The contingency problem

[kaffalidjmah]

Hi guys!! Been a while..i have a question, i am trying to build a mage, i have a lot of spell known bla bla bla.
One of them is contingency. Note: i don't want to pick craft contingency. Also don't want to have celerity. Low cheese here, sometimes happens. Which is the spell you contingency and in which situation? Like, under a % of my hp, activate otiluke sphere i think is a "standard" contingency, other stuff? Any advice is nice

[Xervous]

Keying the contingency to activate whenever you cast feather fall is a decent option as feather fall is an immediate action. This prevents the contingency's activation trigger from straying into the gray area where the DM could veto it for whatever reason.

[Flickerdart]

Your character doesn't know what HP is, so you'll have to frame it in some way that makes sense in-universe.

Dimension door is always an excellent choice, but vulnerable to local effects like dimensional lock. Greater invisibility is a good one since it's very versatile in terms of what it will protect you from, but also has hard counters.

[paranoidbox]

Obviously some kind of healing spell is always a handy thing to have up your sleeve.

A Mislead might be useful, the base spell is a standard action, but with this it could be triggered immediately when you get ambushed or some such.

[Killer Angel]

Blink is also nice. It gives you some good defence

[Hiro Quester]

My bard/sublime chord used contingency with greater blink, keyed to a code word I would utter ("oh crapnuts!" or the equivalent); speaking is a free action. I'd utter it when targeted by an attack or spell that looked nasty.

[The Evil DM]

The most broken I ever did was...

If my body loses the ability to perform actions of any kind for any reason, physical, mental or both, then Contingency Magic Jar. After which I possessed someone or something around me.

Its great fun when the big bad does it to players.

[Hiro Quester]

At higher levels, my Bard bought a scroll of instant refuge (which is permanent until activated). It teleports you to your safe place if any of a number of listed conditions happen. A list like that is a bit more useful than one particular activating condition

I set up a retainer arrangement with our party cleric's temple. They would cast true resurrection or stone to flesh, or heal, or whatever is needed, if I or my stone or paralyzed body, or disintegrated remains, etc. teleported there. I also gave them a scroll of teleport to hold for me, so I could teleport back to my party after they had done their healing.

Something like EvilDM's trigger would also work for that kind of arrangement, if you have a temple or similar in which there is always a relatively high-level cleric on duty, and which you trust. As long as you are high enough CL that you can contingency a 5th level spell like teleport.

The magic jar idea is a good one (funny RP possibilities, too). But the above would work even after a disintegrate killed you. Magic Jar requires your body to be intact.

[The Evil DM]

The magic jar idea is a good one (funny RP possibilities, too). But the above would work even after a disintegrate killed you. Magic Jar requires your body to be intact.

I would say it depend on the nature of how interruptive a contingency is - which ultimately is GM arbitrated.

A second issue is definition of soul.

Disintegrate destroys your body, does it destroy your soul? I don't think so.

But magic jar does not require the body, it requires the receptacle to be intact. If the magic jar spell ends and your body is gone then you die unless your soul in another captive body.

That said, if you have your receptacle on you and get disintegrated, it gets disintegrated along with you. So I agree with your conclusion but not the reasoning.

Regardless there are many other defenses to use in addition to contingency to cover the instant death options of things like Disintegrate and by no means was this contingency the only defense used - nor would

[Hiro Quester]

I just meant that if you are hit by a disintegrate, a resurrection spell can bring your remains back to life.

But if you body is disintegrated and your soul retreats into a magic jar, then you will die when the magic jar spell ends, since you soul will have noplace to go.


If the spell ends while you are in the magic jar, you return to your body (or die if your body is out of range or destroyed). If the spell ends while you are in a host, you return to your body (or die, if it is out of range of your current position), and the soul in the magic jar returns to its body (or dies if it is out of range).

How can your soul continue in another captive body after the spell ends?

Of course, for anything other than disintegration, interrupting a deathly blow or spell or effect by immediate casting magic jar, so your body appears totally dead and your soul is free to occupy a different body for hour/level, is a really good move.

I'm probably going to take that option next time I get to use contingency.

[NNescio]

Contingent Revivify. Trigger: When I die.

(None of these "half a second before I die", "before I am about to die", etc. predictive triggers bullcrap needed.)

Get Revivify from a scroll or something and UMD it.

Later on if you can cast Limited Wish as a 6th-level spell (there are methods, but they border on cheese) you can also use it to duplicate Revivify.

[The Evil DM]

How can your soul continue in another captive body after the spell ends?

Ahh error on my part. A tweak to Magic Jar that occurred sometime in the last decade.

The character in mention is much older than 3rd ed. Even so - 1 hour per level is a long time to solve the no body problem. Typically my wizard had clones in stasis to occupy in his lair.

I always enjoyed.....

Horde of 3000 mooks.

They are slaughtered left and right until they finally overcome the wizard. - Phew -

Hey wait... "Bob is acting kind of funny, when did bob learn to cast spells? - Oh **** we gotta kill Bob now" - Phew -

Hey wait... "Joe is acting funny now. What's going on? Die Joe?"

Hehehe

[Hiro Quester]

Revivify is also a good one.

Many DMs rule that a spell you cast from a scroll can be folded into a contingency spell. So if you can UMD a scroll, even divine spells like that are a possibility.

And revivify is perfect. After my bard got instant refuge, I changed my contingency to revivify. ( I forgot about that until you mentioned it, NNescio.)

[atemu1234]

I had a BBEG Lich with Contingent Revive Undead... set to occur after they leave his remains, if his phylactery was destroyed.