Mage's Disjunction question


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion


When you use the area-effect version of MDJ, does a person make a separate save for every magic item they have? Seems like that would take way too long.


It's stupid, and that's exactly the way it works. It doesn't target people, it targets all their magic items. Separately.


and is why it's a freaking 9th level spell.
don't mess with level 17+ casters...


That's why we banned it haha.


Goblin_Priest wrote:
That's why we banned it haha.

the spell or high level casters? ;)


Haha, the spell, though we usually level at a rather steady pace and don't stay at level 20 for very long before ending the campaign, so we don't get much playtime with level 9 spells.

The main issue with Mage's Disjunction is not as much rolling all of the saves (though that's terrible in itself), but then recalculating the stat blocks. Fighting a party of high level NPCs, my sorcerer cast Mage's Disjuction, and then forced the GM into a huge grind to recalculate the enemy party's stats, after which we effortlessly won.

I mean, the spell could just be tweaked slightly to remove this problem, but it was just such a terrible crunch that it lead to a kneejerk ban.


Also, What if the whole party is caught in the aoe? A level 20 person will probably have something like a dozen magic items on their person, and assuming a normal size party of about 4 or 5 characters... ya, banning seems like a good idea.


Also, for the recalculating bit, there is a program (forget name at the moment) which can basically store entire character sheets, and you can just click an option to show their stats without any gear. Would still be annoying if, say, only 3/4 of their items got disjoined and you had to check each one off (as well as remembering them all.)


while i have the pc's states with no magic gear and buffs in case they go into anti magic zones. the problem with this spell is that some items will probably save while others won't which mean each effect need to be set by itself.


Yea, that won't work because some items will be affected, some will not.

The easiest fix is just to ban the spell.

A more balanced approach would probably be to require a 1 minute casting time for the AoE effect.


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I haven't banned Mage's Disjunction. It's a really good spell that puts the fear of the gods in your players about going up against high level casters. If you don't want all your stuff ruined, plan accordingly.


Hey, this is funny because we just got hit by one last night. All level 20 PCs. We had to roll for each separate magic item. We just went down the list of gear on our character sheets. It totally sucked! lol


Yeah I bet the avg lvl 20 party has close to 120-150 magic items on them, you’re bound to get a couple 1’s and break the items permanently in addition to the temporarily suppressed items. Wands, bags of holding, all your armor and weapons, backup armor and backup weapons, ioun stones, and then the laundry list of everything else, and you better pray that your bags of holding don’t get destroyed.

Sovereign Court

So what if you Mage's Disjunction someone who has already been Disjunctioned? In regards to the magical items being suppressed, not destroyed.

I'm asking because Disjunction is a magical effect with a duration, so should be able to be dispelled. IE, the target's items initially get turned off, so they Disjunction the Disjunction and cancel the (min/level) effect of the first Disjunction?


Firebug wrote:

So what if you Mage's Disjunction someone who has already been Disjunctioned? In regards to the magical items being suppressed, not destroyed.

I'm asking because Disjunction is a magical effect with a duration, so should be able to be dispelled. IE, the target's items initially get turned off, so they Disjunction the Disjunction and cancel the (min/level) effect of the first Disjunction?

That’s a really good question. I think it should be answered in the Rules forum.


I guess it cancels the old effect and then forces you to roll again for it all?


Goblin_Priest wrote:

Yea, that won't work because some items will be affected, some will not.

The easiest fix is just to ban the spell.

A more balanced approach would probably be to require a 1 minute casting time for the AoE effect.

What about have a limit to how many items can be affected per casting (say, = to CL?)


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I would keep it the way it is. Like it was mentioned above, it's one of the spells that puts the fear into even high-level parties. It's particularly necessary for evening the playing field when the spellcasting BBEG doesn't have enough minion support (a bad tendency in some modules/APs).


PFRPGrognard wrote:
Hey, this is funny because we just got hit by one last night. All level 20 PCs. We had to roll for each separate magic item. We just went down the list of gear on our character sheets. It totally sucked! lol

We used a wish to reverse the effect.

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