Prysus wrote:drewkitty ~..~ wrote:Though, perhaps it is time someone cited the locations of the rule for us people who know the rule but forgot unimportant bits like where it is found......
Greetings and Salutations. Sounds like I've been summoned to the conversation. Okay, so the rules for magic and power armor is in RUE on page 168. Note: There may be other locations with different information (this is Palladium after all), but this is the one I'm most familiar with (and typically the one referenced in regards to this type of conversation).
Wearing Body armor, ...
[snip]
Note: The same considerations and penalties apply to power armor, which practitioners of magic won't know how to operate/pilot.
Trying to cast magic from inside a vehicle or giant robot is impossible, causing the magical effect/damage to strike those inside the vehicle (cannot penetrate the walls of the vehicle ...
So ...
drewkitty ~..~ wrote:Within the rules of Rifts PAs are vehicles.
Unless there's another rule somewhere else, this is false. In Rifts, for the proposes of magic, power armor is just body armor. A claim that Power Armor are the same as vehicles (in regards to magic) is a house rule, or will require further citation from another source. Though you may be thinking of the psionic note (see below).
Agreed; RUE/BOM clearly lump Power Armor in with Body Armor when it comes to trying to cast spells through them, not with vehicles.
And it seems pretty clear to me that talismans are intended to be able to be activated through body armor.
drewkitty ~..~ wrote:The rules about what magic can't pass through say that magic doesn't pass through the structure of vehicles. W/o any Distinction about how thick said structure is.
This is accurate, and (without further citation) Killer Cyborg is mistaken about the thickness of the walls being relevant (in regards to magic). Most likely what he's thinking of is the rule for Psychic Combat on page 366.
What it comes down to is whether one (wrongly
) interprets the RUE/BOM quote to literally mean "no magic or magical energy or magical effect can ever pass through any kind of walls of any kind of vehicle,
OR whether one interprets the passage to be more of a generalization about the fact that you can't cast (most) spells through walls.
I see zero reason to take the first interpretation, and a number of reasons to take the second:
1. Aliens Unlimited Galaxy Guide p. 120, regarding the Dagotte:
The position is not unlike the "God made flesh" status of the Egyptian Pharaohs. In addition to such status, a more practical means of respect is the fact that they are the only ones who can return a raiding party back to their ship or base camp in the blink of an eye via Teleport SuperiorThis came up way back during our roughly 2,000 post argument about whether or not somebody can teleport into a vehicle, and it was the last nail in the coffin for the argument that "no, you can't teleport into a vehicle because magic cannot penetrate the walls of a vehicle as per a RAW interpretation of that RUE/BOM passage."
We have canon evidence that the spell Teleport Superior can indeed work through the walls of a vehicle, which indicates that magic can in fact pass through the walls of vehicles in at least some situations and circumstances, contrary to RUE 188's apparent phrasing.
2. Canon doesn't
have to make any sense, but when in doubt between an interpretation that makes no sense, and an interpretation that does make sense, it seems unwise to choose the one that doesn't make sense.
And "magic cannot penetrate the walls of any vehicle ever, in any way" does not make any actual sense.
One example Doom III used to illustrate this back in that lengthy argument was that of a cardboard box. Add some wheels, and now it's a vehicle.
If magic technically cannot penetrate the walls of any vehicle ever, then:
-A LLW could not sense the PPE of a supernatural creature hiding in that box, even if the mage was touching the box, and the creature inside had infinite PPE.
-No area effect magic of any kind could affect anybody in the box, not Antimagic Cloud, Fear, Calling, Death Curse (which has a range of hundreds of miles and even OTHER DIMENSIONS), Distant Voice, Teleport, Animate Dead, Globe of Silence, Summon Ally (or any summoning spell), Locate (which specifies being able to find people on an aircraft), Life Drain ( which states "characters inside power armor, environmental body armor, manned robots, or military vehicles are affected by this spell"), nor any spell of Legend, or anything else.
Meanwhile, the exact same box sans wheels would not protect anybody from that kind of thing in the slightest.
Which wouldn't make any sense, unless we decide there's something magical or antimagical about vehicles themselves above and beyond their physical nature, some supernatural or at least unnatural aspect of their nature that serves to serve as an antimagic barricade that has no ties to the materials or construction.
And I can't believe for a moment THAT's what the writers meant when they wrote that passage.
Take the Sanctuary spell (BoM 157).
It is described as being able to "immobilize an entire army," with the effect of "any creature that attempts to attack or harm another creature within its radius is instantly struck down, becoming temporarily paralyzed or rendered unconscious." There's specific note of "the perpetrator of any action that will harm another, no matter how subtle, will be so paralyzed."
And "this applies to all forms of war machinery, iron juggernauts and automatons, as well as robots, cyborgs,
battle vehicles...."
How so, if the magic cannot penetrate the battle vehicle's walls to to affect it?
How so if the occupants of the battle vehicle are protected from any and all magic cast from the other side of the vehicle's walls?
Even if it simply paralyzed the vehicle, allowing people within a vehicle to still fight one another doesn't seem to work with the spell's description.
3. The passage in RUE (p. 188)* is more unclear than people like to think:
Trying to cast magic from inside a vehicle or giant robot is impossible, causing the magical effect/damage to strike those inside the vehicle (can not penetrate the walls of the vehicle; even novice students of magic are taught this). As a result, the spell caster must at least open a window or hatch, and stick his head and upper body out (a nice target for snipers) to weave his magic. Many spells also require a line of sight to strike a specific target; the spell caster must be able to see his quarry.Note that the "can not penetrate the walls of the vehicle" part does NOT refer back to "any or all kinds of magic or magical energy." It refers back to "magical effect/damage."
Which is a LOT different from "magic" or "magical energy" and so forth.
In regards to this passage specifically is incorrect to say "magic cannot penetrate the walls of a vehicle; it is more correct to say "magical effects/damage cannot penetrate the walls of a vehicle."
Which could mean something as simple as "you cannot cast fireball/magic net through the walls of a vehicle to a target on the other side," and that seems a lot more like what the writers seem to be discussing/picturing than "all vehicle walls are inexplicably impenetrable to all magical energy/effects of any kind, in every circumstances."
Sure, a mage has to roll down the window, and stick his upper body out, if he wants to cast fireball/whatever at somebody outside the car.
It generally works the same way when somebody inside a car wants to fire a gun at somebody outside the car; they have to either blast through the wall/window, or they have to roll a window down and stick enough of their body out to fire at the target.
I don't see any reason to believe that what the writers were attempting to say is along the lines of "Even if some guy is standing just outside your rolled-down car window, you can't cast a spell at him because he's on the outside of the car," and plenty of reason to believe that the writers are picturing the mage trying to aim/cast at somebody outside and in front of or behind the car; the kind of positioning where it would be blatantly obvious that yeah, you can't just put your hand up to the windshield, cast fireball, and have the fireball appear on the other side of the glass & hurl at the target.
The kind of thing we see with guns in action movies, where somebody hangs out the passenger side window with a gun in order to shoot at people in a car ahead of or behind him/her.
That makes a LOT more sense than assuming that the writers were enscripting into stone a new rule of physics and/or metaphysics to the game world, granting vehicles some kind of anti-magical property that boxes, buildings, and so forth don't have.
This is one of the times where people have looked at RAW, had a way too literal take on what they think RAW means, and just ran with it way out into left field.
It's NOT something that means "If you're driving a car, holding a talisman outside the open window with one hand, you cannot activate the talisman unless you stick your entire torso beyond the magic-negating effects of the vehicle's walls.
It's NOT something that means "If you're in a Conestoga wagon, looking directly out the back or front of the vehicle, you cannot cast a spell to affect the weather, nor shoot a fire bolt through the opening at an enemy."
It just means "most spells won't cast through solid objects, and vehicles are solid objects."
That's why it says that the vehicle walls block magical damage/effects, NOT "the body of a vehicle blocks all forms of magic and magical energy from traveling through."
Edit:
*BoM is more generalized:
Magic can not penetrate the skin of giant robots, or vehicles. Any spell cast inside will only affect the occupants and the internal systems of the vehicle/robot. Likewise, any spell directed at vehicles/robots outside, only affect the robot itself and can not affect the occupants inside.But I don't see much reason to think it means anything different from RUE, with the RUE passage either being an attempted clarification of BoM's vague overgeneralization, or with BoM being a sloppy rehash of RUE's passage, depending on which came first.
Remember the context:
The quoted passage is response to "what about power armor, or vehicles/giant robots?", and the "what about" part is a continuation from the previous question "Are there any spell casting penalties when wearing armor?"
So what it's attempting to answer is effectively the question of
Are there any spell casting penalties while in a vehicle?The answer is simply saying that you cannot cast spells out of a vehicle
the same way you cast spells out of armor, i.e., you cannot cast a spell like fire bolt out of the hand of a giant robot the way you could cast it out of the hand of a suit of power armor or body armor, nor can you cast most other spells that way.
Basically, it's saying that no, being in a vehicle is more like being in a room than in a suit of armor; you can't cast spells through walls.