So, I'm planning on having my players fight an EK who's planning on oppening with this spell. The battle will likely take place in a field with no roof unless they do something crazy and force combat elsewhere. Question is upon greater reflection... Just what does Oscilating do to the players?
Are they, for example, treated as falling for the duration? Does it limit or affect their ability to attack? Does it affect their ability to cast? What of their AC, are they flatfooted? Or does it just stop them from moving around assuming they don't have a means to fly?
Sorry if this is a dumb question, but via the RAW of the spell I am confused. I blame the holidays :/
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Since there's no defined condition "oscillating," the phrase "Oscillating slightly" looks like flavor to me, with the key phrase being "remains there."
They have stopped falling at this point, so shouldn't be treated as such. Since it doesn't say anything about defensive penalties, there shouldn't be any. However, I would expect that they would be unable to move from their squares seeing as they don't have any surface to walk on. This might be inconvenient for melee fighters.
Yeah, the 'oscillating' text is flavor, just means they're sort of bobbing and floating there. RG is a nasty spell in that there's often no save allowed at all, and unless the afflicted have methods of flight on-hand they're kind of boned. The spell doesn't mention anything about attack penalties for the targeted creatures, should they try to shoot bows or something - I'd ad hoc it as something at least as much as levitate's last sentence, if not with an additional -2 to start with due to trying to attack through two differently-oriented gravitational fields.
Well fair enough, if there aren't meant to be any additional penalties I can live with that. Just that in the upcoming encounter, the NPC will be going up against a bunch of ranged PCs(1 arcane archer, a Boomerang using Ranger, and an Oracle) and as cool as the spell is it seems to be... sorta underwhelming. Sure they'll take some fall damage... but that's well over a minute into combat.
I can see how it could shut down a bunch of melee fighter types since they can't move. But for most parties it's won't do anything since, the casters and ranged guys aren't penalized; and they can cast their fly spell on the one or two guys who actually needs it.
It just seems weird when there are other similar spells that state you take penalties for a similar effect when attacking. Granted, that's for a willing ally and as Weirdo said RG is assumed to be "more stable"; but Reverse Gravity is a level 7 spell and in this regard it sounds weaker.
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RG means that ranged characters or spellcasters can't retreat if a melee character with flying gets next to them. Hope you have Point Blank Master...
It could also be very nasty if you fill the area that they're anchored in with some sort of environmental effect that they can't escape. Try Cloudkill, or even better Acid Fog, which doesn't move and provides enough concealment to shut down ranged attacks - equip the BBEG and any key minions with Fogcutting Lenses and they can ignore the concealment and attack the PCs freely. For either spell, just shape your RG such that the PCs are pinned at exactly 20ft up. If you want to mess eith the PCs a little less, Sirocco also works if you interpret the RG to also affect the "downward" direction of the wind (if it blows against the RG it could get weird).