Here's a situation that is about to be faced.
I possess a character with a cloak of etherealness along with a bag full of some thirty bottles of poison. What I want to know is, is it possible for an ethereal character to make an attack against an opponent in this fashion? The ethereal character moves up to a solid target and makes an attack to shove the bag into the body of the targeted creature and then solidify therefore entrapping the bag and it's contents inside the target? If so, what is the mechanics for that specific attack? What kind of damage would a bag do to the body? What kind of damage is done to the bottles? Worse, can an ethereal attacker do the same thing with a weapon?
All answers and opinions are greatly appreciated! Thanks!
Lich
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Either the bag would just stay in the Ethereal plane indefinitely, or when the cloak was switched off it would just slide to the nearest open space and fall on the ground.
No, the rules typically don't allow you to "cheat" objects inside of creatures' bodies or other objects. You also cannot teleport a knife into someone's heart, summon a water elemental inside their lungs, or similar actions unless a spell specifically allows you to do so. Other, similar, disallowed tactics include teleporting someone into the sky so they fall to their deaths, or the old classic of summoning a whale in midair above your enemies to crush them.
In your example, the bag of poison would be "shunted" into the nearest unoccupied space, likely landing at your intended victim's feet, or just next to them.
So even with the character holding on to the bag solidifies, that bag does not remain within the target? OH!!!!! So the only way for an object to solidify within the body of a character is by completely s#~#ting off the magic in someway... Via Dispel magic, anti magic shells or something like that, right? Then the fail safe of that spell where it sends the bad to expelled from the body or it being forced to stay in the ethereal plane is prevented! Would that be the case?
So even with the character holding on to the bag solidifies, that bag does not remain within the target? OH!!!!! So the only way for an object to solidify within the body of a character is by completely s%!+ting off the magic in someway... Via Dispel magic, anti magic shells or something like that, right? Then the fail safe of that spell where it sends the bad to expelled from the body or it being forced to stay in the ethereal plane is prevented! Would that be the case?
No, it would not be the case. Consider it an impossibility of the game world physics for an ethereal (or otherwise 'not solid') object to materialize within a living body.
wow, that word in the middle with the symbols was saposed to be "shutting"
sorry about that all!
No, dispelling a spell generally works the same as ending it voluntarily (see the fly spell's description of what happens when that spell is dispelled). It is debatable whether an antimagic field would have any effect on etherealness at all, since an ethereal creature is on another plane of existence, and usually only spells that specifically say they work across that boundary (such as those that generate force effects) do so. Moreover, the "shunting" effect is not so much a built-in safety mechanism of the spell, but a general rule designed to prevent exactly the kind of tactic you're attempting, as well as a variety of other uncomfortable situations (such as accidentally teleporting oneself inside a big rock). This rule also avoids having to figure out in any greater detail what happens when two objects try to share the same space (how much damage does placing a sandwich inside of someone do? what if it goes directly in the stomach? what if only half of it is in the stomach? what rolls determine this? etc, etc.)
Abjuration effects like antimagic field affect the ethereal plane, I'd say you'd probably get shunted to the material as normal if you were to come within the field and then vanish again if you left it.
A spell that could teleport a weapon inside an enemy's body would be pretty cool, though. Probably 5th level like suffocation?