Ultimate Showdown: The Coalition vs The Federation of Magic

[jaymz]

Killer Cyborg

I went back an seen your post about resources .. read it, did a lil research on it .. and here is what I found out .. hope it helps ..


Coalition Armor is made out of overlapping body plates , which are made out of new lightweight ceramic developed by Triax and shared with the CS.

The Coalition according to every book about them are unable to mine ceramic's .. of any kind .. thus it is well within the realm of poassabilities they are unable to produce the armors they now use an are dependent upon the armors or the ceramic's being shipped to them from the NGR.

And I also took the liberty to see exactly where you got the idea that coal can also produce plastic's .. And which type of plastic's .. Truth be told, they produce a compound that used with other compounds can produce plastic's .. but a more efficent way to produce that is now done meaning the way to produce the plastic with the coal in the first place is horrible enough to not make it worth the time/energy put into it .. to make it cost effective.

So no, the CS can in fact not make plastic's threw coal .. With out having the other resources to combine in the right amounts along with the coal by product to produce the plastic's ..

Len you do understand that you do not "mine" ceramics right? Ceramics are essentially dirt and water with some other chemicals or substance mixed in. I don't think the CS is lacking in the availability of dirt and water or incapabable of producing the chemicals needed to make MD ceramics.

[Lenwen]

Len you do understand that you do not "mine" ceramics right? Ceramics are essentially dirt and water with some other chemicals or substance mixed in. I don't think the CS is lacking in the availability of dirt and water or incapabable of producing the chemicals needed to make MD ceramics.

I will do some research and find out exactly for sure what / how ceramic's are made of and stuff my friend. Ty for the heads up.

[Gamer]

Killer Cyborg

I went back an seen your post about resources .. read it, did a lil research on it .. and here is what I found out .. hope it helps ..


Coalition Armor is made out of overlapping body plates , which are made out of new lightweight ceramic developed by Triax and shared with the CS.

The Coalition according to every book about them are unable to mine ceramic's .. of any kind .. thus it is well within the realm of poassabilities they are unable to produce the armors they now use an are dependent upon the armors or the ceramic's being shipped to them from the NGR.

And I also took the liberty to see exactly where you got the idea that coal can also produce plastic's .. And which type of plastic's .. Truth be told, they produce a compound that used with other compounds can produce plastic's .. but a more efficent way to produce that is now done meaning the way to produce the plastic with the coal in the first place is horrible enough to not make it worth the time/energy put into it .. to make it cost effective.

So no, the CS can in fact not make plastic's threw coal .. With out having the other resources to combine in the right amounts along with the coal by product to produce the plastic's ..

Little problem there the CS has been from the very beginning of Rifts been making their body armor with ceramics.
RMB page 193 'The armor is a lightweight ceramic, with metal accents, bonded on
a molecular level, making it stronger than steel.'
Lonestar built CS Deathwing uses ceramic as well.
So what books are saying they can't use ceramics?

[Lenwen]

Ok checking out a couple site's right now, Every mage I ever play as an NPC .. will carry a regular bullet shooting pistol, as Ceramic's are brittle, and can in fact be shattered .

I fear no CS troop ever .. again !!

mwhahahaha

[jaymz]

Ok checking out a couple site's right now, Every mage I ever play as an NPC .. will carry a regular bullet shooting pistol, as Ceramic's are brittle, and can in fact be shattered .

I fear no CS troop ever .. again !!

mwhahahaha

not likely but ok.

[Nightmask]

Ok checking out a couple site's right now, Every mage I ever play as an NPC .. will carry a regular bullet shooting pistol, as Ceramic's are brittle, and can in fact be shattered .

I fear no CS troop ever .. again !!

mwhahahaha

There really should be more obvious spells in Palladium for reinforcing materials and turning SDC items/materials into MDC items. Spells like Ironwood are far too rare all things considered.

[Lenwen]

So what books are saying they can't use ceramics?

I'll answer your question after you answer mine ..

Why is it .. the CS fell back onto the armors developed by Triax/NGR .. then rather then keeping to their old armors ?

Both are / where made out of ceramic's .. yet 1 is on the next lvl .. compared to the other ..

Why ?

[jaymz]

So what books are saying they can't use ceramics?

I'll answer your question after you answer mine ..

Why is it .. the CS fell back onto the armors developed by Triax/NGR .. then rather then keeping to their old armors ?

Both are / where made out of ceramic's .. yet 1 is on the next lvl .. compared to the other ..

Why ?

Simple. Triax probably has an improved and more efficient process that results in a stronger material. Thus with the information sharing between the two the CS now has a next generation armour that is better than what they used to use. Not all that hard to believe really considering it is in the books that Triax/NGR did help develop some of the newer technologies of the CS.

[Lenwen]

So what books are saying they can't use ceramics?

I'll answer your question after you answer mine ..

Why is it .. the CS fell back onto the armors developed by Triax/NGR .. then rather then keeping to their old armors ?

Both are / where made out of ceramic's .. yet 1 is on the next lvl .. compared to the other ..

Why ?

Simple. Triax probably has an improved and more efficient process that results in a stronger material. Thus with the information sharing between the two the CS now has a next generation armour that is better than what they used to use. Not all that hard to believe really considering it is in the books that Triax/NGR did help develop some of the newer technologies of the CS.

But the question still remains ..

If the CS has access to unlimited Ceramic's .. And they are thee highest tech on N.A. (minus some unknowns), then why is it .. they could not develope thee same armor or better ? ?

[Gamer]

Traix has better Technology behind it compared to the CS.
Triax page 99.
'The overlapping body plates are made of a new lightweight
ceramic developed by Triax and shared with the CS. These
plates add only slightly to the total weight of the armor while
providing significantly more protection.'

[jaymz]

So what books are saying they can't use ceramics?

I'll answer your question after you answer mine ..

Why is it .. the CS fell back onto the armors developed by Triax/NGR .. then rather then keeping to their old armors ?

Both are / where made out of ceramic's .. yet 1 is on the next lvl .. compared to the other ..

Why ?

Simple. Triax probably has an improved and more efficient process that results in a stronger material. Thus with the information sharing between the two the CS now has a next generation armour that is better than what they used to use. Not all that hard to believe really considering it is in the books that Triax/NGR did help develop some of the newer technologies of the CS.

But the question still remains ..

If the CS has access to unlimited Ceramic's .. And they are thee highest tech on N.A. (minus some unknowns), then why is it .. they could not develope thee same armor or better ? ?

Because they aren't the Highest Tech in the world Len. What part of Triax/The NGR (who isn't part of N.A.) had a better process did you miss there?

[jaymz]

Ok checking out a couple site's right now, Every mage I ever play as an NPC .. will carry a regular bullet shooting pistol, as Ceramic's are brittle, and can in fact be shattered .

I fear no CS troop ever .. again !!

mwhahahaha

There really should be more obvious spells in Palladium for reinforcing materials and turning SDC items/materials into MDC items. Spells like Ironwood are far too rare all things considered.

No argument there. There are many variations in power level for things magic can do. Mind you I have modded all of hte spells to one degree or another to be no where near as static as so many are.

[Lenwen]

Because they aren't the Highest Tech in the world Len. What part of Triax/The NGR (who isn't part of N.A.) had a better process did you miss there?

Question for ya ..

How far more advanced in your opinion is Triax / NGR then the Coalition ?

And how far mor advanced is Japan then the Coalition ?

[Giant2005]

I'm wondering myself at the insistence that no mage anywhere would ever share a spell other than for book price no matter what the situation especially when needed for personal defense or offense against a dangerous enemy. Not very realistic or believable. With battle preparations being made against the CS spells would be apportioned out to various units as one would expect based upon their intended purpose. High level spells would be no different than handing out choice gear to elite agents in a tech-based military. Bad enough insisting that the CS has nigh infinite resources with no visible means of justification for it but insisting that the mages would be selfish to the point of self-destruction is just an absurd level of insult to injury.

That's how it's written in the books.
Again if people would just read them.

Or maybe you know... You could consider reading the books yourself?
If you read the Pursuit of Magic section in the Rue, or more specifically just the "Boons and Grants" sub-title, you will know that spells are offered freely in return for any quest or service rendered.
The only avenue for debate is whether or not you consider protecting the Federation, or attacking the Federation's enemies a service to the Federation. In the case that you hadn't realized, that wouldn't be a particularly strong argument to make.

[jaymz]

Because they aren't the Highest Tech in the world Len. What part of Triax/The NGR (who isn't part of N.A.) had a better process did you miss there?

Question for ya ..

How far more advanced in your opinion is Triax / NGR then the Coalition ?

And how far mor advanced is Japan then the Coalition ?

Depends on how you define advanced.

Triax and Japan are more advanced in some areas (or were at least) but the CS is advanced in others. In then I think it may be a wash since Triax has shared what seems to be a significant amount of tech info with the CS greatly leveling the playing field across the board.

[Gamer]

I'm wondering myself at the insistence that no mage anywhere would ever share a spell other than for book price no matter what the situation especially when needed for personal defense or offense against a dangerous enemy. Not very realistic or believable. With battle preparations being made against the CS spells would be apportioned out to various units as one would expect based upon their intended purpose. High level spells would be no different than handing out choice gear to elite agents in a tech-based military. Bad enough insisting that the CS has nigh infinite resources with no visible means of justification for it but insisting that the mages would be selfish to the point of self-destruction is just an absurd level of insult to injury.

That's how it's written in the books.
Again if people would just read them.

Or maybe you know... You could consider reading the books yourself?
If you read the Pursuit of Magic section in the Rue, or more specifically just the "Boons and Grants" sub-title, you will know that spells are offered freely in return for any quest or service rendered.
The only avenue for debate is whether or not you consider protecting the Federation, or attacking the Federation's enemies a service to the Federation. In the case that you hadn't realized, that wouldn't be a particularly strong argument to make.

I have and again read the book and this time read on the guilds and brotherhoods of that same section.
besides it says 'sometimes' not lets give out every freaking spell known in the universe, again with the hippie commune and the lets give it all away as once you give that knowledge it can't be taken back.

[Nightmask]

I'm wondering myself at the insistence that no mage anywhere would ever share a spell other than for book price no matter what the situation especially when needed for personal defense or offense against a dangerous enemy. Not very realistic or believable. With battle preparations being made against the CS spells would be apportioned out to various units as one would expect based upon their intended purpose. High level spells would be no different than handing out choice gear to elite agents in a tech-based military. Bad enough insisting that the CS has nigh infinite resources with no visible means of justification for it but insisting that the mages would be selfish to the point of self-destruction is just an absurd level of insult to injury.

That's how it's written in the books.
Again if people would just read them.

Or maybe you know... You could consider reading the books yourself?
If you read the Pursuit of Magic section in the Rue, or more specifically just the "Boons and Grants" sub-title, you will know that spells are offered freely in return for any quest or service rendered.
The only avenue for debate is whether or not you consider protecting the Federation, or attacking the Federation's enemies a service to the Federation. In the case that you hadn't realized, that wouldn't be a particularly strong argument to make.

I have and again read the book and this time read on the guilds and brotherhoods of that same section.
besides it says 'sometimes' not lets give out every freaking spell known in the universe, again with the hippie commune and the lets give it all away as once you give that knowledge it can't be taken back.

Unlike the 'no they'd never give anything at all away ever even to save their own lives' position you mean? Because no one has claimed any kind of free love things with the spells (and derogatorily comparing it to commune life is a gross mischaracterization), but the very intelligent and rational decision to empower agents with the spells required to ensure the success of military actions vital to the survival for themselves and their people. Because 'sometimes' does not mean 'never', and you're arguing 'never not even to safeguard their own lives'.

[Gamer]

Nope.
I've never argued

you're arguing 'never not even to safeguard their own lives'.

never said it once, never implied it.
It's been against some of you make every mage have access to every high level spell there is.
Go through the threads its always the same with mages running around with all these high end spells.
There is a limit to whom would get what and why, not never and not always.
see I have read through the books. and still do more often a lot of other people it seems.

[Killer Cyborg]

I notice your view tends to flip flop on flavor text. For eg in the now locked thread for best soldier pound for pound you argued that mechanics were the most important factor which i agree with. But other times i notice you will side with flavor text which isnt always representative of game world and players or even logical.

For example?

Alot of comments here is things like 'magic isnt shared' ext, which i believe it was you that gave a good explanation for it in general but that same explanation doesnt hold when talking about a military organization. Suggesting that a military organization makes all of its mages buy each spell doesnt make sense. It is like saying that if grunts want more grenades or to use a samas that they are trained in they need to purchase it.

No. The equivalent of a grunt asking for more grenades would be a magic grunt asking for more goblin grenades.
A grunt asking for more 10th level spells is like a grunt asking for some of the general's personal power and prestige that took the general years to get.
Spells are not equipment. They are knowledge.
Mages hoarde knowledge, because it's what gives them their power.
The more people have that same power, the less powerful that one mage is in comparison.
Giving away knowledge weakens mages in comparison. It makes them less special. It takes away some of their advantage.

The book text contradicts itself all the time meaning that some of the things you have just posted are not necessarily true.

If you're trying to argue "the books contain some contradictions, therefore nothing the books say can be assumed to be true," then there's no point in discussing anything in the books at all.

It just goes to show that not all flavor text you read in the books is applied with logic or common sense, especially when it is in regards to players.

And some of it is.

Because this thread is a hypothetical for those that enjoy the game world and want to participate in it. Most of your posts i notice also only shoot holes into anything being suggested but you dont really offer anything other than that to contribute to the topic at hand. You present sources well but many comments have no point or you do not add your opinion nor do anything for the topic overall.

Naturally, I disagree with that assessment.
I do spend a lot of time shooting down other peoples stuff, but there's a reason for that- people tend to miss or ignore a heck of a lot of the rules or setting, and they tend to go munchkin with their plans/characters/gear, and they tend to bash Palladium in the process of their ideas.
If somebody posts something like, "Hey, I have a cool idea for an attack against the CS... how would it work out?" and it IS a cool idea, that works with the rules and the setting, and human nature, then that's fine.
But what usually happens is that somebody instead posts something like, "I have an easy attack against the Coalition that they couldn't possibly defend against, which proves that Palladium are bad writers and that the only reason why the CS is still standing is because of handwaving!"
Which is a load of crap, and demonstrates that the poster doesn't really know what they're talking about, that they aren't that familiar with the game and the setting, and that they haven't thought things through.

With Flatline's ShadowBeast attack, I mentioned that it's a good idea. I pointed out potential problems.
That's it. That's all I did.
But then people got offended, and wanted to argue with me about it, and here we are.
And the thing is, Flatline asked what people thought about the plan.
What was I supposed to do, NOT tell him about any problems I saw?
Just say, "yeah, that's a perfect plan! now let's all jack off to how cool it is!!"
I hope not, because that's sure as hell NOT what I'd want to hear if I posted that kind of thing. I'd want feedback. I'd want to see if there were any problems that I missed, so I could maybe tinker with the plan and revise it.
Or find out if it was unworkable and move on to a new plan.
It's boring when everybody just sits around agreeing with each other about everything. There's no real growth, no learning, no fun.
Kind of the same reason why we don't sit around role-playing about a perfect world where everybody gets along with each other, and instead fantasize about a world gone to hell, where people have to struggle to survive.

For all your posts in this thread, i can't recall what your side is other than playing devils advocate to both. So i will ask you.
So where do you stand on CS vs Fed? (as in who do you think would win?)
Now is the Fed a military to you or no? (why?)
Do you think the OP meant the thread title to suggest it is one empire vs the other, as in both would have organized militarizes?

Color me mildly impressed that finally started asking questions instead of just assuming that you already knew what the answers were, and getting mad about your assumptions.

In order:
-There is not enough information to say.
-Not really. There's little to no evidence I'm aware of that there's any kind of strict regimenting or formalized training or anything. Assuming that you're talking about Dunscon's crowd, which seems to be the thrust of the conversation. Dweomer actually has a military academy.
-No. It seemed like he was asking, "what would happen if the CS tried to take over the Magic Zone, and had to deal with the various "Federations" there.
The "Federation of Magic" in Rifts today is (FoM 14) a loose-knight conglomeration of a thousand diverse groups and individuals.... The agendas and goals of these groups and individuals frequently clash or work toward contrary and conflicting ends. This leads to constant violence, bloody skirmishes, feuds, vendettas and bitter long-lasting rivalries, not to mention inadvertently thwarting or stumbling over one another. In many aspects, the Federation of Magic, and most of the groups and individuals operating in the Magic Zone, are a study in chaos.
It is rare for more than twenty percent of the various factions within the Federation of Magic to join forces under one leader, even for a short period. The Great Nostrous Dunscan had managed to rally little more than fifty percent of the overall community in his campaign against Chi-Town. No one since, not even his ambitious heirs or the three Lords of Magic, have come close to equaling his leadership and influence.
And so on.
"The Federation of Magic" doesn't have an army. They can't have an army, because they can't even agree on the same goals or leaders. You're talking about factions that actually HATE each other in some cases, and that in most cases don't trust each other (for good reason).
Keep reading. There are literally HUNDREDS of factions and subsets (p. 15) in the FoM, with only two genuine powers:
Dunscon and his "True Federation," which has 15-20% of the people more or less behind him.
The Lords of Magic, who control Dweomer, and who have probably 40% more or less behind them. And Dweomer is still smaller than Tolkeen was (and smaller than Lazlo is).
As has been pointed out, the entire population of Dweomer is 49,628 (as of 105 PA).
Their army consists of 5,760 troops, trained in actual military academies, but 40% of their troops don't even know magic (FoM, 18).
That's not much of an army compared to the Coalition.

Would flatlines strat work? (why?)

What'd I say in my initial response to him?
"Overall, it's a good plan. And yeah, it could mess the CS up a bit. Potentially quite a bit, depending.
But it gets back to the same reasons why the US isn't constantly under major terrorist attacks in the real world- it's tough to find people actually committed enough, in the right numbers, with the right skills, to get the job done."

Basically, the plan could work to cause the CS some problems and losses, but I don't see that kind of thing getting past the loose planning stage as far as the FoM is concerned.
Dweomer wouldn't want anything to do with it.
Dunscon wouldn't want to share his power.

Can you offer more than a boolean/negative answer and add how in your opinion it could or could not work?

Not sure what you're asking, so I can't really say.

If talking Dunscons 'true' Fed, do you think he would share summon shadowbeast with enough casters to make this plot work?
Or would he scrap it because he doesnt want to share spell power?

He wouldn't seriously consider the plan for a minute. Meglomaniacs don't like to share power.

What about if we used flatlines summon shadowbeast strat with say,
a group of earth warlocks say 50? that use earth elementals to also work on hollowing out underneath cities and fortresses to destabalize them and potentially damange them alot. Someone made a thread on this but atm i cant find it to post details.

I discussed that kind of plan in that thread.
The main problem with any kind of major attack like that is that the CS psychics would see it coming ahead of time, giving them time to do something about it.
Also, elementals are really retarded, more so than shadow beasts. Even following simple instructions is something that they can and will screw up.

Appologies if i come off hostile as i assure i am not, but i truely find i have no idea what your opinion is on this discussion.

Apologies accepted, and back atcha.

[Nightmask]

Nope.
I've never argued

you're arguing 'never not even to safeguard their own lives'.

never said it once, never implied it.
It's been against some of you make every mage have access to every high level spell there is.
Go through the threads its always the same with mages running around with all these high end spells.
There is a limit to whom would get what and why, not never and not always.
see I have read through the books. and still do more often a lot of other people it seems.

You've been arguing that these high level spells would never be given out or made available to agents who're actively part of the Federation's military, not that they'd be restrict to certain agents but that they'd not be available at all, and as you put it here with your dismissiveness about things suggesting everyone's trying to hand the spells out to everyone which again isn't the case. You insist none of these spells would be given out even to active agents because 'well the books say mages don't share' which they don't say.

[flatline]

Nope.
I've never argued

you're arguing 'never not even to safeguard their own lives'.

never said it once, never implied it.
It's been against some of you make every mage have access to every high level spell there is.
Go through the threads its always the same with mages running around with all these high end spells.
There is a limit to whom would get what and why, not never and not always.
see I have read through the books. and still do more often a lot of other people it seems.

If those are my threads, that's because I play Temporal Wizards and Temporal Wizards really can start with those spells at level 1.

No kiddin'.

--flatline

[Gamer]

Nicely done.

[Killer Cyborg]

I'm wondering myself at the insistence that no mage anywhere would ever share a spell other than for book price no matter what the situation especially when needed for personal defense or offense against a dangerous enemy. Not very realistic or believable. With battle preparations being made against the CS spells would be apportioned out to various units as one would expect based upon their intended purpose. High level spells would be no different than handing out choice gear to elite agents in a tech-based military. Bad enough insisting that the CS has nigh infinite resources with no visible means of justification for it but insisting that the mages would be selfish to the point of self-destruction is just an absurd level of insult to injury.

That's how it's written in the books.
Again if people would just read them.

At what point am I required to accept what's written in the books if it comes off so incredibly stupid I'd lose IQ points going along with it? Oh right at no point.

'Hey I need this spell to help our war preparations.'

'Sorry but you just don't have the money to pay for it.'

'Pay for it? But I'm trying to keep you and everything we care about alive.'

'Sorry no can do you have to pay.'

'But, but, the Coalitions troops don't have to pay for the gear they need, they're given anything they need to kill us.'

'Well you know we're pretty stupid, we're far too selfish to care enough about our lives to give you the tools you need to keep us alive.'

'Right. Okay. I'll just be heading out west, maybe they aren't quite so suicidally stupid out there.'

You're confusing knowledge with gear, but they're not the same thing.
The CS gives grunts gear, it doesn't give them access to the Chi-Town library or teach them to read.
Because knowledge is power, and those who are in control don't want to share it.

[jaymz]

Nope.
I've never argued

you're arguing 'never not even to safeguard their own lives'.

never said it once, never implied it.
It's been against some of you make every mage have access to every high level spell there is.
Go through the threads its always the same with mages running around with all these high end spells.
There is a limit to whom would get what and why, not never and not always.
see I have read through the books. and still do more often a lot of other people it seems.

You've been arguing that these high level spells would never be given out or made available to agents who're actively part of the Federation's military, not that they'd be restrict to certain agents but that they'd not be available at all, and as you put it here with your dismissiveness about things suggesting everyone's trying to hand the spells out to everyone which again isn't the case. You insist none of these spells would be given out even to active agents because 'well the books say mages don't share' which they don't say.

Unfortunately the only real "military" in the FoM is at Dweomer and a large percentage of those troops don't even know magic. Everythign else is self taught power hungry people for the most part.

Edit - an KC has thoughtfully pointed out above where this in specified in WB-16 FoM

[Killer Cyborg]

It's not that mages never "share" spells, not if you include "share" to mean "teach others spellcasters for very high prices, in limited circumstances," it's that they don't give the knowledge out for free, or cheap.
It's not something taken lightly.

This keeps coming up but no one mentions how it applies to a magic military.

That's because there is no magic military.

But if there was one, a real army of mages, I can see spell training being part of it.
They'd teach you some level one stuff in boot camp, and other spells depending on your MOS and such.
They wouldn't hand out 10th level spells like candy, though.

This applies to the individual and university/cabal type groups more than it does to a magic military.

Universities and cabals work by hoarding knowledge, not by giving it away.

Like all militarizes your trust level is what determines what you have access to, not what you can buy. This applies to both tech and magic, the more they trust you (shown by rank) the more they are willing to let you use/command (jets, tanks, aircraft carrier ext, same goes for spells of level).

Also if your mission requires you to blow up a bridge, they give you explosives for the job. If your mission requires you to summon shadow beasts then they will teach you the spell.

Wrong. If your mission requires you to summon a shadow beast, then you won't even get that mission unless you already know how to summon one, as a rule.
The difference between giving a soldier a bomb and telling him to blow up a bridge, and in teaching a soldier to summon shadow beasts, is that that soldier is only going to have that bomb for that one mission.
The other soldier can summon shadow beasts for the rest of his life, on duty or off duty. He can use the beasts for professional reasons, or for personal reasons. He can send them to do your bidding, or to try to kill you.

Why are we talking about the Fed as if it IS NOT a military organization?
Because the Fed is a military org. (might be a unity of orgs as well depending on interpretation of title)

It's not a military organization. Read the book.
It's a loose collaboration of groups and individuals.

[Nether]

I'm wondering myself at the insistence that no mage anywhere would ever share a spell other than for book price no matter what the situation especially when needed for personal defense or offense against a dangerous enemy. Not very realistic or believable. With battle preparations being made against the CS spells would be apportioned out to various units as one would expect based upon their intended purpose. High level spells would be no different than handing out choice gear to elite agents in a tech-based military. Bad enough insisting that the CS has nigh infinite resources with no visible means of justification for it but insisting that the mages would be selfish to the point of self-destruction is just an absurd level of insult to injury.

That's how it's written in the books.
Again if people would just read them.

The writers have proven to us that they are fallible and have made mistakes in writing in the books. The recent thread that was closed rcc and occ for eg, the RUE even has comments in it that admit as much.

So there has to be a certain point that logic and common sense take over and you realize that the information you are reading could be fallible or limited in its scope, or just maybe contradicts. It would most likely be by accident.

To say if people would just read the books is fine, but understand there is alot of books with alot of information scattered everywhere. I read the passages that KC sourced me a couple times prior but that was years ago and until he brought it up i didnt think those particular parts would describe what i was looking for.

[flatline]

I just wanted to say that in threads where I suggest mages use rare spells to do something, I'm not suggesting that these spells are easily available, just that I assume that if they don't already have it, that they'll figure out how to get it.

It's possible that getting the required spells for something might be more of a challenge than whatever they plan to use the spell for, but that's part of the fun, isn't it? If everything were easy, we'd lose interest in playing.

--flatline

[Hystrix]

I just wanted to say that in threads where I suggest mages use rare spells to do something, I'm not suggesting that these spells are easily available, just that I assume that if they don't already have it, that they'll figure out how to get it.

It's possible that getting the required spells for something might be more of a challenge than whatever they plan to use the spell for, but that's part of the fun, isn't it? If everything were easy, we'd lose interest in playing.

--flatline

That's the point.

It seems some folks on herre are like the underpants gnomes from South Part...

Step one: Gather mages

Step two: ...

Step three: BIG profits

[flatline]

I just wanted to say that in threads where I suggest mages use rare spells to do something, I'm not suggesting that these spells are easily available, just that I assume that if they don't already have it, that they'll figure out how to get it.

It's possible that getting the required spells for something might be more of a challenge than whatever they plan to use the spell for, but that's part of the fun, isn't it? If everything were easy, we'd lose interest in playing.

--flatline

That's the point.

It seems some folks on herre are like the underpants gnomes from South Part...

Step one: Gather mages

Step two: ...

Step three: BIG profits

In this case, we know that Dunscon knows the Summon Shadow Beast spell and we know that he has an affinity for using the beasts, so not only is it reasonable for mages around him to have the spell, if he wanted to share knowledge of the spell with someone for a specific purpose, we know it's well within his abilities to do so.

--flatline

[Killer Cyborg]

If you're wanting to share PPE, that means you have to cast it as a ritual, which means you're not casting it once per melee.

No, I'm casting as a spell. As per RUE 186, freely given PPE: "The PPE is offered with the character's knowledge and consent, enabling the mage to absorb 70% of the PPE offered by each person within a 20 foot radius". It then goes on to say "...and if they are all focused via a ritual, the mage can draw on them all instead of those within only a 20 foot radius". That clearly indicates that the mage does not need to be using the ritual version of the spell to benefit from the PPE of others unless he needs more than a 20 foot absorption range.

Okay, I have to agree.

What the text says is that it can be a spell, but often requires formal ceremony to summon something.
Rules As Written means that even as spell magic, it might well require some kind of formal ceremony.

I see that text on RUE p187 and it does not give any rules making summoning spells take any longer, so any extra time that you would assign would be a house rule.

As would choosing NOT to assign extra time.

4. Depending on rule interpretation, and depending on the specific mission given, the other 85% might simply break free and head home after 2 minutes per level of the mage.

Read the description again, the duration is only shortened from the 3 hours per level once they are engaged in combat.

That's not what the rules say either.
The rules are unclear, which is why I said "depending on rule interpretation."

The rules are perfectly clear:
BoM, p137: "Duration: For straight out combat situation: two minutes per level of exp. Three hours per level of exp to do labor or stays until it has finished its mission or been destroyed (see below for details)"[/quote]

That's not clear, though.
Does "For a straight out combat situation" refer to:
a) Casting the spell while the mage is in combat.
b) Casting the spell and sending the creature into combat immediately.
c) Casting the spell, and the creature eventually gets into combat at some point, and that's when it kicks in.

We're left to guess.

Looking below for details (well, actually in the next columns):
"Controlling the Shadow Beast. In a combat situation, the spell caster can command and control the Shadow Beast for two minutes per level of experience. After that, the exhilaration of combat enables the creature to break free of the mage's control..."

I agree that you have a logical interpretation.
I do not agree that it is the only interpretation.
But I'm willing to go with it for the purposes of this discussion.

By that time, they're already rifted behind CS lines. We don't really care what happens after that.

You don't care if the minions disappear before inconveniencing the CS?

Thanks to the CS's (completely non-canon, but not unreasonable) clairvoyance detection system, the CS has already suffered the inconvenience that I require, but it would be nice if some of the shadow beasts actually managed to do some damage.[/quote]

That all depends on how it works out, whether or not this is a big distraction, and what else you have going on.

However, I do expect the Shadow Beasts to kill someone. If the CS suffers an average of 1 death for every 100 Shadow Beasts we send, then that's almost 5000 dead civilians/soldiers every night. Don't tell me that wouldn't have an impact on morale, troop distribution, and supply chains.

It would.
Conversely, if you managed to pull off an operation of this scale, and the death toll was more like 1 death per 1000 Shadow Beasts, the mages might lose some morale in their own right.

Perhaps, but I have two things in my favor in that regard:
1. the point of the mission isn't to kill a bunch of people, so as long as the mission is successful in drawing resources away from the front line and making the CS more vulnerable, there's no reason for morale to be hurt.
2. we're in a different dimension so we have some measure of control in what news might make it back to the mages involved.[/quote]

1. If your only goal is to distract the CS and slow their invasion, that's cool.
2. Good point.

Also, if the mages I've recruited aren't even from the FoM and surrounding area, they might not care a bit about the success or failure of secondary goals as long as they get paid.

THAT would actually work better, recruiting high-level mages who know the spell. As long as they're evil, they wouldn't even have to be from Rifts Earth. This would be a long-term kind of operation, though.

Shadow Beasts have been summoned for thousands of years all over the megaverse. If there were potential repercussions from mass summons, we'd have heard about it by now.

Not very sound logic there, I'm afraid.
It presumes that we've heard about everything important, that mass summonings on the scale that you're talking about would have the same result as individual summonings on a smaller scale, and that there's no tipping point that can be reached by cumulative effect.

I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, but the fact that no rules are given means that any consequence you would impose is, by definition, a house rule.

Right (or a house interpretation, or whatever).

For all we know, billions of shadow beasts might be summoned every day throughout the megaverse and our 500k might just disappear into the noise. Or, maybe we'll drive Shadow Beasts to extinction. Who knows? But we do know that it's up to the GM since the books don't give us any guidance.

IIRC, one of the books does have more information on where the Shadow Beasts come from, and has some kind of master or superior creature that's related to them.
Might be in one of the PFRPG books.
If I'm remembering this correctly, it might give us more insight into what could potentially happen.

8 hours a day is not the same as 16 hours a day.
Being a professional spellcaster does not mean that they have any experience at casting spells for that length of time.
And doing one 16 hour shift is not the same as doing two of them, or three, or four, or five, etc.

Again, the books give no rules for this type of thing, so anything you decide is a house rule.

Perhaps, but it's a realistic and logical consequence, one that would fall under the banner of "common sense."
The books never state that people can get cancer from smoking either, but that's no reason to assume that nobody in Rifts Earth CAN get cancer from smoking.
It's something that would fall under the heading of "real-world logic and physics apply unless otherwise stated."
Which I'll grant you is probably never an official rule that's actually spelled out, but it is a logical constant.

[qutoe]There's an infinite number of dimensions in the Megaverse. If we chose a random uninhabited dimension, the odds that we choose one that anyone else might recognize are pretty infinitesimal. But you may play it however you like.[/quote]

You're kind of begging the question, though: HOW could you choose a random uninhabited dimension?

Please tell me, if you want to find someone and they're in another dimension, how do you go about finding them? I'm not aware of anything mentioned in the books anywhere close except for that god in CB2 that can always find other gods in his pantheon (Hermes?).

In addition to conventional investigation techniques, and stuff like that mentioned above?
Just off the top of my head and skimming through RUE:
-Summon/contact demons, angels, gods, and supernatural creatures and ask a lot of questions.
-Try to track down where the mages rifted from, and re-open the same passage, depending on how they go there. Or find notes detailing the name of the dimension. Basically, try to replicate how they found and traveled to that dimension in the first place.
-Just try to focus on what you know about that dimension, and open a Rift there. It might not work, but then again it might.

But almost as importantly, how would YOU do it?
If that was the quest your PCs were presented with, would you really just be stumped and give up?
Or could you think of a number of ways to go about it that might lead to success?

Honestly? If the GM didn't give us any leads (which we've been careful to make sure don't exist in this case), I wouldn't know how to proceed besides asking around and hope someone throws us a bone.

You can't recruit a thousand (or a hundred) mages without asking a hell of a lot more, and getting rejected. These rejects would still be out there, and could be interviewed/interrogated.
Any large-scale operation is subject to conventional intelligence-gathering techniques, especially when aided by magic and/or psionics.

It all comes down to how exactly the spells work, and that's not really clear (especially since you haven't named a specific spell that the mages would be using for this plan).
If the entirety of the spell takes place in that other dimension, that's one thing.
But if there's any of it that takes place on the receiving end of things, that's another.

Sorry, I thought it was clear that I was intending to use Dimensional Portal. I'm not aware of any other way to create arbitrary rifts. Are there others that I should be aware of?

All I remembered you discussing was transporting between dimensions, and there are a number of ways to do that.

[qutoe]So, anyways, once the rift exists, the spell has already been successful, so it's too late for a nega-psychic or psi-nullifier to interfere. But, as always, you are welcome to rule differently. I happily acknowledge that my interpretation is a house rule.[/quote]

Agreed- the books don't give enough information either way.
Similarly, they don't give any real info on the accuracy of the Dimensional Portal spell, only that you can open a two-way door to another dimension, not whether you can open one to a specific place within that dimension.
So it'd be house-rules/interpretations either way.

So let's assume that a nega-psychic/psi-nullifier can stop the dimensional portal. We've got 1000 mages sitting on a ley line nexus, if 100 of them are absorbing PPE for the creation of dimensional portals, we have 2000 PPE each melee for casting purposes, so our spell could be cast with 1000 extra PPE for no additional effort. How much ISP does your nega-psychic/psi-nullifier have?

Probably not enough to stop them, IF the mages figure out what's going on and spend that much extra PPE.

the ISS, or civilian posses, or the CS equivalent of the National Guard might well take care of the problem themselves.

Do these second-string forces have the psychic resources to find Shadow Beasts at night?

They don't need psychic resources so much as spotlights.
But I'm betting the there'd be dog boys and such to spare.

Or do the beasts get to run rampant until morning? What other duties do these forces have that would have to be neglected in order to deal with the Shadow Beasts? How much would CS casualties be increased using second-string troops to hunt the Shadow Beasts? Do these forces have the required reserves to keep up with this new duty for weeks? Months?

Actually, the ISS Peacekeepers are actually better trained to deal with supernatural threats like Shadow Beasts than CS Grunts are.

There's no way to know any of this from what I've seen written in the books, but dealing with these shadow beasts will consume resources, no matter if these resources come from the front line or from internal security forces. There has to be a cost to the CS.

Most likely some cost, yes.
Whether or not it's a significant cost comes down to a variety of factors that you and I cannot really know.

Once we get going with this, we can also mix it up a little. Instead of the cheap Summon Shadow Beast, we could start using Summon Lesser Being for more potent monsters and Summon and Control Entities to even further tax the CS's psychic resources (possessing entities become far more dangerous if there's no psychic around to perform exorcism). Heck, to really liven things up, spend one night summoning millions of magic pigeons just to mess with the CS air defenses. Then do it again and this time add a bunch of summoned shape shifters to the mix.

Entities might be a better idea than Shadow Beasts, come to think of it.

I agree that 1000 mages might be tough to do, but if we all agree that this is workable with 1000 mages, then it simply becomes a question of how many mages do we really need to make this strategy work?

I'm confident that nobody would balk at the suggestion of getting 10 mages to work together this way. What about 100? Or 500? It all depends on how big and organized the FoM forces are in a particular GM's game. I chose 1000 mages arbitrarily just to get the discussion going. I don't know what constitutes critical mass of mages for this strategy to work. Personally, I'd ballpark it as somewhere between 50 and 200, but that's just my opinion.
--flatline

Start a thread specifically asking this question, what it would take to implement your Shadow Beast plan, or a variant, and I'll see what I can come up with.

[Killer Cyborg]

If the CS has access to unlimited Ceramic's .. And they are thee highest tech on N.A. (minus some unknowns), then why is it .. they could not develope thee same armor or better ? ?

Because technologies don't work that way?
I mean, there are tribes of bushmen in the world to day that have ceramics.
They might even be the best damned ceramicaticians in their area.
But that doesn't mean that they can compare to what other people in other places can do with ceramics.

[jaymz]

On a side note, it is my opinion that a Magic Military (if a truly magic based military were to exist which at the moment one does not) would be made up mostly of combat-Like mages (Combat Mage, Magus' etc) at most levels while generic magic users (LLW, Shifters, TW's, Conjurers etc) would fill out the special ops and support roles

[Killer Cyborg]

\The Coalition according to every book about them are unable to mine ceramic's .. of any kind

Either cite your sources, or quit making stuff up.

OR are you trying to argue that a lack of specific mentioning of the CS gathering clay means that they are somehow UNABLE to gather clay?
If so, the CS has an even worse problem- they can't urinate!

And I also took the liberty to see exactly where you got the idea that coal can also produce plastic's .. And which type of plastic's .. Truth be told, they produce a compound that used with other compounds can produce plastic's .. but a more efficent way to produce that is now done meaning the way to produce the plastic with the coal in the first place is horrible enough to not make it worth the time/energy put into it .. to make it cost effective.

Under current technology.
Notice that the CS has superior technology to us.

[Killer Cyborg]

Oh, and someone (I think Lenwen) asked how the CS could find the mages scheming on another plane? Spies, that's how. They wouldn't have to find the mages or detect them extra-dimensionsonally, they could use good old fashioned spycraft to gather intel or interrogate conspirators still on this plane. I highly doubt that the CS wouldn't have spies embedded in the Federation. They'd be stupid not to.

Even if the CS doesn't have spies, somebody does.
Dweomer almost certainly does, for example, and when it comes down to a plan that would have massive civilian casualties, Dweomer isn't likely to step in on the side of the bad guys- they might well volunteer the information or leak it to the CS, or to try to stop the plan on their own.
IF not them, then powerful mercenary outfits, or other rival factions, or whatever.
Espionage doesn't disappear just because some people have magic.

[Killer Cyborg]

It also states in one of the books CS production is in fact carried out by civilians and robots/automated facilities. As we have no idea where or how much resources the CS has are coming from (could be anywhere as it is never detailed) there is no reason to have ones disbelief suspended because "ZOMG THEY CAN'T POSSIBLY DO THAT!" because we don;t have enough information to prove or disprove the entire argument one way or the other.

We DO have information that says how much military they have and numbers on some units (SAMAS, Skelebots) so we DO know they can in fact produce those numbers. It's how we do not know.

Very true. I feel the same is true of other entities, Dunscon for instance. If he has the resources to be able to transport/build/operate the City of Brass on another plane, what else is he capable of?

Dunscon just found the place, he didn't create it.
And even he isn't ultimately sure what exactly it is.

[Killer Cyborg]

For instance, I look at the 500K - 1,000,000 CR cost of learning a 10th level spell and my brain starts churning. Why would it cost so much?

Because the demand is really, really, really high, and the supply is really, really low.

Is there a huge demand for teachers of 10th level spells?

Of course!
That's the kind of thing that a mage is likely to live his/her/its entire life without discovering on his/her/it's own.

Is there a cost to the teacher that needs to be covered?

Time, which is a precious commodity.
Also, the loss of relative exclusivity.
Say you're the only mage in town that knows how to summon Shadow Beasts.
When somebody wants a job done that requires shadow beasts, they pay you to summon the creatures and send them out.
And they're willing to pay quite a bit.
For example, Maliki's Curio Shop in Ciudad Juarez will cast spells for you for a price: CR 1000 per level of the spell (VK 79), PLUS up to 50% for a "difficulty" fee.
So if you wanted Maliki to cast a 10th level spell for you, that'd cost you CR 10,000.

So say you normally charge something like CR 15,000 per casting of Summon Shadow Beast.
But then, because you're a nice guy, you teach somebody else the spell.
Now your income from knowing that spell is cut in half, because even if he doesn't undercut your price, a lot of the time people are going to go to this guy and hire HIM to cast it.
Even if he paid you CR 1 million to teach him, you're still kind of made a mistake because that's only the profits from 67 castings, and this guy is going to be a competitor for YEARS.

How do you justify this using normal economic theory?

Supply and demand, and that every time you teach another mage to cast a spell, you're training a potential competitor.
More than that, really, because in the case of magic, knowledge is the only tool necessary for production.
So you're not just doing the equivalent of sharing technology that you have a patent on, you're also effectively giving away a free factory for your competitors to use.

What's going to stop an entrepreneur from teaching it for less and making a fortune?

Go watch The Sopranos.
Then ponder what would happen if you underbid a bunch of union contacts in Jersey.

Now go read up on the Guild for the Gifted (VK, p. 76-78).
Then ponder what would happen if you underbid the Guild for selling spells in Juarez.

I thought of having a few of my PCs start a company making MDC farm machinery. Not a glamorous job by any means, but the fortune waiting to made selling indestructible plows and tractors is immense! Is this meta-gaming? Does this somehow unbalance the game? I think the game is whatever you make it.

Remind me to post the stats for my "Green John" Power armor sometime.
The difference is, you're not stepping on anybody's toes with your plan.
You're not getting between powerful people and their paycheck.

If you like the fact that the CS is a super place to live, holy and good, able to violate the laws of supply and demand, etc., Great!

ANY time you're ready to try to demonstrate that the CS is able to violate the laws of supply and demand, feel free to try.
As far as I can tell, that's an idea that's pulled straight from the deepest part of your hat.

If you don't like that and think the game world should operate by some sort of reason and logic, great!

I prefer the later (which should be obvious from my posts).

It's not.

[Ed]

How do you justify this using normal economic theory?

Because some thing only has value to the degree it is useful and scarce. That's where all the "Learn rare high level spell and make a fortune selling it" break down. In order for them to work, the same economic laws the authors are lauding have to be violated.

[Nether]

No. The equivalent of a grunt asking for more grenades would be a magic grunt asking for more goblin grenades.
A grunt asking for more 10th level spells is like a grunt asking for some of the general's personal power and prestige that took the general years to get.
Spells are not equipment. They are knowledge.

Well this i think depends on your point of view and there is prolly no wrong or right.

Magic soldiers though use spells as thier primary weapon, weather it is for combat, espionage or whatever role, so spells to me is equal to half equipment, and the other half furthering knowledge as you say. Your right, you cant take a spell away once given, but a mages repertoire of spells determines if he meets his military role simular to but not limited to a CS Ranger having the right skills and gear to perform his job.

Mages hoarde knowledge, because it's what gives them their power.
The more people have that same power, the less powerful that one mage is in comparison.
Giving away knowledge weakens mages in comparison. It makes them less special. It takes away some of their advantage.

Only partially true. That does fit most situations with some exception for good align mage groups and militarizes. I will use my favorite group Dweomer, overall that place is fairly good aligned. If they are faced with CS invasion, i would be guestimating that they share any spells they see fit to help a soldier perform his duties. Rank plays into this as it shows level of trust, so really high spells would not necessarily be offered let alone spells of legend unless the soldier has earned it.

Player groups share spells all the time at no cost or very minor favors. Now mind you if they were in business selling magic or casting they might slow down a bit on that approach, but when it comes to survival or higher purpose they will share without a second thought.

The book text contradicts itself all the time meaning that some of the things you have just posted are not necessarily true.

If you're trying to argue "the books contain some contradictions, therefore nothing the books say can be assumed to be true," then there's no point in discussing anything in the books at all.

Not true. All i am showing that the books are not infallible as even the writers have admitted to it in the books, and when logic or game info goes against said point in a book then there "may" be a valid reason for it. As the saying goes, "take it with a grain of salt", vs treating it like gospel.

Naturally, I disagree with that assessment.
I do spend a lot of time shooting down other peoples stuff, but there's a reason for that- people tend to miss or ignore a heck of a lot of the rules or setting, and they tend to go munchkin with their plans/characters/gear, and they tend to bash Palladium in the process of their ideas.
If somebody posts something like, "Hey, I have a cool idea for an attack against the CS... how would it work out?" and it IS a cool idea, that works with the rules and the setting, and human nature, then that's fine.
But what usually happens is that somebody instead posts something like, "I have an easy attack against the Coalition that they couldn't possibly defend against, which proves that Palladium are bad writers and that the only reason why the CS is still standing is because of handwaving!"
Which is a load of crap, and demonstrates that the poster doesn't really know what they're talking about, that they aren't that familiar with the game and the setting, and that they haven't thought things through.

By your answer you sound like you are a GM as well and i can completely understand that, as people want everything and the kitchen sink for free. They might have some pretty far fetching ideas that dont make sense so again i can agree with that, but there is also a point when GM's also are making things too 'out of character' that the actions or concepts become to much.

With Flatline's ShadowBeast attack, I mentioned that it's a good idea. I pointed out potential problems.
That's it. That's all I did.
But then people got offended, and wanted to argue with me about it, and here we are.
And the thing is, Flatline asked what people thought about the plan.
What was I supposed to do, NOT tell him about any problems I saw?
Just say, "yeah, that's a perfect plan! now let's all jack off to how cool it is!!"
I hope not, because that's sure as hell NOT what I'd want to hear if I posted that kind of thing. I'd want feedback. I'd want to see if there were any problems that I missed, so I could maybe tinker with the plan and revise it.
Or find out if it was unworkable and move on to a new plan.
It's boring when everybody just sits around agreeing with each other about everything. There's no real growth, no learning, no fun.
Kind of the same reason why we don't sit around role-playing about a perfect world where everybody gets along with each other, and instead fantasize about a world gone to hell, where people have to struggle to survive.

That isnt what i was aiming at though, making things easy or being yes men. I always make my games very difficult when i write the adventures and on principle i never give the player everything they want by any stretch. But we are not playing a game on the boards where players suggest they want to do x, and then 'GM's' are shooting holes in the plan and not helping the players because it is thier job to figure it out. On the boards though it is meta game and discussion, so i guess what i am saying is if your going to shoot something down, try add your own voice to what possible work arounds are or just say all around it is too difficult. This attitude can only further discussion and reduces poster wars because player x posting idea and just got shot down is like "i hate you x guy, your like my mom' . Be a part of the solution.

For all your posts in this thread, i can't recall what your side is other than playing devils advocate to both. So i will ask you.
So where do you stand on CS vs Fed? (as in who do you think would win?)
Now is the Fed a military to you or no? (why?)
Do you think the OP meant the thread title to suggest it is one empire vs the other, as in both would have organized militarizes?

In order:
-There is not enough information to say.
-Not really. There's little to no evidence I'm aware of that there's any kind of strict regimenting or formalized training or anything. Assuming that you're talking about Dunscon's crowd, which seems to be the thrust of the conversation. Dweomer actually has a military academy.

Actually i always refer to Dweomer first when mentioning the Fed as they are the only real decicated magic military, even if smaller I completely see them like the cliche old Japanese zen masters that live thier life to thier arts perfection. It isnt just a day job to them.

"The Federation of Magic" doesn't have an army. They can't have an army, because they can't even agree on the same goals or leaders. You're talking about factions that actually HATE each other in some cases, and that in most cases don't trust each other (for good reason).
Keep reading. There are literally HUNDREDS of factions and subsets (p. 15) in the FoM, with only two genuine powers:
Dunscon and his "True Federation," which has 15-20% of the people more or less behind him.
The Lords of Magic, who control Dweomer, and who have probably 40% more or less behind them. And Dweomer is still smaller than Tolkeen was (and smaller than Lazlo is).

I guess when i read the thread title i extrapolated it to hypothetical empire vs empire otherwise it would be pointless to discuss when talking about so many groups, Fed of Magic, True Fed of Magic ext and they are diametrically opposed to each other. Then add to it that the Fed of Magic is more allied to other 'good' allies like Psyscape and Lazlo then they are to Dunscon, and yet the crazy genius nutjob also really hates the reg Fed of Magics main city Dweomer. I guess first thing that should have been done in this thread was get clarification from OP what exactly IS the Fed.

As has been pointed out, the entire population of Dweomer is 49,628 (as of 105 PA).
Their army consists of 5,760 troops, trained in actual military academies, but 40% of their troops don't even know magic (FoM, 18).
That's not much of an army compared to the Coalition.

Would flatlines strat work? (why?)

What'd I say in my initial response to him?
"Overall, it's a good plan. And yeah, it could mess the CS up a bit. Potentially quite a bit, depending.
But it gets back to the same reasons why the US isn't constantly under major terrorist attacks in the real world- it's tough to find people actually committed enough, in the right numbers, with the right skills, to get the job done."

Basically, the plan could work to cause the CS some problems and losses, but I don't see that kind of thing getting past the loose planning stage as far as the FoM is concerned.
Dweomer wouldn't want anything to do with it.
Dunscon wouldn't want to share his power.

Can you offer more than a boolean/negative answer and add how in your opinion it could or could not work?

Not sure what you're asking, so I can't really say.

If talking Dunscons 'true' Fed, do you think he would share summon shadowbeast with enough casters to make this plot work?
Or would he scrap it because he doesnt want to share spell power?

He wouldn't seriously consider the plan for a minute. Meglomaniacs don't like to share power.

What about if we used flatlines summon shadowbeast strat with say,
a group of earth warlocks say 50? that use earth elementals to also work on hollowing out underneath cities and fortresses to destabalize them and potentially damange them alot. Someone made a thread on this but atm i cant find it to post details.

I discussed that kind of plan in that thread.
The main problem with any kind of major attack like that is that the CS psychics would see it coming ahead of time, giving them time to do something about it.
Also, elementals are really retarded, more so than shadow beasts. Even following simple instructions is something that they can and will screw up.

Appologies if i come off hostile as i assure i am not, but i truely find i have no idea what your opinion is on this discussion.

Apologies accepted, and back atcha.

Last thing that i would like to hear your opinion on, and anyone else of course is;

If Dweomer had the same population as the CS with equivalent ratios they have now for classes,

Who do you think has the advantage in a war with CS? (both invade each other, fight for victory) (how great an advantage?)

Would Psyscape, Lazlo or New Lazlo be allies (some are already) and come to Dweomers defense?

Thx, and appreciated the reply KC.

[flatline]

Holy crap it's hard to fix nested quotes when something goes wrong! Please forgive me if some of this doesn't turn out right. I finally resorted to loading the text in vim to work through it.

What the text says is that it
can be a spell, but often requires formal ceremony to summon something.
Rules As Written means that even as spell magic, it might well require
some kind of formal ceremony.

I see that text on RUE p187 and it does not give any rules making
summoning spells take any longer, so any extra time that you would assign
would be a house rule.

As would choosing NOT to assign extra time.

Fair enough. So between the two of us, we've basically determined that
there's no way cast any summoning spell as an invocation without a
house rule.

Looking below for details (well, actually in the next columns):
"Controlling the Shadow Beast. In a combat situation, the spell caster
can command and control the Shadow Beast for two minutes per level
of experience. After that, the exhilaration of combat enables the
creature to break free of the mage's control..."

I agree that you have a logical interpretation.
I do not agree that it is the only interpretation.
But I'm willing to go with it for the purposes of this discussion.

That's good enough for me.

By that time, they're already rifted behind CS lines. We don't really care what happens after that.

You don't care if the minions disappear before inconveniencing the CS?

Thanks to the CS's (completely non-canon, but not unreasonable) clairvoyance detection system, the CS has already suffered the inconvenience that I require, but it would be nice if some of the shadow beasts actually managed to do some damage.

That all depends on how it works out, whether or not this is a big distraction, and what else you have going on.

Well, clearly I intend for this to be a big distraction. If dealing with half a million shadow beasts every day doesn't count as a big distraction to the CS, then we'd have to mix it up a bit.

However, I do expect the Shadow Beasts to kill someone. If the CS suffers an average of 1 death for every 100 Shadow Beasts we send, then that's almost 5000 dead civilians/soldiers every night. Don't tell me that wouldn't have an impact on morale, troop distribution, and supply chains.

It would.
Conversely, if you managed to pull off an operation of this scale, and the death toll was more like 1 death per 1000 Shadow Beasts, the mages might lose some morale in their own right.

Perhaps, but I have two things in my favor in that regard:
1. the point of the mission isn't to kill a bunch of people, so as long as the mission is successful in drawing resources away from the front line and making the CS more vulnerable, there's no reason for morale to be hurt.
2. we're in a different dimension so we have some measure of control in what news might make it back to the mages involved.

1. If your only goal is to distract the CS and slow their invasion, that's cool.
2. Good point.

I guess there are two main goals to this operation:
1. pull troops and supplies away from the front lines to take pressure off of the magic zone defending forces.
2. spread the CS psychic resources so thin that magic tricks that are normally ineffective because of thick coverage by psychic sensitives become viable again.

It's just icing on the cake if any of the following happens:
1. the shadow beasts actually kill anyone
2. any lasting damage is done to any parts of the CS infrastructure (food production, civilian or military manufacturing, waste water handling, whatever...we're not picky)
3. this operation causes the clairvoyance net to miss something that it might otherwise have picked up on (of course there's no way we can ever know if this happened)
4. something (anything) happens that hurts CS civilian or military morale
5. something (anything) happens that boosts magic zone morale

Again, we're not picky.

Also, if the mages I've recruited aren't even from the FoM and surrounding area, they might not care a bit about the success or failure of secondary goals as long as they get paid.

THAT would actually work better, recruiting high-level mages who know the spell. As long as they're evil, they wouldn't even have to be from Rifts Earth. This would be a long-term kind of operation, though.

If this is going to be a long term operation, then this is the ideal situation since it doesn't pull mages away from the magic zone.

There's an infinite number of dimensions in the Megaverse. If we chose a random uninhabited dimension, the odds that we choose one that anyone else might recognize are pretty infinitesimal. But you may play it however you like.

You're kind of begging the question, though: HOW could you choose a random uninhabited dimension?

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you for using the term "begging the question" correctly!

And, no, I'm not begging the question. Of the infinite number of dimensions in the megaverse, there are an infinite number of suitable dimensions. I just randomly open dimensional portals until I find one of them. It doesn't matter which one I find.

It matters very much which one the merc group finds. If they don't find the exact dimension that I found, then they can't find me. It does them no good to find another dimension from the set of suitable dimensions since I'm not there.

Please tell me, if you want to find someone and they're in another dimension, how do you go about finding them? I'm not aware of anything mentioned in the books anywhere close except for that god in CB2 that can always find other gods in his pantheon (Hermes?).

In addition to conventional investigation techniques, and stuff like that mentioned above?
Just off the top of my head and skimming through RUE:
-Summon/contact demons, angels, gods, and supernatural creatures and ask a lot of questions.
-Try to track down where the mages rifted from, and re-open the same passage, depending on how they go there. Or find notes detailing the name of the dimension. Basically, try to replicate how they found and traveled to that dimension in the first place.
-Just try to focus on what you know about that dimension, and open a Rift there. It might not work, but then again it might.

But almost as importantly, how would YOU do it?
If that was the quest your PCs were presented with, would you really just be stumped and give up?
Or could you think of a number of ways to go about it that might lead to success?

Honestly? If the GM didn't give us any leads (which we've been careful to make sure don't exist in this case), I wouldn't know how to proceed besides asking around and hope someone throws us a bone.

Actually, I did think of something to try. The caster of Dimensional Portal can open a portal to any dimension that he's been to, so if you capture a Shadow Beast, cast Eyes of Thoth on him so that he can read a scroll of Dimensional Portal and have a Mind Melter force him to read the scroll to open a rift to that dimension. Then as soon as the rift appears, send someone loyal through it and have them come right back. They've now been in that dimension and can open rifts to it via scrolls whenever you're ready to send troops through. Of course, depending on how close your rift is to the mages, it may take you a very long time to explore the area and find them (worst case is that you're on the wrong side of the planet).

The question for the GM is whether or not a magically literate Shadow Beast can read the scroll with his measly IQ of 7. According to the mental retardation article on Wikipedia, someone with mild mental retardation can typically learn to read at a 3rd to 6th grade level, so I guess I'd probably allow it if I were the GM.

You can't recruit a thousand (or a hundred) mages without asking a hell of a lot more, and getting rejected. These rejects would still be out there, and could be interviewed/interrogated.
Any large-scale operation is subject to conventional intelligence-gathering techniques, especially when aided by magic and/or psionics.

Dunscon already has a pool of loyal mages to pick from, so he doesn't even need to recruit, he just chooses who he wants involved and gives them their orders. He doesn't need to leak any information beyond that he has a mission that requires a large number of mages.

Another mage attempting this probably doesn't have that advantage, but he could still do his recruiting in another dimension, hopefully a dimension that is relatively obscure so that any dimension hopping mercs are less likely to have relevant connections.

Actually, the ISS Peacekeepers are actually better trained to deal with supernatural threats like Shadow Beasts than CS Grunts are.

I hadn't considered that, but that might be true.

Once we get going with this, we can also mix it up a little. Instead of the cheap Summon Shadow Beast, we could start using Summon Lesser Being for more potent monsters and Summon and Control Entities to even further tax the CS's psychic resources (possessing entities become far more dangerous if there's no psychic around to perform exorcism). Heck, to really liven things up, spend one night summoning millions of magic pigeons just to mess with the CS air defenses. Then do it again and this time add a bunch of summoned shape shifters to the mix.

Entities might be a better idea than Shadow Beasts, come to think of it.

Yeah, throwing a mix of tectonic and possessing entities at the CS is my default example of a summoning storm strategy but I was just so pleased to see that Shadow Beasts had finally been upgraded enough to be potentially worth summoning that I went with them instead. Perhaps I should have stuck with entities. Oh well.

I agree that 1000 mages might be tough to do, but if we all agree that this is workable with 1000 mages, then it simply becomes a question of how many mages do we really need to make this strategy work?

I'm confident that nobody would balk at the suggestion of getting 10 mages to work together this way. What about 100? Or 500? It all depends on how big and organized the FoM forces are in a particular GM's game. I chose 1000 mages arbitrarily just to get the discussion going. I don't know what constitutes critical mass of mages for this strategy to work. Personally, I'd ballpark it as somewhere between 50 and 200, but that's just my opinion.
--flatline

Start a thread specifically asking this question, what it would take to implement your Shadow Beast plan, or a variant, and I'll see what I can come up with.

That's not a bad idea. I may just do that when I have a moment to myself (kids have colds...I'm dealing with constant interruptions...).

--flatline

[Giant2005]

No. The equivalent of a grunt asking for more grenades would be a magic grunt asking for more goblin grenades.
A grunt asking for more 10th level spells is like a grunt asking for some of the general's personal power and prestige that took the general years to get.
Spells are not equipment. They are knowledge.

Well this i think depends on your point of view and there is prolly no wrong or right.

Magic soldiers though use spells as thier primary weapon, weather it is for combat, espionage or whatever role, so spells to me is equal to half equipment, and the other half furthering knowledge as you say. Your right, you cant take a spell away once given, but a mages repertoire of spells determines if he meets his military role simular to but not limited to a CS Ranger having the right skills and gear to perform his job.

That is a pointless debate in any sense.
For practical purposes, it makes no difference if the mages are taught the spell necessary or handed TW Devices that will cast the spell for them and that is the crux of the "gear vs knowledge" debate. The means of casting the spell is irrelevant whether it is knowledge or gear-based.
Although, using TW devices to meet that need is probably more efficient as it only requires building a device once, if you are teaching a mage a spell and he leaves the service for whatever reason, then you would need to spend considerable time re-training his replacement.
Also with Techno-Wizardry, it could be possible to have the devices run off the Ley Line's power without the need for so many mages casting the spells. One mage to give the orders would do the trick.

[Nether]

No. The equivalent of a grunt asking for more grenades would be a magic grunt asking for more goblin grenades.
A grunt asking for more 10th level spells is like a grunt asking for some of the general's personal power and prestige that took the general years to get.
Spells are not equipment. They are knowledge.

Well this i think depends on your point of view and there is prolly no wrong or right.

Magic soldiers though use spells as thier primary weapon, weather it is for combat, espionage or whatever role, so spells to me is equal to half equipment, and the other half furthering knowledge as you say. Your right, you cant take a spell away once given, but a mages repertoire of spells determines if he meets his military role simular to but not limited to a CS Ranger having the right skills and gear to perform his job.

That is a pointless debate in any sense.
For practical purposes, it makes no difference if the mages are taught the spell necessary or handed TW Devices that will cast the spell for them and that is the crux of the "gear vs knowledge" debate. The means of casting the spell is irrelevant whether it is knowledge or gear-based.
Although, using TW devices to meet that need is probably more efficient as it only requires building a device once, if you are teaching a mage a spell and he leaves the service for whatever reason, then you would need to spend considerable time re-training his replacement.
Also with Techno-Wizardry, it could be possible to have the devices run off the Ley Line's power without the need for so many mages casting the spells. One mage to give the orders would do the trick.

Very good points Giant.

TW really does make a mage military that much more effective and also means you dont need to share spells as much per say. You can also technically have the soldier return the TW device after the mission if it is say a very high spell in that the soldier's rank / level does not sufficiently give him that perk normally.

I have to relook, but does activating a TW device power use a action or does it still follow #action to cast spell of lvl x?
If the first it also makes them much more capable in combat for utilizing higher level spells.

[Giant2005]

No. The equivalent of a grunt asking for more grenades would be a magic grunt asking for more goblin grenades.
A grunt asking for more 10th level spells is like a grunt asking for some of the general's personal power and prestige that took the general years to get.
Spells are not equipment. They are knowledge.

Well this i think depends on your point of view and there is prolly no wrong or right.

Magic soldiers though use spells as thier primary weapon, weather it is for combat, espionage or whatever role, so spells to me is equal to half equipment, and the other half furthering knowledge as you say. Your right, you cant take a spell away once given, but a mages repertoire of spells determines if he meets his military role simular to but not limited to a CS Ranger having the right skills and gear to perform his job.

That is a pointless debate in any sense.
For practical purposes, it makes no difference if the mages are taught the spell necessary or handed TW Devices that will cast the spell for them and that is the crux of the "gear vs knowledge" debate. The means of casting the spell is irrelevant whether it is knowledge or gear-based.
Although, using TW devices to meet that need is probably more efficient as it only requires building a device once, if you are teaching a mage a spell and he leaves the service for whatever reason, then you would need to spend considerable time re-training his replacement.
Also with Techno-Wizardry, it could be possible to have the devices run off the Ley Line's power without the need for so many mages casting the spells. One mage to give the orders would do the trick.

Very good points Giant.

TW really does make a mage military that much more effective and also means you dont need to share spells as much per say. You can also technically have the soldier return the TW device after the mission if it is say a very high spell in that the soldier's rank / level does not sufficiently give him that perk normally.

I have to relook, but does activating a TW device power use a action or does it still follow #action to cast spell of lvl x?
If the first it also makes them much more capable in combat for utilizing higher level spells.

The rules aren't particularly useful in that regard but the majority of TW firearms use high leveled spells and (I assume) only require one melee action to use.
If the above is correct, the same principle should apply to all TW devices.

[Lenwen]

I have to relook, but does activating a TW device power use a action or does it still follow #action to cast spell of lvl x?
If the first it also makes them much more capable in combat for utilizing higher level spells.

All TW items can be made to be instant casts .. reguardless of the lvl of the spell ..

Hope this helps .

[Dead Boy]

I am not so good at highlighting teh quotes like you so bear with my wall of text.

Not a problem, if you can forgive me for the lateness of this reply. I've been really tired the last few nights and haven't been up to lengthy posts. Sorry about that. Still a wee bit on the tired side, so forgive me if I try to address the meat of the matter and skip a little here and there. Please, don't take any omissions on my part as a slight against you personally; it's just me getting sleepy, lazy, and kind of done with this thread.

Did i miss something or is this thread about a war between the two factions and how it would go, and therefore is not limited to one side invading the other. I would expect it to be a two way streak and we would see both. ... Your reply to it only being the CS that is getting invaded changes the point you were making and mine still rings true with the CS attacking Fed ground.

I went the way I did because there are no plans to invade the Magic Zone or pursue the FoM in any military capacity. We know this (as KC pointed out earlier) because the published CS 20-Year Expansion plan clearly does not include the Magic Zone and I am unaware of any published statement to the contrary. As far as the CS is concerned, Dunscon, the FoM, and the Magic Zone are bothersome pains in the butt, but do not represent a pressing immediate threat in their assessment.

Should the FoM attack and invade as a conventional army (albeit a magic one), odds are they would be considered the problem for the local State Army of whatever state they go after (probably Chi-Town because that's the one Dunscon has a mad-on over). The local State Army alone of Chi-Twon is comprised of six Army Corps, and if they have troubles, there are another 30+ Army Corps they can call on for reinforcements and assistance. With numbers on their side and anti-magic experience in their battle hardened soldiers (fresh out of Tolkeen), Dunscon's forces would be hard pressed to come out the victor against them.

Should the FoM attack and invade using terrorist tactics, relying heavily on the strategies of asymmetric warfare as others have suggested they would, it would take the CS a while to notice such activity is "above average". That said, the CS is home to millions of psychics; consequently, the FoM would never totally have the element of surprise with their attacks. They may not always be able to respond as quickly as they'd like (depending on the quirkiness of psychic abilities timing and interpretation), but there would ALWAYS be forewarning and indicators of who attacked. Retaliation may or may not be in the cards on the Magic Zone to get revenge on the FoM; it would really depend on how successful the attacks are. In this regard, as it was seen in Tolkeen, the CS is not special in having psychics with forewarning premonitions... the element of complete surprise is a thing of the past, before the Age of Rifts.

Where does it mention that tolkeen was stock piling for 20 years? I havent gone over lately the reasons CS invaded but i doubt tolkeen was stockpiling and prepping for war for 20 years, i seem to recall it being more like Tolkeen was trying to avoid war with the CS and they never came across in the books before the war series as heavy military/def.

20 years was ballpark estimate on my part starting from about the time the CS first established a blockade around Tolkeen. Let me make amends and look up something a little more official.
...
Found it. The time line in SoT1, pg 101 says in 71 PA, "[Emperor Prosek] send[s] Coalition troops to [Tolkeen's] doorstep, and in a show of force, designates several new permanent and mobile outposts just inside the borders of old Minnesota. ... they (correctly) predict is the beginning of a downward
spiral to total war between the CS and Tolkeen .... From this moment forth, Tolkeen would meet any Coalition military personnel in its territory with lethal force."

So I was was mistaken on that point. Tolkeen has in fact been preparing for war for 34 years against the CS, not 20.

Then you have the vanguard, which i dont see thier numbers growing at all as you project. I agree it is prolly kept in those families and bred that way, but that doesnt mean everyone takes to it nor 2.5 children considering the times they live in let alone guaranteeing children and those lost in hostile lands wipes out a good change of any offspring let.

That 17,000 figure was just a maximum possible projection and was presented as such. Lenwen kind of got it right in citing the Vanguard book (I wish that boy would post page numbers and proper quotes) in that it is most likely less. In it, the official count is a vague one putting "the Vanguard's presence in the Chi-Town 'Burbs... numbers over a thousand, possibly more." with "around 65% to 75% of the entire Vanguard in the 'Burbs." (ASB:V, bp 13) I wish they were a little more explicit there in the writing at the end because though the implication is in Chi-Town's burbs, it could be all of the Coalition's many 'burbs. That places their number at, at least 1,333 (1000/.75) to as much as 3,077 (2000/.65) based on the Chi-Ton number... possibly more if the implication is additional 'burbs

The Psi Ghost article does not say they work for the CS, even if it says they like to live in some CS cities. Cities are the best places for tech and espionage, hence alot of thier focus for work and well espionage. They are espionage agents, you think they would want to be tagged and collared? So in the Ghost occ point you are wrong, but your guestimation is right that they actually are part of psi-battalion as KC pointed out in the back of the book under psi-bat that they do in fact have ghosts in service.

They also officially serve in the Regular Army, as seen in the SoT1 Book. Pg. 29 notes that a pathetic 4% of the regular army is psychic (sometimes I'd like to kick the writer of that series square in the nads; what a ridiculously low number). Four percent of 1.5 million is 60,000. Of that 60,000, 4% are Psi-Ghosts, giving them another 2,400 Psi-Ghosts in the direct service of the Coalition States.

So, are you still adamant the CS doesn't also have at least that many working in other agencies?

Also the thing is we dont know what the CS has suffered for terrorist attacks let alone from the Fed. No one has declared war on them from the Fed, even secretly and there is no info in the books suggesting there is terrorist actions being used against them by the Fed, thats including Dunscons profile as well.

"65 P.A.: Terrorist attacks on Chi-Town
The Federation of Magic takes credit for a series of terrorist attacks leveled against the City of Chi-Town, its 'Burbs, and other communities in the State of Chi-Town." (SoT1, pg 100)

"77 P.A.: Chi-Town Library of the Ages is Destroyed
A bold terrorist attack attributed to the Federation of Magic results in the destruction of the fabled Chi-Town Library of the Ages." (SoT1, pg 101) ~ Sure, the attack may have been staged, or the CS took advantage of an actual attack. Point is, this helps establish the frequency of FoM terrorist attacks by this point was sufficient enough to create a believable cover story out of for the public.

"102 P.A.: The Lady Prosek Incident
On July 4th, terrorists from the Federation of Magic attack the Emperor's wife, Lady Jo-Anna Prosek, and kill the Emperor's youngest son, Jason." (SoT1 pg 104)

These are just the one's they deemed of historical significance. To be sure, many other attacks were had by magic terrorists from the FoM and other parts of the land.

The CS is serious about finding Dweomer, if you read the section in that book on it you will see it says it is pretty much impossible atm for the CS to find its location if ever, short of someone telling them, even then.

They should try my method. It would work great!

The fed side could potentially defend against nuke strikes on the major cities as well with spells like this but they would need to be put into tw devices or have strat set up to be ready and in place to defend against them ie. like tech entities patrolling the sky at certain ranges.
TW devices
House of glass but to a city

Cast against who? And the range of the spell is a significant short coming... plus the city would still be blown to bits, only glassy bits instead.

Energy disruption to knock out nukes but would require quick pickup and dispose of
Mages that can open rifts/portals can send the missiles elsewhere, maybe to enemy bases (need to lookup if any can do this up in air while say flying or tw device.

Nice idea, but the spell does have a critical flaw.

"Can not affect M.D.C. environmental armor, power armor, robots or military vehicles." (BoM pg 106)

Controlled techtonic entities could also be used to take over the missiles and redirect them.

Incoming at Mach 5+? Highly doubtful they could catch the missiles.

Little Force

This one has potential; however, the spell's description does not mention whether it is effective against area effect attacks such as explosions, how it would handle deflecting it. So you get a half-star for this one.

Tele superior

Again, you have targeting issues against the Mach 5+ missiles.

Ok the Fed with spells, bombs ext can pretty much teleport anywhere in the CS they want and destroy their leaders, that includes proseks and generals. They have very little in way to stop it.

... except now we're getting back to the limitations of the teleport spells and the need to scout target sites well in advance. And I really doubt spies are getting inside the secure areas of the fortress cities. And if you want to target the generals, since they'd be more moving targets, getting timely scouting reports would be very hard.

CS nukes though still have radiation and mass fallout though, so it is not really the same as a nuetron bomb where it will leave the structures and landscape available for inhabbiting afterwards, ie the CS moving in to claim the land.

Nope, the CS uses "clean nukes". Says so clear as day on pg 47 of the CS Navy book...
"These are "clean" devices that produce minimal fallout (long-term radiation) but combine the destruction of a thermonuclear explosion with the enhanced radiation of a neutron bomb. What this means is that these nukes can utterly destroy enemy cities, bases and armies without causing long-term devastation of the environment, or so the CS believes." (SB4 pg 47)

On a successful strike the weapons would wipe out the enemy's cities would pose zero environmental threats to the CS, especially if they allowed for a cool off period before sending in any human troops to mop up. Skebots and limited use of power armor would be fine even after initial use.

Also the stats on population diff i think you put to much emphasis on. It also depends on who is attacking first. If the CS, then your pop numbers have merit. If the Fed attacks first then i would think it is safe to assume they wouldnt be attacking with such a puny force without a vastly superior strategy. So one hard thing to theorize about this scenario is we are missing alot of info like Fed attacking vs CS attacking first makes all the diff to how the Fed army is shaped up and who is involved.

Well, seeing as the odd are overwhelmingly heavy that it would be the FoM that makes the first move in this scenario, let's explore what they'd realistically bring to bear.

On an offensive assault against the CS, Dweomer is out. They have zero interest in playing into Dusncon's mad dreams of conquest and world domination. Stormspire is similar in that they typically ignore Dunscon, but have no problems selling the TW wares to him. Magestar is full of "goody goodies" and most assuredly won't come play with Alistair the Mad. So that pretty much means the first assault would be comprised of what the City of Brass can put together armed with weapons supplied by Stormspire. The others (Dweomer, Stomrespire, and Magestar) will come into play if the CS deems it necessary to stage a counter attack into the Magic Zone and retaliate.

The Kingdom of Dunscon has a TOTAL populatn of 31500. Now, let's say Dunscon went completely off his rocker and pressed a full quarter of his population into service of his invasion army, giving them 7,875 soldiers of all kinds. Quite the impressive force compared to most... still less than as many as the CS has in just one of their typical Army Corps, but impressive just the same.

So, you have your 7,875 mixed force. Some are magicians, some are regular troops, but because Stormspire has no actual factories and hand-crafts all their TW goods, I'd estimate no more than a third of them have TW gear to any extent. Duncon's orders are to invade the state of Chi-Town and make the city of Chi-Town burn. How do you think they should proceed?

Extrapolate that to the CS: How many CS civilians would it take to support the CS military? Again, the CS would collapse trying to support its military when there was no one left to farm because all able bodied personnel were needed to mine or work in plants.

Depends on how much automation they use in their processes, which to the best of my knowledge is not known. Even so, they do have a large number of people working in support roles. For instance, take the role of manufacturing...

"the Chi-Town military employs over 1.2 million citizens in their factories and facilities alone. This includes everything from the production of military uniforms, medals, munitions, weapons, armor, robots, and armored vehicles to microchips, parts and widgets for just about everything." (CWC pg 35)

As for the task of handling logistics and general transportation of supplies and personnel, in addition to the Military High Command, the CS maintains the Regional Command, who is strictly responsible for this function. The exact size of the Regional Command is not specified, but we do know each state has its own.

"The Regional Command is an important administrative force that functions in a support and logistics capacity as well as an intermediary body between field units and the High Command. Its purpose is to follow orders and implement the decisions and plans of the High Command. ...Meanwhile, the mportant but unremarkable details like logistics, transportation, communications, maintaining supply-lines and internal security are delegated to the Regional Command. ... Each Coalition State has its own Regional Command which handles all the behind the scenes operations described above. Each is also responsible for the command and deployment of Army Corps assigned to service and defend their particular State and strategic locations within the State." (CWC pg 37)

So we have 1.2 million people in Chi-Town (plus others in all the other fortress cities and the Lone Star Complex) working the production side of support, and at the very least another 55,000 working the logistical and coordination side of the equation to make the War Machine run smoothly. So how many more people would it take to make you happy?

[Killer Cyborg]

Magic soldiers though use spells as thier primary weapon, weather it is for combat, espionage or whatever role, so spells to me is equal to half equipment, and the other half furthering knowledge as you say. Your right, you cant take a spell away once given, but a mages repertoire of spells determines if he meets his military role simular to but not limited to a CS Ranger having the right skills and gear to perform his job.

As Giant points out, that's not really true. Mages in Federation of Magic, as in Tolkeen, tend to use TW weapons as a rule.
They're generally faster, more deadly, and they store their own PPE.

Mages hoarde knowledge, because it's what gives them their power.
The more people have that same power, the less powerful that one mage is in comparison.
Giving away knowledge weakens mages in comparison. It makes them less special. It takes away some of their advantage.

Only partially true. That does fit most situations with some exception for good align mage groups and militarizes.

Being Good aligned doesn't mean that you screw yourself over by giving away your power.
For that matter, it often means the opposite- you don't hand out power to people unless you're absolutely sure that they'll use it responsibly.
You teach another mage Sub-Particle Acceleration, you're responsible for everybody that they kill using that spell.

I will use my favorite group Dweomer, overall that place is fairly good aligned. If they are faced with CS invasion, i would be guestimating that they share any spells they see fit to help a soldier perform his duties.

I agree, but it would be doled out in careful, measured amounts.
As little as necessary in order to get the job done.

Rank plays into this as it shows level of trust, so really high spells would not necessarily be offered let alone spells of legend unless the soldier has earned it.

Agreed.

Player groups share spells all the time at no cost or very minor favors.

Not in my group. I kinda see that as bad role-playing, and meta-gaming.

All i am showing that the books are not infallible as even the writers have admitted to it in the books, and when logic or game info goes against said point in a book then there "may" be a valid reason for it.

Luckily, logic is with them in this case.

i guess what i am saying is if your going to shoot something down, try add your own voice to what possible work arounds are or just say all around it is too difficult. This attitude can only further discussion and reduces poster wars because player x posting idea and just got shot down is like "i hate you x guy, your like my mom' . Be a part of the solution.

I dunno- I'd prefer if people put more thought into their ideas in the first place.
If I come up with a plan of attack, I try to see things from both sides, to anticipate what could go wrong with the plan, and to think of what I'd do if I were on the other side- how I might prepare for such a contingency, and how I might react.
A lot of the stuff people come up with, it's like they can't fathom anything going wrong. Or they assume that everybody but their PCs (or whatever faction they're favoring in the scenario) are complete idiots. Or they assume that their characters/favored faction/whatever are the only people to think of something that is blitheringly obvious ("Hey! Let's forge Credits! The books don't mention any security measures, so there must not be any!").
So mostly, I end up just trying to get people to think, rather than hand them the answers.
Especially because people like to fling crap at me when I point holes in their pet ideas- that makes me a hell of a lot less likely to want to do the work for them.
But I'll keep what you say in mind, and consider it when I post.

"The Federation of Magic" doesn't have an army. They can't have an army, because they can't even agree on the same goals or leaders. You're talking about factions that actually HATE each other in some cases, and that in most cases don't trust each other (for good reason).
Keep reading. There are literally HUNDREDS of factions and subsets (p. 15) in the FoM, with only two genuine powers:
Dunscon and his "True Federation," which has 15-20% of the people more or less behind him.
The Lords of Magic, who control Dweomer, and who have probably 40% more or less behind them. And Dweomer is still smaller than Tolkeen was (and smaller than Lazlo is).

I guess when i read the thread title i extrapolated it to hypothetical empire vs empire otherwise it would be pointless to discuss when talking about so many groups, Fed of Magic, True Fed of Magic ext and they are diametrically opposed to each other.

A lot of threads are created around things that are pointless to discuss.

I guess first thing that should have been done in this thread was get clarification from OP what exactly IS the Fed.

That would have been good.
Especially if the original poster had done it.

Last thing that i would like to hear your opinion on, and anyone else of course is;

If Dweomer had the same population as the CS with equivalent ratios they have now for classes,

Who do you think has the advantage in a war with CS? (both invade each other, fight for victory) (how great an advantage?)

I'd bet on Dweomer in that case. The writers keep letting magic beat tech at its own game, so pretty much the only thing that the CS has going for them are numbers, mass production, and infrastructure.

Would Psyscape, Lazlo or New Lazlo be allies (some are already) and come to Dweomers defense?

Lazlo and New Lazlo, probably.

Psyscape? Probably not. Dweomer isn't really friendly to psychics.
FoM, 16
Those not welcome in the city and usually forbidden to enter include vampires and any undead, cannibals, necromancers, witches, and zealots who cannot control themselves, with Psi-Stalkers counting among the latter...
...Furthermore, the Lords of Magic are extraordinarily hard on all psychics, especially master psionics such as the Mind Melter, Mind Bleeder, Psi-Stalker and Psi-Slinger. This has lead some to believe that The Three either have a personal vendetta or hatred for psychics, or a vulnerability to psionics.

Meanwhile, the Coalition recruits, hires, and trains psychics. Sure, psychics are still something of second-class citizens, but they might well be better allies for Psyscape than Dweomer would be.

[Colt47]

On the subject of armor and equipment with the CS: I've always played it that the CS has limited resources. Armor suits are recycled when possible and the CS does do surveys to try and find new resources in order to keep their army equipped. However, they should probably be economically crumbling after the war with Tolkien, as they don't have any way to keep maintaining their levels of production on armor and weapons. The CS isn't going to fall apart or anything, but they definitely couldn't handle a second war on the scale of Tolkien.

[Killer Cyborg]

So between the two of us, we've basically determined that
there's no way cast any summoning spell as an invocation without a
house rule.

There's no way to do a LOT of stuff without making some kind of house rule or house interpretation.

But actually, as written, it could still be cast as spell magic (i.e., non-ritual), BUT might require some kind of ceremony of unknown description.
It might be as simple as drawing a circle around you before you cast the spell, or it might be as complex as stabbing a goat's shadow in the eye at midnight.
For that matter, it might be either of these (or any number of other things) depending on which variation of the spell you know.

It seems to be left up to the GM.

If dealing with half a million shadow beasts every day doesn't count as a big distraction to the CS, then we'd have to mix it up a bit.

I can agree that those numbers would certainly be distracting.

we're not picky.

Then it's be pretty easy to be happy with the results.

THAT would actually work better, recruiting high-level mages who know the spell. As long as they're evil, they wouldn't even have to be from Rifts Earth. This would be a long-term kind of operation, though.

If this is going to be a long term operation, then this is the ideal situation since it doesn't pull mages away from the magic zone.

Which means it would leave a much, much smaller footprint for espionage and investigation to uncover.

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you for using the term "begging the question" correctly!

And, no, I'm not begging the question. Of the infinite number of dimensions in the megaverse, there are an infinite number of suitable dimensions. I just randomly open dimensional portals until I find one of them. It doesn't matter which one I find.

Sure, but it's not like you can step through a Rift, take a quick peek around, and say, "This dimension is uninhabited!"
Odds are, you're going to be on some kind of planet, and it'd take quite a bit of time and energy to determine whether or that world is inhabited.
Even if it is, there's the possibility that the rest of the dimension is not, though I'll pre-emptively agree that the odds of something showing up to eat the planet, or even just to visit, are probably pretty small if the planet itself is barren.

It matters very much which one the merc group finds. If they don't find the exact dimension that I found, then they can't find me. It does them no good to find another dimension from the set of suitable dimensions since I'm not there.

Agreed.
But if they can find the place you left Rifts Earth from, they might be able to re-open the rift you used, taking it to the same place you are.
(though this could be countered fairly well by using multiple hops from a variety of locations)

Actually, I did think of something to try. The caster of Dimensional Portal can open a portal to any dimension that he's been to, so if you capture a Shadow Beast, cast Eyes of Thoth on him so that he can read a scroll of Dimensional Portal and have a Mind Melter force him to read the scroll to open a rift to that dimension. Then as soon as the rift appears, send someone loyal through it and have them come right back. They've now been in that dimension and can open rifts to it via scrolls whenever you're ready to send troops through. Of course, depending on how close your rift is to the mages, it may take you a very long time to explore the area and find them (worst case is that you're on the wrong side of the planet).

Brilliant!
Incredibly ballsy, too, because a trip to these things home dimension might be REALLY hard to come back from!

As a variation, once the attacks start, you could try summoning your own shadow beasts and just interrogating him to see if he/it knows anything useful.
If he's already been summoned by the mages once, sent through to Earth, then popped back to his home dimension, he could just take you right TO the mages' dimension himself.
Or maybe he's just noticed a lot of his buddies getting summoned lately by the same guys.
Might be any amount of information that could be gained... though the IQ of 7 could well slow things up.

Of course, you might not summon a shadow beast that knows anything about any of it, depending on the size of their home dimension and the total number of shadow beasts there... but the more of them that the mages are summoning, the better your odds of summoning one that knows something.

The question for the GM is whether or not a magically literate Shadow Beast can read the scroll with his measly IQ of 7. According to the mental retardation article on Wikipedia, someone with mild mental retardation can typically learn to read at a 3rd to 6th grade level, so I guess I'd probably allow it if I were the GM.

Same here.
Even if not, there are some ways that you could impart literacy on it for a time, depending on who you have working with you.

You can't recruit a thousand (or a hundred) mages without asking a hell of a lot more, and getting rejected. These rejects would still be out there, and could be interviewed/interrogated.
Any large-scale operation is subject to conventional intelligence-gathering techniques, especially when aided by magic and/or psionics.

Dunscon already has a pool of loyal mages to pick from, so he doesn't even need to recruit, he just chooses who he wants involved and gives them their orders. He doesn't need to leak any information beyond that he has a mission that requires a large number of mages.

Well, he has a pool of mages that claim to be loyal.
And yeah, I'm sure that some are... at least, as loyal as evil mages can be.
But there are a lot of factions and individuals at odds with Dunscon, so the more mages he picks the greater the odds that one of them is a spy of some kind, or has some kind of hidden agenda that might screw things up.

Either way, any spy in Dunscon's circles might well notice a thousand (or even a hundred) loyal mages go missing or get a special assignment.

Another mage attempting this probably doesn't have that advantage, but he could still do his recruiting in another dimension, hopefully a dimension that is relatively obscure so that any dimension hopping mercs are less likely to have relevant connections.

Yup.
For that matter, one mage with the Clone or Doppleganger Spells of Legend could form his own army of loyal mages, without having to recruit anybody at all.

Actually, the ISS Peacekeepers are actually better trained to deal with supernatural threats like Shadow Beasts than CS Grunts are.

I hadn't considered that, but that might be true.

It's one of the bits of power creep that I have an issue with.
CS Grunts don't get Demon Lore as a starting skill, and they don't get bonuses to save vs. horror... but Peacekeepers do.
Just one of the bits of power creep in the game.

Entities might be a better idea than Shadow Beasts, come to think of it.

Yeah, throwing a mix of tectonic and possessing entities at the CS is my default example of a summoning storm strategy but I was just so pleased to see that Shadow Beasts had finally been upgraded enough to be potentially worth summoning that I went with them instead. Perhaps I should have stuck with entities. Oh well.

[/quote]

Eh. Either way it's a good idea.

[Dead Boy]

The CS isn't going to fall apart or anything, but they definitely couldn't handle a second war on the scale of Tolkien.

Actually, they have little choice about the matter seeing as the war against the Xiticix has had to be pushed up. Military operations MUST start soon according to ... pretty sure I read that in Aftermath.

[Nether]

Hey Dead, sorry about long wait for reply,

Alot of my suggestions on magic defense are based on some unspoken rules of example based on how many TW devices are designed. They perform simular but not necessarily to the spells that are required in them. I was not trying to make statement but suggestion, with the idea that others with more knowledge on that area could elaborate more to how it could be feasible. Many of my comments are meant as suggestion but on the boards everyone is like, it is either a statement with source or it is wrong kind of mentallity vs open discussion where they can add to the ideas offered. These boards are a great place (in theory) for players and GMs alike to throw out ideas and try to work them out before they jump feet first in thier game into it.

Some of my other basis for these suggestions is the SoT series for eg shows that organized magic user societies would develop defenses against these type of attacks, which also shows none of these defenses were ever shown in the books before that series was released. So I would go the next logical step further in suggesting that these spells could be taken a bit further in TW devices that make it function in a plausible way or tactics that would allow said powers to be successful or even partially successful, hence layers of defense.

House of glass but to a city

Cast against who? And the range of the spell is a significant short coming... plus the city would still be blown to bits, only glassy bits instead.

I was suggesting it as a possible start for a defense, but definately not worked out. Who ever thier wartime enemy would be, like Chi-town would think twice before nuking a city that would cause the same thing to thier city. I know the spell is based on a person target, but could research be done with TW to make it a city defense? I dont know, again just a starting point. Alot of GM assistance here without writers saying they have x.

Energy disruption to knock out nukes but would require quick pickup and dispose of
Mages that can open rifts/portals can send the missiles elsewhere, maybe to enemy bases (need to lookup if any can do this up in air while say flying or tw device.

Nice idea, but the spell does have a critical flaw.

"Can not affect M.D.C. environmental armor, power armor, robots or military vehicles." (BoM pg 106)

Again, a starting point for a defense. Negate Mechanics is lower and is technically more useful than this spell in the game world simply because it can affect MD tech. Then you have the TW Disrupter Rifle which states it wreaks havok with high tech equipment, well in most cases i do not consider top end sdc tech to be high tech equipment in comparison to mdc tech. Add on top of this that the rifle costs 150k, +40k for clip and that is 190k to affect sdc, that make any sense to you? It costs more than the nova rifle and the TW Jammer pistol is half the cost but 100% effective against md. This is where my basis is coming from in these defenses. So i would in this case be looking for a house rule or the writers to change it if they ever pub this war.

Controlled techtonic entities could also be used to take over the missiles and redirect them.

Incoming at Mach 5+? Highly doubtful they could catch the missiles.

True, but if you could create a far out net and anyway to track the missiles, ie radar as a simple one that everyone has, the entity only needs to be positioned in its path to hitch a ride as it passes thru. They would also need to be far enough out to catch it before it detonates. A step further could have little aircraft that carry the techtonic entity that are capable of flying at successful intercept speeds as well, or offer a teleport ability for the entity to go straight onto the missile. Again suggestions to a workable idea.

Little Force

This one has potential; however, the spell's description does not mention whether it is effective against area effect attacks such as explosions, how it would handle deflecting it. So you get a half-star for this one.

In a TW device, and/or far enough out, even the missile running into it without detonation could send it back in the other direction in which case i guess would make it twice as fast but not double the detonation force. Still the idea is defense.

Tele superior

Again, you have targeting issues against the Mach 5+ missiles.

As mentioned above, smalll defense craft or hey, actually use missiles that offer same speed, but for appropriate intercept trajectories to make it useable and instead of explosive nuke payload, it carries person, entity ext or just TW to cast spell on missile when in range. (so missile 'joining' the target missile like a wing man) Just came up with that.

Ok the Fed with spells, bombs ext can pretty much teleport anywhere in the CS they want and destroy their leaders, that includes proseks and generals. They have very little in way to stop it.

... except now we're getting back to the limitations of the teleport spells and the need to scout target sites well in advance. And I really doubt spies are getting inside the secure areas of the fortress cities. And if you want to target the generals, since they'd be more moving targets, getting timely scouting reports would be very hard.

I did list above how plausible it could be for magic scouts to succeed in scouting, let alone you could just as easily use norms to do it as well. I am thinking a magic scout has far more ability to scout than say a tech only based scout. Mask ppe is a godsend for these people.

The Psi Ghosts you have it correct and overall i didnt think they were that accessible but apparently they are. I think it is a huge benefit for the CS Intel to make use of these individuals especially as listing them for Psi Bat.

Roger on the clean nukes, didnt see that. Though begs to differ why they are as hesistant to use them because with such small drawbacks they could start clearing out alot of areas they want.

Gotta run but will finish posting the other half in a bit.

[Killer Cyborg]

Any plan that starts with "in a TW device..." is a "maybe" at best, unless it relies on a specific TW device that is printed in the official books.
Because whether or not any TW device works, and how, is ultimately up to the GM: this is specified in the TW creation rules.