JustinA said:
As I've mentioned before: Introducing a house rule that symbol spells can't be moved around is an interesting house rule, but since it eliminates the ability to use the symbol spells to guard spellbooks or luggage, it clearly isn't the intention of the designers. And any attempt to interpret "offensive" as "moving" is not only a bad intepretation of the rules, it's a bad use of the English language.
Well, any attempt to claim that I said word "offensive" was a synonym of "moving" is a blatant misstatement of what I said. I did not interpret "offensive" to mean "moving".
Restating what I did say:
1) The rules are very poorly worded. The very fact that we are arguing over the intent of the rules and the meaning of the word offensive is sufficient proof of that. The rules are very vague.
2) I believe that the intent of the designers of the spell was that it be used to make traps. This is the reasoning behind the poorly worded clause supposedly elimenating offensive uses of the spell. A trap is defensive. It is protective. The reason the 'no offensive' uses clause is such a poor idea is it creates questions like, "How does a spell know if it is being used in an offensive way? Is the spell sentient, and it just peversely refuses to use itself if in its opinion your use is offensive." It leaves the question of whether a usage of the spell is offensive or not up to the DM. Worse yet, whether something is offensive or not is circumstantial. If a player casts a symbol in his spellbook, at the time of the casting the symbol is defensive in nature. But if in combat, the player then opens his spell book and shows the symbol to his enemy, the spell is now offensive in nature.
3) The word offensive that people are arguing over should be one with a very clear meaning. The offensive clause literally means, "This spell cannot be employed as a weapon." Offensive here contrasts with ideas like protective and defensive. Unfortunately, the clear meaning of the word is in context shear nonsense, sense as I said before, this is a weaponized spell already. All uses of it are somewhat offensive in nature. It can never be a purely protective spell because it is proactive in nature, especially in the 'when viewed' mode.
4) Taking that altogether, I suggested that if the intent of the spell is for it to be used as a trap, reworking the spell so that it only worked if the surface it was cast on was not moved not only better achieved the design intent of the spell, but made the spell significantly easier to understand (so that a player understood before using the spell how the DM would most likely rule) and easier to arbitrate (so that the DM would need to use less judgement to rule consistantly).
I did not however claim that this is how the current wording of the spell works.
What the current wording of the spell means is anyone's guess.
