Is celerity broken?

Plane Sailing said:

Celerity!

Time Stop. Dimension Anchor. Force Cage.

The fight is over, especially if there is no time limit - you can prepare each spell once a day, and they last longer than that, so just take your time and wear them away. Cloudkill is probably the way to go, though.
 

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Plane Sailing said:
How does casting Time Stop become an automatic win, I wonder?

You can summon beasties (but they still have to start the fight once the timestop ends)
You can do forcecages to trap opponents along with something nasty like cloudkill (unless they are immune to poison/too big to fit in a forcecage/can teleport themselves).

I can see Timestop as being incredibly useful for some quick self-buffing and summoning of (relatively weak) allies - but an encounter finisher...? Against EL appropriate encounters?

How?
stonegod said:
How many quickened or empowered Delayed Blast Fireballs can you get out during Time Stop? Read the ending of JollyDoc's Age of Worms to see the carnage Time Stop can do.
This is why, Plane. Most people either:
1) Ignore or don't realize that the caster of time stop, as a random duration spell, doesn't know the spell's duration (and therefore let it work with delayed blast fireball and delay spell). Or find some way to maximize it (yeah, yeah "bla bla bla maximize rod". Broken item, not a broken spell).
2) Have a DM who interprets the rules that the delay doesn't tick down during the timestop, so a DBF with a delay of '0' rounds will go off as soon as you re-enter the timestream.
#2 I'll at least buy (as in I wouldn't argue during a game if my DM were to allow it). #1 I would immediately point out if it came up in a game where I was playing, regardless of who it benefited.
 
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Simply apply SR to Time Stop. Or use the variants from the Epic Level Handbook. Our group has basically been playing such that when this spell is cast, if the enemies' SR is not beaten, then they're time stopped right along with the Time Stop caster. This can have very bad consequences.
 

SadisticFishing said:
Celerity!

Time Stop. Dimension Anchor. Force Cage.

The fight is over, especially if there is no time limit - you can prepare each spell once a day, and they last longer than that, so just take your time and wear them away. Cloudkill is probably the way to go, though.

Dimensional anchor won't work on someone during timestop since it is a targetted spell:

SRD said:
While the time stop is in effect, other creatures are invulnerable to your attacks and spells; you cannot target such creatures with any attack or spell. A spell that affects an area and has a duration longer than the remaining duration of the time stop have their normal effects on other creatures once the time stop ends.

Also, the target might be too big to fit inside a force cage (or there are more than one target and you can't get them all in, or they have disintegrate available or they are so large you had to use the barred cage they can cast their magic right back out at you...)

There might be a small number of combats where timestop + cloudkill + unbarred cage will be a fight ender... but I would bet it is a really tiny number ( a quick glance down the CR 17 challenges in the MM shows very few opponents that would be beaten by this technique for one or more of the reasons above.

Cheers
 

Plane Sailing said:
There might be a small number of combats where timestop + cloudkill + unbarred cage will be a fight ender... but I would bet it is a really tiny number ( a quick glance down the CR 17 challenges in the MM shows very few opponents that would be beaten by this technique for one or more of the reasons above.
Could someone explain to me why "invulnerable to your spells" wouldn't apply to Cloudkill? From the description of Time Stop, it's something of a misnomered spell - time doesn't really stop, you speed up. So seems to me, you'd cast your Cloudkill, but it wouldn't do anything until Time Stop... stopped.
 

The Blow Leprechaun said:
Could someone explain to me why "invulnerable to your spells" wouldn't apply to Cloudkill? From the description of Time Stop, it's something of a misnomered spell - time doesn't really stop, you speed up. So seems to me, you'd cast your Cloudkill, but it wouldn't do anything until Time Stop... stopped.
Its the cloudkill + forcecage combo---they start taking damage but cannot escape assuming they have no other means to do so.
 


stonegod said:
How many quickened or empowered Delayed Blast Fireballs can you get out during Time Stop? Read the ending of JollyDoc's Age of Worms to see the carnage Time Stop can do.
Sure, but the duration of time stop is variable. Good luck getting those DBFs to all explode at the right time. One round to early or two late, and they're all wasted.

I agree that dimension lock + forcecage + cloudkill just isn't that deadly to a party of high level foes. The only "sure win" I've seen is time stop + fly + reverse gravity + prismatic sphere. In this case, the timestop ends and the victim shoots upwards right into a prismatic sphere. If he isn't flying he's possibly screwed... and if the GM is vicious, the prismatic sphere blocks the reverse gravity, so the victim ping-pongs back and forth through the spell effect. Ouch.
 

So Celerity is borken 'cause of......Timestop? Because of Contingency? Both? Neither?

Let's pin this down a bit more.
 


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