Does a creature's spell resistance apply against its own AoE effects?

[Alzrius]

I suspect I'm missing something obvious here, but I wanted to ask anyway:

I have a lhaksharut that's used its dimensional lock spell-like ability to ward an area against teleporting. One of the PCs is going to try and use a forcecage to try and trap it within the area of the dimensional lock (I've already rules that the barred version should be just big enough to contain it). Now my question is if the lhaksharut needs to make a caster level check against its own spell resistance to use its greater teleport spell-like ability to get out. Can it choose to fail that check against itself, meaning that it can greater teleport out?

I know the rules for spell resistance say that it "never interferes with its own spells, items, or abilities," but its not the spell resistance that could potentially interfere, here.

[willuwontu]

And that's why you never dimensionally lock down your own area. It's spell resistance would not apply to the dimensional lock.

[RAWmonger]

You buggered yourself there tbh. Sorry if that ruined a fun encounter for you. If the encounter hasn’t happened yet (you said a pc is “going to” do something), apologize and ask them if you can retcon the encounter. An Int 14, High Wis creature who is familiar with his spell like abilities would know how the interaction of his abilities works and probably not do that to himself unless he had no other choice (like he was fighting a late game kassadin).

If your players would rather have a boring free win, just give it to them. There’s plenty of fun high risk encounters to be had

[Firebug]

Ok, they cast Forcecage at it... then what? It surrenders? At most it loses 1 action.

First, it could just use its Dispel Magic SLA to automatically remove the Dimensional Lock from the area, since you always succeed on dispelling effects you created yourself. Then greater teleport away if it wanted to flee*. It may not want to leave its protection from melee box.

Or uses its Disintegrate SLA to automatically destroy the Forcecage per the text of Forcecage. "The walls of a forcecage can be damaged by spells as normal, except for disintegrate, which automatically destroys it."

Third it could use Dismissal on itself if it were summoned/called, though with called it needs to have the condition of ending its service whenever it feels like it (like about to be captured and prevented from completing service anyway). This one is a bit more of a stretch and relies on that Dimensional Lock says: "Also, the spell does not prevent summoned creatures from disappearing at the end of a summoning spell."

Alternatively, it does have a standard action attack of 2 energy bolt ranged attacks for 10d6 (choice of acid, cold, electric or fire) each... is it trapped or is it protected from the melee component of the party? Frankly, the creature inside the Barred Forcecage has cover against any weapon that can fit through the bars, and nothing about all other creatures getting cover from the inside.

[RAWmonger]

While those work, solo monster high CR encounters rarely last long if the creatures turn has equivalent action economy to A SINGLE PLAYER’S turn.

[Alzrius]

willuwontu wrote:

And that's why you never dimensionally lock down your own area. It's spell resistance would not apply to the dimensional lock.

Why not? Dimensional lock says "Spell Resistance: yes" in its stat entry.

[Quixote]

Here's another great example of why encounters that involve single creatures are less interesting than those with multiple.

[RAWmonger]

Alzrius wrote:

willuwontu wrote:

And that's why you never dimensionally lock down your own area. It's spell resistance would not apply to the dimensional lock.

Why not? Dimensional lock says "Spell Resistance: yes" in its stat entry.

Because a creatures own spells/SLAs always permeate its spell resistance. You even quoted that yourself in your original post... "A creature’s spell resistance never interferes with its own spells, items, or abilities."

There's no exception for *spells that negatively effect the creature*...