[3.5] Practical antimagic survival

[Show]

The words that no player wants to hear:
DM: "Hey, I've just learned how much fun antimagic fields are!"

Well, I've just come up against this situation. Needless to say, I'm not very happy about it.
As it stands, my character is a Warlock 7//Sorcerer 4/Cleric 1/Mystic Theurge 2(early entry tricks allowed). I've got essentially nothing but my magic, and I don't want it to be taken away from me! I've considered this topic before, but with it becoming such an issue now because of the circumstances...

Essentially, I need to know three things:
1) Does Vitrolic blast penetrate antimagic fields? I've seen two arguments:
a: It does not allow spell resistance, therefore will not be affected by the AMF
b: The eldrich blast itself is a SLA, regardless of the essences applied, so AMF still affects it.

2) Are there any ways to handle an encounter full of antimagic other than fleeing at top speed? I'm worried that we may end up against creatures with antimagic fields surrounding them and other such crimes against nature.

3) I don't really know what to expect with asking this question, but...
What are the best ways to completely break the game using antimagic fields? This one is more theoretical than the first two, more of academic interest than anything else.
I know that a sculpted antimagic field(used as a spell blocking shield) is one way, but wouldn't spells just reactivate once they have passed through, essentially negating the advantage?

I've done a bit of web research, but I can't seem to find what I'm looking for. Playground, lend me your strength!

[ffone]

Surely AMF suppresses Vit Blast; AMFs suppress all spell-like and supernatural abilities, don't they? So unless ou can argue it's an Ex instead of a Su or Sp....

The only Spell Resistance based thing I see in AMF's SRD text is about summons. I don't think bypassing SR will help you. Maybe you're thinking of golem Magic Immunity.

The 'PC abuse' of them, I believe, generally involves a way to keep using your owns stuff in an AMF (google cheater of mystra, twice-betrayer of shar).

When faces with enemies who have them, maybe run away and come back after the spell duration should've expired (granted, it's 10 min / level).

If your DM is mysteriously giving them 24-hour AMFs, well....generally when I run up against DM fiat my strategy is somewhat metagame - try to survive (with all my gear intact) in a way that looks like a close call - when DMs are fiat-ing it means they just need to make themselves feel like the big man who can hose you if he really wants to, so the key is to make them thing he's made his point. Try something like running away and trying to fire a bow from hundreds of feet away. You could try battlefield control things that won't be suppressed by an AMF (move/shape earth stone etc. outside the AMF) so the enemies can't reach you for melee.

What are your allies? Generally, AMFs are used by DMs to hose casters like you, so hopefully your more physical allies can pick up the slack (despite their suppressed items.)

[Cog]

Vitriolic Blast works like the Orb line of conjurations. The casting of it is magical, and must be made outside the AMF, but it'll affect a target inside an AMF just fine.

[gomipile]

It looks like you can't use the level 4 orbs, but the level 1 lesser orbs should be easy enough for you to get access to. The effects of instantaneous conjurations like orbs are explicitly not affected by AMF.

[Show]

Vitriolic Blast works like the Orb line of conjurations. The casting of it is magical, and must be made outside the AMF, but it'll affect a target inside an AMF just fine.

Do you have a source for it? I might have to pull one out once our DM realises I can still magic stuff in an antimagic field.



The 'PC abuse' of them, I believe, generally involves a way to keep using your owns stuff in an AMF (google cheater of mystra, twice-betrayer of shar).

When faces with enemies who have them, maybe run away and come back after the spell duration should've expired (granted, it's 10 min / level).

If your DM is mysteriously giving them 24-hour AMFs, well....generally when I run up against DM fiat my strategy is somewhat metagame - try to survive (with all my gear intact) in a way that looks like a close call - when DMs are fiat-ing it means they just need to make themselves feel like the big man who can hose you if he really wants to, so the key is to make them thing he's made his point. Try something like running away and trying to fire a bow from hundreds of feet away. You could try battlefield control things that won't be suppressed by an AMF (move/shape earth stone etc. outside the AMF) so the enemies can't reach you for melee.

What are your allies? Generally, AMFs are used by DMs to hose casters like you, so hopefully your more physical allies can pick up the slack (despite their suppressed items.)

I didn't consider battlefield control at all! I would try to use a mundane option from a distance, but most of our party is overpowered due to too many magical items(also the problem with just letting our melee'ers handle it, one has extremely valuable magic armor, and the other has a cape which gives him some +20 strength). I'll look through my favorite battlefield control spells.

And, of course, I guess I could just let my DM finally trump the party for once. :smallwink:

[ffone]

Oh huh, there's this line from AMF:

" (The effects of instantaneous conjurations are not affected by an antimagic field because the conjuration itself is no longer in effect, only its result.)"

So maybe the Orbs do work (the dmg, not sure about the status effects). Geez - yet another reason Conjuration is a (too-)good school.

Is Vitriolic Blast specified as an instantaneous conjuration effect? (I realize it has the 'feel' of one, being an SR: No acid ranged attack like Acid Arrow or Orb of Acid.)

If you can find instantaneous conjurations for battlefield control, those will also be good vs AMF foes.

[Show]

Oh huh, there's this line from AMF:

" (The effects of instantaneous conjurations are not affected by an antimagic field because the conjuration itself is no longer in effect, only its result.)"

So maybe the Orbs do work (the dmg, not sure about the status effects). Geez - yet another reason Conjuration is a (too-)good school.

Is Vitriolic Blast specified as an instantaneous conjuration effect? (I realize it has the 'feel' of one, being an SR: No acid ranged attack like Acid Arrow or Orb of Acid.)

If you can find instantaneous conjurations for battlefield control, those will also be good vs AMF foes.

I'm not exactly sure. I'll look through the book when I get home and check, but as for now, I don't know exactly what effects it has. Perhaps I could find some errata on it, too.

[Cog]

It's a ray attack formed from conjured acid. The conjuration would necessarily take place where the ray originates, or there's no ray of acid, even though the word "instantaneous" isn't directly used. Basically, the magic is doing two things in this case: 1) creating acid, and 2) launching it at the target. As long as both of those effects occur outside the AMF, what happens inside the AMF is little different from somebody chucking a vial of acid at the target.

Targets of an Orb inside an AMF would still need to save against the status effect. The entire Orb spell is an instantaneous conjuration effect.

[ffone]

A cape of +20 str? geez. And this is at gestalt L7?

This is a pet peeve I have with DMs: so many of the bad ones do this; they throw out ridiculous magic items, and then later try to fiat themselves out of a whole. I've seen sooo many threads where a DM did that.

With modestly over-wealth'ed PCs, my strategy as a DM is just to go lean for awhile, and let their XP and level catch up. (Every 2 levels is about 2x WBL.) With completely ridiculous items on PCs the DM might consider just choosing encounter levels, and calculating XP, as if the party or some of the PCs have higher ECL. Or, if there's a non-metagame way for enemies to recognize the party's best pieces of gear, stealing/sundering. (Ethereal Filcher with Arcane Sight, etc.)

WBL is roughly 2x every 2 levels, so if you want to give your PCs a (temporary) ECL increase from their WBL, maybe +1 for every doubling of WBL.

Of course players will go bananas and whine and scream about how nothing is worth the ECL increase b/c here's some other 'better' build of that ECL, but treating their ECL is higher is really no difference from calculating XP differently or making enemies harder (for every 2 levels higher a PC is, they will level up at half the speed from a given encounter, as a function of the 3.5 XP formula. See "XP is a river".)

[Person_Man]

It seems a bit heavy handed to use a 6th level spell on a 7th level character, even a gestalt one.

My advice is fairly simple. Next time that you make a gestalt character, make one side of your progression non-magical. In particular, the entire Tome of Battle, Knight, most Factotum abilities, and many PrC are Extraordinary. For this game, simply hang back and focus on enemies outside of the 10 ft radius. You can also cast spells with an Instantaneous or Permanent duration on the environment around you - Rock to Mud, Wall of Stone, healing spells for allies, etc. Just because you can't directly attack someone doesn't mean you can't use your magic to benefit your party.

[Radar]

If you are outdoors, then drop shrunk (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/shrinkItem.htm) rocks on the person covered in AMF. Rocks fall, annoying enemy dies. :smallwink:

[gomipile]

VITRIOLIC BLAST
Greater; 6th; Eldritch Essence
This eldritch essence invocation
allows you to change your eldritch blast
into a vitriolic blast. A vitriolic blast deals
acid damage, and it is formed from
conjured acid, making it different
from other eldritch essences because
it ignores spell resistance.

It seems to be the invocation equivalent of conjuration's orb of acid, yessir.

[Show]

Thanks, all. I really appreciate the help. :smallbiggrin:

I learn something new every day!

[Andion Isurand]

Get the tumble skill if you don't have it, either by skilled city dweller ACF (trade ride for tumble) or with the Martial Study feat (with a desert winder manuver).

Martial Study is on the fighter feat list, so it works well with the UA's combat wizard variant where you get fighter feats in place of scribe scroll and your wizard bonus feats.

That way you can tumble away from your enemies and out of AMF fields using your move action before casting spells each round.

[Cog]

Martial Study is on the fighter feat list, so it works well with the UA's combat wizard variant where you get fighter feats in place of scribe scroll and your wizard bonus feats.
If you do this, keep in mind that if you do Martial Study for the first-level Scribe Scroll trade and you're single-classed, you only get the class skill out of it. You don't yet have the first IL you need to take even a first-level maneuver.

[Fouredged Sword]

No, you have an initiator level of 1/2 your character level if you have no martial classes. You gain no recovery method though, so it's once per encounter. You should still be able to use the ability as you level some.

[Cog]

You might want to take a look at the table on page 39 of Tome of Battle.

Remember, in D&D, fractions round down.

[Akal Saris]

I think most DMs will still rule that the PC can pick a maneuver at level 1, regardless of the fractions rule in D&D.

[Cog]

ToB is already a lot more multiclass-friendly than many of the other splats. One of the advantages that the initiator classes get to have is having maneuvers from level one. I don't see any particular reason to steal that away from them, and certainly not in the name of giving Wizards more flexibility.

[Fishy]

Yes, ToB was designed to be much more friendly to multiclass characters than books that came before it. To me, that seems like an argument for the more permissive interpretation, not the stricter one.

D&D also has fractions that are 'round down, minimum 1'- it's not an unprecedented thing.

[Cog]

D&D also has fractions that are 'round down, minimum 1'- it's not an unprecedented thing.
Yes, it does. And in every case, it's very explicit to put that phrasing in. Why? Because that's not the default rule and it has to specify that they're making an exception.

I don't think it's a horrible houserule to make, by any means. But if somebody's being given build advice, they should be told that it's a houserule, since it's not their call.

[ffone]

It seems to be the invocation equivalent of conjuration's orb of acid, yessir.

Neat, Vit Blast seems like a good invocation to take for that reason alone, then (not much else a Warlock can do inside an AMF I guess) and of course the anti-SR that's it's usual appeal.

Overall, the "instantaneous conjurations" clause seems like a big 'hole' in the dreaded AMF which a magical character should try to play to (esp. b/c conjuration already seems to be the favorite Wiz school at GitP).

Oh, another nice thing about Vit Blast is dissolving locked doors and generally doing the "dungeon disassembler" thing people do with reserve energy-blast and infinite-summon feats. (Or can regular eldritch blast hurt objects already?) A warlock could make a pretty good disassembler since he can Detect Magic to avoid destroying precious magic loot, dissolve anything else that might be a trap or locked obstacle, and invis / fly for scouting. Hmm, is there an invocation for unlimited summon like disassemblers do with that elemental summon reserve feat? Even if not, with a combination of the previous tactics, he'll be able to avoid stepping into many spell effect zones / purely magical 'traps' - Alarm, Forbiddance (bia Detect Magic) and dissolve nonmagical/mechanical traps.