can be dealt with by going "Nope!" and moving off, you kind of need to deal with whatever a DM does and make inquiries if you find it to be problematic.

Yes. The DM actually has the power to spawn a neutral baby, puppy and an old woman there, so I can see them and get what I see. The engine will also do the job of calculating how much damage I did to them.

If the DM on the other hand decides that the wilting suddenly kills all plant life in an area where I have cast it before without similar effects, I am liable to call bullshit. This is a particularly good example since Horrid Wilting is supposed to affect all living creatures in the area and to be extra-effective against plants. However, in NWN it clearly does not do that unless we agree to go by the PnP description for the occasion.

Silvarus wrote:

Yes. The DM actually has the power to spawn a neutral baby, puppy and an old woman there, so I can see them and get what I see. The engine will also do the job of calculating how much damage I did to them.

If the DM on the other hand decides that the wilting suddenly kills all plant life in an area where I have cast it before without similar effects, I am liable to call bullshit. This is a particularly good example since Horrid Wilting is supposed to affect all living creatures in the area and to be extra-effective against plants. However, in NWN it clearly does not do that unless we agree to go by the PnP description for the occasion.

Yeah the ever changing rules on spells and the environmental effects given the DM online at the time is the pure reason why I have like 50 uses of earthquake on items in my bag in case anyone pulls that crap in the mill..... I'll go right to their home and quake till we have a new entrance to the lowerdark.... or if they are in the underdark the core of the planet I assume?

But yeah not a fan of the ever changing effects of spells and power hard to know what will happen.

Serbiris, if I am told beforehand that special rules/circumstance apply, preferably with a reference to the version of the spell a DM is going to enforce so my character can act according to the knowledge he would reasonably have, I think it's fair. It is not common sense, though, so it really needs to be communicated/agreed upon beforehand.

We can overcome the limitations of the game engine when we want to tell a story. But, in general, I think we should keep rules that aren't enforced by the game to an absolute minimum. Something that is so explicitly a part of the "game" mode of the role-playing game, like how spells work, should really be handled mechanically. Something like that is a given that we automatically accept when we play a video game, and it would be psychologically unreasonable to expect people to realize, remember and stick to additional rules have no representation in game.

So hellballs in Amia Forest are a-OK?

I never liked the WYSIWYG way of looking at things. Quite simply the NWN mechanics don't allow for that level of realism that you would find in PnP. If you are spamming Fireballs at a dry stack of hay then yes it certainly would catch fire. All because there isn't a DM to RP it for you and make a few fancy effects doesn't mean it wouldn't catch fire. Just ignoring what impact a destructive spell could have on the environment your casting it in is just poor RP imho.

I like to consider other variables as to whether a spell is more destructive. Like if you cast Fireball on a stack of hay in the field, luckily for you it was raining all last night so it only smouldered a bit. If you are casting Earthquake, unlucky for you you cast it near to a fault line now all hell has broken lose. Now these would need DM oversight but just be smart about what you cast where. It seems like a lot of casters don't take into consideration just what a spell would do ICly, not what the NWN engine allows to happen.

I really wish AoE spells affected party members too. Seeing a player ruin into a Hellball to attack someone because they know they wont be harmed and the enemy will be KDed is all kinds of retarded. Seeing a caster spamming Icestorm on enemies where he has party members attacking those enemies in melee range just makes me cringe.

Even aside from the principled approach to WYSIWYG vs. PnP adaptation, I think the keyword is arbitrary. As a general rule of thumb, a DM is better off not provoking players with arbitrary changes to confound their efforts just to present a challenge, especially after the fact (such as after the spellcasting in this instance). Sometimes these extra challenges are welcome additions if the player knows about it in advance, but if they have no relevance to the story and just seem to be tacked on as an aggravation to the players, that does no one any good.

I also have a hard time believing makes have 100% control over what an area of effect spell... affects. Sure, I could see a wizard flinging a smaller, more compact, or otherwise more controlled fireball as context required without having to RP every bit out ... but it's hard to swallow that Acid Rain wouldn't hit or affect the ground. Likewise, if a bandit or troll ran down the road near Bendir and someone blasted it with an area spell, bystanders not in your party WILL be affected.

I play regularly with someone who cannot earthquake during events for fear of hurting half the people around. The simply extrapolate that I to not using an Earthquake where it might seem dangerous to.

I don't think anyone but a DM should say you killed a granny or blew up a house at random, but it is not unreasonable to say your massive cloud of acid on the forest ground isn't going to kill a few bugs.

WYSIWYG doesn't always work, otherwise NPCS and their belongings are dawn near immortal.

Edit: Posted from phone. Typos and auto correct abound.

Magical Damage - Environment Edition

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