Wall of Thorns Question

[Lady Melo]

Quick Question about Wall of Thorns (Link).

Namely this part

Pathfinder Core Rulebook pg.382 wrote:

Duration: 1 minute

Over the course of a minute, you cause a thick wall of thorny brambles to grow from the ground. You create a 5-foot-thick wall of brambles and thorns in a straight line...

As I read it the spell it's self lasts 1 minute and that minute is the wall of thorns growing. After that the wall is a permanent feature until destroyed. However it isn't completely clear and could have been intended to work as the other walls spells (except stone which doesn't have a duration).

Assuming it is how I read it, how would you rule it being partially there. Mechanically I think it has 0 effect until 10 rounds have passed, but it isn't implied that it's 9 rounds of harmless grass slowly growing which on the 10th it explodes in to a thorn wall.

[Goldryno]

The wording is confusing but if you look at the other wall spells you can see that Wall of Stone (which remains afterwards) doesn't have a duration while the other more magical walls (like wind and fire) that are assumed to fade do have a listed duration. I do not think that Duration they list is the same amount of time needed for you to grow the wall (despite the very reasonable way you are interpreting that beginning flavor text).

So I would probably rule that this creates an instant Thorn Wall to your desired specifications which lasts for a little while (1 minute) before magically fading/dying as suddenly as it grew after 1 minute.

[Lady Melo]

Those are the two possible interpretations and that make the spell Wildly different, I feel like it is kind of important to know how this spell works. I would think there must be an official answer as this is not a Grey area kind of thing (It's only a 3rd level spell and there are officially run event games).

any other stuff falls in GM discretion easily, but If the spell takes 1 minute to start, or only lasts 1 minute has very different uses (though both are cool for different reasons).

[Goldryno]

I agree it's important to know how it works and the way to use it correctly.

I would say though that in addition to making it less consistent with the other spells and wording, that if it took 9 rounds for the spell to take effect, I would expect them to have built the spells entry differently.

I would have expected them to list a cast time of 1 minute with no duration listing. Plus with the limitation in the spell that you must do it in an unbroken space with such a long delay means that it would be almost unusuable in any combat.

On the other hand I wouldn't be mad if Paizo wanted to give you the ability to grow permanent hedge maze defenses for any home-base you might have. Just mechanics that tricky to use seems to be something they have steered away from.

[Jared Walter 356]

Goldryno wrote:

I agree it's important to know how it works and the way to use it correctly.

I would say though that in addition to making it less consistent with the other spells and wording, that if it took 9 rounds for the spell to take effect, I would expect them to have built the spells entry differently.

I would have expected them to list a cast time of 1 minute with no duration listing. Plus with the limitation in the spell that you must do it in an unbroken space with such a long delay means that it would be almost unusuable in any combat.

On the other hand I wouldn't be mad if Paizo wanted to give you the ability to grow permanent hedge maze defenses for any home-base you might have. Just mechanics that tricky to use seems to be something they have steered away from.

This isn't written as clearly as it could be. However, I read this as you cast the spell in 2-actions. It takes ten rounds to create the wall, and then the wall becomes permanent.

If they had listed the casting time as 1-minute, you wouldn't be able to walk away from it until the full minute. This way feels more in line with other wall creation spells.

In short, I would run it as Lady Melo originally described.