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Ayrik
Great Reader

Canada
7966 Posts

Posted - 11 Apr 2021 :  17:26:52  Show Profile Send Ayrik a Private Message  Reply with Quote
"Discretionary power of the DM" is also the entire foundation for the illusionist subclass. Some DMs would let allow 3rd-level illusions to achieve great things. Other DMs would disallow or screw over even the mightiest 9th-level illusions.

So the illusionist class was almost never chosen by players. They expected illusions to autofail if they had adversarial DM.

Just as they expected wishes to autofail if they had an adversarial DM. A ring of three wishes is supposed to be a wondrous find, the stuff of legend. It's not supposed to be a ring of three Fausts.

The (ex)players who recall 2E in this negative light are not remembering bad rules, they're remembering bad DMs.

[/Ayrik]
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bloodtide_the_red
Learned Scribe

USA
297 Posts

Posted - 11 Apr 2021 :  18:30:40  Show Profile  Visit bloodtide_the_red's Homepage Send bloodtide_the_red a Private Message  Reply with Quote
quote:
Originally posted by SaMoCon

And what would you do when the player gives the item to the aforementioned ghost of the former legendary wielder? I can't believe I had to spell that out for you.


You mean when a character that has never ever touched the item they are seeking with the discern location spell casts the spell next to a ghost?

Or are you saying the character will find a ghost of a former owner, assuming one exists, and then have the ghost use the item to find the item for the ghost? Or will the character control the ghost somehow?

Well, to find that ghost...assuming one existed...would be a whole adventure right there. Even if you know King Bob touched the item, how do you find King Bobs ghost...assuming he even is a ghost.

Oh, and you'd have to control the ghost too.


quote:
Originally posted by SaMoCon
Seriously, most of the arguments I've been seeing in this scroll against the OP's assertion are in the vein of roadblocks attempting to stonewall player characters and not in the light of a fantasy world with tens of thousands of years of civilizations and magic used by super-intelligent beings.



Nope, the thing is few people in real or fantasy worlds are as smart or clever as they think they are....

Example continued:

Silly Player- "I become an arch necromancy cleric and command the ghost of King Zim to use my discern location device and tell me the location of the Orb of Doom!"

DM- "Wait...how will you find the ghost, assuming there is a ghost of that person?"

Silly Player- "Um, epic skill Find Ghost?"

And, naturally that player would first have to get a arch necromancer cleric character to start with.
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Wooly Rupert
Master of Mischief
Moderator

USA
36779 Posts

Posted - 11 Apr 2021 :  19:28:18  Show Profile Send Wooly Rupert a Private Message  Reply with Quote
quote:
Originally posted by bloodtide_the_red



Nope, the thing is few people in real or fantasy worlds are as smart or clever as they think they are....

Example continued:

Silly Player- "I become an arch necromancy cleric and command the ghost of King Zim to use my discern location device and tell me the location of the Orb of Doom!"

DM- "Wait...how will you find the ghost, assuming there is a ghost of that person?"

Silly Player- "Um, epic skill Find Ghost?"

And, naturally that player would first have to get a arch necromancer cleric character to start with.



And that assumes that it's still in the last place King Zim knew about. If someone has found it since then, moved it to another spot, and taken steps to make sure it's hidden, then all the effort of finding King Zim's ghost leads you exactly nowhere.

Candlekeep Forums Moderator

Candlekeep - The Library of Forgotten Realms Lore
http://www.candlekeep.com
-- Candlekeep Forum Code of Conduct

I am the Giant Space Hamster of Ill Omen!
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SaMoCon
Senior Scribe

USA
403 Posts

Posted - 12 Apr 2021 :  01:40:11  Show Profile Send SaMoCon a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Have you ever played a game called "Where in the World is Carmen San Diego?" If so, did you just give up after not finding her at the first location you searched? The game is designed for you to fail to catch her at the first location. Does that mean the game is over? That makes as much sense as a fighter giving up the battle because he failed to hit a goblin with his first attack. Just like the fighter who has to try again, maybe moving to a more advantageous position or gain additional bonuses, the endeavoring parties (PC or NPC) on the trail of the lost items will be able to build on their failures and successes over time. Sages, knowledge skills, bardic lore, and a host of other activities can continue in earnest from this location to figure out what would want to move such an item but not use it, is likely to hoard it, or met an untimely end before using it. Again, the system (3e to current) is there to pick up the GM's slack. The only real dead end is a petulant GM that is not honest with the players.

There is one more option that NOBODY brought up as for why lost items are lost - they were destroyed. This is also an acceptable answer for why these things are not found that is not contradicted by the lore or the rules. Entities and organizations endeavoring to find these items would end up at their remains.

Make the best use of the system that's there, then modify the mechanics that don't allow you to have the fun you are looking for.
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bloodtide_the_red
Learned Scribe

USA
297 Posts

Posted - 12 Apr 2021 :  03:02:53  Show Profile  Visit bloodtide_the_red's Homepage Send bloodtide_the_red a Private Message  Reply with Quote
This goes back to what I and others have said: Finding a lost item is long hard work and there are no quick easy shortcuts. Looking often takes a life time...even fancy extended non human ones. And just about all of them fail.
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SaMoCon
Senior Scribe

USA
403 Posts

Posted - 12 Apr 2021 :  12:48:16  Show Profile Send SaMoCon a Private Message  Reply with Quote
quote:
Originally posted by bloodtide_the_red

This goes back to what I and others have said: Finding a lost item is long hard work and there are no quick easy shortcuts. Looking often takes a life time...even fancy extended non human ones. And just about all of them fail.

Excuse yourself, BTR. When did you say "Finding a lost item is long hard work" prior to me telling you the same thing on 03Apr? Just as a refresher - "All the protection spells in the world cannot stop detective work. Legend Lore & Vision spells in particular are divining rods that circumvents that "immune to divinations" trait of artifacts because it follows trails, clues, and information. More accessible is bardic lore that will do the same thing with enough dice rolls. The final nail in the coffin of this argument is that days, weeks, months, years or more may be spent tracking down the whereabouts of truly lost items. The bonuses to checks will accumulate and even epic level DCs will be overcome because motivated individuals are not like the impatient & feckless people populating our modern world that will give up a difficult task as soon as things don't immediately produce results. Researching, interviewing, compiling, collating, tracking, and verifying information will render a result." So that would make this the 4TH TIME I have brought up this exact point in the same scroll.

Nowhere did anybody say these endeavors were going to be effortless, which is what you and Wooly have been implying throughout much of this scroll to the detriment of a meaningful exchange on this topic. Reading your responses left me with the impression that the both of you have concocted such as a straw man position to argue against instead of what the OP made clear from the very beginning. To paraphrase what you wrote earlier, BTR, few sages on the Candlekeep forum are as smart or clever as they think they are...

Nothing new has been added here for a while and my patience is exhausted, so I am not bothering with this scroll again.

Make the best use of the system that's there, then modify the mechanics that don't allow you to have the fun you are looking for.
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Wooly Rupert
Master of Mischief
Moderator

USA
36779 Posts

Posted - 12 Apr 2021 :  18:27:36  Show Profile Send Wooly Rupert a Private Message  Reply with Quote
quote:
Originally posted by SaMoCon



Nowhere did anybody say these endeavors were going to be effortless, which is what you and Wooly have been implying throughout much of this scroll to the detriment of a meaningful exchange on this topic.



That is not at all what either of us have implied. What we have openly said is that given centuries, even millennia of time, any scattered clues you may find are likely to lead to dead ends with no other ways to move forward.

You're the one trying to make it effortless by saying that contacting the dead makes all efforts to hide something and all subsequent changes to the world to be utterly moot.

Candlekeep Forums Moderator

Candlekeep - The Library of Forgotten Realms Lore
http://www.candlekeep.com
-- Candlekeep Forum Code of Conduct

I am the Giant Space Hamster of Ill Omen!
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bloodtide_the_red
Learned Scribe

USA
297 Posts

Posted - 13 Apr 2021 :  02:33:45  Show Profile  Visit bloodtide_the_red's Homepage Send bloodtide_the_red a Private Message  Reply with Quote
I typed finding a lost item is long hard work back in my first reply to the scroll.

Some spells might help find an item.....maybe, but they are just tools like anything else. The D&D rules don't have a "you get a plus to the DC per day, week, month, year that you do something", so maybe it's a personal houserule.

So, finding an item is hard, for all the reasons I listed. It's not impossible, just improbable to do.

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TBeholder
Great Reader

2377 Posts

Posted - 16 Apr 2021 :  17:10:03  Show Profile Send TBeholder a Private Message  Reply with Quote
quote:
Originally posted by Gary Dallison

Nobody can perform a skilled task correctly 100% of the time.
[ . . . ]
I think I know why they designed it that way, because spells are a finite resource, and spells are finite because they allow characters to break the rules (sometimes drastically), and for balance reasons they made wizards unable to do anything else.

If you want proficiency-check-based magic system, take a look at The Net Wizard's Handbook.
But that's a separate can of worm for another scroll.

quote:
Originally posted by Demzer

I do not understand the assumption that finding the grave of someone that died 500 years ago is way easier than finding the random artifact lost 500 years ago that the party is actually looking for.

For general things, depends on the methods. Usually gods will know if they care at all.
For arcane magic, it would make sense to require some sort of connection to the target, unless it used to be common knowledge.

But artifacts? They resist meddling and resist divinations. Also, artifacts are important.
As in, long-term game pieces in "divine chess". Thus several gods with vested interest would try to interfere with each other's search, let alone prying mortals (whose pawns they are, anyway?). One of these gods probably tracks the artifact in question at any given time (possibly more for relics, in that they may change hands, but remain intrinsically "someone's" relics). But gods would apply "need-to-know" principle to revealing such information... and usually consider their own servants specifically tasked to hide/guard/capture/use/destroy the artifact to be the only people who really have to know such details. That's what "artifacts are important" means IMHO.

People never wonder How the world goes round -Helloween
And even I make no pretense Of having more than common sense -R.W.Wood
It's not good, Eric. It's a gazebo. -Ed Whitchurch
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Ayrik
Great Reader

Canada
7966 Posts

Posted - 16 Apr 2021 :  20:03:46  Show Profile Send Ayrik a Private Message  Reply with Quote
The reliability of the tools and the rules which apply to them are not relevant to the argument.

Magic can be used to find things.

Magic can be used to hide things.

Why should either magic get special treatment or preference?

[/Ayrik]
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Athreeren
Learned Scribe

128 Posts

Posted - 03 Jun 2022 :  10:02:22  Show Profile Send Athreeren a Private Message  Reply with Quote
I've just come across an answer in an old comic book (Forgotten Realms: The Great Game): according to the mage Dwalimar Omen, most artefacts have their own detection damping aura. Now is this a security set up by the creators of the artefacts so as not to always have a target on their back, or do they all tend to develop such an aura over time? Well, let's just say that Mystra works in mysterious ways.
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TheIriaeban
Master of Realmslore

USA
1289 Posts

Posted - 03 Jun 2022 :  22:12:04  Show Profile Send TheIriaeban a Private Message  Reply with Quote
In 2e, there was this concerning the detect magic spell:

A stone wall of 1 foot or more thickness, solid metal of I inch thickness, or a yard or more of solid wood blocks the spell. Magical areas, multiple types of magic, or strong local magical emanations may confuse or conceal weaker radiations.

I used that as a general rule for locate object, too. Spells that locate/detect items that are level 6 or higher (level 5 for divine magic) can bypass normal materials but can be blocked by magic. Artifacts have the usual protection from location magics.

With that in place, you won't have some low level caster locating the Maguffin of Ultimate Awesomeness.

"Iriaebor is a fine city. So what if you can have violence between merchant groups break out at any moment. Not every city can offer dinner AND a show."

My FR writeups - http://www.mediafire.com/folder/um3liz6tqsf5n/Documents
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