Birthright: Chimaeron

In any case, I'm not trying to promote that particular spell, so I'll drop that. I was merely saying that there are plenty of things that illusions can do, and thus I support including illusion based Realm Spells.

@HW: I did not say 'when an arms race happens, the game stops'. What I said was that the end of an arms race is the game being over. Once an arms race begins, there is no going back to the relatively pleasant way things were beforehand, it just keeps going until there's a collapse at the end of the story. The best we could hope for is that it goes slowly enough that those not involved could still play around it.

The 'personal attack' I made was 'you're getting dishonest here'. Apparently, that was fair criticism: You literally just said I said something I didn't say, surrounded by a bunch of belittling spin.

An arms race is a bad thing because it distracts from the game. That can be good if the game has become stagnant, but we haven't even started yet.

@BB: We gain XP from playing the game in a more-or-less appropriate manner, not by retiring from adventuring to go study new war magic so we can come back and win easily later. This focus on action is what makes the game fun, with a relatively light-hearted fantasy-medieval theme: Problems can be solved with adventures, armies, and political moves, not with an ever-accumulating arsenal of superweapons and countermeasures.

In the modern world, sure, instead of fighting an enemy, it may be more efficient to research a new weapon. But even in the real world, this easily gets out of control, with every soldier having to wear a gas mask, every command base in a subterranean bunker, and 'duck and cover' drills in the schools. When that happens, life isn't fun anymore--even was much as it was previously.

Wrong. I made no personal remarks about you. I took your comments and applied an understanding of the words you used. Ill admit that I made a mistakr on rhe exact phrasing you used. It doesnt changr the point youre trying to drive at, which is that everything becomes about that arms race.

And I'll not tell you again to leave off the personal remarks.

Ohh another spell!! Swap or transport province. Swap places with another province lol!!

'Exact phrasing'? They mean completely different things; one is true and the other is absurd. If you can't drop the spin we can't have an honest discussion.

The nature of an arms race is that it becomes the focus of activity for anyone involved in it. Those involved who don't focus on it lose the race. If the consequence of losing the race isn't losing a war, then it's questionable why they would have devoted attention to it in the first place.

And if you cant stop making personal remarks, then I'll start making personal remarks, and I'm better at it. I'm mean, rude, crude, and a stubborn SOB. If you want to go down this road, then let's dance. I am trying to keep civil, but I will not restrain myself much longer. You have been warned.

What you are saying here is rubbish. I, and others, have pointed out exhaustively why. We have explained it several ways, several times. You ignoring that is on you. Only you.

You are disagreed with in both the particulars and in the over all assessment. That isn't personal. Stop making it so.

Is that what you think this comes down to? You think you've won the argument already, so you don't have to play by the rules? That's not how this works.

Intimidation isn't a sensible way to discourage someone from complaining about dishonest arguments.

I would guess this heat is the reason why Juan hasn't allowed new spells to be researched before. I expect him to be cautious about introducing any, and especially about how he lets players be involved in creating them, because there's so much anxiety from the players surrounding them.

In the end it's his decision where he wants the game to go. I'm very sure he does not want to see spell research be a major focus and I'm glad of that.

I have not seen any references within the rules here for battle magic. A priest joining a battle should be able to cast turn undead, barkskin unit etc... As defined in the books of priest craft/mage craft.

I would like to see some type of elemental summoning to be a counter balance to people that feel summoning undead is evil.

Yah maybe an Erik’s forest type but elementals for those not wanting to stink of Druidic magic

It is Summoning. Reflavour summon Gnoll/Ogre... to summoning a small/med/large etc elemental. Evil is stronger... hence the temptation to do evil.