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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9639693" data-attributes="member: 42582">This is not an accurate account of Aetherial Premonition.Quoting from the Dungeoneer's Handbook, p 184:The caster sets an aetherial alarm in the Otherworld to provide warning against approaching danger. . . . This spell wards a camp, house or the like. It creates the sound of a ringing bell in the event of trouble.The nature of the spells is very similar (not identical) to the Alarm spell - not identical, because it is not a tripwire but more like an early warning system. But the spell does not manipulate fate - contrast, say, Destiny of Heroes (p 193): "Channeling raw power into the Skein of Destiny and strumming the taut strings like a harp, the magician infuses allies with heroic power." That spell does manipulate fate, by strumming on the strings of the Skein of Destiny.Yes, this is basically correct.Of course, that is what Alarm could do. As I posted upthread, it's not as if D&D eschews the incorporation of mechanical effects into spell resolution:Some of these issues go all the way back to the early days of D&D. For instance, the AD&D rulebooks do not set out any clear integration of the rules for thieves moving silently or hiding in shadows, or the rules for invisibility, with the rules for surprise. Whereas the rules for rangers' stealth are (straightforwardly) integrated into the surprise rules.AD&D integrates the surprise rules into the encounter rules via the evasion rules: a party who obtains surprise can always evade an encounter. An alternative approach, adopted by Rolemaster (and so dating back about 40 years) is to have the encounter roll modified by the party's attempts at evasion/sneaking.No one ever - to my knowledge - described that feature of Rolemaster as "alteration of reality and fate". Doing so would be just as silly as applying that description to Aetherial Premonition. [USER=6915329]@Faolyn[/USER] has understood the basic premise of the spell perfectly well.The notion of "moral high ground" is yours, not mine. As the OP said,You seem to agree that the difference between the two approaches is clear. You add that what determines what they GM might see fit is further procedures.Presumably some potential intruders - especially assassins, mage-hunters and the like - would have the ability to detect and analyse magic. And might be very stealthy - using invisibility, pass without trace and the like.And some assassins presumably would used ranged rather than melee attacks. And even some unprepared intruders might, simply by luck, avoid the alarm in the course of making ranged attacks (eg a manticore might do this).Well, I think the notion of "better" doesn't have much purpose until we ask "better for what" or "better for whom"?But as the example of Pass Without Trace, and the AD&D rules for rangers and surprise and evasion, show, it's not true that D&D always or in general eschews mechanics in favour of sheer fiction that the GM then has to adjudicate.As you probably know, the Torchbearer roll for a camp event is modified by such things as whether or not someone is on watch, how dangerous the environs are, whether or not the camping PCs light a fire, etc.Of well-known RPG systems, the clearest comparison to a TB2e camp check is a classic D&D wandering monster roll. There is a general rule that tells the GM when to make the roll (every N turns, where N normally equals 2 or 3 depending on version being played). If the roll is made, a table is then rolled on to see who turns up. And the GM then establishes fiction around that to make sense of the encounter.Classic D&D wilderness encounters are similar, although the whole procedure is not quite as tight, and in Gygax's DMG is a bit more confusing in how it is presented.The OP draws a distinction. On the basis of the drawing of that distinction - which you seem to agree is a real one! - you then impute a "fundamentally different philosophy" to me.  But Torchbearer cites the original D&D game, Moldvay Basic and B2 Keep on the Borderlands in its bibliography. There is nothing about Aetherial Premonition, as a mechanical effect, that would be out of place in a classic D&D game: it would affect the encounter rules (as [USER=6915329]@Faolyn[/USER] noted) and/or the surprise rules and (thereby) the evasion rules.This thread, at least from the perspective of the OP, is not about "philosophies". It's about techniques.EDITed to fix a misattributed quote.</blockquote>

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