Combat Magic Spells?

[HarleeKnight]

There is a post with the usefulness of different spells broken up into categories... Ratty's Guide to Spell Magic, I love this guide and I come back to it often.
http://palladium-megaverse.com/forums/v ... 8&t=142445
In it, one of the categories is Combat Magic Spells... I would like to read some of the spell descriptions, but I can't find this list in any book. Anyone know where to find them?

[The Beast]

They're in one of the small sourcebooks like the Black Vault (but not that one). Should be the same one with the Cold Blooded RCC.




Petty tyrants thrive when they have authority backed by vague regulations.

[Shark_Force]

i thought they were from merc ops...

[ShadowLogan]

Not Merc Ops^1, but one of the companion books Merc Town^2 or Mercenary Adventurers^3. I think it's supposed to be Adventurers, but would not be surprised if it was MercTown (I don't have either book, I am going off of memory from previous mentions on the forums). While neither book mentions Combat Magic in the store page currently, it might have in the past (or in an old weekly update).

EDIT: While not in the Palladium Store as such, it gets a mention in the description over at DrivethruRPG.com^4 which mentions 7 new mercenary OCCs, Combat Mage OCC and Combat Magic

^1 https://palladium-store.com/1001/produc ... c-Ops.html
^2 https://palladium-store.com/1001/produc ... ctown.html
^3 https://palladium-store.com/1001/produc ... ebook.html
^4 http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/197 ... Adventures

[13eowulf]

To confirm; it is Mercenary Adventures.

[Glistam]

As was already said, they're from Mercenary Adventures. It's a neat branch of magic with some bafflingly terrible spells and some amazingly awesome spells.

[Shark_Force]

As was already said, they're from Mercenary Adventures. It's a neat branch of magic with some bafflingly terrible spells and some amazingly awesome spells.

which every other kind of wizard is supposed to think is stupid because reasons.

[eliakon]

As was already said, they're from Mercenary Adventures. It's a neat branch of magic with some bafflingly terrible spells and some amazingly awesome spells.

which every other kind of wizard is supposed to think is stupid because reasons.

As far as I can tell...
...the reason is so that they can give their combat mages some amazingly OP battle spells... with out having to make them a specialist with access to a unique branch of magic that they and they alone can cast (like Warlocks or Shamans or the like)
The result was a rather heavy handed "Thou shalt not take this because of RP"
I have toyed with some house rules style changes to the flavor there to help (more or less they are more of 'secrets' that you only share with 'real soldiers')
But yeah... "reasons"

[Axelmania]

I'm prone to thinking that natural selection would weed out those foolish enough to avoid the spells...

Except those who would spend credits on learning them are probably wanting to jump into battle and get themselves killed.

Other mages might spend creds learning spells useful behind the lines, or maybe repairing their body armor, and survive through avoiding combat, thus leading to the reputation that combat magic is foolish.

[eliakon]

I'm prone to thinking that natural selection would weed out those foolish enough to avoid the spells...

Except those who would spend credits on learning them are probably wanting to jump into battle and get themselves killed.

Other mages might spend creds learning spells useful behind the lines, or maybe repairing their body armor, and survive through avoiding combat, thus leading to the reputation that combat magic is foolish.

Which might work...
...if they hadn't put some of the better utility spells in there.

But it is, at least, a good partial solution.

[dragonfett]

The thing that baffles me is how some of those spells could be deemed "Combat Magic", such as Magelock.

[Axelmania]

You could cast it on the satchel containing your enemy's spare e-clips before attacking them?

Or to lock the door to a building before your set it on fire?

Which might work......if they hadn't put some of the better utility spells in there.

I hadn't looked that close, it was hearing about Mystic Invisibility which drew me in for CS evasion.

Certainly no bread/milk/wine/vinegar or plant-growth-acceleration or flesh-from-stone or summoning shadowy beasts to attack from safety in there...

Farseeing seems pretty useful for avoiding combat. Not so much the 2 miles if you have binoculars, but the tripling of range for things like See the Invisible which are pretty low.

Spy Eye as well.

[Library Ogre]

In some ways, I think a weakness of Rifts, PF, and D&D and its offshoots is that they made their default magic-casting classes generalists. Wizards can cast any spell a Warlock can... their version might be more expensive and higher level, but there's no reason a wizard can't create Breath of Life or Little Mud Mound, because of the breadth that wizard magic encompasses.

Thus, when you get something like "combat magic", which doesn't have a separate supernatural source, you have to come up with convoluted reasons why this isn't part of every wizard's repertoire... You can sometimes achieve that through obscurity ("No one knows about Nepalese Pogo Magic, so Pogo magic spells don't appear outside of Rifts: Nepal"), but that can start to strain credulity when there's tons of contacts with other parts of the setting.

[dreicunan]

In some ways, I think a weakness of Rifts, PF, and D&D and its offshoots is that they made their default magic-casting classes generalists. Wizards can cast any spell a Warlock can... their version might be more expensive and higher level, but there's no reason a wizard can't create Breath of Life or Little Mud Mound, because of the breadth that wizard magic encompasses.

Thus, when you get something like "combat magic", which doesn't have a separate supernatural source, you have to come up with convoluted reasons why this isn't part of every wizard's repertoire... You can sometimes achieve that through obscurity ("No one knows about Nepalese Pogo Magic, so Pogo magic spells don't appear outside of Rifts: Nepal"), but that can start to strain credulity when there's tons of contacts with other parts of the setting.

True, but given the write-up on the Combat Wizard, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch for the role-playing reason in this case to be "All you Ley Line Walkers and Shifters act like we Combat Wizards are beneath you, so we aren't going to teach you our neat new tricks." (Eliakon made a similar point earlier). You can't learn what someone won't teach you unless it is through experimentation. That would leave picking the spells as something you worked out upon gaining a level for classes that get to do that.

[Nox Equites]

Enough money and snobbery be damned, I'll sell you new spells.

[dreicunan]

Enough money and snobbery be damned, I'll sell you new spells.

For which you may accidentally end up fragged by other combat mages.

[Library Ogre]

True, but given the write-up on the Combat Wizard, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch for the role-playing reason in this case to be "All you Ley Line Walkers and Shifters act like we Combat Wizards are beneath you, so we aren't going to teach you our neat new tricks." (Eliakon made a similar point earlier). You can't learn what someone won't teach you unless it is through experimentation. That would leave picking the spells as something you worked out upon gaining a level for classes that get to do that.

Like a lot of cultural issues, though, this winds up against the Megaverse problem... in a sufficiently infinite universe, why can't the quadrillions of people in the Three Galaxies, who have billions of spellcasters among them, have almost identical spells, developed some time in the last several thousand years of civilization? Do we really think the UWW is going to say "Combat magic? Ewwww... that's unseemly"? And if Bob the Line Walker learned the spell at level up, what's to keep him from teaching it to Anna, his apprentice, and also a line walker?

When a power is the province of a specific source, it's can remain more contained. When it's just "slightly disliked knowledge", it becomes less reasonable.

[Shark_Force]

True, but given the write-up on the Combat Wizard, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch for the role-playing reason in this case to be "All you Ley Line Walkers and Shifters act like we Combat Wizards are beneath you, so we aren't going to teach you our neat new tricks." (Eliakon made a similar point earlier). You can't learn what someone won't teach you unless it is through experimentation. That would leave picking the spells as something you worked out upon gaining a level for classes that get to do that.

Like a lot of cultural issues, though, this winds up against the Megaverse problem... in a sufficiently infinite universe, why can't the quadrillions of people in the Three Galaxies, who have billions of spellcasters among them, have almost identical spells, developed some time in the last several thousand years of civilization? Do we really think the UWW is going to say "Combat magic? Ewwww... that's unseemly"? And if Bob the Line Walker learned the spell at level up, what's to keep him from teaching it to Anna, his apprentice, and also a line walker?

When a power is the province of a specific source, it's can remain more contained. When it's just "slightly disliked knowledge", it becomes less reasonable.

or even just some place on rifts earth. are we to believe that lazlo (the city-state which literally just told tolkeen their strategy for war should be to find someplace to hide so well that the CS will never find them) has not been studying the problem of how to become invisible to dog boys or radar? sure, it's a small chance of success... when you have one person doing it. when you have 20 or 30 or 100 people working on it, well, if we use the rules from nightbane, within a month or two someone would have something worked out, probably not quite as good as the more fully developed combat magic option, but something. maybe a few more months if they're sharing information (like a guild) and someone should have a version that is basically the same as the combat magic version. because "plan run and hide" isn't going to work too well if every time someone goes to or comes from your hiding place they leave a really big obvious arrow pointing in your direction (and you're going to need something to work from so you can scale it up into a city-wide version with techno-wizardry or powerful rituals or whatever else you use).

when a particular effect is extremely desirable, and you have a bunch of people who are each essentially dedicated researchers specializing in the exact same field (that is, the type of magic is not actually different, it's only the specific knowledge that isn't known), someone is gonna figure out how to generate that effect before long.

(frustratingly enough for the combat mages, the reverse is probably not very true... i don't imagine combat mages make as good researchers as more conventional mages )

[dreicunan]

True, but given the write-up on the Combat Wizard, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch for the role-playing reason in this case to be "All you Ley Line Walkers and Shifters act like we Combat Wizards are beneath you, so we aren't going to teach you our neat new tricks." (Eliakon made a similar point earlier). You can't learn what someone won't teach you unless it is through experimentation. That would leave picking the spells as something you worked out upon gaining a level for classes that get to do that.

Like a lot of cultural issues, though, this winds up against the Megaverse problem... in a sufficiently infinite universe, why can't the quadrillions of people in the Three Galaxies, who have billions of spellcasters among them, have almost identical spells, developed some time in the last several thousand years of civilization? Do we really think the UWW is going to say "Combat magic? Ewwww... that's unseemly"? And if Bob the Line Walker learned the spell at level up, what's to keep him from teaching it to Anna, his apprentice, and also a line walker?

When a power is the province of a specific source, it's can remain more contained. When it's just "slightly disliked knowledge", it becomes less reasonable.

or even just some place on rifts earth. are we to believe that lazlo (the city-state which literally just told tolkeen their strategy for war should be to find someplace to hide so well that the CS will never find them) has not been studying the problem of how to become invisible to dog boys or radar? sure, it's a small chance of success... when you have one person doing it. when you have 20 or 30 or 100 people working on it, well, if we use the rules from nightbane, within a month or two someone would have something worked out, probably not quite as good as the more fully developed combat magic option, but something. maybe a few more months if they're sharing information (like a guild) and someone should have a version that is basically the same as the combat magic version. because "plan run and hide" isn't going to work too well if every time someone goes to or comes from your hiding place they leave a really big obvious arrow pointing in your direction (and you're going to need something to work from so you can scale it up into a city-wide version with techno-wizardry or powerful rituals or whatever else you use).

when a particular effect is extremely desirable, and you have a bunch of people who are each essentially dedicated researchers specializing in the exact same field (that is, the type of magic is not actually different, it's only the specific knowledge that isn't known), someone is gonna figure out how to generate that effect before long.

(frustratingly enough for the combat mages, the reverse is probably not very true... i don't imagine combat mages make as good researchers as more conventional mages )

Good points all around. "The Megaverse problem" is a good way to put it. Another thought I had is that Shifters who link up with a War deity would likely be encouraged to learn some Combat Magic by their patron.