Sage Advice Needed - Reverse Gravity Spell

[MarkB]

The best trap I've never actually used in play was a featureless, smooth-surfaced room with a sharply angled floor and ceiling, and reverse gravity covering half of it. A character would step into the field, fall up to the ceiling, roll up the steep incline and back out of the field, fall to the floor, roll down the steep incline back into the field - basically, a room-sized blender inflicting falling damage several times a round.

 

[Harzel]

As a DM, I also have impacted creatures/objects "launch" from the reverse gravity into the normal gravity. That means they go much higher than 100 feet in the air if there is no obstruction. They fall up for about one round (effectively falling 100 feet twice which takes about 5 seconds), then down for one round (again, 5 more seconds) and end up a bit above the floor, then up for another round to a lower max height, then down for a round, etc... I have the height decrease by 10 feet for every interval, in general, but things offering more air resistance will be decreasing their height swing by more each interval. As it only lasts a minute, at most, I have them take a full minute to settle in at 100 feet. I usually wing it, but the pattern for humanoids is usually something like:

Rd 1: Launch to 195 feet
Rd 2: Drop to 10 feet
Rd 3: Launch to 185 feet
Rd 4: Drop to 20 feet
Rd 5: Launch to 170 feet
Rd 6: Drop to 40 feet
Rd 7: I stop being so precise and say they're oscillating between 50 and 150 feet.
Rd 8: ... between 60 and 140 feet.
Rd 9: ... between 80 and 120 feet.
Rd 10: I have them settle in at roughly 100 feet.

I can't help thinking that at some point your PCs will try to turn this into a carnival attraction.

 

[Harzel]

It would really help if some extra verbiage had been added that stated, "All creatures who enter or start their turn in the affected area....".

Yes, AFAIK, every other spell for which that is the intent says so explicitly in some way.

Needless to day, this took up some 30 minutes of debate (and maybe a little arguing) of our game time.

You may want to consider agreeing with your players to limit in-game debate.

 

[jgsugden]

I can't help thinking that at some point your PCs will try to turn this into a carnival attraction.

Likely not. When a PC integral to a surprise storyline failed to attend a session at the last minute, I had to vamp a bit to keep the PCs from moving forward with the game. I had the PCs hauled before the king unexpectedly and had to defend their recent actions before the king. They'd been attacked in town and had killed their foes, but they'd used typical PC tools to do so - fireballs, flaming spheres, thunderwaves, charm spells, etc... It turned into a fun pure RP session where the Lawful party members were at odds with their chaotic counterparts. It also spawned a lot of lingering inside jokes that I evoke by just slipping in a few legal words here and there...

So no, they would not be thinking carnival games. They would be too worried that a villager class action.

 

[Mouseferatu]

The best trap I've never actually used...

I am so stealing this.