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A character wants to cast stone shape. He can make 20 cubic feet. He is in a 5 foot wide stone hallway that is 20 foot high as well. The hallway extends forward 50 feet.
The character says he can use the spell to create a shaft of stone extending down the hallway 50 feet.
I disagree. The spell clearly says range is touch and range is defined:
"A spell's range indicates how far from you it can reach, as defined in the range entry of the spell description. A spell's range is the maximum distance from you that the spell's effect can occur, as well as the maximum distance at which you can designate the spell's point of origin. If any portion of the spell's area would extend beyond this range, that area is wasted. Standard ranges include the following."
He can manipulate only the stone where he can touch it. The player makes the argument that he is still touching the stone and therefore can create a long tube or shaft extending down the hallway.
However, I will also add that this hallway is filled with allies and monsters...
Well for starters that's more than 20 cubic feet, secondly as long as its one continuous piece of stone he is still touching it
Well, depending on how thin he makes it, he could probably do it... but it is going to be a 50ft long piece of stone supported by what exactly?
It would crack and crumble as soon as he made it.
It also isn't an attack spell. The stone would be made during the course of a 6 second round, meaning that even if it projected out like a spear and did't just fall to pieces along the way (it would), then it is moving at 50ft/6 seconds, or 8-1/3 ft/s.
That is way too slow to be a weapon of any kind. It comes out to about 5.68 mph.
The average person walks at about 4 mph... so that is a slow, pointless piece of rock that with fall apart as soon as it gets too long.
I am not sure what his intent was, but as a weapon... say to make a big jutting spear out of stone, it just doesn't work at all.
YOu can do neat stuff with stone shape, but this wouldn't work. He could block off the hallway by making a set of bars accross the hallway, with each of the 4 'bars' having 1x1x5 ft dimensions.
He could make a square of difficult terrain.
This is a transmutation spell, not a conjuration spell. You're not creating 20 cubic feet of stone out of thin air. You are taking 20 cubic feet of stone and changing its shape.
A 5 foot cube is 125 cubic feet. I wouldn't allow the creation of a long thin piece of stone suspended in the air. I would probably rule that you should be able to touch all the stone that you shape with this spell. So, in the hallway described, you could make a door or gate that is a few inches thick, but only about 5 feet high.
And remember, that stone is being pulled from the surroundings, so it is changing the shape of the hallway itself. Probably making it wider.
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The character was going to pull the stone from the wall next to him; he wanted to cut off an enemy from others further on down the hallway-a hallway with enemies.
Perhaps it could be done by resting on the ground? Like making a snake stone tube or something crawling down the hallway.
And the time spell duration is instantaneous, so all this is done right away on his turn.
The player is correct. Otherwise the spell is worthless and the cubic footage is a moot point.
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well, assuming that the wall is a continuous piece of stone... he can form a single hairline crack that runs 50 ft down the wall and barely uses any of his alloted cubic feet, then have stone rods spring out like a cage door to block the opponent off.
I think this is a pretty cool use of the spell TBH. When I first read your post I thought that he was attempting to impale a hallway full of enemies on a giant stone spear... and that just doesn't fly.
I will always rule for cool when possible, and this does not seem outside the purview of the spell. It wouldn't actually be that hard for a target to climb over or break through the stone he shaped, but at least he would get the desired effect.
Between the cubic footage and the "no fine detail" limitations, the spell is pretty limited as it is.
I'm not sure that your example work work, Malkov, as it sounds like fine detail would be required.
Hmm...seems like you could create effects at ranges of hundreds or maybe even thousands of feet away by use of snaking protrusions.
Then again it seems like a way to get range out of a touch spell.
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I may see the possibility of extending a tube of stone down a hallway by sliding it along the ground, but then how in the heck would the character form it back up into a wall further down the hallway? Seems nearly impossible and I'm fairly certain the spell is intended to make the stone at touch level be molded as one would clay. If the character isn't actually down the hallway to touch the wall he is building up, how would it be molded?
Sure, the argument could be used that he was still "touching" the molding, but that would seem that he could cause effects far farther than was intended, and I think the spell was given touch range for a reason.
Where in the spell does it say how large of an object you can make? Yes, it has the cubic feet of lump stone you're using, but there are no limitations of how large an item you can make. The spell doesn't say you can only make a door that is five feet long and 2 feet wide. What if the caster is only 1 foot tall and wants to make a 10 foot tall door, by some of the reasoning given here, since he can't touch the part of the door that is 10 feet away, he can't create the door. That is completely incorrect. In a similar fashion, the caster should be able to create a fence that is 10 feet long, and hence it would extend 10 feet away from said caster. Also, that being said, the caster should also be allowed to make an oddly shaped wall that begins with a very thin base and expands to a larger area.
If the caster of stone shape can be 1 foot tall and can create a 10 foot tall door, he can create the wall as described using the stone tube along the floor which expands at the point designated to be a wall. Think of abstract art.. those strange shapes that are one continuous piece of something, but some parts are thin and small and other parts are large and thick.
Does anyone disagree with this?
Sorry for the double post, but when I asked where the spell says how large of an object you can make, I meant to say how long or how wide. The spell does not define dimensions, only the total cubic feet of stone that can be shaped into a new shape. A square, rectangular, or irregularly underground tunnel shaped piece of stone can have a 50 foot long 1/4 inch piece of stone extending off of it and connecting to a wall. I don't see why this would not work.