By Andreas Bringedal.
As players often have problems with the Wizard spells #1-#5, let’s look at them in a systematic way:
- Magic shells protect ONLY from the outside and in.
- It has no effect WHATSOEVER on spells cast from the inside of a shell to the outside.
- Neither does it have ANY effect when cast from the inside on someone similary positioned inside.
- Spells cast from outside a shell and into it must overcome the Shell’s strenght WHEN it says so in the spell description !
- A few spells ignore magic shells, like the Cure Plague spells that have a fixed cost.
- Shells are CUMULATIVE:
- There will be one, two or a maximum of three shells on a character, depending upon wether the caster is in a force or a guild, or a party inside a location, and wether he has a shell cast upon himself.
- A guild will have one or two, depending upon wether the CASTER is inside the same location as the guild or not.
- All forces except parties may have only ONE shell protecting it. A party entering a location may benefit from the locations shell.
Some examples
[ ] = Location
( ) = Party or Legion
{ }= Guild
A-J = Characters
( A,B ) [ C,D ( E,F ) { G,H } ] ( I,J )
A casting a spell on B must overcome B’s shell (plus B’s own inherent MAR of course; but for the ease of exposition, we assume all characters’ MARs to be zero in these examples)
A casting on C must overcome the Location’s shell as well as C’s personal shell.
A casting on E must overcome the Location’s shell, E’s party’s shell and E’s personal shell.
A casting on G must overcome the Location’s shell, the Guild’s shell and G’s personal shell.
A casting a spell on a guild within the location, must overcome both the Location’s shell and the Guild’s shell.
A casting a spell on a party within the location, must overcome both the Location’s shell and the Party’s shell.
A casting on J must overcome J’s legion’s shell as well as H’s personal shell.
C casting on A must overcome A’s legion’s shell as well as A’s personal shell
C casting on D must overcome D’s personal shell.
C casting on E must overcome the E’s party’s shell as well as E’s shell.
E casting on C must overcome C’s personal shell.
E casting on F must overcome F’s personal shell
G casting on A must overcome A’s legion’s shell as well as A’s personal shell.
G casting on H must overcome H’s personal shell.
G casting a spell on one of the legions on the outside, for instance Gather Food, must overcome ONLY the Legion’s shell.
When any of these characters casts a spell on the PROVINCE they must ONLY overcome the province’s own magic protection, that is equal to its magic recovery rate. A province’s recovery rate can only be known by Sperry’s Knowledge or by watching your characeter’s (arcane, NOT priest) mana recovery. This is the only time the province’s magic resistance comes into play.
Short Resumé
If the Target is listed as ‘Force’, then the shell of that force has to be overcome – always; whether the spell is cast from within or without the force is not relevant. But if the Target is listed as ‘Character’ then the relative position of the caster must be taken into account: if he and the target are in the same force, then only the shell of the target character is relevant, the force’s shell is not; if caster and target are in different forces, than the shells on all the forces surrounding the Target become relevant, but not those on the forces surrounding the caster.
Warnings
* Target of the spell Bless Animals #222 is the Force in which the animals are staying, and the Qualifier is animal id#. This means that the shell of the force has to be overcome! Note that only animals in a force (F…) can be blessed, not e.g. animals in a field herd (H…) or in a Guild (G…).
* Be reminded that Shells on Legions, Locations and Guilds ONLY offer protection against Strategic spells, NOT against Battle spells! Note that in the rules this is only stated under spell #2, but also should be added to #3 and #4. Further, this also applies to characters, not only soldiers. So a Duel spell against a Character in a shelled Party, will go straight through that shell. However, such force shells offer a great protection against nasty works like: Teleport into, Cause Plague, Scrys, Earthforce, etc.
* Only Shells on Characters also protect against Battle and Duel spells, and thus will add to the MAR on your character’s overview. Also for Strategic spells, all shells surrounding the character add to his MAR, not visibly but effectively: any magical attacks on him (Ego Attack, Wrath of God etc) will be divided by this MAR+shells. Example: an Ego Attack of 300 (= 30 spell points x 10) will do 50 points of damage to a character with a MAR of 1 in a party with a shell of 5.
Some questions from the Strategic Reserve, answered by Edi Birsan
Q: I have a 8 point shell of protection on my location. If I want to increase it to 40 how many spell points do I need?
A: It turns out that you need 40. In order to make any increase in shell you have to overcome the magic resistance of the force. So as long as you are casting more than 8 points in the new spell then the new shell will be whatever number you cast! Otherwise what would happen is that players would use the technique to drop the shell on enemy forces; we wanted 9 points of magic to increase the shell by 1, so it becomes 9 rather than just 1.
Q: If I am in a Guild, will the shell of the city and the shell of the Guild protect me against magic attacks from outside the city?
A: Yes. This is known as the Magic Bomb Shelter technique.
Q: When inside a location and you want to Scry on that location does the magic resistance of the location count against you?
A: YES, that is because the target of the spell (the force) has the shell of protection. If you were going after a character inside the same location then the shell of the location would not help the target since you were inside.
This article is reproduced with kind permission from “Aayko’s The Legends Corner”.