Mitigating an anti-magic field

[zooqooo]

I'm preparing to play in a new OGL campaign where we will be playing highly optimized characters in a equally highly optimized dungeon. I don't have any specifics for what character creation will be like, but I'm thinking past there, to more big picture problems.

Obviously, the bane of all highly optimized characters is a simple anti-magic field, something that my DM will not hesitate to put in the most inconvenient locations. So the task is, tell me any and all of the loopholes and crazy tricks to deal with problems in an anti-magic field. I'm sure that the DM will have some particularly nasty things to accompany the field, from magic floors that disappear, dropping the party into certain death; to high cr undead creatures with (ex) abilities to make the combat more unfair.

TL;DR what're the most creative ways to deal with an anti-magic field, and what essentials do you bring into a highly lethal dungeon?

[ryu]

Simple method is called the tinfoil hat trick which involves a hollow cone or dome of whatever material desired big enough to fit around your entire square hit with permanencied shrink item so it fits on your head. Antimagic field hits you unshrinking the hat which will then block the necessary line of effect for the emanation. You can then do any number of fun things from inside such as teleporting to a previously known safe location and so on.

Also many conjuration spells involve the spontaneous creation of things and are entirely immune to AMFs after being cast. Common favorite spells for attacking into an AMF are anything with Orb of X as a title.

[Sleven]

Martial Study: Iron Heart Surge. Qualify with the spell Heroics -> Martial Study: Wall of Blades. Requires a 10th level character, but it solves a lot more problems 1/encounter than just antimagic field. Although, a shrunk steel/iron dome is useful for a lot more than just the tinfoil hat trick.

[Nifft]

Simple method is called the tinfoil hat trick which involves a hollow cone or dome of whatever material desired big enough to fit around your entire square hit with permanencied shrink item so it fits on your head. Antimagic field hits you unshrinking the hat which will then block the necessary line of effect for the emanation. You can then do any number of fun things from inside such as teleporting to a previously known safe location and so on. Tried & true, but it only works some of the time.

Problematic when flying, since the bottom is necessarily open.

Also, expect your DM to start quibbling about how the ground isn't perfectly level and therefore the AMF leaks in, getting all over your shoes and technically applying to you since you're in your shoes.


Martial Study: Iron Heart Surge. Qualify with the spell Heroics -> Martial Study: Wall of Blades. Requires a 10th level character, but it solves a lot more problems 1/encounter than just antimagic field. Although, a shrunk steel/iron dome is useful for a lot more than just the tinfoil hat trick.
Iron Heart Surge is potentially viable, but your thoughts on using the heroics spell to get it while inside an AMF are ... questionable.

If you can get the benefits of the heroics spell while you're stuck in an AMF, then you don't need the benefits of the heroics spell.

[ryu]

And that DM will have the line of effect rules pointedly shoved in his face that any such opening must be at a MINIMUM of one square foot to provide line of effect. Even if you must houserule that away the problem can still be easily circumvented by the hat including a "small" amount of draping cloth covered in the shrinking. Not hard enough to count? Extra pieces of the same material attached but allowed to move by hinges. On flat ground they'll simply fall horizontal, but cover the airspace of any tipping. Do NOT get into engineering quibbles with experienced wizard players. You'll only make them stronger.

[Nifft]

And that DM will have the line of effect rules pointedly shoved in his face that any such opening must be at a MINIMUM of one square foot to provide line of effect. Even if you must houserule that away the problem can still be easily circumvented by the hat including a "small" amount of draping cloth covered in the shrinking. Not hard enough to count? Extra pieces of the same material attached but allowed to move by hinges. On flat ground they'll simply fall horizontal, but cover the airspace of any tipping. Do NOT get into engineering quibbles with experienced wizard players. You'll only make them stronger. IMHO it's a better strategy to get your DM on board with this bit of clever engineering, rather than keeping it secret and then trying to shove rules into the DM's face. That seems a bit anti-social.

Plus, it's the DM, and the DM can say things like:

- "There's a wagon rut in the dirt. It's over a foot square. You die like a fish in a barrel."

- "There's a log next to you. The cone is propped up, and the gap is more than a foot square. You die like a fish in a barrel."

... and so on.

Engineering cleverness can be an excellent thing, and as I mentioned this is a tried & true strategy, but it's not fool-proof. The fools can also be quite clever.

[ryu]

IMHO it's a better strategy to get your DM on board with this bit of clever engineering, rather than keeping it secret and then trying to shove rules into the DM's face. That seems a bit anti-social.

Plus, it's the DM, and the DM can say things like:

- "There's a wagon rut in the dirt. It's over a foot square. You die like a fish in a barrel."

- "There's a log next to you. The cone is propped up, and the gap is more than a foot square. You die like a fish in a barrel."

... and so on.

Engineering cleverness can be an excellent thing, and as I mentioned this is a tried & true strategy, but it's not fool-proof. The fools can also be quite clever.

That's nice. I've already covered why any given obstacle or sloping doesn't matter, but hell lets get extreme. Costume of linked hinged plates far enough from the body to allow freedom of movement for casting without a single gap wider than a few inches. Quite possibly including shoe plates shrunken for ease of walking that expand if an AMF is below. If you want to make a fight of quibbles the person designing the defense can simply design them all away. Didn't even need to use new spells to that either. Just whatever material needed fabricated into desired shapes shrunk and permanencied.

[Nifft]

That's nice. I've already covered why any given obstacle or sloping doesn't matter, but hell lets get extreme. Costume of linked hinged plates far enough from the body to allow freedom of movement for casting without a single gap wider than a few inches. Quite possibly including shoe plates shrunken for ease of walking that expand if an AMF is below. If you want to make a fight of quibbles the person designing the defense can simply design them all away. Didn't even need to use new spells to that either. Just whatever material needed fabricated into desired shapes shrunk and permanencied.

- "Your big hat still counts as a hat. Armor doesn't block the AMF."

- "Your linked, hinged plates collapse into a pile, pinning you under their considerable weight, except your foot which somehow pushed a plate the wrong way and is sticking out, whereby you are exposed to the AMF."


Seriously, no amount of engineering cleverness will save you if you try to shove rules in the DM's face.

Picking a fight with the DM is a guaranteed loss.

An ounce of social grace is worth a ton of clever.

[noob]

"- "Your big hat still counts as a hat. Armor doesn't block the AMF.""
Please quote where it is written that armor or hats does not blocks line of effect?
Anyway if you want to beat antimagic fields you can turn them in a boost spell by just being an initiate of mystra and not only if will make you more powerful than just that hat and it have no real counter.

[Hiro Quester]

Be a swiftblade. All the awesome effects you get from haste are Ex abilities that are indispensable, even in an AMF. Extra move or standard actions, miss chances, freedom of movement...

Even your cast Haste as a time stop capstone ability should continue to function in an AMF, if you cast it outside it.

You could use this to cast haste in an 8th level slot and take three rounds in time stop to place a giant tinfoil hat over the source of the AMF.

[Hyperversum]

In the past we had to travel a room with a permanent AMF annoying us, glorious Generalist Wizard and Support Cleric. Since we were the reasons the party didn't die in all the previous encounters, I decided to start a simple "RAW" analysis.

AMF is a spell, which need to be cast and that if you want to put in a room, it should be done through Permanency or similar effects.

Then, I took my beautiful and only staff, never used, that possesed 3 spell, personally crafter: Teleport, Time Stop (2 charges for one use) and Disjunction (2 charges for one use).

I started spamming the disjunction until I didn't break the AMF (like... 5 casts? Maybe 6/7) and we went through as normal.
For our luck.

[lord_khaine]

"- "Your big hat still counts as a hat. Armor doesn't block the AMF.""
Please quote where it is written that armor or hats does not blocks line of effect?

Please quote where it is written that armor or hats block line of effects. The burden of proof is on you, since there is plenty of indirect evidence for it not being the case.
Like how armor and hats dont absord the damage from evocation spells.

[Eldariel]

One obvious thing is using minions. Planar Binding is still binding so send some massive demon meat in. Gate is the same.

Constructs and Undead are explicitly not affected so have a Huge Darksteel Golem with appropriate equipment kicking butt in the front, or send your Zombie Hydra or Dragon first. Remember, undead mounts also allow you to fly after a fashion. Similarly, Simulacrums/Ice Assassins work though they lose their biggest selling point in SLAs. Big enough still works thoigh.

AMF is an emanation so similar to the hat, Shrunk Item/PAOd boulders/big things can be tossed in to create safe zones behind it.

Of course, the strongest option is making AMF a friend. Initiate of Mystra, Invoke Magic, and few other thing enable casting in AMF making it a wonderful protection.

[Mr Adventurer]

If it's permanent and fills a whole bounded space, it's an incredibly expensive piece of magical construction. Steal the whole bounded space.

[Anthrowhale]

Celerity[Wall of Force] provides a way to block an AMF which is either mobile or appearing. I'm guessing that's not viable since Celerity is not OGL. In some situation you could ready an action to cast Wall of Force to the same effect.

There are ways to permanently swap your physical body. With a suitable choice of sufficiently robust physical body being placed in an AMF is ok.

[noob]

For example if you steal a body huge enough for not being containable entirely in an antimagic zone then you can avoid some problems:


Should a creature be larger than the area enclosed by the barrier, any part of it that lies outside the barrier is unaffected by the field.
So it means that if you are big enough you can avoid partially the antimagic zone.

[Lapak]

Martial Study: Iron Heart Surge. Qualify with the spell Heroics -> Martial Study: Wall of Blades. Requires a 10th level character, but it solves a lot more problems 1/encounter than just antimagic field. Although, a shrunk steel/iron dome is useful for a lot more than just the tinfoil hat trick.Someone else pointed out the problem with using Heroics to qualify for this, but that’s ok as I was simply going to suggest ‘play a martial initiator concentrating on non-supernatural maneuvers.’ Even in a play environment where the DM does not allow you to IHS an anti magic field, they’re hurt a lot less by it than many character types.

[ryu]

- "Your big hat still counts as a hat. Armor doesn't block the AMF."

- "Your linked, hinged plates collapse into a pile, pinning you under their considerable weight, except your foot which somehow pushed a plate the wrong way and is sticking out, whereby you are exposed to the AMF."


Seriously, no amount of engineering cleverness will save you if you try to shove rules in the DM's face.

Picking a fight with the DM is a guaranteed loss.

An ounce of social grace is worth a ton of clever.

Nonsense. Getting into a fight with your DM isn't an automatic loss. It's a straight fight with likelihood of winning based on how many of the players at the table end up agreeing with you. This is of course assuming you meant argumentative fighting, the recommended form, over simply punching someone in the nose. That just immediately makes you the bad guy for the whole table.

[Sleven]

Someone else pointed out the problem with using Heroics to qualify for this, but that’s ok as I was simply going to suggest ‘play a martial initiator concentrating on non-supernatural maneuvers.’ Even in a play environment where the DM does not allow you to IHS an anti magic field, they’re hurt a lot less by it than many character types.

I was saying to take the actual feat Martial Study: Iron Heart Surge (as in using the 12th level feat every character receives), and meeting Iron Heart Surge's qualification requirements with the spell Heroics. There is no issue here, because after the duration of your Heroics spell runs out, your Martial Study: Iron Heart Surge feat self qualifies.

[Nifft]

"- "Your big hat still counts as a hat. Armor doesn't block the AMF.""
Please quote where it is written that armor or hats does not blocks line of effect?
If armor blocks Line of Effect in your games, then you've just handed armor-users supremacy over casters forever. :biggrin:

Needless to say, the core rules don't generally support your thinking.


Nonsense. Getting into a fight with your DM isn't an automatic loss. It's a straight fight with likelihood of winning based on how many of the players at the table end up agreeing with you. My recommendation is to not fight other players at all.

[Lapak]

I was saying to take the actual feat Martial Study: Iron Heart Surge (as in using the 12th level feat every character receives), and meeting Iron Heart Surge's qualification requirements with the spell Heroics. There is no issue here, because after the duration of your Heroics spell runs out, your Martial Study: Iron Heart Surge feat self qualifies.
Aha. I read that backwards because I don’t allow feat qualification via short-term effects, which is admittedly a self-inflicted blind spot in some conversations.

Edit just in case that’s unclear: I get that IHS self-qualifies once you have it; I wouldn’t personally allow a player to get it that way in the first place.

[Nifft]

Aha. I read that backwards because I don’t allow feat qualification via short-term effects, which is admittedly a self-inflicted blind spot in some conversations.

Edit just in case that’s unclear: I get that IHS self-qualifies once you have it; I wouldn’t personally allow a player to get it that way in the first place.

The way we play Maneuver qualifications is that they can't self-qualify, but you can have two Maneuvers which mutually qualify.

So if you have IHS and one other Iron Heart maneuver, you can retrain the other one for a higher-level Iron Heart maneuver, using IHS to qualify.

But you can't have fewer than two Iron Heart maneuvers if you want to retain use of IHS.

[Lapak]

The way we play Maneuver qualifications is that they can't self-qualify, but you can have two Maneuvers which mutually qualify.

So if you have IHS and one other Iron Heart maneuver, you can retrain the other one for a higher-level Iron Heart maneuver, using IHS to qualify.

But you can't have fewer than two Iron Heart maneuvers if you want to retain use of IHS.
Yeah, I’m fine with that as long as the manuevers involved are you have more-or-less permanent access to.

[noob]

If armor blocks Line of Effect in your games, then you've just handed armor-users supremacy over casters forever. :biggrin:

Needless to say, the core rules don't generally support your thinking.

My recommendation is to not fight other players at all.

Well it would help fighters if armor actually did something instead of just helping you doing something you are already able to do.