Why the fear and hatred of Disjunction?

[Infiniti2000]

Given all the tools available to a 17th (+) level party, getting hit by MD by surprise is inexcusable. Know your enemy.

Right, because characters are incapable of surprising other characters of similar and likely lower power levels. ... ?

 

[KarinsDad]

The spell does not automatically destroy all items. The defense is a good will save, something that is very important to people in high level games or their character gets held or charmed all the time.

There are a lot of PC concepts where they have low Will saves, but still have strong defenses against Holds and Charms.

For example, Mind Blank or Force of Personality.

 

[Crothian]

There are a lot of PC concepts where they have low Will saves, but still have strong defenses against Holds and Charms.

For example, Mind Blank or Force of Personality.

And then they will have a lot of problems with this spell, as it should be. If one's concept has a weakness then they will have problems with that weakness. I fail to see what this matters, a concept is the players choice.

 

[Elemental]

Second, if an NPC is fanatic to the point they are willing to so ANYTHING - MD is low on the list. There are FAR better ways to eliminate the PCs. Wild and self-sacrificing use of Wish or Miracle comes to mind right away.

Lots of things are "broken" if the NPC is essentially suicidal. There are many great ways to kill (or worse) if you do not care about saving yourself.

But that wasn't your earlier argument.

In fact, with an atypical campaign that has very, very few artifacts, even minor ones, the risk factor for casting MD goes way down and the spell becomes a bit too strong due to lack of a presumed balancing factor.

I pointed out ways of removing that balancing factor. And I disagree that spells become broken if you have a heedless NPC. The effects of Miracle can be used by anyone, and Wish is basically DM fiat outside the published limits.

(and "suicidal" is an exaggeration--as has been explained before, the chance is miniscule, and it's easy to come up with circumstances where an NPC would decide it's worth the risk rather than getting slain)

I'll also note that artifacts are outside the normal treasure scale. Apart from wildly variable published adventures (some of which hand artifacts out like candy, others which have none), there are no ways of assessing how many a party "should" have outside of guesswork.

 

[Artoomis]

Well, this is all very entertaining.

How many actual experiences are there with this spell?

I personally have only one, and it was fine. No complaints from actual in-play experience.

 

[Artoomis]

But that wasn't your earlier argument.

You were not talking about NPCs who did not really care about takings the chance to lose all spell abilities forever.

Let's forget hypotheticals for a while and talk about actual in-play experiences, There must be a few out there.

What happened? How bad was it, really?

 

[Crothian]

Well, this is all very entertaining.

How many actual experiences are there with this spell?

I've run many games that got into high levels.

This spell has happened at least once in each campaign I've ran that got to 9th level spells. That's 4 campaigns. It was used against the PCs a few times and one time it nailed the fighter and he lost a lot of stuff but the cleric and wizard and monk in the group were mostly fine. The players I can only remember them using it once and it was against a quasi god and they needed all the help they could get.

I've never had a player complain about anything in our games. I did get a lot of "Crap!!" comments and "I'm so screwed!!" but no one ever gave up and they found a way to be useful with what they had and with what others had spare.

 

[Elemental]

You were not talking about NPCs who did not really care about takings the chance to lose all spell abilities forever.

Could you elaborate on that? I'm honestly not sure what you're saying. If it's what it seemed like--then uh, yes, I was talking about NPC's who weren't bothered about taking the chance.

(an afterthought--if a Wish can restore multiple magic items, why can't it restore spellcasting ability?)

I'm probably coming off as more belligerent than I wanted to in the last few posts, so I'll pull back from this thread a bit.

 

[Deset Gled]

(an afterthought--if a Wish can restore multiple magic items, why can't it restore spellcasting ability?)

Mainly because MD specifically states that it can't.

I'm with Artoomis on the fear factor of using MD. It's a fate worse than death*, that cannot be rectified in any way. That alone means MD should only ever be used as a measure of last resort, no matter how small the chance it blowing up in your face.

*Edit: "It" being the case where casting MD on an artifict causes the caster to lose all casting abilities, not the normal affect of MD.

 

[KarinsDad]

And then they will have a lot of problems with this spell, as it should be. If one's concept has a weakness then they will have problems with that weakness. I fail to see what this matters, a concept is the players choice.

I agree that it is a weakness, I was merely pointing out that having a high Will save at high level is typically not required (i.e. it hardly ever comes up in the game) because most high level Will save spells are mind affecting.

There is only a very small percentage of high level Will save spells which are not mind affecting, hence, a player might think his PC is well protected, doing fine, gets hit with an MD and discovers that he is totally screwed.

Most Evocation spells are Reflex saves, most Illusion and Enchantment spells are mind affecting Will saves, most Tranformation and Necromatic spells are Fort saves. Most Abjuration spells are not direct attacks (MD is screwy this way as well).