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The Dresden Files => DFRPG => Topic started by: vultur on May 09, 2014, 04:48:19 AM
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You should totally be able to do veils with non-Spirit elements.
Aleran Aircrafters use air veils, which make perfect sense -- light is bent going through the air (like mirages).
You should also be able to do an entropy water veil (scattering the photons that pass through so they don't form an image), this might look more like a big fuzzy cloud or "visual static" than invisibility though.
Earth and fire are harder to justify ... though heat can contribute to mirages, and light is a form of electromagnetic radiation and earth has ties to electromagnetism, so maybe... Alera also has Woodcrafted Veils which hide you in an environment with plants, maybe you could do something similar with earth (or elemental wood if you use an alternate elemental system).
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I see earth veils as dust clouds etc...
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My first character was a wizard whose primary element was Air. He would change the refractive index of the air around him, causing light to bend around him. You're completely right. You can do veils with every element, it's just how you word it. Don't forget that a "Veil" is not just invisibility, which is what you're actually asking about; Why can't I go invisible with every element. A veil is just a block against someones perception of you.
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Well, since the book says Spirit is the stuff of light and illusion and mind stuff, it's why you can put up a block and look invisible. I suppose I could use Earth to do the same, but it'd look like a dust storm (block versus alertness, anyone?) or similar physical feature. Fire might be a wall of flame, Water might distort and bend/refract the light so their vision might be off, but these blocks are NOT what I'd call "subtle." I guess that's why there's Spirit.
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You should totally be able to do veils with non-Spirit elements.
Aleran Aircrafters use air veils, which make perfect sense -- light is bent going through the air (like mirages).
You should also be able to do an entropy water veil (scattering the photons that pass through so they don't form an image), this might look more like a big fuzzy cloud or "visual static" than invisibility though.
Earth and fire are harder to justify ... though heat can contribute to mirages, and light is a form of electromagnetic radiation and earth has ties to electromagnetism, so maybe... Alera also has Woodcrafted Veils which hide you in an environment with plants, maybe you could do something similar with earth (or elemental wood if you use an alternate elemental system).
If I'm not mistaken, the Aleran woodcraft veils work by weaving vines and bushes and stuff around to hide you physically. So an analogous earth 'veil' would be burying yourself under the dirt.
I don't think water or fire would work to hide you--I know all the elements can be used for different actions, but there ought to be some differentiation between them, and it makes sense that there are some things one element could do but others can't. You can't use spirit to start a campfire, for instance.
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Water: dense fog is the obvious answer
Fire: dense smoke, or a quick series of 'flash-bang' explosions to overwhelm the senses of anyone looking in your direction, or carefully manipulated 'heat haze'
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You can do veils with every element, it's just how you word it.
You really should be right. But YS 255 calls veils the special province of spirit magic.
You can't use spirit to start a campfire, for instance.
Sure you can. Spirit does lasers. Lasers create heat.
Spirit: it's just better.
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Spirit: it's just better.
You sound like a commercial.
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You sound like a commercial.
I half expected him to do a thumbs-up, smile and one of his tooth would blink.
Anyway, a veil is basically a supernatural stealth roll, and if you can explain to me how your element can do it, I'm game. An actual "I'm invisible"-veil would still be spirit, though.
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Iv'e always been pretty lenient on what a caster can do with Rotes in particular. If the player wants to make something up on the fly all of the "not subtle" methods are cool within the element description but why not let the Air channeler (or whatever) have some sneaky veil-like Rotes too? Magic is supposed to be more about what you believe you can do with it than anything else.
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If I'm not mistaken, the Aleran woodcraft veils work by weaving vines and bushes and stuff around to hide you physically.
I think it is more like camouflage; Bernard can use it while moving while they're sneaking through the swamp in Captain's Fury. There's a bit where Bernard says he can't calm the dogs with earthcraft and keep the veil up at the same time while they're sneaking by, so Gaius shows Amara how to do an (aircrafted) veil.
You really should be right. But YS 255 calls veils the special province of spirit magic.
Yeah... which seems to violate the "block is a block is a block" principle.
And there shouldn't be an outright more powerful element either.
Well, since the book says Spirit is the stuff of light and illusion and mind stuff, it's why you can put up a block and look invisible. I suppose I could use Earth to do the same, but it'd look like a dust storm (block versus alertness, anyone?) or similar physical feature. Fire might be a wall of flame, Water might distort and bend/refract the light so their vision might be off, but these blocks are NOT what I'd call "subtle." I guess that's why there's Spirit.
I agree it would be hard to do a subtle veil with earth or fire, but Aleran aircraft veils seem pretty much "invisibility", and I think a water/entropy veil could be pretty similar.
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It's less about the rules and more about the western worldview. Veils are spirit only because the Western element wizards learn that "Spirit covers LIGHT, mind and force" meaning that any wizard who learns the traditional path is convinced that spirit is needed to manipulate light. In the case of the game they only use the word veil for straight-up invisibility. You summon a fog to hide you, fine, but it isn't considered a "veil." This is much in the same way that you can have many different sparkling wines but only a specific one from a specific source is champagne.
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YS252 "an evocation based veil, for example, is often done as a block, but what it blocks isn’t damage, it’s perception" Going off what what's read in the rules saying that veils are spirit only seems to be very stupid and unbalanced. If I'm GMing a game, and you use some element to bend light, that makes sense, then yea it's perfectly fine. Your aeromancer says he's going to change the refractive index of the air around him, yea go ahead. You're going to use fire to heat up the air around you, I might make you hurt yourself more if you fail the control. As for earth magic, since it's domain is electromagnetism, hell yea you can say the light just doesn't reflect off of you, making you invisible. And I don't see a way for water magic to do it that isn't very dangerous for yourself.
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And I don't see a way for water magic to do it that isn't very dangerous for yourself.
Water covers entropy, and Carlos can put a bullet-disintegrating shield up without harming himself, so I don't see why you couldn't put up a light-warping shield. The shield doesn't actually touch you, there's space between it and you.
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The easiest way would be to simply use the light bending capability of water, due to its refractive index. It would be a bit like putting up mirrors around you, things might seem to be at different places than they are. Like a spoon looks bent in a glass of water.
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Water covers entropy, and Carlos can put a bullet-disintegrating shield up without harming himself, so I don't see why you couldn't put up a light-warping shield. The shield doesn't actually touch you, there's space between it and you.
I mean if someone were to say I'm going to put up a shield of entropy around me that destroys photons entering. I'd say that you don't control everything and there's any kind of fallout, I'd probably have the veil fall on you in a place and hit you, hard.
And yes I know he can put up a shield of entropy that disintegrates stuff, but that's not close around his body
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Fallout and damage is reserved for when you fail to control a spell so I hope you'd offer a FP for taking damage even if they successfully cast the spell
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Wouldn't not letting any photons through result in an empty black blob where you're trying to veil?
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Wouldn't not letting any photons through result in an empty black blob where you're trying to veil?
Yea that's what was thinking. I was just writing down what someone else had as an example
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You could project the shield on only one side of yourself, which would leave you visible to anyone looking from another direction, but from the direction shielded, all they would see is a blob-like shadow on the objects behind you.
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This seems like as good an excuse as any to post this (http://qntm.org/invisibility).
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Wouldn't not letting any photons through result in an empty black blob where you're trying to veil?
Yes, but that's not really what I had in mind. Carlos's shield doesn't totally dematerialize things passing through it, it disintegrates them into small pieces and scatters them. Similarly, a water veil would bend/refract/scatter light ... much like an Aleran air veil... not completely annihilate it. It wouldn't be total invisibility (at least unless you were really good at it), but it could probably be quite effective, especially in a visually complex environment or a fast-moving chaotic situation where people don't have much time to look (would be harder to do it against, say, a blank white wall with nobody else around).
And yes I know he can put up a shield of entropy that disintegrates stuff, but that's not close around his body
This wouldn't necessarily be, either.
EDIT: "lair veil"? Agh, typos...
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This seems like as good an excuse as any to post this (http://qntm.org/invisibility).
Hmmm. Well, we are told making a veil you can see through easily from the inside is harder...
My guess is it works this way. The veil normally bends light around you, then puts it back on the path it would have followed after passing through the empty space if you had not been there. But to allow you to see, it doesn't bend light that is directed toward your eyes.
This would cause your eyes to be visible, though, so the next step is to use a second (EDIT: one-way) layer of veiling in front of your face to absorb outward-directed light reflected from your eyes (the light you actually use to see is absorbed, not reflected).
The photons that hit your eyes still don't pass through the "empty space" where you are standing (either absorbed by your eyes or by the eye-covering second layer of veiling), but this should appear only as two eye-sized spots of shadow on the surface behind you -- not very noticeable.
Unless I am missing something...
EDIT: removed redundant sentence fragment on light passing through
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Yes, but that's not really what I had in mind. Carlos's shield doesn't totally dematerialize things passing through it, it disintegrates them into small pieces and scatters them. Similarly, a water veil would bend/refract/scatter light ... much like an Aleran air veil... not completely annihilate it. It wouldn't be total invisibility (at least unless you were really good at it), but it could probably be quite effective, especially in a visually complex environment or a fast-moving chaotic situation where people don't have much time to look (would be harder to do it against, say, a blank white wall with nobody else around).
Actually, an entropy shield would more likely make it look like frosted glass than invisibility or even near invisibility -- entropy being randomness, after all. It might be useful for hiding your features, but would be useless for hiding the fact that something is there.
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I take issue with the idea that Spirit is the best element. If this is true, then it is only because of self-imposed limitations by the culture of this forum.
For more information, there is my very first thread on this forum: Purview of Evocation (http://www.jimbutcheronline.com/bb/index.php/topic,37778.msg1847469.html#msg1847469)
If those self-impose limitations were removed, I think every element would have the versatility and uniqueness to make specialization in anything other than Spirit really cool.
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The book is inconsistent, it states "A block is a block is a block" three pages before stating "A special kind of block called a veil is the special province of spirit magic." However, when you dig into the "block is a block" sidebar you'll note a point which I go by.
Specifically, there's no difference except those you can define by assessments and declarations.
A spirit veil may bend light around you while an earth veil either refracts light in a crystalline fashion or perhaps gives you the chameleon-like ability to blend into your background. Air might be timely distractions, dust in the eyes, or combine with fire to create a heat mirage and water could simply make you transparent. They're all functionally the same until someone creates or tags an appropriate aspect.