Contingency Confusion

[winter92]

So Contingency gets a lot of referencing on these boards as a big part of how wizards can break the world. I certainly see it's utility, but the description claims that a caster can only have one active at a time. Most references on GitP however seem to call for setting up a wide variety of contingencies.

There seems to be a common knowledge solution to this but I haven't been able to find it: how does a person set up multiple contingencies without having them destroy each other?

[Alex12]

I generally assume they refer to Contingent Spells created with the Craft Contingent Spell feat.

[Aegis013]

In some cases they may be using the word by its normal definition instead of referring to the spell. Such as the tin-foil hat trick being a contingency for AMFs, but not using the spell Contingency.

[winter92]

Ah, thanks. I can mostly tell when people are referencing non-magic "contingency plans", but I'll keep an eye out for it. I didn't ever really look into Craft Contingent Spell because my table makes XP cost spells rather awkward and painful, but that explains a lot.

[Fouredged Sword]

Yes the craft feat cost EXP, but the value you can get out of it is totally worth the cost if you pick right.

[tyckspoon]

There seems to be a common knowledge solution to this but I haven't been able to find it: how does a person set up multiple contingencies without having them destroy each other?

There's 2 basic ways- you either use Craft Contingency, which lets you set up multiple Contingent effects (which do not have the same limitations as the Contingency spell, incidentally - if you want your Crafted Contingencies to be 'cast a dozen Scorching Rays on the idiot who just shot an arrow at me', you can do that) or you make your Contingency spell a very general effect that can be helpful in a huge number of situations. For example, you set up the Celerity spell as your Contingency. Celerity just gives you an undefined action, so once your Contingency goes off you can then cast whatever other spell/use whatever item suits the situation.