Smother Again--Pete and Loz?

[Briquelet]

I've seen it posted before, but I have questions about Smother. Case in point...

A sorcerer has Smother and wishes dead the four Lunars standing 15m away in the courtyard outside Gringle's Pawnshop. The sorcerer is observing from a guest room window on the second floor.
Sorcerer = 68% Grimoire 71% Manipulation Pow 16

Round One
The sorcerer has initiative over the armored soldiers who are talking with Gringle below. He begins casting his Smother with up to 8 points of manipulation avalaible. He does not need to manipulate anything except range and number of targets. This is only two manipulations and the spell will, therefore, take him two actions to cast. The sorcerer pushes the number of targets to four (3 levels) and the range to 1600m (4 levels), just for fun.

The sorcerer begins casting on his first action.
The soldiers dismount on their first actions.
On the sorcerer's second action, the spell is complete (remember, he only performed two different manipulations.) He rolls a 67% for his Grimoire skill. The soldiers' resilience (55%) rolls are 89 (fail), 69(fail), 42(failed), and 19(failed). Therefore, all four will begin taking suffocation damage at the start of next round.

On the soldiers' second turn, they draw weapons and run toward the door of the shop.

The soldiers with shields have a third action and they go crashing into the Gringle's negotiations room.

Second Round
At the very start of the round each soldier attempts a basic resilience roll to determine the damage taken against the asphyxiation. Their rolls are 1) 92(fail) 2) 14(success) 3) 18(success) and 4) 01(crit). Soldier 1 immediately takes 1D3 to both his chest and head. Soldiers 2 and 3 each take 1D3 to the chest. Soldier 4 takes no damage this round. Again, they are now -40% to all skill attempts because they are slowly dying.

The sorcerer goes first, and since the spell is autonomous, he decides to run like hell. He sprints through the pawnshop to a back room and slams the door.

The soldiers's first action allows them to enter the pawnshop and get to the door they heard slam.

The sorcerer's second action is to throw the bolt on the door and push against it to keep the Lunars from entering.

The Lunars' second action is to begin making panicked Brawn tests to knock the door down, but they all fail due to the -40% penalty.

The two Lunars with shields get one more action and they begin hacking into the door with their scimitars to weaken it.

Round Three
At the very start of the round each soldier attempts a basic resilience roll again to determine the damage taken against the asphyxiation. Their rolls are 1) 66(fail) 2) 58(fail) 3) 00(fumble) and 4) 07(success but not a crit). Soldier 1 immediately takes another 1D3 to both his chest and head. Amazingly, he is still on his feet. Soldier 2 takes another 1D3 to both his chest and head and stays on his feet. Soldier 3 takes a D6 to his chest and head, dropping his chest to zero. He attempts a resilience roll at -40% and fails, leaving him unconscious. Soldier 4 takes 1D3 to his chest.

The sorcerer's first action is to cast Damage Resistance upon himself, giving him a 7 point damage shield.

The soldiers continue pounding on the door during their second action and miraculously break it in with a very low Brawn roll.

On his second action, the sorcerer steps to the back of the room and declares a defensive stance (parry) with his quarterstaff.

On their their action, the two Lunars with shields Charge in and attack. They are both at 20% due to the -40% penalty, so both miss. The sorcerer cannot parry a charge, so his action is lost.

Round Four
At the start of the round, soldiers one and two now drop due to excessive ongoing damage. The last Lunar standing now fails his resilience roll and takes 1D3 to his chest and head.

The sorcerer remains defensive on his first action and will parry the Lunar's attack.

The Lunar attacks and actually hits the sorcerer, who failed to parry. The damage is exactly 7 pts, a good blow, but not enough to get through the Damage Resistance.

The Sorcerer ends up surviving until the start of Round Five when soldier #4 drops like a stone.

Ok, let me know first of all if this example was correct. Second, what would have happened if the Lunars had killed the sorcerer--would the autonomous Smother have ended with his death?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Mongoose Pete]

I've only skimmed over it, but I think it was correct until round 3 where you applied the -40% penalty to the soldier's Resilience roll. Personally I'd only impose the penalty to physical or mental actions - its more a psychological penalty for feeling yourself slowly suffocate.

Other than that it looked okay. Smother can be deadly if cast in the right situation, but tough opponents may last nearly a minute before passing out from reaching Major Wound level. So you need to plan it well.

Something else to note, is that those collapsed soldiers with only Serious Wounds when the spell ends will survive. Those reduced to Major Wounds can possibly survive if successfully resuscitated by First Aid. So the spell doesn't necessary have to end in death.

If the sorcerer was slain, then his spell would have ceased immediately.

Does that help?

 

[Dal Thrax]

Well that spell is going to last POW minutes, so I don't really expect that their will be any survivors. Since the sorcerer only cast the spell at magnitude the targets best bet is probably to cast Dismiss Magic or Countermagic on the income spell (dismiss magic talks about targeting a single spell, which MIGHT allow one casting to dispel the smother on all the targets depending on how you read it).

Some people will yell at me for saying this but anyone who is going into harms way on a regular basis probably should have access to some kind of counterspell. When your breaking up a domestic dispute on a world with common magic, you probably some form of spell protection.

 

[Mongoose Pete]

Well that spell is going to last POW minutes, so I don't really expect that their will be any survivors.

I was only pointing out the option that the sorcerer can end the spell early... for those apparently few games where consequences occur from killing, rather than merely incapacitating, foes.

If a sorcerer simply allows a smother spell to continue for its full duration, then yes, all the victims are dead.

 

[Dal Thrax]

Well that spell is going to last POW minutes, so I don't really expect that their will be any survivors.

I was only pointing out the option that the sorcerer can end the spell early... for those apparently few games where consequences occur from killing, rather than merely incapacitating, foes.

If a sorcerer simply allows a smother spell to continue for its full duration, then yes, all the victims are dead.

I hate to nitpick but but

Autonomous: The spell's effect will remain until its duration ends, without need for concentration.

The sorcery rules don't provide any mechanism for canceling an autonomous effect short of a neutralize magic. Smother isn't exactly high on my list of non lethal options for this reason (as a concentrate spell even Wrack is less likely to produce fatalities than smother).

If you don't mean to kill somebody don't go around casting death spells on them!

 

[ThatGuy]

That is an interesting interpretation of the rules. It definately injects an interesting textural element of your-spells-are-deadly-whether-you-like-it-or-not :twisted: I like the spirit of added spell awareness and responsibility, but I think I will allow cessation of spells by players in my game. It just feels more humane, and, I don't know, Sorcerorous (is that even a word?)

 

[GoingDown]

Autonomous: The spell's effect will remain until its duration ends, without need for concentration.

The sorcery rules don't provide any mechanism for canceling an autonomous effect short of a neutralize magic. Smother isn't exactly high on my list of non lethal options for this reason (as a concentrate spell even Wrack is less likely to produce fatalities than smother).

If you don't mean to kill somebody don't go around casting death spells on them!

But, on page 129 :

Dismissing Sorcery Spells

Like Common Magic, a caster can dismiss any active sorcery
spell(s) he has cast as a single Combat Action, at any point.

It pretty much means that autonomous sorcery spells can be cancelled whenever sorcerer wishes to do so.

EDIT. By the way, here is something I have think of. Should it go like this:

1. Sorcerer casts smother
2. opponent tries to resist the spell. If successful, he resists whole spell effect, and doesn't start to suffocate at all.
3. IF resist test was unsuccessful, opponent needs to make another resist roll (not opposed roll this time) to determine how long he can go without penalties . If this test is successful, he can go CON * 1d4 seconds without penalties. If unsuccessful, he starts to suffocate immediately and continues to do so each combat round

So, first test is to resist the spell completely. In Sorcery spell resisting rules, there is phrase :
"The target may make an Opposed Test of their Evade, Persistence or Resilience skill (as specified by the spell) against the casting roll of the sorcerer, to avoid the effect of the spell entirely."

And second test is by suffocation rules if the victim can take last breath before starting to suffocate.

 

[Dal Thrax]

Sigh, yep you're right. Which still leaves me very confused about the duration of holdfast. I see why smother is in there, a combat damage spell that does not require concentration, but wow that spell uses every obscure subsystem in the game.

 

[Loz]

Sigh, yep you're right. Which still leaves me very confused about the duration of holdfast. I see why smother is in there, a combat damage spell that does not require concentration, but wow that spell uses every obscure subsystem in the game.

What's confusing about it? The spell merges two substances together. Once its cast, it doesn't need concentration, which would be counter-intuitive given its uses (fixing things together, for instance). It makes it very handy for fixing a foe's feet to the stone floor, leaving him unable to free himself for a few minutes whilst you have lunch, question him on why he tried to break in, then go to find your favourite torture kit... You wouldn't be able to have that level of fun if it was a Concentration spell... :twisted:

 

[Lord High Munchkin]

It makes for handy-dandy locks too! Cast it last thing at night at high power, dismiss in the morning.

 

[Briquelet]

Frankly, knowing that killing the sorcerer will end the spell is enough for me. If spells continued on past the demise of the sorcerer, that would be SCARY! At least in this instance, everyone is going to try to immediately take down the guy who can kill with that kind of power.

With regard to the comment about a target having a chance to roll to see if he is prepared and can hold his breath, I disagree. The spell states rolls for Damage begin on the round after casting. I agree with this; I'd be surprised as Hell if suddenly my wind were cut off by an invisible force. I like the scene where Vader chokes Admiral Motti as an example.

 

[Dal Thrax]

Sigh, yep you're right. Which still leaves me very confused about the duration of holdfast. I see why smother is in there, a combat damage spell that does not require concentration, but wow that spell uses every obscure subsystem in the game.

What's confusing about it? The spell merges two substances together. Once its cast, it doesn't need concentration, which would be counter-intuitive given its uses (fixing things together, for instance). It makes it very handy for fixing a foe's feet to the stone floor, leaving him unable to free himself for a few minutes whilst you have lunch, question him on why he tried to break in, then go to find your favourite torture kit... You wouldn't be able to have that level of fun if it was a Concentration spell... :twisted:

It was somewhat unclear whether the effect was a glue with a duration or a permanent merging (similar to how form flesh is permanent after its duration expires). Seems like the answer is glue not merge then.

 

[Mongoose Pete]

It was somewhat unclear whether the effect was a glue with a duration or a permanent merging (similar to how form flesh is permanent after its duration expires). Seems like the answer is glue not merge then.

Its supposed to be like glue. However, the merging emphasis was to avoid PCs from trying to rip their hand off something they were Holdfasted to, by suggesting they simply leave a layer of skin behind. This way, they'd have to flay the flesh from their palm or fingers before they could escape. You wouldn't believe some of the things that came up in playtesting... :roll: :wink: