Shrink Item Question

[Harmon]

My wizard is considering items to take on a long trip and I was thinking about how best to travel, when I noticed a spell- Shrink Item.

He's 10th lvl with Extend Spell so that could easily push the duration of the spell into 30 dys- long enough for the trip.

The question is- can he load a (all items are non magical, so lets not worry about that) chest with food, clothes, etc and Shrink them (plural) down, or would all the things in the chest be considered as seperate items for the purpose of this spell, thus making him cast the spell many, many times.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

I'd rule that the chest takes everything along with it when it shrinks, otherwise you'd end up with some odd occurrences, like Casting Shrink item on a jelly donut resulting in a rapidly disappearing piece of dough and an explosion of jelly.

 

[shilsen]

I'd rule the same as Patryn of Elvenshae. Seems like a nice use of an underused spell.

 

[Harmon]

I'd rule that the chest takes everything along with it when it shrinks, otherwise you'd end up with some odd occurrences, like Casting Shrink item on a jelly donut resulting in a rapidly disappearing piece of dough and an explosion of jelly.

Copy that.

Can you image the mess that would create? Never mind.

Is there anyone with any other thoughts on the subject, so far everyone agrees with me on this plan.

Thanks for your thoughts. I love a thread that works.

 

[Shadowdweller]

The question is- can he load a (all items are non magical, so lets not worry about that) chest with food, clothes, etc and Shrink them (plural) down, or would all the things in the chest be considered as seperate items for the purpose of this spell, thus making him cast the spell many, many times.

My tendancy as a DM would be to rule that it does not affect contents, for balance reasons. Underused the spell may be, underpowered it is not.

Jelly donuts? D&D? Logic? Somehow magic recognizes what is considered a discrete object and what is not. Since apparently other compound objects can be targetted by other spells.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

How would allowing such a spell to shrink the contents of a chest along with the chest be unbalancing?

Can you think of two or three really egregious exploits this would allow?

 

[Shadowdweller]

It's not so much a matter of that potential use being unbalancing in and of itself, but it adds up. Consider the following:

- This potential use would supercede (or at least drastically reduces) the need for those extradimensional carrying devices...prices of which range over 10,000gp in cost.

Among the potential uses we ALREADY have for the spell:
- Reduction of single objects either way too large or way too heavy to normally be carried even in a bag of holding (i.e. a boulder)

- Potential to carry objects not normally easy to carry (such as a pool of water or a burning torch)

- Various potent attack combinations based on returning said objects to previous size.

- A potent disarming tool (giant's club becomes the size of a small stick, but with a cloth-like consistency)

Notwithstanding the amount of grief caused by interpreting "One touched object" to actually mean many touched objects.

 

[Thanee]

Well, you can already shrink an "object" composed of several "sub-objects", that is a burning campfire. So, it's pretty obvious to me, that this would work as well.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Shadowdweller]

Well, you can already shrink an "object" composed of several "sub-objects", that is a burning campfire. So, it's pretty obvious to me, that this would work as well.

But then again, the spell description SPECIFICALLY addresses that particular case.

 

[Thanee]

Well, they could hardly cover all cases there. It's for us to extrapolate properly.

I still think it's reasonable to assume, that his would work. A chest is one object and the stuff containt within - the content of the chest - is part thereof for this purpose.

Of course, you cannot get something from the chest to normal size without breaking the whole spell then.

Bye
Thanee