This spell functions like fireball, except that it is more powerful and can detonate up to 5 rounds after the spell is cast. The burst of flame deals 1d6 points of fire damage per caster level (maximum 20d6). The glowing bead created by delayed blast fireball can detonate immediately if you desire, or you can choose to delay the burst for as many as 5 rounds. You select the amount of delay upon completing the spell, and that time cannot change once it has been set unless someone touches the bead. If you choose a delay, the glowing bead sits at its destination until it detonates. A creature can pick up and hurl the bead as a thrown weapon (range increment 10 feet). If a creature handles and moves the bead within 1 round of its detonation, there is a 25% chance that the bead detonates while being handled.
Fireball:
A fireball spell generates a searing explosion of flame that detonates with a low roar and deals 1d6 points of fire damage per caster level (maximum 10d6) to every creature within the area. Unattended objects also take this damage. The explosion creates almost no pressure.
You point your finger and determine the range (distance and height) at which the fireball is to burst. A glowing, pea-sized bead streaks from the pointing digit and, unless it impacts upon a material body or solid barrier prior to attaining the prescribed range, blossoms into the fireball at that point. An early impact results in an early detonation. If you attempt to send the bead through a narrow passage, such as through an arrow slit, you must "hit" the opening with a ranged touch attack, or else the bead strikes the barrier and detonates prematurely.
The fireball sets fire to combustibles and damages objects in the area. It can melt metals with low melting points, such as lead, gold, copper, silver, and bronze. If the damage caused to an interposing barrier shatters or breaks through it, the fireball may continue beyond the barrier if the area permits; otherwise it stops at the barrier just as any other spell effect does.
Earth Glide:
The target can pass through stone, dirt, or almost any other sort of earth except metal as easily as a fish swims through water, traveling at a speed of 5 feet. If protected against fire damage, it can move through lava. This movement leaves behind no tunnel or hole, nor does it create any ripple or other sign of its presence. It requires as much concentration as walking, so the subject can attack or cast spells normally, but cannot charge or run. Casting move earth on an area containing the target flings the target back 30 feet, stunning it for 1 round (DC 15 Fort negates). This spell does not give the target the ability to breathe underground, so when passing through solid material, the creature must hold its breath.
Analyzing. Hypothesizing.
Hypothesis reached. Assassination tool perfected.
Query.
Is it possible to earthglide directly under a target, place the delayed blast fireball within 20 feet of the target but still underground, and spend the next 5 rounds earthgliding directly away from ground zero to escape?
Would you make it out in time (5 rounds later *should* be enough time, but Earthglide limits you to 5' per round, and I'm staying entirely underground to avoid detection)? It feels like you do, but it depends on whether the round timer includes the one you cast on, and whether it detonates at the start or the end of your turn. If it includes when you cast it, then you move 5, 2nd turn, you move the second 5, 3rd turn, you move the 3rd 5, 4th turn, you move to exactly 20 feet away, 5th turn it blows up at the start of your turn and kills you.
If it doesn't count the turn you cast it, or detonates at the end of your turn, you can get away with it.
Fireball claims it produces no pressure, but it does say if I destroy the interposing wall then it will continue outwards, so I'm not too worried about whether it's mechanically possible to be sure I hit the guy with the fireball, but do I make it out in time? Is there any normal way to catch someone doing this, short of living guards with Tremorsense?
I've seen some nasty assassination efforts before, but having noticed this I'm never letting any important NPC's sleep on the ground floor again!
You need tremorsense to know where you are and find your target, and you can't breathe so you don't have a lot of time to blunder around. Even blind sight won't allow you to see through solid matter to find your way.
Without some way of getting both, it's not going to be that effective. Even with tremorsense, the sense is not that specific, and will not allow you to tell the difference between your target and another medium sized humanoid of the same type.
I'm pretty sure fireballs stop at solid barriers, including but not limited to the earth. It's a ball of fire, not an explosion. You wouldn't need to earth glide farther away than under the ground. Retracting your arm should be sufficient.
Though Imbicatus' points are all valid and would need to be overcome for this to work.
I'm pretty sure fireballs stop at solid barriers, including but not limited to the earth. It's a ball of fire, not an explosion. You wouldn't need to earth glide farther away than under the ground. Retracting your arm should be sufficient.
Though Imbicatus' points are all valid and would need to be overcome for this to work.
Using the bolded portion of Fireball to overcome the "solid obstacle" of the earth, I'm actually not placing the fireball above ground, to avoid triggering any magical sensors.
I was assuming Tremorsense, but wasn't really thinking too much about how to get it. Forgot about holding breath, but I can think of a few ways around that.
In theory, however, with a layout of the location to know where the person sleeps, could you find the bed and would the fireball (placed just under the ground below the bed) actually destroy the dirt and proceed upwards to destroy the bed and damage the target?
For reference, Stone is hardness 8 and 15 HP / Inch of thickness.
So 3 inches of stone would need a damage of 15x3 +8, or 53 DMG to destroy.
If I placed the fireball within that range, I would need to be around lvl 16 to have a an average damage (before any modifiers, just off the 16D6) high enough to bust it. Admittedly, a LvL 16 Sorcerer has other options, but then again a much lower level sorcerer might be able to get ahold of a necklace of fireballs and drop a low level Delayed Blast right next to the necklace.
The question is more or less one of timing, and whether "ground above the fireball" counts as "Interposing Barrier".
This also brings up the implication that if "Ground" is an interposing barrier, which by all definitions that I am aware of it is, and so are walls, then does Fireball actually blow up walls and leave a smoking crater when it gets strong enough to cause those kinds of damage?
If not then we may want to clarify what "interposing Barrier" means for this spell.
As a showy assassination technique this requires a certain factors to be in place:
Information where is your target and ability to Identify him.
Ability to access your target through stone structures. Note that earth glide lacks the natural stone clause so you can go through the walls of a stone castle and even threw a floor thick enough but you would be limited and possible observed if the wall/floor aren't thick enough.
You can attack from a wall similar to a incorporeal creature, either blindly, in which case you have total cover, or leaning out in which you have cover or improved cover. This combined with a decent stealth score can let you go room to room, spot your target, drop spell, and vanish.
Keep in mind that if you use a polymorph effect to gain this speed you can breath just fine according to the polymorph rules.
Druids with the Arson domain can be really good with this tactic as they can Wild Shape into a Small Earth Elemental for hours, move through the stone with Earth Glide and cast delayed blast fireball from the Arson subdomain.
This is why Druid Eco Terrorists are so dangerous, between Control Winds, Control Weather, Contagion, Control Water and influencing local rat populations they can destroy a city single handed. This just adds some nasty single target action on top of their environmental destructive power.
Energy attacks against stone means you divide the damage in half before adding in hardness. Your 56 points of damage would just barely get through a single inch of stone.
The bigger problem though is that by the time you can really do this, anyone who would die from it you could probably kill off in an easier way.
Earth Glide doesn't really explain just what happens if you leave objects behind. Or whether it's possible to speak inside the stone; your body can move around freely, but can you expel breath to speak and cast spells?
Also, where are you getting Earth Glide that allows only 5ft speed?
Earth Glide doesn't really explain just what happens if you leave objects behind. Or whether it's possible to speak inside the stone; your body can move around freely, but can you expel breath to speak and cast spells?
Also, where are you getting Earth Glide that allows only 5ft speed?
Earth glide the spell, I linked into it. That limitation is not on an Earth elemental form from poly now that I look, and neither is breathing. So it looks like a full shape shift is definitely ideal.
Yeah, I know there's other ways to kill people far, far easier. This was just one I thought was particularly nasty for leaving no evidence you were ever there. It avoids most detection methods, including a lot of magical ones, and the explosion could be covered up with a physical bomb fragment left at the scene, and a spell to hide the evocation aura.
This isn't the easiest kill, just a particularly discreet one.
As far as what happens when you leave an object behind... I'm not really sure. I figured it would stay stuck in the stone, since the flavor of the spell seems to be that you part the stone/earth like water. You can leave objects bobbing in the water, and stone doesn't really have a buoyancy that I'm aware of (and the object left behind wouldn't get to "swim" either unless you cast a spell on it too) so I feel like frozen in place is the best answer. Great hiding place for keys by the way, in the unmarked wall next to the lock. Pay no attention to the funny looking tile on the other side of the door, that's just a trap.
Other options include shunting the object to the nearest open space, which also works for this spell combo.
If you are up against a high level foe to use this trick on, then nothings stopping them from having a few dozen earth elementals hanging out under the foundation waiting for something to ping on termorsense and either attack it underground, sound an alarm, or both.
If you are up against a high level foe to use this trick on, then nothings stopping them from having a few dozen earth elementals hanging out under the foundation waiting for something to ping on termorsense and either attack it underground, sound an alarm, or both.
This, at least, with a lowish level summon monster spell for up to 6 Small Earth Elementals, makes a reasonable defense vs this kind of attack. Now I feel far less inclined to feel that this is a perfect assassination combo for a ground-floor target. I was thinking of people on the surface with tremorsense, but even they don't work so great vs this, they might prevent it but they don't pose a threat of any serious nature most of the time. Elementals swarming you en route, however, feels like a more interesting twist for my players if they ever get the idea to use this.
Cool. That about fixes most of my questions, except the bit where Fireball technically should cause a bit of a crater. I feel like wood would be the closest approximation of Dirt in the hardness zone (there are some soft woods that can get close to loose soil, and there are some hard packed dirts that can get pretty solid), so we'd be leaving about an inch deep impression at 25 damage, plus another inch at 45, 65, 85, and 105. Unlikely to be significant for a single fireball, but over time repeated applications could drill a 20' wide tunnel through a hill. Neat use for it, since the lack of pressure means it doesn't really cause too much damage to any dirt outside of the tunnel, but I'm sure there's more efficient ways. *Shrugs* It was worth a look into anyways. Once in a while I find a pretty unusual application of a spell or ability, so I try to dig to the bottom of them.
You need line of effect to where you're casting. Gliding through the Earth, you'd have no line of effect to anywhere except yourself.
You can cast a spell without needing a target, or targeting a 5' square. Basically I always have line of effect to my fingertips. The idea isn't to throw it out of the wall, or really at any location in particular, but to find out how far you are from the surface and cast the spell such that it breaks contact with your fingertips (and therefor freezes solid in the dirt/stone) about an inch from the surface, where it waits patiently for detonation. I may be ruled against, if a Dev feels like commenting to the effect of "the force of the stone would crush the spell-pebble and activate it instantly" but that's probably about the only real question I have anymore about how this works. Unless you have something that you feel prevents the spell being cast with no particular target in mind? I've never seen a rule related to the matter, but I'm also new to the boards and therefor unfamiliar with a lot of errata.
You have line of effect to your fingertips because they're part of you. You do not have line of effect to anything outside of your own body, though, and you need to cast this somewhere that isn't you. You can glide through Earth, but your spells can't, and gliding doesn't actually cause any displacement, so you can't just put the delayed blast fireball in an air pocket your make or something.
I can see how that would be a problem with the rock being molded perfectly to my hand like a glove...
For arguments sake, if nothing else, the inside of a size too large gauntlet I can slip out of? Would this provide the needed pocket space, fail to come with me, or cast the spell from the end of the gauntlets finger (thus failing from lack of room)?
At this point I'm mostly theory crafting a never gonna happen event because I do feel like you finally provided a viable reason I'd have to reach into the room (setting off those magic alarms I was going to all this trouble to avoid), but it's fun to over examine things anyway.
You can't put it an inch from the surface because there's no space to put it an inch from the surface. Like MPLindustries said, you don't displace when you earth glide so there isn't any actual space to insert other objects, except for perhaps other earth elementals.
You could certainly pop up for one round, put your fireball down somewhere inconspicuous, and leave. If you have a high stealth mod you get cover to hide from remaining partially submerged.
*edit*
In response to your post, instead of using fireball, just sit underground using all your slots to summon earth elementals. Without a command they will attack the nearest hostile, which would be the enemies above you (conveniently triggering traps in the process) --- although you could also cast tongues for terran and command them to do something specifically.
True, but leaves evidence of a caster being involved. Still a great way to clear a few rooms of a dungeon, use tremorsense and a team of Earths to go room to room. Had a dwarf paladin with a bound earth archetype do that to Rappan Athuk. His pet gave them a map, eliminated most nonmagic traps, and told them where every non flying enemy and half of those were hiding. Earth's are annoying to DMs. Lol.
So no casting db fireball, because it produces a physical object (the pea sized bit of fire). What of something that doesn't? Would something like burning hands heat the stone enough to ignite wood above it to destroy a building discretely?
What all spells could you cast to defend yourself while underground, say when attacked by an Earth Elemental while digging around?
