New Earth Spell

[ken]

never heard of an army of female Hoplites sacking a city and enslaving men....

Really Check this out; The Celtic Queen Boudicca with her two daughters "took no prisoners," as they destroyed the capital of Roman Britain.

hoplite.jpg

. This is a Hoplite, this is a male Check out those long legs, short skirt, bouffant hairstyle.

[cynthialee]

her daughters were raped....

a reasonable response to such a horrid crime

and she lead an army of men not an army of women

[Daedalus]

Obviously like any other mind effecting spell attacking the monster would break the spell.

As the spell does not actually harm the monster, mearly delays it being a pest I don't know that a resistance roll is nescesary. Resistance rolls to spells never made any sence to me except in the case where the target of the spell has more intelegence than the caster.
My take on magic has always been if you allow a warrior to just nuke folks left and right with a sword....whats the big deal with a wizard ussing magic to achieve the same results?

However, now that I have pondered on it longer... I don't think that those creatures with more mind points than the caster should be able to be compeled with mind effecting spells.

Are you using the European edition?
I have the North American game system, where the spell Sleep is worded thusly:

This spell puts a monster into a deep sleep, so it cannot move, attack, or defend itself. The spell can be broken at once or on a future turn by a monster rolling one red die for each of its Mind Points. If a 6 is rolled, the spell is broken. May not be used against Mummies, Zombies or Skeletons.

I checked the card resources on this sight to see if things were different in the European edition...

This spell will put one monster or player to sleep. He may try to defend himself by rolling one die per Mind point. If he rolls a shield, he is unaffected. Once asleep he may not defend if attacked. He will awake if he rolls a six at the start of his turn, or if attacked.

Some confusion arises between the two editions, so it wasn't obvious to me that attacking the monster would break the spell until your post prompted me to learn a little more. I've gained some insight thanks to your unique and amusing spell. All my questions were put forward with the spirit of constructive criticism and an interest in seeing your idea developed, but I now see you already had a built-in way to allow the spell to be broken by an attack from a Hero.

Without it, I thought there was a balance issue where a Chaos Warrior or Gargoyle could be sent aside to be slaughtered without the ability to respond. I'd still allow for a turn-to-turn roll to end the spell for lesser balance issues, as I'm fine with a victim breaking the spell. Taking a tough monster out of a fight until it can be dealt with singly is a darn good advantage, as the Heroes can mass their attacks at once and quite possibly kill it before it can respond. Still, I imagine any evil wizard can deal with that well enough in a game, while preserving a view of magic seperateness.

[Big Bene]

It's still mean...
As much as I remember, I never sacked a city and enslaved women, nor did I ever (or would ever) rape somebody. And I think that's true of 99,9% of my fellow males. Those hoplites (I don't know to wich exact incident you do refer) seem to have been bad people, but I doubt findig their inner female would have made them better all of a sudden.

a reasonable response to such a horrid crime

Slaughtering the populance of a city is a reasonable response to the rape of two persons?
Understandable perhaps, if you assume they've been driven mad by the experience, but reasonable?

[cynthialee]

The culture that spawned the men that raped those women is just as resposible.
The people of the time would have cheered the rape of barbarian women.
Sacking the city was a resonable response.

Having been raped I can say very surely that if I had a daughter and someone raped her.....I would go to the ends of the earth and spare no lives to wreck vengance on the perpitrators.

[cynthialee]

Daedalus,
I have a bad habit of forgetting that my house rules are not universal....

[Big Bene]

Having been raped I can say very surely that if I had a daughter and someone raped her.....I would go to the ends of the earth and spare no lives to wreck vengance on the perpitrators.

If I had a daughter and someone raped her, I'd very probably do just the same. But that doesn't mean it's right - or "reasonable". Personal feelings are often understandable, but seldom reasonable. That's why we have a legal system and don't allow the victims to excercise frontier law.

As much as I despise a crime such as this and would go out of my way to hinder it (I can only hope to be as courageous as my grandfather who was shot when stepping in between a rape, and subsequently died), I would also not let you or any other crime victim go on a killing frenzy, if I could do something about it. And nobody will convince me that slaughtering a city is a reasonable reaction to rape.

I also want to say that it was not my intention to steer into those troubled waters or bring up any bad feelings. Bad luck that of all the warlike women in history Ken brought up the example of Boudicca and her daughters.
I'm pretty sure that you don't really generalize all male as chaotic evil.

[cynthialee]

She did not have recourse of legal action.
Wageing war in such a circumstance must be seen as the only civil course of action.

[Big Bene]

I did not accuse her of frontier law or wanted to say she should have taken legal action.
I said that personal desire for vengeance is not a good advisor and does seldom result in reasonable reactions. I just substantiated this claim by noting that, for this very reason, we nowadays prefer a legal system over frontier law.

If there is no legal system, people of course can't be blamed for taking up frontier law, but this will still most often result in unreasonable over the top reactions. And killing thousands of people because "their culture spawned" (or even promoted) the rapers of one's daughters would have been way over the top (and therefore unreasonable - sorry, but I will maintain that).

This is of course purely theoretic, as we just cannot know the real motivations of queen Boudicca. Contemporaries saw her war more as a fight for her people's freedom than for the revenge of her personal hardships, and this also was the cause her 50000 followers enlisted to, not the "reasonable" reaction to the rape (and her own whipping, we should not forget). Her personal motivation may have been entirely different, but we will never know.
I just had problems with your jurisdiction of the killing of a city's populance as a "reasonable reaction" to two rapes.

I'm still not comfortable having this discussion. It doesnt't serve any good for you, for me, or for the board.
I actually like the "overwhelming filth" spell. It's funny - and I think that's what it was ment to be.

[cynthialee]

I will go with the assumption that you do not know the level of reverance that the female comunity and especially the feminist comunity assigns to Boudicca and I will walk away from this topic.
My passions can only become more inflamed at this point.