SCS: Should Debuff Spells Ignore Immunity to Spell Level?

thar_thaazdhen

Liches are only affected by spells from level 6 or higher. Rakshasas are only affected by spells from level 8 or higher. SCS made a sensible decision to make Breach work even against these monsters. This exception doesn't extend to other debuffing spells like Spell Thrust, Secret Word and so on. Don't you think this should change?

I vote yes. My reasoning is that, e.g., Minor Globe of Invulnerability is an outer shield and therefore it shouldn't benefit from its caster's immunity to level 3 spells. Spell Thrust should take it down.

How does it work in Pen and Paper rules?

Thanks to everybody for creating this great game and to @DavidW for SCS!

O_Bruce

Truth to be told, I don't even know why SCS makes Breach work on Litches and Rakshashas. If they are immune to level 5 spells, it should not work.

And to think that you need to install that component, since AI will treat it as if they were installed...

DavidW

For what it's worth: SCS's design philosophy is to make the minimum changes to the vanilla rules that I think are necessary to make combat interesting.

So: Breach is the *only* spell that can bring down combat protections. So if it can't affect Liches/Rakshasas, you have basically no recourse against their Pro/Magic Weapons except to wait it out, even at high levels. That doesn't sound fun. (Plus: Wands of Spell Striking work differently, which is confusing.)

But there's no analogous argument for anti-spell-protection debuff. There are lots of L6+ debuffs. (If you don't have L6 spells, you have no business fighting a lich!)

Ammar

Best would be to add another breach like spell at about level 7 (maybe with Lower Resistance baked in) for lunches and one at level 9 (plus some additional effect for spellcasting demiliches.

SCS is a decent compromise here. Making liches easier by allowing more lower level spells to strip their defenses is not the right way.

sarevok57

or what SCS could have done is made one of those higher level dispelling spells dispel combat protections, like say ruby ray of reversal for example,

breach is the only spell that will dispel combat protections ( mantles, stoneskin, etc)

but all the other ones; spell thrust, secret word, pierce magic, ruby ray, warding whip, pierce shield, spell strike etc.. they all basically dispel the same type of spells; spell turning, deflections, spell shield, spell immunity, and the odd spell trap etc..

AstroBryGuy

thar_thaazdhen said:

How does it work in Pen and Paper rules?

Many of the spell-combat spells don't exist in pen & paper AD&D, or function very differently. Some examples: "Breach Defenses" in PnP makes creatures normally immune to normal weapons vulnerable; Spelltrap actually holds the spell cast at the wizard (it doesn't restore the wizard's spells) for release later; Warding Whip parries *physical* attacks against the wizard; Spellstrike undoes a spell cast in the previous round; Spell Immunity protects against a specific single spell (of 4th level or less), not an entire spell school (not even Spell Invulnerability does that); Spell Shield gives saving throw bonuses; etc..

EDIT: And, by PnP rules, the "Protection from Magic Weapon" spells (there are three: Edged, Blunt, and Missile) are not supposed to work on creatures immune to normal weapons. So, liches and rakshasas should not be affected by PfMW at all. Allowing Breach to correct this mistake by Bioware is ok in my book.

Source: The Wizard's Compendium, Volumes I-IV.