Magical Defense, is there one? Pt 1

How do you defend against magic?  The short answers almost always comes up... Anti-magic fields/zones and counterspells/Dispel Magic.

The thing is... those...  pseudo active forms of defense.  The former has a duration, stops your own beneficial magics, and is a limited area of effect spell while the latter requires not only a caster to be present but also to see the spell being cast and also, depending on the ruleset, cast a similar spell (or spell level) to neutralize it.

Now both of these actually require a spell caster to stop.  Only the dispel magic line of spells actually address a huge disadvantage that any GM trying to challenge a party...  or conversely a party trying to protect against NPCs...  magic items.

See, a good deal of this stems from the fact that players, particularly my own, are very paranoid people.  Despite the fact that I enjoy and encourage over the top heroics and daring, I have a reputation with my players of being a bit mean.  This is a bit unfounded.  I do punish stupidity and charging in blindly but I don't punish heroics.

What this means is that they are overly paranoid of the concept of Scry and Die or variations of it.  Constantly looking over their shoulder in a fashion that only usually gets seen in Shadowrun or Cyberpunk players.  Warded against all forms of remote detection and viewing.  They are afraid of squads of people showing up in the middle of the night and killing them all.  They are afraid of the wizard who will appear out of nowhere and slay them all while flying and invisible.

Mind you, they won't mind it at all if they do it.  But because of the Player/GM arms race...  they are literally terrified of the day I return the favor.  I won't...  its not ultimately fair or conductive to the continuation of the campaign's story.  They are convinced though that at any moment, I am going to swoop in with elite NPCs and slaughter them all.

Not unless my story benefits.  Sorry.  It is one thing to kill the characters or the whole party due to the luck of the dice during a climactic battle or they were stupid and charged straight in on the dragon on their own volition.  It is a complete other to merely slit their throats without it meaning something.  It is why I am not a fan of the random encounter.  Random encounters lead to random damage and thus to meaningless deaths.  But that is a topic for another day.

No, the crux of this once divorced of my player's paranoia is my own paranoia as a GM.  How do I stop the spell casters?

It is a pretty well accepted concept that a properly prepared mage is like Batman if given prep time.  A well run party is like a whole slew of Batmans in tandem.  Watch what a cleric, a mage, and a bard can do to buff a rogue and warrior sometime and be amazed.

Now... to ask the question that every Batman villain asks himself...  How do you stop Batman?

If your villain is in a central location... be it Mt Doom or just a simple evil castle... and directing his legions of darkness, what keeps him safe from the party?  Besides the level problem...  according to rules...  nothing actually.

Now, if you are running it entirely as a dungeon crawl game... congrats, you don't have my problem.  Your players are programmed to think in simple squares and I envy you.  I don't have that luxury... I have unwittingly trained a whole slew of gamers who don't think 'inside the box' so to speak.

To them, the world is open... the villains move according to their plans and agendas.  If the players deign themselves interested enough to interfere with the villains, the villains will notice and adjust accordingly to the delays and setbacks inflicted upon them by the players.  The retaliation is often in kind.

To my players, major attacks are conducted like military operations.  They will recon the area, take out as many guards as possible quietly to soften up the area, and then strike heavy and hard towards the perceived target.  It is not always successful.  But it is effective.

The problem is... how do you challenge a group like this?  There is the traditional monster...  blargh!  I be scary or odd or unknown...  the monster from obscure manual 34B page 12 is interesting and it works well for dungeons... but not if your villain is say... a local corrupt noble who has human guards.

What about traps you say!  Of course!  Traps!   Ask yourself this...  would you trap your living room?  While you were still living in your house?   Would you trap the hallway to the bathroom?  The answer to these usually should be... no.  Why?  Because not only do you live there... so do others... who don't know of your traps.  You don't want to hurt your friends.

Now, some of you might actually be complete and total shut ins who are completely anti-social and have no guests.  To you, the idea of trapping ever 5 feet of your home sounds logical.  But say you actually did have friends and family and loved ones...  I know... venturing into Fantasy territory here...  or employees or guards.  No... you might trap a vault...  but that is now just a deterrent against rogues and spies... not parties.  No... traps are not a solution.


I'll get down to this more later...