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Message: <blockquote data-quote="robertliguori" data-source="post: 4259891" data-attributes="member: 47776">Hey, thanks to the specificity rule, all you need is an effect that protects your physical form.  "You are zorted into nothingness." does not reference other rules; "You are protected from things that zort you." does; ergo, the dark and subtle mysteries of the Vecna-bits will be available as soon as a careless designer starts introducing additional conditions akin to petrification, and a generic preventative.In a Greek tragedy, the cast can't cast Forbiddance to prevent their gods from descending from Olympus, and don't have too much of a chance of murdering them outright if they get the notion.  The current treatment of artifacts would be a damn fine set of rules...for an E10 game.  But the entire point of being a paragon is that the set of rules and assumptions about what mortals can and cannot do is bent in your favor, and by the time you're epic, "the impossible" is also known as "what I did before breakfast today."Really, it's the minion problem with the polarity flipped.  I like the idea of encountering enemies so weak relative to a character that they can be mown down en masse, and I like the idea of spells, effects, and dangers so potent that no traditional countermeasures will work.  I just don't like those conditions to remain constant across 30 levels of adventuring.  Part of the joy of D&D is watching monsters go from plot device ("A troll! Run away!" to a solo ("He's back! Lidda, drop the cask of alchemist's fire on his head!") to an elite ("Dammit, a troll and a cleric? But clerics can cast Resist Elements...oh bugger.") to a normal monster ("I'll take the one on the left, and you take the two on the right.") to finally minion status ("Yeah, the Trollfens sound like a great place to invest in real estate.  Trust me on this.")  Likewise, I enjoy the fact that you can go from "A wall of force? Well, there's no way we're getting around this.  Let's go back around and look for the keycharm." to "Okay, we have one rod of cancellation.  We can make one breach in the fortress's magics.  Or, we can hold onto it, on account of the fact that Miss Entropic Disciple up there may well be flinging a Sphere of Annihilation around.  What do you all think?" to "A wall of force? Disjunction. It go poof now."I like the fact that you can encounter a great wyrm, a massive creature that exemplifies the utter peak of the development of might both physical and magical, and he is a Sorceror19, and you can be a Sorceror20.Having mechanicless, "These can only be opposed or countered through the GM's whim" items smacks me of including equipable Elministers in your world.  The way I roll, even the big boys of the universe play by the same rules as everyone else, and if Vecna hops into the material plane and throws a Magic Missile at you, a Shield charm will block it.  I think it makes a more satisfying universe than roping off certain effects and not thinking about what they imply or how to make them work consistently.</blockquote>

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