October 2016 Sage Advice & PHB Errata

Chaosmancer said:

So... 15th level at earliest? And honestly, if that is the most powerful and most clever use of Demiplane a player can come up... meh?

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I'd characterize it less as "meh" and more as "interesting" and maybe "occasionally useful." It converts Demiplane from a purely defensive panic button/stronghold into which you retreat, into a panic button which you press to retreat and then optionally re-emerge from a few seconds later covered in Haste, Foresight (maybe), Mirror Image, Stoneskin, Protection From Elements, and with a Simulacrum buddy to double your firepower.

The other interesting use of Demiplane I can think of is actually the zombiepocalypse (Demiplane stuffed full of Necromancer-charged skeletons and zombies which are now uncontrolled and omnicidal; you Teleport in, cast Demiplane to unleash the zombies, and Teleport back out).

I see how it could be a concern, looks like you could store up to 30 glyphs within a demiplane, break concentration rules and buff your entire party with a whole suite of abilities. Costs 6,000 gold a minimum though

Or store 216 mephits inside to unleash in a horde of exploding terror upon an enemy

Or literally anything else you could think of that fits in a 30x30x30 room. I honestly could see Demiplane as one of the most powerful spells in the game for how flexible it is.

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Yeah, potentially it is very good in a Combat As War-style game. Even just the potential for tricking General Zod into the Demiplane and then Dispelling it to send him permanently into the Phantom Zone... it's a nice little spell. Probably overkill for a Combat As Sport-style game though, wherein reducing an enemy to zero HP is always good enough.

Hemlock said:

It converts Demiplane from a purely defensive panic button/stronghold into which you retreat

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Yeah... about that: the spell does not specify anything about what happens when you close the door (or indeed that the door is something that can be closed at all).

I realize you're envisioning the wizard opening up a demiplane, running into it, and closing the door behind him.

But how do you actually support that basd on what the spell actually says?

Can't the monsters just bash in the door? It has no stats, does that mean the door is a flimsy wooden door or some indestructible "door of force"? Can the door actually be closed (the spell only talks about opening the door)?

Even so, what does the spell actually accomplish except conjure up an extra dungeon room? The spell isn't concentration and isn't listed as dismissable, so there is no obvious way of severing the connection short of casting dispel magic on your own spell (while inside).

Besides, if my wizard ally casts the spell and I run inside, I sure hope no unseen monster stuns or kills the wizard before she can join me inside - doesn't killing a creature end all its ongoing spells...?

I'm having trouble envisioning practical use of the spell, except for long-term storage (as a kind of clumsy but big bag of holding). Does anyone know why the demiplane is so small by the way - it feels ridiculously ungenerous for a level 8 spell...

You could smuggle reinforcements past a check-point I guess (create a demiplane, walk in allies, close demiplane; new day, visit king, cast the spell as a kind of summoning spell that brings in exactly the allies you want without any of the usual summoning limitations).

Hemlock said:

Even just the potential for tricking General Zod into the Demiplane and then Dispelling it to send him permanently into the Phantom Zone... it's a nice little spell.

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Well, by the reading of the spell, it doesn't seem terribly difficult to free him by casting the spell yourself.

You need to know the "nature and contents" of a demiplane to connect to it, if you haven't created it yourself.

This can go one out of two ways:

The DM plays by the spirit of this passage, clearly intending the demiplane to be reachable by other casters. Or the DM can easily be obstructive, rules-lawyering away any chances of ever activating this passage in practical play.

This is because "nature and contents" is left completely undefined. How precise do you need to be?

If I can create my demiplane and then throw in an extra bathing duck that everyone needs to specify as part of the contents of the room, then that will effectively act as a key or password preventing access.

But if the DM is okay with me just saying "I open a demiplane to General Zods prison" then there's little security. Or if I can trivially use divination magic to get a list of "what objects are in Zod's room" and then demiplane to "the room with Zod and a bathing duck".

I guess what I'm saying is that before I'd use this spell to trap General Zod, I'd first have a talk with the DM about how easy or hard it is to learn the "nature and contents" of a demiplane you didn't create yourself...

CapnZapp said:

I guess what I'm saying is that before I'd use this spell to trap General Zod, I'd first have a talk with the DM about how easy or hard it is to learn the "nature and contents" of a demiplane you didn't create yourself...

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That seems to be the case with many spells in this game. I imagine that the door question is the same; they didn't specify it, because who knows what you and your DM want the answer to be.

Chaosmancer said:

It takes an hour to cast.

Potentially very useful, and I'd allow it as a clever use of resources, but not sure if it would be better to spend that hour laying down a blur glyph or a Lightning Bolt/Fireball Glyph for when the enemy breaches.

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Blur and other self-buffs aren't eligible for Glyph of Warding.

CapnZapp said:

I guess what I'm saying is that before I'd use this spell to trap General Zod, I'd first have a talk with the DM about how easy or hard it is to learn the "nature and contents" of a demiplane you didn't create yourself...

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Well, it's a risk you take, but remember that freeing Zod requires:

• A 15th-level wizard,
• who knows that Zod is imprisoned in a demiplane (presumably you disposed of his henchmen and kept his fate hush-hush),
• who wants to free Zod,
• and who knows the demiplane spell.

Even assuming the most generous reading of the "nature and contents" clause, those are highly non-trivial prerequisites.

Dausuul said:

Even assuming the most generous reading of the "nature and contents" clause, those are highly non-trivial prerequisites.

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Besides, no matter how the DM interprets "nature and contents," a DM who's out to get you will just have someone free Zod via the Gate spell, which works even if you don't know the location.

Hopefully (for them) Zod will not have starved to death in the meantime.

Dausuul said:

Well, it's a risk you take, but remember that freeing Zod requires:

• A 15th-level wizard,
• who knows that Zod is imprisoned in a demiplane (presumably you disposed of his henchmen and kept his fate hush-hush),
• who wants to free Zod,
• and who knows the demiplane spell.

Even assuming the most generous reading of the "nature and contents" clause, those are highly non-trivial prerequisites.

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*shrug*

As a fail-proof security prison, this Demiplane suggestion assumes too much.

If you are a high-level player that just worked hard and long to imprison General Zod:
* all your enemies will be equally high-level. Having access to a 15th level wizard can be taken for granted
* I'm guessing somebody learned the secret or there'd be no adventure
* well, duh... About the only reason to imprison the good general is to make it an adventure keeping him there
* again, a prerequisite completely out of your hands

I know many players who would prefer a solution where you control any weaknesses yourself. This so-called prison could be emptied without you even knowing about it.

Unless you spend your days inside the room. Alone. With General Zod.

That would suck. But it'd be way cool too, when the general's allies attempt to bust him free, and you can go all medieval on their asses as punishment for making you sit all that time inside a 30 by 30 room

Greenstone.Walker said:

So much for protecting books with it. :-(

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It seems to me that if you change it to "location where it was cast or the caster's current location" then yuh can have your travelling spellbooks and chests without having your magical grenades.

Hemlock said:

Besides, no matter how the DM interprets "nature and contents," a DM who's out to get you will just have someone free Zod via the Gate spell, which works even if you don't know the location.

Hopefully (for them) Zod will not have starved to death in the meantime.

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We never established what class Zod is, did we? For all we know, he's a cleric, and could have Create food and Water prepared. He'll be very angry, but he wouldn't be starved.