Death and Taxes

[David Hunt]

Scott Adams wrote:

>Ok.  So not taxes.  But heres a question.
>
>On magic ...say a magic user is casting say a thunderstorm ...but a meteor
>falls
>on him and kills him.  Does the storm just poof and vanish?  What I'm saying
>is does the magic the MU casts at the time of death just end?  In most stories
>and books and such the answer is yes.  The sterotypical version at least.
>
>A MU fires a fireball 20 feet wide (ok..so hes a great mage) but dies on
>slipping on a banna peel and impales his head on a dagger.  Does the
>fireball go poof or continue till duration?
>
>That should be the jist of my query :)
>
>If you read it as the book (ie a MU hurt by combat loses mana cast) the
>answer would be yes all magic goes away.
>
>
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I would say that if you actually managed to finish the spell and get it
off, then the spell would continue on without you, albiet without any
direction from the dead guy.  So the Thunderstorm wouldn't blast the
occational guy with Lightning bolts and the Wind would continue in the
last direction you set but I think that most spells will continue
without you if they're already going.  The Fireball you listed would
continue on for the second phase.  At least this is how I interpret the
rules of P&P.  I think that this has a degree of importance, because you
can't just stop a spell that you want to end.  You have to cast
Dispel/Banish on it.  If the spell depended on you for some support
after you cast it, then it might follow that you could end it whenever
you wanted without a Dispel.

Bottom line, the way I read the rules, if you kill/incapcitate/whatever
the guy before he gets the spell off sucessfully, then the spell just
fizzles.  After, he's got it off, then it will continue without him
unless the description makes a note otherwise, like Darkling Light that
states that killing the caster will stop the spell.

Of course a referee could instigate whatever House Rule they wanted to
place.  The rules aren't sacred, they're just one of the foundations
that you're building your game world out of .  If the Ref thinks that
magic shouldn't outlive its caster, then he can say it doesn't, and then
figure out what that does to the game world.
.