| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
When they step on, they get a will save to disbelieve and fall...
Would this work as RAW, if one falls they all reroll their +2 to fall?
I was going to give them a chance to see the floor is weird (Perception, DC 25), and if they notice (detect magic is an automatic notice, "Oh, the floor is glowing.. Ill try spellcraft") they get a spellcraft to recognize the spell (DC 12- Some sort of illusion related to the shadow subschool; DC 18 It's a horizontal shadow wall)
Sounds good, with a caveat.
If the PCs notice something strange about one small section of flooring, they are going to have a few options:
1. Avoid it because they are trying to avoid traps (which would in fact cause them to avoid a trap in this case, so good on the PCs if they go this route) and/or
2. Examine the floor without stepping on it, so even if they figure out what is going on they won't fall OR
3. Ignore the floor. Which they would only do if they are idiots who cannot possibly have lived this long. However, if they do this then at some point they fall into the very real trap(s) you have placed elsewhere in the adventure.
However, this is only true if the section of Shadow flooring in question is small. If the entire party is walking down a corridor and the floor for, let's say, 50' is made of a shadow Wall of Stone, when they get to the 35 foot mark and the Magic Mouth on the wall tells them to watch their footing, they will very likely be in trouble. Unless, of course, the PC rogue watching for traps and leading the group makes a DC 25 Perception check (not too hard, really) and stops them before they step onto this section in the first place. This sort of trap works best when it is placed in an area the PCs are charging or fleeing into.
A villain wearing Boots of Levitation or with a Carpet of Flying underfoot could provide a nice misleading touch, assuming he or she was expecting the PCs.
Is this a shadow wall a la Shadow Conjuration or via an Image spell?
All illusion spells determine their will saves once either of these conditions is met:
1. The character intently focuses on the illusion OR
2. The character interacts with the illusion.
I'd give perception checks if the characters are moving at trap-finding speed. If they're not actively looking for traps, they shouldn't see it.
Perhaps the walls could be decorated with scenes from a particularly unpleasant afterlife, with faint and muffled screams (real or illusionary) audible at some point to a not particularly high Perception check and seeming to emanate from under the PCs' feet.
This whole idea is awesome, but one question sprung to my mind:
Can't you voluntarily fail a saving throw? Like, when someone casts healing on you, for example? So what would prevent the PCs from voluntarily failing their saving throws in this situation?
(Unless the stuff about voluntarily failing was one of the houserules too in my previous groups where I learnt the game....)
Okay, yeah, I just imagined it from a PC's point of view. I'm standing in a hallway, and all of a sudden my buddy slips through the solid (in my eyes at least) floor. What would my reaction be? Certainly something like, "Whoa, what just happened? This can't be true!" -> another Disbelief Save
The character would not forfeit his save, since he is disbelieving. The player might want to do it, but that would be metagaming.
|
Well they can voluntarily fail the throw, but they would only do so if they could identify the spell.
I believe it has been stated by the devs that you know whether or not the spell has the "harmless" descriptor, but outside of that this is true.
EDIT: I suppose I specify that you know if it has that descriptor if you are a target and can use that information to decide whether to resist or not.
This whole idea is awesome, but one question sprung to my mind:
Can't you voluntarily fail a saving throw? Like, when someone casts healing on you, for example? So what would prevent the PCs from voluntarily failing their saving throws in this situation?
(Unless the stuff about voluntarily failing was one of the houserules too in my previous groups where I learnt the game....)
Actually, curative spells do not require saving throws unless you are undead. There are spells that require a willing subject (for instance, you cannot Teleport or Dimension Door out of a fight with unconscious comrades because as they are unconscious they cannot be "willing"), but those do not involve voluntarily failed saving throws.
This is totally unofficial, but I would think you could always voluntarily fail a Reflex save, given that they imply dodging or avoidance. I don't see many ways in which most characters could voluntarily fail Fortitude saves, unless it involved voluntarily breathing in noxious fumes or something else of the sort. Higher level monks, perhaps, have sufficient control over their bodies to fail Fortitude saves at will.
However, when it comes to Will saves, if a voluntarily failed save involves truly believing something that you have good reason to think simply isn't so, unless it was an long-instilled article of faith I'd say it couldn't be done as an immediate action. So someone standing on the shadow Wall of Stone seeing evidence of its illusory nature would still have to roll a save, whereas someone farther back on a real floor could perhaps take a standard action to mutter "I believe in floors; floors are real" and empty her head of thoughts of illusion before confidently striding forward. The very most I can see an endangered PC doing as an immediate action would be to reverse Wisdom bonuses into penalties on the Will saving throw, assuming the PC actually stated he or she was trying to believe in the lie.
Here's a problem: For Wall of Stone, you need to use Greater Shadow Conjuration. GSC has a 60% reality if you pass the save.
As stupid as this sounds, you might need several castings of GSC to make this work, setting each at intervals (say, 10 ft of hallway each). Otherwise, a successful save only has a 40% chance of the desired effect. 3 castings, however, goes to 80% (roughly) chance of them falling, assuming they make all of the saves.
Unfortunately, the save DC is also going to be a minimum of 20.
Could just go with custom via GM Fiat. What might be easiest is to simply say that it's equivalent to a 3rd level spell (DC 14) with a 0% reality if disbelieved.
Alternatively, you could have a maze-like path with a Silent Image over the holes (to make a solid floor) or over the actual floor (to make a giant hole). Obviously, this is easiest in a larger room than a hallway.
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Unconscious creatures count as 'willing' for teleport and the like.
Unconscious creatures are automatically considered willing, but a character who is conscious but immobile or helpless (such as one who is bound, cowering, grappling, paralyzed, pinned, or stunned) is not automatically willing.
Thank you, Malachi! That is very helpful. I just wish I'd known that (or that my GM had known that) when my Str 7 wizard ran into a burning building and thought she had to try to drag the unconscious tenants out by hand if she wanted to save them.
There's no Perception check per se to notice any wierdness.
Knowedge Arcana usages: ("Identify a spell effect that is in place" OR "Identify materials manufactured by magic" would seem to be useful, but if you need Detect Magic to ID an Aura, why should you be able to ID a Spell Effect without Detect Magic? ...I think those usages actually ALSO require Detect Magic just like Auras do, even though that text isn't repeated for them. If you rule that way, they will only get to make those Knowledge Checks if they have Detect Magic or similar effects running... (Really, Casters SHOULD have Detect Magic running all the time when exploring dungeons, etc., albeit anybody else also doing the same could then ID that they have Detect Magic running...)
So mostly they will just have to suck up the Save... Which I don't see a problem with, that IS the sole means mentioned for Shadow Conjuration (well, besides SR), and if you would institute all these other Perception/Skill Checks for this case, I don't see why it shouldn't apply to ALL Shadow spells (e.g. Perception vs. Shadow Fireballs). If there is some effect increasing Will Save DCs, I would just apply it here, which ends up helping the PCs (since they want to fail the Save in order to not fall). I assume there is other reasons why that aura is useful, which outweight that it may make this particular trap easier.
Ignoring that they are travelling incognito with other cultists, i.e. assessing the trap on it's own in context of the Will Save DC boost, the trap is very devious in that having one or two of several creatures passing by end up falling thru, but their companions don't, ends up isolating the two groups. Even if the people on top don't have Detect Magic running to be able to actually ID the effect as a spell per se, it seems appropriate to be able to make a Knowledge check to realize 'hey, this situation seems like they just fell thru a Shadow Conjuration Wall'. So they could then Disbelieve if they wanted, but would then fall themselves, although they could just retreat and climb down over the corner of the real floor.
There is a rule not EXACTLY applicable here, but it seems like you could still use it... From Acrobatics/Jumping: ...So if that applied, they may end up below the Shadow Conjuration wall, but they would have grabbed onto the edge and wouldn't necessarily fall all the way in, and could later climb up (albeit still couldn't stand on the Shadow Wall, since they already Failed their Save). Of course, the cultists would notice that they were not 'true believers'.
...I get the feeling that you really don't want the PCs to fall thru here? If so, why have this trap here? If it would be too horrible, it shouldn't be there, or you should find some other way to inform the PCs and encourage them to willingly fail their will save (such as Old Cultist reminding New Cultist to remember to believe all they see, or otherwise bad things can happen).
But overall, no, you don't get to know that a will save is for an illusion effect, or any other information like that about what the save is against. If you did, illusions would just become junk.