Re: Nifty Idea

At 11:59 PM 9/15/96 GMT, you wrote:
>
>>
>>        I doubt the ship would tear itself apart. The gravity that affects
>>ships is the ship itself. That's why some ships have decks on both sides. So
>>gravity would help keep the ship together. If it were close enough to a
>>planet the effects would be different and possibly quite spectacular.
>
>Or a larger ship. Such as in combat.
>

Maybe if it were super close. However much glass is brittle, it is hard. It
shouldn't break unless it were made with very thin walls.

>>        Exactly, but as I said before, the descriptions for these spells
>>specifically say that they can despelled despite the fact that they are
>>permenent. *Some* DM's would conclude that that means that some permenent
>>spells can't be dispelled.
>
>Sure, and some, from reading the spell Permanency, would conclude that they
could be, and that
>lower level spells wouldn't be stronger than the Permanency spell.
>
>Go figure.
>

I still don't see why you keep coming back to the permenecy spell. Oh well.
I see the connection your making. I just don't happen to agree 100% with it.
The reason permenency is sometimes dispellable is to protect game balance.
Without it, it would be way to powerful a spell. I mean being able to make
undispellable walls of fire, I think not.  Polymorph is dispellable because
otherwise it would unbalance the game. However with or without
dispellability Glassteel does not unbalance the game. The amount of glass it
transforms is small. It's effect is small (see through cheaper steel).
Having it be dispellable would put it down to about the fifth level spells.

Another reason for more choice was my picture of how the magic worked.
Polymorph traps someone in another form. It doesn't actually 'change' them
it just locks them into that form. The chance of the new mentality taking
over increases the reson for this. If it just changed form, there would be
no reason for the mind to change. My mental picture would be bars around the
creature keeping in the desired shape. Mend reestablishes a former bond then
goes away. Erase destroys a small amount of matter. Glassteel changes the
matter than goes away. The material is not strenghened, it is changed. It is
not locked into the new form. Instead it just is the new form.


>>Exactly. The question is, is glassteel instaneous or permenent. If its
>>instaneous than it can't be dispelled unless you also allow such 'permenent'
>>spells such as mending and erase to be dispelled. Technicaly, these spells
>>should be instantaneous, not permenent. Of course the final decision is up
>>to the DM.
>
>
>Again, it makes and maintains a basic change in the nature of the material,
like the Polymorhs
>do. It doesn't "heal" or destory, like mending or erase, but fundanentally
changes, like the
>Polys. Sounds to me as though it's permanent, not instantaneous.
>
>

        As above I see Polys mantaining a form but not Stone or Glassteel
these one just make the change and go a way leaving nothing to dispell.

>I can see why you can argue that permenent spells can be
>>dispelled. After all it says in the PHB that they can. However, if so than
>>erase and mend should be dispellable also. You need to be consistant.
>
>I am. If the spell says it isn't dispellable, it isn't, if it doesn't say
so, I assume that the
>rules written under the Dispel Magic spell apply. What's inconsistant?
>

The fact that other permenent spells like mend and erase can be dispelled.

>>The thing is though that most other spells would kill the crew but leave the
>>ship, and a very good ship at that, intact. Dispel magic would leave the
>>crew alive but destroy the ship(and probabably any treasure). By destroying
>>the ship, most of the reason for attacking the ship is gone.
>
>That depends on why the ship was attacked, doesn't it? In a defensive
fight, I'm not as worried
>about the other guys ship remaining. If I'm the type to use Greek fire, I
don't think there's
>much difference between burning a ship to ashes, and magicing it to splinters.
>
>I can wait a couple of hours for the crew to suffocate if I want them dead,
and a shattered ship
>does less damage to cargo than a burnt one. I've no problem floating thru
the debris looking for
>the cargo. Or survivors, if it was someone on the ship I ewanted. And there
will be more
>survivors if I destroy the ship rather than the crew, or, in the case of
fire, both ship and
>crew.
>

The reason I said that other spells would do damge to the crew is because
glassteel, like steel, would be immune to the effects of most other spells.
Fire could rage through the ship killing all the people but the chance of it
harming the glassteel would be slim.

The main difference is in our view of Glassteel. You seem to picture it as a
possible unbalacing of the game and compare it to 'permenent' spells like
polymorph. I view it is a fairly weak spell and compare it to such spells as
mend and erase. Much of our arguements are the same just pointed
differently. The fact of the matter is that there are lots of holes in the
AD&D system. It's up to the DM to find the right patch. Your patch on the
hole is different from mine but both work fine. it's important to remember this.
MaTT