Can I make a really 'frilly' Wall of Force?

[Bauglir]

My favourite creative wall of force anecdote involved a small pocket plane which consisted of a set of metal walkways (about 10' wide) over an apparently endless drop. A group of muscular looking clawed humanoids were charging at us along one of these walkways. Grease was cast on the walkway, and a wall of force was placed diagonally across the walkway on the grease...

 

[Hypersmurf]

If the restriction meant that the wall had to be be a completely convex structure where internally contained lines could be drawn from any point, then the wall of force would be unable to plug, say, a hourglass-shaped opening.

That's right.

A Wall of Force might be able to make an airtight seal in a starship corridor, or block off (but not tightly seal) a flagstoned brick corridor, or generally cover the majority of an irregular natural tunnel. But if you try to expand it to fill in all the nooks and crannies, it will be "broken when formed", and the Wall will fail.

You could block most corporeal, non-gaseous creatures in the hourglass-section tunnel with two Walls of Force. Incorporeal creatures would just go around the Walls, and gaseous creatures would seep through the gaps.

-Hyp.

 

[Pielorinho]

My favourite creative wall of force anecdote involved a small pocket plane which consisted of a set of metal walkways (about 10' wide) over an apparently endless drop. A group of muscular looking clawed humanoids were charging at us along one of these walkways. Grease was cast on the walkway, and a wall of force was placed diagonally across the walkway on the grease...

See, now THAT'S a creative use of magic! It makes perfect sense, it doesn't require any weird physics extrapolations, and -- most importantly -- it's a solution specific to the encounter, rather than a cheese designed to make a caster unstoppable in almost every circumstance.

I love it!
Daniel

 

[Pbartender]

I have a rule in my game: any spell that becomes markedly more powerful in most situations when used in an unorthodox manner gets nerfed.

I request my DMs to use a similar rule in their games.

Why? Because D&D is at its best when there's no magic bullet, when different situations call for different tactics. If just about every battle can be won by casting a wall of force "monofilament", the game quickly becomes boring. (And yes, just about every battle could be won with this maneuver: the only common exceptions would be enemies expecting a monofilament attack and possessing sufficient magical means to disrupt the attack).

Creative spell-use is good. Abuse of spells to make a character regularly more powerful than all the other characters is bad.

My solution? A wall of force is either shapeable (in which case no dimension may be less than 10'), or it is not shapeable (in which case I'll rule it as a square). The spell is plenty good if it creates an invisible square barrier.

It may be that the monofilament points to a place where the rules need to be errata'ed. I would not in a million years allow such cheese in my game.

My sentiments, precisely, Dan.

My favourite creative wall of force anecdote involved a small pocket plane which consisted of a set of metal walkways (about 10' wide) over an apparently endless drop. A group of muscular looking clawed humanoids were charging at us along one of these walkways. Grease was cast on the walkway, and a wall of force was placed diagonally across the walkway on the grease...

Now THAT's an innovative and unorthodox means to use the spell offensively, that still follows the basic rules of the spell. An excellent example of a GDPC tactic.

 

[hong]

And there is great surprise and terror in 10-inch titanium penii

Penae.

 

[Pax]

While sliding into the wall is, in and of itself, harmless, the bisected creature may suddenly find that it is very impossible to circulate blood from one side of his body to the other, due to the impediment of the wall of force running through him.

And who says blood needs to circulate, until and as it wants to? And yes, that was the theory on how blood worked, up to and through much of the Renaissance.

Since walls of force are impenetrable,

... unless you make a DC 100 Escape Artist check (ELH).

anything which involved coordinating parts of the body on opposite sides of the wall would be impossible.

Why? The body moves because the spirit wills it; if light can pass through a wall of force, why could not the will of your soul?

What, after all, is a Soul made of? Are you sure it's blocked by a Wall of Force?

If the subject attempted to move sideways in the least, the part of his body that would be stuck against the wall would be unable to move, while the other part would be free to do so: Since the wall of force is impenetrable, force cannot be transmitted through the wall of force: As a result, the part of the body which is pressed against the wall would not be able to prevent the motion of the other part: The victim would be cut in half, messily.

But who says the left half isn't still connected to the right half? The body is not cut, therefore, it will not fall apart.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

As for hitting it from the edge: the simplest answer would be to declare that the wall of force is broken if it's hit from the edge, since the rules give no means for the wall to do damage and no parameters for the wall's stopping a sideways approach. Once there's a body in the middle of the wall, the wall is no longer unbroken, and so it's dispelled.

Not how you'd expect it to work? It's the mystery of magic that makes it grand!

Do not attempt to confuse Norfleet by refering to the actual spell description. He will just make more stuff up to justify his answer.

 

[Tilla the Hun (work)]

So I must ask if a consensus has been reached as to the usage of the terms 'continuous', 'unbroken' and 'vertical'?

...The caster can form the wall into a flat, vertical plane whose area is up to one 10- foot square per level. The wall must be continuous and unbroken when formed. If its surface is broken by any object or creature, the spell fails....

Now granted as a GM, I'll just point to 'wall' and ask how a mandelbrot (or grate) constitutes a flat, unbroken, wall

But as a player, I'd certainly push the point and ask what constituted flat, vertical, unbroken, and continuous??

I like the monofilament walls of force... But as a GM, a strand of anything 1 molecule wide is a strand, not a wall.

The grates I might allow - with multiple castings, each casting constituting one of the lines - but probably not. That's a grate, not a wall. That's a line, not a wall.

A wall must divide one area from another. Thus, my minimums would be set at 5' by 5'.


Now all of that said... Any reason why a wizard couldn't research LINE OF FORCE or POINT OF FORCE and/or use sculpt spell metamagicks on WALL OF FORCE and accomplish most of what was bandied about here?

Also, if it is immobile, with respect to what perspective? Careful if you say caster, cuz then they could argue that the 'vertical' component is with respect to the caster as well..

 

[TuDogz]

If all of this wall of force presto chango shape altering foo faa is possible, why bother with forcecage? Do you think that a simple change from a plane to a is cube worth a 1500 gp material component and a two spell level increase? And why wouldn't the bar option just have been given in the WoF description?

 

[MerakSpielman]

I wonder... are we allowed to use non-Euclidian geometry to define our plane?