Can Stone Shape block a passage during combat?

[zoroaster100]

Yesterday during a combat in some natural underground stone tunnels, a 6th level druid player character cast stone shape and wanted to block a ten foot wide tunnel with a one foot thick stone wall made of the surrounding stone. I allowed it, but I'm not sure if that was a legal use of the spell. Any thoughts? How hard would it be to tear down such a wall? And what effect would the spell have on the surrounding stone floor, ceiling or side walls, if any?

 

[Jack Simth]

Let's see.... a 10 foot wide tunnel .... 6th level druid .... spell gives 10 cubic feet + 1 cubic ft/level .... assuming a 5 ft cieling .... that's 50 cubic feet for one foot thick (5 * 10 * 1) .... no. Not that thick. Now, as he gets 16 cubic feet, if he cuts the thickness by about a factor of 4 (3 inches), then he only has to cover (5*10*0.25) 12.5 cubic feet - which he can do (and he has a little leeway for the cieling height - at 3 inches thick, and 16 cubic feet available, he can make a wall as high as 6.4 feet tall. At 2 inches thick, that's 9.6 feet tall. At 1 inch thick, that's 19.2 feet tall.... assuming the DM lets him shape the stone over a wide area in less than 1 cubic foot blocks.... which isn't a given.

Edit: As for how difficult it would be to break, check out the Wall of Stone spell for a quick measure: "Each 5-foot square of the wall has 15 hit points per inch of thickness and hardness 8" so a wall 1 foot thick would have hardness 8 and 12*15=180 hit points (a lot, especially at that level). For the 3 inch thick wall, that would be 45 HP. Also: "If a creature tries to break through the wall with a single attack, the DC for the Strength check is 20 + 2 per inch of thickness." So DC 44 for a foot thick wall (let's see... rolling a natural 20, that takes a modifier of +24, and an effective strength of ... 58?); for the 3 inch wall, that's a DC of 26 (which is a bit more reasonable, at a "20 succeeds" minimum possible check modifier at +6 (effective str 22)

 

[zoroaster100]

Oops. When I read the spell description in the midst of running the combat, somehow I read ten cubic feet as a ten foot cube. The tunnel was ten feet wide, so assuming the druid can shape a wall thinner than 1 foot, he could make 16 cubic feet, and could shape it into a wall 12 feet wide by 8 feet high by 2 inches thick, which would have hardness 8 and 30 hit points. Well, we had to stop playing before the battle ended, so now I can figure out if the creatures that were blocked off (a troglodyte cleric and a band of zombies) have been able to break through in the four rounds since the stone wall was placed.

 

[Jack Simth]

Perfectly understandable. "10 foot cube" and "10 cubic feet" are very similar phrases.

As for what effect it would have on the surrounding material - exact effect (if player doesn't specify) is DM descretion, but the spell doesn't create stone - it shapes it. Whatever segment he touched now has an approprietly sized hole, as that was the material pulled to make the wall.

Edit: and for how long it takes to breach a Hardness 8, HP 30 section of wall (on average):

Figure the damage range for the attacking critter (e.g., we have a medium Str 14 cleric with a +1 Mace - +2 Str, +1 Enhancement, base 1d8; damage roll is 1d8+3) and figure what portion of that would penetrate the hardness (1d8+3 penetrates hardness 8 on a roll of 6, 7, or 8, for 1, 2, or 3 points of damage, respectively) and what that will average per hit (there are 8 possible rolls, 3 of which do damage; we have (3+2+1+0+0+0+0+0)/8 damage per hit, or 6/8 pts/hit) and figure how often hits will happen (we have a Large (?) wall (-1 AC), it's an inanimate object (dex 0 -5 AC; additional -2 penalty as well) and has a base of 10 - which means it has 10-1-5-2= AC 2. Virtually any character will only miss on an automatic miss - a roll of 1 - as objects aren't subject to criticals, this means that the cleric will be getting 95% hits, or 100%, if taken one hit/round as a full round action) and multiply the two together to get your damage per attack ((6/8)*(19/20)=0.7125 damage per attack). Multiply that by the number of attacks per round that fit the criteria (for each given attack bonus/damage combo - as this wall can really only be missed on a roll of 1, we can just full attack - although if we only get one attack/round, might as well full-round it to get a gaurunteed hit; let's say the cleric gets two attacks/round - this means the cleric, by himself, is dealing 0.7125*2=1.425 points of damage/round (on average)). To get the expected time it takes to breach the wall, add up the damage/round for each character attacking the same section, and divide the resulting number by the HP of the wall (if we only have the one cleric, then that 30 HP will take about 21 rounds to breach the wall (30/1.425)). Chances are, that wall is still up after four rounds.

 

[PrinceZane]

Just expect the players to unleash a full round of ready actions when they can see the wall broken... unless they're too busy running with their heads between their legs...

 

[PrinceZane]

Erm... expect them all to unleash a set of readied actions a piece... didn't quite come out right the first time...

 

[Jack Simth]

Also, note that a base str-18 human barbarian 5, full power attacking in a rage (+4 str) with a mundane two handed greatsword, get's 2d6 (base damage) + 10 (two handed power attack)+6 (str 22) damage per hit (18-28, 10-20 after hardness, average dealt 15.5) and will likely smash through that wall in one or two hits. If that's an Adamantium greatsword, he ignores the hardness of the wall, and will be through in exactly two hits, regardless of what he rolls for damage (minimum damage is 18, max is 28 - two 18's will breach, one 28 will not). Barbarians are great for getting through walls in a hurry....