Holding actions (to interrupt spells)

[IndianaJoe3]

22 hours ago, Gandalf970 said:

How does interrupting spell casting look in Fantasy Hero.  I assume a player holds an action and uses the gestures or incantations as a trigger.  Does the spell caster automatically lose the spell if hit, is there a combat casting skill etc.  Any ideas would be helpful.

 

As others have said, it will depend on how you want your magic system to work. Concentration, Gestures, and Incantations all have rules for interrupting Powers with those Limitations. You could use Limited Power: Interruptible (-0) to give the same effect without any of the other drawbacks.

 

Barring any of those (or similar) Limitations, the only way to interrupt a spell is for the interrupter to have an appropriate Dispel, with a held action.

 

5 hours ago, Doc Democracy said:

All Duke has said is that it might be different in every game and there may be some games in which you cannot interrupt spellcasting.

 

It's important to remember that Hero is a toolkit system. The game mechanics for Pulsar's power blasts and Talisman's Hellfire are the same (Blast, 12d6). You can't interrupt Talisman just because, "It's magic."

[Ninja-Bear]

Hugh- (and naturally I could be wrong) but the RAW GB(!) quoted to me meant that if you hit a wizard no matter the limitations, if his spell requires an attack roll and you stun him, then the spell stops working. So a shield spell? No it works though I do believe that if you get to act first, you get to hit before the spell fires off. The toad spell? If you stun him then it doesn’t fire off. 

[Ninja-Bear]

28 minutes ago, IndianaJoe3 said:

 

As others have said, it will depend on how you want your magic system to work. Concentration, Gestures, and Incantations all have rules for interrupting Powers with those Limitations. You could use Limited Power: Interruptible (-0) to give the same effect without any of the other drawbacks.

 

Barring any of those (or similar) Limitations, the only way to interrupt a spell is for the interrupter to have an appropriate Dispel, with a held action.

 

 

It's important to remember that Hero is a toolkit system. The game mechanics for Pulsar's power blasts and Talisman's Hellfire are the same (Blast, 12d6). You can't interrupt Talisman just because, "It's magic."

Actually according to what GB(!) quoted you can if it has a Attack Roll. So if you get the drop on Pulsar and Stun him then his Blast doesn’t go off. I think that is very trope appropriate.

[IndianaJoe3]

4 minutes ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Actually according to what GB(!) quoted you can if it has a Attack Roll. So if you get the drop on Pulsar and Stun him then his Blast doesn’t go off. I think that is very trope appropriate.

 

Well, yeah, you can act before him and prevent him from acting. I'm not sure if that counts as an interrupt for purposes of this thread, though. You could hit him and still not do enough damage to Stun or KO him.

[Ninja-Bear]

1 minute ago, IndianaJoe3 said:

 

Well, yeah, you can act before him and prevent him from acting. I'm not sure if that counts as an interrupt for purposes of this thread, though. You could hit him and still not do enough damage to Stun or KO him.

Well sure. I don’t think the OP was looking to guarantee to interrupt just a chance to interrupt or how to interrupt the caster.

[Chris Goodwin]

8 hours ago, Gnome BODY (important!) said:

You might want to reread some Fantasy Hero books, because Gestures and/or Incantations is in fact the base condition. 

 

I don't believe this is factually correct.  

 

In FH 1, for first-gen Hero, the base condition for all spells were a full Phase to cast, half DCV, a Magic Skill at -1 per 10 Active Points, and END cost of 1 per 5 Active.  Gestures and Incantations are Limitations that can be taken, but there's no requirement built into the system that they must be.

 

In FH for 4th edition, the base condition is the requirement of a total of -1 from a list of Limitations; it's assumed that a list will be provided by the GM, but the book provides a list which includes Gestures and Incantations.  I'll note here that no particular Limitations from the list are required, so a character could easily have spells without either Limitation.  

 

The genre books for FH for 5th and 6th editions specify that the GM will create the magic system, and will specify any required Limitations.  These can include Gestures and Incantations, and those are listed as very common for magic, but there's nothing requiring them.  

 

The sample magic system provided in Fantasy Hero Complete does include Gestures and Incantations as requirements.  

 

Finally, the original poster in this thread, Gandalf970, specified Gestures and Incantations in the original post.  

 

There are a number of ways an attacker could disrupt a caster's spell using Gestures and Incantations:

• Via an Entangle or Grab that affects the hands, unless another body part is specified for the Gestures
• By an Entangle that affects the mouth or the voice, whether this is provided by a Modifier built into the Entangle (such as Stops Sense and specifies Voice as the "sense" stopped via the "voice as sense" rules in 6e2) or by special effect and GM permission
• By a Grab that affects the mouth (possibly via an OCV penalty)
• With GM permission, by a Darkness that affects the Hearing Group, possibly requiring the "voice as sense" rules in 6e2
• With GM permission, negotiation, and discussion, an attack against the Hit Locations covering the hands, mouth, or throat might do it.  Slitting a caster's throat before they can incant, slicing off a hand or arm, smashing the fingers or throat with a club, fist, or other weapon, choking or strangling the caster... any of these probably will do it.

Pretty much all of this includes discussion with the GM as a prerequisite.  

 

Tl;dr:  To fully answer the OP's question: if a spell has Gestures and Incantations, there are a number of ways provided by the rules to disrupt the casting, and a number of others that can be had with GM negotiation.  The majority if not all of these can be performed with a Held Action. 

[Gnome BODY (important!)]

11 hours ago, Doc Democracy said:

No more evidence than you have that any such game reliably utilises interruptable magic. 

 

Not going to engage further, you might be only the second person I block in a couple of decades on the boards.

Fantasy Hero 5th edition, example magic systems section.  11 out of 12 systems presented have Gestures and/or Incantations.  The last does not have the SFX of gestures or incantations so cannot be the magic system used by the OP who mentions gestures and incantations.  The baseline is clearly for Gestures and/or Incantations. All evidence supports OP using a magic system where spells have Gestures or Incantations. 

There's one bit of my evidence, still haven't seen any of yours. 

 

You don't get to say you're bowing out unless you actually stop arguing.  Claiming to leave an argument is not a get-last-word-in-uncontested free card. 

 

8 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

GB(I), your RAW is only relevant IF the power requires Gestures or Incantations. 

Do you have a single iota of evidence that Gestures and Incantations aren't in use?  Remember, we're not discussing the vague abstract of all possible magic systems, we're discussing OP's magic system.  And OP mentioned "gestures or incantations".

 

3 hours ago, Chris Goodwin said:

Finally, the original poster in this thread, Gandalf970, specified Gestures and Incantations in the original post. 

In this thread, this is the only important part of your post. 

[Gnome BODY (important!)]

8 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Hugh- (and naturally I could be wrong) but the RAW GB(!) quoted to me meant that if you hit a wizard no matter the limitations, if his spell requires an attack roll and you stun him, then the spell stops working. So a shield spell? No it works though I do believe that if you get to act first, you get to hit before the spell fires off. The toad spell? If you stun him then it doesn’t fire off. 

I have no idea how you got that from the rules I quoted.  If the interrupting action required an attack roll, the spell fails.  Nothing about the spell having/lacking an attack roll. 

 

7 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Actually according to what GB(!) quoted you can if it has a Attack Roll. So if you get the drop on Pulsar and Stun him then his Blast doesn’t go off. I think that is very trope appropriate.

7 hours ago, IndianaJoe3 said:

 

Well, yeah, you can act before him and prevent him from acting. I'm not sure if that counts as an interrupt for purposes of this thread, though. You could hit him and still not do enough damage to Stun or KO him.

Not Stun.  STUN.  Any damage interrupts the spell.  Come on people, the rules are right there.  I quoted them for you!  Read! 

[IndianaJoe3]

1 hour ago, Gnome BODY (important!) said:

Not Stun.  STUN.  Any damage interrupts the spell.  Come on people, the rules are right there.  I quoted them for you!  Read! 

 

I was specifically discussing powers without Limitations. I guess the context got lost.

[Hugh Neilson]

Actually, he said

 

On 6/27/2020 at 8:38 AM, Gandalf970 said:

How does interrupting spell casting look in Fantasy Hero.  I assume a player holds an action and uses the gestures or incantations as a trigger.  Does the spell caster automatically lose the spell if hit, is there a combat casting skill etc.  Any ideas would be helpful.

 

Not "my GM requires gestures or incantations be taken even on all spells" or even "I assume gestures and incantations are required", but "if I just hold an action using gestures or incantations as the trigger, am I good to go?"

 

So the first question is "what are the terms of the magic system in use in your game?"  I guess he does not "lose the spell", since, unlike D&D, he does not have limited uses of each spell.  Unless, of course, the magic system in use requires him to have limited charges.  "I'll attack anyone who makes gestures or starts incanting"?  What stops my Warrior from muttering "Iggitty Aggitty Ook - AK AK" in an attempt to draw fire away from the spellcaster?

[Ninja-Bear]

13 hours ago, IndianaJoe3 said:

 

I was specifically discussing powers without Limitations. I guess the context got lost.

Don’t feel bad. I reread what he quoted and I think I misunderstood him too.

[Ninja-Bear]

12 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

"I'll attack anyone who makes gestures or starts incanting"?  What stops my Warrior from muttering "Iggitty Aggitty Ook - AK AK" in an attempt to draw fire away from the spellcaster?

I should use that the next time! HA!

[Shoug]

On 6/28/2020 at 4:37 AM, Doc Democracy said:

 

No more evidence than you have that any such game reliably utilises interruptable magic. 

 

Not going to engage further, you might be only the second person I block in a couple of decades on the boards. 

 

I'm sorry, but he does have evidence. He's not being pedantic or mean, he actually has evidence that the OP is asking an answerable question about RAW. I run into this all the time as a fresh Hero player. Inconsistent answers to what I think are straightforward rules questions. It's as though the game does not have rules at times. Besides, as far as I can tell, uninteruptability is as close to a houserule as is possible achievable in Hero. Everything in the game has built in special counters, "hard counters" in video game lingo. Any power can be Dispelled, and conversely any character can have Power Defenses to protect them from that. There's Normal Damage and Killing Damage, Normal Defense and Resistant Defenses. There's Penetrating and there's Hardened. Everything absolute like Desolidification and NND requires an SFX be specified that just defeats it. It's basic comic book protocol that things escalate in this way, that Superman has a special weakness to kryptonite, or that for one episode there is something that can resist Cyclopse's beam. And while we're not necessarily talking about superhero games, this etiquette is woven into the *actual rules of the game, the ones written in the book I bought, the ones I'm reading and trying to use.* 

 

So questions like, "how does interrupting a power using gestures and incantations work", questions that *do have answers*, should be answered first correctly, and then with the caveat, "If this isn't how you'd like it to work, feel free to take off Gestures and/or Incantations and just RP those things as SFX. This way it will take a timely Dispel to counter a spell, and not just any held attack action." I agree with Gnome-body here, this isn't a question of how things could be, it's a question of how the rules work as written.

 

I don't know why everybody assumes that people using the most flexible and toolkit-y system ever created are probably using house rules too. I have a deep love of systems and rules and the games they produce, Hero is more of a homebrew creation system then a game, it makes no sense that I would bend the rules when they're already so fluid. If I'm just making things up, I'm gonna play an easier game to do that in, like Fate or The Fantasy Trip, games with fewer interconnected systems that I have to worry about.

[Doc Democracy]

51 minutes ago, Shoug said:

So questions like, "how does interrupting a power using gestures and incantations work", questions that *do have answers*, should be answered first correctly, and then with the caveat, "If this isn't how you'd like it to work, feel free to take off Gestures and/or Incantations and just RP those things as SFX. This way it will take a timely Dispel to counter a spell, and not just any held attack action." I agree with Gnome-body here, this isn't a question of how things could be, it's a question of how the rules work as written.

 

I said I was not going to engage but I don't want to seem like I am ignoring you.  There is nothing in the rules that say a spell has to use gestures or incantations.  That is all that was said to begin with - the system as written is silent on whether spells need gestures and/or incantations (though it does provide a lot of examples with that kind of thing).

 

It is NOT a RAW answer to tell someone that you can interrupt a spell by undertaking actions that trigger disadvantages that may be built into the spell.  It is correct to tell someone that the first thing they need to do is assure themselves (with the GM for a game) that spells in the game reliably utilise those disadvantages in spells.

 

It is because HERO is so fluid that you cannot make assumptions on how things are done in any particular game.  I have, admittedly only run one Fantasy HERO game in all the years that I have used the system and the magic users in that game varied in the disadvantages they took on spells - there was no overarching spell system - the players made up their own spells and while the majority of them used gestures or incantations a substantial minority did not - simply because the players did not want their spells to be uninterruptible...

 

That was NOT house-ruled magic, it was using HERO as written in the rules...

 

Doc

[Chris Goodwin]

From the original post...

 

On 6/27/2020 at 7:38 AM, Gandalf970 said:

How does interrupting spell casting look in Fantasy Hero.  I assume a player holds an action and uses the gestures or incantations as a trigger.  Does the spell caster automatically lose the spell if hit, is there a combat casting skill etc.  Any ideas would be helpful.

 

(Boldface mine.)  For a spell with Gestures and/or Incantations, a successful hit in combat against the caster doesn't necessarily disrupt the spell.  If an attacker wanted to disrupt the spell, I've already mentioned in the thread how they might do so, with various targeted attacks.  There are other Limitations that do allow a successful hit to disrupt a spell; specifically, Concentration lists how, and provides a way a caster might avoid it.  

 

There's an optional-but-recommended Limitation noted in a couple of Fantasy Hero books, without a lot of supporting documentation... the Limitation is called Spell (-1/2) and it basically rolls a number of Limitations into it, the specifics usually being up to the GM.  This Limitation could include the condition that a spell being cast can be disrupted by an incoming attack that does some threshold of STUN and/or BODY to the caster.  

 

3 hours ago, Doc Democracy said:

I said I was not going to engage but I don't want to seem like I am ignoring you.  There is nothing in the rules that say a spell has to use gestures or incantations.  That is all that was said to begin with - the system as written is silent on whether spells need gestures and/or incantations (though it does provide a lot of examples with that kind of thing).

 

It is NOT a RAW answer to tell someone that you can interrupt a spell by undertaking actions that trigger disadvantages that may be built into the spell.  It is correct to tell someone that the first thing they need to do is assure themselves (with the GM for a game) that spells in the game reliably utilise those disadvantages in spells.

 

Gestures and Incantations were specified as given in the original post in the thread.  Regardless of whatever other hypothetical or potential conditions a given magic system or spell might include or require, we are in fact starting from Gestures and Incantations as a requirement, per the OP.  I'd like to suggest any discusssion of whether or not a given magic system might or might not require them be tabled, for that reason.  

[Doc Democracy]

Then I guess it's the last time I'll be involved in these threads.  I obviously don't understand the basics.

 

[Chris Goodwin]

42 minutes ago, Doc Democracy said:

Then I guess it's the last time I'll be involved in these threads.  I obviously don't understand the basics.

 

 

I honestly didn't mean to come across in any negative way.  The premise was given in the initial post.  We can expand it to a general discussion of magic, but let's keep in mind that we're not doing the original poster any favors by ignoring the givens.  

 

You are right in that there's nothing in the rules that says magic requires Gestures and Incantations, but that was one of the givens in the initial post.  

 

More generally, we are in the Fantasy Hero forum, and we're discussing magic, which frequently does have ways for an attacker to shut down a caster that don't involve an active Dispel or similar, which can include hacking off the caster's arms with a honking great sword, because they can't perform Gestures without them.  

[Duke Bushido]

5 minutes ago, Chris Goodwin said:

h can include hacking off the caster's arms with a honking great sword, because they can't perform Gestures without them.  

 

 

Ah, yes. 

 

The famous "anti-neener sword kata...." 

 

We meet again.... 

[Hugh Neilson]

17 hours ago, Chris Goodwin said:

Gestures and Incantations were specified as given in the original post in the thread.  Regardless of whatever other hypothetical or potential conditions a given magic system or spell might include or require, we are in fact starting from Gestures and Incantations as a requirement, per the OP.  I'd like to suggest any discusssion of whether or not a given magic system might or might not require them be tabled, for that reason.  

 

Actually, what the OP said was (emphasis added):

 

On 6/27/2020 at 8:38 AM, Gandalf970 said:

How does interrupting spell casting look in Fantasy Hero.  I assume a player holds an action and uses the gestures or incantations as a trigger.  Does the spell caster automatically lose the spell if hit, is there a combat casting skill etc.  Any ideas would be helpful.

 

This could indicate that Gestures and Incantations are required in  the game in question.  However, it can just as easily be read to say that the OP assumes every spell requires Gestures and Incantations.  The first step is clarifying whether this is the OP's assumption or a hard-coded requirement of the specific game in question.  But that is not how interrupting a spell looks in Fantasy Hero.  It is how interrupting a spell might look if a specific Fantasy Hero game requires those specific limitations. 

 

The point that  not every Fantasy Hero game may require those specific limitations is an important one.  This may, or may not, be the way to interrupt a spell in any given Fantasy Hero Game, but it is not guaranteed to be effective under every game constructed using the Fantasy Hero System.  In a game where spellcasting is a mental process that always requires Concentration, holding an action to be triggered by unusual gestures or incantations is utterly useless when the spellcaster need only concentrate, not speak or gesture, to cast his spell.

 

In the Harry Potterverse, for example, Disarming wands would be a much more effective tactic, despite the requirement a wand be pointed (arguably Gestures, but including that in OAF would be equally valid) and the typical, but not universal, requirement of a single spoken word or two.  In that game (based on the source material), the far more effective approach was to disarm the wand before its holder had an action to cast a spell, not wait for him to cast.

[Duke Bushido]

On 6/28/2020 at 7:53 PM, Hugh Neilson said:

What stops my Warrior from muttering "Iggitty Aggitty Ook - AK AK" in an attempt to draw fire away from the spellcaster?

 

 

I don't know how long it takes things to get through moderation, so forgive if we've moved on when it makes it through.

 

That apology said:

 

Absolutely nothing stops you from muttering "Iggitty Aggity"-whatever-else-you-want.

 

It's a perfectly valid tactic for protecting the spell caster, and one my players have used every now and again.  Not often, but enough to cover the caster for something really important, usually.

[Khas]

Related to this I have a question, as written in the fantasy book, incantations and gestures start at the beginning of the segment. Since this is written in a genre book describing "fantasy limitations" and not in the cores, do you think this is a genre rule (or suggestion) or this is a clarification valid for any genre? 

Thanks

[pawsplay]

There is nothing about Gestures that says you can't be hurt. Unless it's Restrainable or Requires Concentration, Gestures are fine unless someone hacks off their fingers first.

[Duke Bushido]

On June 27, 2020 at 6:21 PM, Ninja-Bear said:

I thought target the first person who utters “unga bunga” was self explanatory? 😁

 

On June 28, 2020 at 3:33 AM, Doc Democracy said:

 

So I have built myself a Fantasy Hero character and, with permission from the GM, have an instinctive magician, small VPP that allows me to hurry spells, dispense with gestures, with concentration or any other element as desired.

 

What would Gandalph's character do to interrupt my spellcasting?  Anything guaranteed to work RAW? 

 

 

On June 28, 2020 at 9:10 AM, Hugh Neilson said:

 

 

To me, the question was "Will holding an action to target anyone who gestures or incants allow the character to reliably interrupt spellcasting?"

 

The answer is "maybe".  It depends on the spellcaster, which depends in part on the magic system.

 

 

On June 28, 2020 at 9:14 AM, Hugh Neilson said:

To the question of downvotes, I agree they are unhelpful. 

 

12 minutes ago, pawsplay said:

There is nothing about Gestures that says you can't be hurt. Unless it's Restrainable or Requires Concentration, Gestures are fine unless someone hacks off their fingers first.

 

 

 

Sorry, Gentlemen.  

 

I cannot add any more rep today....

 

(and possibly for sixty days: I don't know.  On the plus side, apparently it doesn't take too terribly long to get a comment through moderation.  

 

[Chris Goodwin]

3 hours ago, pawsplay said:

There is nothing about Gestures that says you can't be hurt. Unless it's Restrainable or Requires Concentration, Gestures are fine unless someone hacks off their fingers first.

 

Now that you mention it... I have no idea off the top of my head whether that's true.  A trip through 6e volume 1 reveals... 

 

6e1 p. 381:

 

Quote

If the character takes damage from or is adversely affected by any power that requires an Attack Roll or MCV Attack Roll while he’s Gesturing, the power doesn’t activate or immediately turns off.

 

6e1 p. 381-382:

 

Quote

If he takes damage or is adversely affected by any power that requires an Attack Roll or MCV Attack Roll while he’s Incanting, the power doesn’t turn on or immediately turns off.

 

I hadn't bothered to check that before, but it looks like with Gestures or Incantations, an attack can disrupt the Power.  "[T]akes damage from or is adversely affected by" probably means something like, at least 1 STUN or BODY through defenses, or at least 1m of Knockback, or greater than EGO on a Mental Power.  I suppose technically at least 1 segment of Flash would trigger that as well, but that seems a little much.  I can see a case for it either way.  Enough to change the character's position, status, or any of their game values.  

[pawsplay]

I don't know how I missed that. But there it is.