Always appreciate your fine comb look at idea's when it comes to RAW, and I would agree with pretty much all of it.
Maybe I described spike strips wrong, it would be a 5 foot piece of stone/grass whatever you want (one object) with high quality blades sticking upwards from it (probably more money than its worth) so shrink item should work on that. You could call the blades and the thing it is attached to separate, but I'd argue thats a bit nit picky, like arguing a shirt and its buttons are not the same thing for the purpose of the spell.
I had no objection to the spike strip, other than to note that a bag of caltrops is really really cheap and does the same thing.
I have no idea what would be light enough and strong enough, mithril may work?
My question on the dropped cube was rhetorical. If it's light enough for
Mage Hand to carry and drop, it's also light enough for whoever is inside to just lift it off and toss it away.
And while I agree fireball easily surpasses pretty much anything shrink item can do, the day long duration, means if you need to take care of a big bad evil guy, then you do have a certain amount of extra stuff prepared against him. (If pretty weak and not the best thing ever)
Oh, I agree, it's a great way to prep things in advance, and essentially give you access to several days worth of spellcasting in a single day.
Do you think using the 3rd level spell to replace the wall spells would work well? Since I may (after running it by my new DM, new city, not sure what they are like yet, but people tell me he is freindly) try that.
Not exactly sure what you mean, unless you're talking about carrying shrunken walls around with you. That could be fun.
We had an odd situation regarding this topic come up in our game the other day. The question was, what happens when you throw a barrel of whiskey (63 gallons to a hogshead, in traditional measure) down the throat of a Purple Worm?
In shrunken form it's easy to manage: It reduces to something slightly smaller than a standard D6, and the Purple Worm is known specifically for its "Swallow Whole" ability.
Now, no matter what intoxication rules you use, the worm is in trouble. Standard measures for drinks are one ounce shots for distilled beverages, which makes it 64 shots per gallon, 63 gallons per hogshead. And while it will make its Fort save on anything but a 1 in the beginning, every set of intoxication rules I've ever seen has a cumulative penalty: The more you drink, the bigger the penalty.
4032 shots of whiskey is going to apply one hell of a cumulative penalty, no matter what his Fort save is to begin with, even adjusting for size.
And they had several barrels in
Shrink Item form.
The thought of a Purple Worm, totally schnockered, is hard to envision. It's a burrowing creature, so staggering and/or falling down doesn't really apply. No feet, so it can't lose its footing or stumble.
The party was planning on using them as special effects incendiaries, and probably still will.
But the simple thought of beating a monster like that by getting it drunk... Gotta be worth style points if nothing else.
