Earth-Based Spells

[Presto2112]

I am strongly considering eliminating the following sentence from any earth-based spell I encounter it in:

Worked stone cannot be affected.

It just doesn't make sense to me that Soften Earth and Stone won't work on a certain rock, just because some schmuck making two silver pieces a day took a chisel to it and turned it into a block or a staircase.

 

[Cheiromancer]

The issue is that walls in dungeons and castles will no longer be an effective barrier to mid level adventurers. There is a bit of a problem already with power attacking barbarians armed with adamantine weapons; a DM might say that a sword (even an adamantine sword) is ineffective against walls, and try to prevent them from getting an adamantine pick, but that's a little bit doubtful.

A third level party isn't going to be able to afford adamantine weapons or have super-high strength, but they can easily have access to soften earth and stone.

Sure, an 11th level caster can use disintegrate to destroy one ten by ten cube of stone- blowing a hole through a wall, say. But your proposal would allow a 9th level caster to destroy a whole building by turning the bases of load bearing walls to mud. That's a massive increase in destructive power.

Would you allow that in your campaign?

 

[Presto2112]

The issue is that walls in dungeons and castles will no longer be an effective barrier to mid level adventurers. There is a bit of a problem already with power attacking barbarians armed with adamantine weapons; a DM might say that a sword (even an adamantine sword) is ineffective against walls, and try to prevent them from getting an adamantine pick, but that's a little bit doubtful.

A third level party isn't going to be able to afford adamantine weapons or have super-high strength, but they can easily have access to soften earth and stone.

Sure, an 11th level caster can use disintegrate to destroy one ten by ten cube of stone- blowing a hole through a wall, say. But your proposal would allow a 9th level caster to destroy a whole building by turning the bases of load bearing walls to mud. That's a massive increase in destructive power.

Would you allow that in your campaign?

*grumblegrumblegrumblestupidgamebalanceissuesgrumblegrumble*

 

[GreatLemur]

An alternative solution would be to follow the consequences of such a destructive magic being widely available through to their logical conclusions. Certainly if merely "worked" stone is no barrier to earth-manipulation spells, then people would develop a building material that is. Maybe they've got bricks stamped with a simple ward against exactly that kind of magic every couple feet or so, or they've worked some troublesome disruptive element into the mortar, etc. It should be a reasonably cheap solution, and everybody with a need for it should already have it: government and military buildings, jails, banks, arcane universities, large tombs, all the rich folks' houses, etc.

Even with such a precaution available, though, you should probably bump the revised spells up a level, seeing as they are being made much more useful.

 

[Sigurd]

Innate protections

Unless you think that the works of society have a sort of tempering magic of their own. Society's presence permeates this plane and worked stone and steel etc inherit a level of protection. Intelligent creatures have expectations about the defenses of their walls and the security of their homes. Their collective will takes some extra magic to overcome whereas any rock has no such protection.

Just rationalizing - but I like it

Sigurd