How do you handle Magic Circle in your game?

[DracoSuave]

Plus the circle itself has to be a perfect circle. You can't make it square, or have it go up and down walls, or anything like that. It's rarely good for boxing in existing threats simply because existing threats tend to move around at least once in that hour.

The point that is being missed by the OP is that if you have an hour of preparation, with sufficient imagination -any- encounter can be trivialized in almost any rpg ever.

In a cyberpunk game:

'In one hour, assassins will come here to kill you!'
'Oh. Suppose we should grab a taxi then, and call the cops.'

In a space game:

'Oh noes! Space Pirates will be here in one hour!'
'Hyperspace warp field GO!'

In Paranoia!:

'Bully! Traitors will be here within the hour and are going to bring communist propaganda to insite the clones to riot!'
'Pshaw! How would you know what communist propaganda would look like unless you've been crafting it with loving precision! *lasers down the questgiver*'

Magic Circle requires a lot more prep than these things, that's for sure.

 

[satori01]

The Ritual is very poorly written, and probably should be errata'd or clarification given on the intent. Every DM is going to have to make some rullings about this.

Now Magic Circles in past editions have had 2 main effects, that are often seperate...to keep things out, and to keep something in.

Obviously an clear use of this spell is to make a safe haven for a group while in a dungeon, except for the problem that you theoretically can not get out. Many other Rituals allow the caster to designate people to be able to pass through other defensive Rituals....so not hard to add that house rule.

As to the trapping part...that becomes a little more complicated.
Teleportation I believe clearly works to get in or out of the Ritual, as you do not need line of Effect to Teleport and one can make a cogent arguement that Teleportation does not have you pass thru anything (eg you do not take damage when teleporting to the other side of a damage dealing zone etc).

The other question is how far does the Magic Circle's protection extend?
Does it extend infinitely upwards or downwards? Would a sufficently powerful Magic Circle prevent birds from flying overhead, animals from grazing, or Dwarves mining underneath the Magic Circle?

I think on the surface of it you can rule out a Magic Circle interfering with Extra Planar travel. If a creature has a personal plane shift they can utilize the power to escape. Likewise the same for Teleportation, so this spell has some clear limits to the type of enemies in can hinder and the levels of which it will be trivial for enemies to bypass.

The trickier question for me is how far does the Magic Circle effect extend to?
Would it extend up through the roof of a building? if for example, a King has a Magic Circle protecting a sacred chalice in the basement would the castle be inaccesable above the Magic Circle no matter how high the Castle goes up? I think that strains credulty.

Thus I think you can reasonably fly out of, (if you destroy a roof over you, outdoors a DM will have to decide how far up the Magic Circle extends or if the Magic Circle domes over), and dig out of a Magic Circle.

This seems in line with a 5th level Ritual....creatures that can Fly, that can Burrow, or that can Teleport will be only slightly inconveinced. Other creatures will be blocked dependent upon the power level of the Magic Circle.

 

[satori01]

Magic Circle = useless against flying creatures?
and things with burrow
and teleport
and anything that can jump 5'

Wow that makes most things just slightly annoyed by this spell.

LOL....this honestly gave me a good laugh...thank you.

First the ritual was too powerful, because you cited a 5th level character, that was an Eladrin or Gnome, that took Skill Focus Arcana, a Familiar, and had four friends to help could keep the bowling team of Orcus, Vecna, and the Tarrasque away.

(as an aside, I play in a group of 9 people, and beside my Wizard, only 3 other people are trained in Arcana. There is a Warlord w/ 14 Int, who could probably make the assist roll, so my Wizard could do this. Under point buy almost everyone else has 10-8 Int because lets face it...Int is a dump stat(even for the Sorcerer in my group, Int a dump stat)....Rogues do not need it, Fighters do not need it, Rangers do not need it, and the rest of my group is Fighter, Rogues and Rangers....so 4 people assistng not that easy to come by for your average 5 person group.)

Now after people have dissected the rules, and determined that Teleportation, Flight, and Burrowing can bypass the erstwhile too powerful 5th level ritual.....it is too weak?

There is no pleasing you...is there

As you mentioned before, a clear use for this Ritual is to be able to take an extended rest on say level 2 of the Temple of Elemental Evil w/o having to treck back to Hommlet.

Now by RAW not being able to get out of your own Magic Circle is a clear oversight, but easily corrected by the DM, simply allowing the caster to designate people to be able to pass in and out of the Magic Circle ala many of the other perimeter defense Rituals in the game.

 

[Flipguarder]

I love all your ideas. The only thing I wanted to express in this thread is that none of that is stated and therefore you have to houserule it either way.

EDIT: And that raw, yes it is both too powerful and too weak based upon interpretation. This is the kinda stuff I could see groups getting in huge arguments about and I think there should be errata or a generally accepted houserule.

 

[Stalker0]

Plus the circle itself has to be a perfect circle. You can't make it square, or have it go up and down walls, or anything like that. It's rarely good for boxing in existing threats simply because existing threats tend to move around at least once in that hour.

When I started this thread, I wasn't thinking about situations where a group is trying to handle an upcoming situation in the span of a few hours, I was thinking about a scenario where a villian has plenty of time to plan.

Take this one for a example. An eladrin wizard has created his dungeon as his headquarters. In the main entrance way, he creates a magic circle against natural, and with this host of elven and eladrin minions, easily gets a check that blocks creature his level or more than likely much higher level.

Sure he spends money for teh ritual, but it saves him a boatload of trap costs.

The party is trying to beat this wizard and heads to his dungeon, some of the party is natural. How do they get through?

 

[Bumbles]

The party is trying to beat this wizard and heads to his dungeon, some of the party is natural. How do they get through?

Through the thermal exhaust p...er, drain pipe of course!

 

[Saeviomagy]

I think the thing to remember is this:
Rituals, and the problems they solve, are fundamentally designed to be plot devices.

 

[Kraydak]

When I started this thread, I wasn't thinking about situations where a group is trying to handle an upcoming situation in the span of a few hours, I was thinking about a scenario where a villian has plenty of time to plan.

Take this one for a example. An eladrin wizard has created his dungeon as his headquarters. In the main entrance way, he creates a magic circle against natural, and with this host of elven and eladrin minions, easily gets a check that blocks creature his level or more than likely much higher level.

Sure he spends money for teh ritual, but it saves him a boatload of trap costs.

The party is trying to beat this wizard and heads to his dungeon, some of the party is natural. How do they get through?

They don't, of course. They just drop another magic circle (or ring of magic circles, if you make them only ward against entry) around the defensive one.

Could make for a comic campaign: a large fraction of the world's surface is taken up by inpenetrable magic circles, and the best portion of the world to boot! The problem has become catastrophic and the goal of the campaign is to find a way to break the circles AND survive what is trapped inside.

 

[Mirtek]

The party is trying to beat this wizard and heads to his dungeon, some of the party is natural. How do they get through?

The non-natural members break the circle for them.

The other question is how far does the Magic Circle's protection extend?

IMO the best solution it to make it a globe, just like bursts and blasts should be treated as cubes

 

[ki11erDM]

The party is trying to beat this wizard and heads to his dungeon, some of the party is natural. How do they get through?

Honestly Stalker, that gets to one of the core disagreements people have about D&D. Is the world created for the players to overcome challenges? Or is the world created and let evolve naturally. I am personally an advocate for the middle way.

Is the Eladrin there to be defeated by the PCs in his layer? If yes, then there should be some way around the protection, a back door of some type. If the Eladrin is not meant to be challenged by the PCs in his layer then there should be no way around it.

If I was DMing that, I would expect my players to want to attack him in some manor, but I would not provide them with an obvious counter to the protection. But if they came up with a reasonable plan… it would work.

As to the size and shape of the circle, I would not make it a dome; I would make it a column (because diagonal movements count the same, but that is another thread). If the circle is 30’ across it would extend up 30’ or until it hit an obstacle. As the ground is an obstacle I would not extend it down. That being said I would not break out burrowing monsters on my PCs unless they starting abusing it, then my Ki11er nature comes out.
Could the spell be worded better so Rules Lawyers would have a hard time abusing it? Sure, but I don’t want ever spell and power taking up 5 pages of text.