Stone wall spell, What are the uses?

[Avatear]

Hello guys, I wonder what are the ways you can use it. Plus do you need a piece of stone, Or a part of a huge wall with the amount of cubic you can shape?

[kestral287]

Are you talking about the Stone Wall Word of Power, or the classic Wall of Stone spell? If it's Stone Wall-- it's pretty much a straight barrier to divide things up, though if you really wanted you could make a maze or something. No material components needed.

If it's Wall of Stone, you only need a small block of granite (provided by your spell pouch). The rest is magically created, and can be formed into any shape you want. Enough castings combined with Permanency could build a castle, the Great Wall of China, a castle the size of China...

[ShoulderPatch]

kestral287 wrote:

... combined with Permanency ...

Not needed with the Wall of Stone spell. "Duration instantaneous". Once the stone is down it's already permanent.

[blackbloodtroll]

ShoulderPatch wrote:

kestral287 wrote:

... combined with Permanency ...

Not needed with the Wall of Stone spell. "Duration instantaneous". Once the stone is down it's already permanent.

Well, better than permanent, as it cannot be dispelled after the fact.

[Cyrus Lanthier]

You can't permanency Wall of Stone, because wall of stone is Instantaneous. Let that sink in.

You can't permanency it- you can't even dispel it. Once it's there, it's a real wall. So... Over a relatively short time span, it creates the Great Wall, or a Castle, or an awesome mage tower that would have been impractical/impossible to create by mundane means. Heck, you could make stone ships, in theory (especially with Fabricate to thin the hull and cut down on excess weight). House the poor, change the courses of rivers, put quarries out of business...

Oh, you want actual adventuring uses? You can always entomb the party to give you a few rounds to buff up (assuming you have a way out, but Dimension Door is lower level. Some method of knowing what you are jumping into is helpful, though- who knows if *they* buffed up), or cut off the enemy's charge, or retreat, or divide the enemy group in any number of ways the benefit you- not all characters can break through a stone wall, and even those that can will waste at least one round, very likely more. You can entomb a mundane foe who isn't a human battering ram and they are basically dead for lack of air. Depending on your GM's reading of the spell, you might be able to "shape" it more closely around foes, so that they can't really move if they fail the reflex save and at that point even Bill the Barbarian is dead of suffocation, since he can't actually *swing* his adamantine maul. But that would make it a mass Reflex save or die spell, which should probably not be allowed. GM's should allow you to halve the walls area to double it's thickness (since it's "any shape you desire"), which makes it a better spell to get rid of a troublesome (low reflex save) opponent for a few rounds. Trap basically any swarm or ooze (Bad to terrible reflex saves, by the way) under a wall of stone and... Well, if it's not dead, it's not getting out. Bonus points if you then lure a troubling foe to the same spot and break open the wall. Vampire turns to gas? Why follow it back to it's coffin- we'll just trap it in/behind a Wall of Stone and it's dead.

Does your enemy have a castle because *he* has Wall of Stone? Use your Wall of Stone spells to make a ramp to get up the wall. He also has Fabricate, so amazing moats? Enough Wall of Stone will clear that problem. Are catapults breaking your Walls of Stone? you should cover them in Walls of Stone- that will keep the crews baffled for a while. If you get really desperate, you can make a really tall tower outside his Catapult range, make some Catapults with Fabricate (also level 5, also awesome), and out-range them due to height, making any actual siege between sufficiently magically backed opponents into a contest of who can cast Wall of Stone the most (unless someone actually has a spell that roasts the whole castle alive or something, which is totally a thing, I suppose. That and summoning an outsider with some silly sort of DR. Oh, wait, back to Wall of Stone!).

Enemy likes Fireball, or has similar evocation "blasting" powers? Prepare action to cast Wall of Stone. You'll find that breaking Line of Sight, even with a little 5' wall, will negate a whole lot of things your fellow spell-casters are trying to do (this is also an important reason to have high Spellcraft, clearly). Breaking Line of Effect is even better. In the case of Fireball in particular, you should be able to cut it off and cause a premature detonation, with hilarious results.

Basically, Wall of Stone is amazing. It creates something permanent (not to mention highly malleable) from nothing, and it even has some pretty great combat utility. What more do you want from a 5th level spell?

Edit: Aww, ninja'd about the whole "can't be dispelled" thing. :p

[ShoulderPatch]

blackbloodtroll wrote:

ShoulderPatch wrote:

kestral287 wrote:

... combined with Permanency ...

Not needed with the Wall of Stone spell. "Duration instantaneous". Once the stone is down it's already permanent.

Well, better than permanent, as it cannot be dispelled after the fact.

... which is still permanent. Permanent big-P as a specific game term didn't negate permanent little-p as the general English language word still being correct (I.E., Cure Light Wounds would also be a permanent spell once cast).

Now though I'm thinking about the levels-levels-levels comic in the early OoTS days (think it was in the first 10 or 15 strips). ;)

Cyrus Lanthier wrote:

Oh, you want actual adventuring uses? ...

What's really great is, what Cyrus's extensive post listed probably isn't 1/5 the uses players have found for that spell over the years. Toss in Stone Shape and Knowledge: Engineering, multiple castings and some creative players...

[Cyrus Lanthier]

Ahh... Let's not argue semantics here. Let's all just try to come up with more and better ways to use one of the most versatile and amazing spells available. :p

Yes, ShoulderPatch, the possibilities with this spell are near limitless. It's fun just trying to think about bad situations and then trying to solve them with wall of stone. :p

Oh- badly wounded party member might die next round? Hide them under a Wall of Stone! Just give them plenty of breathing room. You might also have enough wall left over to trap some guys or cut off a charge or something (bonus points if you prepared an action to both save your guy and potentially waste an enemy's turn).

[ShoulderPatch]

Fair enough, I mainly wanted to segue into the Order of the Stick reference. ;)

I often use them as parting gifts for towns and hamlets that our characters occupy for awhile. I've got 1 or 2 GMs that try and make their world dynamic, by level 10 or 12 our PCs can easily clear a small area around any village in a day, a little magical structure creation and rarely some terraforming later, we've ensured in our GMs dynamic world those Level 1-5 mainly NPC class villagers are now fighting behind cover/concealment and have more than a few tricks up their sleeve. Notably less passing back through to find Toothy the Orcy Orcs warband has ransacked a place that had a really clean outhouse I favored.

[Cyrus Lanthier]

That's pretty great. Yea, if I'm playing a good/socially minded character and I've got a spell like Wall of Stone, I generally do things like that. I remember my buddy's druid running around and blessing crops and such as well. But yea, the ability to simply create infrastructure/defense (and that's part of the *intended* use of the spell :p) is amazing. Especially if you have a good GM who cares about that sort of thing.

Unfortunately for me, the only socially minded Wizard I have played lately is too low level to cast Wall of Stone. :(

Also, just throwing this out there, but it's an even better pick for Sorcerer's, since you need to get high mileage out of your limited known spells. Also, as noted earlier, the ability to cast Wall of Stone in rapid succession is occasionally awesome.

[ShoulderPatch]

Summoned Earth Elementals and Wall of Stone. One of many combinations.

Long ago when I was first using it, the immediate use I found was to instantly create bunkers for myself (groups arcane caster at the time) and the groups Ranger(archer). Smaller openings as needed so we could fight/see out but have cover from return fire. The entrance I'd create facing away from the conflict and the Ranger would sit his AC at the entrance so anything trying to get in had to fight it. Generally with enough walls to each side of the AC so anything coming in had to congo-line-of-death or break a wall, kept the lower CR riffraff out. Even if the big baddie got to the bunker and was strong enough to just bust in that generally meant some attacks spent and thus the Ranger had a turn to switch from bow to melee weapon w/o need of having used a feat (and we had a turn to switch places if the enemy was coming in adjacent to me, turns out Sorcerers are much harder to kill hiding behind Aragon and White Fang, and our allies had a turn to move to us). Many years and creative uses of the spell later I still fondly remember it aiding us time and again in that first campaign.

[the David]

Round 1. Cast Create Pit.
Round 2. Cast Stone Wall to cover pit.
Round 3 + caster level. Enemies die horribly caught between a wall of stone and the ground.

Add some metamagic to Create Pit for some extra fun. Widened Create Pit is nice, or Heightened Create Pit for those enemies with a high reflex save. Use a Quickened Create Pit and you could cast this within one round.