Fade's post about calling holds in field battles raises an interesting question. Suppose that I cast a Paralysis spell at an enemy, and the NPC doesn't take it because he misheard the incant, or didn't know what a Paralysis does, or whatever. If Fade's viewpoint is to be accepted, I should just continue playing, and accept that the spell was wasted. This raises an interesting question: IG, what did my character just observe? Did he just observe that he cast the spell, and it hit but mysteriously didn't work? If so this raises an interesting point. It seems very likely that IG scholars would try to understand this phenomenon of spells that mysteriously don't work. They would likely observe that:
- spells mysteriously fail more often in field battles than they do in smaller battles [OOG: because field battles are more chaotic],
- the louder you say your incant, the less likely the spell is to mysteriously fail [OOG: because the target is more likely to understand it]
- spells mysteriously fail more often in the nighttime than in the daytime [OOG: because the NPC might not see the packet hit in the night]
This could lead to interesting theories about how magic works: maybe ambient noise interferes with magic somehow? Or maybe magic draws some of its power from sunlight, so it's less likely to work in the dark?
I think that IG scholars investigating this would add a lot to the game. It makes IG sense that they would do so when faced with this kind of phenomenon. And it also means that you don't feel like you've wasted a spell when it "mysteriously fails" for that reason - yes, you didn't paralyze your target, but you got valuable scientific data! (And it also helps OOG as well; if said IG scholars told Plot what they found, it would help Plot identify what types of effects need to be clarified.)
Note that we had a similar discussion earlier in the context of damage numbers, but the situation is very different here. Unlike damage calls, spell incants are explicitly in-game (ARB p.99: "in-game, these words are understood by anyone" - and is also why you can call damage but not say spell incants while under the effect of a Silence). And unlike body points, spells like Paralysis and Web are specific, discrete effects, not abstractions.
One could also ask a similar question about module scaling. Again, the fact that "if a less powerful group of adventurers goes exploring, they will likely see less powerful monsters" is presumably a fact that can be observed IG - who is exploring and what type of monsters they encounter are IG observable.
- spells mysteriously fail more often in field battles than they do in smaller battles [OOG: because field battles are more chaotic],
- the louder you say your incant, the less likely the spell is to mysteriously fail [OOG: because the target is more likely to understand it]
- spells mysteriously fail more often in the nighttime than in the daytime [OOG: because the NPC might not see the packet hit in the night]
This could lead to interesting theories about how magic works: maybe ambient noise interferes with magic somehow? Or maybe magic draws some of its power from sunlight, so it's less likely to work in the dark?
I think that IG scholars investigating this would add a lot to the game. It makes IG sense that they would do so when faced with this kind of phenomenon. And it also means that you don't feel like you've wasted a spell when it "mysteriously fails" for that reason - yes, you didn't paralyze your target, but you got valuable scientific data! (And it also helps OOG as well; if said IG scholars told Plot what they found, it would help Plot identify what types of effects need to be clarified.)
Note that we had a similar discussion earlier in the context of damage numbers, but the situation is very different here. Unlike damage calls, spell incants are explicitly in-game (ARB p.99: "in-game, these words are understood by anyone" - and is also why you can call damage but not say spell incants while under the effect of a Silence). And unlike body points, spells like Paralysis and Web are specific, discrete effects, not abstractions.
One could also ask a similar question about module scaling. Again, the fact that "if a less powerful group of adventurers goes exploring, they will likely see less powerful monsters" is presumably a fact that can be observed IG - who is exploring and what type of monsters they encounter are IG observable.