How do you handle Mordenkainen's Disjunction?

[Thanee]

MoF has a 7th level Antimagic Field (slightly different name), which is not personal, btw!

Bye
Thanee

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

Doesn't it seem strange to have a game where having your stuff(tm) destroyed is worse news than being killed

A bit of aside, my experience is that this was even a bigger problem in 1e/2e because:

(1) The slowing rate of levelling at the high single digits meant that by the book experience awards were inadequate to motivate a remotely sane PC. Therefore DM had to appeal to greed (or weave a fabulously intriguing story). The result tended to be PCs whose class abilities paled in comparison with power of their stuff.

(2) Lacking feats in the game system meant that two similar characters concepts would be functionally identical, save for equipment. If my fighter loses his equipment, your fighter can do absolutely everything I can do, except better, in detail.

In 3e/3.5, if I lose everything I still probably have a functional character with mostly the same peculiarities and weaknesses. The character is still the same character, albeit weaker. Not so in 1e/2e.

 

[Cedric]

I'd say that the rest of your ideas are tactics rather than countermeasures...

You can argue semantics with me if you want...but the end result is the same. There are a number of things that a skilled group of players can do to prepare themselves for a specific tactic. The honest truth is that I have never worried about MDJ, and I never will.

This game seems to have become so watered down (nerfs to harm, disintegrate and numerous other spells), that I no longer fear much of anything. (Dragons being a big exception...always worry about Dragons!).

A 20th-level NPC gets ~220,000 gp worth of gear. If he's carrying around an artifact that will be all the gear he possesses.

Feel free to adjust the NPCs CR for the amount of gear he is actually carrying.

Cedric

 

[Cedric]

I really hate to sound like I'm doing a "Back in my day" speech...but anyone who finds D&D hard now, should bust out 1st edition and try running through Tomb of Horrors with a "by the book" GM.

Cedric

 

[Bauglir]

I don't want to offend any 1e fans but I really did not see the appeal in being arbitrarily killed off in every room of a dungeon. Many Tomb of Horrors traps just killed off PCs with no warning and no chance to escape - that's not challenging, it's impossible.

3.xe is challenging, it's just gives the PCs a reasonable chance to overcome those challenges using their abilities.

 

[frankthedm]

I removced it from the wizard / sorcerer list and left it only in the magic domain for my own game. So at least its only in the hands of the clergy of Marduk [city and pure incantation], Oberon [Fae dealings and all that] and Tawil at Umar [ magic, dimensions, and some other things].

At that level of play having EVERYTHING on you at one time should be discouraged. 3.5 went way too far to protect your items, If you are disintegrated IMNSHO there should be nothing left but dust [...ok, ok 50% chance for your boots to remain ]

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Nonetheless, how can you discuss the (un?)balanced nature of a spell while discounting one of it's primary functions and disadvantages (the chance of angering a greater being and of losing spell-casting abilities)??

In fact, it's pretty tough to discuss many 9th level spells as "balanced." Many of them are designed to be used more as story-line items than routine spells.

That's certainly how I employed M's Disjunction last night.

IME artifacts don't crop up that often, and no player deliberately destroys an artifact, assuming they can even identify it as such.

It's also not really a disadvantage - how often do you run into someone carrying an artifact? Even in FR it's extremely rare.

I see what you mean about 9th-level spells ... many of them aren't balanced. Many of the ones that are now balanced are no longer 9th-levle, like Temporal Stasis. (Toss out the material component and it's ok IMO.)

 

[Plane Sailing]

You can argue semantics with me if you want...

Not interested in semantics thanks, but you stopped quoting me before my elucidation of the difference between what you offerered and what is missing wrt MD. You provided some generic tactics which are fine, but nothing which is a specific stop to MD.

That is probably why you didn't get much of a response to your list of suggested tactics.

Cheers

 

[Thanee]

I removed it from the wizard / sorcerer list and left it only in the magic domain for my own game.

So clerics get it and wizards don't, altho it's a spell created by a wizard and surely anti-magic is more a realm of wizards than clerics?

But if it works for your game, that's cool of course!

Bye
Thanee

 

[FrankTrollman]

Also remember that the "permanent" loss of all magical power isn't all that, well, permanent. The way D&D handles classes is that getting a new level of Wizard overwrites your previous level - just as getting a +3 enhancement on oyur sword supercedes a +2 enhancement on the same.

So if a 17th level Wizard loses all of his magical abilities - all he has to do is take a single level of Wizard and he has all of the magical abilities of an 18th level Wizard. MDJ does not prevent you from gaining new levels of Wizard - and 18th level doesn't give you +1 9th level spell - it gives two 9th level spells.

So while MDJ can end up with a powerful wizard running around as a commoner for a while - it ends as soon as he gets 17,000 XP in a pile - so it's not that much of a deterent.

-Frank