So, I had an encounter last night with my party that I GM, where a create pit spell was cast.
One of the unlucky recipients was a imperial Ghoul.
Imperial Ghouls have a burrow speed.
Create Pit states that it has walls of Coarse stones.
Burrow states
"A creature with a burrow speed can tunnel through dirt, but not through rock unless the descriptive text says otherwise."
So as a semi-mindless Ghoul, I had it burrow straight down into the create pit spell.
A player pointed out(about a couple of turns later) that this would impossible because
1. It is an extra dimensional space.
2. The floor was coarse stone.
So I quickly googled around for about 10 minutes trying to find a good answer, and I determined that the walls were coarse stones, but the floor would be the same. And effectively, the ghoul would not be able to escape the pit by burrowing, he would simply be burrowing further into an extra dimensional space.
I found this answer to be the best I could come up with at the moment instead of "The Ghoul Actually never disappeared in the first place, everyone go back 2 turns and target the ghoul normally"
I also stated, that as soon as the Create pit wore off, that the Ghoul would be violently ejected and land prone.
The player who cast the spell, was not happy with this answer, and started acting up. I told him I just wanted to move things along, and I gave him my reasoning. But he still felt cheated out of his spell. Then he said it was fine, but then when I tried to continue, he continued to explain that he was not fine with it. This is not the first time that I rule something one way, and he becomes greatly displeased. I feel sometimes I give my PC's an inch, and they try to take a mile. And this player always sidetracts the game to say why his ruling should be superior than mine.
It also got me thinking that a lot of Monsters with burrow type abilities do not have a text saying what they can or cannot burrow into. As for example a Gargantuant Purple worm. It is imply the dig through everywhere, but not explicitly said that it can burrow through stone in its abilities. Or say for example adult dragons with the burrow ability?
So a couple of questions:
-How would you have all settled this?
-Are create pit spells completely immune to any spell or ability that targets rocks or dirt?
-Would an elder Purple Worm or Adult Dragon trying to burrow top down into a pit just magically be forbidden to do so?
-A bag of holding can rupture, are other extradimensional spaces unabled to be completely meddled from the inside?
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The ghoul shouldn't have been able to burrow out of the pit because it doesn't have the ability to burrow through stone.
Whether you should have ret-conned that is a side question, but if nobody had tried to target the ghoul in the interim and the ghoul hadn't done anything noteworthy in the intervening period I likely would have just said, 'Ok, my bad he is still in the pit. Proceed'.
If a creature with the ability to burrow, dig, or otherwise pass through the stone walls did so I'm not sure what would happen... it depends on what is 'outside' the extra-dimensional space created by the spell. Since it is a short duration spell to begin with I might rule that breaking through the walls ends the spell... causing it to fill in and deposit creatures on the surface as normal.
[/I]Create Pit[/I] does not violently eject it's occupants or place them in the prone position when the spell ends.
Other than that, I would not allow a creature to burrow out (even if they could move though stone), it is an extra-dimensional effect. You could place it onboard a ship or the roof of a tower, where would the occupants burrow too? Thematically, if they could move through stone, I would just have them reenter the pit from the opposing wall.
[/i]Create Pit[/i] does not violently eject it's occupants or place them in the prone position when the spell ends.
Other than that, I would not allow a creature to burrow out (even if they could move though stone), it is an extra-dimensional effect. You could place it onboard a ship or the roof of a tower, where would the occupants burrow too? Thematically, if they could move through stone, I would just have them reenter the pit from the opposing wall.
I only added that stipulation because the ghoul dug straight down. Close to a shunt effect.
So thematically if they burrowed straight down, the would come out the side?
I personally would have felt like I wasted my spell if I had been the player. The player didn't handle the situation well, either. As the GM it IS your job to make calls on the fly, and sometimes they're just incorrect, but that's OK, no one's perfect. I think this was a case of you making a call that should've gone the other way. Extra-dimensional spaces (at the very least, those made by the Pit spells) are meant to be a set size (explicitly listed in the spell's description), and a simple burrow speed shouldn't enable a creature to alter the laws of physics that govern them.
It's important to stick to calls you make on the fly like that, and look into them only after the session has ended. Being that you're here asking for opinions tells me that you did and are doing the right thing. Alternatively, after seeing how upset the player was, and if by then you HAD considered maybe Burrowing wasn't the correct answer, deciding "just then, the Ghoul realizes his claws can't burrow through spacial borders, and is shunted back to the floor of the Pit, laying prone and feeling rather under-accomplished," I doubt anyone would have worried much about the 2 rounds that went by while it was out of sight, and continued combat normally.
I have never thought much about this spell until now. It seems strange that it has so little to do with earth/rock (it IS on the earth/cave domain but there it is listed as 'extra-dimensional' and NO references to Plane of Earth are mentioned in the text)
As far as ruling. DM wins. That is standard. If your players are feeling like they are being ruled against too often then the game doesn't hold up in the long term.
This would make me think that a LOT of other issues happen with this spell. If the summoner falls but the Eidolon doesn't... Aren't they on separate planes now???
This would make me think that a LOT of other issues happen with this spell. If the summoner falls but the Eidolon doesn't... Aren't they on separate planes now???
It's only an extra-dimensional space, not an extra-planar space. Same plane. Took me a minute to clean my brain off the ceiling before I made that distinction, myself, though ;)
Point of note: Burrow is not defined in Pathfinder. If you were reviewing Burrow on d20pfsrd, they note that they included the 3.5 rules.
It's also worth noting that extradimensional spaces are weird. Per the CRB:
A number of spells and magic items utilize extradimensional spaces, such as rope trick, a bag of holding, a handy haversack, and a portable hole. These spells and magic items create a tiny pocket space that does not exist in any dimension.
Thus, burrowing in this case, even if it works on the "coarse stone" (lol GM fiat), wouldn't actually accomplish anything. The space surrounding the bottom of the pit doesn't lead back to the dirt that is theoretically adjacent to it. There is a degree to which these extradimensional spaces break one's sense of reality because the "ground" you were originally on before falling in is still very much in the same spot and being in the pit =/= being in the ground.
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Point of note: Burrow is not defined in Pathfinder.
They seem to have used the name 'Earth Glide' in the universal monster rules, while still referring to it as burrow as well;
"Earth Glide (Ex) When the creature burrows, it can pass through stone, dirt, or almost any other sort of earth except metal as easily as a fish swims through water. If protected against fire damage, it can even glide through lava. Its burrowing leaves behind no tunnel or hole, nor does it create any ripple or other sign of its presence. A move earth spell cast on an area containing the burrowing creature flings it back 30 feet, stunning it for 1 round unless it succeeds on a DC 15 Fortitude save.
Format: earth glide; Location: Speed."
Which does beg the question... Why couldn't you use part of the earthglide/burrow ability to facilitate climbing?
I get that RAW a climb speed is different than a burrow speed, but it seems like you could 'burrow' vertically and then pull yourself up over the ledge?
(again this assumes that you can burrow through this NON-earth spells stone walls)
The ghoul shouldn't have burrowed through anything and assuming the party didn't kill the ghoul while at the bottom of the pit, or that the ghoul didn't manage to climb out, then the spell would have eventually ended and the ghoul would have simply ended up in that square standing, not ejected prone.
Point of note: Burrow is not defined in Pathfinder.They seem to have used the name 'Earth Glide' in the universal monster rules, while still referring to it as burrow as well;
"Earth Glide (Ex) When the creature burrows, it can pass through stone, dirt, or almost any other sort of earth except metal as easily as a fish swims through water. If protected against fire damage, it can even glide through lava. Its burrowing leaves behind no tunnel or hole, nor does it create any ripple or other sign of its presence. A move earth spell cast on an area containing the burrowing creature flings it back 30 feet, stunning it for 1 round unless it succeeds on a DC 15 Fortitude save.
Format: earth glide; Location: Speed."
...kind of. Earth Glide is a specific type of burrow. You can tell that there is a difference when comparing an Earth Elemental, which has Burrow 20 ft., earth glide, vs. an Underworld Dragon, which just has Burrow 20 ft.
Which does beg the question... Why couldn't you use part of the earthglide/burrow ability to facilitate climbing?
I get that RAW a climb speed is different than a burrow speed, but it seems like you could 'burrow' vertically and then pull yourself up over the ledge?
(again this assumes that you can burrow through this NON-earth spells stone walls)
If you can burrow into the "wall" such that you fully or mostly enter a 5' square, you can use it as a replacement for a climb speed, but I can understand the design decision to separate burrow from climb. It makes sense for GMs to have the option of allowing rather than feeling tied to a forced ruling.
Well just to add a bit of context to the whole situation again:
The Part consisted of 4 Gestalted Characters at Lv5 one with a large plant companion.
They were up against 2 imperial ghouls both at CR4.
Their plan was to open door to the room, cast create pit as a choke point and try to get whatever ghouls inside the pit.
To a degree, I get it. One would not like it if their ace in the hole tactic was ruined by a monster with a mundane ability.
But as GM 1990 pointed out, all I am trying to do is to make encounters less tedious than hack and slash, and a bit more memorable. Hell even the player who had created pit thought that ghouls were "mindless undead that would come barreling down into my pit" sometimes I feel that he has a MMO style of gaming. But that is besides the point.
I assume that the concensus is that create pit is immune to all magical and mundane affects because it is not a real thing. So an elder purple worm would not be able to tunnel downwards, nor a elder earth elemental would be able to by pass the walls.
Hell, I assume that create pit is also immune to adamantine, or excavasious escape or shape stone.
I wouldn't have a problem with Stone Shape to create handholds or similar, but the fundamental thing to remember is that, as an extradimensional space, you're essentially overlaying unreality on top of reality. That unreality lacks depth or content beyond the stated scope of the effect. As such, you start having to ask silly questions when modifying the space, like if this line from Bag of Holding applies to your Create Pit:
If a bag of holding is overloaded, or if sharp objects pierce it (from inside or outside), the bag immediately ruptures and is ruined, and all contents are lost forever.
The assumption is no, since the Create Pit spell doesn't say it, but the spell also doesn't assume the ability to burrow or otherwise puncture the space.
Well just to add a bit of context to the whole situation again:
The Part consisted of 4 Gestalted Characters at Lv5 one with a large plant companion.
They were up against 2 imperial ghouls both at CR4.
Their plan was to open door to the room, cast create pit as a choke point and try to get whatever ghouls inside the pit.
To a degree, I get it. One would not like it if their ace in the hole tactic was ruined by a monster with a mundane ability.
But as GM 1990 pointed out, all I am trying to do is to make encounters less tedious than hack and slash, and a bit more memorable. Hell even the player who had created pit thought that ghouls were "mindless undead that would come barreling down into my pit" sometimes I feel that he has a MMO style of gaming. But that is besides the point.
I assume that the concensus is that create pit is immune to all magical and mundane affects because it is not a real thing. So an elder purple worm would not be able to tunnel downwards, nor a elder earth elemental would be able to by pass the walls.
Hell, I assume that create pit is also immune to adamantine, or excavasious escape or shape stone.
This is correct. A creature's ability to traverse through earth - be it dirt or stone - using either magical or mundane means in this scenario is mute, because despite the bottom of the pit being made of dirt, and the walls being made of stone, beyond these barriers exists nothing. Let's take the same scenario, but put the scene on the top deck of a ship. The Create Pit spell would work in the exact same way, but someone standing inside the ship directly below the spell's area wouldn't be affected, or even aware of the spell's effects.
On making combat more interesting, my suggestion is to focus instead on the design of the encounters themselves. Environmental hazards are a simple yet effective way to wildly alter how an encounter plays out. Filling this room with a permanent Fog Cloud effect would have given the players a very different dynamic to fight with, and might have made for a very memorable encounter. No matter how you plan or run your encounters, you need to keep in mind that the players' first priority is ending the encounter with as efficient a victory as possible. How interesting the encounter is won't be on their minds. With this in mind, remember that no matter how you plan or run an encounter, if a player manages to simplify the encounter (ESPECIALLY after using valuable resources like spell slots) let them have their moment, because it's interesting to them. So if you were to put that Fog Cloud in that room, and the caster used a Gust of Wind spell to disperse it, then they dispersed it. Don't tell them "sorry, this fog seems especially resistant to wind effects" simply because the concealment made for a more interesting encounter. And please don't think I'm making a jab at you personally. This is something that even the most seasoned DM's need to be reminded of every once in a while. Sometimes a player will trivialize an encounter on you when you didn't expect them to. When that happens, us DM's need to just let it happen and try again next time.