Defense against Forbiddance Damage?


Rules Questions


Is there any spell or ability that allows you to avoid or negate the alignment based damage taken by entering an area warded with a forbiddance spell?

What I'm wondering is if mind blank which prevents your alignment from being detected might work to negate the damage as in the field would be unable to detect your alignment and attack you.

Obviously the field might not work by detecting your alignment but is simply harmful to anyone of different alignment so that might be a moot point and I'm looking for other options.

I have a group of players who needs to move through an about a mile of chamber that is dimensionally locked and has alternating forbiddance effects every 60 feet.

Note that they will be disguised and observed by their enemeies so they can't simply heal up after each entry (or rest and recover) as that would give away the fact that they are not of the appropriate alignment.

Short of being the correct alignment how might they get through this? Are there methods of faking the correct alignment as far as the spell is concerned?

Thanks for any help.


I assume taking ten levels in Master Spy isn't exactly an option?


Undetectable Alignment hides alignments "from all forms of divination", and Forbiddance is an abjuration. Still, if divination is interpreted as detection, it'll work.
Corruption Resistance will negate some of the damage, but not enough.
Your best bet might be an Antimagic Field spell.


No, I'm afraid 10 levels of Master Spy isn't an option :)

Unfortunately neither is anti-magic field because the mind blank they have in place is necessary to keep them from being revealed to non-magical senses (their disguises are dependent on magic to work).

Anything that would cause them to be treated as LE (the alignment of the Forbiddance effects) should work, but I don't know what that would be. Limited Wish? Wish?

Sovereign Court

I'd say that the answer will probably have to be a macguffin. If they can all just travel to the sunken city of Phlobotinum, they'll find an appropriate number of the ancient amulets of Plot that allow their wearers to harmlessly weather alignment-based damage.


Finarin Panjoro wrote:

Is there any spell or ability that allows you to avoid or negate the alignment based damage taken by entering an area warded with a forbiddance spell?

Spell resistance will be the easiest.

There are forms of evasion for will saves, but they are less common in PF than in 3.5.

There are classes that will let you be treated as differing alignments.

You could magic jar something of the proper alignment and have it transport you...

As to mind blank.. neither it nor misdirection will help you here. It's not detecting your alignment. Instead it is effecting you based on alignment. Mind blank doesn't protect you from unholy blight or unholy word, nor will it from around 30 stacked level 21 forbiddance spells.

On a side note... that's a lot of forbiddance spells there... a mile of them? That seems a bit unrealistic.

-James


They're entering the Eye of Ba'al, the most heavily fortified place in all the planes (according to the Book of the Damned).

I figure Moloch (Archduke of Malebolge) having a few thousand years to place his defenses (and forbiddance being permanent) means he'd have figured out that spacing them apart by 10 feet would make it nearly lethal for any non-devil to enter and move across the chamber. (Which by my design is a circular chamber of descending tiers 3 miles high and 1 mile across surrounding the magical replica of the 9 layers of Hell which floats at the chambers center).

So it is a pretty extreme case.

I figured Mind Blank wouldn't cover it, but I thought I'd see if my opinion was wrong.

However James suggestion of spell resistance gave me the answer. Greater Spell Immunity . They know they're going to encounter the forbiddance zones and they can cast this on themselves before they enter the area (the duration will be three hours at a CL of 18).

Thanks all, that's what I needed!


Actually this raises another question: Would spell immunity- forbiddance allow them to planar travel within a forbiddance effect or merely make them immune to the damage component.

I mean it makes them immune to the spell, right? This could be important in terms of escaping.


Finarin Panjoro wrote:

Actually this raises another question: Would spell immunity- forbiddance allow them to planar travel within a forbiddance effect or merely make them immune to the damage component.

I mean it makes them immune to the spell, right? This could be important in terms of escaping.

The SR check is against the damage, so that's what the immunity lets them ignore.

Even with SR you cannot teleport in, etc.

-James


I am not sure on the specifics for the extra-planar stuff, but is it possible for them to go under the spell? I'm thinking earthglide or some-such. If they are being observed (and the tone of the conversation seems to heavily imply this) then yeah, SR is the best bet (though wish certainly has the power to possibly do what they want).

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