Black Sand - Confused

[IzorkX]

Hey.


A region of black sand literally
swallows light, emitting magical
darkness rising to a height of 20
feet over the surface. Creatures that
come in contact with the sand take
1d4 points of damage per round from
negative energy (no save). Those
reduced to 0 hit points crumble into
black sand themselves.

When they die, do they turn into "permanent" sand?

I am a Dread Necromancer with the Tomb-tainted soul feat and I want to use the sand to heal myself, by putting it into my boot or something like that.

But we are unsure if the sand created when they die is permanent, the DM says it's not (by reading the spell) but I am unsure if that's true.

Is it permanent and why?

Also the "spell" it self can be made permanent by a permantcy spell (which i will never get as a dread necromancer).

[Ashtagon]

Hey.


A region of black sand literally
swallows light, emitting magical
darkness rising to a height of 20
feet over the surface. Creatures that
come in contact with the sand take
1d4 points of damage per round from
negative energy (no save). Those
reduced to 0 hit points crumble into
black sand themselves.

When they die, do they turn into "permanent" sand?

I am a Dread Necromancer with the Tomb-tainted soul feat and I want to use the sand to heal myself, by putting it into my boot or something like that.

But we are unsure if the sand created when they die is permanent, the DM says it's not (by reading the spell) but I am unsure if that's true.

Is it permanent and why?

Also the "spell" it self can be made permanent by a permantcy spell (which i will never get as a dread necromancer).

I'd rule that it has to be a significant volume of sand involved -- several cubic feet at least. A bit of sand in your boots just isn't enough to create this magical effect.

RAI tells me it's meant to be a terrain feature, not a piece of equipment.

[Darrin]

When they die, do they turn into "permanent" sand?


I'd say no. When the spell expires, all of the black sand (including creatures turned into black sand) would revert to normal not-so-black sand. Creatures killed by the sand would still be dead, effectively the equivalent of being disintegrated.



I am a Dread Necromancer with the Tomb-tainted soul feat and I want to use the sand to heal myself, by putting it into my boot or something like that.


Awesome idea! Since the spell doesn't specify any minimum amount of sand, yeah, you could put some in your boots. You win D&D.

However, you might want to be careful... your DM might rule that if you were brought down to 0 HP by some other attack while touching the sand, even though the sand didn't do any damage, you still might wind up turning into black sand.



But we are unsure if the sand created when they die is permanent, the DM says it's not (by reading the spell) but I am unsure if that's true.

Is it permanent and why?


It's a spell effect with a duration. When the duration expires, the black sand becomes ordinary sand.

There's also the point that you can make the spell permanent via permanency, which kind of drives home the point that the spell effect wasn't permanent to begin with.

There may be an additional problem with the spell effect area, which creates a 20' area spread. There's no indication in the spell description that if you remove the black sand from that area that it will still retain the properties of black sand. Essentially, the effects of the spell is not literally something you can pick up and walk around with, it's just an emanation of negative energy tied to a particular geographic location.

There's an argument that if you find some black sand that was not created via a spell effect, you could pick it up and walk around with it. If you really were a Tomb-Tainted Dread Necromancer, however, you could probably expect even a somewhat reasonable DM to start dropping positive-energy anvils on your head whenever he felt like it.



Also the "spell" it self can be made permanent by a permantcy spell (which i will never get as a dread necromancer).

Did you already add the black sand spell via the Arcane Disciple feat? If not, then you could pick up permanency via the Time Domain that way. Otherwise, there are other ways to add the spell to your spell list. Extra Spell or Wyrm Wizard, for example.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I get the impression that blacksand also occurs naturally in deserts in D&D, going by sandstorm. I'm not certain that's the RAW of it though.

[Amnestic]

I get the impression that blacksand also occurs naturally in deserts in D&D, going by sandstorm. I'm not certain that's the RAW of it though.

I didn't get the impression it's "naturally occurring", but there can be permanent features of the stuff created by excessive 'dark' magic use.

[BowStreetRunner]

Page 20 of Sandstorm describes Supernatural Waste Hazards, including Black Sand. Page 111 details a spell that creates Black Sand.

The first entry explains that some of these supernatural hazards occur in unnatural environments and in areas where the land is infused with magic. In these instances, there appears to be Black Sand that exists on a permanent basis.

The spell only creates black sand for 1 min/level, but can be made permanent by the permanency spell.

So both permanent and temporary black sand appear to exist. There is no explicit mention of how this affects the people who die. However, I think it would be reasonable for a DM to rule that those killed by 'temporary' black sand just become regular sand when the spell ends.

[monkey3]

I think people are adding a bunch of rules to "balance" the spell and/or its effects. This is fine, but let's separate RAW vs. house_rules, and once we get RAW straight, then we can rule 0 it as much as we want...

1) The rule states that a creature killed by black sand (temporary or otherwise) turns into black sand. since it doesn't say otherwise, this new blacksand is permanent.

2) Any undead touching blacksand heals every round. Again, there is no volume stated, so even a thin layer inside the undead's boots will suffice.

Those are RAW as I see it. Fee free to adjust to your own worlds.

[Person_Man]

However, you might want to be careful... your DM might rule that if you were brought down to 0 HP by some other attack while touching the sand, even though the sand didn't do any damage, you still might wind up turning into black sand.

I for one love this idea. You want to use an obscure rule and a Feat to gain Fast Healing 1d4? Fine. But if you are ever at 0 hit points for any reason, you turn to black sand. Thus, the cost of using Black Sand in this way is that you lose access to your negative hit points, and can't be brought back from death with anything short of True Resurrection or Wish.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

I for one love this idea. You want to use an obscure rule and a Feat to gain Fast Healing 1d4? Fine. But if you are ever at 0 hit points for any reason, you turn to black sand. Thus, the cost of using Black Sand in this way is that you lose access to your negative hit points, and can't be brought back from death with anything short of True Resurrection or Wish.

Well, to be honest, the feat is pretty much a given for any Dread Necro for plenty of self-healing, so that feat has already been expended, he's just wanting to use an obscure rule to get more mileage out of it.

[Boci]

I for one love this idea. You want to use an obscure rule and a Feat to gain Fast Healing 1d4? Fine. But if you are ever at 0 hit points for any reason, you turn to black sand. Thus, the cost of using Black Sand in this way is that you lose access to your negative hit points, and can't be brought back from death with anything short of True Resurrection or Wish.

Its a cool idea, but I'm pretty sure its a house rule. The "those" is clearly meant to refer to "a creature reduced to 0 hp by the damage of the black sand", and given that the rules say that and not "creatures reduced to 0 hp whilst in contact with black sand" leads me to be pretty sure that RAW points in the same direction.

[Eurus]

Well, to be honest, the feat is pretty much a given for any Dread Necro for plenty of self-healing, so that feat has already been expended, he's just wanting to use an obscure rule to get more mileage out of it.

Well, Tomb-Tainted Soul already gives you infinite out-of-combat healing, and Fast Healing 1d4 is honestly too small to be significant in most combats. It might not legitimately be worth the risk.

Also, half of RAW is literally semantics, trying to figure out what the tense or subject of a specific word is and what it refers to. That's why I consider it pretty stupid.

[Invader]

Would you say it's magical darkness as the darkness spell which is just shadowy or is it completely black out, cant see anything, kind of darkness?

[Feralgeist]

Permanent blacksand that is also shapesand. Form it into daggers. Stackable damage or fast healing by jamming them into yourself, your enemies or your undead minions. Bury a few into the skull of an ogre zombie, then when they revert it just is a big zombie with a head full of blacksand that is constantly healing it. Sure 1d4 aint great, but 7d4 fast healing per round is nothing to sneeze at


Edit: This stuff is also known as dread necrocaine, as they love to do lines of it in their spare time

[Azraile]

sound's like you need to do one of 3 things:

1 go find some naguraly formed black sand....

2 get the permancy spell

3 use craft magical item to make some black sand.

[Azraile]

18k or 36k in gold to make as much sand as the spell dose.....

figure back from that to get the price for how much you need to fill your shoes

[Endril]

You know, zombies can wear shoes too...

[Azraile]

You know, zombies can wear shoes too...

a 20 foot radius worth of sand for less than 40k is a good deal when you think how many shoes that fills... .and how many zombies/skelle's that makes constantly regenerating o.o

[Feralgeist]

after rereading the black sand thing i don't think you could use multiple amounts of it to gain more dmg. It'd be subject to DM fiat of course but if you'd only get 1d4 per round from standing or laying in the stuff then i guess it stands to reason that you'd only get 1d4 regardless of exposure amount. Still, 1d4 fast healing that's equippable to your minions (sandshaped blacksand platemailed zombies anyone?) isn't bad for a 2nd level spell considering it's mins/level

[ArqArturo]

I suddenly got the image of a Dread Necromancer (either Tomb-tainted or necropolitan) doing sand angels and laughing like an idiot, while the rest of the party thinks he/she has finally gone insane.

[Alex12]

I suddenly got the image of a Dread Necromancer (either Tomb-tainted or necropolitan) doing sand angels and laughing like an idiot, while the rest of the party thinks he/she has finally gone insane.

Had something like that in my last campaign. One of the party members grabbed a puzzle box that put him into magical catatonia as he solved it. I was a necropolitan Dread Necromancer, and everyone else in the party was alive. The evil paladin (the DM didn't think much of alignment restrictions) tried to grab that party member, and got zapped for one point of damage. He asked me to try, due to my free healing. I touch the party member, and start feeling really good. Turns out that he's radiating negative energy. I decided that, since I was planning on going Tainted Scholar and we were all various flavors of evil, that studying this effect was more important than freeing the party member, especially since it didn't seem to be damaging him.

As for the necromancer frolicking in black sand, the problem is the darkness effect. It's magical darkness, so undead darkvision doesn't work.

[Coidzor]

^: depends on if it's magical darkness or magical darkness like the Darkness spell which actually causes shadowy illumination like that of a candle. So if it is the latter, then while it's harder to see into the area where the black sand is, they'd still be able to make out the dread necromancer to some extent.


I suddenly got the image of a Dread Necromancer (either Tomb-tainted or necropolitan) doing sand angels and laughing like an idiot, while the rest of the party thinks he/she has finally gone insane.

That is a great image. :smallbiggrin:

[BowStreetRunner]

I wonder if the OP still needs this resolved, since the original question was posted over a year-and-a-half ago. While the Dread Necromancer was doing sand angels the Thread Necromancer was busy digging up old posts!