Blade Barrier as a lawnmower!

[Force0]

During our game session last night my player wanted to kill some trees really fast (long story), anyway the cleric thought of using Blade barrier, am I looking this right or is this the ultimate in seige spells? It can chop down a castle wall fairly easily in not very long, and the spell lasts 10 min per level (min 130 min at 13).

Anyway what are your thoughts on this?

 

[Alejandro]

Hmm, it certainly looks like it can create a 30' wide gap in your average curtain wall, doesn't it?

But it's not Dismissible, and certainly not mobile. It's a damn flashy use of a 6th level spell!

 

[0-hr]

To the best of my knowledge, Blade Barrier creates a disc of blades that exist in a plane. This is pretty much a 2 dimensional construction (like a coffe can lid but 60 feet across). So it would be great for cutting down trees, but not the best for opening walls. If the disc was horizontal, it would tear a pretty nasty line out of the wall; which, I guess, might cause the upper part to collapse. But note that the effect is not freely dispellable. So the cleric is going to either have to blow a Dispel Magic to turn it off, of the whole army is going to have to sit there and wait for it to go away (which will take a couple of hours).

And once it is gone, note that Wall of Stone is only a 5th level spell

 

[dren]

Blade Barrier

Your plan won't work, as the spinning disc of razorsharp blades ...whirl around...an immobile circular barrier. (pg 179, PHB)

Once created, the blades spin around, but unable to move from it's spot and thus unable for use as a fantasy style lawnmower. Unless of course you Rule 0 it.

dren

 

[EvRFreez]

Naturally you wouldn`t be able to move the Blade Barrier (unless you made a new spell, but that`s another story...) but it would definitely mow down the chunk of wall you set it to. And considering that there`s nothing to stop you from putting a bunch of them, you and your army can sit back and enjoy the spectacle of the mortar from x stories of wall falling in on itself over the course of several hours. Seeing as sieges normally take months, this seems like a bargain. Also, of course, if you happen to be flying over the town (preferably invisible) then you can target key locations to be visited by whirling slicey death.

One fun trick; make a series of horizontal blade barriers complete a huge line in the wall. That way, the wall falls in on itself, gets ground up, mortar flies everywhere, flies down again, more grinding, et al. And think what those guards on the parapets must feel like. Soup!

 

[Darkness]

Use planar ally instead and tell it to batter down the wall for you.

 

[kreynolds]

Use planar ally instead and tell it to batter down the wall for you.

...and have it start at the bottom of the wall. As soon as you destroy a lower section, it gets easier and easier from there.

 

[Greybar]

I think the general rule is that any 11th level character (particularly a spell caster) is pretty much capable of taking on the defenses of a small mundane town, period.

The comment about the blade barrier being 6th, but Wall of Stone being 5th is a very wise one. [grin]

John

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

I would say "no". Do you want to have to calculate how much of the dungeon collapses on the PCs if the battle drags on?

Also, consider carefully what the spell description means by "spinning disc". One possible reading of that phrase would disallow intersecting the spell with an inanimate object.

One possible reading of the spell description is that inanimate objects never take damage from the spell.

Blade Barrier appears to be intended as a protective barrier. I think the lawnmower idea is twisting the wording inappropriately.

 

[Krafen]

An even more fun way to take out a curtain wall is to polymorph yourself or someone else into an umber hulk and then cast fly on them. A party I played with a while back did this to completely destroy the tower of an adversary they had defeated but who had escaped. No more base of operations to return to.