"The spell to be brought into effect by the contingency must be one that affects your person..."
Does this mean you must be a legal target? Or that it has to be a personal range spell?
One of my players wants to have breath of life pre-set to cast on him whenever he dies. Re-reading the spell text, however, makes me think that maybe that wouldn't work after all.
So, is it legal? Would the contingency potentially save his life? Or would it just leave his corpse with a touch charge that will never be used?
What are the specific limitations of contingency? Besides teleport, what are some good spells that can be used with it?
Breath of life should work well as a contingency, IMO.
Heal has been used quite a lot as contingencies both by players in my campaigns and by BBEG-type enemies (even spellcasters from published adventures sometimes have Heal as a contingency, typically set to go off when their hit points reaches some level or when they are affected by one of the conditions Heal can remove).
That is legal.
If they wanted it to be restricted to "Personal" spells, then I'm fairly sure that they would have been more explicit, in much the same way that brewing potions is restricted from using "Personal" spells.
The phrase "affects your person" means any spell that affects you. Teleport is a common choice, as is Word of Recall. Heal, Breath of Life, also good choices.
But, for example, you cannot say "I cast Finger of Death with a Contingency that it will go off and target any creature that damages me". That would definitely be NOT "affecting your person".
Can you strap yourself with a delayed blast fireball targeting yourself? Can you make a contingency suicide vest?
Can you strap yourself with a delayed blast fireball targeting yourself? Can you make a contingency suicide vest?
Fireball doesn't target anything, being an area spell and all. I imagine you could contingency a flesh to stone spell (to keep people from looting your corpse) or a disintegrate spell (to keep your body from being desecrated/made into undead).
I wonder if you could hit yourself with a targeted chain lightning and have the secondary bolts hit the creatures closest to your corpse (THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!).
I think my favorite would be magic jar. Somebody kills you, but before your body "dies" your soul is put into the magic jar. You then take over somebody else's body and keep preparing/casting magic jar as long as it takes you to get your original body back.
Short of getting hit by a dispel magic effect, this would effectively make you immortal, would it not?
Can you strap yourself with a delayed blast fireball targeting yourself? Can you make a contingency suicide vest?Fireball doesn't target anything, being an area spell and all. I imagine you could contingency a flesh to stone spell (to keep people from looting your corpse) or a disintegrate spell (to keep your body from being desecrated/made into undead).
I wonder if you could hit yourself with a targeted chain lightning and have the secondary bolts hit the creatures closest to your corpse (THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!).
But wouldn't a delayed blast fireball meet the requirements of: "The spell to be brought into effect by the contingency must be one that affects your person..."?
But wouldn't a delayed blast fireball meet the requirements of: "The spell to be brought into effect by the contingency must be one that affects your person..."?Can you strap yourself with a delayed blast fireball targeting yourself? Can you make a contingency suicide vest?Fireball doesn't target anything, being an area spell and all. I imagine you could contingency a flesh to stone spell (to keep people from looting your corpse) or a disintegrate spell (to keep your body from being desecrated/made into undead).
I wonder if you could hit yourself with a targeted chain lightning and have the secondary bolts hit the creatures closest to your corpse (THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!).
Perhaps. Still, I can see GMs ruling that it affects ONLY your person.
Have a villians with contingency fireball + necklace of fireballs. Even better to have hit use lots of fire resistance.
There's always the possibility to use it as a counter measure. For instance if you have a suspicion that what you're about to fight could use a Maze spell, why not Contingency a Dimensional Anchor on yourself. You could word it to "If anything would cause me to unwillingly change planes a Dimensional Anchor will activate, preventing it". Perhaps a Resilient Sphere could go off if you're expecting some sort of ambush.
Of course your DM will have to play the monsters or NPCs as not knowing this, which I would hope they would.
Of course your DM will have to play the monsters or NPCs as not knowing this, which I would hope they would.
Hah! I have the players hand me an envelope with their contingency written inside it. I don't know it so I can't metagame it.
It's not that I would metagme it. It's that I would metagame myself. I would start by saying "Oh, if my BBEG prepares that spell, it will trigger the Ccontingency" followed by "If I don't prepare it, then I'm metagaming and punishing my player" followed by "if I do prepare it, then I'm metagaming and punishing my BBEG".
All of which is followed by "Now what? What would I have done if I didn't know about the Contingency? I might have prepared the bad spell. I might have changed my mind and prepared something else. But, now that I'm dwelling on it, which should I do?"
Follow that with "OK, I'll prepare it because my player went to all the trouble to set this up, it would be remiss of me to never give him the chance." And this thought is accompanied by guilt that I'm metagaming, and punishing the BBEG, but I tell myself I'm doing the right thing.
And then comes the fight, and I find myself asking the same sets of questions about whether the BBEG should cast the bad spell, or save it for next round. When is the right time? What if I wait for the dramatic moment and then someone crits my BBEG and I never get to do it? Maybe I should do it now?
Blah, blah, blah.
I headgame myself too much. It's just easier if I don't know - then I can make my encounters however I want with no headgames, metagames. or advil.
How the hell did I get Ninja'd by a Terrasque!?!? lol
It's a Stealthy tarrasque. With HiPS...
i have a bit of an issue with allowing spells that affect your person to work on dead characters, other than that any spell that can be targeted affect the caster either as a target or a personal spell should work.
There's always the possibility to use it as a counter measure. For instance if you have a suspicion that what you're about to fight could use a Maze spell, why not Contingency a Dimensional Anchor on yourself...
I don't think that this is legal.
Contingency goes off as a reaction to whatever situation you describe, not as an interrupt. Also you must be able to discern this condition "internally" ("being hit by" / "being reduced to less than n HP") not "externally" ("someone is about to cast spell x on me") because that is basically augury style.
Being affected by a maze spell would be a legal descrption, but you would already be in the maze when your anchor fires off...
There's always the possibility to use it as a counter measure. For instance if you have a suspicion that what you're about to fight could use a Maze spell, why not Contingency a Dimensional Anchor on yourself...I don't think that this is legal.
Contingency goes off as a reaction to whatever situation you describe, not as an interrupt.
I'm not so sure about that. Interrupting something and saving your butt is kind of the point of contingency.
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Contingency mentions that "the conditions needed to bring the spell into effect must be clear, although they can be general. In all cases, the contingency immediately brings into effect the companion spell, the latter being cast instantaneously when the prescribed circumstances occur.
It seems to me that *when* exactly the spell takes effect depends more on your wording than anything else.
Contingency spell: Death Ward
Trigger: When someone casts a magical death effect that would directly affect me."
When someone starts to cast a magical death effect.
When someone targets me with a magical death effect.
When someone uses a magical death effect.
The wording of the spell doesn't limit the circumstances in any way, which makes this interesting...
Contingency spell teleport:
Trigger: Teleport me to the treasury in my castle when someone enters it without my permission.
Contingency spell Nondetection
Trigger: When someone attempts to scry me.
When someone attempts to use a divination spell on me.
Actually, without a limiting factor on conditions, you could totally manipulate the spell just to find out when a condition occurred :/