Wall of stone rules clarity needed


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i recently posted about wall of stone on the PF2E Subreddit and an argument came about whether or not you could box in enemies, seal them in, or if you could even enclose them at all.

post in question; https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/mlpuen/our_first_over_powere d_spell_wall_of_stone/

So is the roof not considered a seperate area between the 5 foot square on the and the one in the air? can i enclose enemies on four sides? can i box them in? what can i and can't i do exactly?


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AeonsShadow wrote:
So is the roof not considered a seperate area between the 5 foot square on the and the one in the air?

No: it even says you can make stairs and there is no way to do that without making a right angles and having part "in the air". So you just make the right hand turn and spend the 5' sections to make the roof.

If you're talking about a roof there beforehand, it's its own area and you just have to raise the wall to it.

AeonsShadow wrote:
can i enclose enemies on four sides?

Nothing stopping you in the text.

AeonsShadow wrote:
can i box them in?

If you have enoughwall to use, sure.

AeonsShadow wrote:
what can i and can't i do exactly?

You can place 5' sections in any configuration you wish as long as the "edges don't pass through any creatures or objects". This means you have 96 5x5 wall pieces to play with.


RAW yes it can be made to work that way. This said the height is defined upon creation and uniform so pyramids won't work (but boxes with 3 protruding walls can).

RAI I don't believe for a second that it was intended to function this way; the stair/bridge comment suggesting the intent being for utility not offense imo.

It is too powerful/cheesy and will become the "every combat" option past a point, especially against lots of medium sized creatures or especially against huge sized creatures.

My houserule is:
- You can create steps on diagonals
- You can rotate the wall on its bottom axis to allow for long diagonals or horizontal surfaces (up to the height)
- All segments must share a border with the segment that came before on the length plane

Creatures can still be trapped in certain circumstances but I am okay with this as long as it isn't an every battle one spell solution.


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The Gleeful Grognard wrote:
RAI I don't believe for a second that it was intended to function this way; the stair/bridge comment suggesting the intent being for utility not offense imo.

You can use the cube for utility too. Make the cube, but leave out a 5' section for a door and you've now got a nifty instant house that'd pretty defendable.


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graystone wrote:
The Gleeful Grognard wrote:
RAI I don't believe for a second that it was intended to function this way; the stair/bridge comment suggesting the intent being for utility not offense imo.
You can use the cube for utility too. Make the cube, but leave out a 5' section for a door and you've now got a nifty instant house that'd pretty defendable.

But you are still in the realm of

Spell: "You can make a wall, a set of stairs, or a bridge."
Player: "Cool! I make a box."

Box isn't, as far as I know, a synonym for wall, stairs, or bridge. And the spell doesn't say "you can make things that are similar to these things" or any other sort of permissive to do anything besides 1 of the 3 options stated statements... so where is the logic that follows from the text of the spell to a result that is a box?


thenobledrake wrote:
graystone wrote:
The Gleeful Grognard wrote:
RAI I don't believe for a second that it was intended to function this way; the stair/bridge comment suggesting the intent being for utility not offense imo.
You can use the cube for utility too. Make the cube, but leave out a 5' section for a door and you've now got a nifty instant house that'd pretty defendable.

But you are still in the realm of

Spell: "You can make a wall, a set of stairs, or a bridge."
Player: "Cool! I make a box."

Box isn't, as far as I know, a synonym for wall, stairs, or bridge. And the spell doesn't say "you can make things that are similar to these things" or any other sort of permissive to do anything besides 1 of the 3 options stated statements... so where is the logic that follows from the text of the spell to a result that is a box?

I agree that it's clearly not meant to be used that way.

It's a line, 1-inch-thick wall of stone up to 120 feet long and 20 feet high, which might also be placed horizontally instead of vertically in order to provide some sort of bridge/stair if needed.

Shortly, In Sanct Ylem.


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The Gleeful Grognard wrote:

RAW yes it can be made to work that way. This said the height is defined upon creation and uniform so pyramids won't work (but boxes with 3 protruding walls can).

RAI I don't believe for a second that it was intended to function this way; the stair/bridge comment suggesting the intent being for utility not offense imo.

It is too powerful/cheesy and will become the "every combat" option past a point, especially against lots of medium sized creatures or especially against huge sized creatures.

My houserule is:
- You can create steps on diagonals
- You can rotate the wall on its bottom axis to allow for long diagonals or horizontal surfaces (up to the height)
- All segments must share a border with the segment that came before on the length plane

Creatures can still be trapped in certain circumstances but I am okay with this as long as it isn't an every battle one spell solution.

I think you are overreacting to Wall of Stone

Yes it is an awesome spell. But casters can dimension door without line of sight at this level. Plus it has a hitpoints, hardness and AC. A barbarian by himself can take it down in one round.

A typical best case is it buys you one round from a couple of enemies. Overpowered? No.

I really don't think you need to take any more goodies away from casters.


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thenobledrake wrote:
Box isn't, as far as I know, a synonym for wall, stairs, or bridge.

Why would it have to be? It gave examples, not an exclusive list: "The wall doesn't need to stand vertically, so you can use it to form a bridge or set of stairs, for example." It's simply pointing out some things that are possible because it doesn't have to be vertical. Can you point out any part of the text of the spell that specifically prevents a cube?

"You can shape the wall's path, placing each 5 feet of the wall on the border between squares.": check, no issues here.

"The wall doesn't need to stand vertically, so you can use it to form a bridge or set of stairs, for example.": no issues here, just examples and horizontal placement is fine so check on the roof.

Where is the issue?

thenobledrake wrote:
And the spell doesn't say "you can make things that are similar to these things" or any other sort of permissive to do anything besides 1 of the 3 options stated statements... so where is the logic that follows from the text of the spell to a result that is a box?

Where is the logic that those are the ONLY things? Why say "for example" instead of 'You can make a wall, stairs and bridge only'? Examples aren't exclusive. Would you say that when Humanoid Form says "You transform your appearance to that of a Small or Medium humanoid, such as a dwarf, elf, goblin, halfling, human, orc, or lizardfolk", it's giving you an exclusive list of ONLY those humanoids? If so, your understanding of the English language is far different from mine.


The difference is pretty clear there.

The former mention what the wall of stone can be used for ( a wall ) which can also be turned by 90° to provide some sort of stairs/bridge.

The latter mentions alternatives by saying "such as".

I see no comparison between a spell which says "you do X, but you can also do Y" and another that says "You can to stuff like this, that and any other stuff which you could imagine until within the spell limits ( in your example, "small or medium humanoid" which means "S or M" size and the"humanoid" trait are required ).

The Gleeful Grognard said it right.

Quote:
It is too powerful/cheesy and will become the "every combat" option past a point, especially against lots of medium sized creatures or especially against huge sized creatures.


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HumbleGamer wrote:

The difference is pretty clear there.

The former mention what the wall of stone can be used for ( a wall ) which can also be turned by 90° to provide some sort of stairs/bridge.

The latter mentions alternatives by saying "such as".

I see no comparison between a spell which says "you do X, but you can also do Y" and another that says "You can to stuff like this, that and any other stuff which you could imagine until within the spell limits ( in your example, "small or medium humanoid" which means "S or M" size and the"humanoid" trait are required ).

The Gleeful Grognard said it right.

Quote:
It is too powerful/cheesy and will become the "every combat" option past a point, especially against lots of medium sized creatures or especially against huge sized creatures.

Please go read the spell again. It mentions nothing about 90 degrees.

It is extremely free form.

You shape a wall of solid stone. You create a 1-inch-thick wall of stone up to 120 feet long, and 20 feet high. You can shape the wall's path, placing each 5 feet of the wall on the border between squares. The wall doesn't need to stand vertically, so you can use it to form a bridge or set of stairs, for example. You must conjure the wall in an unbroken open space so its edges don't pass through any creatures or objects, or the spell is lost.

Each 5-foot-by-5-foot section of the wall has AC 10, Hardness 14, and 50 Hit Points, and it's immune to critical hits and precision damage. A destroyed section of the wall can be moved through, but the rubble created from it is difficult terrain


The 90° part was to show you how to turn a wall into a bridge or stairs ( unless you expect to keep it vertically and 1 inch wide, to show what a cool acrobat you are )...


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Gortle wrote:

I think you are overreacting to Wall of Stone

Yes it is an awesome spell. But casters can dimension door without line of sight at this level. Plus it has a hitpoints, hardness and AC. A barbarian by himself can take it down in one round.

A typical best case is it buys you one round from a couple of enemies. Overpowered? No.

I really don't think you need to take any more goodies away from casters.

Casters are very powerful as is by the time wall of stone comes into play, taking away "any more goodies" is irrelevant.

See, the thing about it is wall of stone becomes really powerful against large or huge sized melee creatures that have to knock out multiple blocks, especially when you loop the box around the target's sides a few times AND they have to pass through multiple squares of difficult terrain to get out.

Remember that it is immune to crits and precision. Not everyone is a barbarian with barbarian levels of raw damage either.

This is where (in my experience) intelligent casters wall up, then dump AoEs into the zone when spaces open up (cloudkill is a solid choice). It is effective, repetitive and requires the GM to plan against the party to overcome in most cases rather than create natural encounters.

Even with medium sized creatures it is ridiculously good to comfortably wall off 6+ foes for a few rounds and stagger how you take them on, it lets the whole party focus fire.

I 100% agree it is able to do all of this RAW, but it is just too powerful. For groups that are less abusive of obviously effective tactics maybe it is fine.


The Gleeful Grognard wrote:
Gortle wrote:

I think you are overreacting to Wall of Stone

Yes it is an awesome spell. But casters can dimension door without line of sight at this level. Plus it has a hitpoints, hardness and AC. A barbarian by himself can take it down in one round.

A typical best case is it buys you one round from a couple of enemies. Overpowered? No.

I really don't think you need to take any more goodies away from casters.

Casters are very powerful as is by the time wall of stone comes into play, taking away "any more goodies" is irrelevant.

See, the thing about it is wall of stone becomes really powerful against large or huge sized melee creatures that have to knock out multiple blocks, especially when you loop the box around the target's sides a few times AND they have to pass through multiple squares of difficult terrain to get out.

Remember that it is immune to crits and precision. Not everyone is a barbarian with barbarian levels of raw damage either.

This is where (in my experience) intelligent casters wall up, then dump AoEs into the zone when spaces open up (cloudkill is a solid choice). It is effective, repetitive and requires the GM to plan against the party to overcome in most cases rather than create natural encounters.

Even with medium sized creatures it is ridiculously good to comfortably wall off 6+ foes for a few rounds and stagger how you take them on, it lets the whole party focus fire.

I 100% agree it is able to do all of this RAW, but it is just too powerful. For groups that are less abusive of obviously effective tactics maybe it is fine.

I think you covered everything.

About the required damage to pass through, talking about monsters, I think it might be quite different depends the creature/s you trapped in ( or beyond ). For what concerns characters well... goodbye spellcasters, rogues, swashbucklers, ranged characters and so on.

What's for sure is that, for what concerns the difficulty of the combat as well for the actions required for the creatures to deal with it, it's a total mess.

Having to rework any single encounter ( past lvl 9 the spellcaster is going to have more than 2/3 walls per day ) to provide challenge would be a real pita ( I think I can easily affirm that it would ruin things for either DM and players ).


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The Gleeful Grognard wrote:

Casters are very powerful as is by the time wall of stone comes into play, taking away "any more goodies" is irrelevant.

See, the thing about it is wall of stone becomes really powerful against large or huge sized melee creatures that have to knock out multiple blocks, especially when you loop the box around the target's sides a few times AND they have to pass through multiple squares of difficult terrain to get out.

Remember that it is immune to crits and precision. Not everyone is a barbarian with barbarian levels of raw damage either.

This is where (in my experience) intelligent casters wall up, then dump AoEs into the zone when spaces open up (cloudkill is a solid choice). It is effective, repetitive and requires the GM to plan against the party to overcome in most cases rather than create natural encounters.

Even with medium sized creatures it is ridiculously good to comfortably wall off 6+ foes for a few rounds and stagger how you take them on, it lets the whole party focus fire.

I 100% agree it is able to do all of this RAW, but it is just too powerful. For groups that are less abusive of obviously effective tactics maybe it is fine.

I don't personally see this as being that powerful to be honest. By throwing up the wall of stone, they are breaking their line of sight, and essentially making everyone hidden from each other. Sure, the party could use this tactic to section off and take out enemies one by one, but their opponents can just as easily use this time to break out the other way, and set up an ambush further down the dungeon/wherever the combat happens to be happening, or consolidate their forces and wait for the party to break through their own walls.

It's certainly not an auto win scenario like certain spells were back in 1st edition. Glitterdust springs to mind.


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The Gleeful Grognard wrote:


Even with medium sized creatures it is ridiculously good to comfortably wall off 6+ foes for a few rounds and stagger how you take them on, it lets the whole party focus fire.

I 100% agree it is able to do all of this RAW, but it is just too powerful. For groups that are less abusive of obviously effective tactics maybe it is fine.

Ok. It is fairly easy for the GM to add a few extra opponnents if wall of stone is too effective.

All the groups I've seen at this level have been able to put out twice that sort of damage in a round even without criticals it is hard to miss AC 10.

I agree if all the strikers in your group are precision damage dealers is it going to be harder. But there are a number of precision immune monsters like swarms, wraiths, worms, ooozes. So what are you doing there?

There are spells you can prepare like Passwall. Heck even 1 invisible creature can cause it to fail. Not to mention simple mundane tactics - if you are all next to each other the wall can't separate you.

To me it is just like invisibility, flying, reverse gravity .... when you get to a certain level then you need to plan for it.


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As far as balance goes Wall of Stone is one of the very few good control spells in the primal spell list. If you weaken walls, particularily this one which is the best, it really hurts them.


Gortle wrote:

Ok. It is fairly easy for the GM to add a few extra opponnents if wall of stone is too effective.

All the groups I've seen at this level have been able to put out twice that sort of damage in a round even without criticals it is hard to miss AC 10.

I agree if all the strikers in your group are precision damage dealers is it going to be harder. But there are a number of precision immune monsters like swarms, wraiths, worms, ooozes. So what are you doing there?

There are spells you can prepare like Passwall. Heck even 1 invisible creature can cause it to fail. Not to mention simple mundane tactics - if you are all next to each other the wall can't separate you.

To me it is just like invisibility, flying, reverse gravity .... when you get to a certain level then you need to plan for it.

Leaning into it and making combats longer to directly counter a spell is not a good move.

It isn't players I am worried about, but npcs.

Okay, let's take a level +2 cloud giant, it does an average of 24 damage a strike before hardness, 10 damage after hardness. It needs to hit the wall 5 times to destroy 1 segment, but being huge it will need to destroy a minimum of 4 segments to move though, possibly 9 if the GM is mean.
Now that assumes the wall only ends up being one layer deep. You can double or tripple this and even allow for vent holes or one multi layer hole so you can maintain LoS.

Same dealwith medium sized creatues. Just segment them off and choose how to deal with them.

Throw a +4 monster at them, going with a giant again this time a shadow giant. It does 31.5 before hardness 17.5 after, so that is one segment a round destroyed on average and you can wrap it a number of times so it will be effectively stopped for 4+ rounds easily while members of the party can effectively weaken it.

As I said before, it forces a GM to counter the players with unrealistic specially catered encounters. That feels terrible for the GM and players alike and leads to PF1e style combats. Or a borked spell can just be adjusted so it isn't so obviously powerful.


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You can pass by spaces smaller than you btw, it's considered difficult terrain usually (need squeeze if it's even smaller).

And even then if people say that wall of stone can't be used for boxing, Wall of Ice is almost as good with the dome formation.


The Gleeful Grognard wrote:
Gortle wrote:

Ok. It is fairly easy for the GM to add a few extra opponnents if wall of stone is too effective.

All the groups I've seen at this level have been able to put out twice that sort of damage in a round even without criticals it is hard to miss AC 10.

I agree if all the strikers in your group are precision damage dealers is it going to be harder. But there are a number of precision immune monsters like swarms, wraiths, worms, ooozes. So what are you doing there?

There are spells you can prepare like Passwall. Heck even 1 invisible creature can cause it to fail. Not to mention simple mundane tactics - if you are all next to each other the wall can't separate you.

To me it is just like invisibility, flying, reverse gravity .... when you get to a certain level then you need to plan for it.

Leaning into it and making combats longer to directly counter a spell is not a good move.

It isn't players I am worried about, but npcs.

Okay, let's take a level +2 cloud giant, it does an average of 24 damage a strike before hardness, 10 damage after hardness. It needs to hit the wall 5 times to destroy 1 segment, but being huge it will need to destroy a minimum of 4 segments to move though, possibly 9 if the GM is mean.
Now that assumes the wall only ends up being one layer deep. You can double or tripple this and even allow for vent holes or one multi layer hole so you can maintain LoS.

Same dealwith medium sized creatues. Just segment them off and choose how to deal with them.

Throw a +4 monster at them, going with a giant again this time a shadow giant. It does 31.5 before hardness 17.5 after, so that is one segment a round destroyed on average and you can wrap it a number of times so it will be effectively stopped for 4+ rounds easily while members of the party can effectively weaken it.

As I said before, it forces a GM to counter the players with unrealistic specially catered encounters. That feels terrible for the GM and players alike and leads to PF1e style...

Don't forget the height of the huge creature when you are blocking it in. A cloud gaint might be able to climb over the wall in one round if there is no top. Though it has levitate anyway.

Regardless the cloud giant will probably attack 3 times, and even the 3rd strike at -10 only misses on a natural 1, so it is not 2 full rounds before he is out.

A 5th level spell and one round to take one enemy out of the fight for 2 rounds. Seems fair to me.

If you really think it is unbalanced then your solution should be to reduce the strength of the wall, or take away its immunity to critical hits for bludgeoning damage. Something like that.

I'm perfectly fine with it.


Gortle wrote:
Please go read the spell again. It mentions nothing about 90 degrees.

It does, indirectly. Because it says each 5 feet of the wall has to be on the border between squares, so going from any one side of a square to the next side of the same square is a 90 degree turn.

graystone wrote:
Why would it have to be?

Because otherwise the Ambiguous Rules advice comes into play by default because treating "stairs" and "bridge" as examples of anything except stairs and bridges is going to be vague at best.

And since the ambiguous rules advice tells us if something seems to good to be true - such as wall of stone being the ultimate in construction techniques, capable of everything it can clearly do, and also force cage junior because of interpreting examples of the spell not having to stand vertically as examples of being able to build more advanced shapes than straight line and jagged line - that it probably is, I know the spell would need to actually say "you can trap your enemy in a box" for that to be an intended function of the spell.


Gortle wrote:

Don't forget the height of the huge creature when you are blocking it in. A cloud gaint might be able to climb over the wall in one round if there is no top. Though it has levitate anyway.

Regardless the cloud giant will probably attack 3 times, and even the 3rd strike at -10 only misses on a natural 1, so it is not 2 full rounds before he is out.

What? The cloud giant does on average 10 damage to a 5ft segment an action a round. We are talking about caging it in so I am not sure where the no top element is coming into this when that is LITERALLY the debate.

Being generous it would require a 4x4 segment to be destroyed to get its 3x3 self out.

With 120ft of wall it is encircled nearly twice over with no realistic way to know which direction to go the giant, realistically would have to smash out 8 sections of wall unless it picked lucky.

And please don't get fixated on the giant, it was just chosen as a creature with a baseline amount of physical damage and huge size while being two levels higher.

There are similar issues with large sized creatures too. Chuck a young gold dragon in with unrestricted boxing and it is trapped for multiple rounds regardless of what direction it tries to flee, even with draconic frenzy.

The rules don't actually say you can just move through spaces 1 size smaller than you and it becomes difficult terrain iirc, please quote a page number from the crb if you know otherwise.
That said it is a common house rule and one I use myself, acknowledging it above even. The reality is allowing a huge sized giant to move through a 5ftx5ft space is not likely to fall into that for near any GMs, even a 5ftx10ft space, that is squeeze territory and squeeze is an exploration activity.

The spell is perfectly powerful/reliable without abusing the utility text cheese. Have it be as cheesy as you want in your game but don't pretend like it doesn't provide a massive advantage RAW.


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Squeeze

Quote:
You contort yourself to squeeze through a space so small you can barely fit through. This action is for exceptionally small spaces; many tight spaces are difficult terrain that you can move through more quickly and without a check.


During our AoA campaign (3rd book, around level 9+), we banned wall of stone after about three sessions of it being used to divide and box-in enemy forces.

From anecdotal experience, wall of stone has the following problems:
1) It's too strong. Most at-level creatures and some higher-level creatures can't get out in one round. Many lower-level creatures take 4+ rounds to get out, and wall of stone has no save. A divided group of enemies is a sub-trivial encounter.

2) It takes too much time to cast. Not the 3-action cost, but the player describing the wall in the meticulous right way to box in 5 enemies in separate-but-contiguous cubes. It's definitely doable with the amount of wall-space wall of stone gives you, but double checking it on the fly kills game tempo.

3) It has too much bookkeeping. Each box-ed in enemy is attacking their own wall-space with its own hit-points. Keeping track of everything makes combat a lot more mentally fatiguing than it needs to be.

Casters have plenty of effective options without resorting to a game-tempo killing, annoying, auto-trivializing spell like Wall of Stone.


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Yeah its is just that Wall of Stone has always done this, in all editions of d20 that it has been around.

This is what walls do. This is why wall spells are good.

I want my casters to be awesome. Yes there are spells that exist that negate encounters - look around there are a quite a few. A good illusion will do it, Calm Emotions can do it. Even a simple good diplomacy skill roll can do it.

You are never going to be able to balance good tactical teams against those that are not. You just have to adjust for your group.

If nothing else increase the number and size of the encounters.


Well there is this about wall spells in general: https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=302 "choosing its contiguous path square by square. The path of a shaped wall can’t enter the same space more than once, but it can double back so one section is adjacent to another section of the wall."

So what prey tell does this mean?


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That you have to draw the wall in a continuous fashion, and can't at any stage run a new section of wall through an old section of wall. But you can touch.

You really need a 3D model to visualise it.

So you can make a 5 sided cube on a floor fairly easily. But your next section of wall will have to extend off it. The wall has to be connected everywhere and in a way that is doesn't go through itself.

As far as I can tell its not too much of a limit, it mostly just consumes a bit more of your available wall.


I don't have an issue with pf1 wall of stone. There were plenty of other spells in pf1 that rivaled wall of stone's power level in that edition.

Imo the power level of pf2 wall of stone is an outlier.


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I am with @thenobledrake on this one, i.e. you have to chose the orientation of wall at the moment of casting and can't deviate from the 2 planes you did chose mid-spell. So you can align the path of the wall either along the x,y or z,x or z,y axes, with the later two being practically identical in application.

The simple reason why I believe this is the fact that you can't take a continuous strip of paper 12 inches long and 2 inches wide and fold it into a cube while only being allowed to use 90° (or 180°) bends along the longer edge. On the other hand you can easily use said strip and method to form a bridge or set of stairs as mentioned in the spell description.

But thats just my semi-scientific interpretation while translating RAW into ROI using geometry class abstractions. I can elaborate if required.


voideternal wrote:

During our AoA campaign (3rd book, around level 9+), we banned wall of stone after about three sessions of it being used to divide and box-in enemy forces.

From anecdotal experience, wall of stone has the following problems:
1) It's too strong. Most at-level creatures and some higher-level creatures can't get out in one round. Many lower-level creatures take 4+ rounds to get out, and wall of stone has no save. A divided group of enemies is a sub-trivial encounter.

2) It takes too much time to cast. Not the 3-action cost, but the player describing the wall in the meticulous right way to box in 5 enemies in separate-but-contiguous cubes. It's definitely doable with the amount of wall-space wall of stone gives you, but double checking it on the fly kills game tempo.

3) It has too much bookkeeping. Each box-ed in enemy is attacking their own wall-space with its own hit-points. Keeping track of everything makes combat a lot more mentally fatiguing than it needs to be.

Casters have plenty of effective options without resorting to a game-tempo killing, annoying, auto-trivializing spell like Wall of Stone.

Yeah I see what you are saying, but I think you are going to far in banning it.

Recommend you modify it so its still good. Perhaps some of these.
1) require the shape to be a simple bridge or simple stairs or box or a wall with a 3 corners and leave it at that . IE relatively simple shapes.
or
2) drop the hardness of the wall
or
3) treat the entire wall as one set of hitpoints. So the whole thing shatters and crumbles when you knock down one section.


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Ubertron_X wrote:

I am with @thenobledrake on this one, i.e. you have to chose the orientation of wall at the moment of casting and can't deviate from the 2 planes you did chose mid-spell. So you can align the path of the wall either along the x,y or z,x or z,y axes, with the later two being practically identical in application.

The simple reason why I believe this is the fact that you can't take a continuous strip of paper 12 inches long and 2 inches wide and fold it into a cube while only being allowed to use 90° (or 180°) bends along the longer edge. On the other hand you can easily use said strip and method to form a bridge or set of stairs as mentioned in the spell description.

But thats just my semi-scientific interpretation while translating RAW into ROI using geometry class abstractions. I can elaborate if required.

This only matters if you assume that the spell actually functions in world as the rules say it does. The rules text, in my opinion, is there to make using the spell as easy and intuitive as possible for the player and GM. In the game world however, I like to think that the Wall of Stone, or whichever wall you happen to be using, isn't set in perfect 5 foot blocks, aligning to the edge of squares that the characters in the story aren't privy too. Especially since that would make the wall incapable of adjusting to terrain features like uneven hills or valleys that have a less than or greater than 90° angle to them relative to where the wall begins, something I'm not convinced the spell can't or shouldn't be able to handle.

Instead they'd be constant and flowing walls, and could very well twist and turn in whichever angle the caster decides they want or need at the time of casting.

The difference between the wall and the strip of paper, is that the paper already exists when you try to maneuver it into position, creating tear points. The wall of stone on the other hand is being created all at once, so it wouldn't have the same kind of tear points the paper has.

Why couldn't it take a sudden 120° turn? Or "twist" to form a horizontal ceiling after beginning as a vertical wall? As long as it is supported, I see no issues. And since apparently the wall can function as a bridge across a chasm with the only support being at the beginning and end, it probably wouldn't take much to support such a structure.


beowulf99 wrote:
This only matters if you assume that the spell actually functions in world as the rules say it does.

What reason is there to assume otherwise?

I will grant you that the language used in the description of the spell is telling players how the spell works in the clearest way the author can manage, and that the words and figures actually on a scroll of the spell in-world would not be at all the same... but not that the in-world version of the spell can actually result in different outcomes than those stated by the rules text.

Because if what the rules tell the player the spell can do in-world isn't accurate, that makes the rules an unreliable narrator of what is going on in-world, and that makes it so that players can't possibly know what their character's are actually capable of doing.


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beowulf99 wrote:

This only matters if you assume that the spell actually functions in world as the rules say it does. The rules text, in my opinion, is there to make using the spell as easy and intuitive as possible for the player and GM. In the game world however, I like to think that the Wall of Stone, or whichever wall you happen to be using, isn't set in perfect 5 foot blocks, aligning to the edge of squares that the characters in the story aren't privy too. Especially since that would make the wall incapable of adjusting to terrain features like uneven hills or valleys that have a less than or greater than 90° angle to them relative to where the wall begins, something I'm not convinced the spell can't or shouldn't be able to handle.

Instead they'd be constant and flowing walls, and could very well twist and turn in whichever angle the caster decides they want or need at the time of casting.

The difference between the wall and the strip of paper, is that the paper already exists when you try to maneuver it into position, creating tear points. The wall of stone on the other hand is being created all at once, so it wouldn't have the same kind of tear points the paper has.
Why couldn't it take a sudden 120° turn? Or "twist" to form a horizontal ceiling after beginning as a vertical wall? As long as it is supported, I see no issues. And since apparently the wall can function as a bridge across a chasm with the only support being at the beginning and end, it probably wouldn't take much to support such a structure.

As anybody who has ever tried to place a straight piece of scenery on uneven ground (Valheim being my own latest example) I fully agree to be able to adjust the actual shape of the wall as long as most of the changes remain mostly cosmetical and/or fit into the narrative. As such - as a GM - I would not be declined to having the wall run at a 45° angle or even to putting crenellations and a walkway on top if the wall(s) is (are) to be used to fortify a small hamlet or similar.

However there is a fine line in between 'use' and 'abuse' and I therefore call it a stretch to go from a mechanical rules text to an organic use of said text back to a mechanical abuse of said rule.

Player: I cast Wall of Stone to block the flow of water rushing towards our party.
GM: As per the spell text you can place the wall in continuous 5 feet by 20 feet sections, up to a length of 120 feet, following the grid.
Player: But didn't you say that the tunnel we are in is almost cirular? So if I use retangular sections only water will still be able to pass through the cracks.
GM: Don't worry, the magic of the spell will make up for any minor elevation changes in the terrain.
Player: As you have just admitted the wall can take any form and I will henceforth use it to entrap any creature we meet using any shape imaginable.
GM: ...


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thenobledrake wrote:
Because if what the rules tell the player the spell can do in-world isn't accurate, that makes the rules an unreliable narrator of what is going on in-world, and that makes it so that players can't possibly know what their character's are actually capable of doing.

To a degree the rules are an unreliable narrator, since they require the player to accept certain facts about the way that the game world works. The rules operate in perfect 5 foot squares, with turns being taken in roughly 6 second increments every time and with hit points that govern exactly how much punishment a creature can take before being knocked out. By necessity the rules have to simplify things to keep the game moving at a reasonable rate, otherwise you end up with a system with overly bloated rules like Rollmaster (never played it, only really read about it in memes to be fair to the game).

The game rules are also not 100% immutable, and especially in circumstances that are abnormal or hyper specific, the GM is expected to step in and make a judgement call on whether something is or isn't reasonable. For me, using Wall of Stone to create a box isn't unreasonable.

Ubertron_X wrote:
However there is a fine line in between 'use' and 'abuse' and I therefore call it a stretch to go from a mechanical rules text to an organic use of said text back to a mechanical abuse of said rule.

Eh, if allowing more freedom with the shape of a wall feels abusive, then by all means, disallow it. In my opinion though, even allowing a player to go ahead and fully encase their foe within rock chambers really doesn't put them in that much of an advantageous spot. They still have to either break open the rock wall themselves to target the foe, or wait for the opponent to do so themselves.

It could allow them to bypass the foe, but then again so could a casting of the spell not allowing total encasement, or the liberal use of another spell, like Invisibility Sphere. And even once they do break through the rock wall to get at the enemy trapped inside, they are giving the opponent a handily solid piece of cover against ranged attacks and difficult terrain to slow the approach of melee threats.

In my opinion, leaving the spell open to more exotic and flavorful shapes is more important for allowing creativity to impact gameplay than it is beneficial to the group or balance to limit the spell to avoid potential abuse.


beowulf99 wrote:
Eh, if allowing more freedom with the shape of a wall feels abusive, then by all means, disallow it. In my opinion though, even allowing a player to go ahead and fully encase their foe within rock chambers really doesn't put them in that much of an advantageous spot. They still have to either break open the rock wall themselves to target the foe, or wait for the opponent to do so themselves.

For any foe that is restricted to basic land movement only, sure. Any foe that has a climb or fly speed however might beg to differ.


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Ubertron_X wrote:
beowulf99 wrote:
Eh, if allowing more freedom with the shape of a wall feels abusive, then by all means, disallow it. In my opinion though, even allowing a player to go ahead and fully encase their foe within rock chambers really doesn't put them in that much of an advantageous spot. They still have to either break open the rock wall themselves to target the foe, or wait for the opponent to do so themselves.
For any foe that is restricted to basic land movement only, sure. Any foe that has a climb or fly speed however might beg to differ.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. A foe with a climb or fly speed is even Less bothered by this use of Wall of Stone, since they have the ability to break the wall in places the party can't normally get to, and escape/attack from that direction rather than one that the party will expect.

Unless you meant something different that I didn't catch?


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So what does this mean in the main spell description of Wall of Stone?

"You can shape the wall's path, placing each 5 feet of the wall on the border between squares."

combine with:

""choosing its contiguous path square by square. The path of a shaped wall can’t enter the same space more than once, but it can double back so one section is adjacent to another section of the wall."


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1) RAW allows Wall of Stone to enclose creatures. The rules for laying the wall allow it to double back so the edges touch.

2) You will need line of effect to lay the wall, so you have to start from the back, and some shapes won't be possible for the front blocking the back. Unless your GM rules that the whole wall appears at once and doesn't come in panel by panel.

3) I don't know why creatures don't get a saving roll if boxed in. I would allow a Reflex save to leap out of the box as it forms.


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Why did Paizo create the 7th level spell Force Cage: https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=690 when a spell 2 levels lower out performs it in so many different ways?

Wall of Stone has a better range, 10 more HP, is permanent and has no saving throw....If heightened to 7th it has even more HP than Force Cage :)

The way I see it, there is almost no reason to ever learn/cast Force Cage if you can just create 20ft cube from a Wall of Stone to box in a bunch of creatures.

Normally if its too good to be true.....


What would the fix for Wall of Stone be?

Prevent wall of stone from completely caging a monster?

Allow it, but provide a saving roll?

Make the spell uncommon?

Change the spell's level or wall strength?


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Krugus wrote:

Why did Paizo create the 7th level spell Force Cage: https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=690 when a spell 2 levels lower out performs it in so many different ways?

Wall of Stone has a better range, 10 more HP, is permanent and has no saving throw....If heightened to 7th it has even more HP than Force Cage :)

The way I see it, there is almost no reason to ever learn/cast Force Cage if you can just create 20ft cube from a Wall of Stone to box in a bunch of creatures.

Normally if its too good to be true.....

Cage of force is partially transparent. The hardness at 20 is much higher.

Ethereal plane traps a range of creatures not affected by Wall of Stone

It is also available to Occult not Primal. That does count for a fair bit.

But yes for general use it hardly seems balanced.


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Krugus wrote:

Why did Paizo create the 7th level spell Force Cage: Force Cage Linkified when a spell 2 levels lower out performs it in so many different ways?

Wall of Stone has a better range, 10 more HP, is permanent and has no saving throw....If heightened to 7th it has even more HP than Force Cage :)

The way I see it, there is almost no reason to ever learn/cast Force Cage if you can just create 20ft cube from a Wall of Stone to box in a bunch of creatures.

Normally if its too good to be true.....

I would contend that even if you aren't allowed to create a roof with Wall of Stone, you could still use it to trap a creature handily using only the wording of the spell. There is no guarantee that a creature can climb wall of stone, given that it is a shear wall of stone that doesn't necessarily have anything like hand holds or features that you can grab, and it can be 20 feet high, tall enough to reach the roof of most caves/dungeons.

Add to the cons of Force Cage that the entire cage shares an HP pool as far as I can tell, so one solid 60 point hit will take down the spell in it's entirety. The only pluses I can really see is that Force Cage can be created in midair and stay suspended there. That and it extends into the ethereal plane for whatever that is worth in your particular campaign.

That sounds more like a Force Cage being bad issue than Wall of Stone being too good to be honest.


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Are we just going to ignore the fact that Force Cage allows you to one-sidedly pelt the trapped monster with spells?


voideternal wrote:
Are we just going to ignore the fact that Force Cage allows you to one-sidedly pelt the trapped monster with spells?

"One-sidedly"? AFAICT, spells can pass uninhibited in both directions?

_
glass.


glass wrote:
voideternal wrote:
Are we just going to ignore the fact that Force Cage allows you to one-sidedly pelt the trapped monster with spells?

"One-sidedly"? AFAICT, spells can pass uninhibited in both directions?

_
glass.

Not only that, but some physical attacks can pass through too, since it's a size-based limitation rather than a hard "you can't attack through the cage"


One-sidedly, because the caster of force cage decides which monster to use it on.
Casting force cage on a caster is as meaningless as casting wall of stone on a teleporting demon.


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What seals the deal for me is the line "up to 120 feet long, and 20 feet high."

The spell doesn't give you free reign with a number of 5x5 tiles to cover, it makes a wall up to certain dimensions. And, yes, it can wrap back up in on itself and enclose a space with 4 fairly tall walls, but let me ask this real quick: How "tall" and how "long" is the wall of a 10x10x10 cube? I understand that a piece of paper with infinite seams would be able to be folded into a cube, but that's not really what we're talking about.

That being said, this is one of the rare circumstances where I actually think some further clarification would've been nice. I don't know if it's technically required, but I don't want to have to work through the implications of the geometry to figure out if it should be allowed or not.

Side note: the examples given are perfectly in-line with a wall. Stairs are really just walls flipped on their sides with a lot of corners in a pattern.
I'm also not claiming anything about 90 degree angles or anything. I'm simply saying that the concept of a wall that's up to 120ft long and 20ft high fits the geometrical concept of a wall that is consistently flat along one dimension, traditionally that is the vertical dimension, but the spell allows the flat side to be horizontal instead.


voideternal wrote:

One-sidedly, because the caster of force cage decides which monster to use it on.

Casting force cage on a caster is as meaningless as casting wall of stone on a teleporting demon.

That doesn't address the original point that if treated as being able to fully encase a creature, wall of stone is better at that purpose than a higher-level spell that is designed to do that exact thing.

Because while wall of stone might not stop every teleporting demon, it will block every effect that requires line of sight (force cage won't) and stops all attacks and spells passing through to target the party until it is dealt with (force cage doesn't).

That is evidence that interpreting wall of stone as being able to fully encase an enemy is in too good to be true territory.


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Wall of stone can often encase someone indoors though. So should it not ever be able to do so, only able to do so with a ceiling 20 foot or lower or anytime you want?
Unlike most other walls it doesn't do damage and you can just as easily block yourself off or give enemies an escape route if you fully encase them.


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OrochiFuror wrote:

Wall of stone can often encase someone indoors though. So should it not ever be able to do so, only able to do so with a ceiling 20 foot or lower or anytime you want?

Unlike most other walls it doesn't do damage and you can just as easily block yourself off or give enemies an escape route if you fully encase them.

I mean, there is no mention of whether you can or can't close someone off from the other with the wall, but assuming you can't for whatever reason, suddenly there are a LOT of issues with the spell that make it unwieldy. Say the GM decides you can't completely block a creatures movement with the spell, now you have to account for that when placing your wall segments. This could lead to a spellcaster spending unnecessary time placing their wall segments one at a time and checking whether or not creatures A, B, and C can all still move/ reach the party etc... Suddenly instead of a quick box or line of wall across a space, the caster is designing a rat maze that has one "clear" path between the two parties.

I mean the point of the spell is to block lines of sight and the path of creatures, right? I think we can generally agree on that, because if we can't, what is the point of making a Wall of Stone? And if that is one of the points of the spell, then why shouldn't it be allowed to fully block off a creatures movement?

I could see allowing a reflex save to escape being entrapped in a wall of stone, but that gets fiddly. It works for Force Cage because that is a defined area, 20 feet on each side. But Wall of Stone could enclose someone while being a much larger (or smaller) area. So if you gave someone a reflex save to avoid being trapped by the spell in a way similar to Force Cage, what range could they move to avoid that situation when they pass that save? Their speed? An arbitrary amount like 5, 10, 15, etc... feet?


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OrochiFuror wrote:

Wall of stone can often encase someone indoors though. So should it not ever be able to do so, only able to do so with a ceiling 20 foot or lower or anytime you want?

Unlike most other walls it doesn't do damage and you can just as easily block yourself off or give enemies an escape route if you fully encase them.

Wall of stone being able to block off an area given the circumstances of an encounter is fine, because that is a spell having a particular situation in which casting it is even better than usual. That exists all over the system, and rewards players for tailoring what they are doing to the encounter they are doing it in, or at least for choosing options that synergize with the adventure they are playing through.

But an interpretation of wall of stone that can always trap an opponent? That's not fine. That makes force cage being higher level not make sense, and rewards one-trick-pony style of play.

And if I am remembering correctly, walls that can deal damage only do so when a creature chooses to move into the wall's space, so that's not actually a bonus that wall of stone should be getting something in exchange for not having - it's a defect of those walls because an enemy can just walk through them, taking a very small amount of damage relative to the level of spell spent, which wall of stone is already better off compared to them for not having so it actually does the job of a wall by default rather than if the creature you're trying to section off elects to be sectioned off.

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