Shark_Force wrote:wait, how is nobody aware of the security system that this scheme is designed to disrupt?
you're putting a bunch of false positives in place that will in all likelihood last for years on end so that dog packs don't have an easy time knowing which magic effect they're detecting is important and which isn't.
who doesn't know about the fact that the CS has dog packs? i mean, this isn't like we're looking at some super-secret information, this is designed to disrupt something that isn't even a tiny bit secret, and that pretty much everyone knows all about.
as for motivation, well, turns out that a large number of spellcasters hate the CS. there's a whole bunch that used to be from tolkeen (and that is actually canon, there are tolkeen revenge squads or something to that effect), there's an entire city mostly full of them in the magic zone, and it's a fair bet there are a lot more who aren't in those two specific categories because the CS has by and large declared war on them already. so... yeah, if they can screw over the CS just a little bit by sending a pigeon to wait around for old man higgins to make the one-thousand mile hike through xiticix territory to go to the 'burbs of some CS city so it can deliver it's message of "neener neener", it isn't unreasonable to suppose that some portion of them would do that.
It's not unreasonable, provided that:
a) Somebody thinks of it in the first place.
b) The idea catches on.
If those two things happened to happen, then spamming pigeons could be something that various mages just do from time to time as a hobby. If enough mages do it, then it might work to some degree or another.
as to clairvoyance only applying to events, places, or people, that's still fairly straightforward... "the next major security breach" or "the next attack <nation> will launch on us", etc.
Sure.
But "major" is subjective, and "next" might lead you to focus on a minor attack that happens instead of the major attack 10 minutes later.
Tolkeen, for example, could have had mages using Oracle successfully to predict an event that happened right before Holmes' army showed back up.
(though, incidentally, so far as i can tell KC hasn't supported clairvoyance for stopping the pigeons specifically, just for other things.
Correct.
My view is that because Clairvoyance is triggered automatically for world-changing events, the effectiveness of using clairvoyance for national security would be somewhat proportional to the threat level of the attack if it succeeds.
Any attack/threat capable of destroying Chi-Town, for example, would automatically trigger a HUGE number of psychic visions.
Any attack/threat capable of severely damaging Chi-Town would trigger a lesser number of automatic visions.
Spamming magic pigeons by itself likely wouldn't trigger ANY automatic visions, because spamming magic pigeons is unlikely to be a world-changing event.
Now, IF the CS is smart, then they should also have their Clairvoyants working to deliberately detect threats as well. If I were in charge, I'd have a standing order that right before bed, every Clairvoyant who had enough energy (i.e., unused ISP) should meditate on questions such as "Who is the greatest threat to the Coalition," "Where is our greatest enemy located," or "Will there be any major attacks against the Coalition in the near future?"
Terms such as "greatest" and "major" are relative, so different psychics might well get different answers, but the sheer number of psychics would mean that some useful information should be obtained.
And, of course, I'd also have some means and protocols for passing this information on, and I'd have computers and people in place to sift through and prioritize the information received this way.
i'm still not at all convinced it works even en masse to provide reliable detailed information on time, place, etc... otherwise the major threats that were announced way back when in the mechanoids book would have been much more clearly detailed since lazlo was explicitly working in cooperation with psychics all over the place.
Well, that's the thing: clairvoyants might well have been used successfully that way in any given campaign world.
The Four Horsemen, for example, ARE defeated. As were the Mechanoids.
HOW they were defeated is left up to every individual GM, and any number of GMs could legitimately use Clairvoyance as a key player in defeating the menaces in question.
Since there is no official story of how things went down, we cannot state as fact that Clairvoyance
did play a key role, but we also cannot state as fact that it did
not.
certainly, i don't think clairvoyance is intended to turn you into Ed Glosser, Trivial Psychic, so anything as minor as a magic pigeon shouldn't get much of anything. but, as noted, there are other ways to track the pigeon... i'm just not sure they're terribly worth attempting since, once again, it's fairly simple to make it nearly impossible to track down a group that takes precautions).
What I would focus on, I think, is the ability of Psi-Stalkers to track by psychic scent. That may well allow you to sniff out the individuals casting the spells, and perhaps to track the pigeons back to their source(s) now and then.
IF the pigeons are any kind of problem in the first place.
But clairvoyance could be handy (and Object Read) for gaining clues as well.
I think it'd be an interesting adventure (or even campaign) to play a Dog Pack & Psi-Stalker team assigned to track down a pigeon-spamming mage.
Or, for that matter, to play a group of pigeon-spammers trying to avoid capture.
That's the main thing that I think a LOT of people miss when discussing this kind of attack on the CS: it shouldn't ever be a "This would automatically succeed" or "This would automatically fail" kind of thing.
What it should be is an opportunity for adventure.
