If you cast one of the Pit family spells and after your opponents fall in, seal off the top with a flat wall of stone, what happens when the floor of the pit rises up?
How much damage should be applied and what happens to the wall?
I am inclined to do one of two things.
1) Same damage as the fall and the wall is rubble, turning the area into difficult terrain.
2) The creatures in the pit take as much damage as it takes to break the wall (similar to falling on another creature) and the wall is rubble, turning the area into difficult terrain.
Thoughts?
I pulled this combo on a white dragon with good success. The wall was 18 inches thick; the GM described it as fracturing with blood oozing out of the cracks.
That is to say #2; though if thick enough I wouldn't expect the wall of stone to be much more than a bit raised/fractured afterwards.
Create Pit creates an extradimensional space. If that extradimensional space disappeared and there was no adjacent open space, I'd probably treat it like Blink -- you get shunted to the nearest open space and take 1d6 damage per 5' of shunting.
You can't cast Wall of stone that way. It has to be vertical and anchored on at least one vertical point.
Core book, page 367
"The wall created need not be vertical, nor rest upon any firm foundation; however, it must merge with and be solidly supported by existing stone"This leads me to believe that the wall can be created horizontally, as long as two sides merg into existing stone (such as the floor or walls of stone buildings).
Create Pit creates an extradimensional space. If that extradimensional space disappeared and there was no adjacent open space, I'd probably treat it like Blink -- you get shunted to the nearest open space and take 1d6 damage per 5' of shunting.
If the spell didn't describe the bottom of the pit rising up, bringing everything back to ground level, I would tend to agree, but with the current description, I would have a problem with making it a shunt.
If the spell didn't describe the bottom of the pit rising up, bringing everything back to ground level, I would tend to agree, but with the current description, I would have a problem with making it a shunt.
That's your right, of course. But the majority of spells like Dimension Door, Maze, Blink, Passwall, Ethereal Jaunt, etc. just shunt you off more-or-less harmlessly, so I prefer to use those as a guide to what the intent is supposed to be.
Are there any counterexamples? (E.g. spells where it says that a creature takes a lot of damage if the spell ends in a solid object.)
My guess would be to apply the cave-in rules assuming the creature is in the bury zone. It's not exact, but it's pretty close.
Cave-ins and collapsing tunnels are extremely dangerous. Not only do dungeon explorers face the danger of being crushed by tons of falling rock, but even if they survive they might be buried beneath a pile of rubble or cut off from the only known exit. A cave-in buries anyone in the middle of the collapsing area, and then sliding debris damages anyone in the periphery of the collapse. A typical corridor subject to a cave-in might have a bury zone with a 15-foot radius and a 10-foot-wide slide zone extending beyond the bury zone. A weakened ceiling can be spotted with a DC 20 Knowledge (engineering) or DC 20 Craft (stonemasonry) check. Remember that Craft checks can be made untrained as Intelligence checks. A dwarf can make such a check if he simply passes within 10 feet of a weakened ceiling.
A weakened ceiling might collapse when subjected to a major impact or concussion. A character can cause a cave-in by destroying half the pillars holding up the ceiling.
Characters in the bury zone of a cave-in take 8d6 points of damage, or half that amount if they make a DC 15 Reflex save. They are subsequently buried. Characters in the slide zone take 3d6 points of damage, or no damage at all if they make a DC 15 Reflex save. Characters in the slide zone who fail their saves are buried.
Characters take 1d6 points of nonlethal damage per minute while buried. If such a character falls unconscious, he must make a DC 15 Constitution check each minute. If it fails, he takes 1d6 points of lethal damage each minute until freed or dead.