Wall of Thorns - Overpowered? How to balance...

[Quartz]

Are you allowing characters with Evasion etc their saving throws? Secondly, if the character is known for this tactic, then enemies might try to engage her where she can't use it. Flying enemies are one obvious tactic. Withdrawing and igniting the wall is another.

 

[rvalle]

Since Sunbeam has a duration, it would certainly be a supportable ruling that the blindness lasts only for that duration or until dispelled. I don't see anything in the description that indicates that the blindness is either Permanent or Instantaneous.

I started a thread about this a while back and the consensus was that the effect was permanent as per the low level Blindness spell. One issue with linking the blindness effect to the spell duration is that the spell ends after the caster uses up all the sun beams. I suppose could link it to the 1 round/level duration.

Potions of remove blindness are pretty reasonable treasure for any number of intelligent opponents who are entitled to drinkable treasure--including giants. (And dragons, demons, devils, etc). There are quite a few blinding effects in the game and a way to get rid of them can be important. And at the levels that parties can cast Sunbeam (it's level 7 so you should generally not see it until level 13), the non-intelligent monsters that are high enough CR that it is reasonable to expect them to be a threat are generally advanced and templated enough to have reasonable defenses against sunbeam (the reflex save negates the blindness).

I'm running the Worlds Largest Dungeon so both characters and monsters don't have access to as many recourses as they would in the outside world. I just can't bring myself to say 'Oh, I guess the Giants has some potions of remove blindness'.

That said, I wonder how you're running sunbeam. As I read it, you cast the spell and nothing happens. The next round you can spend a standard action to conjure a beam. You can repeat it until you run out of beams, but I've always found it to be too slow to be of really frequent use. Sunburst, on the other hand... the huge area of effect can make it difficult to target in indoor situations or skirmish battlefield conditions. It is, however, frequently a battle ender--a scroll of sunburst finished off the final battle of the Siege of Brindol in our Red Hand of Doom game in the first round. And it finished off a nasty ambush in the most recent level 18 game I played.

Hmm, I see what you are saying about getting a beam on the first round. Eh... I let her do it and I don't see enough there to take it way next time she does it. It would be a strange spell (the only one?) that didn't allow the effect to take place the round you cast it.

At the time she was using it she was Improved Invisible with blockers in front of her. She would blast 2-3 Giants, blinding them, and then moving to a new location with a new line of fire. Next round do the same. The save for the Giants was hard to make and she blinded all 5 of the Fire Giants they were currently fighting.


Anyway, to get this back on topic These are both spells that are minor annoyances to a full party but very bad to a typical group of straight non-classed or non-spell casting classed monsters. I'm sure there are many more... flesh to stone... bestow curse, the already mentioned Blindness spell all come to mind.

rv

 

[Nifft]

In my experience, monsters die when they fight PCs. So long term effects aren't all that big of a deal. If your monsters are fighting the PCs twice, it's kinda cool that the effects of their first fight linger on... but in a dungeon environment, might not the blind Fire Giants have already been killed and eaten by some stronger foe? And their corpses re-animated into fireproof skeletons?

Cheers, -- N

 

[ericpat]

In my experience, monsters die when they fight PCs. So long term effects aren't all that big of a deal. If your monsters are fighting the PCs twice, it's kinda cool that the effects of their first fight linger on... but in a dungeon environment, might not the blind Fire Giants have already been killed and eaten by some stronger foe? And their corpses re-animated into fireproof skeletons?

Does that work? The fireproof part?

I ask because I thought It was thwarted by this:

Special Qualities
A skeleton loses most special qualities of the base creature. It retains any extraordinary special qualities that improve its melee or ranged attacks. A skeleton gains the following special qualities...

Is there something else that I'm overlooking that lets that work?

 

[Cintra]

The red dragon skeleton in the SRD has fire immunity, so I think the fire giant skeletons would, too.

 

[Nifft]

The red dragon skeleton in the SRD has fire immunity, so I think the fire giant skeletons would, too.

Yep. I forget the exact chain of rules that allows this -- maybe someone else has it handy?

Cheers, -- N

 

[rvalle]

In my experience, monsters die when they fight PCs. So long term effects aren't all that big of a deal. If your monsters are fighting the PCs twice, it's kinda cool that the effects of their first fight linger on... but in a dungeon environment, might not the blind Fire Giants have already been killed and eaten by some stronger foe? And their corpses re-animated into fireproof skeletons?

Cheers, -- N

There is actually a lot of this in our game. The party hits a big group of bad guys, fight till nearly out of spells/HP's and run away. They rest up (at a safe place) and come back to find the bad guys have changed their SOP (Guards and teams ready to attack or move around to the rear/gone (wiped out by something else or moved elsewhere), or ready to parlay.

(Ponders...) in this case there are 5 blind giants out of a group of about 15. The 3 captains (with fighter levels) and their Queen (with a few levels of Rogue) still around. The party weakened the Giants rivals (Trolls that have been wished to have fire resist, improved AC, SR, Regen...)to the point that the remaining Giants went in and wiped them out. There isn't anything around to challenge the Giants... except the party.

In fact... they have just ambushed the party (by leaping out of a river of lava hoping to grapple and drag the weak small pests into the cleansing fire...) as they retreat from fighting Gargantuan Fiendish Wyverns. The next game should be interesting.

 

[Doug Sundseth]

I started a thread about this a while back and the consensus was that the effect was permanent as per the low level Blindness spell. One issue with linking the blindness effect to the spell duration is that the spell ends after the caster uses up all the sun beams. I suppose could link it to the 1 round/level duration.

That thread was either before my time at ENWorld or out of my ken. Without rehashing that issue, I don't think it's facially unreasonable to use any of the following:

1) The blindness lasts for the duration of the spell. As I noted, I think this is the strongest interpretation. As you noted, there seem to be varying opinions on that. This would be pretty much like treating the blindness here like I treat the blindness from Glitterdust (whose wording is also ambiguous as to its duration, though I didn't notice that till just now*.)

2) The blindness is permanent, like the blindness from Blindness/Deafness. Note that in this case a Dispel Magic will end the effect. (A limited-use Dispel Magic is probably more supportable in general treasure than a limited-use Cure Blindness/Deafness.)

3) The blindness is instantaneous, like the damage from this spell. (I suppose that you could rule that the damage from this spell has a duration too, based on the wording, but I wouldn't.) In this case, only a spell that will cure the condition will stop the effect.

I don't think it's obvious which of those interpretations is correct, since the description is pretty limited.

* "...causing creatures to become blinded and visibly outlining invisible things for the duration of the spell" can be parsed as "...(causing creatures to become blinded and visibly outlining invisible things) for the duration of the spell" or as "...(causing creatures to become blinded) and (visibly outlining invisible things for the duration of the spell)". The former seems the more natural reading to me, but neither is precluded by the way the description is written.

 

[Zelc]

1) The blindness lasts for the duration of the spell. As I noted, I think this is the strongest interpretation. As you noted, there seem to be varying opinions on that. This would be pretty much like treating the blindness here like I treat the blindness from Glitterdust (whose wording is also ambiguous as to its duration, though I didn't notice that till just now*.)

Well, the spell duration ends when all beams are exhausted. So shooting your last beam automatically removes the blindness from everyone you've already blinded? That doesn't really make sense. Honestly, there are plenty of permanent ways to blind people, and for a 7th level spell, it's not too powerful.

 

[rvalle]

* "...causing creatures to become blinded and visibly outlining invisible things for the duration of the spell" can be parsed as "...(causing creatures to become blinded and visibly outlining invisible things) for the duration of the spell" or as "...(causing creatures to become blinded) and (visibly outlining invisible things for the duration of the spell)". The former seems the more natural reading to me, but neither is precluded by the way the description is written.

Hah, that is interesting. We've never read it as other then the blindness fades when the glittering does.

I always like seeing others viewpoints on things, though it does make for a confusing game.

Thanks,

rv