D&D 5E Leomund's Tiny Hut

[Bacon Bits]

Imagine casting this on the only bridge across a major river as an army of orcs marches towards a helpless city. Or in a tunnel. Or the footbridge/drawbridge leading into a keep/castle. Or a stone paved road through a marsh. Or a mountainside path. Or major trade route between cities.

Assuming you have the full minute to cast it . . . wow. And it is a ritual, so you can just re-cast it every 8 hours, and with a good supply of rations/water or a create food/water spell you can just camp that spot until a caster with dispel magic or something similar removes it.

As a ritual it will take 10 minutes, but that's beside the point.

If it's an army, then an army has resources. It's not a PC group with 20,000 members. It will have combat engineers, and more than enough backs to get a ridiculous amount of manual labor done very quickly. Yes, even orcs have combat engineers. Why do you think they bring goblins?

> the only bridge across a major river

Collapse the bridge out of spite from their end. Build ferries. Cross river. Otherwise, go around.

> Or in a tunnel

Tunnel around. Then collapse the old tunnel from both sides. Otherwise, go around.

> footbridge

Cut the ropes. Then have some goblins cross and tie a lead to the bridge, haul it back up or start a second bridge, and cross. Otherwise, go around.

> drawbridge leading into a keep/castle

Why didn't you just raise the drawbridge? Hell, we'll just build a short ramp or use ladders to get over your dome and we can go right in! If that doesn't work, we'll just have to attack the walls. I mean, who attacks a castle and expects the gate to be open?

Sure, if you impose stupid restrictions like, "Its a bottomless gorge and this is the only bridge and you can't ever cross it any other way even magically," then sure, it works. In reality, an army doesn't set out without the capability and knowledge required to circumvent basic natural barriers, and *no* army is so stupid as to not have a plan B if a bridge, mountain pass, or some other natural barrier is taken by the enemy. Yes, it will take time. Days or weeks, possibly. However, all you've done is said, "What if I take this immense natural barrier that has a passage through or across it, and then removed or held the passage." That's been a tactic of war for thousands of years, from the Battle of Thermopylae to the German destruction of the bridges across the Rhine in WWII.

 

[Riley37]

who attacks a castle and expects the gate to be open?

People with spies, assassins, and allies (by loyalty or by bribery) inside the castle. That's who.

In general, you've got a set of good points. I rather like the Thermopylae/Rhine reference. Using LTH to close a route is not always so easy, just by itself.

On another hand, what if *both sides* are able and willing to evolve counter-measures, on an ongoing basis?

Wizard casts LTH on a drawbridge. Orcs place ladders up and over the LTH. Orc army starts to swarm across those ladders. Wizard drops Delayed Blast Fireball, then dimension-doors back to safe location inside castle. (Or possibly jumps down a trap door in drawbridge, and uses a pre-prepared zip-line under the drawbridge, thus saving a spell slot.) LTH collapses. Delayed Blast Fireball detonates. Earth-shattering kaboom ensues, right where Company J of the orc army was swarming over ladders.

Orc general shrugs, orders remainder of Company J to withdraw, summons shaman for consultation on next round of siege strategy.

In this story, LTH is neither an automatic "I win" card, and nor is it "meh, that's useless". It's a tool, used in conjunction with other tools.

As attackers get desperately clever to storm the castle despite the defenses, and as defenders seek more and more clever uses of LTH, precise details start to matter more and more. "Creatures and objects within the dome when you cast this spell can move through it freely". Does that include, say, casting LTH over a pile of bombs, and then lighting a bomb's fuze and pushing it through the wall of force, so that it detonates just outside the wall... repeatedly, while the supply of bombs lasts? What happens if someone on the outside sees the bomb emerging through the wall, and pushes back, and the fuze burns down while the bomb is halfway through?

The warrior who was inside LTH when it was cast, and his quiver full of arrows, may pass "freely" through the dome of force. Therefore, he can fire those arrows at targets outside the dome. Can those targets pick up the arrows, and fire them back into the dome? If they dip the arrows in pitch, ignite the pitch, and THEN shoot the arrows back: the arrow is material which can pass through the wall of force, but the flaming pitch is not. What happens?

If you remove all the earth or rock beneath LTH, what happens? Assuming that LTH has a floor made of equally impervious magical force, then what happens if the attackers dig a pit underneath it, 30' wide and 100' deep, and wait for the end of the duration? LTH goes poof, and everything that was inside it falls 100'? (onto poisoned spikes, of course.)

LTH can be used as a bomb shelter against Meteor Swarm, and can endure a full 10-minute-duration Call Lightning barrage. The Tarrasque cannot push through it, or push it aside. A Storm Giant can whack it for hours with a +3 maul, and it won't be dented. You could bury it under hundreds of tons of lava, and it still won't take any damage. (Though when duration expires, the inhabitants may then be in trouble.) That's a LOT of power for a third-level spell.

LTH is problematic because it's written partly as if no one would ever use it for anything other than a safe rest location, and partly as if it could be used flexibly, for any purpose which could benefit from a one-way-visibility, selectively permeable barrier of unbreakable magic force.

 

[travathian]

Yes, it will take time. Days or weeks, possibly. However, all you've done is said, "What if I take this immense natural barrier that has a passage through or across it, and then removed or held the passage." That's been a tactic of war for thousands of years, from the Battle of Thermopylae to the German destruction of the bridges across the Rhine in WWII.

Exactly, only now the tactic only requires a 1min setup time, is basically invulnerable, and provides opportunities for other trickery. Delaying enemy forces or shifting the location of the fight are standard tactics. Magic just allows you to implement them in fascinating and sometimes very quick ways.

I never claimed it was a spell that once cast means game over for the enemy, its just another tool in the arsenal of war that I was hoping to bring to light and share some fun ideas.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

If you remove all the earth or rock beneath LTH, what happens? Assuming that LTH has a floor made of equally impervious magical force, then what happens if the attackers dig a pit underneath it, 30' wide and 100' deep, and wait for the end of the duration? LTH goes poof, and everything that was inside it falls 100'? (onto poisoned spikes, of course.)

Good points in that post. As an aside, it seems pretty clear to me that LTH does not have an impermeable floor. Undermining/burrowing (Earth Elementals, Umber Hulks, sappers) is therefore one of the obvious weaknesses of the hut, and one of the reasons you should still keep one eye open while resting inside it in a hostile environment--and that goes triply if you're using it as a fortress against an actual army.

 

[Saeviomagy]

Yeah, nothing is stopped from going out, so if (for example), you make it on a bridge and someone collapses the bridge, you'll fall out of it, ending the spell.

I think this spell has some cool new uses, but overall nothing insurmountable by even a relatively unprepared opponent.