How do you handle Magic Circle in your game?

[Flipguarder]

For the second, that same character might be able to ward off his house or hut. Armies don't care. They just move along and deal with the -real- objective.

Unless that real objective happens to be you or something you are holding.

So you'd be fine with this power:

Waaaaambulance
You whine at the dm about how high this encounter level is.
At-Will ✦ any
Free Action Close Blast 50
Prerequisite: Must be under level 10
Effect: Instantly kills all enemies above level 22 within burst.

Because after all, you would never use it.

 

[Mirtek]

and as long as you have everlasting provisions, you good.

I would also recommend some bags of holding to store your feces, otherwise it would soon become very unpleasend within the circle

All a tarrasque does is makes it easier (no -5 to check)

If you don't take the -5 you risk some crazed cultist to just smudge your runes and break your circle.

And what you forget the mention is that the circle has no build-in-exception for it's caster. If you create such a magic circle around you, you are forever trapped within the circle too

Unless that real objective happens to be you or something you are holding.

So you'd be fine with this power:

Waaaaambulance
You whine at the dm about how high this encounter level is.
At-Will ✦ any
Free Action Close Blast 50
Prerequisite: Must be under level 10
Effect: Instantly kills all enemies above level 22 within burst.

Because after all, you would never use it.

Actually the correct effect would be

Effect: Instantly kills all enemies above level 22 within burst while you are immobilzed forever. Roll a new character.

 

[Regicide]

I would also recommend some bags of holding to store your feces, otherwise it would soon become very unpleasend within the circle

You'd use the feces to hurl at the tarrasque outside the circle. Hey, a 20 hits!

 

[Mirtek]

You'd use the feces to hurl at the tarrasque outside the circle. Hey, a 20 hits!

Unfortunately you can't. Since you're trapped by your own circle you can't hit anything outside the cricle with thrown weapons

 

[Flipguarder]

You guys are laughing about it but if it affects the caster an all-purpose magic circle that would stop someone your level would mean you are forever trapped within it right? Isn't that just idiotic?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Unless that real objective happens to be you or something you are holding.

So you'd be fine with this power:

Waaaaambulance
You whine at the dm about how high this encounter level is.
At-Will ✦ any
Free Action Close Blast 50
Prerequisite: Must be under level 10
Effect: Instantly kills all enemies above level 22 within burst.

Because after all, you would never use it.

I don't understand why you bothered to start this thread. You don't seem to want to even acknowledge that anyone else's opinion on the matter is worth hearing. lol. And I just expel whiners from my game. Actually what I do is give the monster the following power.

Pillar of Salt (at-will; free action) Range infinite; Effect: target is turned into a pillar of salt. No known effect can reverse this power.



Rituals are perfectly fine. There may be some rather artificial situation you can concoct where a ritual can provide a benefit substantially greater than what you would expect, but they are rare cases.

Certainly you could trap yourself inside a circle and avoid being eaten by a tarrasque but so what? In any case Magic Circle is subject to being destroyed by any garden variety environmental effect. Nothing in the description of the ritual states that it will endure wind, rain, etc. The DM is free to work this out in any way that makes a good story.

So, Flip, instead of insisting that everyone else is just wrongheaded about it, how about you tell us what you DO want rituals to do? How should it work? Just saying its broken isn't doing us any good.

 

[Flipguarder]

I don't understand why you bothered to start this thread. You don't seem to want to even acknowledge that anyone else's opinion on the matter is worth hearing.

I didn't start this thread. But yes I am being a little stubborn about this simply because everyone seems to think Im obviously wrong.

Rituals are perfectly fine. There may be some rather artificial situation you can concoct where a ritual can provide a benefit substantially greater than what you would expect, but they are rare cases.

Such as in any situation where a person maxes out their key skill? Such as a level 5 wizard being able to protect himself from anything in existence?

Certainly you could trap yourself inside a circle and avoid being eaten by a tarrasque but so what? In any case Magic Circle is subject to being destroyed by any garden variety environmental effect. Nothing in the description of the ritual states that it will endure wind, rain, etc. The DM is free to work this out in any way that makes a good story.

We all understand that a DM is able to do anything in the game, thats a given. We discuss rules here.

If Im concocting strange scenarios that don't normally happen, then I'd just like to point out that others are giving the power qualities that it doesn't have by raw to make it seem less powerful, such as:

1. Weather can affect it.
2. You can teleport inside it.
3. The caster is trapped inside as well.

None of these qualities exist within the text.

So, Flip, instead of insisting that everyone else is just wrongheaded about it, how about you tell us what you DO want rituals to do? How should it work? Just saying its broken isn't doing us any good.

Fantastic, I've just been hoping to get a convo going on this topic. The problem I believe is in the way skill bonuses function.

You can get a 20+ bonus fairly easily by level 2 but then no other bonuses except 1/2 level raise your skill.

One possible solution would be to lower the bonus to trained skills in heroic to 2 or so, then give all trained skills an additional 2 bonus in paragon level, and then additional 2 in epic. So trained would mean less at lower levels
2 at heroic
4 at paragon
6 at epic.

Another idea is to lower the amount of specialization one can have in one skill, right now there are:

Attribute
racial
background
1/2 level
feat
familiar
power
item

perhaps only 3 of these bonuses work for any one skill check, the largest ones obviously overriding weaker ones.

Another possibility is having some current bonuses that don't stack stack. Maybe your familiar provides a feat bonus, Or racial doesn't stack with background.

What I really have a problem with is that skill bonuses can be so high at lower levels but they don't get much higher. This makes the overall situation such that a specializer in a skill at level 5 is only 13 away from a specializer at level 30.

 

[Ryujin]

None of these qualities exist within the text.

In point of fact it says, "...these symbols make it difficult for creatures of a particular origin to enter or pass." No mention of 'exit' at all. I would say that the creator could easily exit his own circle. Getting back in could pose a problem.

 

[Flipguarder]

If we are arguing semantics (im down if you are) then I believe the idea that a magic circle creator would be trapped there is unfairly (i believe) attributed to the idea of passing the boundary. As in it doesnt matter which direction you are coming from, passing is passing.

Let me reiterate, I believe that's a terribly broken and stupid way to read the ritual.

 

[Mirtek]

You guys are laughing about it but if it affects the caster an all-purpose magic circle that would stop someone your level would mean you are forever trapped within it right?

Right

Isn't that just idiotic?

Yes. If you draw a circle around you that works against your own origin type you are an idiot.

Yet this doesn't make the whole ritual idiotic, because you can create such a circle from the outside, you don't need to create the circle around yourself.

that it doesn't have by raw to make it seem less powerful, such as:
[...]
3. The caster is trapped inside as well.

None of these qualities exist within the text.

Trapping the caster too is RAW from straight from the rules text. Saying that a caster can ignore his own circle is completly made up with no reference to the rules