Zero, there is a reason he put a spoiler tag there. You need to put a spoiler tag on your reply too, because it's giving away details to people who, like you, have not read all the books.
What would you say would be an appropriate player concession, considering that these are killing spells?In general a killing spell is supposed to start and end the conflict. They should never really have a chance to concede. I suppose if the guy flubs the first spell a reasonable concession is all the consequences the person took from a half decent killing spell.
@crusher_bob
a) Yep, the GM has to agree to a concession. What happens if he doesn't agree or it makes no sense for him to agree?
b) Players might be aware if you roll against their characters. Except the heart-exploding spell (and any thaumaturgy attack) has a flat number of shifts; you don't roll the attack, you just use the shifts. Sure, a wizard might sense the energy gathering. That's why the professional wizard assassin casts her big spell with a trigger and uses an indirect sympathetic link. For example, take photo of public building for link to that building. Trigger for the prepared spell is you tearing the photo. Observe with telescope when your target will enter that building. Trigger the spell as he does and make the building explode. No wards/thresholds on public buildings, no way to sense the energy in advance, simpler and cleaner than trying to get a link to a specific target. Such a big setup on trigger that waits for the sympathetic link is how the Chichen Itza ritual was done (except it was a LOT bigger). That's why its targets couldn't sense the spell being prepared, couldn't scan magically for its location or prepare defenses against it.
Ditto for the professional mundane assassin. They don't try to shoot you from ambush. They put a bomb in your car. Better yet, they put a much bigger bomb in the car next to yours so that even if you search your car for bombs you still won't find anything and will still get dead.
C) Not a single attack. I shoot you, see if you are dead. If you aren't, I shoot you again and look. If you still aren't dead, I shoot you a third and a fourth time until I am sure you're dead. And when I am sure you are dead, I put you and the crime scene on fire. Can't have police finding good evidence or you rising from the dead if you're a vampire, after all. That's because a professional assassin should ensure their victims' "dearly departed" status rather than do the usual half-@$$ed job supervillains do.
Ditto with a serious assassination attempt with magic. You put multiple spells keyed to activate one after the other, preferably with multiple different forms of lethal attack (an entropy-generated accident, turning the air poisonous, spontaneous combustion, a gravity hammer and a heart-ripper) because redundancy is always a plus. The target might have single-use defenses against a single attack but not all of them. The target might be immune to the specific form of attack but not all of them (such as an accident or poison vs a vampire or combustion and heart-ripper vs a fire elemental). The target might be tough enough to survive one attack but not all of them.
But most important of all, if you managed to kill the target, the sympathetic link you used will stop working and any spell activated after he dies will fizzle. By observing the fizzle, you can confirm success fairly accurately.
a) The concession has to make sense and be acceptable. If an assassin wants to kill you, what concession will you offer? Surrender? He isn't interested in prisoners. His attacks knocking you out but not killing you? He double-taps you to make sure you're dead. Similarly, a wizard hitting you with a heart-ripping spell does not intend to accept any concessions. His spell is intentionally lethal. And it's also an overkill - he doesn't try to stop your heart or give you an accident - he rips your hear out of your chest with enough force to blast your chest cavity apart. What kind of concession would make sense and be acceptable under the circumstances?
b) You can only concede before the roll that takes you out. If a sniper ambushes you and shoots you in the head from a half-mile away, you won't know of the attack until after it happens. Similarly, if a wizard casts a death-spell on you from twenty miles away, you won't know it's happening.
c) The smart wizard won't do a 36-shift spell. He'll do ten 10-shift ones, keyed to go off together. Even if each individual spell only deals 1 consequence to you, you die because you don't have enough stress boxes and consequences to absorb all of them. Even if you can concede against one, the following spells will still kill you (sort of how an assassin double-taps an already taken-out opponent or shoots the prisoner)
...(the spell took a day to prepare at least so a lot of scenes)...
...For effectively one day's worth of preparation for a powerful wizard who had...
a) The concession has to make sense and be acceptable. If an assassin wants to kill you, what concession will you offer? Surrender?You aren't surrendering to the assassin. Its a meta-game deal. You need to suffer a lasting damage, but something like a moderate consequence does that.
b) You can only concede before the roll that takes you out. If a sniper ambushes you and shoots you in the head from a half-mile away, you won't know of the attack until after it happens. Similarly, if a wizard casts a death-spell on you from twenty miles away, you won't know it's happening.Indeed, a one shot spell will do the trick.
c) The smart wizard won't do a 36-shift spell. He'll do ten 10-shift ones, keyed to go off together. Even if each individual spell only deals 1 consequence to you, you die because you don't have enough stress boxes and consequences to absorb all of them. Even if you can concede against one, the following spells will still kill you (sort of how an assassin double-taps an already taken-out opponent or shoots the prisoner)A bunch of problems with that. First off they defend 4 times. You need to fight through wards 4 times, thresholds four times. Even a normal human could mount a defense of 7ish fairly easily. Or you get really unlucky and a wizard has a 10 shift ward.
No. If you spend the whole day casting one spell, that day is one scene long. A scene has no fixed duration, and lasts "the amount of time it takes to resolve a single conflict or accomplish some other significant purpose."
Sancta's last point in pretty significant. Keep in mind 1 scene for an off screen npc does not = 1 scene for the players.
The ability to concede or not is and should be limited only by the creativity and the ability to negotiate of the players and GM. No matter what the scenario or set up is.Not only makes sense, but is interesting and dramatic. The whole point of playing in the first place (to me) is to be engaged in an interesting adventure/story.
You can look at Death Masks as an example. Harry and Susan are running away from the Denarians, and one of them casts a lethal Entropy curse at him. Harry can't roll well enough to avoid it, so his player negotiates--the concession is that he's trapped in his apartment all night and morning (meaning he can't do things like saving Shiro or contacting his allies) and he has to deal with Susan getting out of control as well.
As has been pointed out, it doesn't matter whether the aggressor would accept the terms. What matters is whether the GM and the players can come up with something that makes sense.