Questions of D&D (LoE problems)

[archangel.arcanis]

Um, up to one 10ft square per level means it has a maximum area of one 10ft square per level.  
There is no restriction given on the shape or total area apart from a maximum cap.  

EDIT:
I can place the ring across the corner of a 10x10ft square.  That will fit regardless of whether you agree I can shape the wall or not. 

You could shape it if it said that you could "create one section of up to 10 square feet" not "one 10-foot square per level"

For putting it over the corner that should be ok unless there is something that I'm not aware of, which is very possible since I haven't read much on the ring gates.

I am trying to create a hole in the mechanics after all.  Edge cases are where it happens at. 

Yes, yes, I am deliberately poking the rules and looking for a problem.  If only to come up with a better idea of how to explain the problem. 

You aren't poking the rules you are deliberately seeing what you want and not what is there. This is the same as a friend who insisted that spellbook mastery let you spontaneously cast the spells you picked with it despite it clearly not stating anything close to that.

[jseah]

I don't think we're reading the spell description the same way.  
Because I'm reading "one 10-foot square per level" as an area of 10x10xCL sq. ft.  (IE. up to an area of one 10ft square per CL)
I think you are reading it as "10-foot squares, up to one per CL"
 - I also note that under your reading, tunnels with circular cross sections cannot be blocked at all with wall of force.  Good to know.  


Well, the corner should work, so the shaping problem is moot either way.  

EDIT: alternatively, I could just use wall of fire, which won't block Ring Gates.  Easy enough to be immune to it. 

[nijineko]

transdimensional spell/psionics only work into trans/extra dimensional spaces from the material plane, they most unfortunately do not work from an extra/trans dimensional space into the prime material.

well, if the area is "up to (x)", then it can in theory be smaller. after all, we can use walls of force to seal off irregular passages underground... (at least every dm i've ever had allowed it. probably with a spellcraft check to mess with the variables) so as long as it is flat and vertical (at casting), there might be something to this idea.

[Rymosrac]

I have no more magic answer for flip-flop cases than the next guy - but the AMF inside a portable hole doesn't look like one to me.

An open portable hole provides a portal to an extradimensional space. How that barrier interacts with immovable effects (or movable ones for that matter) is certainly a gray area. What isn't a gray area is whether normal magical effects (like, say, a portal generated by a bag of holding) can function in an AMF. Thus the portal inside the bag cannot activate in the first place while the AMF is in effect, and will close if open when the effect is created. You could still conceivably try to open the bag end of the portal,. but the bag would be unable to open the portal end inside the extradimensional pocket, since it resides inside an AMF.

[jseah]

Even if I hook my Ring Gate over one corner, the restriction on Wall of Force being vertical makes for some seriously weird questions.  

Since the other end of my Ring Gate could easily be pointing perfectly horizontal (before I put the corner through), there's no way the corner of the Wall of Force will be vertical when it comes out the other end.  

^Rymosrac; nijineko:
The AMF in a portable hole problem has been answered.  Mainly that AMF can't get out of the extradimensional space so there's no problem. 

[Rymosrac]

So essentially the thought exercise comes down to how D&D treats objects as complete and whole entities - a chain being a single object instead of a series of link objects, or a body of water being a single object instead of a mass of water molecules and whatnot - which has always been the point of detail where I see the system break down. It's all in uncovered territory as best I can tell, outside the intended purview of the game system as published. Not that it should be, just that it is.

As for the wall of force, I'd adjudicate it as the check for being vertical occurring only at casting. Though one certainly feels inclined to ask WHAT they intended for it to be vertical with regards to. The caster? The local gravity well? What about planes with no gravity or subjective gravity? Those are just the obvious questions as they occur to me, and they're not new.

[Beltendu]

Yeah, I think I agree with Rymosrac on this one - once it's cast, go to town with the Ring Gates.  Of course, I've generally felt the vertical restriction was a little silly anyway.  It's not like it lasts long enough to be useful as a permanent floor or ceiling anyway.

[archangel.arcanis]

i think the vertical only was intended to keep force cage useful. There are lots of stupid things that they never addressed even all the way from the PHB in 3.0 that have carried over. the best you can do is hope the DM has a brain to compensate for the designers ignoring the obvious.

Also a note that may help with the wall of force is the precedent of the ring of force shield being made with wall of force.

[jseah]

And if it's not vertical afterwards, you now have a "mobile" wall of force.  In that if I rotate or move the exit gate around, the horizontal bit of wall of force will easily move/rotate with it (otherwise the angle doesn't fit and you have a "bent" wall of force), means I could hit people/things with a wall of force by moving the exit end of the ring gate. 

Which brings up the question of which end is the stationary one?  Is it possible to cast the wall of force through a ring gate such that the corner is the one that's vertical and immobile, while all the other bits are the ones that can move?

[Saxony]

And if it's not vertical afterwards, you now have a "mobile" wall of force.

The properties "vertical" and "immobile" do not imply each other. Thus, a nonvertical Wall of Force is not necessarily mobile.

You meant to type the quoted section?

[jseah]

They do not imply each other.  Correct. 


However, placing a Ring Gate over one corner means when it exits the other side of the Ring Gate, that corner there is now moveable.  By moving the exit Ring Gate.  (since it comes out of the exit regardless of where the exit is)

[Saxony]

They do not imply each other.  Correct. 


However, placing a Ring Gate over one corner means when it exits the other side of the Ring Gate, that corner there is now moveable.  By moving the exit Ring Gate.  (since it comes out of the exit regardless of where the exit is)

@1st paragraph: Agreed.

@2nd paragraph: Hmmm.... I'll think about that.

[Amechra]

Well...

The thing is, you could move the corner of that wall of force. However, from the point of view of the portal being a whatever, the wall is not moving at all.

The way to think of it is that the Ring Gate is moving, but the wall isn't.

Reminds me of something that would make a literally impenetrable wall. It would be a portal whose exit and entrance where both in the exact same spot, facing the exact same direction.

You can't go through, because you get in your own way.

Makes one hell of a mirror too.

[jseah]

The thing is, you could move the corner of that wall of force. However, from the point of view of the portal being a whatever, the wall is not moving at all.

The way to think of it is that the Ring Gate is moving, but the wall isn't.

It is moving.  I could use the exit portal to push my wall of force into a stone wall.  Or heck, into another wall of force or even itself!

Conversely, I could put my exit ring gate right in front of and facing a flat stone wall, then drop my entrance ring gate over the corner, neatly pushing the corner right into the wall. 

[veekie]

Given the size of ring gates you would be getting a long, baseball bat-like plane of force.
Sounds like fun.

[Amechra]

Alright. Let me clarify.

Relative to itself, the Wall of Force is not moving. From the Wall's point of view, the world around it is warping.

However, from our point of view, the wall does seem to move. Keep in mind though that we're dealing with portals here, so our pitiful human views on motion are not truly applicable.

[The_Mad_Linguist]

There's a preferred reference frame; the battlemat/grid.  Which the DM sets.

[nijineko]

it's all relative.

(to what the dm wants.)

[Amechra]

There's a preferred reference frame; the battlemat/grid.  Which the DM sets.

it's all relative.

(to what the dm wants.)

Yeah, from the DM's perspective, the wall isn't moving, the book he just threw at you is.

[jseah]

Amechra:
Actually, I think that's correct.  I think I must have been looking at portable holes that way.  

Not sure if anyone is going to shoot that down.  A 12k gp item that can warp space in a way spells cannot?  ...  XD


Any idea on what happens when a wall of force is "warped" in a way that ends up with it inside a wall?