Nightmask wrote:Well you see there's this thing called 'The Godzilla Threshold', the point at which the damage that might be caused by unleashing Godzilla on a threat is seen as less than not unleashing him at all. The heroic defenders of Tolkeen were fighting bravely but losing against an implacable and monstrous threat, one so devoted to their total destruction that calling up demonic aid was the lesser of two evils to try and protect their people from unwarranted genocidal assault. A desperate move indeed yet not stupid nor can one really consider it that evil given the enemy that they were dealing with. Just as the failure to act decisively forced the Machine People to join the Kreegor, a race considered evil and yet were more willing to embrace them as sentient beings than the supposedly enlightened peoples of the CCW. Sure they eventually got around to recognizing them as people but it was far too late to undo the damage.
100% agreement. The only other option Tolkeen was left with was to surrender (and possibly be slaughtered anyway) or (IMO) to find a magical means of teleporting the whole city to a new location far outside of CS territory.
Unfortunately Tolkeen couldn't be allowed to come up with a city-wide teleport event to simply remove it to another dimension (Robotech Earth perhaps?), otherwise given the magic users available and all the magical knowledge they could have come up with a last-ditch ritual to remove the city to some other location.
Fair warning: I consider being called a munchkin a highly offensive slur and do report people when they err in doing so.
'Reality is very disappointing.' - Jonathan Switcher from Mannequin
It's 'canon', not 'cannon'. A cannon is a big gun like on pirate ships, canon is what you mean when referring to something as being contained within one of the books such as how many dice to roll for a stat.
Nightmask wrote:Well you see there's this thing called 'The Godzilla Threshold', the point at which the damage that might be caused by unleashing Godzilla on a threat is seen as less than not unleashing him at all. The heroic defenders of Tolkeen were fighting bravely but losing against an implacable and monstrous threat, one so devoted to their total destruction that calling up demonic aid was the lesser of two evils to try and protect their people from unwarranted genocidal assault. A desperate move indeed yet not stupid nor can one really consider it that evil given the enemy that they were dealing with. Just as the failure to act decisively forced the Machine People to join the Kreegor, a race considered evil and yet were more willing to embrace them as sentient beings than the supposedly enlightened peoples of the CCW. Sure they eventually got around to recognizing them as people but it was far too late to undo the damage.
100% agreement. The only other option Tolkeen was left with was to surrender (and possibly be slaughtered anyway) or (IMO) to find a magical means of teleporting the whole city to a new location far outside of CS territory.
Unfortunately Tolkeen couldn't be allowed to come up with a city-wide teleport event to simply remove it to another dimension (Robotech Earth perhaps?), otherwise given the magic users available and all the magical knowledge they could have come up with a last-ditch ritual to remove the city to some other location.
I like that part, if they had been allowed then there'd have been no need for the books!!
My real world Physics defeats your Quasi-Physics!!! Bubblegum Crisis, best anime/sci-fi/ for totally hot babes in Power Armor.!!!! Magic. Completely screws logic at every opportunity. (credit due to Ilendaver)
Nightmask wrote:Unfortunately Tolkeen couldn't be allowed to come up with a city-wide teleport event to simply remove it to another dimension (Robotech Earth perhaps?), otherwise given the magic users available and all the magical knowledge they could have come up with a last-ditch ritual to remove the city to some other location.
I like that part, if they had been allowed then there'd have been no need for the books!!
No, they could have done so at the end when all was clearly lost and still had the books play out as they did. You could have even had the PC group be involved in the ritual or procuring components required to make it happen if the game progressed to that point rather than the CS being halted earlier.
Fair warning: I consider being called a munchkin a highly offensive slur and do report people when they err in doing so.
'Reality is very disappointing.' - Jonathan Switcher from Mannequin
It's 'canon', not 'cannon'. A cannon is a big gun like on pirate ships, canon is what you mean when referring to something as being contained within one of the books such as how many dice to roll for a stat.
Nightmask wrote:Unfortunately Tolkeen couldn't be allowed to come up with a city-wide teleport event to simply remove it to another dimension (Robotech Earth perhaps?), otherwise given the magic users available and all the magical knowledge they could have come up with a last-ditch ritual to remove the city to some other location.
I like that part, if they had been allowed then there'd have been no need for the books!!
No, they could have done so at the end when all was clearly lost and still had the books play out as they did. You could have even had the PC group be involved in the ritual or procuring components required to make it happen if the game progressed to that point rather than the CS being halted earlier.
Ultimatly Tolkeen wasn't played very smart. The CS Generals were portrayed like retarded monkeys (and I mean no offense to retared monkeys), and yet they still won. Both sides were written, and stratigized poorly. However, Tolkeen had every advantage when it came to magic. They had spells of ledged at their disposal for crying out loud! They had greater elementals fighting for them. They had summoners, necromancers and every concievable edge, yet they couldn't win.
Tolkeen could have been best of both worlds. Evac civilians AND fight off the CS with their military.Either way, they should have evacuated the civilian population WAY before the END of the final seige. There was no reason to leave civilians in a war zone for nearly 4 years! It was rediculous.
Hystrix wrote:Ultimatly Tolkeen wasn't played very smart. The CS Generals were portrayed like retarded monkeys (and I mean no offense to retared monkeys), and yet they still won. Both sides were written, and stratigized poorly. However, Tolkeen had every advantage when it came to magic. They had spells of ledged at their disposal for crying out loud! They had greater elementals fighting for them. They had summoners, necromancers and every concievable edge, yet they couldn't win.
Tolkeen could have been best of both worlds. Evac civilians AND fight off the CS with their military.Either way, they should have evacuated the civilian population WAY before the END of the final seige. There was no reason to leave civilians in a war zone for nearly 4 years! It was rediculous.
Well at start the civilians stayed for the same reason that they stayed in any other city in real life during a war, because they either had confidence in their leaders, were willing to tough it out, or felt there wasn't anywhere else to go. Look at Great Britain, their main city got hit by massive waves of firebomb attacks and yet the citizens in spite of the hell on earth that they had to deal with stayed. When the Allies made that same mistake later on with Berlin again the citizens remained when they could have fled. As intelligent as people are they still have a need to defend what they feel to be theirs and can cling to these things to the point of their self-destruction when giving them up would have allowed survival instead.
In regards to how Tolkeen was handled, well as already noted they were designated loser so no matter what resources they had on their side that should have ensured a victory in defending Tolkeen and dealing the CS a decisive defeat they were going to lose. While a side generally has to be designated loser for the stories it generates bad feelings from the readers/players if the designated loser shouldn't have lost the fight but was forced to take a dive instead to make the designated winner remain so.
Fair warning: I consider being called a munchkin a highly offensive slur and do report people when they err in doing so.
'Reality is very disappointing.' - Jonathan Switcher from Mannequin
It's 'canon', not 'cannon'. A cannon is a big gun like on pirate ships, canon is what you mean when referring to something as being contained within one of the books such as how many dice to roll for a stat.
Nightmask wrote:Unfortunately Tolkeen couldn't be allowed to come up with a city-wide teleport event to simply remove it to another dimension (Robotech Earth perhaps?), otherwise given the magic users available and all the magical knowledge they could have come up with a last-ditch ritual to remove the city to some other location.
Sad thing is, if they'd had a few Astral Mages and Astral Lords (both from Nightbane WB-1: Beyond the Shadows,) they could have created a pocket-dimension mirror-image of Tolkeen on the Astral Plane for them to evacuate the citizens to that the Coalition troops couldn't have found without the help of thier Psi-Battalion and couldn't have attacked anyway, a la Psyscape.
Given the PPE available from a city of mages alone let alone some chipped in by the non-mages an Astral Lord or Mage could just about create an entire world in the Astral Plane. Just 2 PPE alone from everyone would provide hundreds of thousands of PPE for building with. You could max every feature out, tack on all sorts of extra bundles of the Size feature, and make electrical power available to power a country easily and have it be free. You wouldn't even have to ever deal with Rifts Earth again at that point, you'd have a luscious world where your only problems would be the disputes that always come up between sentient beings. You could maybe even include a special realm feature where evil people had black halos over their heads or some other feature in the fabric of the realm to reduce the chances of being betrayed.
Fair warning: I consider being called a munchkin a highly offensive slur and do report people when they err in doing so.
'Reality is very disappointing.' - Jonathan Switcher from Mannequin
It's 'canon', not 'cannon'. A cannon is a big gun like on pirate ships, canon is what you mean when referring to something as being contained within one of the books such as how many dice to roll for a stat.
Plus iirc, the time in the Astral Plane goes 100 times faster than the regular world, with that in mind the forces of Tolkeen would be breeding faster than the CS can kill them. If they spent the 4 years of war in the Stral Plane, they would have an army that dwarfs the CS's quite considerably.
Hystrix wrote:Ultimatly Tolkeen wasn't played very smart. The CS Generals were portrayed like retarded monkeys (and I mean no offense to retared monkeys), and yet they still won. Both sides were written, and stratigized poorly. However, Tolkeen had every advantage when it came to magic. They had spells of ledged at their disposal for crying out loud! They had greater elementals fighting for them. They had summoners, necromancers and every concievable edge, yet they couldn't win.
Tolkeen could have been best of both worlds. Evac civilians AND fight off the CS with their military.Either way, they should have evacuated the civilian population WAY before the END of the final seige. There was no reason to leave civilians in a war zone for nearly 4 years! It was rediculous.
Well at start the civilians stayed for the same reason that they stayed in any other city in real life during a war, because they either had confidence in their leaders, were willing to tough it out, or felt there wasn't anywhere else to go. Look at Great Britain, their main city got hit by massive waves of firebomb attacks and yet the citizens in spite of the hell on earth that they had to deal with stayed. When the Allies made that same mistake later on with Berlin again the citizens remained when they could have fled. As intelligent as people are they still have a need to defend what they feel to be theirs and can cling to these things to the point of their self-destruction when giving them up would have allowed survival instead.
In regards to how Tolkeen was handled, well as already noted they were designated loser so no matter what resources they had on their side that should have ensured a victory in defending Tolkeen and dealing the CS a decisive defeat they were going to lose. While a side generally has to be designated loser for the stories it generates bad feelings from the readers/players if the designated loser shouldn't have lost the fight but was forced to take a dive instead to make the designated winner remain so.
Uh... yeah, most of the civilians especially women and children were shipped off to the country side "out of danger." I doubt that most of the mages thought they had no where else to go. It is hard to say "no I'm staying here" when your spouse or parents just teleport you.
you some might think you're a but you're cool in book --Mecha-Viper BEST IDEA EVER!!! -- The Galactus Kid Holy crapy, you're Zer0 Kay?! --TriaxTech Zer0 Kay is my hero. --Atramentus The Zer0 of Kay, who started this fray, Kept us laughing until the end. -The Fifth Business (In loving Memory of the teleport thread)
Giant2005 wrote:Plus iirc, the time in the Astral Plane goes 100 times faster than the regular world, with that in mind the forces of Tolkeen would be breeding faster than the CS can kill them. If they spent the 4 years of war in the Stral Plane, they would have an army that dwarfs the CS's quite considerably.
Not quite, if you've gone with earth-like conditions (which you just about would have to) then time flows at the same rate as on the Earth plane (I also don't remember anything ever saying time passes faster let alone that much faster, if anything you tend to stop aging in the Astral plane).
Fair warning: I consider being called a munchkin a highly offensive slur and do report people when they err in doing so.
'Reality is very disappointing.' - Jonathan Switcher from Mannequin
It's 'canon', not 'cannon'. A cannon is a big gun like on pirate ships, canon is what you mean when referring to something as being contained within one of the books such as how many dice to roll for a stat.
Giant2005 wrote:Plus iirc, the time in the Astral Plane goes 100 times faster than the regular world, with that in mind the forces of Tolkeen would be breeding faster than the CS can kill them. If they spent the 4 years of war in the Stral Plane, they would have an army that dwarfs the CS's quite considerably.
Not quite, if you've gone with earth-like conditions (which you just about would have to) then time flows at the same rate as on the Earth plane (I also don't remember anything ever saying time passes faster let alone that much faster, if anything you tend to stop aging in the Astral plane).
I just looked it up and I significantly understated the time difference. For every minute that passes in the real world, a week passes on the Outer Plane. For every 52 minutes in the real world, a year passes in the Astral Plane. Assuming children can be raised and trained to fight in 21 years, in just over 18 hours real time, Tolkeen could breed and train an entire generation of Soldiers.
Giant2005 wrote:Plus iirc, the time in the Astral Plane goes 100 times faster than the regular world, with that in mind the forces of Tolkeen would be breeding faster than the CS can kill them. If they spent the 4 years of war in the Stral Plane, they would have an army that dwarfs the CS's quite considerably.
Not quite, if you've gone with earth-like conditions (which you just about would have to) then time flows at the same rate as on the Earth plane (I also don't remember anything ever saying time passes faster let alone that much faster, if anything you tend to stop aging in the Astral plane).
I just looked it up and I significantly understated the time difference. For every minute that passes in the real world, a week passes on the Outer Plane. For every 52 minutes in the real world, a year passes in the Astral Plane. Assuming children can be raised and trained to fight in 21 years, in just over 18 hours real time, Tolkeen could breed and train an entire generation of Soldiers.
Which still ignores the fact that's not how it works, an Astral Domain has the same time differential as Earth does at the minimum when using earth-like conditions. One minute there is one minute on Earth. One would need to have such conditions because you can't very well reproduce or have functional lives as ectoplasm.
Fair warning: I consider being called a munchkin a highly offensive slur and do report people when they err in doing so.
'Reality is very disappointing.' - Jonathan Switcher from Mannequin
It's 'canon', not 'cannon'. A cannon is a big gun like on pirate ships, canon is what you mean when referring to something as being contained within one of the books such as how many dice to roll for a stat.
Giant2005 wrote:Plus iirc, the time in the Astral Plane goes 100 times faster than the regular world, with that in mind the forces of Tolkeen would be breeding faster than the CS can kill them. If they spent the 4 years of war in the Stral Plane, they would have an army that dwarfs the CS's quite considerably.
Not quite, if you've gone with earth-like conditions (which you just about would have to) then time flows at the same rate as on the Earth plane (I also don't remember anything ever saying time passes faster let alone that much faster, if anything you tend to stop aging in the Astral plane).
I just looked it up and I significantly understated the time difference. For every minute that passes in the real world, a week passes on the Outer Plane. For every 52 minutes in the real world, a year passes in the Astral Plane. Assuming children can be raised and trained to fight in 21 years, in just over 18 hours real time, Tolkeen could breed and train an entire generation of Soldiers.
Which still ignores the fact that's not how it works, an Astral Domain has the same time differential as Earth does at the minimum when using earth-like conditions. One minute there is one minute on Earth. One would need to have such conditions because you can't very well reproduce or have functional lives as ectoplasm.
They don't need to adjust the time differential to simulate Earth-like conditions. They can make a realm where they have physical bodies that doesn't alter the time-stream, that actually sounds easier than building one and altering the timestream to match Earth.
Nightmask wrote:Which still ignores the fact that's not how it works, an Astral Domain has the same time differential as Earth does at the minimum when using earth-like conditions. One minute there is one minute on Earth. One would need to have such conditions because you can't very well reproduce or have functional lives as ectoplasm.
They don't need to adjust the time differential to simulate Earth-like conditions. They can make a realm where they have physical bodies that doesn't alter the time-stream, that actually sounds easier than building one and altering the timestream to match Earth.
Except the 'Earth-like conditions' feature doesn't come that way, since Earth's time doesn't flow like that. It's an inherent feature of the conditions to be that way and not one you can leave off. The only thing that goes your way is that anyone who's part of the creation of the realm stops aging while in the Astral Domain.
Fair warning: I consider being called a munchkin a highly offensive slur and do report people when they err in doing so.
'Reality is very disappointing.' - Jonathan Switcher from Mannequin
It's 'canon', not 'cannon'. A cannon is a big gun like on pirate ships, canon is what you mean when referring to something as being contained within one of the books such as how many dice to roll for a stat.
Nightmask wrote:Which still ignores the fact that's not how it works, an Astral Domain has the same time differential as Earth does at the minimum when using earth-like conditions. One minute there is one minute on Earth. One would need to have such conditions because you can't very well reproduce or have functional lives as ectoplasm.
They don't need to adjust the time differential to simulate Earth-like conditions. They can make a realm where they have physical bodies that doesn't alter the time-stream, that actually sounds easier than building one and altering the timestream to match Earth.
Except the 'Earth-like conditions' feature doesn't come that way, since Earth's time doesn't flow like that. It's an inherent feature of the conditions to be that way and not one you can leave off. The only thing that goes your way is that anyone who's part of the creation of the realm stops aging while in the Astral Domain.
Firstly, the book actually says those creation rules are just guidelines and the lord/mage can create a realm with any conditions it likes. Secondly, even if the entirety of Earth was rifted into the Astral Realm, it wouldn't retain it's current speed of time. The speed of time is governed by the universe not the planetary mass - Jupiter and Earth both have different planetary conditions but they both have the same speed of time because they are both governed by the same universal rules. A Lord/Mage making a realm to simulate Earth are still going to have a realm governed by that plane's rules unless they use their abilities to override those rules.
Nightmask wrote:Except the 'Earth-like conditions' feature doesn't come that way, since Earth's time doesn't flow like that. It's an inherent feature of the conditions to be that way and not one you can leave off. The only thing that goes your way is that anyone who's part of the creation of the realm stops aging while in the Astral Domain.
Firstly, the book actually says those creation rules are just guidelines and the lord/mage can create a realm with any conditions it likes. Secondly, even if the entirety of Earth was rifted into the Astral Realm, it wouldn't retain it's current speed of time. The speed of time is governed by the universe not the planetary mass - Jupiter and Earth both have different planetary conditions but they both have the same speed of time because they are both governed by the same universal rules. A Lord/Mage making a realm to simulate Earth are still going to have a realm governed by that plane's rules unless they use their abilities to override those rules.
Which, you know, is exactly what the Astral Lord/Mage is doing when he selects 'Earth-like conditions' since normally the astral plane is ectoplasm and I've no idea what you're trying to do bringing up rifting Earth into the Astral plane as that's completely irrelevant. Earth-like conditions means you've defined that section of the Astral plane to operate by the rules that the Earth operates under, which means when it comes to Day/Night cycle, heat, gravity, AND the flow of time are linked to the Earth and not the Astral Plane. Just as the Nightlands has a cycle linked to Earth because of their metaphysical closeness so to does an Astral Domain designed to have enough link to earth to generate Earth-like conditions. The Astral plane's temporal flow is completely superceded by the linkage to the conditions of the Earth. You want to change those properties you have to spend build points (at least a hundred) to change one property whether it be rendering supernatural beings powerless or altering the flow of time you don't get it free.
Fair warning: I consider being called a munchkin a highly offensive slur and do report people when they err in doing so.
'Reality is very disappointing.' - Jonathan Switcher from Mannequin
It's 'canon', not 'cannon'. A cannon is a big gun like on pirate ships, canon is what you mean when referring to something as being contained within one of the books such as how many dice to roll for a stat.
Nightmask wrote:Except the 'Earth-like conditions' feature doesn't come that way, since Earth's time doesn't flow like that. It's an inherent feature of the conditions to be that way and not one you can leave off. The only thing that goes your way is that anyone who's part of the creation of the realm stops aging while in the Astral Domain.
Firstly, the book actually says those creation rules are just guidelines and the lord/mage can create a realm with any conditions it likes. Secondly, even if the entirety of Earth was rifted into the Astral Realm, it wouldn't retain it's current speed of time. The speed of time is governed by the universe not the planetary mass - Jupiter and Earth both have different planetary conditions but they both have the same speed of time because they are both governed by the same universal rules. A Lord/Mage making a realm to simulate Earth are still going to have a realm governed by that plane's rules unless they use their abilities to override those rules.
Which, you know, is exactly what the Astral Lord/Mage is doing when he selects 'Earth-like conditions' since normally the astral plane is ectoplasm and I've no idea what you're trying to do bringing up rifting Earth into the Astral plane as that's completely irrelevant. Earth-like conditions means you've defined that section of the Astral plane to operate by the rules that the Earth operates under, which means when it comes to Day/Night cycle, heat, gravity, AND the flow of time are linked to the Earth and not the Astral Plane. Just as the Nightlands has a cycle linked to Earth because of their metaphysical closeness so to does an Astral Domain designed to have enough link to earth to generate Earth-like conditions. The Astral plane's temporal flow is completely superceded by the linkage to the conditions of the Earth. You want to change those properties you have to spend build points (at least a hundred) to change one property whether it be rendering supernatural beings powerless or altering the flow of time you don't get it free.
The flow of time has nothing to do with the Earth nor it's conditions. Due to time dilation, time doesn't even flow at a constant rate on Earth in reality. If you were to travel extremely fast or near an extreme gravitational force, time would slow down. Even on the real Earth time is not constant. The Astral realm is simulating Earth's conditions and it is also simulating it's lack of a governing force with respect to time. As such, it is completely at the mercy of the Astral Plane's timeflow unless the Lord/Mage chooses to change it.
Nightmask wrote:Which, you know, is exactly what the Astral Lord/Mage is doing when he selects 'Earth-like conditions' since normally the astral plane is ectoplasm and I've no idea what you're trying to do bringing up rifting Earth into the Astral plane as that's completely irrelevant. Earth-like conditions means you've defined that section of the Astral plane to operate by the rules that the Earth operates under, which means when it comes to Day/Night cycle, heat, gravity, AND the flow of time are linked to the Earth and not the Astral Plane. Just as the Nightlands has a cycle linked to Earth because of their metaphysical closeness so to does an Astral Domain designed to have enough link to earth to generate Earth-like conditions. The Astral plane's temporal flow is completely superceded by the linkage to the conditions of the Earth. You want to change those properties you have to spend build points (at least a hundred) to change one property whether it be rendering supernatural beings powerless or altering the flow of time you don't get it free.
The flow of time has nothing to do with the Earth nor it's conditions. Due to time dilation, time doesn't even flow at a constant rate on Earth in reality. If you were to travel extremely fast or near an extreme gravitational force, time would slow down. Even on the real Earth time is not constant. The Astral realm is simulating Earth's conditions and it is also simulating it's lack of a governing force with respect to time. As such, it is completely at the mercy of the Astral Plane's timeflow unless the Lord/Mage chooses to change it.
*laughs* Man that's just so wrong. The Earth dimension has a universal constant when it comes to the flow of time, which depending on the curvature of space due to gravity can vary by fairly trivial amounts to enormous amounts around things like Neutron Stars or black holes but there is still very much a standard rate of time passage on earth and I can't begin to imagine how you could come to the conclusion that there is no governing force for time or that try and handwave away the passage of time as nonsense like you seem to be doing.
So you go and simulate Earth conditions you're simulating Earth's time flow with everything else, period. That's the entire point of 'simulate Earth conditions' rather than 'use Astral Plane conditions'. You're linked to Earth you're synced with its conditions and as already noted just as you're generating solid matter and a 1G gravity field you're going along with the Earth's time flow. Astral Lords and Mages do not have the infinite power you're suggesting that they have and have limits based on what they can afford to pull off and that means even if a time differential was possible it's something that they'd have to pay for because the default would be Earth time. If it were possible to create a realm with a temporal differential like you suggest and churn out hordes of conquering warriors someone would have, especially in places like the Nightbane Earth yet they haven't. That they haven't is quite understandable, because they can't, because they have limits.
Plus being peaceful sorts Tolkeen wouldn't go making conquering hordes anyway, if they could create such a domain capable of holding their entire population they'd have just evacuated Earth to live there in relative peace rather than stay. Maybe set up some portals to relative safe areas and arrange trade for things that they couldn't produce in realm but otherwise just leave Earth to the CS and enjoy being settled somewhere the CS couldn't reach them.
Fair warning: I consider being called a munchkin a highly offensive slur and do report people when they err in doing so.
'Reality is very disappointing.' - Jonathan Switcher from Mannequin
It's 'canon', not 'cannon'. A cannon is a big gun like on pirate ships, canon is what you mean when referring to something as being contained within one of the books such as how many dice to roll for a stat.
Nightmask wrote:*laughs* Man that's just so wrong. The Earth dimension has a universal constant when it comes to the flow of time
Ignoring the condescending nature of your post, I have to say you have proved my point with that statement. As you said, the dimension has a universal constant when it comes to the flow of time, how the Earth reacts to that is entirely at the mercy of that dimension. Now you take that Earth-like realm and put it in a dimension where time flows much faster and guess what? Time flows faster. Creating a realm with Earth-like conditions isn't taking your realm and putting it on Earth, it is emulating that planet's conditions within the Astral Plane. As the Earth is governed by its dimension's universal constant when it comes to the flow of time, the Earth emulator too is governed by its dimension's universal constant when it comes to the flow of time. The difference is, the latter is in a dimension where time flows much much faster.
Nightmask wrote:*laughs* Man that's just so wrong. The Earth dimension has a universal constant when it comes to the flow of time
Ignoring the condescending nature of your post, I have to say you have proved my point with that statement. As you said, the dimension has a universal constant when it comes to the flow of time, how the Earth reacts to that is entirely at the mercy of that dimension. Now you take that Earth-like realm and put it in a dimension where time flows much faster and guess what? Time flows faster. Creating a realm with Earth-like conditions isn't taking your realm and putting it on Earth, it is emulating that planet's conditions within the Astral Plane. As the Earth is governed by its dimension's universal constant when it comes to the flow of time, the Earth emulator too is governed by its dimension's universal constant when it comes to the flow of time. The difference is, the latter is in a dimension where time flows much much faster.
Funny I don't see how I can be proving your point when yours doesn't work. The Astral Plane is linked with the Earth Plane to a degree already, else one couldn't look back into the Earth plane from it and you certainly wouldn't be able to use it for spying on people of it takes them a week to complete a sentence. When you're creating an Astral Domain you're creating a demi-plane, a pocket of the Astral Plane that you've reconfigured and attached more to Earth and seeing as how the Astral Plane is an amorphous and incredibly fluid dimension easily molded by these Astral Lords and Mages I marvel how you think the pockets flow of time would be that of the Astral Plane when the pocket is specifically stated to be copying the Earth's conditions which means that they override any Astral conditions. The only listed exception states that you stop aging, nothing else.
Even all the background material shows that these domains have the same passage of time that Earth does, so however much you want to claim that it runs your way all the material shows it doesn't, none of the material anywhere shows any example domains where time is passing thousands of times faster than on Earth or even ten times faster. Domains with earthlike-conditions have a passage of time equal to Earth. If you leave Earth on January 10th, 2011 and stay a week in an astral domain and return to Earth you'll return January 17th, 2011 and not return to find it still January 10th, 2011.
Fair warning: I consider being called a munchkin a highly offensive slur and do report people when they err in doing so.
'Reality is very disappointing.' - Jonathan Switcher from Mannequin
It's 'canon', not 'cannon'. A cannon is a big gun like on pirate ships, canon is what you mean when referring to something as being contained within one of the books such as how many dice to roll for a stat.
Nightmask wrote:Unfortunately Tolkeen couldn't be allowed to come up with a city-wide teleport event to simply remove it to another dimension (Robotech Earth perhaps?), otherwise given the magic users available and all the magical knowledge they could have come up with a last-ditch ritual to remove the city to some other location.
I like that part, if they had been allowed then there'd have been no need for the books!!
No, they could have done so at the end when all was clearly lost and still had the books play out as they did. You could have even had the PC group be involved in the ritual or procuring components required to make it happen if the game progressed to that point rather than the CS being halted earlier.
Ultimatly Tolkeen wasn't played very smart. The CS Generals were portrayed like retarded monkeys (and I mean no offense to retared monkeys), and yet they still won. Both sides were written, and stratigized poorly. However, Tolkeen had every advantage when it came to magic. They had spells of ledged at their disposal for crying out loud! They had greater elementals fighting for them. They had summoners, necromancers and every concievable edge, yet they couldn't win.
Tolkeen could have been best of both worlds. Evac civilians AND fight off the CS with their military.Either way, they should have evacuated the civilian population WAY before the END of the final seige. There was no reason to leave civilians in a war zone for nearly 4 years! It was rediculous.
The problem I have is that I don't see magic as all that powerful in Rifts, even the spells of Legend seemed woefully inadequate to me. I don't want to start another argument (I've been beating this Dead Horse for a while). What I want in a mage for Rifts is the power that a D&D mage used to have, if you had a 15-20th level mage in D&D you were POWERFUL, you could cut deals with Dragons and you nearly walked with the Gods (sometimes you BECAME a God). In rifts some of your spells barely match the damage of a plasma rifle or even a paltry laser pistol. I've had to throw out the Palladium magic system and use my own instead.
My real world Physics defeats your Quasi-Physics!!! Bubblegum Crisis, best anime/sci-fi/ for totally hot babes in Power Armor.!!!! Magic. Completely screws logic at every opportunity. (credit due to Ilendaver)
keir451 wrote:The problem I have is that I don't see magic as all that powerful in Rifts, even the spells of Legend seemed woefully inadequate to me.
It is so woefully inadequate .. the creator of the game line does not even play the magic system as it is .. and has stated this much in multiple books .. and even in person ..
The actual spells would be fine if they cost much less PPE or your GM was willing to chuck around Rings of Elder like they were candy; And high level spells were readily available. The main limiting factor is the spell system is far too strict, if it weren't so restricting and a mage had a fight with a guy in armor with a rifle I'd pick the mage every time. Currently if the mage wants to survive the encounter he has to be extremely sneaky and get the first strike in.
Nightmask wrote:Well you see there's this thing called 'The Godzilla Threshold', the point at which the damage that might be caused by unleashing Godzilla on a threat is seen as less than not unleashing him at all. The heroic defenders of Tolkeen were fighting bravely but losing against an implacable and monstrous threat, one so devoted to their total destruction that calling up demonic aid was the lesser of two evils to try and protect their people from unwarranted genocidal assault. A desperate move indeed yet not stupid nor can one really consider it that evil given the enemy that they were dealing with. Just as the failure to act decisively forced the Machine People to join the Kreegor, a race considered evil and yet were more willing to embrace them as sentient beings than the supposedly enlightened peoples of the CCW. Sure they eventually got around to recognizing them as people but it was far too late to undo the damage.
100% agreement. The only other option Tolkeen was left with was to surrender (and possibly be slaughtered anyway) or (IMO) to find a magical means of teleporting the whole city to a new location far outside of CS territory.
Unfortunately Tolkeen couldn't be allowed to come up with a city-wide teleport event to simply remove it to another dimension (Robotech Earth perhaps?), otherwise given the magic users available and all the magical knowledge they could have come up with a last-ditch ritual to remove the city to some other location.
Sad thing is, if they'd had a few Astral Mages and Astral Lords (both from Nightbane WB-1: Beyond the Shadows,) they could have created a pocket-dimension mirror-image of Tolkeen on the Astral Plane for them to evacuate the citizens to that the Coalition troops couldn't have found without the help of thier Psi-Battalion and couldn't have attacked anyway, a la Psyscape.
Not to mention if they really, really wanted to... they could have had it made so that technology didn't work in there... and then let the CS "invade" and subsequently get annihilated.
you some might think you're a but you're cool in book --Mecha-Viper BEST IDEA EVER!!! -- The Galactus Kid Holy crapy, you're Zer0 Kay?! --TriaxTech Zer0 Kay is my hero. --Atramentus The Zer0 of Kay, who started this fray, Kept us laughing until the end. -The Fifth Business (In loving Memory of the teleport thread)
@Zer0 Kay; Had Kevin actually done something that stupid I would have travelled to his office and burned EVERY Rifts book I'd ever bought on his doorstep before "going Postal" inside his offices.
My real world Physics defeats your Quasi-Physics!!! Bubblegum Crisis, best anime/sci-fi/ for totally hot babes in Power Armor.!!!! Magic. Completely screws logic at every opportunity. (credit due to Ilendaver)
you some might think you're a 
but you're cool in book