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View Full Version : [3.5] antimagic field tactics and items



fortesama
2010-09-26, 06:31 AM
I'm playing a spontaneous caster this time so i don't have the luxury of having learning too many utility spells. Previous experience with my DMs has shown that they have a tendency to start tossing AMFs large enought to cover a galleon with an unreachable object as it's origin, and very frequently they start doing that as early as 3rd level. While a tinfoil hat would be nice, i'm a level 4 sorcerer... casting as sorcerer 7 but i didn't take shrink item. at least i have nonmagical flight.

back on topic, we know that if a DM wants to stick you in an AMF without warning or prevention, they'll find a way. with that in mind, i asking for ways i could reliably contribute to such encounters. i've got some tanglefoot bags and eggshell grenades on me. dust of choking and sneezing is a bit expensive for a level 6 character.

Edit: Don't ask how i got that kind of cash.

Radar
2010-09-26, 07:16 AM
First thing, that comes to my mind are caltrops and marbles. Both are mundane and reusable, if you have time to pick them up. Flying will let you be out of meele range more often then not, so it might be useful to get a crossbow (it's still something). You might poison the bolts even, but poison will soon stop being effective due to low DCs. They aren't cheap as well.
If you have nonmagical flight capabilities, then you have the comfort of staying out of the AMF in an open area. When you have an opportunity grab Shrink Item (for the Tinfoil Hat as well as bombardment - find some heavy stones before a known fight, shrink them, drop them into AMF and watch your enemies go *splat*) some instantaneous conjuration spells (various Orb of X spells or even Acid Splash might be worth it - especially if laced with some nasty metamagic as Fell Drain).
Also: AMF is an emanation, so it doesn't hit around corners so to say. If you are within the field, then to source is within your sight. It also means, that total cover might shield you from it, but i'm not sure about that one.

fortesama
2010-09-27, 02:06 AM
marbles? i've got a collapsible pole, some cheese, some sausage, a spoon, a bottle of acid, torches, tindertwigs and other things before but no marbles. :smallsigh:

and i'm pretty much the only guy in the group who even bothers to get alchemical items and keep such mundane items in my bag. they usually expect the caster (almost always me) to use flashy solutions to problems while the noncasters that are not rogues simply bash stuff. and it's satisfying to see the surprise on the dm's face when i pull out a perfectly ordinary item to manage various problems without having to use magic.

Radar
2010-09-27, 04:24 AM
marbles? i've got a collapsible pole, some cheese, some sausage, a spoon, a bottle of acid, torches, tindertwigs and other things before but no marbles. :smallsigh:

and i'm pretty much the only guy in the group who even bothers to get alchemical items and keep such mundane items in my bag. they usually expect the caster (almost always me) to use flashy solutions to problems while the noncasters that are not rogues simply bash stuff. and it's satisfying to see the surprise on the dm's face when i pull out a perfectly ordinary item to manage various problems without having to use magic.
Marbles are handy, if you want to replicate Grease with cheap, mundane item. Other then that: if it's not your ship, you are fighting on, you can create a real mess with a bottle of lantern oil (there sure are supplies of that on a ship) and a torch - it's difficult to contain the fire tough (nasty stuff (http://www.woodrow.org/teachers/chemistry/exchange/topics/safety/demogreasefire.html) happens, if you splash it with water) and 1d6 per round isn't much frankly (stupid nonmagical fire rules *mumbles*).
With your flying advantage, you might be able to use nets efficiently and those should be easy to get.

Myth
2010-09-27, 04:48 AM
Also: AMF is an emanation, so it doesn't hit around corners so to say. If you are within the field, then to source is within your sight.

Make sure your DM understands this. AMF is not an omnipotent sphere of no magic, it's easily avoidable by hiding behind corners, crates, barrels, or going inside a room. For your DM to be covering an entire galleon with AMF he either does not know what the spell does, or does not know just how big a galleon IS and how much STUFF it has on deck, and how many different rooms there are.

fortesama
2010-09-27, 06:37 AM
Make sure your DM understands this. AMF is not an omnipotent sphere of no magic, it's easily avoidable by hiding behind corners, crates, barrels, or going inside a room. For your DM to be covering an entire galleon with AMF he either does not know what the spell does, or does not know just how big a galleon IS and how much STUFF it has on deck, and how many different rooms there are.

which is why he did place the item that generates it out in the open... surrounded by some really tough things. when i played as a cleric of mystra, they stopped tossing those fields at me when they realized how futile it was. ditto for dead magic zones. similar thing happened when our killer DM tried to lock me inside one, not realizing my contingent extraordinary spell-aimed AMFs didn't stop my spellcasting, though i went along with the masquerade until the last minute.

Myth
2010-09-27, 07:06 AM
Your DM sounds like he is in an arms race against your casters, instead of just putting rules on spellcasting and character classes at char creation. This isn't going to end well i reckon.

Shenanigans
2010-09-27, 09:40 AM
You already mentioned that you have acid, one of my favorite non-magic problem-solvers. I like the other things mentioned also...oil, poison, etc. To be honest, I think you're doing a pretty good job already.

fortesama
2010-09-28, 08:03 AM
while we're on the topic of items, any ideas on how to save someone from aboleth mucus? we've managed to take one down due to the random number god's blessing and i harvested some of it's mucus. i don't intend to use it until i have some preventions and cures on hand lest i get hoist by my own petard at some future date due.

Grommen
2010-09-28, 01:48 PM
Make sure your DM understands this. AMF is not an omnipotent sphere of no magic, it's easily avoidable by hiding behind corners, crates, barrels, or going inside a room. For your DM to be covering an entire galleon with AMF he either does not know what the spell does, or does not know just how big a galleon IS and how much STUFF it has on deck, and how many different rooms there are.

Or is really sick of spells and spell casters. :smallbiggrin:

Sounds like a harsh solution your DM has come up with though. How bout a few ranks in Craft (traps) and make some trip wires?

fortesama
2010-09-28, 07:54 PM
Or is really sick of spells and spell casters. :smallbiggrin:

Sounds like a harsh solution your DM has come up with though. How bout a few ranks in Craft (traps) and make some trip wires?

my sorc's a kobold actually, so craft (trap) is a permanent class skill. haven't actually used rogues or similar before so i'm a little clueless on what i could use.

Tetrasodium
2010-09-29, 09:41 AM
while we're on the topic of items, any ideas on how to save someone from aboleth mucus? we've managed to take one down due to the random number god's blessing and i harvested some of it's mucus. i don't intend to use it until i have some preventions and cures on hand lest i get hoist by my own petard at some future date due.

Polymorph or similar into a warforged would probably do it since they don't breath and are explicitly mentioned as being able to do jobs like undersea salvage more cheaply than humanoids due to the lack of needing to breath in ECS or some other book. Body of war would definitely do it since a warforged juggernaut is a pure construct not a living construct, basically anything that turns you into a construct (i.e. marut or whatever) should work actually.

Tyndmyr
2010-09-29, 09:47 AM
Your DM sounds like he is in an arms race against your casters, instead of just putting rules on spellcasting and character classes at char creation. This isn't going to end well i reckon.

This has been my experience with such things.

If you show them the rules, they tend to start blathering on about null-magic zones, or epic spells, or other similarly arbitrary means to basically say "no magic". And playing a caster in a zone where magic doesn't exist is really boring.

Basically, you have a coupla options.

1. Arms race. Fun for a while, with tricks like Initiate of Mystra, Invoke Magic and the like, but if they're willing to houserule wildly on the fly, or banhammer frequently, this is mostly an exercise in futility.

2. Play melee. For the more vengefully inclined, a broken melee char, like a 1d2 crusader or a hulking hurler. Obviously, with a way to get an AMF.

3. Find a better DM.

fortesama
2010-10-04, 09:09 AM
actually, these kinds of things happen when one of our DMs feels like having the player use nonmagical solutions to problems. i'm cool with that in most cases and i'm the group's thinking guy, though it gets rather jarring when they mix it up with encounters where the casters, who is almost always me, becomes dead weight. i'm mainly trying to find ways to be useful inside AMFs... or bypass that barrier entirely when the antimage DM takes the helm with some weird monsters such as the one linked below.

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=155763