Adjudicating Wall of Ice (3.5)

deaddmwalking · Post by **deaddmwalking** » Sun Aug 19, 2012 3:00 pm

Wall of Ice is described as an anchored plane of ice.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/wallOfIce.htm

I don't want to punish a player for creative use of spells, but I have reason to make sure I do things right in this case.

In a hallway, the player wants to cast the spell so that it crosses the hallway more than once.

In the diagram below the letter I represents the walls of the corridor and C represents the wall of ice:

ICI

Is this a 'valid' casting? Or does it have to look like one of the following:

I-I

I/I

I appreciate your responses.

Winnah · Post by **Winnah** » Sun Aug 19, 2012 3:09 pm

It is either a hemisphere or a plane. The plane is a flat surface, but can be oriented how you like. The last two examples are how I understand the spell to function.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Sun Aug 19, 2012 3:27 pm

As a hemisphere, it can be placed on the wall or floor and indirectly create a proper C shape, but it would be pretty easy to crawl around it. Unfortunately, for the flat-place version, it's pretty clear that it's intended to be a plane. Wall of stone can be shaped to follow a pattern, but you're ice wall is going to have to be I/I or I-I.

Now, keep in mind that the wall can be anchored along the walls and be horizontal, bisecting the hallway; forcing those who wish to traverse the hall either have to crawl under the ice wall at a crawl or break it and go through the plane of cold damage.

DrPraetor · Post by **DrPraetor** » Sun Aug 19, 2012 3:30 pm

ICI is not a valid use of the Ice Plane form, no.

But IOI - with the O being a hemisphere, ought to be valid. It's not clear what happens if there's only partial room for the hemisphere, or if the hemisphere can't be contiguous but is anchored at walls and ceilings. Frankly, it's not clear (to me) whether the entire hemisphere has a single hp total to break or what.

Anyway, a typical corridor is about 5 feet across, so a ten foot hemisphere from a 7th level caster would require you to break INTO the hemisphere and then OUT OF the hemisphere to walk past it. No cold damage, though.

A hemisphere in the middle of the corridor would presumably be, effectively, two different walls.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Sun Aug 19, 2012 3:47 pm

virgil wrote:Wall of stone can be shaped to follow a pattern, but you're ice wall is going to have to be I/I or I-I.

Even Wall of Stone is a bit vague in its shapeability. On the one hand, it says "you can create a wall of stone in almost any shape you desire", but on the other hand the effect line has the (S) for shapeable which means "a shaped effect or area can have no dimension smaller than 10 feet".

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Sun Aug 19, 2012 3:59 pm

You can still get a zig-zag pattern down the hallway with that limitation.

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Sun Aug 19, 2012 4:56 pm

DrPraetor wrote:ICI is not a valid use of the Ice Plane form, no.

But IOI - with the O being a hemisphere, ought to be valid. It's not clear what happens if there's only partial room for the hemisphere, or if the hemisphere can't be contiguous but is anchored at walls and ceilings. Frankly, it's not clear (to me) whether the entire hemisphere has a single hp total to break or what.

Anyway, a typical corridor is about 5 feet across, so a ten foot hemisphere from a 7th level caster would require you to break INTO the hemisphere and then OUT OF the hemisphere to walk past it. No cold damage, though.

A hemisphere in the middle of the corridor would presumably be, effectively, two different walls.

If you can anchor the plane to an irregular wall, you can probably intersect the hemisphere however you like.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sun Aug 19, 2012 6:10 pm

virgil wrote:You can still get a zig-zag pattern down the hallway with that limitation.

What do you mean by this Virgil?

Why would |_| not be allowed but /\/ be allowed?

DrPraetor · Post by **DrPraetor** » Sun Aug 19, 2012 6:19 pm

@Kaelik and Virgil: I assume he means that you can zig-zag down a hallway but each zig and each zag has to be at least ten feet long?

Wall of Ice is an evocation - which means you can definitely put the hemisphere in the middle of the hallway - I'm assuming you could even put it upside down or something, if you wanted.

The important issue is whether there is anywhere a 10-square-foot section of the hemisphere that you could crash through that'd get you all the way to the other side of the hemisphere. This requires pen and paper and a bit of trig.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sun Aug 19, 2012 6:37 pm

DrPraetor wrote:@Kaelik and Virgil: I assume he means that you can zig-zag down a hallway but each zig and each zag has to be at least ten feet long?

Why does it being 10ft long matter for Wall of Ice?

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Sun Aug 19, 2012 7:09 pm

Wall of Ice creates walls of ice in 10ft chunks.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sun Aug 19, 2012 7:13 pm

Grek wrote:Wall of Ice creates walls of ice in 10ft chunks.

Um... No it doesn't.

DrPraetor · Post by **DrPraetor** » Sun Aug 19, 2012 7:28 pm

Kaelik - I assume you actually speak a foreign language, and read this forum through some kind of computerized autotranslation?

Virgil was clearly talking about wall of stone. Because staying on topic would cause us all physical pain.

Having finished giving Kaelik shit - I was suffering from a total brainfart. Wall of Ice fails if any of the area is filled with other material - including the walls of the tunnel. So unlike other evocations, you can't create the hemisphere if there isn't room for the area you specify. But the area is up to radius 3 ft + 3 ft per level, so as long as the hallway is fairly wide, you should be able to use a hemisphere to block it off, and then enemies would have to break through each side of the hemisphere.

Grek - More to the point, the wall of ice is destroyed in 100-square-foot chunks. I think that the authors of the spell just assumed that the hemisphere would have an area of less than 100 square feet - but at 7th level, the area is actually 2 pi * 49, over 300 square feet. Of course that hemisphere is also 10 ft. in radius, so in a 6 ft. wide hallway with 8 ft. ceilings, the entire hemisphere couldn't be more than 2 pi * 16, and there'd be big gaps, enemies could probably just walk around.

deaddmwalking · Post by **deaddmwalking** » Sun Aug 19, 2012 9:01 pm

Kaelik and I will be discussing wall of ice with some folks at theRPGsite and want to avoid 'not using spells correctly.

I understand that a 'plane' of ice is supposed to be a straight line, with no bends, turns, or shaping - different than a wall of stone.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Sun Aug 19, 2012 10:37 pm

Correct, wall of ice is a plane of X amount of square feet, but you can make the plane any height and width, and you can anchor the sides along the walls or the ceiling/floor.