Magic Circle - how do you open this thing?

[Tony Vargas]

The Magic Circle ritual allows only two ways to defeat the barrier created:

1) A higher-level affected creature can bull through it, taking damage.
2) An unaffected creature can spend a standard action to obscure part of the circle, breaking it.

The level of creature blocked by the circle is the check result -10.
If you want to block all creature types, rather than just one, the check is at -5.

So, if you're a high level character and manage a check of 45+, you can create a circle that no PC, yourself included, can break, ever. A little higher, and no published monster can break it, either.

An arcana check could theoretically be as high as +33 (+5 trained, +3 focus, +15 levels, +10 INT), higher if there are items or situational bonuses involved, so such results could certainly be possible.

Of course, all you have to do is roll reasonably, and it's pretty likely that no creature placed in a given adventure will be able to break the circle. So even if such a circle isn't theoretically unbreakable, it's functionally unbreakable barring a DM ex machina.


Our group encountered this issue recently - fortunately, the circles we created were vs 'natural' creatures, and the player of our eladrin (fey, not natural) made it to the next session, but it was funny there for a while. But if those had been 'all creature' circles...

We have two DMs who alternate, and our alternate DM has already house ruled that the caster can break his own circle, regardless. Our current DM declined to rule, since the eladrin was able to break the circle, by RAW.

 

[chitzk0i]

So... what was the problem? An NPC had made a magic circle?

 

[WalterKovacs]

Presumably someone could create a circle around themselves so powerful they could never escape from it ...

It's basically the fact that someone can create a circle that they can't do anything about seems like a failing in the ritual.

 

[NMcCoy]

To me, at least, the implied setting clearly suggests that there exist rituals in the world that aren't listed in the PHB. Surely there's something out there that'll break a magic circle in exchange for a few plot coupons...

I made the same observation about the ritual, only it struck me not as a problem but as a delicious potential plot hook - you could have a warlock sealing away a diabolical artifact so that he'd never be tempted to use its infernal power again... A city sealed off from the rest of the world centuries ago by nothing other than a massive magic circle, with nobody able to enter or leave... A barrier that the PCs can't yet break, but will be able to someday once they're stronger, provided their rivals don't get there first...

Also, am I the only one that envisions the Magic Circle barrier looking exactly like the force field in the Smash Bros. Brawl home-run contest?

 

[Tony Vargas]

As it turned out, there wasn't an insurmountable problem, but the potential problem we noticed was that a ritual caster can create a magic circle that affects himself, and there's no way to voluntarily break it. If the caster creates a magic circle vs all creature types, the only thing that'll break it is a high-enough level creature, but, that high enough level might be well above 35 (and, there's no game-design reason for a 36+ level creature to even exist), making the circle potentially, utterly, unbreakable & permanent. That's a little nuts.

Even at much lower levels, just rolling high can create a circle that neither you, nor any creature that'd have any business in an adventure of your level, could break, requireing some sort of /deus ex machina/ uber-high-level NPC/monster to deal with.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I note that Magic Circle prevents you passing through the circle, affect creatures within the circles boundary or affect the boundary in any way.

What about teleporting? It doesn't require line of effect to the destination, so are you 'passing through the circle'? The normal understanding of teleportation would have you not crossing the boundary - instead of being 'here' you are now 'there'.

Of course, that would mean that you would want separate (stronger?) rituals for capturing teleport capable creatures.

A possible way of including variability in the magic circle would be rather than say "it blocks creatures of level equal to (check result -10) or less" would be to say "blocked creatures can make one attempt to bypass the barrier per day - to do so they roll 1d20 + their level".

This would work out the same on "average", but would allow for some upsets to occur too.

Just a thought.

Cheers

 

[Badapple]

**Warning Thunderspire Labyrinth spoliers********



The magic circle situation occurred in the "guantlet" section of TL, where a maze like series of traps activate as a green dragon flies out of a pit in the center. The party has to survive 10 rounds (and beat the dragon) to pass through the door to the next area.

The party succeeded enough at a prior skill challenge to learn that a dragon would emerge from the pit, so prior to activating the guantlet encounter, the wizard put a magic circle on each of the two openings from the pit room to the rest of the complex.

The magic circles were set to affect "natural" creature types. The wizard is trained in arcana, 6th level, 18 int, and has skill focus arcana. Her arcana mods for the skill are +5+3+4+3-10 for a total of +5. Since the dragon was a level 5 solo, it was impossible for her to fail the roll to hedge out the dragon. Even rolling a one on the check will have the circle effective versus level 6 natural creatures or less.

Additionally, someone in the party had the bright idea to throw a gnoll prisoner inside one of the magic circles, since he was "natural" and it would serve as an effective prison.

Needless to say the guantlet encounter, which is one of the centerpiece encounters of TL, was trivialized, as the party simply bypassed the traps and went to the open door. The dragon was stuck on the other ends of the circle totally unable to affect the party. As DM, I didn't mind as the party put the information they gained to good use and came up with a clever way of bypassing the encounter. They were awarded full experience points.

The interesting hitch was later on after clearing out the Well of Demons, the party wanted to rest up and kill the dragon, and move along with the gnoll prisoner, when they realized that because they were all humans/halflings/dragonborn PCs they were all the "natural" type and they could not affect their own circle! The wizard pc was very upset, she thought she could disable her own circle any time she wanted to.

We scoured the PHB and DMG but no where did we find generic rules that a ritual could be dismissed by the creator. So I ruled that the circle was there on the ground and could only be defeated by a non natural creature using a standard action or a natural creature of level sufficient to beat the arcana check. (She rolled a 17 and an 18 on her checks so unless a level 22 natural creature decided to slum it in Thunderspire and bulled through the circle option B wouldn't happen)

The party wizard was very upset because the gnoll prisoner was stuck in the circle and there was zero chance to release him, and she didn't want him to starve to death in there.

Anyways, at a cost of 100gp and being level 5, we found out that magic circle is a VERY potent ritual. Way more powerful than "magic circle vs. evil" and equivalent wards in 3.5. In fact I see some seriously abusive tricks that can be done with it in the hands of a nasty arcanist...

 

[Tony Vargas]

Needless to say the guantlet encounter, which is one of the centerpiece encounters of TL, was trivialized, as the party simply bypassed the traps and went to the open door.

It was a little more tense than that, from our point of view. The cleric & wizard were both pretty hozed by thier traps, and we spent a fair amount of effort trying to destroy the skelletons (which, aparently, you can't) & water elemental (banished). Two of us got rolled over by the force ball thing. We were actually planning to fight the dragon, since we didn't realize the door would just open in 10 rounds, we thought we'd have to defeat the dragon. Our plan was just to deal with the traps, take a short rest, and then face the dragon reasonably fresh.

We did that, and got ready to release the dragon... when we realized we /didn't know if we could/. After a rather frustrating and increasingly panicky debate and rules scouring, we headed over to the circles, and only then realilzed the door had openend!

Additionally, someone in the party had the bright idea to throw a gnoll prisoner inside one of the magic circles, since he was "natural" and it would serve as an effective prison.

Yeah, that was me. The impetuous young warlord who dumped WIS, and has a tempestuous relationship with the wizard...

The interesting hitch was later on after clearing out the Well of Demons, the party wanted to rest up and kill the dragon, and move along with the gnoll prisoner, when they realized that because they were all humans/halflings/dragonborn PCs they were all the "natural" type and they could not affect their own circle! The party wizard was very upset because the gnoll prisoner was stuck in the circle and there was zero chance to release him, and she didn't want him to starve to death in there.

Veronica, the Wizard, is Good - a young, idealistic, spoiled sort of Good, but still Good, and the player takes it seriously - she was really upset about the Gnoll. You see, we captured the Gnoll when some of us blundered into an extradimensional prison /where it was trapped/. Though we attacked it until it surrendered, it was a bit better off as our prisoner than starving in a featureless room in another dimension. Now, she realized, /she/ had trapped it in an even smaller magical prison, and she couldn't let it out.

Of course, since putting one of the circles around the Gnoll was /my/ idea....

Anyways, at a cost of 100gp and being level 5, we found out that magic circle is a VERY potent ritual. Way more powerful than "magic circle vs. evil" and equivalent wards in 3.5. In fact I see some seriously abusive tricks that can be done with it in the hands of a nasty arcanist...

Fortunately, we have a nice archanist.

It just happened to work out for us, I think, though it was frustrating at the time, the RP arround the event was pretty good. And Veronica isn't likely to abuse it.

I think two good house rules would be:

1) A Ritual Caster can un-do thier own rituals. Maybe with an arcana check, time, or even additional component costs, but it should be possible.

2) An unaffected creature attacking /through/ a Magic Circle should break the circle. (If the Eladrin archer-ranger had made that session, he could have just murdered the dragon - I guess it would have had to go hide in the pit or something).

 

[DandD]

Couldn't the gnoll prisoner in the magic circle simply erase the runes on the ground/whereever it is placed to form the barrier? That's how a magic circle might be broken, isn't

 

[Tony Vargas]

Affected creatures can't break the circle, or cross it's boundry, or affect creatures on the other side. That works in both directions. So, you can put a circle around yourself for protection, or put it around something else to bind it.