Is it me or the Pit spells are way too strong?

[Diego Rossi]

Fake Healer wrote:

Doesn't putting an extra dimensional object into another extra dimensional object cause Bad Things to happen? Or was that just 3.5?

So wouldn't putting the folded paper of Hungry Pit into a Bag of Holding be really bad?

PRD wrote:

A number of spells and magic items utilize extradimensional spaces, such as rope trick, a bag of holding, a handy haversack, and a portable hole. These spells and magic items create a tiny pocket space that does not exist in any dimension. Such items do not function, however, inside another extradimensional space. If placed inside such a space, they cease to function until removed from the extradimensional space. For example, if a bag of holding is brought into a rope trick, the contents of the bag of holding become inaccessible until the bag of holding is taken outside the rope trick. The only exception to this is when a bag of holding and a portable hole interact, forming a rift to the Astral Plane, as noted in their descriptions.

So "really bad" only for the bag of holding/portable hole combo.

[Ughbash]

Orc Boyz wrote:

Ughbash wrote:

Except they are in an extra dimesnional space not the paper. Folding the paper has no effect.

but the entrence to the pit in on the paper, and can be folded.

No, the entrance to the pit is in a certain tiem space adn yo now have a 10 x 10 peice of yor paper that is missing.

[Devilkiller]

Loopholes and exploits aside, I think the Pit spells have been strong but not game breaking when I've used them as DM. I could often get a similar effect by just putting in a well, mineshaft, cliff, etc and maybe a monster with Improved Bullrush into the encounter.

The primary benefit of the Pit spells when I've used them wasn't damaging enemies but getting them out of combat for a while. I think that for this the Pits seem kind of similar to the various Walls though with a different set of advantages and limitations. For instance, Pits seem likely to be more useful in wide open areas which walls can't easily seal off. In the right area a Wall can block monsters for a while without even allowing a saving throw though.

I'm thinking about taking a Pit spell or two as a PC in a current game and figure that they'll be great against some foes but useless against many others. If they work too well the DM will probably send some terrible monster to eat my PC's soul.

[Darkholme]

Alot of what you guys are describing with the Pit spells can also be done with Passwall.

[Bigtuna]

As a GM I don't like it when a player uses a tactic (in this case a spell) that negates 75% of what I like to throw after them.

(Some) Players that like pit spells - I assume - like to play casters. Casters have ways of getting out of pits - so you get to feel awesome with no downside. One spell BFC for the win - now the rest of the party just have to clean up the rest. But what if you are a fighter with no fly potion?

If I have to redesign encounters to match a single player then something is wrong.

And yes in some settings/campagins Pit spell might lose their effectivness with level - Rise of the Runelord have plenty of large encounters - but what if the setting is a human city? Humans aren't large or able to fly unless their class allows them to.

So if I want to make city adventure I can either design encounters that will be effecient/challeling to the party - with the knowledge that this is a world with pit spell (and every one who have every heard about an angry wizard isn't afraid he will turn them into a toad - but throw them into a pit) OR i can just ban the spell, and focus more on the story and less on the encounters.

[Russ Taylor]

I really dislike the "suck in adjacent creatures" aspect of the pit spells. Good enough without it, and that's not how other pits in the game work. I also dislike the escalating climb DC. I for one let people d-travel out of them all day long. Overall, I find them in the "slow the game" class of spells, so not a fan that way either. They're interesting other than those critiques.

[Lordbennyhana]

What about if a creature with the ability to passwall ended up in the pit? Considering it is an extra dimensional space could it escape by passing through the sides of the pit and if so would it appear then in the material plane?

[Caderyn]

You do know your climb DC's are just the Base DCs 30 (35 for hungry pit), there are certain climb specific actions you can use to lower these DC's

For Medium Creatures (–5DC Climbing a corner where you can brace against perpendicular walls)

For Large creatures (–10DC Climbing a chimney (artificial or natural) or other location where you can brace against two opposite walls.)

This means for a Medium creature the DC's are 25 and 30, and a large creature the DCs are 20 and 25 (coupled with STR being the primary stat for climbing and it being a class skill for almost everyone its fairly easy to pass the climb checks to escape a pit)

[ZomB]

The climb skill explicitly says the modifiers are cumulative, so its -15 DC for a large or bigger creature in a pit.

Remember climb is a move action so 2 per round, and creatures with good climb skills can do an accelerated climb.

I avoid the acid pit version as it destroys their stuff.

[Richard D Bennett]

I've been using pits with some frequency in our group's Shattered Star campaign and, like many "save-or-suck" effects that have come before, I like them less the more I use them.

Any effect that negates an encounter is a problem for me: If I fail, I feel like I've wasted my action. If I succeed, I have rendered everyone else moot. I've done this 1.5 times in our most recent dungeon crawl (the .5 being the removal of all of the bad guy's minions), and it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth each time, because the five other players at the table get to stand there and watch. This has led me to larger thoughts about the nature of the wizard/sorcerer and how one of the balancing factors seems to be that they can take on whole encounters by themselves, but only a few times a day. To me, this seems to be an enemy of party fun, but that's a subject for a different thread.

As far as pit spells go, now I look for opportunities to use them to take out a part of the encounter and help ensure that action economy stays on our side. If I wanted to win the fights by myself, I'd go play Dragon Age or some such.

[Devilkiller]

Since LordBennhana resurrected the thread to ask about Passwall I'd like to try to address his question. I'm not sure, but I don't think that Passwall would help somebody stuck in a Pit spell.

Per Create Pit, the walls of the Pit are made of "coarse stone". Are they 1' thick? 5' thick? Infinitely thick? Infinitely thin? I guess we don't know. Could somebody simply break a hole in the wall? Could a creature with a Burrow speed or Earthglide simply go through the wall of the Pit and into whatever material is beyond? I don't think so. Consider the case where a caster has created a 30' deep Pit in the deck of a ship which is only 20' tall. The spell says that the underlying material is not displaced, so I don't think that somebody swimming beneath the ship would see a 10 foot block of stone walls protruding from the bottom of the ship. The bottom of the pit isn't in the ocean. It is...somewhere else...

@ZomB - The table does indeed say that the modifiers are cumulative. That seems really odd to me though since the table specifically calls out artificial chimneys, which I’d expect would usually have 4 walls. However, I found a thread where James Jacobs says the -15 DC is applicable. That's enough to convince me. That will make it pretty easy for Large stuff to get out of the Pits, but I think they're still very useful spells if perhaps a bit situational.

[Noctus100]

Pulling this discussion out 10 years later if anyone else plays Pathfinder.

I GM a custom campaign and I am a player in Tyrant's Grasp. Originally I discovered group and recognized its brilliance as a GM and had a cultist wizard use it against my players.
The players were annoyed at first but it made a boss fight a lot more interesting because it was used as crowd control against the players and their summons.

Seeing the utility of this spell the Wizard who plays in both campaigns has also used this spell.

Between our two games it has given an extra dimension to combat that has been really fun. It was used as temporary escape for one session, used to block an escape route in another session, it has trivialized combats, and it has been a double edge sword in other combats.

So I think the spell is greatly placed where it is. Pathfinder is balanced in a rock paper scissors system where sometimes player abilities will absolutely dominate and sometimes players will be completely useless to allow other players to shine.

If you find the caster is dominating too much with create pit throw in a few hard counters to give other players a chance to shine. High Reflex saves, dispel magic, Huge creatures, flying creatures, creatures with climbing abilities.

[Azothath]

the cycle of discovery and thinking it's the new sliced whitebread, then finding it has limitations and is not so useful as first thought is the usual cycle newbie spellcaster's go through.

the pitfalls or limitations of the various create pit spells are discussed in the thread and they do lose their general effectiveness as level goes past 9th or so and flying becomes more common. They are generally for battlefield control by creating area hazards that delay foes. There are more powerful spells but dumping an iron golem into a pit can be a dramatic change in the tide of a battle (just remember things gotta fit in that 10*10 so Walk the Plank becomes rather useful). Since many monsters run on Str I don't know why there isn't more jumping in the game (I think GMs forget the simple stuff). Creatures with Climb movement or Earth Glide or even a good climb skill can simply circumvent the spell.

Wizards ARE gonna dominate if their players are clever, just a fact of the game. The GM just needs to talk to the player so that they understand that there are other players and it's a team sport, otherwise nobody likes the consequences.

[Diego Rossi]

Earth Glide allows a creature to avoid the pit if used as an obstacle, but it doesn't allow it to leave the pit without climbing, as the sides of the pit are part of an extradimensional space and aren't linked to the game world. The creature with Earth glide can't move through them.

[Melkiador]

Diego Rossi wrote:

but it doesn't allow it to leave the pit without climbing, as the sides of the pit are part of an extradimensional space and aren't linked to the game world. The creature with Earth glide can't move through them.

I think you will get some major table variation on that. At the least you could probably glide into the "surface" of the pit wall and glide up it.

That's assuming the pit even is earthen. It could just as easily be wood

[Diego Rossi]

Melkiador wrote:

Diego Rossi wrote:

but it doesn't allow it to leave the pit without climbing, as the sides of the pit are part of an extradimensional space and aren't linked to the game world. The creature with Earth glide can't move through them.

I think you will get some major table variation on that. At the least you could probably glide into the "surface" of the pit wall and glide up it.

That's assuming the pit even is earthen. It could just as easily be wood

Create Pit wrote:

You create a 10-foot-by-10-foot extradimensional hole with a depth of 10 feet per two caster levels (maximum 30 feet). You must create the pit on a horizontal surface of sufficient size. Since it extends into another dimension, the pit has no weight and does not otherwise displace the original underlying material. You can create the pit in the deck of a ship as easily as in a dungeon floor or the ground of a forest.

The sides of an extradimensional space aren't connected in any way with the normal universe.

Saying otherwise isn't table variation, is playing with different rules.

[Azothath]

circumvent
Create Pit:C2 of which there are 2 zones; a)the pit with "The pit’s coarse stone walls have a Climb DC of 25." b)the "sloped" edge. The lauded "SR:no" works against considering the stone magical.
For some (as it is clearly interpretive) the added edge AoE could be considered volumetric (and the border of the AoE) giving it a depth of one square allowing suitable forms of movement through those squares. IDK, it's tricky when you get into the details of a spell.

There are several movement types (Climb, Fly) along with several spells (such as Spider Climb) which work against falling into the pit or offer a conundrum if it is at all possible as it is assumed that gravity makes creatures fall. This inevitably leads to in situ rulings against the effectiveness of the spell.

  I'll just skip adding more to the stirred pot, LoL...

[Melkiador]

Diego Rossi wrote:

The sides of an extradimensional space aren't connected in any way with the normal universe.

Saying otherwise isn't table variation, is playing with different rules.

There is a physical point at which there is normal surface and extradimensional surface touching. There are no limitation on transferring from one surface to another. I'm just not sure if the extradimensional surface starts on the squares next to the pit, since they are sloped.

Quote:

The pit’s coarse stone walls

So, you could always use earth glide to enter the wall and swim up that way, along the wall

[Matthew Downie]

Diego Rossi wrote:

The sides of an extradimensional space aren't connected in any way with the normal universe.

Citation needed. An extradimensional space is "a tiny pocket space that does not exist in any dimension". I don't see any rules specifying what happens if you penetrate the 'sides' of that space. With a Bag of Holding, rupturing the sides causes everything in the space to be lost forever, but the pit doesn't say the same.

[glass]

Melkiador wrote:

Quote:

The pit’s coarse stone walls

So, you could always use earth glide to enter the wall and swim up that way, along the wall

It doesn't specify how thick those walls are, so it's a GM call if you fit within them while earth gliding.

[Azothath]

I don't think you have to be underwater to swim, thus you need not submerge in stone to earth glide Mon Ability(does mention it is a burrow movement type), Earth Glide:T4 spell. I'd agree the description is centered about moving through stone but there is no reason you couldn't swim though on top partially exposed. IMO you'd suffer a halved movement rate for moving directly upwards(like Spd(walk/run), Climb{accelerated}, Fly).

The spell details are left to the GM. I will say that Rope Trick:T2 offers some insight. The intersection or access is via a squarish or collapsible(bag of holding) opening (in simple terms a bounded flat plane).
If you consider the intersection of Real space(in let's pretend land) with the non-dimensional/extradimensional space a squarish bounded flat plane then that would include the sloped area. The pit walls and sloped area would be the aforementioned "rough stone" and essentially be the AoE. That provides a single square of defined "wall" area around the pit/hole.
It's undefined what would happen if you went through the walls - but there are some examples in RAW. Piercing the wall of a Bag of Holding or Portable Hole plus non/extra-dimensional space == bad news. In topology (as we have a weird topology) I'd consider the sides coterminous with the opening, thus you pop out at the top OR enter the AoE on the other side using symmetry or some random side as it's all the same (weird, I know).

My edumacation(LoL) tells me that non-dimensional and extradimensional are different, mainly the latter actually has dimensions (of space). The Game is written for a middle school level of understanding so it's rather rough when it come to interpretation.

If you want a worse conundrum think about the interaction with Rock to Mud:T5.

[Boomerang Nebula]

It would be interesting if pit spells were true extra-dimension spaces as in they extended into the fourth dimension.

If gravity doesn’t extend into that fourth dimension, because there is no mass there, then creatures wouldn’t fall into the pit at all.

If there is gravity drawing creatures into the fourth dimension it would draw all creatures along the three dimensional boundary equally since the fourth dimension is perpendicular to all of the three standard dimensions. So a creature that earth glides towards the side could find themselves falling horizontally into the pit from their perspective. Also, if the three dimensional walls surrounding the pit weren’t very strong they would collapse into the fourth dimension. Very weird.

[Azothath]

Boomerang Nebula wrote:

It would be interesting if ...

urrr... I can only direct you to the Standard Model of Physics.

You can read up on the Higgs boson, Gravity, the graviton and such. While theoreticians have come up with theories, no extra dimensions have been found which generally disproves a lot of the suppositions.

Meanwhile the descriptive physical model in the PF1 Game world is far worse than Newtonian Physics circa 1850 (pre-Maxwell's Equations and certainly before Einstein or Heisenberg). Your high school Physics course is way more accurate and precise with its measurements and predictions and has far better models and a higher degree of consistency.

[Diego Rossi]

Matthew Downie wrote:

Diego Rossi wrote:

The sides of an extradimensional space aren't connected in any way with the normal universe.

Citation needed. An extradimensional space is "a tiny pocket space that does not exist in any dimension". I don't see any rules specifying what happens if you penetrate the 'sides' of that space. With a Bag of Holding, rupturing the sides causes everything in the space to be lost forever, but the pit doesn't say the same.

AoN wrote:

Extradimensional Spaces

Source PRPG Core Rulebook pg. 501
A number of spells and magic items utilize extradimensional spaces, such as rope trick, a bag of holding, a handy haversack, and a portable hole. These spells and magic items create a tiny pocket space that does not exist in any dimension. Such items do not function, however, inside another extradimensional space. If placed inside such a space, they cease to function until removed from the extradimensional space. For example, if a bag of holding is brought into a rope trick, the contents of the bag of holding become inaccessible until the bag of holding is taken outside the rope trick. The only exception to this is when a bag of holding and a portable hole interact, forming a rift to the Astral Plane, as noted in their descriptions.

The space doesn't exist in any dimension, so, how can the walls touch some other dimension?

[Boomerang Nebula]

@ Azothath,

My interest is from a geometric perspective, not a physics perspective, but thanks anyway.

[Azothath]

Commentary
Diego-
 I think you are over-reading the text and adding meaning where the thrust of the bolded description doesn't follow your intent. Translation may play a role (if your native language is not english). By "dimension" I believe the writer meant an existing plane of existence, and was trying to describe a "pocket dimension" rather than a singular mathematical dimension. It is artistic rather than technical writing and I think there was some avoidance of the word "plane". They should have said, "self-enclosed bounded dimensional space (with or without time, gravity etc)" but the books are written for a young adult audience (note the pervasive lack of any algebraic formula or expression along with many mathematical symbols or expressions in the books, they are quite regressive in that way even fumbling with word problem grammar). The "meat" of the paragraph boils down to two items; interactions (in PF1) result in the inability to use/access the enclosed/contained pocket dimension, then only the OGL bag of holding & porthole hole interaction remain (probably a copyright/RL legalistic thing as the CRB was a "rush job").
 Often you have a unique view so it is interesting to hear your opinions. You tend to dig yourself into a logical/philosophical hole and find yourself with nowhere to go or trapped in a rather odd position. I'd advise you to relax on the overly pedantic reading of over-parsed text; statisticians learned this about interpreting the importance of small subgroups of data relating to the whole set. Again, the Game is a Work of Art and not a technical manual or science textbook.
 I do believe in reading the text and just doing what it says, that's just what I call the simple/core close-to-RAW reading. When you get into the specifics a GM is needed as the Game falls apart. The Game is Meant to be Interpreted. There's no other way it will work.

Real World --> the Game. Not the other way around.

Clearly there has to be an intersection or interactive boundary between the plane the spell is cast on and the pit's AoE(pocket dimension) otherwise nobody could fall into it (which is why I believe you mentioned walls in your earlier post). Within the AoE space/time and gravity exist (otherwise no falling), and there's breathable air in the open pit. Where you go if you could go through a pit wall is not defined -- and we are stuck there. In fact I had to get a bit tricky to determine the width of the wall assuming a cuboid shape AoE. At least it resolves one unknown.

As it is a Game and GMs should be somewhat creative at times(depends on your tastes) you can review Alice's Adventures by L.Carroll, Flatland by E.Abbott, or The World at the End of Time by F.Pohl for some ideas. Klein bottle.

[Azothath]

setting the top side of the cuboid AoE (20'*20'*(10*⌊CL/2⌋+5')deep with a top centered 10'*10'*10*⌊CL/2⌋' hole) as the intersection of the two spaces.
Alternatively you could set the thickness of the wall at 6"(fine - the smallest measurement) or slightly less. That yields a non-simple shape and spell area of effects are simple volumetric shapes, creatures, or objects.
I'd also like to point out that the "sloped area" physically isn't well described, just the Rflx save. Odd as I'd assume it is rather sloped (like 33-45 degree incline) given it causes a reflex save at +2. That is a serious gaffe in the description. From Climb skill, A slope is considered to be any incline at an angle measuring less than 60 degrees; a wall is any incline at an angle measuring 60 degrees or more. Mathematically I'll point out that for a 10ft pit with 60 deg incline on the exterior 5ft, the slope ends at (5*sin(60°)=)4.3ft deep leaving a (10'-4'4"=)5'8" pit... at 45° it's 3.5ft with 6.5ft pit. Houston - we have a problem!

Going through a border of the AoE on a wall or bottom is undefined;
not being able to progress beyond the non-interactive sides of the AoE, coming out at the top(interactive side), coming out on another side (opposite or random),
are all equally valid. It's really up to the GM's taste.

you can't tunnel through to another non-interactive part of the plane where the spell is cast as the area of interface is the part where the two spaces connect and interact.

[Matthew Downie]

Diego Rossi wrote:

The space doesn't exist in any dimension, so, how can the walls touch some other dimension?

The entrance to the pit is connected to the caster's dimension, why not the walls too?

(Though exactly where they'd be connected to is debatable...)

[Loren Pechtel]

Boomerang Nebula wrote:

It would be interesting if pit spells were true extra-dimension spaces as in they extended into the fourth dimension.

Going to higher dimensions produces some very nasty consequences. IIRC there's no workable universe for anything but 3 spatial and one temporal dimension. My memory is that with four spatial dimensions there is no such thing as a stable orbit. Not only does your planet freeze or fry, but every atom in your body has electrons orbiting it...

[TriOmegaZero]

That's how you get hounds of Tindalos.

[Senko]

TriOmegaZero wrote:

That's how you get hounds of Tindalos.

Its not the hounds of Tindalos you need to worry about it's what happens next if you kill them and keep messing around up there.

[Niemand]

just wait for the Bose-einstein Gibbering mouther and the thrum of Euler's String Kaminari... it makes the self-evident looping Allip of Gödel-Escher-Bach and Boundary Value Elementals seem trivial...

the bill from a quantum duck is full of quarks