Shades and Trap the Soul

[Physiker]

Hey guys,

I'm new to this forum, and I'm foreign to this language so I beg your pardon.

I used this forum a lot for information gathering and power gaming. But now the time has arrived that there is no post which can clarify my following question:

Can I use Shades to simulate Trap the Soul ?
And if thats possible: Where is the soul (and body) in that case ?
Because if I understand Shades correctly, I do not need any material components or foci.

I hope my questions are understandable and that I did not make too much spelling and gramma mistakes.

Waiting for your opinions,
Phyiker

 

[Starbuck_II]

It only has an 80% chance of working on those who make will save to believe.

You don't need focus/material so I guess they are trapped in the shadows. You make a Quasi-real gem.

So target gets Will, (if suceed will then 80% chance to be affected), SR, and a second Will save to not be captured.

 

[Physiker]

Well, that is what I was thinking too, but in this case Trap the Soul would be better when you cast it via Shades than normal.

Because in the description of the spell stands :

Trap the soul forces a creature’s life force (and its material body) into a gem. The gem holds the trapped entity indefinitely or until the gem is broken and the life force is released, which allows the material body to reform. If the trapped creature is a powerful creature from another plane it can be required to perform a service immediately upon being freed. Otherwise, the creature can go free once the gem imprisoning it is broken.

And since a shadow can not be broken you would have captured the creature forever.

In the other case, when you summon a quasi real gem to trap the soul, then you could sell the item.
Let's see, you use this spell on a NPCs which is level 1 so it's quit unusual that he will ever has the chance to save. But on the other handside you now hold a 1000gp gem in your hand which could be sold to anyone who believes this gem was real.

I do not believe that any of this methodes was intended by the creators of this game.

 

[Physiker]

So after a few discussions with other players I came to this conclusion:

The spell Trap the Soul cast normaly involves an expensive gem as material component, since a normal material component should vanish after the casting, but is needed in this case as a container the spell renders the gem worthless. Otherwise you would not need to buy a gem but to rend one.

So if you cast Trap the Soul via Shades, you also summon a worthless something which looks like a gem and contains the soul of the victim.

I'm not sure if that's actually what the rules says but I will persent that as houserule to my group.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Sounds fine. I was going to posit allowing the caster to use any old rock off the ground and for the purposes of the Shades spell, it's as good as the gem. It's not like the hardness and hp of a gem is laid out in the regular case anyway, but if it really mattered in combat for some reason, the Shades version "gem" should have 80% the hp you'd assign to a real gem of that type.

Note there are other lower level spells where this issue can come up. For example, using shadow spells to mimic Contingency, with its doll.