How do you rule on Force effects vs harmless energies?

[Greenfield]

This thread is labeled D&D, but anyone can play. It's just a rules question that, as far as I know, has no right or wrong answer.

Premise: Someone is in a Force Cage, or a Resilient Sphere, or a Telekinetic Sphere, or the Force construct of your choice.

Question: Can they have a normal conversation with someone on the outside?

Pretty much all of these say that "Nothing comes in or goes out". Do you limit that to harmful energies?

I mean, all of them are transparent or invisible, so obviously light goes in and out, yet a Searing Light spell would/should be stopped by any of them.

Gaze attacks go through a Wall of Force I know, so the "nothing" doesn't seem to mean absolutely nothing. Do you, at your table, let characters inside talk normally through the barrier to someone on the other side?

Related question: How do you rule on Teleport effects and Force constructs?

Also: How about Prismatic Sphere and Teleport effects?

Not trying to start an argument, just a conversation.

 

[Deset Gled]

Fun fact: The question "Does sound pass through a force effect?" has been debated on this site for at least 16 years. http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?518-Force-effects-definition

As far as I know there's never been an official answer. It doesn't matter for things like a Wall of Force or Forcecage with bars. And frankly it's been pretty rare in my experience for a case where it matters to come up.

From the description of a Force effect I really think sound shouldn't pass through. Sound is literally a compression wave traveling through a medium, and the main effect of a Force effect is to stop physical motion. The matter can't vibrate into or out of the Force effect, so the wave reflects back and doesn't travel through. In fact, a Force effect should be the perfect sound reflector. That being said, I would be fine with a DM ruling the opposite as long as they played it consistently.

 

[Joshua Randall]

As a 4e player I have the luxury of saying, "It does what it says in the power (or ritual) and nothing more nor less."

As an old-school player dating back to AD&D / 1e, we always treated force effects as invisible, infinitely strong panes of quasi-glass. Force 'glass' blocks physical blows but doesn't block light nor sound waves (the 'glass' can vibrate). Also force 'glass' is permeable to gas because after one person's PC suffocated inside a resilient sphere, we decided that was not fun.

 

[Greenfield]

3.5 version of resilient Sphere specifies that the occupants can "breath normally".

I knew that 4e rules limited or "forgot" a lot, in order to minimize descriptive text, but I didn't know they blew that one.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

Well, if you're talking about D&D I'd point out that sound really has all its own rules regarding what does/doesn't inhibit it and what happens when it does. That's generally spelled out rather explicitly in spells, abilities, what-have-you. If it doesn't say it stops sound in a description, it almost certainly shouldn't. And science can generally take a hike the instant magic gets involved. Trying to apply science rules to magical effects is a fools errand. You can say something works or doesn't and CLAIM that it's because of actual physics in the game universe, but it doesn't matter if it is or not. It's generally best to assume that things always work as they normally do in the real world until a rule says it doesn't - and then it's irrelevant WHY it changed, it simply did because the game needs/wants it to.
YMMV

 

[Joshua Randall]

I knew that 4e rules limited or "forgot" a lot, in order to minimize descriptive text, but I didn't know they blew that one.

It's not blowing it; it's a fundamentally different approach to game mechanics design.

What does resilient sphere do in 4e? It does exactly what the power says. Period. Anything not listed is assumed to work like the real world, or is up to DM/Player negotiation.

Otiluke’s Resilient Sphere
You trap your enemy in a transparent, immobile globe of impenetrable force.
Daily Arcane, Conjuration, Evocation, Force, Implement
Standard Action Ranged 10
Target: One creature
Attack: Intelligence vs. Reflex. If you target yourself or a willing ally, you automatically hit.
Hit: You conjure a sphere of force that encompasses the target’s space until the end of your next turn. While in the sphere, the target is immobilized and cannot attack anything outside its space. Creatures outside the sphere cannot attack the target, and the sphere blocks objects and creatures attempting to pass through it. The sphere can be attacked. It has 100 hit points, and attacks against it hit automatically.
Sustain Minor: The sphere persists until the end of your next turn.
Miss: The target is immobilized (save ends).

Both 'objects' and 'creatures' in 4e are defined game terms -- air, soundwaves, light (photons) are neither objects nor creatures. Therefor they're not blocked by a 4e resilient sphere.

So that's how I'd rule it in 4e.

In other editions, I'd go by those rules and also whatever the table agrees upon. As I mentioned above, we ended up with the 'quasi-glass that's infinitely strong, perfectly invisible, and gas permeable' interpretation back in the day.

 

[Greenfield]

How could someone suffocate in that short a time, I wonder?

One ongoing "blew it" in 4e is that diagonals are counted the same as straight movement and distance, so a "Fireball" is a fire-cube, as is any other circular/spherical area or volume. But we've beaten that horse to death a long time ago. There's no reason to reach for that horse whip again.