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View Full Version : 3.5 - Resilient Sphere + Greater Stoneshape = ?



skeeter_dan
2009-05-21, 12:00 PM
I'm currently running my group through the final chapter of Red Hand of Doom and they've come up with a particularly vexing way of taking out Tyrgarun, the blue dragon. In their first encounter with him outside the dungeon, they essentially ignored him (taking massive damage in the meantime from his breath weapon despite Mass Energy Resistance). Thus, they ended up facing him inside the dungeon; due to an unexpected series of events, he ended up in a five-foot wide hallway when the party sorcerer happened upon him.

The sorcerer cast Otiluke's Resilient Sphere and the dragon failed his save. So, he's trapped and temporarily out of the picture while the party is fighting some other baddies. Then the druid gets an idea. He decides to use Greater Stone Shape to close in the helpless dragon on all sides with five feet of stone. The intention is that it will make the dragon suffocate to death.

So, my question is, how do I handle this? This is obviously not a typical use of Stone Shape, but it is a particularly clever one. I don't want one of the most dangerous foes in this particular dungeon to be taken out by two spells (without a single point of HP damage), but I also don't want to punish ingenuity.

The options I've gone through are as follows:
1. Stone Shape uses natural stone, which may have cracks and fissures that would allow some air through, meaning he wouldn't suffocate.
2. It would take the dragon 3 hours to suffocate and he could potentially punch through the stone using his breath weapon (electricity) and his claws...

The first is a bit of a cop-out and just delays the issue. The second seems questionable whether he'd be able to do enough damage to get through five feet of stone...

Adumbration
2009-05-21, 12:10 PM
According to SRD, 5 feet of unworked stone has: Break DC 65, Hardness 8, and 900 hp.

Yuki Akuma
2009-05-21, 12:24 PM
Three hours is plenty of time to blast his way out with his breath weapon, even if electricity deals half damage to stone, so he's fine.

That is, by the way, 1,800 rounds. On average he can use his breath weapon once every other round, so that's 900 blasts with his breath weapon. If he rolls at least 18 damage per blast, he'll make it out in about three hours.

If he rolls terribly he might still suffocate, but the odds are he'll do it faster than three hours. How much damage does his breath weapon do?

Gorbash
2009-05-21, 12:38 PM
He could also full attack on the rounds which he cannot use breath weapon.

Keld Denar
2009-05-21, 12:52 PM
Stone Shape requires that you be in contact with the stone you are manipulating. That would require the druid to be on both sides of the Resilant Sphere to shape the stone around it to trap it on both sides.

And yea...the dragon should be able to bash its way out easily. Assuming it has Power Attack (which dragons should), and that you never miss a stone wall you are attacking, the dragon could full PA Claw/Claw/Bite/Wing/Wing/Tail to do over 100 points of damage a round despite the hardness of stone. That would do more damage than the breath weapon any day.

Yuki Akuma
2009-05-21, 01:06 PM
Sure, but having the stone burst into shards as a stream of magical lightning erupts through it is Awesome.

Keld Denar
2009-05-21, 01:12 PM
Sure, but having the stone burst into shards as a stream of magical lightning erupts through it is Awesome.

dig dig dig dig dig dig dig BLAST!

Line of Effect is NOT blocked by a barrier if the damaging effect destroys the barrier. So, if the dragon times it right, he could unleash a nasty surprise to anyone hanging around waiting to see if the dragon makes it out of the hole.

Theodoriph
2009-05-21, 01:28 PM
If your Blue Dragon is a young adult, he has access to 3rd level cleric spells including Meld Into Stone. Problems solved (and a nasty surprise to boot). =D

If he's younger than a young adult, he probably has to bash his way out. =)


Edit: Nevermind. You have to step out the same side you entered. Bah! :D

Yuki Akuma
2009-05-21, 01:30 PM
If your Blue Dragon is a young adult, he has access to 3rd level cleric spells including Meld with Stone. Problems solved. =D

If he's younger than a young adult, he probably has to bash his way out. =)

Did he prepare it today? No?

Then he's out of luck.

Dark_Scary
2009-05-21, 01:30 PM
Line of Effect is NOT blocked by a barrier if the damaging effect destroys the barrier. So, if the dragon times it right, he could unleash a nasty surprise to anyone hanging around waiting to see if the dragon makes it out of the hole.

Actually, Line of Effect is blocked by a Barrier even if the effect destroys the barrier.

That is why Fireball and Lightning Bolt have a specific clause stating that line of effect is not blocked for them.

Theodoriph
2009-05-21, 01:35 PM
Ironically...another 3rd level cleric spell a blue dragon of young adult or older could use...is Stoneshape. =D That would get him out. Again if he's not old enough, bash the wall down.

Theodoriph
2009-05-21, 01:55 PM
Did he prepare it today? No?

Then he's out of luck.



Dragons cast as sorcerors. They have all their spells prepared :D Blue dragons cast cleric spells as arcane....so stoneshape at will...limited only by his spells per day.

The Glyphstone
2009-05-21, 01:57 PM
Did he prepare it today? No?

Then he's out of luck.


Almost correct - the question is "did he choose it as one of his known spells", since dragons don't memorize spells, but cast as sorcerers with the ability to choose spells known from the Cleric list. And for that matter, he'd have to be a full-blown Adult, not a Young Adult..the latter has CL3rd, which means 2nd level spells only, an Adult gets the CL5th for 3rd level spells.

Theodoriph
2009-05-21, 01:59 PM
Ack...silly me. You're right about the adult thing of course =)

Harperfan7
2009-05-21, 02:06 PM
I'm not saying whether or not this would work, but I want to point out that I don't think lightning hurts stone all the way, I think it does like half damage or something, and wouldn't using lightning suck up the air faster kind of like fire?

Regardless, he could claw his way out pretty easily I would think.

Lapak
2009-05-21, 02:12 PM
Ack...silly me. You're right about the adult thing of course =)Given that he fits in a 5' corridor AND was encased by a Sphere, does that limit what age category he could potentially be? Feels like if he was old enough to be a serious spellcaster he probably wouldn't fit in the spaces we're talking about.

EDIT: Obviously I've not read the scenario in question, so I'm not familiar with the dragon.

Theodoriph
2009-05-21, 02:37 PM
Given that he fits in a 5' corridor AND was encased by a Sphere, does that limit what age category he could potentially be? Feels like if he was old enough to be a serious spellcaster he probably wouldn't fit in the spaces we're talking about.

EDIT: Obviously I've not read the scenario in question, so I'm not familiar with the dragon.


Well the dragon seemed to be at threat to the party as per their first encounter.

Let's assume the party is all the same level.

Now greater stoneshape is a level 5 druid spell. So the druid has to be level 9 at a minimum.

A juvenile blue dragon is large. It should be 10 feet by 10 feet, though I suppose a DM could rule it as being 5 feet by 10 feet, but only a CR 8.

And since it's large, the party sorceror has to be at least level 10 to encase the 10 foot long dragon in a resilient sphere.

So we have a problem where the party is minimum level 10, while a juvenile would be a CR 8. It should have been a cakewalk of a fight.

It's probably not a juvenile young dragon.

Move up one age category to young adult, and the CR goes up to 11, which is more reasonable for a 10-12 level party. Again, I think it should be 10 * 10, but a DM could rule it as being 5*10.

Move up one category to Adult and the CR goes up to 14. The size category goes up to huge, which I believe is 15 * 15, though again, with a dragon, a GM could rule 5*15, depending on their conception of the dragon. The sorc would need to be level 15 to encompass the dragon in the sphere. So this is quite possible too.



Really, a dragon being in a 5 foot wide hallway is ridiculous to begin with. =D But it's likely a young adult houseruled to be 5*10 like a horse.

Yuki Akuma
2009-05-21, 02:44 PM
I'm not saying whether or not this would work, but I want to point out that I don't think lightning hurts stone all the way, I think it does like half damage or something, and wouldn't using lightning suck up the air faster kind of like fire?

Regardless, he could claw his way out pretty easily I would think.


Three hours is plenty of time to blast his way out with his breath weapon, even if electricity deals half damage to stone, so he's fine.


Why the hell would electricity 'suck up' the air? Do you not know anything about how electricity works?

Fire needs oxygen. It's the result of an oxidisation reaction with carbon.

Electricity is made of free-flowing electrons that don't give a **** about what they're flowing through. Have you ever heard of undersea cables?

Edit: Now that I think about it, it might create ozone, which... ain't good for you. Of course ozone decays back into oxygen in about half an hour, so.

Coidzor
2009-05-21, 07:02 PM
Looking at the Campaign's Web Enhancement from WOTC, it would appear that Tyrgarun is a young adult Blue Dragon.

Spells and some pertinent stats: Also, some potentially bogus math:He has acid splash, mage armor, mage hand, message, ray of enfeeblement, shield, detect magic, read magic, and create/destroy water....

So basically, hes' going to have to bust out on his own prowess unless Monsignor DM feels like altering his spell selection or already has.

Con 19, Fort +15 for purposes of determining suffocation.
Rules of Suffocation:
"Suffocation

A character who has no air to breathe can hold her breath for 2 rounds per point of Constitution. After this period of time, the character must make a DC 10 Constitution check in order to continue holding her breath. The save must be repeated each round, with the DC increasing by +1 for each previous success.

When the character fails one of these Constitution checks, she begins to suffocate. In the first round, she falls unconscious (0 hit points). In the following round, she drops to -1 hit points and is dying. In the third round, she suffocates.
Slow Suffocation

A Medium character can breathe easily for 6 hours in a sealed chamber measuring 10 feet on a side. After that time, the character takes 1d6 points of nonlethal damage every 15 minutes. Each additional Medium character or significant fire source (a torch, for example) proportionally reduces the time the air will last. When a character falls unconscious from this nonlethal damage, she drops to –1 hit points and is dying. In the next round, she suffocates.

Small characters consume half as much air as Medium characters. A larger volume of air, of course, lasts for a longer time. "

suffocation extrapolation: So that's 2*19 = 38 rounds after his air runs out that he can survive with no problem. Since we can assume that the "chamber" is 5x10, that's half the air of a 10x10 chamber, so halve the amount of air to 3 hours worth. Now you can either say a large creature equals 2 medium creatures (as is usually the case for things like teleport and other spells) or possibly 3 medium creatures.

If a large creature is 2 medium creatures, then the dragon has around 1 and a half hours worth of air. 1.5 hours *60 minutes per hour *10 rounds per minute = 900 rounds of air + 38 rounds before suffocation would set in.

If a large creature is 3 medium creatures, then... he has 45 minutes worth of air. 45 minutes * 10 rounds per minute = 450 rounds +38 rounds before suffocation sets in.

breath: 1d4 rounds, 10d8 elec.

gear: wand of fireballs and an amulet of mighty fists+5

so his full attack is beefed up to... something like
bite: +25. 3d6+8 (19-20) (average of 18.5?)
2 claws: +23. 1d8+5 (average of 9.5 x2?)
2 wings: +23. 1d6+5 (average of 8.5 x2?)
1 tail slap: +23. 1d8+11 (average of 15.5?)

so against the hardness something along the lines of
(18-8)x1=10
(9-8)x2 = 2
(8-8)x2 = 0
(15-8)x1= 7

So an average of 19 damage after hardness... and that's against hp 900...

900 hp divided by ~19 per round = ~48 rounds of full attacking to break through. 50 rounds * 6 seconds per round = 300 seconds. 300 seconds divided by 60 seconds per minute = 30/6 = 5 minutes. So, assuming he rolls averagely, he'd be stuck there for less than five minutes after he got out of the sphere?

if he rolls max damage for all attacks, that'd be

bite: (26-8)x1 = 18
claws:(13-8)x2 = 10
wings:(11-8)x2 = 6
tail: (19-8)x1 = 11

or 45 maximum damage on a full attack. So if he rolled phenomenonally well (barring crits of course, crit rules being foggy to me as to why somethings and not others can be critted... or one was using a rule that unattended, inanimate objects always suffered full damage) that'd be 900/45 = 20 rounds (which is better than his breath weapon potentially doing max damage of 40 if the stone taking half damage from elec damage is true)

His breath weapon deals 10d8 electricity or an average of (10*4.5?) or ~45 damage every 1d4 (~2.5) rounds... half of that would be 22.5.. So either 45 regularly on average and 22 halved against stone or 40 regularly on average and 20 against stone, meaning he would be better off using his breath weapon as much as possible, even if by just a smidgen

As he'll hit with all attacks against an AC of 10(assumed for the inanimate stone) on everything but a Nat 1... Well, I'm thinking he gets out of one side easily, now whether that's the side the PCs are on now, that is a different matter.

So he probably escapes in 5 minutes if he rolls well or 10 if he rolls a little bit less well. So that depends on how much you wanna roll for him and how much of a headstart you wanna give the PCs.

Since he's in the sphere and the sphere has to last at least 10 minutes to be able to fit him inside of it.... so he'd be out in 15-20 minutes after the casting of the sphere.


Also... He does not seem to have power attack, so he can't trade in some of that attack bonus for damage output. Not that it really matters to him.

skeeter_dan
2009-05-22, 12:04 PM
Coidzor, thanks for going to all that trouble. That gives me some good guidelines to go by. Since he still has 10 minutes of being stuck in the resilient sphere, the party will likely have taken off before he gets out (they're in bad shape and will likely stoneshape themselves a place to hide and rest). The party has made the assumption that he won't be able to escape and they were so confident in that assumption that they almost convinced me as well...

As to why a Large dragon was in a five foot wide hallway...well, the party had used stoneshape to block off every other passageway and he was trying to sneak around to a larger room before they got there. He wasn't actually expecting to run into the party and wouldn't have if not for some bad luck on his part. He was squeezing through, hoping to catch them by surprise later on.

ericgrau
2009-05-22, 12:56 PM
How large of a volume can greater stone shape affect? Because a 5 foot diameter sphere encased in 5 feet of stone is 406 cubic feet. Or if it's only 1 foot (114 cubic feet of stone), then he'll break through it 5 times faster, with plenty of time to spare.

Assuming he is large and makes 8 times as much CO2 as a medium human, he needs at least 8.6 minutes, or 86 rounds, before CO2 levels become too high (3%). That'll give him even more time.