Scharlata said:
Hi, fellow Evardians!
If someone is standing in the midst of Evard's black tentacles and is not affected by them because she made her save, do the tentacles grab at her in the next and all following rounds or is she unaffected as if she made her save standing in the area of an entangle spell?
Kind regards
Hello!
I'll be using the 3.5 SRD to answer this, largely cuz I nuked my 3.0 one.
First off, there's no save versus Black Tentacles. The spell causes a grapple check against all targets in the area of effect. The "save" is basically the opposed grapple check.
Now, my answer to the second question WAS going to be easy...but on review of the spell description for Black Tentacles, I failed to find text that states that the tentacles continue trying to grapple over the duration of the spell. It notes that tentacles that have successfully grabbed a target will do damage on successive rounds with additional checks...but nowhere does it say that the tentacles that fail to grapple in the first place will keep trying to do so.
A strict reading of the rules would suggest that if someone beat the grapple check of the tentacles, they'd be in the clear (with the exception that their ground movement speed is halved, as noted). This would be true whether they beat the first grapple check, or if they got grabbed, squeezed for a bit, then managed to get away. The tentacles appear to make one grab attempt per casting of the spell. If they miss, or if someone escapes...that's it.
As for Entangle, that spell is specifically noted as attempting to re-entangle creatures who save or escape. The relevant text is quoted from the 3.5 SRD here:
"Each round on your turn, the plants once again attempt to entangle all creatures that have avoided or escaped entanglement."
Strictly for myself, I'd probably house rule Black Tentacles with similar text, since it seems a bit pallid for a 4rth level spell lacking it. And silly too, with all those black tentacles waving aimlessly about if they missed once. It may also be that there's errata for it.
