Low Level Bypassing Glyph of Warding

[Yogibear41]

You are a 1st level Changeling (or soemthing else with the shapechanger subtype) the town/city/village you live in has random Glyphs of Warding keyed to the shapechanger subtype hidden at major points throughout it. What means can you use to fool/bypass these glyphs on a regular basis, so you can actually move about town without tripping them off. (You don't know where the glpyhs are, and even if you did they could add new ones and new locations without your knowledge)

You have 2500 gp to spend on magic items to help conceal your presence.

[Saintheart]

Since the glyphs key on subtype, the simplest thing I can think of is something that gives you Polymorph at will (which changes subtype and therefore avoids the spell.) The trick is the cost. One thing might be to team up with a convenient spellcaster who's willing to turn you into a rat for the night so long as you bring back some booty for him.

Other way is to find a way to get persistent read magic and a persistent item of Guidance of the Avatar which gives you the spell and the Spellcraft check to detect each glyph as you come across it.

Guidance of the Avatar item with 50 charges would be spell level x CL x 1,000 gp = 6,000 gp. Require a specific skill to be able to use it, deduct 10%. Require a specific class or alignment to use it, deduct 40% more. That gets us down to 3,000 gp.

Per the SRD, when creating a custom magic item, you "Calculate the market price based on the lowest possible level caster, no matter who makes the item." An Ur-Priest can cast Guidance of the Avatar at level 2, which saves us about 2,000 gp on the price since it's spell level x CL x 1,000 gp -- thus we're down to a pricetag of 4,000 gp before we apply deductions for skill, class and alignment as described - this gets us down to 2,000 gp.

A 50 charge read magic item would be spell level x CL x 1,000 gp: 0.5 x 1 x 1,000 = 500 gp. That's before you get to the special bonuses.

Total of 2,500 gp.

That said, this approach is more or less guaranteed to get your DM suddenly springing Glyphs on you out of nowhere on the basis that "you didn't have your read magic + Guidance combo up three seconds ago, and the Glyphs are all at random." But then it's pretty difficult to find a custom always-on item of nondetection, polymorph or the like for less than 2,500 gp.

Another cheaper method, though, might just be to be a Rogue 1 and just have a Guidance of the Avatar item as suggested. Rogues can Search and Disable Device on that stuff, and a +20 on the check sure helps.

[Darrin]

Hmm. Best I can do is buy some Chaos Flasks (100 GP, Planar Handbook). Change them into a vial/jar of flux slime (ELH), and use the antimagic field to ignore the glyphs. However, this only lasts for 1 round per point of Wis, so even with an 18 Wis, that doesn't even buy you two minutes of AMF.

A continuous item of suppress glyph would probably cost around 3 x 5 x 2000 x 2 (duration) = 60,000 GP. Race restriction (changeling only) knocks it down to 52K.

Hmm. The changeling could be unwittingly speaking the password whenever he gets near one of the glyphs. Maybe it's keyed to his name and he keeps introducing himself to the people he meets?

Or maybe when the elders of the town set up the glyphs, they modified the spell a bit so that the "password" was written on certain objects, and anyone carrying these password objects could ignore the glyphs.

[Vizzerdrix]

This can be solved for 1 gp. Get a tindertwig, and burn down the city. Come on, you know you want to.

[Deophaun]

I wonder if misdirection would work. That could allow you to create a good deal of chaos by making random people ping as shapechangers if it did.

[Troacctid]

Nondetection is a 2nd level spell for Telflammar Shadowlords. That means it's 3300 gp for a Drow House Insignia that casts it once a day at CL 5. With the Mercantile Background feat, you can buy it at 75% of the normal price, which is 2475 gp for 5 hours of immunity to Glyphs per day.

[Jack_Simth]

Nondetection is a 2nd level spell for Telflammar Shadowlords. That means it's 3300 gp for a Drow House Insignia that casts it once a day at CL 5. With the Mercantile Background feat, you can buy it at 75% of the normal price, which is 2475 gp for 5 hours of immunity to Glyphs per day.
Nondetection makes a DC for a caster level check. At CL 5, that'll be DC 20. A standard Glyph of Warding is going to have a minimum likely caster level of 5, so a 15 or better beats the Nondetection - 70% chance of ignoring one... or would be, if Glyph of Warding was a divination.

... however... a standard Glyph of Warding is a "one shot" effect, and costs money to set up. I wonder how hard it would be to set them off remotely? Dab a little fresh blood on a rat and throw it through the area or something. If you set enough of them off, they won't waste their money on them anymore.

However:
The DM is throwing CR 4 traps (www.d20srd.org/srd/traps.htm#cr4GlyphofWardingBlast) at level 1 you. If you solo one, it's worth 1,350 xp - aka, enough to get you to level 2 all by itself. So if you find out where one is, and can make the Search / Disable Device DC (28 each) reliably at level 1, you'll be instantly level 2. It's not until you're 4th level that it backs off of that 1,350 xp if you're soloing them. So one gets you to 2nd level, two more gets you to 3rd, two more gets you to 4th, three more gets you to 5th...

So how do we get you a Search and Disable Device such that you can reliably do so?

Well, for Search, you can take 20 if nobody's watching you closely. So you need a +8 Modifier, and that's easy - +4 ranks, +2 Int, +2 Masterwork Tool (50 gp) will do the job.

For Disable Device, you know the trap is there. A charge from a wand of Guidance of the Avatar plus a native +7 modifier will do so on a 1. +4 ranks, +3 dex will do. A wand of a 2nd level spell costs 4500 gp... so you'll need scrolls on your budget at 150 gp each. Minus that 50 gp for the masterwork search tool, your budget supports 16 such scrolls, and it only takes 8 for that to get you to 5th level.

Then Again:
The DM is throwing CR 4 traps (www.d20srd.org/srd/traps.htm#cr4GlyphofWardingBlast) at level 1 you. This suggests he really intends for you to find a plot-based way around them. Gather Information to find out where they are, who's making them, how the locals get around them, what password is set by default, a token that bypasses them for some reason, or some such.

[Saintheart]

Well, for Search, you can take 20 if nobody's watching you closely. So you need a +8 Modifier, and that's easy - +4 ranks, +2 Int, +2 Masterwork Tool (50 gp) will do the job.

Five bucks says a DM throwing CR 4 traps at a level 1 character is going to be the sort of DM who rules that you can't take 20 on a Search check to find a trap because failing carries a penalty for failure, i.e. you wander into the Glyph while you're searching for it. Not that I'm cynical at all, of course. :smallcool:

[Troacctid]

Nondetection makes a DC for a caster level check. At CL 5, that'll be DC 20. A standard Glyph of Warding is going to have a minimum likely caster level of 5, so a 15 or better beats the Nondetection - 70% chance of ignoring one... or would be, if Glyph of Warding was a divination.
The caster level check is only for divinations. Glyph of Warding is an abjuration.

[Yogibear41]

The glyphs have been in the game long before I even knew what DnD was, game goes back to the 1st edition days, has nothing to do with me really, I just like to play shapechangers. When the area has been plagued by doppelgangers and lycanthropes for generations, the people tend to set up defenses against them were they can.

To be honest, I only assume they are glyphs of warding, they could actually be something else.

I'm not familiar with drow house insignia will have to look into them.

[sleepyphoenixx]

The caster level check is only for divinations. Glyph of Warding is an abjuration.

Yes. Which Nondetection does absolutely nothing about because it only affects divinations.
How did you reach the conclusion that it makes you immune to GoW?

[Troacctid]

Yes. Which Nondetection does absolutely nothing about because it only affects divinations.
How did you reach the conclusion that it makes you immune to GoW?
The text of the spell specifically says that nondetection fools it.

[sleepyphoenixx]

The text of the spell specifically says that nondetection fools it.

So it does. That's what i get for not rereading it i guess.

[Fizban]

That is just weird. But the phrasing in Glyph of Warding does seem to be clear in that whatever aspect it's responding to is based on magic since non-magical disguises don't work on it.

The intent behind Nondetection is pretty dang clear though. If Glyph of Warding is affected by Nondetection, it would be in the way that Nondetection works, which is by forcing a caster level check.


On the "level up a ton from all the free trap xp," note that you don't even have to disable a trap to get xp for it. DMG p39, "Overcoming the challenge of a trap involves encountering the trap, either by disarming it, avoiding it, or simply surviving the damage it deals." So even walking past or through them towards whatever you're trying to do would result in a ton of xp, if awarded as written.

To the broader point: I don't think one can claim that said changeling has been living in this town. Presumably that's the point of the exercise, figuring out how to justify one doing it, but there's no good reason. No parent would try to raise their child in this area, no sane adult would willingly move in. The only type of person that should be attempting this is one with significantly more levels and resources, not a 1st level character who just so happens to have pulled it off somehow. The only "feasible" solution I would accept would be some form of Detect Magic at-will (or just a sufficient number of times) to avoid them and the explicit plan of getting the heck out as soon as you've found some food and water.

It's a simple fact that without some sort of resource constraints, no settlement should ever have reason to fear any sort of monster. Glyph of Warding spam is just one of the ways. Each one of these non-mobile area glyphs cost 200gp to set, which is a non-trivial amount of money for even mid-level adventurers, and wards a very small area. Detecting and avoiding them should be entirely feasible, as long as someone isn't watching for people who are avoiding the warded areas.

[Jack_Simth]

The glyphs have been in the game long before I even knew what DnD was, game goes back to the 1st edition days, has nothing to do with me really, I just like to play shapechangers. When the area has been plagued by doppelgangers and lycanthropes for generations, the people tend to set up defenses against them were they can.
If you regularly play shapechangers, the DM knows this, and sets up an area that's been plauged by shapechangers... yeah, it's about you.

To be honest, I only assume they are glyphs of warding, they could actually be something else.

Then advice that's specific to a Glyph of Warding isn't going to help much. So the answer is "Get more information" - the Gather Information skill, perhaps. Find out where these defenses are, how they work, and so on. Maybe get an item of Detect Magic or something for use in locating these traps.

[Yogibear41]

If you regularly play shapechangers, the DM knows this, and sets up an area that's been plauged by shapechangers... yeah, it's about you.


It's really not, the DM specifically told me before I ever even played a shapechanger for the first time, that they existed in the area we were in.

I say "regularly" but really its only been like 3-4 times out of 10+ characters(or more) over the years. I had a pretty big Lycanthrope phase when I first started DnD.

I have successfully used Non-Detection in the past to avoid "the wards" but that was only on one character.

[Saintheart]

...you knew there were Glyphs of Warding and/or magical defences keyed to the shapechanger subtype riddled through this area and rolled up a Changeling anyway? o_O

[RoboEmperor]

...you knew there were Glyphs of Warding and/or magical defences keyed to the shapechanger subtype riddled through this area and rolled up a Changeling anyway? o_O

Have you ever played a changeling? It's da bomb.

[Yogibear41]

Not actually playing a changeling, just something with [shapechanger] tied on to it, saying changeling just makes things easier, but yeah. Joining another campaign group my DM runs on another night soon, and was working on a few character ideas that I have had in the back of my head for some time.


Leaning toward either Savage Bard, or Battle Sorcerer for my starting level which will open up Eternal wands for my use. Rest of the party is level 3, but my idea has a LA, so I would be 1st, but would get to start with 3rd level WBL, hence the gold I can spend.


Was thinking of using Misdirection on my familiar, but I don't think that will work, as Misdirection doesn't seem to change the creature type detected.

[Deophaun]

Was thinking of using Misdirection on my familiar, but I don't think that will work, as Misdirection doesn't seem to change the creature type detected.
What misdirection does is change your aura, and we know that at least in some cases your aura is affected by your type:

You can detect the aura that surrounds undead creatures.
The question is, does the shapechanger subtype have an aura associated with it? It would make sense if all types and subtypes did, as that would explain how magic traps or devices can key off them. But there's nothing in RAW to say one way or another, so DM's call.