Ring of Blades spell

[Oryan77]

Ring of Blades is in the Spell Compendium book. The description text says that "at the beginning of your turn" the blades deal damage to people in it's 5' range around the caster.

A player of mine was saying that "beginning of your turn" means on the casters initiative and at the beginning of his initiative only. Meaning, it only hurts someone if that person is already in the threatened square. If the caster has to move (even a 5' move) to get the blades in range of an enemy, then the blades do not hurt the person because you had to move first..so the blades didn't deal damage at the "beginning" of your turn.

To keep the game going I agreed that he might be correct. But now that I think about it more carefully, that doesn't make any sense. The spell is a 3rd lvl spell. With his ruling, the only time you'll deal damage is if a guy moves up to attack and can't move again out of range. After that, he can simply make 5' steps after each full attack to keep the blades from hurting him. If the caster approaches someone, the enemy just has to keep making 5' steps each round to force the caster to also make a 5' step which causes the blades to not attack at the beginning of your turn. Seems like a pointless spell to be 3rd level and only deal 1d6 +1 dmg a level (max +10 points).

Is he correct about this?

 

[Vegepygmy]

Yes.

 

[shilsen]

As Vegepygmy said, your player's correct.

And it's more useful than you think. The only time an attacker has the option to full attack and 5 ft step away is if the caster chooses to move up to the enemy and attack. If the caster doesn't do so, the enemy has to move in and attack, and take the damage on the caster's turn. This applies to all enemies who have to move up to the caster and attack. Since the caster is a spellcaster, he's got the option of staying at a distance and casting spells, which many enemies will not, which means they'll have to either close to melee and take the damage, or stay at a distance.

One downside to remember, however, is that if your caster moves to an ally to heal him or needs an ally to move to him to heal him, the ally will take the damage at the start of the caster's next turn if he can't get out of there.

 

[SteveC]

Ring of Blades was one of my warmage's favorite spells, because it was a "don't stand so close to me" sort of effect. For a spellcaster that wants to stand off and blast opponents from range, it really works like a charm once creatures start to get full attacks. If an opponent approaches you, they'll start off by making only one attack. Then, on your turn, you do ring of blades damage, and then can pull out, say, a fireburst, and clean house with them. Then you can take a 5' step back.

At that point your opponent can step in and make a full attack on you, but then they're stuck once again, because they can't back out.

And honestly, if one enemy is still alive after that point, they are probably way out of your league anyway.

One other thing to note: the spell also does damage to anyone that is adjacent to you when you first cast the spell. That way, you can use it to inflict damage to anyone that's right on top of you.

--Steve

 

[Infiniti2000]

Ring of Blades is in the Spell Compendium book. The description text says that "at the beginning of your turn" the blades deal damage to people in it's 5' range around the caster. ... Is he correct about this?

Yes, unless you decide to use the spell as it was originally printed (with errata) in the Complete Arcane. There, it's "at the end of your turn". That version doesn't suck.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

I find that with a ring of blades AND a fire shield going, people tend to leave you alone in melee.

DS