Maybe I'm misunderstanding the antipathy towards disbelief as a defense to magic. But it seems odd to me to say that disbelief in magic granting immunity is silly - in a world with magic, couldnt it be just as sensible to say that genuine disbelief makes you immune?
Conceptions of magic arent distinguished by whether they're silly/sensible, in my view. Perhaps you think it's mechanically unbalancing or not consistent with how you picture magic or something. But when the man in the pointy hat wiggles his fingers and says strange words - any result other than "nothing happens" has left reality and common sense behind.
That isn't what was described. He said that "magic didn't work on them". Big difference from nothing happening at all. Picture it like this:
An wizard casts burning hands, create a 15 cone of flame. One character, seeing magic like this on a daily basis, knows that this fire can harm him and is scorched. Another, despite seeing magic like this just as often, just "doesn't believe it's real", and is unaffected by it.
To elaborate: He sees this fire damaging his friends and setting things on fire, and he denies it's existence, and that somehow makes it not affect him. At that point it's no different than him no being affected by a non-magical flamethrower. If people were simply immune to all forms of magic simply because they were raised to not believe in it... I feel like magic wouldn't be used often at all. If someone had never heard of and didn't believe in it, and that was enough to make it ineffective, who WOULD it affect?
When the first person discovered magic, and tried to use it on/in front of someone else, wouldn't they just not see anything happening, and magic would end right then and there?
Things like antimagic fields and magic resistance exist... but not because someone just believes it won't work. If the GM had said "Nothing happens when you cast the spell", that would indicate an antimagic field, and that would be something else. Just saying "Magic doesn't work on them because they don't believe in it" is not okay.
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In a world where the physics can be affected by one's belief it does - who says belief isnt another factor of energy manipulation? I understand it doesnt fit your idea of magic, but wiggling one's fingers and making blocks of stone appear is already not making sense. If such mystical blocks of stone dont hurt disbelievers that's just another feature of this silly world's physics.
It makes perfect sense in the context of the world it exists in, just as the weird evolution presented in X-men makes sense in the context of that universe.
Operating under the premise that "It's not our world, so anything I feel like goes" makes for bad writing and bad gaming.
Things like antimagic fields and magic resistance exist... but not because someone just believes it won't work. If the GM had said "Nothing happens when you cast the spell", that would indicate an antimagic field, and that would be something else. Just saying "Magic doesn't work on them because they don't believe in it" is not okay.
It's different, but it's no more silly. Magic makes no sense anyhow - being able to ignore the effect of those flames is just another magic thing isnt it? (In this case brought about by disbelief, not by casting a spell). The DM has invented a world where disbelief conveys magical powers - no more silly than any other fantastical world.
I dont think it's a good idea, personally - largely because it goes against the grain of (most) literary accounts of magic. Arguments about magic based on realism though are just drawing arbitrary lines about what bits of reality we can ignore and what we shouldnt.
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In a world where the physics can be affected by one's belief it does - who says belief isnt another factor of energy manipulation? I understand it doesnt fit your idea of magic, but wiggling one's fingers and making blocks of stone appear is already not making sense. If such mystical blocks of stone dont hurt disbelievers that's just another feature of this silly world's physics.It makes perfect sense in the context of the world it exists in, just as the weird evolution presented in X-men makes sense in the context of that universe.
Operating under the premise that "It's not our world, so anything I feel like goes" makes for bad writing and bad gaming.
I can't speak to writing, but it doesnt make bad gaming in my experience.
The alternate world I'm suggesting has, as part of the context, the feature that disbelieving in magic makes you immune to it.
That isn't what was described. He said that "magic didn't work on them". Big difference from nothing happening at all.Maybe I'm misunderstanding the antipathy towards disbelief as a defense to magic. But it seems odd to me to say that disbelief in magic granting immunity is silly - in a world with magic, couldnt it be just as sensible to say that genuine disbelief makes you immune?
Conceptions of magic arent distinguished by whether they're silly/sensible, in my view. Perhaps you think it's mechanically unbalancing or not consistent with how you picture magic or something. But when the man in the pointy hat wiggles his fingers and says strange words - any result other than "nothing happens" has left reality and common sense behind.
Yeah, my point was not that the DM said nothing happened. It was that the only sensible/realistic response to spellcasting is "nothing happens". Once you say that the wizard is able to do all kinds of things with magic - you can say the disbeliever can do all kinds of things with magic. There may well be narrative constraints and/or balance constraints to what you allow in your game but "realism" constraints are arbitrary - any kind of magic is unrealistic.
Things like antimagic fields and magic resistance exist... but not because someone just believes it won't work. If the GM had said "Nothing happens when you cast the spell", that would indicate an antimagic field, and that would be something else. Just saying "Magic doesn't work on them because they don't believe in it" is not okay.It's different, but it's no more silly. Magic makes no sense anyhow - being able to ignore the effect of those flames is just another magic thing isnt it? (In this case brought about by disbelief, not by casting a spell). The DM has invented a world where disbelief conveys magical powers - no more silly than any other fantastical world.
I dont think it's a good idea, personally - largely because it goes against the grain of (most) literary accounts of magic. Arguments about magic based on realism though are just drawing arbitrary lines about what bits of reality we can ignore and what we shouldnt.
I stand by my statement that magic would never begin to exist in the first place if not believing in it alone would make it ineffective because no one could believe in magic until they saw it work or someone else saw it work, which apparently would not happen. So it does not make sense.
I stand by my statement that magic would never begin to exist in the first place if not believing in it alone would make it ineffective because no one could believe in magic until they saw it work or someone else saw it work, which apparently would not happen. So it does not make sense.
They could be persuaded it does (non magically).
Gods could have intervened.Magic may come in different strengths.
Disbelief-as-defence may have been implanted in certain individuals (by magic or by gods).
...
There's no logical problem, just more arbitrary determinations.
Conceptions of magic arent distinguished by whether they're silly/sensible, in my view. Perhaps you think it's mechanically unbalancing or not consistent with how you picture magic or something. But when the man in the pointy hat wiggles his fingers and says strange words - any result other than "nothing happens" has left reality and common sense behind.
Mechanically? Its absurdly imbalanced, and its mostly non existent in pathfinder outside of golems, who have a legacy of being powered by the stuff. Worse, if you say it ignores your weapons enhancement bonus or such, or that they can do things like ignore fire or conjured objects instead of SR: yes, then you blow most logic out of the water and I'll start asking if I can play a character who's immune to damage because I don't believe in getting hurt. "Rocks can't hurt me. They don't even exist!" probably shouldn't save me from a landslide...
Making "sweeping judgement" is not an indication of maturity or age level. Only of how judgmental someone is.
Which is an indicator of maturity, at least where I come from. Younger people have fewer experiences with which to contextualize life, so they're prone to bring their own limited experiences to hypotheticals. And when those past experiences are dramatic, it results in sweeping judgments on events that a more mature person wouldn't immediately categorize as black or white.
Not to say that there aren't immature non-judgmentals and mature judgmentals out there, but that's the trend.
And I'm NOT being overly sweeping in judgement because I've already given a number of ways people can leave and said that if someone is engaging in inappropriate table behavior toward you like cussing you out, making racist comments or other behavior then ofc it's ok to leave.
This statement would be a lot more convincing if you hadn't spent much of this thread slinging around words like tantrum, storm out, little girl, and drama queen so freely. And from your very first post, which Ross Byers deleted for being incendiary.
Conceptions of magic arent distinguished by whether they're silly/sensible, in my view. Perhaps you think it's mechanically unbalancing or not consistent with how you picture magic or something. But when the man in the pointy hat wiggles his fingers and says strange words - any result other than "nothing happens" has left reality and common sense behind.Mechanically? Its absurdly imbalanced, and its mostly non existent in pathfinder outside of golems, who have a legacy of being powered by the stuff. Worse, if you say it ignores your weapons enhancement bonus or such, or that they can do things like ignore fire or conjured objects instead of SR: yes, then you blow most logic out of the water and I'll start asking if I can play a character who's immune to damage because I don't believe in getting hurt. "Rocks can't hurt me. They don't even exist!" probably shouldn't save me from a landslide...
Yeah, I think it's quite a poor idea for a game.
I just dont think it's any more unrealistic than power word kill, magic missile, comprehend languages...
I stand by my statement that magic would never begin to exist in the first place if not believing in it alone would make it ineffective because no one could believe in magic until they saw it work or someone else saw it work, which apparently would not happen. So it does not make sense.They could be persuaded it does (non magically).
Gods could have intervened.
Magic may come in different strengths.
Disbelief-as-defence may have been implanted in certain individuals (by magic or by gods).
...There's no logical problem, just more arbitrary determinations.
These are scenarios I can think of:
1. The time before magic. No one knows it exists, no one has any concept of what magic might be. Therefore... could anyone even discover magic? No one in existence believes in it, and if they don't believe in it, it has no effect. And if it has no effect, how can they discover it?
2. The above scenario, but a God implants the knowledge, belief, and ability to harness magic into the mind of a single person. This assumes that what the god does is not "magic", because the person would be immune to it otherwise.This person attempts to use magic, but finds it has no effect, and either he starts to think his idea of magic is imaginary, or finds it useless, and stops doing it. The same thing would apply to a group of people; magic couldn't spread beyond this group, and it would die with them.
3. The only way to get around the above would be for someone to belief in magic simply by being told about it (since a demonstration wouldn't work). I doubt this would even be possible (I certainly wouldn't believe it if someone walked up to me and said he could shoot fire form his hands unless he showed me first). If this were enough, then couldn't the players just tell the no-believers about magic, and suddenly it would work on them?
4. Magic knowledge of magic was given to everyone at the moment of creation (perhaps a few people were excluded, doesn't matter). In this case, new children born would be immune to magic until they were told that it existed. If that were required for magic to be effective, I'd imagine there would be scores of people who kept their children form learning about magic in order to make "anti-magic soldiers", and the practice would be well known to everyone, and the players should have known ahead of time.
As for "magic may come in different strengths", I assume you mean that a powerful enough spellcasters would be able to overcome it. In that case it isn't immunity, and the players should be able to at least attempt to get around it (roll to overcome SR).
You still have the issue of people not experiencing/believing in other things and still being affected, such as drow and the sun. Maybe I've never heard of lightening bolts, and don't believe in them. The only difference between the spell and an actual lightening bolt is that one was generated by energy from the Astral plane (or some such). After the fact, there is no difference.
Yeah, there you go saying "flip the table and walk out" again.
Very few of the people who posted here mentioned anything violent or remotely this rude in their posts, and the ones that did that I remember were responding to someone punching them in the face.
You keep assuming everyone does this in the worst possible way when many people just say "This isn't for me" and walk out. At worst they have an argument that ends with "Well I guess I'm not playing, then".
It's not about violent behavior. Flipping the table is hissy fit behavior. Getting up in the middle of the game and causing a scene and storming out is hissy hit behavior. Many of the posts were about heated arguments then in the middle of the game deciding to get up, grab their stuff and walk out.
I swear, is DnD filled with a bunch of Sheldons with no concept of proper social behavior? And I have no apologies for using the words hissy fit and drama queen. If someone berated their waiter and called them a retard for not having a menu item I'd call them an a!+~#@*. I'm not going to mince words as if I should be apologetic to others who are at fault.
Yeah nothing about deciding to leave a an argument at a group gathering sounds like a hissy fit to me. I have decided to leave a variety of group gatherings for a variety of reasons, sometimes because I had an argument,
Would it be creating less of a scene if we sat there and continued to argue for another hour?
These are scenarios I can think of:
1. The time before magic. No one knows it exists, no one has any concept of what magic might be. Therefore... could anyone even discover magic? No one in existence believes in it, and if they don't believe in it, it has no effect. And if it has no effect, how can they discover it?
2. The above scenario, but a God implants the knowledge, belief, and ability to harness magic into the mind of a single person. This assumes that what the god does is not "magic", because the person would be immune to it otherwise.This person attempts to use magic, but finds it has no effect, and either he starts to think his idea of magic is imaginary, or finds it useless, and stops doing it. The same thing would apply to a group of people; magic couldn't spread beyond this group, and it would die with them.
3. The only way to get around the above would be for someone to belief in magic simply by being told about it (since a demonstration wouldn't work). I doubt this would even be possible (I certainly wouldn't believe it if someone walked up to me and said he could shoot fire form his hands unless he showed me first). If this were enough, then couldn't the players just tell the no-believers about magic, and suddenly it would work on them?
4. Magic knowledge of magic was given to everyone at the moment of creation (perhaps a few people were excluded, doesn't matter). In this case, new children born would be immune to magic until they were told that it existed. If that were required for magic to be effective, I'd imagine there would be scores of people who kept their children form learning about magic in order to make "anti-magic soldiers", and the practice would be well known to everyone, and the players should have known ahead of time.
Bear in mind I'm not arguing for it (it doesnt fit my conception of what magic "should" be like), but that's based on cosmetic consideration. Logically, these objections are easy enough to defeat:
perhaps in this world disbelief is different from ignorance (as far as magic is concerned - entirely an arbitrary determination). That is, suppose it's not enough to just not know about it, you have to actively disbelieve in it despite having heard of its existence.
As for "magic may come in different strengths", I assume you mean that a powerful enough spellcasters would be able to overcome it. In that case it isn't immunity, and the players should be able to at least attempt to get around it (roll to overcome SR).
No that's not what I meant. I meant that maybe magic used to be much stronger (and it 'trumped' the disbelief aspect so everyone got used to the idea - now it's faded a bit and the disbelief effect has increased.
You still have the issue of people not experiencing/believing in other things and still being affected, such as drow and the sun. Maybe I've never heard of lightening bolts, and don't believe in them. The only difference between the spell and an actual lightening bolt is that one was generated by energy from the Astral plane (or some such). After the fact, there is no difference.
In this world, of course, there is a difference from a magic lightning bolt and a natural lightning bolt. (One is affected by disbelief, if nothing else).
It's as sensible as any other magical system (which is to say - not at all), even if not as desirable.
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Sheldons
*Groan*
like flipping the monopoly board.
Isn't that hyperbole?
Well, the problem is deliberate exaggeration is a hyperbole. I think that's a simile though... but that's probably unrelated. Walking out, is not the same as a hissy fit or flipping a table. It can be done in numerous ways, and just walking out doesn't infer doing anything related to screaming, violence, or flipping tables.
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Yes, flipping a monopoly board and storming out is drastically different from saying "GM, you're not being reasonable, this game isnt for me", gathering your books, and leaving. How do you not see that?
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I also think someone skimming a few pink 50's out of the bank in monopoky is QUITE different from someone being forced to do nothing for 2 hours amd be expected to do nothing for longer.
Monopoly isn't like a tabletop RPG though. You don't spend nearly as much effort butting your backstory into the shoe. I suppose you can, but its not in the norm. You also own stuff on the table sometimes with these games, so its not unreasonable to take that when you go. There are also many social relationships that affect why you might leave or what your doing, or other peoples actions at the table. Monopoly also has much different options available. Monopoly you can be mean, but you can't murder your friends imaginary kids for instance.
And yes, I think its an exaggeration to compare leaving the room, to flipping the table in a "hissy fit" and leaving. One way is destructive, the other is relatively passive. Additional details change the constructed scenario. I ate is relatively neutral. I ate a buffet is an exaggeration of that basic idea. I ate a buffet of endangered animals probably has an entirely different problem with it.
I find the shoe much more expendable than my dnd characters. And no, I don't play a game I don't like that last hours upon hours. Tell me of your shoes character development?
Who mentioned a crappy trap and screaming at your DM?
Okay, point taken. Its a bad idea to walk away over everything. Just remember if you generalize everyone who walks out as walking out over nothing, you turn a blind eye to a lot of bad things. People have their reasons.
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Taking your ball and going home is immature behavior.
When you join a D&D game you're entering into a social contract of sorts. You should finish the session and just never return if the experience was so terrible. Of course, you should attempt to find a compatible gaming group (and DM) before you invest the time and energy into building a character. Communication is the key.
Just picking up and leaving (especially if your party is in the middle of combat and needs you there) is poor form. Even if the DM is being a dick.
If the other players don't say anything when they see how much the DM is being a dick to that one player. He/she is perfectly justified of saying scr** you guys i'm going home. They obviously don't care enough to help him/her, so why should he/she bother caring about their time and social contracts?
I don't need friends who don't care. So if they don't care, i care even less.
Why are people so worried about alienating someone? The world is full of people, and some will be more compatible with you then others.
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I personally have walked away, saying only that I needed to chill out.
Basically, if I am that heated, then I know I need to cool down, and take another look at the situation after.
Unfortunately, most people have a hard time telling when I am angry, and this is likely due to the fact that I have a lot more patience than just about anyone I know, and when I do lose my patience, it's not a slow rising thing apparent to all.
Most people I game with know that if I am pissed off, it took a lot to get me there.
Usually, they are willing to work with me on a resolution.
Passive-aggressive actions, especially over time, are what usually get me.