time stop spell and delay spell feat?

[spiderfate]

is it possible to use delay spell feat to cast a few offenses spells against a target. for instance first round you cast time stop which stops time for lets say three rounds. then in your next time stopped round you cast fireball delayed for 3 round, then on your second time stopped round you cast lightning bolt delayed for two rounds. at the end of your time stop spell would both spell go off?

 

[Greenfield]

First, the DM is supposed to roll the duration of your Time Stop, so you don't know how many rounds it will last or how long to delay the spells.

That being said, yes it would work. You can't effect people or objects that are still in normal time while under a Time Stop. Since your spells will go off after the Time Stop ends, that restriction won't apply.

Similarly, you could cast spells with a duration, such as Blade Barrier on top of a foe, sandwiched between two Walls of Force, and that would work. It's a particularly nasty combo, since the Save v the Blade Barrier represents the target stepping out to one side or the other, according to the book. If they can't take that step, it's hard to rationalize that Save working. At that point, all they can do is take the damage and keep on taking it.

 

[Celebrim]

Similarly, you could cast spells with a duration, such as Blade Barrier on top of a foe, sandwiched between two Walls of Force, and that would work. It's a particularly nasty combo, since the Save v the Blade Barrier represents the target stepping out to one side or the other, according to the book. If they can't take that step, it's hard to rationalize that Save working. At that point, all they can do is take the damage and keep on taking it.

It's also a "combo" that in general I wouldn't allow to work, at least as you've described it. It's an attempt to use the flavor of the spell to evade the rules of the spell. If a person receives a saving throw even if stunned, they certainly receive a saving throw in the event that walls of force have been thrown up to either side of them.

If you have to "rationalize" things, consider that when stopped, the targets of this "combo" in general would not be standing perfectly straight and upright and in a perfectly straight and even line. Some will be carrying spears or staves held in front of them. Generally they will be in a fighting crouch with 40" of blade extended in front of them, or in the middle of a fast moving stride. Horses and other 'long' animals will be turned facing the spellcaster. They will be in a variety of postures, and positions and not perfectly lined up for this "combo" either individually or with their comrades. When the combo goes off, they get a reflex save to throw themselves up against either wall, reducing the width of the space they take up. Before the time stop, they were taking up a space 3-5 in depth(or more). After it, they are squeezed into as a little as 8" (though even that small of an area seems really) unlikely. Sure, they end up pinned in a small space between a wall of force and a wall of blades, and if you have rules for 'squeezing', then they are subject to the penalties for squeezing (unless they risk the blades), but they don't lose their saving throw. The rules of the game make no allowance for 'cleverly' removing saving throws in this manner. This is rules lawyering by flavor text.

I might allow this sort of thing to work for space filling monsters like Gelatinous Cubes, but that's about it. Ideally this sort of thing would be written in to the rules of a "space filling" monster, something like, "Space Filling (ex): Gelatinous Cubes receive no reflex save to avoid any obstacles in the spaces that they occupy or move through."

 

[Greenfield]

It's also a "combo" that in general I wouldn't allow to work, at least as you've described it. It's an attempt to use the flavor of the spell to evade the rules of the spell. If a person receives a saving throw even if stunned, they certainly receive a saving throw in the event that walls of force have been thrown up to either side of them.

I have no problem allowing them the Save. What the Walls do is force them to make that Save again next round. And the round after that. And the round after that, until they find a way to leave the area of the Barrier.

If you have to "rationalize" things, consider that when stopped, the targets of this "combo" in general would not be standing perfectly straight and upright and in a perfectly straight and even line. Some will be carrying spears or staves held in front of them. Generally they will be in a fighting crouch with 40" of blade extended in front of them, or in the middle of a fast moving stride. Horses and other 'long' animals will be turned facing the spellcaster. They will be in a variety of postures, and positions and not perfectly lined up for this "combo" either individually or with their comrades. When the combo goes off, they get a reflex save to throw themselves up against either wall, reducing the width of the space they take up. Before the time stop, they were taking up a space 3-5 in depth(or more). After it, they are squeezed into as a little as 8" (though even that small of an area seems really) unlikely. Sure, they end up pinned in a small space between a wall of force and a wall of blades, and if you have rules for 'squeezing', then they are subject to the penalties for squeezing (unless they risk the blades), but they don't lose their saving throw. The rules of the game make no allowance for 'cleverly' removing saving throws in this manner. This is rules lawyering by flavor text.

A man takes up a five foot space, or 60 inches. Plenty of space for that 40 inch blade.

I agree that lining up more than two enemies in this arrangement would be problematic. Getting one would be easy. The Walls of Force aren't in adjacent squares/lines, there's a five foot area in between for the Blade Barrier. And when you're at the point where you're throwing 9th level spells around like this, any enemy who can't slip this trick is a speed bump. And you don't waste four spells like this on a speed bump. This was an answer to a question asked by someone who was interested in rules lawyering.

I might allow this sort of thing to work for space filling monsters like Gelatinous Cubes, but that's about it. Ideally this sort of thing would be written in to the rules of a "space filling" monster, something like, "Space Filling (ex): Gelatinous Cubes receive no reflex save to avoid any obstacles in the spaces that they occupy or move through."

I don't think "space filling monster" is a recognized category.

Space filling posts, on the other hand...

(And yes, I include my own in that group)

 

[Quartz]

IMHO The fireball goes off 3 rounds after the Time Stop ends - whenever it ends - and the Lightning Bolt 2 rounds after. Do note that per the SRD during a Time Stop you cannot target anyone but yourself and other creatures are invulnerable.

This spell seems to make time cease to flow for everyone but you. In fact, you speed up so greatly that all other creatures seem frozen, though they are actually still moving at their normal speeds. You are free to act for 1d4+1 rounds of apparent time. Normal and magical fire, cold, gas, and the like can still harm you. While the time stop is in effect, other creatures are invulnerable to your attacks and spells; you cannot target such creatures with any attack or spell. A spell that affects an area and has a duration longer than the remaining duration of the time stop have their normal effects on other creatures once the time stop ends. Most spellcasters use the additional time to improve their defenses, summon allies, or flee from combat.

 

[Greenfield]

The clip you provided suggests that time for spells runs the same as the caster's personal time frame.

That is, the "rounds" the caster has in Time Stopcount against the time in delay or duration of spells they cast while in Time Stop. Your proposal, that the rounds spent in TS don't count towards that delay or duration run directly contrary to RAW.

 

[Celebrim]

I have no problem allowing them the Save. What the Walls do is force them to make that Save again next round. And the round after that. And the round after that, until they find a way to leave the area of the Barrier.

Again, I disagree with this ruling.

Neither the blade barrier nor the wall of force fill up whole 5' squares. They can be imagined as lines of string laid across the battle mat.

If D&D was a skirmisher miniatures game, it might be reasonable to rule that a medium-sized character takes up a full square 5' to the side, and that you could construct the lines such that a medium-sized character was constrained to remain touching the string that represents the vertical wall of blades, and so was continually 'passing through it'. Note however first that the writer of the spell doesn't include this possibility in his language. There is no provision for a character to remain in continual contact with the blades. After the first round, you are on one side or with other, and you only are in contact if you try to pass through to the other side. So if you want to hold fast to what is written, the interpretation of continuous contact isn't provided for in the rules.

And if you want to interpret the situation on the basis of what the abstraction of the rules stands for, you still don't come to the conclusion you wish to uphold because medium sized creatures even according to the rules don't have to fill and take up 5' x 5' spaces. Creatures can balance on narrower surfaces and squeeze through smaller gaps than is provided by the 5' x 5' square, and it be both quite legally supported and quite logical within the shared imaginary space. If you lay your strings down across the battle map to represent the walls of force and the wall of blades, you find yourself having to space the walls of force about 5' apart because otherwise they risk being penetrated by a portion of an object at the time of casting. When the wall of blades comes into effect, regardless of how you place the strings, there is always a gap into which the medium sized character can squeeze on one side of the wall of blades or the other such that he is not in continual contact.

To achieve the situation you describe from your ruling IMO requires a much higher expenditure of resources or a much more unusual and difficult to arrange situation - for example, the characters are already squeezed into a small space by necessity (a 1' wide corridor) or choice (a row of soldiers standing at attention), or the walls of the room can move and push the players into a small space.

I don't think "space filling monster" is a recognized category.

No, but it has enough unique features that I think it should be.

 

[Greenfield]

Both spells are Line effects, meaning that they run from a vertice to a vertice.

The Blade Barrier, being a damage dealing line effect, affects anyone in any square the Line touches. Or, more simply put, it isn't a pen mark on the board with zero-thickness.

So with that in mind, imagine three straight rows on the battle mat:

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB
CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC

I can place a Wall of Force along the "top" side of row C (Bottom side of Rob B, same thing).
I can place a Wall of Force along the "bottom" side of row A (top side of Row B, same thing).

Now I place Blade Barrier diagonally along the length of B, from top-left B to bottom-right B.

There is no square anywhere along B, within the length of the spells, that isn't in the area of effect.

That's the ugly layout.

If I wanted to get technical I could lay my Wall of Force spells along the "Top" of A and the "bottom" of B, and the Blade Barrier along the straight line where A and B meet. Now I have a 10 foot wide path that is all within the damage area of the Blade Barrier.

The "Ugly" layout, it could be argued, couldn't be laid out because the target(s) might extend outside their squares by way of 40 inch blades, etc. The rules don't actually allow for that (Medium sized creatures use a 5x5 square, period), but I'm playing to your argument here, so we'll presume that that's an actual consideration. The "Ugly" layout also doesn't leave the target any room to sidestep the barrier, thus making it possible to rationalize the "No Save Possible" scenario we both agree shouldn't happen.

The more technical layout takes advantage of the rules for Line effects, but allows for a credible possibility of a Save in the form of a side-step, as described in the rules.

And to be clear, the tactical movement rules in D&D 3.* pretty much do make it a tactical-skirmish game. Miniatures and battle mat are *NOT* optional for encounters like this, and figures really do have to abide by the "snap to grid" rules.

Now, to be clear, you can't use this to force characters, be they PC or NPC, into that area, nor drive them into a line.

This works most easily when dealing with a single target, or perhaps two. (Two points define a Line, after all, and we're dealing with three parallel Line effects). If you happen to be able to trap more than two in there it's a happy accident.

And, as I said earlier, when you're at the level where you have enough spells to throw four-spell combos like this (with one of them being the ninth level Time Stop, any target worth dropping such an expensive combo on is almost certainly going to slip right out of it. If they can't then you probably blew your big-nasty on the wrong target.

So this is a thought/rules exercise and nothing more.

Your arguments so far have fallen into two basic categories: "It's not fair to deny them an escape", and "In the real world sense, people take more/less space than this would work on."

My reply to both of these is: We aren't in the real world, we're talking game rules. "Fair" isn't part of the consideration of what's possible under the rules.

What a DM will or should allow, either for PCs or NPCs, on the other hand, should always take "fair" into account.

 

[Celebrim]

Both spells are Line effects, meaning that they run from a vertice to a vertice.

No, they are not. Or at least, not per the SRD, and so far as I can recall off the top of my head, not per the full player's handbook either. The Wall of Force description does not make one mention of them being a Line effect, nor does the SRD description of a Line Effect correspond to the effects of the wall.

The Blade Barrier, being a damage dealing line effect, affects anyone in any square the Line touches. Or, more simply put, it isn't a pen mark on the board with zero-thickness.

That's not something I'm finding in the rules anywhere. Nor does that correspond to the description of other wall spells that have a definite thickness. Wall of Ice for example has a definite thickness of 1" per caster level. It does not fill an entire 5' square.

So with that in mind, imagine three straight rows on the battle mat:

Yes, I see and have seen even before you showed me what you are imagining, but it's not the rules. Nor for that matter do I agree that D&D is a tactical skirmish game, nor do I agree that medium sized creatures are required by the rules to take up a 5' x 5' space. None of that is per the rules.

Nor for that matter do I consent to your straw man characterization of my argument. Regardless how I feel about it, my point is based on the fact that you are adding to the rules things not found within them. It's not merely that you aren't adhering to the spirit of the law, or that I think the rules are wrong or unrealistic or something, but you aren't adhering to the letter of the law either.

 

[Greenfield]

I stand corrected. You're quite right, neither spell is a "Line Effect". The Blade Barrier doesn't extend damage to adjacent squares. It only affects creatures in the squares it actually occupies.

Spells like Wall of Ice list a definite thickness because it's relevant to the spell: They have a Hardness and a number of hit points per inch of thickness needed to break them. But while Blade Barrier isn't classified as a "Wall" spell, it is described as a "wall of whirling blades" (as opposed to a "plane"), and the last time I looked, blades have a non-zero thickness. So the Blade Barrier does take more space than an imaginary line on the battle mat. Exactly how much more is subject to debate, of course, but for purposes of my argument any non-zero thickness lets my combination work.

As for medium sized creatures taking a single five foot square: I refer you to page 149 of the PHB, in the section on Creature Size. It's pretty specific. And yes, it's also in the SRD.

This brings us to the specific rules for squeezing through a smaller space. (Search your SRD for that specific phrase,"squeezing through", if you need a reference.) The rules for "Squeezing through a smaller space" refer to Escape Artist skill, when the space is less than half your normal space. And if my Blade Barrier does have a non-zero thickness, then the space available between it and the nearest Wall of Force will be less than half a square. There are specific rules for that circumstance as well. In particular they mention, when discussing Evasion, that "As with a Reflex Save for any creature, a character must have room to move in order to Evade." So, per the rules, there is no Save or Evasion if the person has no room to move.

As for the nature of your argument: While complaining about me abusing the "color of the spell", you argued about "Generally they will be in a fighting crouch with 40" of blade extended in front of them...". Please tell me that that wasn't a color argument of your own? A reach for some way to say "no"?

And it was decidedly *not* a rules argument. (One that, incidentally, presumes that the target is wielding a Bastard Sword. )

Now you may choose to rule that blades do have a zero thickness in your game. Kind of flies in the face of, well, pretty much everything, but you could do it. You may choose to rule that a person can "squeeze into a smaller space" and use Escape Artist without ever touching the confining barriers that edge that space. I'd put some really big penalties on that, if I allowed it all.

You obviously don't like this combination. Too nasty, too powerful (as in continuous damage and difficult or no Save), too plaid, whatever. But it's a four spell combo requiring a 9th level Arcane spell, a 6th level Clerical spell and two 5th level Arcane spells. It's insanely difficult to pull off and uses top tier spells. It *should* be nasty, powerful and plaid.

And it's within the rules. (As a note, there are far easier ways to do this. The OP simply asked about what could be done with Time Stop.)