Craft Contingent Spell only has rules for things that affect you. So no, you can't have one that triggers on Wishporting or on a sphere of annihilation dropped into a Well of Many Worlds, because you aren't your demiplane or every sphere of annihilation or Well of Many Worlds in the multiverse.
You can place another spell upon your person so that it comes into effect under some condition you dictate when casting contingency. The contingency spell and the companion spell are cast at the same time. The 10-minute casting time is the minimum total for both castings; if the companion spell has a casting time longer than 10 minutes, use that instead.
The spell to be brought into effect by the contingency must be one that affects your person and be of a spell level no higher than one-third your caster level (rounded down, maximum 6th level).
Nowhere does it say that I couldn't allow it to trigger when someone wishports in...I think you may have misread the part about "must be a spell that affects your person (i.e. a personal spell, which timestop is)." However, I would also like to note that nowhere in my 3.5 players handbook does it say "maximum 6th level." Which means either one of two things, I have a misprinted, earlier version of the 3.5 players handbook, or the SRD is wrong...either way craft contingent spell allows you to have up to 9th level spells.
Ok, I think you're not seeing what I'm referencing in Craft Contingent Spell; it says " Triggers for contingent spells are usually events that happen to the bearer of the spell, and can include death, contracting disease, exposure to a breath weapon or to energy damage, falling, exposure to poison, exposure to a dangerous environment (trapped by fire, plunged underwater, and so forth), succumbing to sleep or fear effects, gaining negative levels, or being rendered helpless, deafened, or blinded." That's all. There are no rules for things that do not happen to the bearer of the spell. And yes, you have a misprint, because I'm looking at my PHB and it includes the note about maximums; can anyone else back me up on this so it's not just my word against Azrael's?
If your veils are immune to Disjunction, the Hive members are bringing Fine Tower Shields (which they can Wish into existence) because those grant total cover to their user and, by the same reasoning as your spell effects being protected by themselves, the Tower Shields have total cover as well. All non-targeted effects can no longer affect the HIVE. Which would also block his AMF you mention below, so I presume you don't actually want this to work. Number of veils is irrelevant; the HIVE generates an actually infinite number of members in a turn, and each can pull this trick.
I knew someone would mention the ol'tower shield trick one of these days. I'm sure there is a damaging aura (probably sonic) that I can have active on myself and widen widen widen until it would at least match the area of my AMF, in which case the tower shields (since any magical abilities of theirs will be suppressed) should easily be destroyed...also I hope you don't think a tower shield could get through the veils? The AMF yes, but the veils would destroy them immediately, no save.
Any suggestions on that damaging aura...it obviously has to be one that would deal damage as soon as they enter...I'm sure there's something out there.
It doesn't matter if you deal damage with an aura; it doesn't have LoE to the tower shield, and the only exception to total cover with a tower shield is the bit about targeting. Likewise your AMF has no LoE to the tower shield, because it's part of my equipment, so it retains its special qualities (if any; it doesn't need any, and in fact it's more efficient just to Wish thousands into existence at once). Now, you can DEFINITELY argue that this is a fucking retarded interpretation of the rules, and I'd agree with you. It's just that it's the same interpretation that would make your veils immune to disjunction, which is why I brought up the example; I'm trying to get us to agree on a dodgy issue which you mentioned as a possibility (you didn't endorse it wholeheartedly, and I thank you for that, I'm just trying to make the whole issue a definite conclusion). At any rate, the tower shields exist only to let the HIVE members do whatever they want until they start taking their actions, not to get through your veils' disjunction does that, or the specific spells that take down the layers.
They get plenty of actions; each member of the swarm is aware of everything every other member is, which means only one member needs to detect Azrael for the others to attack effectively. Remember, since it's fully capable of doing so, the HIVE is Wishporting an infinite number of vermin in for every wave. And it can do so for an arbitrarily large number of waves within a single round. Each wave has its first member cast True Seeing on itself and the rest drop an infinite number of Disjunctions on Azrael.
Yes but can they "share senses?" They still need to be able to target him...awareness isn't the same as 'that creature being able to use anther's senses for the purpose of resolving LoS and LoE.'
Does it matter? They're aware of where Azrael is, and Disjunction is an area effect so they don't NEED to target him. And LoE is EASILY taken care of by the fact that there are an infinite number of vermin standing right next to the one with senses.
Also I think it goes something like this...
1. A member of the swarm enters the 300ft mark, thus Azrael becomes aware of them, initiative is rolled, Azrael wins initiative (an assumption, but im pretty sure his 80ish initiative beats theirs).
Question: does Mind Blank stop Foresight? If so, Azrael never becomes aware of them because this all happens on the HIVE's surprise round. However, I don't think it does, so ok. I don't really care.
2. They have foresight so they all activate their immediate actions thus gaining infinite actions (how do they do this btw...I don't believe anyone explained how they actually gain infinite actions); Azrael cannot stop this.
3. They approach him and make it inside his AMF, however, at that moment all their infinite actions (I assume) will be nullified, including any contingencies they might have.
Here's where it falls apart. They do not approach. They appear right next to Azrael. That's where they start upon Wishporting in. And they have infinite actions because there are an infinite number of them, which isn't exactly an AMF-negatable effect.
4. Azrael's contingency activates because someone made it inside his field.
5. Since they no longer have infinite actions, and used up their immediate action for the turn Azrael completes his contingency and casts time stop. Within his time stop he first uses CoP to learn how many actions he will need to generate in order to beat them (lets face it, infinite is hypothetical, they have to stop generating actions at some point, which gives them x number of actions, if Azrael knows how many actions they have generated then he can generate X . X actions). Azrael then proceeds to generate that many actions, comes out of his time stop, and kills them all...all of them...everywhere...in all of existance...so they cannot generate any more on the next turn.
No, they don't have to use a finite number of actions. Actually, since they have infinitely many immediate actions and infinitely many spell slots from which to cast Greater Celerity, they just automatically get to go before he gets to do anything, and they obliterate him.
1. Azrael has an emanation that will destroy their tower shields (I think this is plausable, given the amount of spells out there, there has to be something...)
2. The H.I.V.E. did not, prior to battle, CoP how many actions they would need to generate in order to win the battle. If they did not Azrael does indeed beat H.I.V.E. If they did, it results in a paradox in which the only possible solution is a stalemate...and even so much as stalemating the H.I.V.E. isn't something just any Wizard can do.
I agree to the first, because arguing that a LoE-blocking effect protects itself as well is utterly ridiculous. Quite frankly, tower shields were never a serious argument (neither were the veils protecting themselves, I hope). As for the second, it doesn't need to, it just uses infinite actions. Seriously, it can just do that. It has a literally infinite number of vermin after its first round of existence. Each iteration of the HIVE is generated on the same turn the prior iteration was, and has even more actions and spells with which to generate the next iteration than did its progenitor iteration. Because it has more actions with every iteration, it can go through an infinite sequence of iterations within a finite timespan, and so after 1 round it has an infinite number of members.
The HIVE has an infinity of members on the instant of its creation. Azrael does not. Azrael has an arbitrarily large number of members at any given round, because unless I'm missing something, he doesn't gain more actions every iteration from new units than he expended creating them. So, actually, there are more units of the HIVE than there are of Azrael.
First of all, I thought the H.I.V.E. had like 4500 members or something, with the ability to gain exponentially more with respawning. Second of all Azrael can have them all the instant of his creation if he wanted to...it would be the first thing Azrael does after hes finished fusing all of his believers because he can do it all in another time-stream.
Its first iteration has 4500, but all that respawning happens in the
same turn as it was created. That very instant. There is a vertical line in the graph of "number of members of the HIVE" vs time.
So at that point it just becomes an argument about who existed first as a char...In fact Azrael basically forces H.I.V.E. to have existed before him in order to beat him because, if they do not, his prestidigitation contingency goes off as soon as someone tries to CoP information about him or anything he has created...read the 'inevitable defeat' section in my char notes (which, btw, did exist before any of these conversations began).
If that's the case, then it's more reasonable to assume the HIVE did exist first, since it can happen 11 levels earlier (same reasoning as Omniscificer vs PunPun before PunPun was level 1). Honestly, any FullCaster20 with all his defenses up can't be killed except by somebody killing him before those defenses went up, because it's trivial to get infinite actions (Example: Celerity yourself into Shapechange. Shapechange lets you change shape as a free action; turn into a Chronotyryn, which has Dual Actions and grants you Sorc spellcasting; cast Sanctum Greater Arcane Fusion, using your Chronotyryn 6th level spell slots with Versatile Spellcaster to get the slots without spending any real ones, and just shove Celerity into both slots. Whenever you run out of Chronotyryn slots, shapechange into a DIFFERENT Chronotyryn. That's just off the top of my head and I'm sure others can come up with better ideas. You don't actually need everything I just outlined; just an infinite supply of spell slots and either Dual Actions or Greater Arcane Fusion will be enough to keep things going for the rest of ever). Once you have infinite actions, you can force a stalemate just by never giving your opponent the opportunity to actually do anything.
