Undead and Anti Magic Field Trap

[CyberThread]

I just thought of a possibly nasty trap...


Have a stone in the middle of some dungeon room , that needs to be sundered so that anti magic field goes away.

Fighter sunders it


Suddenly the room fills up with Effigies (Monster Manual II) , Wraiths , Banshees, or Greater Shadows.


I have never thought of the incorporeal undead as being used for such a nice trap.

[Emperor Tippy]

Never disable an AMF inside a dungeon, it always makes it worse.

Disable it and the permanent Maximized Searing Walls of Fire (with Energy sub versions of the other energy types) that fill the whole room turn back on all of the sudden. As do the Auto reset wall of Force traps that cover all of the walls and were disabled by the AMF, and the Dimensional Lock which was disabled.

Or the stones that have benefited from strategically placed permanent Shrink Item spells suddenly find themselves shrunk by 1/16th in every dimension as the spells are now no longer suppressed and thus the whole ceiling comes down on your head as all the supports are gone.

Also never cast an AMF inside a dungeon. Or an Area Dispel. Those will take out the PAO support beams and stones that are holding the whole dungeon together and when the PAO's go away they go from solid granite blocks that measure 5 feet in every dimension to a quarter inch in diameter granite pebble.

Making dungeons that quite thoroughly screw adventurers over unless they find taking the Tomb of Horrors cold to be easy is so much fun. ;)

[Toy Killer]

When I pit the characters against Devils, I love using "doomed if you" tactics like this.

For example, Lesser Devils of Bhor use specialized javelins that turn people's flesh to wax. The javelin works as a wick, allowing the victim's to be melted slowly and painfully. As soon as their camps are discovered by mortals, they typically throw up Darkness. Players have to decide if they are going to put one person through torture so they can save all of the remaining, or do their damndest to fight through the darkness with the adventurers at a critical disadvantage...

[Chronos]

Or just use light spells, or non-human torches. That doesn't sound like much of a dilemma to me. Heck, if I were presented with that scenario, I don't even think it would occur to me that I was expected to use a torture victim as a candle-- I'd just think "Oh, the devils are using darkness, that's annoying".

[TuggyNE]

For example, Lesser Devils of Bhor use specialized javelins that turn people's flesh to wax. The javelin works as a wick, allowing the victim's to be melted slowly and painfully. As soon as their camps are discovered by mortals, they typically throw up Darkness. Players have to decide if they are going to put one person through torture so they can save all of the remaining, or do their damndest to fight through the darkness with the adventurers at a critical disadvantage...

I gotta admit, until I saw Chronos' post I had no idea what the dilemma was supposed to be.

For that matter... darkness doesn't allow non-magical light sources to brighten the area, so I don't think human torches would even work. :smallconfused:

[CyberThread]

For that matter... darkness doesn't allow non-magical light sources to brighten the area, so I don't think human torches would even work. :smallconfused:


What part of HUMAN TORCHES is not magical?

[TuggyNE]

What part of HUMAN TORCHES is not magical?

The part where it's not a spell, SLA, or supernatural ability that generates light?

[CyberThread]

so if it is not one of those, how does it turn a human into wax?

[Douglas]

Turning people into wax is magical. Lighting them on fire afterwards is not.

[CyberThread]

do we even know what source this devil is from? I have a feeling it is homebrew....or 3rd party.

[Pickford]

Never disable an AMF inside a dungeon, it always makes it worse.

Disable it and the permanent Maximized Searing Walls of Fire (with Energy sub versions of the other energy types) that fill the whole room turn back on all of the sudden. As do the Auto reset wall of Force traps that cover all of the walls and were disabled by the AMF, and the Dimensional Lock which was disabled.

Or the stones that have benefited from strategically placed permanent Shrink Item spells suddenly find themselves shrunk by 1/16th in every dimension as the spells are now no longer suppressed and thus the whole ceiling comes down on your head as all the supports are gone.

Also never cast an AMF inside a dungeon. Or an Area Dispel. Those will take out the PAO support beams and stones that are holding the whole dungeon together and when the PAO's go away they go from solid granite blocks that measure 5 feet in every dimension to a quarter inch in diameter granite pebble.

Making dungeons that quite thoroughly screw adventurers over unless they find taking the Tomb of Horrors cold to be easy is so much fun. ;)

AMF doesn't suppress Wall of Force, among other things.

[Chronos]

No, but they do suppress the traps that make the walls of force.

[Psyren]

Just throw a cloth over it, and if nasty stuff appears, pull the cloth back off quickly.

EDIT: Or the walls of fire etc. roast your cloth and become suppressed immediately, though that might not be much comfort to whoever was standing in the room.

[Emperor Tippy]

No, but they do suppress the traps that make the walls of force.

Exactly, all kinds of fun. It's even better if you decide that magic traps that are suppressed can't be detected while suppressed.

[John Longarrow]

What part of HUMAN TORCHES is not magical?

Because the human torch is a superhero???

It may be me, but I'd never think that sundering a rock would have much to do with an Anti-magic field, so this trap wouldn't do much in most games I'm in. Also, why would the undead need to wait until AFTER the stone is sundered when attacking while its up would work soo much better? Am I missing something?

[Douglas]

Also, why would the undead need to wait until AFTER the stone is sundered when attacking while its up would work soo much better? Am I missing something?
They're all incorporeal. Incorporeal undead "wink out" in an AMF and reappear when it ends. As long as the field is up, they effectively don't exist.

[Chronos]

Incorporeal undead wink out in an AMF.

[Toy Killer]

do we even know what source this devil is from? I have a feeling it is homebrew....or 3rd party.

Totally homebrew, but the fact that people are turned to wax with an obvious wick sticking out is usually enough to imply what They want the party to do.

I rule it as a magical light.

Of course, there are a number of ways around darkness... but the fact that they provide a way of torture as a way of evening the odds against themselves really pushes the feel that they are immortal entities of evil, not just another band of reshuffled orcs or other baddies.

[Pickford]

Exactly, all kinds of fun. It's even better if you decide that magic traps that are suppressed can't be detected while suppressed.

That doesn't make sense. If the trap is suppressed the walls aren't up, in which case one would still need to trigger the trap and make the walls. If the walls were already up, the AMF wouldn't suppress them and it wouldn't matter if it was suppressing the origin.

In the scenario provided the trap must, necessarily, trigger upon the destruction of the antimagic field (somehow...presumably the moving of the stone or whatever)...but once the amf is gone...why wouldn't the party just teleport away? Or ruby ray of reversal/disintegrate a hole? That's an utterly pointless trap. Indeed, if the AMF was successfully dispelled, say via a Mordenkainen's Disjunction, it would almost certainly permanently destroy 'any' spell-based trap the AMF was capable of suppressing.

edit: And if we're just going to use rule 0 (i.e. arbitrarily do whatever) why even have a discussion on how nasty a trap is, no mechanics are even necessary, it functions by fiat.

[CyberThread]

That doesn't make sense. If the trap is suppressed the walls aren't up, i



Two or more antimagic fields sharing any of the same space have no effect on each other. Certain spells, such as wall of force, prismatic sphere, and prismatic wall, remain unaffected by antimagic field (see the individual spell descriptions). Artifacts and deities are unaffected by mortal magic such as this.

[John Longarrow]

I just thought of a possibly nasty trap...


Have a stone in the middle of some dungeon room , that needs to be sundered so that anti magic field goes away.

Fighter sunders it


Suddenly the room fills up with Effigies (Monster Manual II) , Wraiths , Banshees, or Greater Shadows.


I have never thought of the incorporeal undead as being used for such a nice trap.

Thinking about this, it isn't really a trap as much as an ambush. Still not sure why the party would go into an AMF, or why the fighter would sunder a rock. In general, ignore the whole AMF issue and just have a room the party enters where the incorporeal undead attack.

If it was a light source and there is something the party needs to do to keep it going so the dread wraiths don't enter, that would make more sense.

[Pickford]

Two or more antimagic fields sharing any of the same space have no effect on each other. Certain spells, such as wall of force, prismatic sphere, and prismatic wall, remain unaffected by antimagic field (see the individual spell descriptions). Artifacts and deities are unaffected by mortal magic such as this.

I was going off the tippy argument that the trap itself is suppressed by AMF. If that is true, the walls can't go up until the trap is triggered, and you'd need some trigger that occurs 'after' the AMF is dropped. If you triggered it before, no joy.

[TuggyNE]

I was going off the tippy argument that the trap itself is suppressed by AMF. If that is true, the walls can't go up until the trap is triggered, and you'd need some trigger that occurs 'after' the AMF is dropped. If you triggered it before, no joy.

A good consideration, though not I think terribly difficult to accomplish: have a trap set to go off whenever some pressure plate is down, either repeatedly or only when its intended results are not (yet) extant.