Shadow Cloak and Immediate actions

[Trask]

Can some of you rules lawyers help me out?

https://mission-from-sigil.obsidianportal.com/items/shadow-cloak

One of my players bought this item, and he says that he can use it to evade an attack entirely when it is made against him. Is that how it works? I've let him use it that way for a few sessions but I've grown curious, particularly because it is a very strong item in his hands. Just simply put, does this item's power, being an immediate action to teleport or conceal, evade the attack made against him that triggered it? Or does the player take that hit and then teleport/conceal

thanks!

[Ramza00]

Yes you can evade attacks similar to a conjurer's abjurant step, unlike other forms of teleportation this is only reactionary and can't be used for normal movement but only in response to attacks.

[Necroticplague]

Can some of you rules lawyers help me out?

https://mission-from-sigil.obsidianportal.com/items/shadow-cloak

One of my players bought this item, and he says that he can use it to evade an attack entirely when it is made against him. Is that how it works? I've let him use it that way for a few sessions but I've grown curious, particularly because it is a very strong item in his hands. Just simply put, does this item's power, being an immediate action to teleport or conceal, evade the attack made against him that triggered it? Or does the player take that hit and then teleport/conceal

thanks!

It evades the attack. Things that occur in the middle of things interrupt them, and effects are then resolved in a first-in-last-out fashion. The attack came first, so it's resolved last. The teleport reaction to it came second, so it's resolved first. A first level wizard ACf does the same thing more times per day. All this does is let you no-sell a melee attack 3 times a day. Ranged attacks will still hit him unless he teleports around a corner.

[Fizban]

Not all things in DnD use "the stack," but generally speaking yeah. Immediate actions interrupt whatever was going on, that's the whole point, so if the cloak teleports you out of range then that attack's gonna fail.

I'd also note that item is ridiculously powerful and you should feel no obligation to allow it if you don't want to, since it's clear you didn't know how it worked. Swift and immediate action teleportation are only possible in a few sourcebooks and can easily break or trivialize stuff from the majority of books that do not expect it to be a thing, especially at the dirt cheap prices they give it away for. And whoever wrote the PHB2 wizard variants is terrible at their job.

[Inevitability]

Note that a creature with reach might still be able to hit him. For instance, when he's next to an otyugh and the otyugh full attacks him, he can teleport away, but the aberration will still be able to target him with its tentacles. The otyugh would not longer be able to bite him, though.

[Trask]

Thanks guys, helpful info. This item is pretty strong but instead of tearing it away from him I think i'll use some of the advice from here and bring some enemies with long reach and ranged attacks. Also maybe I'll make some feint kind of encounters that will get him to blow them earlier so he has to be more cautious.

[Ramza00]

Thanks guys, helpful info. This item is pretty strong but instead of tearing it away from him I think i'll use some of the advice from here and bring some enemies with long reach and ranged attacks. Also maybe I'll make some feint kind of encounters that will get him to blow them earlier so he has to be more cautious.

Don't forget to remember that you can always add lots of low level critters to an encounter, and if you use proper tactics (things like concealment, cover, line of effect, line of sight, readied actions, etc) it is hard for the PCs to attack them.

Yet even low level critters can be very deadly. For example a level 1 kobold (does not have to be a kobold, but I am referencing Tucker's 1st edition Kobolds) can do two spells in a single round as a sorcerer, wizard, whatever.

1) Power Word Pain, doing somewhere between 4d6 to 16d6 damage if the PC has less than 50 hit poitns

Now the Kobold did this from some form of tunnel, where the only way to approach him is from a frontal assault

2) The Kobold with his remaining move and swift action, now clasts blockade creating a 5ft cube of wood blocking the tunnel. This wood cube has 600 hit points, but only lasts 3 rounds, effectively giving the kobold a 3 round head start.

The Kobold now runs away as fast as his legs can take him with his move action from this round plus additional move actions in future rounds.

Oh if you make him a wizard you can give him abrupt jaunt so he can effectively teleport as an immediate action just like the cloak.

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Now all of this advice is not to tell you how to deal with the shadow cloak but to merely point out using the resources at your avaliability combine with good tactics to present a serious threat to your party's PCs. Not with the goal of doing a total party wipe out but to challenge them and make them sweat some of the time.

After all your party members are doing much the same thing, your PC bought a very good item and is now using it as a tactical aid to reduce how many times he is in serious danger, it is the DM's job to also play the same game and to do tactics that make the player sweat but are not merely "DM fudging the numbers."

After all that 4d6 to 16d6 damage only involved two spells, and the kobold was not doing a succide run but instead proper fighting strategies in their defensive lair. That kobold is a mere CR 1 (a normal kobold is CR 1/4, but add 1 class level for the wizard or sorcerer spells and it is now CR 1).

Your job as DM is to do a war of attrition, to have challenging encounters, but not too challenging to cause the party to just die for the enemy does 1 hit kills. Instead your job is to throw enough of these encounters prior to them resting that they run low on spell slots, hit points, limited number of day magical abilities, etc that they are now having to monitor their resource use for each encounter and choose how to use their resources wisely. Aka it is your job to prevent your party from doing nova type tactics, and being wasteful of their resources.

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Another tactic is to have your monsters fight side by side and then use the 2nd level sorcerer spell via class levels or a simple wand to cast wings of cover, which is an immediate action and blocking line of effect. The nice thing about wings of cover is it blocks practically everything and if the caster has the dragonblood subtype (there is a human subrace that gives it, and many other races) then the wings of cover also protects adjacent allies.

You can even have a wizard use his pseudodragon familiar (improved familiar feat) do this.

[Gruftzwerg]

Shadow Cloak is really strong yeah. But not so strong as that it should be denied totally (as you figured out too). But still, when players have strong items, they need to pay sweat & blood for it, not just gold imho.
As said, you can try to bait the 3 charges of the cloak or put him in situations where it is of no use (ranged).
But there is a much more subtile method. You can put him into situations, where he temporarily don't wanna wear it himself^^
Let some small animals pee/**** on his cloack over night, while he is asleep. The next day he realizes the smell and needs to find a river to clean it well. (or use all water supplies to clean it). Or if you really want to pull out the joker: a well placed "Skunk"-Encounter before the main Encounter could do the job too :smallbiggrin:

[Trask]

[QUOTE=Ramza00;20624201]Don't forget to remember that you can always add lots of low level critters to an encounter, and if you use proper tactics (things like concealment, cover, line of effect, line of sight, readied actions, etc) it is hard for the PCs to attack them.

Yet even low level critters can be very deadly. For example a level 1 kobold (does not have to be a kobold, but I am referencing Tucker's 1st edition Kobolds) can do two spells in a single round as a sorcerer, wizard, whatever.

1) Power Word Pain, doing somewhere between 4d6 to 16d6 damage if the PC has less than 50 hit poitns

Now the Kobold did this from some form of tunnel, where the only way to approach him is from a frontal assault

2) The Kobold with his remaining move and swift action, now clasts blockade creating a 5ft cube of wood blocking the tunnel. This wood cube has 600 hit points, but only lasts 3 rounds, effectively giving the kobold a 3 round head start.

The Kobold now runs away as fast as his legs can take him with his move action from this round plus additional move actions in future rounds.

Oh if you make him a wizard you can give him abrupt jaunt so he can effectively teleport as an immediate action just like the cloak.

------

Now all of this advice is not to tell you how to deal with the shadow cloak but to merely point out using the resources at your avaliability combine with good tactics to present a serious threat to your party's PCs. Not with the goal of doing a total party wipe out but to challenge them and make them sweat some of the time.

After all your party members are doing much the same thing, your PC bought a very good item and is now using it as a tactical aid to reduce how many times he is in serious danger, it is the DM's job to also play the same game and to do tactics that make the player sweat but are not merely "DM fudging the numbers."

After all that 4d6 to 16d6 damage only involved two spells, and the kobold was not doing a succide run but instead proper fighting strategies in their defensive lair. That kobold is a mere CR 1 (a normal kobold is CR 1/4, but add 1 class level for the wizard or sorcerer spells and it is now CR 1).

Im sorry this might sound noobish but how can a kobold sorcerer/wizard cast two spells in one round?

[Gruftzwerg]

Im sorry this might sound noobish but how can a kobold sorcerer/wizard cast two spells in one round?


For example a level 1 kobold (does not have to be a kobold, but I am referencing Tucker's 1st edition Kobolds) can do two spells in a single round as a sorcerer, wizard, whatever.

Special Kobolds from the Dragon Magazine. I think from the late 80s..

[Ramza00]

Im sorry this might sound noobish but how can a kobold sorcerer/wizard cast two spells in one round?
Different casting times.

Power Word Pain is a standard 1 action casting time.

Blockade is a swift action casting time. Aka it operates very similar to the quickened metamagic except you do not need the +4 metamagic, since this effect is built into the spell already.

Thus you can cast both spells in a single round, and still have a move action as well.


Special Kobolds from the Dragon Magazine. I think from the late 80s..
Tucker Kobolds were named after the DM Tucker, and were a story told in that Dragon Magazine from the 1980s. They were normal kobolds, but the DM purposefully used the kobolds with lots of team work, as well as a special battlefield that took advantage of the kobolds strengths. It is called "homefiled advantage" and did things such as having murder holes in the caverns where you could shoot arrows from (similar to how a castle had murder holes to shoot arrows from the wall, and murder holes in the "gate room" where you have a 20ft corridors from one side of the wall to the other. Well 20 feet may sound like a short distance, but these "gate rooms" often had spears / spikes where death comes from the left, the right, the top, and bottom of the gate. Have your horse die from underneath a murder hole, and suddenly that 20ft coordior is hell itself due to these murder holes.

Remember kobolds in the flavor where trap makers, who used teamwork, and were of small size so they can have coordiors they can run in, but the players could not enter for it was like an airshaft that only a child could crawl through since it was so small.

http://www.tuckerskobolds.com/ details the original editorial from the Dragon magazine in the 1980s.

The whole point of the article to illustrate than an encounter is more than raw stats like do you get a 2 attacks from 2 claws, or you get 3 attacks with a claw, claw, bite. An encounter is supposed to be a memorable experience (at least some of the time), and not merely a random encounter crafted by the DM, like a circus's house of horrors / house of mirrors. Sometimes the "random encounter" is done by monsters who operate better as a team than the players at the table, sometimes the random encounter occurs when the monsters created a distinct home field advantage to spring their trap in.

These kobolds were part of a greater dungeon where the deeper you get into the dungeon the harder the CR was of the monsters from a technical standpoint. Yet the kobolds on the 1st level of the dungeon were far more scary than the monsters on the 10th level of the dungeon.

[Zanos]

Not sure if it's RAW, but I make people declare this before the attack roll. Once the attack roll hits your AC, you can't teleport out of the way anymore, you've been hit.

[Fizban]

I'm just gonna go ahead and point out that Power Word: Pain is also possibly one of the most broken spells of all time. It's a 1st level spell that will kill every creature up to CR 2 without fail in a single casting, barring spell resistance or extreme luck. This includes player characters of all but the tankiest classes of up to 3rd-5th level, at which point you simply use two castings. The guy who wrote this spell is worse at his job than the one who wrote Abrupt Jaunt, and it should not factor into anything ever.

Races of the Dragon also has Wings of Cover (a 2nd level spell you can cast on anyone's turn that makes you basically immune to an entire spell or attack-oh, I see that's been mentioned), Sticky Floor (a Conjuration [creation] spell that somehow covers the floor in SR:no glue that magically works through shoes and lasts even longer than Web-at 1st level), and Greater Mighty Wallop (the single most powerful weapon buff spell in the game by several degrees). So yeah, spell balance not so great there. I said myself that the item was ridiculously powerful, but that doesn't mean you respond with stuff that's even worse against the whole party.

Aside from greater reach, surrounding him, and most importantly keeping the number of encounters on adventuring days appropriate (letting the players fight once and then leave at their leisure=no), skirmishing groups that retreat once their foes have cast short duration buffs and burned ablative defenses to wait out the timers are good idea too. Can be difficult to make sure they can actually do that, stealthy ranged attackers are the best as one would expect. The party or character who expects their buffs to always be around should run into some of these post-haste.

Another counter would simply be cramped quarters: if there's no clear and safe space to teleport into he can't use the cloak or might have to land somewhere worse. Or the spell counter, Anticipate Teleport (SpC) is a 24 hour spell that really punishes people who expect to swift teleport around with impunity: it slaps a 1 round delay on them and bam you just lost your turn. You do need to be close enough to catch their destination in the area and it's personal-only so you need a gish NPC (and you should never be throwing more than a few classed NPCs per level), but if I allowed those items you can bet I'd be ready with the counter.

[Bronk]

Two more things for this Shadow Cloak...

1: It specifies that you have to teleport to a spot that you can see clearly, so destinations can be restricted by fog spells, darkness, concealment due to other creatures, etc.

2: You can't take an immediate action when you're flat-footed.

[Ramza00]

I'm just gonna go ahead and point out that Power Word: Pain is also possibly one of the most broken spells of all time. It's a 1st level spell that will kill every creature up to CR 2 without fail in a single casting, barring spell resistance or extreme luck. This includes player characters of all but the tankiest classes of up to 3rd-5th level, at which point you simply use two castings. The guy who wrote this spell is worse at his job than the one who wrote Abrupt Jaunt, and it should not factor into anything ever.

Races of the Dragon also has Wings of Cover (a 2nd level spell you can cast on anyone's turn that makes you basically immune to an entire spell or attack-oh, I see that's been mentioned), Sticky Floor (a Conjuration [creation] spell that somehow covers the floor in SR:no glue that magically works through shoes and lasts even longer than Web-at 1st level), and Greater Mighty Wallop (the single most powerful weapon buff spell in the game by several degrees). So yeah, spell balance not so great there. I said myself that the item was ridiculously powerful, but that doesn't mean you respond with stuff that's even worse against the whole party.

I very much agree power word pain is a very powerful spell. I do not know if I would use the word "broken though." Imagine we were rating spells with star ratings (★) from 1 to 5, well from level 4 on power word pain is ★★★★ 4 stars for a 1st level spell, but it is not a 5 star spell. Now from levels 1 to 3, it is most definitely a 5 star spell.

This is because I believe you need to judge the spells not just by their spell level and other similar spells but also the resources you have to counter those spells and how much of a hinderance they put on a player at specific levels of play. A Healing Belt heals 4d8 (average 22) if you use up all the charges at once, or 6d8 if you spread the charges up 1 at a time (average 33) for 750 GP, Power Word Pain because it is 4d4*1d6 has a huge range of possible damages but its average damage is 35, and it clump more towards the middle like a bell curve due to it being 4d4 rounds before the 1d6 occurs. (Similar to how a 2d6 clusters around a 6, 7, or 8 more often than a 1d12). In other words a power word pain is roughly equivalent to a healing belt on the resource curve to damage done ratio.

At a level that you could afford a Shadow Cloak (5500 gp) we are talking level 8 where it would take 20% of your wealth of 27000 gp or at level 10 which is 11% of your wealth at 49,000 gp. By then 1d6 damage per round is not that impressive and is just a minor annoyance, furthermore at level 8+ you are often going to have 50 or more hit points and thus get an even shorter power word pain.

All of this is to say that power word pain power drops very rapid post level 4, and at the level the DM is playing with his PC it is just a way of reducing the players resources and putting a slight edge to combat without the DM having to perfectly plan the encounter, or wing the numbers on the fly. He can "tailor the difficulty" to not do a TPK yet at the same time tax their resources and make the player more mindful of what is occurring.

Perhaps that kobold also has a crossbow and he attacks with the crossbow most of the player were in a serious risk of a single Power Word Pain killing them, but if they are not in such a situation the DM who runs the kobold may choose the more "elite" attack option and drain the PC of some of their resources by using power word pain. As for stacking power word pains, that is a DM who sees their role as purposefully trying to cause total destruction and if that was the goal there are so many ways the DM can nova a player you should not focus just on power word pain.

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And that I think is perfectly acceptable when your PC is playing with Immediate Action spells that disrupt attacks from ever occurring such as the Shadow Cloak, Abrupt Jaunt, Wings of Cover, Battlemagic Perception + Counter Spell, Divine Defiance, etc.

Put another way, think of immediate action deniers as the "blue magic color" from magic of the gathering color wheel pie. They are action taxes and action disruptors. Well these effects can be powerful, but a blue player fighting another blue player with counterspells reshifts the game into a more standard type magic game. The PCs should not be the only people with nice things, the monsters the DM creates should be also have nice things just as long as you do not do a purposeful TPK (aka rocks fall for you purposefully did too high of an encounter).

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I did like your advice on other things involving tactics to illustrate my point about the DM finding ways to tax the PCs of their resources so that they seriously feel threatened yet it is not a guranteed TPK, but my point with the Power Word Pain was not just that is an good combo for the DM, but that you can easily scale that combo up or down and since the damage is only 3.5 damage per round to a person with 8+ HD it gives the player and the DM time to figure out what to do in subsequent rounds to get the desired result.

In other words it is something the DM can easily insert without thinking to make combat more exciting without adding more work for the DM.

[Fizban]

Your argument is that a specific 750gp magic item can allow you to survive a single 1st level spell (castable off a 25gp scroll or for free up to 4 per day depending on build), assuming you're allowed to passively heal through it. A 1st level spell that anyone can learn requires a specific magic item on every single monster, NPC, and PC under the limit in order to avoid certain death, assuming they flee immediately. It doesn't matter what optimization level or character level, the spell is broken: it doesn't behave like any other power word, the resources needed to counter it are absurdly, laughably disproportionate, it is simply not appropriate for a 1st level spell. It still doesn't make sense at 3rd but at least it's out of madness range. The closest comparison is Greater Creeping Cold, which is 4th (blah blah 50hp blah blah fort for half).

Your example of a pair of blue mages is quite apt: most people rather hate playing against lockdown and disruption (I should know, I main blue without even proper counterspells and people still hate my bounce). If one person has just now decided to bring a little in, why would the response be to bring even more in and bog the game down further with interrupts and uncertainty that they'll even get to act? The response is to use anti-blue, not just give up and switch to combo-control yourself, leaving the rest of the players screwed. As for monsters/NPCs getting nice things, I already mentioned how the game is not designed for the PCs to fight classed NPCs regularly, since as class abilities are skewed strong enough to fight monsters they are murderously strong against other PCs while being to fragile to make a proper fight. And no, I'm not talking about using a single spell for a specific fight, I'm talking about the precedent it sets and the trend it encourages into the future. The very fact that the OP has been asked indicates the game was consciously aimed at the rabbit hole and I will not encourage it since that sort of thing should be agreed upon, not creep in and disrupt people who didn't sign up for it.

Alternatively, consider that MtG is a game constantly updated and tuned for tournament play, while 3.5 is hah. In Magic they'll sometimes admit they've printed a broken monstrosity and ban it, but the DM is the one who has to do that for DnD. You can force everyone to play with the Mind Sculptor, or you can admit you done screwed up and ban it. Preferably before it's destroyed the format.

And while I'm making MtG comparisons: there's also no mana system. In DnD you run at full power from round 1 and as long as you've got the swift/immediate effects lined up you're fully superior to anyone who can't fill those actions. It's like trainer cards in the original Pokemon card game: you can keep playing them till you're done drawing and shuffling and searching and crush anyone who didn't load their deck up with the same. MtG ensures that both players get to act for a few rounds of escalating effects and usually doesn't allow free stuff (and the free stuff is always where the broke shows up). Going first is huge but normally you can't win on round 1 or cast a single spell and then pass turns till you win, you can lockdown your opponent with counters but it slows your own offense. Not so in DnD, where a wand of Wings of Cover makes you 50-100% invincible against a given threat and has no impact on your ability to fight back.

[Ramza00]

I am more or less done with this conversation for I have not more really to add, I was mostly responding to the OP and I made my points, that said I will finish this conversation and do one last post out of respect for you :)

But with me ending the conversation let me point out three logical leaps that you leaped in such a way that I view that as being flawed.

1) Comparing a one use item, to a reusuable item that refreshes each day means direct GP comparisons of 50 GP vs 750 GP is very misleading.

2) The fact that you will be facing hit point damage in practically every encounter indefinately in D&D means you are going to use the belt 15 times to pay it off by the end of any game that is not a 1 shot and is a continued campaign. Since the healing belt has not attenuation period, you can also swap belt between party members and thus share the belt between party members so if one person needs more hit points healing per day you can be flexible.

3) What does the DM care about the GP cost of a scroll. What does the GM care if the spell is considered a level 1 spell or a level 2 spell or a level 3000 spell. These are abstract mechanics that really do not exist in the game, they are just rules that your player know but your PCs would have very little knowledge of. The purpose of the DM is two fold

A) To provide a good narrative experience
B) To be an adaptable computer and to think outside the box in a way a pc game just is not capable of.

In other words D&D is just a structured game of pretend. The DM can create whatever resources he wants and whether a spell cost 25 GP or 2500 GP ultimately does not matter, or whether the spell is a 1st level spell or a 9th level spell. What matters is that the game of pretend feels fun and enjoyable and not like the DM is picking on you or not, or if the game is so easy there is no challenge and thus it is not fun. Does the player ultimately care if the spell is labeled as 1st level or 3rd level, or 5th level? Really?

I am asking this rhetorical question for in my personal own belief, no it ultimately does not matter if its a 1st level or 3rd level or 5th level spell. What matters is the gameplay and whether the player feel challenged, whether the storytelling is immersive and engaging, and how much XP and treasure the party gets as reward for however challenging the encounter was.