Does a Death Ward Protect against Phantasmal Killer?

[0-hr]

Ya know, I thought this kid was just being obstinate for the sake of trolling; but now I am starting to think that he actually believes that he is right and the rest of the world is wrong.

That is just sad.


But really people, quit paying attention to him and he will go away. Consider it a test of wills to ignore his bait. He who posts last, loses.

 

[hong]

He who posts last, loses.

HAW HAW!! Ki Ryn posted last! Ki Ryn LOSES!!!1!





Hmm.

 

[Xylix]

The burden of proof is on you, I'm afraid.

There is not enough information to proove it EITHER way... As such the burdeon of proof is on both sides.

Inductive arguments are the only method without absolute proof either a statement in some book without a doubt detailing this situation. This does not exists so only inductive arguments can exist.


Like science, inductive arguments do not show anything without a doubt, they merely show something is very likely.

For instance an inductive argument is one where an individual attempts to show something is likely to exist. For instance to proove Santa's disexistance I would :

Point out that he could not get everywhere in time.

Point out that you can see what you parents buy, and if you are careful you can even show that those labled from Santa where indeed bought by your parents.

Point out that no one has ever seen santa, despite visits to the north pole.

Point out that they can trace santa's origion, in history.

Point ou that in many cultures santa does not exist, and that the childern recieve no presents prooving he does not give gifts to all the good childern.


etc....

In the end one who is logical is forced to agree, if they agree with the premises that Santa probably does not exist.

If they agree with the premises but do not agree they are then being illogical. There really is not anything you can do about people being illogical.

That is true even with a deductive argument, which DOES proove.

Just like no one can prove that your phantom Death spell but not [Death] spell category does not exist.

Nope but they can show it is very questionable. That is where you where going in your first post. You had a decent start, and your weak argument would be much stronger in comparrison if you destoyed what there was of mine.

Where it is highly questionable a logical person will move on. Especialy those who house rule everything anyway

You must convince us that it does exist and you are not doing a very good job.

It is very difficult to convince someone that has no intention of considering your argument short of perfect proof.

Which would be about 1/2 of my contenders. The rest are hard to convince because they have already utterly accepted the premise that only spells with the [death] tag are actually death spells. Anything else must automatically be thrown out.

There is only so much I can do to that premise, because it does have a certain degree of soundness, just like my argument that Death Ward was using the 'pragmatic' definition.

To me your assertion that it is only [death] without backing is as pointless as me stating that "Thats not true". Some addressed this correctly by going down and shoring up their premise to try to make it more acceptable. This made the argument on your side stronger.

Like any good arguer I attacked those premesises to the best of my ability undermining your hard work.



However the net result with a Inductive argument is determined by which most people are going to accept as more likely. To do that one needs to do more than mere defend their argument they need to destroy the opposition.

 

[Shirt Guy John]

proove
burdeon
"This does not exists"
proove
disexistance
"those labled from Santa where indeed bought by your parents."
origion
ou
childern
recieve
prooving
childern.

My gods! I don't care how logical you are, please god please learn some grammar and spelling. Hell, I know I can't spell worth a darn, but like spell and grammar check your stuff first or something. You like dictionaries, right? So go look up some of your words and make sure they're right! Please!

etc....

NO!!!!!!! Please! No more!!!

In the end one who is logical is forced to agree, if they agree with the premises that Santa probably does not exist.

umm... what? Did you just say that people who agree with you are going to agree with you because they agreed? I'm sorta... lost in that statement.

Okay, here's the thing, you haven't proven that Santa doesn't exist, you've proven that the stereotypical Christmas Santa doesn't exist. That's like proving God doesn't exist by disproving the Christian God. It's not right.

However the net result with a Inductive argument is determined by which most people are going to accept as more likely.

So.. by my tally... your position is not the net result of the argument. Um... isn't that bad for you or something? Oh wait, I get it! You're disregarding people that aren't working through this the same way that you are! I gotcha!

To do that one needs to do more than mere defend their argument they need to destroy the opposition.

One sec...

Alright, I'm back and I brought my Rocket-Launcher. Bring on the opposition!

I know, I know, "Don't Encourage Him", but how can I not? It's so fun to play the idiot with the idiot!

Weeeee!!!!!!!!

 

[jmichels`]

All this talk of descriptors and stuff may not be convincing enough so lets look at the wording of the spells. In the Phantasmal Killer spell it actually has the words "... succeed at a Fortitude save or die from fear." in it. The Death Ward spell says that it doesn't protect you from "...other sorts of attacks, such as hit point loss, poison, petrification or other effects even if they might be lethal." That said, PK causes you to "die from fear" and Death Ward doesn't stop you from dying from something other then from a "...death spell or magical death effect." You can posit that when PKed (and failing your Will save) you are dying from fear which isn't a magical effect. It is true that the fear was brought on by a magical effect but the fear itself is not magical since it was the result of "...forming the fears of the subject's subconscious mind into something that his conscious mind can visualize: the most fearsome beast." So the PKed guy dies due to the nonmagical fear created by his subconcious mind and not from a "magical death effect." For instance Death Ward wouldn't stop you from dying from a fireball. The fireball is brought on by a magical effect but the roasting (and the HPs lost due to roasting) is the thing that kills you. In this case the subconcious mind is the thing that roasts you.

 

[Xylix]

My gods! I don't care how logical you are, please god please learn some grammar and spelling. Hell, I know I can't spell worth a darn, but like spell and grammar check your stuff first or something. You like dictionaries, right? So go look up some of your words and make sure they're right! Please!

*Chuckle*

I probably should bother editing my posts, but they usually end up so darn long!

umm... what? Did you just say that people who agree with you are going to agree with you because they agreed? I'm sorta... lost in that statement.

Not quite, I stated that those that agreeded with the premises must agree, if they are logical.

The premises are the fundmental statments:

e.g.

Point out that he could not get everywhere in time.

Point out that you can see what you parents buy, and if you are careful you can even show that those labled from Santa where indeed bought by your parents.


If they dissagreed with teh premises I would be forced to prove those (or show them likely) to get them to accept them. To do that I would have to make more premisies.

and so on and so on....

Eventually one of two things would happen:

#1: We would reach a stage where I managed to construct an argument (by prooving premisies as necessary) that consists of only premisies that they agree with. If this happened if they where logical, and the logic of my argument was sound then they should agree (this is inductive, in deductive they MUST agree).

The problem with inductive is they can still believe, what is important though is they accept their postion is unlikey.

#2: There will be a point where one reaches a fundementally accepted premise. That is not shared. Such a premise is one that is accepted by the individual without question. Perhaps things like 'Murder is wrong, Nachos is good, the DMs manual is sacred, etc....'

In any case a fundmentally accepted premise is about possible to convince another not to accept, as they accept this without question.

If you cannot disprove this fundemental premise, or get them to accept it (as you can never proove your own fundmental premise without first removing is fundmentalness, which risks disprooving it). Then the argument cannot continue. As such both parties recognize their differances, aplaud their use of logic and leave.

If two people are presenting opposing ideas then

#3 : The opposite occures, your argument is disprooved. In this case if the other is accepted as the most likely resultant you move to that if you are logical. If there is another likely (in your mind) resultant you might go there instead. In this case the argument resumes with one party presenting a new argument.


there is of course....

#4 : Everybody gets tired of talking.

Okay, here's the thing, you haven't proven that Santa doesn't exist, you've proven that the stereotypical Christmas Santa doesn't exist. That's like proving God doesn't exist by disproving the Christian God. It's not right.

The stereotypical Christmas Santa is the only one I cared about. Afterall this is only an example.

As such when I used santa you should subsitute it for 'stereotypical Christmas Santa'

You incorrectly presumed I was refering to all Santa's, just like I incorrectly presumed everyone would understand I would be talking about the 'sterotypical christmas santa'

So.. by my tally... your position is not the net result of the argument. Um... isn't that bad for you or something? Oh wait, I get it! You're disregarding people that aren't working through this the same way that you are! I gotcha!

Nah, I only care about the Neutral ones....

When I started getting arguments that consisted of one statement I decided bothering with anyone else was pointless.

Then after dealing with more raw statments I decided I would be happy if people just started attacking my premises.

As such I do suppose my goal is partially successful. At this point I wouldn't mind you destroying my argument as long as the board started using logic more commonly in arguments.

Afterall, I would merely house rule the result any way

Alright, I'm back and I brought my Rocket-Launcher. Bring on the opposition!

Bring the fun!

 

[Stalker0]

Guys, geez, lay of Xylix.

I don't agree with everything he's saying, and I believe death ward doesn't guard against pk, but at least he's arguing well, much better than many people I've seen.

I mean, dissing his spelling? We don't need to all gang up on him, just keep arguing your points and hopefully the truth will come about.

 

[nameless]

Aside from the considerable bickering, I want to throw in my two cents. Death Ward IMO protects against ONLY effects with the [death] descriptor. That would include the aforementioned list of spells, plus any other supernatural or spell-like ability which had the [death] descriptor.

The relevant burden or proof is not on Phantasmal Killer, but on Death Ward caring about [death] effects versus "death effects." Given the nature of immunities and wards and such in other areas, like mind-affecting spells, poisons, or even fire, Death Ward probably grants immunity based on descriptors as well.

I can see the logical disconnect between Death Ward's protection and many magical effects (from spells or not, it's irrelevant). If you are insistent in having it protect versus a larger subset of effects, then house rule them to be [death] effects. It's probably a more elegant solution to enumerate what is warded than to create a rule class based on english words. It stops a lot of rules disputes, too.

-nameless

 

[dcollins]

I don't agree with everything he's saying, and I believe death ward doesn't guard against pk, but at least he's arguing well, much better than many people I've seen.

No, he's definitely being a jerk. Anyone who expresses such pleasure at having disgusted others, and fills up a thread with verbiage like this one, absolutely qualifies as a troll.

 

[Shirt Guy John]

I know I should quit but...

Okay, so that was more of an attempt to be funny than an attempt to do anything. Sorry if you took me seriously on that, I'm used to communicating with people who are used to my sense of humor. I humbly appologise.

And now to the topic at hand. Assuming you (the guy who is way over-logical) were counting only people who had been "neutral" at some point (which is damn funny considering how logical you appear to be. Prove or disprove that the people on here aren't going to have any bias and i'll know you're crazy), how about people who were on your side in the beginning? Innitially I was in the camp of "What? Since when was Phantasmal Killer not a death spell?", but after reading the arguments herein, I switched my view. It never dawned on me that Phantasmal Killer kills through fear (an indirect death effect, just like a leathal fireball or meteor swarm or death by poison), but once that was drawn to my attention, I couldn't see how Death Ward could possibly protect against it. IF you were really wanting that, you would have to make a spell that made you immune to fear effects (like the Paladin), which would save your a$$ against this spell.

Now I know that this line of thought has been shown to you before. I would try to argue using your logic but frankly... I don't follow half of it. I mean, this is a game with its own rules (though this seems to be the minority opinion) and sometimes logic doesn't win out over pure rules. I think there's more sophistry than logic in your posts anywho (again, as someone else already pointed out). But here goes anyways...

Barring any snooty (snotty) definitions that really aren't necessary, I'll try it like this. In the core books, death spells are a definate thing, like alignments. There are spells and abilities that are distiguished as "Death effects", such as spells with the death discriptor or the death attack of an assassin. The spell Death Ward protects against death spells and magical death effects and nothing else. Death spells are pretty simple; they have the [Death] discriptor on them. Magical death effects would be anything else that caused instant death by means of a death effect; it doesn't do anything else to you, just kill you dead by hitting your life force. This makes the Death Ward spell protect against a good sized but well defined group of effects. Anything else (which includes the Phantasmal Killer spell) is not prevented by this ward. I think it's fairly well set out. Now you could argue that the game designers screwed up with not putting the [death] discriptor on Phantasmal Killer, but at this point, I think that if it had been a mistake, it would have been remedied in the FAQ (and it very well could have to my knowledge, 'cause I've never read the damded thing) or in errata somewhere. As it has not, I think that without going into the real of house rules, you'd have to stick with the definition of death spells that the game was built with.

Now my argument here of course is just a regurgitated of everyone else's, sumarized a very little bit. I've tried to stick with how a reasonable person who respects the rules at all as they're written (as I think is fair to assume we all should be in the Rules forum), and not how real world philosophical logic would go through it, because frankly, that's just a bit inapropriate 'round here.

And I really wish Troll wasn't used to describe posters like this (and probably people who keep 'em going too... damn me). Trolls are a noble and powerful breed, who scare the living bezebus outta' me. this guy's just annoying.