Hazards and Disintegrate

[siegfriedliner]

So this is a tale of two games both pretty high level.

I'm the first game we encountered a a number of force blades doing their best poe impression and we used Disintegrate fairly wastefully to destroy the force blades.

In the second game with a second GM in a completely different ap there was hazard that sprung a force barrier up and could easily be disarmed from beyond that force barrier.

So first I threw a hammer at a monster behind this barrier not being told it exists. He tells me that my hammer bounces of the invisible barrier. I go great I have see invisibility so I would have seem the barrier.

Then he goes no this force barrier is not a wall of force so it's not necessarily invisible like that. So I go then I can see the force barrier because it's not invisible. He goes no it could be translucent. Now a translucent wall is by definition visible. But he is the GM so we moved on.

My ally tried to Disintegrate the invisible transclucent wall of force and the GM said that doesn't work you can't just can't solve hazards with the right spell. And I was like that is exactly how Disintegrate works it's says so quite plainly in the spell that it destroys force constructs.

In the end it's the gms game so we moved on, but it annoyed me because part of what I really value in good GM's is that they feel like a fair arbiter of the rules and he doesn't.

But besides venting a little frustration I just wanted to double check I was right about Disintegrate as long as the force effect isn't bigger than 10ft or specifically says that Disintegrate doesn't work on it then Disintegrate is your going to spell for taking down force effects ?

[Vali Nepjarson]

Yeah, the GM was being unfair there and was probably just upset at the idea of his hazard being easily overcome. That is absolutely one of the core uses of that spell and him not allowing it is ridiculous in most cases.

Now, that isn't to say that you can't have reasons why the spell doesn't work for some reason. Maybe there's some sort of magic emitter that immediately reforms the wall of force and you need to disable that first. But it doesn't sound like that's the case.

I actually agree with the wall being un-seeable. I can see an argument either way, but to me the wall is invisible by description, but not because it's being magically made invisible as in the invisibility spell. It's just naturally so translucent that you cannot see it. See invisibility doesn't work because you're basically looking at a paper thin plane of indestructible glass, except even more translucent. I'd allow you to see something like a shimmer in the air if you had the Magic Sense feat or something like that.

But yeah, as far as the other ruling goes, that is a major red flag in my book for GMing. Your group should probably have a talk with him and express that you feel that he is hurting the fun of the group and that it feels like he's being anti-player. If he digs his heels in even more, then you have to decide whether you want to put up with it or find another GM.

[Freakytapir]

siegfriedliner wrote:

My ally tried to Disintegrate the invisible transclucent wall of force and the GM said that doesn't work you can't just can't solve hazards with the right spell. And I was like that is exactly how Disintegrate works it's says so quite plainly in the spell that it destroys force constructs.

Isn't that what spells are for? Seems like pure salt to me.