Nah, then they’d play White Wolf or something. 
I like D&D, but it is at its heart a turn-based tactical wargame that just happens to be wrapped up in a colorful candy fantasy shell. I see nothing wrong with players who play down the roleplay and play up the combat, but you do want to be sure you and the DM understand each other if that’s the case.
Good Lord, don’t think White Wolf games don’t encourage twinky madness. I’ve endured far too many games and let-me-tell-you-about-my-character stories with (old) Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, … and now Exalted. Especially Exalted – Lord, the rules on that thing.
Say rather, “Wraith”. No, wait. No one really ever played that one. “Changeling,” then.
1 - Spell targeting should have consequences. With a battle grid you have people in nice neat arrangements - so it’s entirely possible to hit your target and miss the ally who is locked in hand-to-hand combat with him.
It’s silly. What are you going to do? Anything else penalizes a spellcaster.
2 - Your typical D&D setting is a high-magic setting. There’s nothing special about a +1 flaming sword. That comes from the way the system is designed and the world written. There’s no danger in crafting a magic sword, and there’s no chance of failure. It’s practically an industrial process.
3 - Heroes or mercenaries, it depends on the play group. If you have (IMO) a good group, even if the money isn’t good enough, if that’s the plot the DM has planned the group will find an excuse to go along with it.
4 - Too many books. Most of them crap. All of them follow the 1-fluff, 2-new class, 3-new prestige class, 4 - new feats, 5 - new magic items, 6- new spells. Prestige clases are the worst. You need a DM to put his foot down when things get really silly.
5 - First player sounds like a whiner. Second one is designing a character a specific way. Keep in mind that energy damage isn’t avoided by DR.
6 - Again, people need to grow up. If they want to retire a character, fine. But why should you let them swap out a 6th level character for a 6th level character? Put in a level penalty.
-Joe
In my first 3e game, this became a session killer. I got seriously tired of the Wizard Player getting up, leaning over the board and spending several minutes at a time trying for precise placement. So I gave him 10 seconds and a fireball template, and insisted that he drop it on the board from a height of 6". If it fell to the side, OH WELL.
My next game, I asked the WP to target a specific square as the center, without resorting to the template, and gave him the same 10 seconds to do it.
Have done this several times. The last game I ran had a 30 second rule. Mainly because one overly social, yet completely inept gamer always insisted on having characters with kewl powerz, yet never knew how to use them properly and was never paying attention to the game. So when it was his turn, if you let him, he’d spend five minutes or more trying to read up on his powers and decide what to do. Not at my table, bub.
Assuming that there is a high enough level Wizard, that he is well disposed to the party, that he has the time available, that he’s interested in doing the job, that he has the necessary spells and feats in his repertoise to do the job. The last is the crunch. How many PCs take item creation feats? So why does every city Wizard take all of them and have all the necessary spells? The answer is that they don’t. They’re also extremely busy with their own lives and their own work and can’t all be willing to drop working on other things at a moment’s notice to make some unknown foreign adventurer’s new gizmo, which for all they know, just might be used against whatever faction(s) the Wizard belongs to.
Like toddlers, Players need to learn the limits of their parents (GMs). They will, as a matter of course, ask for every item, every spell, every special item; and expect to have unlimited supplies of extremely rare items available at will just because they have the gold available. It’s your job as GM to make that less true and a little more real market like.
I’ve been in groups that have played that way, I’ve run for groups that have played that way. Sometimes it’s the chemistry of the player mix, sometimes it’s the chemistry of the characters everybody is playing that game. If it’s the former, and you keep finding the same in every game, then you might want to recruit some new players or find a new group for when you want to be heroic.
Two Words: Living World Things that don’t get solved by the PCs don’t just disappear without consequences.
(1) I’ve had success in the past motivating groups with “rival” NPC adventurer groups. Not enemies, but often friendly groups that go off and do their own thing and which I use to tackle the big things that the PCs don’t think are good enough. Usually it’s headed by some smarmy (and/or flamingly gay) Paladin. When the PCs see all the money and/or political rewards the other group gains, they start to reconsider passing things by.
(2) No one killed the Ogre that was threatening the village of Ipo? Well, he’s now managed to kill everyone, eat their sheep and move on to the larger village of Hu. He’s also backed by a small tribe of Orcs that have fallen under his sway.
No one stopped Evan the Evil from getting the Rod of Bad Things? Well, now he has it, and Bad Things are happening to large sections of the Kingdom. Want more magic and specialty items? Sorry, they’re being used for the War against Evan.
I do it, and every GM I’ve played with does it. Usually it’s on a “These books only, anything else requires advance permission” basis. You show up and start casting an unapproved spell, or claim you took an unapproved class, and there are fireworks involved. Or at very least; Ipo the Wizard starts casting this cool spell he thinks he learned…and nothing happens. Ok, your turn Bob.
Most people are flexible about this, but several GMs had the rule where the new character comes in one level lower. I had rules for changing characters in my last game to make it easier, but I also had a general Three Strikes rule. If you just showed up with a new character without talking it over, that was TWO strikes against you. Three and you’re gone from my table forever.
Oh crap. Going to be late for work now.
Oh my god, just an update on the cleric who doesn’t like to heal. We played last night. The session previously we broke for the night in the middle of a battle. We had just taken a tower in the swamp, but one of the hobgoblins escaped. We were expecting him to come back with his dragon friend. At this point, I have 3 hit points remaining.
So first thing, I ask the cleric to, you know, heal me so I don’t die immediately when the dragon rears his ugly head. So he starts rolling d8s and then informs me that I’m at about half hps and he’s not wasting any more of his spells. Me: ??? What about the wand of cure light wounds we bought you? Him: Oh. I didn’t use that. You should have told me to use the wand if that’s what you wanted.
So then he spends the rest of the night bitching that he doesn’t have any spells to cast because he wasted them on healing me because I “was whining about it”. WTF.
Once I was a devoted referee, or DM.
There are two kinds of players: Those who go by numbers, and those who go by fantasy. If your group is the going by number guys, you have to accept it, because that’s (most of) the fun of role playing to them. You’d ruin it for them if you force them to accept the “reality” of role playing, unless you create tables like: “IF [moving etc] THEN [dice etc]”. - If both types are in your group, you try to find a middle way which appeals to both kinds of players. Tables for one, and pictures for the other. Both parties will be happy.
That’s inflation, and there’re not much to do about it. Get back to basics, an adventure with low level characters with rusty blades and nothing to eat. Those are the fun parts. I still remember The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsch (?); there were tons of fancy level 7, 8, 12, umph adventures I’ve forgotten though, but those first low life mud-blood-beer adventures stick with me forever like great novels I once read, and if someone mentions a thing I once put together, you can rest assured it was one of those “OMG we don’t have any water!?” scenarios.
No. You’re the director and your players are your audience. Don’t try to force Bruce Willis into an Ingmar Bergman adventure - simply because nobody will be happy.
You need to create scenarios that make your players motivated. If you find that your players don’t give a rat’s ass about saving the princess, then by Jove, don’t create a save-the-princess scenario. Create a “you got one copper coin and a stick, but you’ve heard about this”-kind of scenario. Most role players are cynics in character. It’s great. Use it, but give’m hell if they’re plain evil or just silly (otherwise things will go down the drain pretty fast).
You have to have an agreement: Who’s the man? If the ref/DM isn’t, you’re screwed.
You let your players call the shots; they’re the hyenas, you’re the carcass. That’s the dynamics of role playing. Sorry.
You’d need some sort of fuck off boot camp for DMs. Either you’re the master, or your players are.
Check out that dog whisperer Cesar Millan. And then you have to ask yourself: Who’s the leader of the paack?
If they are motivated by money, punish them by taking it away. Adventure hooks should be things like they got robbed in the middle of the night or something. They shouldn’t be able to sell treasure for much if they haven’t helped anyone out, have a reputation for stinginess. After a King asks them for help and they refuse, he should nationalize their magic items for the greater good. Then you can have rewards big enough to tempt them back without leading to insane inflation.
Optimizing strategy can be a fun and interesting part of the game. However, we’re not playing chess. RPGs tend to work best if you keep the action going. So, impose a time limit. You don’t have to play it in the old Paranoia style where any player who doesn’t have an immediate answer to, “What do you do?” loses a turn, but pressure the player to get on with it.
If I did implement a targeting rule, I’d do it by grenade rules. You pick your square, then roll to see how much deviation you got and in what direction. This will actually slow down the game a bit, but not as much as the kind of dickering over placement that you mention. But it has the advantage of making area-of-effect spells as dangerous a proposition as a bouncing grenade.
This is part of the design of 3.0 & 3.5. Each town listing shows its limits on the value of items available, but characters can generally get ahold of any item they want. In 2nd edition, the items didn’t even have listed prices. You couldn’t simply buy them, and you couldn’t simply sell them. As a result, a party would accumulate a number of ecclectic items. Things characters had their hearts set on would be something they’d hint to the DM about and then try to be good until Christmas.
I like being able to get the items I specifically want, but what has been lost is that sense of wonder at finding a new magic item. Miscelaneous items are no longer fun because they’re just things to cash in to get the big ticket items that increase core abilities – stats, attack rolls, damage output, armor class. The EL of encounters is based on the assumption that a party of a given level will have a given value in magic items, and they’re not thinking it’ll be a lot of Bags of Tricks or Boots of Water Walking.
The folks at WotC are promising to reverse this trend in 4th edition. Magic items will be rarer, and will not be figured into the overall power of your character, so that it won’t be necessary or possible to keep them maxed out at each level, and receiving magic items will feel like Christmas again. But the price for this is de-democratizing magic item availability.
They might enjoy doing so for roleplaying purposes, but the wealth-by-level guidelines make it ultimately impractical as a way to advance your character. The DM is encouraged to keep the value of the goods each PC has to the values listed on DMG 3.5 135. NPCs should be built around the total gear value as listed on DMG 3.5 127. Following these guidelines makes grubbing for money impractical in terms of actual gain, as Haley explains:
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0158.html
The internet is a valuable resource here. On boards like ENWorld, the official WotC boards, ect, people are discussing these things. Do a google search to find discussions of any oddball things characters request. Or, just pop on the boards and ask yourself. People have already done a lot of the work of figuring these things out, and share their findings. Everyone benefits.
Your player seems to misunderstand how the spells work. Spells like Tasha’s Uncontrollable Hideous Laughter are not meant to put the kibosh on the main guy in a decisive way. You can get lucky and have that happen, but your percentages are better using it for what we call Crowd Control. The goal of crowd control is to reduce enemy numbers, disperse concentrated power, give your power-hitters advantages in strategic maneuvering and keep mooks the hell away from casters and archers. Trying to blow through the saves of the main bad guy is a high-risk, high reward scenario, though slow and steady wins the race, and the enchantress is better off engaging in crowd control than trying to win the lottery.
I don’t watch a lot of sports, but I know enough to make the following analogy: football players don’t work around the principle of getting in Hail Mary passes, nor basketball players 3-point shots. They all work as a team on crowd control and ball access.
For the GM, this means that a good battle should often have mixed units with different strengths and vulnerabilities, some of which will be understood by astute players. Guards tend to have high Str and Con, but low Wis (thus conveniently failing spot checks a lot). Players will understand this, and should make the connection that these are good low-save targets for crowd control spells. Spell casters tend to be vulnerable to attacks that affect physical stats – melee combat, spells with Fort saves, ect.
And, of course, the enemy understands this too, though any enchantment lobbed against a PC is basically a Hail Lathander pass. But they also attempt to control the field and keep the wrong kind of damage from reaching the wrong kind of weak spots.
As someone else mentioned, DR doesn’t help against energy weapons. It also doesn’t boost your saving throws vs. enchantments. The NPCs don’t have to take him out if they can simply make him useless. Try trip, disarm, grapple and sunder. Trip is very powerful, and because of this it makes as much sense for an enemy to have learned to do it well as to have learned to deal a lot of damage. Standing up from prone provokes an attack of opportunity, which can be used to perform another trip. Picking up your weapon after a successful disarm provokes an attack of opportunity, which can be used on another disarm. I ran a scenario in which my wife’s barbarian was pitted against a fighter of the same level. The fighter didn’t have nearly the damage output or hit points, but he could trip and disarm because of all his fighter feats. It made a huge difference.
Mixed units. Some units in the battle are there to give your PCs a chance to use their favorite abilities, and some are there to use their own specialties against the PCs.
I’m reminded of a line from SuperBad: “We shouldn’t be blocking his cock. We should be guiding his cock.” Don’t cockblock your PCs. Let them do what they do best. But don’t let it be good enough by itself. To that end, design counters not to defeat the PCs’ strengths, but to complicate their effectiveness and to remind them of the opportunity cost of the strengths they didn’t choose.
I don’t put a lot of restrictions on it, with the understanding that the party doesn’t ever push my buttons. I like for players to have a chance to get a feel for the system and different styles of play, and to that end I even allow some retconning, again with the understanding that the players will not abuse it. But if your players show a tendency toward abuse, you should probably reign it in quickly and decisively. You’re not dealing with players feeling out the game. You’re dealing with players who appear to understand the game well enough to use character-swapping as a kind of min-maxing – playing a character only through its sweet levels and then switching to a character whose crappy levels have already been passed. I’m not saying this is what your players are consciously doing, but it is one reason not to allow players to switch characters willy-nilly.
On spell targeting: I have to prelude that I go back to the original D&D. The concept was that battle is complicated, everyone is moving around, and the dice roll is meant to be an approximation of a whole bunch of things happening. Thus, if a spell caster is taking the time to aim a [del]hand-grenade[/del] fireball, then the people have the ability to duck, jump, dodge [saving throw.] If you want to allow the spellcaster to aim, that should be a special dice roll – just as if the archer wants his arrow to hit the sorcerer’s left hand.
Magic item selection: I personally like lower-level games for exactly that reason. If you find that it’s a problem, the DM can always avoid the rules. A character walks into the mage’s shop and says he wants a flaming sword +1? The mage says, “I’ll be glad to, first I have a problem you have to solve for me. Bring me the [broomstick of the wicked witch of the west] and I’ll be happy to enchant your sword for you.” Or, the assistant says, “Sorry, the mage is trying to fight the dragon in yon mountains, and I’m just here to sweep up and handle the little things. Would you like some sneezing powder?”
Characters focus on money: that’s what your stuck with, your players are who they are.
Min/max: the DM can adjust this. Especially if they’re greedly for treasure. Be sure that the too-powerful character finds some sort of gemstone that in fact includes a curse (e.g., a slow spell is cast on them at random times)… and that they can’t get rid of. Throwing away, it just reappears in their pocket. Trying to sell, no one wants to buy it.
In short, my solution is to be a clever DM and get what I want.
Or if that doesn’t work, give them… additional motivation.
Maybe someone very very powerful tells them that they must finish the quest, or else. Say, they made a deal once with an archfiend, and he decided to call in the favour. Or maybe they owe someone 10,000,000 GP, and they really, really need the money, RIGHT NOW.
Or maybe the Big Bad they need to kill is actually hunting them. They have to finish the quest before the quest finishes them.
Or if none of that work, you can wormhole them to the 537th layer of the Abyss, sans equipment, and watch them fight their way home. In short, if altruism or love of adventure doesn’t work as a motivation, maybe survival will. Remember, you’re the DM. It’s your job to give them a hard time, not the other way around.
The only potential downfall is this;
Both my previous campaigns, run six years apart, went down in flames resulting in the loss of friendships because my otherwise intelligent players inexplicably started demanding a candy-coated no-risk game from me because that would be “more fun”. Then they started to get pissy and insulting about it because they didn’t want to have to THINK when they played.
Quite literally, and this is a Big Cosmic Mystery to me, both groups fell into a mode of wanting to do nothing more than wander in circles, wait for things to attack them, then track them to their lair and find treasure. Even though I do not run games like that and had made it very clear that I would NOT run a game like that.
(I wasn’t asking them to think hard either. I wasn’t asking them for more than any previous game we’d played! So from my end, GOOD RIDDANCE!)
The bottom line for me as a RPG player and GM is that;
Both sides need to have fun, and both sides need to give a little when it stops being fun for the other side.
Heck, I remember DMing a guy who wanted to be chaotic good (under Version 2 rules, so this goes back a ways) but after watching him spend upwards of 20 minutes planning his attacks, I flatly told him “Okay, you’re neutral good, now”. I always figured alignment was what you did, not what you claimed, and if you wanted the freedom of being chaotic and wild and free and all that crap, you couldn’t become Mister Plansalot when it suited you.
Real friends dont let their friends play 3.5! 
I dont recall any of our members having this problem because they are in it for the fun and the creativity (btw, player here not DM). If the group is only interested in farming or grinding then maybe they need to move on to a better suited game (or group).
I think today’s society has removed a lot of game value - first, the game was designed to get people to use their brains by developing strategic planning (excercising the brain) and hopefully creativity. I especially appreciate it when the DM recognizes my <character’s> improvement in reactive and proactive measures AND when a “questionable” plan works out. I so did love the time I completely ruined the DM’s story-line when I did something completed unexpected - and I was rewarded handsomely in the end with some extra xp.
Also, the DM’s I’ve dealt with do not make it easy to buy magical items/enhancements. “you’re in the middle of nowhere in a village with some farms, blacksmith, etc - they dont carry the item(s) you are looking for… the villagers FEAR magic (and if they find out you are one of those mumbly spell casters they will imprison you or kill you on the spot, etc”
There was one instance where one or two of our players were bit by werewolves and we had to find an antidote - good luck when you have a bunch of villagers who completely distrust strangers! So what do you have to do? Let your comrades die, or earn the townspeople’s trust? Sometimes REPUTATION is much more valuable than xp and treasures. Or at least, that’s how our games are done.
The only time we are allowed to switch characters is if you die… then it’s new character minus a level or two. I also believe the DM has the call on stats so there is not a player or more that are superb fighting beings until you get in the much higher levels and it’s REASONABLE. In other words - the DM has the final say and if the players dont like it - fine! rocks fall from the sky and eveyone dies! (and yes, I’ve seen this because players were whining and being difficult) :smack:
Well as for me… I was seriously bored with 2e and was only running a game (after a 5 year haitus) because friends wanted to play and begged ME to run it because the other guy who was talking about GMing was a horrible railroader who was known to decide what he wanted you to do and fight with you at the table about it.
Third edition seriously reinvigorated my game play and my interest in the game.
Yeah, I don’t get it. WoW mentality is all I can guess at. Otherwise it’s like I said, a Big Cosmic Mystery. Why you would want to do that at a table allegedly “having fun with your friends” is inexplicable.
Right now I’m playing a War of the Burning Sky campaign and loving it. I got talked into playing a Bard because the GM wanted someone with some Lore ability and Face skills. We’re 5th level now and I love blowing away the Diplomacy parts of the game with my +15 Diplomacy, +10 Bluff and +10 Gather Information skills checks. Especially the last session, where I spent the first part convincing seven different religious sects to cooperate. With some circumstance bonuses and cultural mods, the worst roll was; “That’s a 1…plus 18…19 total.” (the DC was 15 for that one! I couldn’t fail.)
But that’s the most fun for me. Figuring things out and solving problems in one fell swoop in ways that the GM doesn’t necessarily account for. EXP farming is boring, which explains why I don’t play WoW.
Before anyone says that Bards suck…
Inspire Courage + Inspirational Boost (swift spell) + Song of the Heart (Eberron Feat)
= Inspiring for +3 To Hit and +3 Damage.
Oh sure, you wouldn’t want that on your team, would you!
In 4th Edition, Bards are not going to be in the PHB. But they are going to have something called the Warlord. This class apparently rallies allies and gives bonuses in combat. It seems to me that the Warlord is the Bard for players too insecure in their manhoods to play real Bards. 4th edition won’t really be worth the money until they come out with the supplements that include Bards and Gnomes.
Hey now… I play WoW and I do not grind or farm - I actually do the quests and roam all over the friggin place (which, at times, has gotten me in to some serious trouble!) I dont have one character over 60. I think my highest is 55. And I love the game… but oh how I miss AC2!
On one of my blogging sites I would write about my weekend adventures… I so love to play Bunni! A big female warrior that duel wields… daggers?! wtf?! It’s crazy but dang if she doesnt kick some serious booty-ends!
I’m not too hip on Black-Ops, but mostly because I do not know much about military tactics and weapons. Luckily the guys help me and I’ve picked up pretty good.
Now… if I could just keep the math part of it straight with the different campaigns!
Back when I was playing, I was playing AD&D 2nd edition. We were playing on Krynn, though not a Krynn anyone would recognize. I was (I am ashamed to admit it) a bit of a min/maxer, a bit of a munchkin. (I got better)
My character, Redlin Blackblade was a female fighter who was doing her best to destroy Krynn (Chaotic Evil. In an attempt to purge the world of Kender, she gathered a flight of black dragons to charge the clouds with acid over Kendermore, and then used blue dragons to create rainfall[long story. I convinced our DM that static charge helps precipitate rainfall] that destroyed Kendermore).
A lot of fun, and I had aquired some pretty awesome toys along the way.
My DM, in an effort to re-establish some control, sent us to Ravenloft, where our PC’s didn’t know anything about the world, didn’t know the deal, and stripped us of our gear.
Some of the funnest times I’ve had as a player. Maybe you should read up on an alternate world.
Other gaming friends of mine had a similar problem… no real set focus on their adventuring, so their GM made them local lords (Duke of Lodi, actually) in their gaming world. They had a good time, I guess, and it gave them endless adventure hooks, and made them responsible for what they did.
Uh, Bryan, I don’t mean to criticize, but being “chaotic” has nothing to do with being a brain-dead moron who runs around like ADHD-afflicted six-year old on pop rocks and smack. A Chaotic character can perfectly well plan a methodical attack and set up careful ambushes and plans. What they can’t do is favor (or at least enjoy) a society of iron laws and restricted personal freedom. They’d probably be more likely to respect deviations from plans and such, but there’s nothing which says they can’t make them.
If you want to change that in your games, fine, but that’s definitely not DnD. And it makes things a lot diffierent, especially if something that small completely changes your alignment.
For what its worth, at least half the responses here are of that sort. Many poeple get online and start crowing about what they think DnD should be when someone asks what it is. What it is has its own problems, but you have to know that before you can start houseruling. I’m no fan of rules-lawyering, but you do need to at least follow the basics so that everyone can play.
As far as #5 goes,
Spells like Tasha’s Hideous Laughter and so forth are perfectly effective at shutting down even the main bad dudes, but you need to tailor them to your srengths and the enemy’s weaknesses. Uber-barbarian enemy? Catch him before he rages (maybe even after) and hit him with a Will save. Hit him with a reflex save anytime. Drop his Int score and watch him sit and drool.
Wizard? Bring on the poison attacks and death spells ( you may need to hit him with a dispel magic first). Rogue? Fort and Will are the ways to go there. Uber-save monk or blackguard or something? Go for sure damage they can’t avoid, like the basic magic missile. Or use utility spells to change the environment in ways their saves won’t help against. A big reflex save won’t help you move off your turn, for example, and a move earth spell can often hold an enemy back or seal them off.
It helps to have a GM who introduces the villain before you fight. In this case, try using those social skills to figure out what the villain can do - which will tell you a great deal about what he CANNOT do. This doesn’t mean it will work all the time, and the player needs to choose his own spell selection wisely, but the wizard can do anything he can imagine doing.
2nd ED had Magic Shoppes too. And, there is nothing saying that a 3.5 game has to have them. IMHO, you do have to hand out a fair amount of magical loot, and if it isn’t useful, they should be able to trade, but you don’t have to have Magic Shoppes brimming with cool stuff on every corner. Sure, they do have to be able to buy basic magic weapons, wands and potions, but you can make anything past +1 into a mini-quest.
Solution: more cool loot that is keyed by you for each PC, but has quirk that reduces the trade-in value. For example, say you have a half-orc Fighter, with a thing for greataxes. So there’s a greataxe +2 in the next loot, but it can only be used by those of orcish blood. Value is then only 4000, say, and half that for sale is 2000. They will think twice about selling it, even though he’d prefer a +1 Keen greataxe. A cleric or paladin can find an item keyed to only worshipers of his Deity, the rogue can find cool stuff that is obviously hot and can’t be pawned, the Wizard some new spells only his Speciality can learn, and so forth.
New Characters? That is a tough one. You don’t want to firce a player into playing something he’s tired of, but then again, a “non-organic” PC can be a lot more powerful than one played since the start.
Solution: Starting exp pts is set at the base of the lowest level in the party. Starting equiptment is set at the table from the DMG page 135, but one level lower. Combine that with the specific loot from above and players will think twice about new PC’s but will be able to make that chocie if they really want to.
The Fey’ri are a LA+3 race (if they have DR), which mean he has BAB and Hit Dice three less. That will cause him to die if the foe can get past his DR. And, I don’t see why some bad guys can’t have magic weapons, or Oil of Magic Weapon, or a spell of Magic weapon cast on them. 