Sorcery in Iraq

Re: Re: Sorcery in Iraq

Lucianarchy said:
Yes, just like every other country in the world.
Yup. Frequently takes the form of extreme misogyny:

Abbas Abdullah, 42, walks in to complain that after one-and-a-half years of marriage, his wife, Zeyneb Fadel, 31, doesn't like him anymore. Abdullah pushes her onto a chair and tells al-Duleimi to exorcise the genie - a Jew, of course - that is competing for her affection.

Al-Duleimi screams Quranic verses into Fadel's ear, converses with the genie inside and beats her with a rubber hose. Abdullah, clearly thrilled, yells at the genie inside his wife: “Get out or I'll pour boiling water over you!”

Zeyneb, her face swollen from tears and pain, confesses quietly to a journalist: “I don't like my husband.”
That's what superstition is all about. Control.
 
Re: Re: Re: Sorcery in Iraq

Pyrrho said:

Yup. Frequently takes the form of extreme misogyny:


That's what superstition is all about. Control.

Mysogyny comes from the culture, and thrives within male orientated society, it has nothing to do with 'superstition'. Mysogynists will use whatever is at their disposal to justify their actions.

International Capitalism "controls" far, *far* more than any superstition.
 
Scary stuff, but sadly predictable in a country where the marketplace of ideas has been so thoroughly bankrupt, and/or a black market for so many years. When there's no good information, the bad kind does seem to rush in to fill the vaccum.

Still, you've got to give them credit for coming up with an all purpose excuse for any mistakes in advance.

“We use the genies or the angels,” the magician says. “But we prefer the angels, because the genies lie 75 percent of the time.”

Hmmm, I wonder if it'll give JE or SB any ideas? You know, "Hey, it's not my fault I got it wrong. The genies lie 75% of the time." That could almost explain JE's execrable performances on LKL. Probably the bright lights scare away the angels, so all he's got left to talk to are the genies ... and ... well ... they lie a lot.

Barb
 
If they were really practicing sorcery in Iraq, the Iraqi army could have sent out battallions of 5th-or-higher-level wizards against the invading U.S. troops. Do you have any idea how devastatingly effective a hundred simultaneously-cast fireball spells would be? I mean, each spell would have a blast radius of 20 feet and do at least 5d6 of damage (saving throw for half).
 
tracer said:
If they were really practicing sorcery in Iraq, the Iraqi army could have sent out battallions of 5th-or-higher-level wizards against the invading U.S. troops. Do you have any idea how devastatingly effective a hundred simultaneously-cast fireball spells would be? I mean, each spell would have a blast radius of 20 feet and do at least 5d6 of damage (saving throw for half).

Most soldiers would only be 1st or 2nd level fighters and not have a bonus to their Reflex saves. They'd be toast.

Although, a M-1 Abrahms has a longer range than a fireball...
 
You're right, a brigade of charging wizards is a silly idea. They'd all be mowed down by cluster bombs from the air or M-1 Abrams H.E.A.T. rounds at long range.

However, if you strategically positioned your wizards as snipers....
 
Yes, a wizard (or better yet, a Sorcerer) would make an excellent sniper. Fireballs have no miss chance unlike a rocket propelled grenade. Or he could cast true strike on himself and fire away with a bolt action rifle and be a crack shot even at long range.
















Yes, we're geeks! Get over it!
 
be better to just get a really powerful wizard to cast Improved Wish and just get rid of the invading army in one fell stroke.
 
EdipisReks said:
be better to just get a really powerful wizard to cast Improved Wish and just get rid of the invading army in one fell stroke.
Have to be careful on the wording, your wish might be fulfilled by a nuclear barrage annihilating both the occupying army and your entire country. :D

(depends on how evil the DM (GM?) is, I suppose. ;))
 
I take it back about a wizard being a good sniper. Have a cleric animate a zombie, and have him be a sniper. Why? No heartbeat or breathing to mess up his aim.
 
Yeah, but zombies only have 1 hit die. And as everybody knows, how much damage you can absorb before being killed determines how accurate you are with a weapon. :rolleyes:
 
Aoidoi said:
Have to be careful on the wording, your wish might be fulfilled by a nuclear barrage annihilating both the occupying army and your entire country. :D

(depends on how evil the DM (GM?) is, I suppose. ;))

this problem is easily solved by making the wish as long as is necessary to cover all the little possible issues. 10,000 pages would be a good start. ;)
 
And don't forget to wish not to be aged 5 years or lose experience points or need 2d8 days of bed rest. Those can be a killer.
 
All you would need is Improved Invisibility. You could plant bombs, and get passwords, for starters. You would always know what the US was up to, and could kill whoever you needed to.

Better yet, cast it on a ranger or an army of rangers, no one will hear them coming, they could sabotage tanks, cars, weapons.

Apart from that area spells would be best, lets see the US army deal with Mass Blindness and Deafness, or Sunburst.

Hell, Time Stop, properly applied, would be all you need.
 
tracer said:
Yeah, but zombies only have 1 hit die. And as everybody knows, how much damage you can absorb before being killed determines how accurate you are with a weapon. :rolleyes:

Well, they have 2 hit dice. But I'd rather take a good, high level sniper, kill him, and use the zombie template on him, for a high level zombie. The Iraqi army could have made bazillions of zombies and skeletons with a few 5th level clerics. And you wouldn't have to worry about them deserting.

I wonder if improved invisibility works against thermal imaging?
 
Since there's no such thing as thermal imaging in 3rd Edition, we don't really know if improved invisibility would work against it or not.

However, if you're willing to go back to the old 1st or 2nd Edition rules, there was such a thing as infravision. What did the 1st and 2nd Edition rules have to say about Infravision's ability (or lack thereof) to see invisible creatures?
 
Invisibility fooled infravision and ultravision. True Seeing was required to see invisible creatures still.

I made a d20 Shadowrun conversion right after 3rd edition came out. I had a rule that 3rd level and lower illusions (like regular invisibility) did not fool technology. 4th level and higher did. Arbitrary, but fair I thought.
 
Hexxenhammer said:
True Seeing was required to see invisible creatures still.
If all you wanted to do was see invisible creatures, the 6th-level true seeing spell was overkill.

All you needed was a plain old 3rd-level detect invisibilty spell. The only kind of invisibility that detect invisibilty couldn't see through was dust of disappearance. (I'm not sure about the invisibility conferred by etherealness, though.)
 

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