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Originally posted by Ayrik

Note that demihuman races, quite specifically elves and half-elves, lose access to their "supernatural" racial abilities and experience all sorts of subtle discomforts when in proximity of a mythallar's field of effect.

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Originally posted by The Masked Mage

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Originally posted by Ayrik

Note that demihuman races, quite specifically elves and half-elves, lose access to their "supernatural" racial abilities and experience all sorts of subtle discomforts when in proximity of a mythallar's field of effect.

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What's that from? A 3rd E source? 4th?

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Originally posted by Ayrik

Then you didn't read the correct passages in 2E Arcane Ages: Netheril. I recall it was somewhere early in the text, perhaps near the generic fluff/descriptions of flying enclaves, not later in the "magic item" sections. Demihumans, specifically elves and half-elves, caught anywhere on, under, or within a working mythallar's field (ie: about a 1-mile radius) somehow temporarily lose their natural-mystical connection to the Weave/World/Faerūn/Feywild/whatever ... I recall the specific example being loss of elven resistance to sleep and charm. I recall this effect also being mentioned offhandedly somewhere in the Return of the Archwizards trilogy.

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Originally posted by Ayrik

To be sure, some elf-attuned mythallar might negate this inconvenience, or even somehow transpose it onto humans. Magic makes nothing impossible, although I can't recall any canon examples of mythal-mythallar hybrids or whatever to counter this barely-remembered adverse effect.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if yet another "quasi-magical" mechanism duplicated magical items within proximity of a mythal - that is, say, "mythal-magical" items which function like "normal" magical items in every qualitative way (while being cheaper/easier to manufacture) yet cannot function outside the mythal's field/zone of influence.

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Originally posted by Kyrel

Off the top of my head, I wouldn't expect to find any Elves studying human magic. Not even Netherese style magic. As I recall the fluff descriptions of the Elves view on Human magic, the vast majority of Elves fine it to be crude and unrefined.

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Also, I seem to recall an old description of the Netherese "Mythhalla" (those spherical things at the heart of every Enclave that powered all of their pseudo magical items) as sort of "ripping holes in the Weave", rather than using it properly.

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The elves didn't hate the Netherese, yet they didn't have a great appreciation 
for them either. They saw these humans as careless and wanton in their magic use. 
The fact that the Netherese didn't take the precautions to shape and control their 
spellcasting (use somatic components) proved to the elves their lackadaisical nature. 
The elves were impressed with Netherese floating cities and the leaps in Netherese 
spellcraft, but they nonetheless felt uncomfortable in or near Netheril's cities.
   Whenever an elf was in or directly underneath a floating city, they lost many of 
their innate abilities, including their sleep resistance and 50% of their charm resistance.
- "Netheril"

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Originally posted by Ayrik
Other models and viewpoints have been discussed at Candlekeep, one version I found compelling is to consider mythallars as functioning something like batteries or capacitors, reservoirs of magical energy.

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Originally posted by The Masked Mage

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Originally posted by Ayrik
Other models and viewpoints have been discussed at Candlekeep, one version I found compelling is to consider mythallars as functioning something like batteries or capacitors, reservoirs of magical energy.

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If I were to go with an electronics metaphor I'd say a Mythallar works more like a transistor... I'd extend this though, to compare it to a vacuum tube in that they are fragile, can explode, and draw on larger amounts of power.

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Originally posted by The Masked Mage

My only dispute with that thinking is that it assume elves would study other forms of magic in order to use it. I think there would be a large school that would study it in order to understand it, and perhaps improve upon it by making it work the "right way."

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For example, one of the artifacts of Myth Drannor were dragon scales carved with runes that are essentially a treatise on dragon magic. 9 out of 10 dragon magic spells would be useless to an elf, but in understanding the magic they better understand dragons, and in turn better understand the world and the Weave and ultimately themselves.

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but in understanding the magic they better understand dragons, and in turn better understand the world and the Weave and ultimately themselves. This is the traditional elven way of looking at the world.

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Originally posted by TBeholder
More importantly, elves didn't make The Tablets of Pharyssolnyth, just squirreled them away when had an opoportunity. By the dragons, for the dragons.

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Originally posted by TBeholder
The stated usefulness of tablets was the obvious one: learning how to protect oneself from dragon magic. Theoretically, this could also promote study of how to defeat it or how to make their own magic better compatible with that of an allied dragon.

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