Weird stuff in Shining South

[Zaq]

Been a while since I had a reason to flip through Shining South, but I did anyway, and man, there's some bizarre and stupid stuff in there. Let's just chat about that for a bit, shall we?

Now, yes, mandatory disclaimer: dunking on the inexplicable design choices in a Forgotten Realms book isn't exactly a bold hot take, and it's not like this is some major new discovery. I get it. Regardless, this is what my brain chose to focus on right now when I should be doing homework, and I'm sharing.

The spells are kind of insane, but in a charming way. I think streamers (with its famously really bad use of the word any) is moderately infamous in high-op circles, but there's some other really bizarre stuff that I want to just shine a brief light on.

Protection from winged flyers is basically what it says on the tin: like the protection from x alignment spells, but it works against critters that fly using wings. Weird, right? Super weird. Not bad, but weird.

Brittleskin is neat because it's one of the few ways I've seen to tack on a "+damage every time target is hit" effect in 3.x (which I love), but it's a bit undertuned in that it's single target, Fort negates, and directly linked to target's natural armor.

Circlet of enervation is a repeated ranged touch attack for 2d6 damage and a negative level. It's not clear what action this takes. Like, at all. Maybe a move action for directing a spell? A standard action because it implies that you can only do it once per round?

Coral growth makes a relatively large quantity of Permanent (not Instantaneous) living coral as a standard action with no permanent costs (i.e., no expensive components, including XP). Not bad for a 3rd level slot (for a druid; 4th for a wizard).

Sticks and stones is just bizarre and you should read it. It's weird.

Sparkles is basically glitterdust only it's bigger, lasts longer, is two spell levels higher, and doesn't blind (it just imposes the -40 Hide). Again, mostly noteworthy for being bizarre.

Stone trap seems to exist for the sole purpose of straight up trolling. Make a block of stone (200 lb/level, no cap) "turn invisible and hover at a designated point in the air" until the trigger conditions you set up fire off, at which point is falls down and goes boom. It can explicitly be used to hold up other material. I want to make an entire dungeon out of it, except that doing so would be a terrible idea for so many reasons it's not even funny. I mean, you could make the world's dumbest version of Tetris!

There's some unusual magic items in there as well, like the pick of piercing that just straight up destroys force effects all day every day for under 14k gp, the supremely weird door of mirrors that doesn't seem to actually have any useful effect beyond simply being really disturbing (why electricity damage, though?), and the superfluous vapor bottle whose design space has 100% overlap with the eversmoking bottle (same price, same effect, just makes "vapor instead of smoke" and requires fog cloud instead of pyrotechnics for some reason).

The PrCs are typical insane Forgotten Realms fare and can mostly be safely ignored, though I'd love to whack the Maquar crusader with the homebrew hammer until it stopped being so derpy, since there's a tiny kernel of interesting material in the center of a whole lot of bad. To wit, all the PrCs have stupid prereqs, unnecessarily narrow abilities, and a complete lack of balance sense, making them unappealing. Nothing new under the sun (not that Shining South is in any way new, of course, but meh, a rediscovery is still a discovery). Most of us are already aware of Crinti shadow marauder as an alternate source of shadowpounce (requiring fewer feats than Teflammar shadowlord but offering fewer general-purpose benefits on the path to the good stuff), and I don't have anything new to say on that front.

The feats, like the PrCs, are almost all dumb. I suppose Eagle Tribe Vision is a bigger no-questions-asked all-day-every-day bonus than I usually see in a feat (+5 to Spot, period; I still can't think of when I'd ever spend my precious first feat on it, but it's technically noteworthy), and Hyena Tribe Hunter is the tiniest bit noteworthy for being a way to explicitly get around the prereqs on Improved Trip, but overall they're not worth the paper they're printed on. I suppose they're somewhat amusing if you find extremely stupid feats to be comedic. (Sure, let's spend a feat on a +2 competence bonus to damage against aberrations!)

Mostly it's the magic items and spells that strike me as weird enough to discuss. I mean, protection from winged flyers? I'm so torn between "why?!" and "well, why not?" on that one. Also, stone trap. Just... stone trap.

Discuss!

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Zaq
I mean, protection from winged flyers? I'm so torn between "why?!" and "well, why not?" on that one.

I’m not seeing a debate here.

I vividly recall one of our very first 3.5 sessions, in which the party rogue wandered into a side corridor and was drained by a nest of stirges before we could get to him. That nest caused us a lot of trouble, but if we’d had this spell available it sure would’ve helped.

And in general, a bonus against attacks from winged foes isn’t a bad thing to have with you. At first glance it seems situational, but I keep recalling situations where we really could’ve used it.

Now I’m wondering if this would be viable against a bat swarm, since I’m recalling an especially vicious bat swarm from Rise of the Runelords that just about tore us apart.

[Zaq]

I’m not seeing a debate here.

I vividly recall one of our very first 3.5 sessions, in which the party rogue wandered into a side corridor and was drained by a nest of stirges before we could get to him. That nest caused us a lot of trouble, but if we’d had this spell available it sure would’ve helped.

And in general, a bonus against attacks from winged foes isn’t a bad thing to have with you. At first glance it seems situational, but I keep recalling situations where we really could’ve used it.

Now I’m wondering if this would be viable against a bat swarm, since I’m recalling an especially vicious bat swarm from Rise of the Runelords that just about tore us apart.

I'm not contesting the usefulness. I just think it's weird that it exists at all.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Zaq
I'm not contesting the usefulness. I just think it's weird that it exists at all.

If it's useful, I don't see why it's weird. It fills a role, thus makes sense, both in-world and mechanically.

If anything's weird about it, it's that there aren't other variants of the spell, against swimmers, earth-gliders and the like.

[ben-zayb]

Coral Growth is definitely a hidden gem. It's situationally a better Wall of Stone.

IIRC it was even in the BG website's superthread of overlooked spells. Not sure if the playground was able to archive that discussion, though I'm inclined to think no because the thread itself is fairly obscure and barely-referenced here even back then.

[Silva Stormrage]

Coral Growth is definitely a hidden gem. It's situationally a better Wall of Stone.

IIRC it was even in the BG website's superthread of overlooked spells. Not sure if the playground was able to archive that discussion, though I'm inclined to think no because the thread itself is fairly obscure and barely-referenced here even back then.

Frankly sounds like a useful thread, we could start a list here if need be.

Still I agree with Zaq these spells are odd from a design perspective. Sticks and stones is particularly amusing, it could be a useful spell with some minor tweaking (Getting the undead to scale) but I also wonder why it has negative levels attached on...

[Venger]

excellent premise for a thread.

as far as spells go, mycontil's last resort is possibly the worst imaginable use for a 9th. deal a huge amount of untyped damage to yourself (no save) which it erroneously refers to as "max damage" despite involving no die rolls (huh?) and then deal crappy amounts of damage to people standing right next to you. if you beat their sr. and they fail the ref save for half. and it costs 5,000gp and requires soup bones from an archmage. and you can only cast it once a week. evocation really is the worst school. this spell has nothing to do with mushrooms.

daltim's fiery tentacles is evard's black tentacles but fire and a level higher. not a terrible spell but peculiar nonetheless. if i want bfc, i'll do black tentacles. if i want crappy amounts of damage in the worst type, I have many other choices. I like it as a spell to learn as a fiend-blooded, though.

kyristan's malevolent tentacles slaps though. black tentacles that deals negative levels is a good deal for a 6

the strange, hopping mouse like beguiler also lurks in shining south. good choice for an improved familiar. always-on true s eeing alone is worth it, but it can do a bunch of other cool stuff too, and is pretty cute.

[The Viscount]

I admit a fondness for Kyristan's Malevolent Tentacles for the sheer spitefulness of negative levels on top of the BFC.

Sticks and Stones is a pretty nice spell that is completely at odds with how normal necromancy works. If you can use necromancy to animate whatever, then this suggests that necromancers uses corpses for caprice basically. I mean I know flesh/cadaver golems also use corpses, but still, it's a weird spell in that way. I had always assumed that necromancy couldn't animate stuff other than dead flesh, but I guess it can. Maybe that's why the duration's short, because it can't do it indefinitely?

3.0 approach to PrCs, especially divine ones, really irritates me. The restrictiveness essentially means you have to plan from character creation if you want to enter some of these, and it's extremely difficult to do more than one PrC.
I'll admit a certain fondness for Jordain Vizier which is a class that kind of doesn't do anything. Its code of conduct is almost comically extreme for no real reason, you're certainly weaker than a paladin and it's not like you're wielding any great power.

[Zaq]

I admit a fondness for Kyristan's Malevolent Tentacles for the sheer spitefulness of negative levels on top of the BFC.

Sticks and Stones is a pretty nice spell that is completely at odds with how normal necromancy works. If you can use necromancy to animate whatever, then this suggests that necromancers uses corpses for caprice basically. I mean I know flesh/cadaver golems also use corpses, but still, it's a weird spell in that way. I had always assumed that necromancy couldn't animate stuff other than dead flesh, but I guess it can. Maybe that's why the duration's short, because it can't do it indefinitely?

3.0 approach to PrCs, especially divine ones, really irritates me. The restrictiveness essentially means you have to plan from character creation if you want to enter some of these, and it's extremely difficult to do more than one PrC.
I'll admit a certain fondness for Jordain Vizier which is a class that kind of doesn't do anything. Its code of conduct is almost comically extreme for no real reason, you're certainly weaker than a paladin and it's not like you're wielding any great power.

I feel like that's less a 3.0 thing and more a Forgotten Realms thing. My take is that the vast majority of FR PrCs aren't intended as classes but are instead not-very-well-genericized versions of specific NPCs from various devs' home games. With 1d3+1 superfluous prereqs tacked on to every single one. (Also, none of them actually do anything. That dead level at 8th on the Halruaan magehound just angers me.)

The sidebar on pg. 32 is confusing. So, like, apparently you already have to be using Complete Divine, and if you are, you can call a sacred fist a hin fist by... tacking on extraneous restrictions and not giving anything in return? Okay. Not exactly like sacred fist had any flavor that needed adaptation.

I agree that Jordain vizier is tantalizingly goofy.

[AvatarVecna]

"Brittleskin" is a weird spell that's ultimately not very useful unfortunately. It's a targeted debuff, so while it boosts your damage, you can't just make it an always-on buff by default, and the duration makes it difficult to set up in advance. It's ideal target is a creature with high natural armor - and creatures like that tend to also have pretty solid Fort saves. It also allows for SR but that's kinda expected. In lower-op play, the best targets will ignore it, and anybody that can't ignore it isn't worth casting it on. In mid-op play, you can probably cheese CL and DC high enough to get creatures failing frequently...but at that level of play, any creature with that much natural armor is either not much of a threat in the first place, or is at least a decent caster themselves and already used Scintillating Scales (a persist-able self-buff with a naturally-longer duration and a lower spell level that, incidentally, completely counters Brittleskin and is far more commonly known among optimizers).


If it's useful, I don't see why it's weird. It fills a role, thus makes sense, both in-world and mechanically.

If anything's weird about it, it's that there aren't other variants of the spell, against swimmers, earth-gliders and the like.

Careful, that's a slippery slope that ends with you crashing anal-circumference-first into "Against every Wild Animal, Aquatic Creature and Robbers" - the absolute height of personal protection, on very special occasions (https://farm4.static.flickr.com/3514/3725756246_fcf68452ab_o.jpg).

[Anthrowhale]

The Selective Spell feat seems like a decent +1 metamagic.

Halruaan Elder is super-overpowered. In addition to circle magic (at level 5), it seems to give the last ingredient needed for +0 persistent spell using Adroit Spell (-1, Halruaan Elder 1), either Improved Metamagic (-1 Incantatrix 10) or Cloak of Mysteries (-1 Dweomerkeeper 10), Easy Metamagic (-1 Dragon #325), and Free Metamagic (-3, Shapechange[Old Tome Dragon] from Dragon #343).

Allied Defense is a decent feat if you are into gritty mundane play. In essence, a party member can sacrifice their chance of hitting to amplify AC for the whole party. This plus Improved Combat Expertise is one of the few ways to get a high AC in a dead magic region.

[Venger]

I feel like that's less a 3.0 thing and more a Forgotten Realms thing. My take is that the vast majority of FR PrCs aren't intended as classes but are instead not-very-well-genericized versions of specific NPCs from various devs' home games. With 1d3+1 superfluous prereqs tacked on to every single one. (Also, none of them actually do anything. That dead level at 8th on the Halruaan magehound just angers me.)
I think of fr and 3.0 as basically synonymous. I know a couple of the odd books like the alpha version of the completes are technically setting independent

I like when the devs will nakedly admit this like back in eye of xanathar.

[The Viscount]

I feel like that's less a 3.0 thing and more a Forgotten Realms thing. My take is that the vast majority of FR PrCs aren't intended as classes but are instead not-very-well-genericized versions of specific NPCs from various devs' home games. With 1d3+1 superfluous prereqs tacked on to every single one. (Also, none of them actually do anything. That dead level at 8th on the Halruaan magehound just angers me.)

The sidebar on pg. 32 is confusing. So, like, apparently you already have to be using Complete Divine, and if you are, you can call a sacred fist a hin fist by... tacking on extraneous restrictions and not giving anything in return? Okay. Not exactly like sacred fist had any flavor that needed adaptation.

I agree that Jordain vizier is tantalizingly goofy.

You've got me there. I suppose it's because the majority of my 3.0 books are FR books I forget about stuff like BoVD.

I love how Halruaan magehound has no protection from its own antimagic field. Going by prereqs and theme, this class is a repackaged Mage-killer, except they replaced the bland but functional features with less useful ones, and took away 2 levels of casting for good measure.

Jordain Vizier's Hammer pants are the peak of fashion and I won't hear a word against them.

[Zaq]

You've got me there. I suppose it's because the majority of my 3.0 books are FR books I forget about stuff like BoVD.

I love how Halruaan magehound has no protection from its own antimagic field. Going by prereqs and theme, this class is a repackaged Mage-killer, except they replaced the bland but functional features with less useful ones, and took away 2 levels of casting for good measure.

Jordain Vizier's Hammer pants are the peak of fashion and I won't hear a word against them.

Hearing a word against them would probably violate the code of conduct anyway.

No, not saying a word against them. Hearing it. No, not hearing it and failing to respond. This is very simple.

[The Viscount]

The book's got some weird monsters, too.

The Halruuan behir is a medium version of the classic, with no swallow whole, but electricity damage on all its natural attacks. I never got why behir had 3 different abilities that work with grapple, none of which can be used together. Electricity on the 6 rakes is pretty mean, though.

The mantimera is just a manticore with the chimeric template. I haven't sat down to do the math to see what minor differences they'd have, but it's essentially the same monster.

[Fizban]

Protection from Winged Fliers is weird because usually when you invoke mystical protection it's against some other mystical force, alignment being a cosmic team designation. Having wings is not generally considered a supernatural anatomy or planar force.

Darsson's Cooling Breeze is weird in being the only continuous wind spell that could move a ship that actually has the duration to do so. Except it blows from a point rather than you, so it still can't.

Dispel Fog, for when Gust of Wind is apparently not enough to clear fog, except it requires a dispel check when Gust doesn't. It has clear ups and downs but weirdly specific.

Firey Vision. Because Clerics are known for shooting 8d6 worth of flaming death rays out of their eyes every round. Doesn't even have Darkfire's excuse of being originally written as a special Drow spell.

Want another super specific defensive spell, how about Rock Catch? You know what else Clerics are known for? Consuming rocks in flame with Stonefire! And of course, Suspension. Because you can't justify an airship without a specific spell that can float a few tons, nevermind that you need hundreds of tons to levitate a ship and its cargo.

The Forceful and Blazing Skylances are also just kinda weird, use Burning Hands or Magic Missile a couple times per day. Dweomered Doors, a whole special category of doors more expensive than the room- but wait, there's also Dread Doorways, because this category needed its own suite of Artifacts! And the Halruuan Skyship, which continues following the weird tradition of making a big point of describing all these individual intricate parts of the construction but then in the end it's actually made like every other magic item.

I actually like the Vapor Bottle, because the Smoke Bottle is full of smoke, which you'd rather not breathe. Can't say I'm a fan of the fire-spitting hooded cobra rattlesnake dragon.

Great Rift Deep Defender is basically a truncated version of Dwarven Defender: 5 levels instead of 10, but the DR is conditional and with a slight damage bonus rather than having a stationary rage to track. Not sure if it's better or worse.

[Sian]

It’s worth noting that maquar crusader is itself a rehash of devoted defender from S&F, with an additional feat tax (iirc, away from books) ... and one of the few ways to tank (although its effectiveness and practicality is questionable as you’ll have to be adjacent)

[Scots Dragon]

I think of fr and 3.0 as basically synonymous.

Interestingly enough, this isn't actually a two-way relationship. There was a lot of inexplicable weirdness that was added to the setting by the decision to switch to third edition, with some stuff that's pretty much entirely new conceptually and doesn't fit neatly with the previous editions and their take on the setting.

Most of the weirdness listed is entirely a third edition problem with the setting.

The protection from birds spell ironically isn't, and that one actually is in second edition. Along with all the other variations you'd expect for protection from specific creatures, only they're in Greyhawk, and all of them were invented by Mordenkainen. You can find them in the Greyhawk Adventures hardcover.


as far as spells go, mycontil's last resort is possibly the worst imaginable use for a 9th. deal a huge amount of untyped damage to yourself (no save) which it erroneously refers to as "max damage" despite involving no die rolls (huh?) and then deal crappy amounts of damage to people standing right next to you. if you beat their sr. and they fail the ref save for half. and it costs 5,000gp and requires soup bones from an archmage. and you can only cast it once a week. evocation really is the worst school. this spell has nothing to do with mushrooms.

That's because Mycontil himself was just a weirdly named person. He was a high-level invoker evoker* who the ruler of Halruaa and a powerful, beloved figure who saved the country from invasion several times. The spell itself was the last one he cast, and it was actually first introduced in, oddly enough, a book called The Shining South.

https://cf.geekdo-images.com/imagepagezoom/img/tyx6odmiHSQNu9iVl9ODr-Ifrjs=/fit-in/1200x900/filters:no_upscale()/pic517832.jpg


Mycontil's Last Resort (Alteration/Evocation)

Range: 10 yards per level
Components: V,S,M
Duration: Instantaneous
Casting Time: 1 (see below)
Area of Effect: 30' radius
Saving Throw: 1/2

This is the spell that most mages claim Mycontil used in his climactic battle against the Dambraii. The spell was claimed by Ramael, and is one of the chief arguments his foes used to discredit him.

When cast, this spell converts all remaining spells in the caster's memory to magical energy, in much the same way that a staff of power's final strike does. All creatures in a 30' radius take 1d4 points of damage per spell level memorized; creatures farther away than 10' may save versus death magic for half damage.

This spell works even against magic resistant creatures. A creature who is 65% magic resistant can resist only 65% of the damage, he takes the rest normally. If he is farther than 10' away, he still gets a saving throw to evade half of the damage that would affect him.

The effects on the mage can be devastating. When the spell is cast, the caster must immediately make a system shock roll. If he fails, he dies immediately, consumed in the casting. If he succeeds, he permanently loses one point of constitution, and is in a coma for 1-4 weeks. A heal spell will shorten the length of coma to 1-4 days from the time the heal spell was cast.

The material component is the finger bone of an archmage, which must be prepared in a ritual which takes from 1-4 days. The material for the ritual is costly as well, involving diamond dust worth at least 5000 gold pieces, and a pure platinum ring on the finger. When the ritual is complete, the caster intones all but the final word of the spell, which he mentally commands at the time of the casting. After all is prepared, the caster can activate the spell merely by speaking the final word and breaking the finger bone. After the initial casting the caster does not have to keep this spell in memory. Once the ritual is completed, the caster may memorize another ninth-level spell to replace the last resort.

For obvious reasons, this spell is not used frequently. In the history of Halruaa, only Mycontil is thought to have cast this spell.

It's somewhat more impressive in 2nd edition as the ultimate Last Resort spell, hence the name, 'cause assuming a 29th-level invoker (equal to the current Nentyarch, Zalathorm Kirkson), and his having a full repertoire of spells when casting (8/8/8/8/7/7/7/7/7), he would have been inflicting a potential 325d4 damage to whatever it hit.

That's enough to kill pretty much anything in one shot. Most actual gods would be taken out by that.

[The Viscount]

All this talk of protection from winged fliers reminds me of Pazuzu's aura of servile avians which makes all evil creatures with a natural fly speed make a save before they attack him. I love this ability both because of its excellent name and the fact that it is extremely unlikely to come up in a fight with the party.

[Zombulian]

Now, I can’t really see how this is at all useful, but Sticks and Stones is notable for being a spell that creates an undead while lacking the [Evil] tag.

[AvatarVecna]

Now, I can’t really see how this is at all useful, but Sticks and Stones is notable for being a spell that creates an undead while lacking the [Evil] tag.

That's not giving it nearly enough credit. I stumbled across this spell while building a necromancer for one of the villain contests, and it's nuts. Let's ignore cheese for a moment and just focus on intended use: this summons a skeletal minion that can bestow one negative level per round for the full round/lvl duration. For comparison, Enervation is one spell level higher, and gives 1d4 negative levels in a single shot (which is probably about as many as the skeleton could be expected to hand out for its duration), and the negative levels don't just go away when the spell's duration expires. It was mainly relevant to my build in that competition because I wanted Necromancy spells that created undead minions (for Corpsecrafter benefits), and most spells that summoned undead for a short duration were Conjuration spells for whatever reason.

...of course, then we get to the cheese (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/specialAbilities.htm#energyDrainAndNegativeLevels) :


A character with negative levels at least equal to her current level, or drained below 1st level, is instantly slain. Depending on the creature that killed her, she may rise the next night as a monster of that kind. If not, she rises as a wight.

...yup. Cast this spell while you're somewhere full of 1 HD creatures that are sleeping or otherwise incapable of preventing a skeleton from bad-touching them to death, and you've got yourself one wight per CL wandering around permanently where there were none before. Of course, this can be combined well with Command Undead and similar abilities.

EDIT: And needless to say, while the creation of the first such wight will take at most 24 hours, that wight's own bad-touches will turn commoners to additional wights in 1d4 rounds.

[Zombulian]

That's not giving it nearly enough credit. I stumbled across this spell while building a necromancer for one of the villain contests, and it's nuts. Let's ignore cheese for a moment and just focus on intended use: this summons a skeletal minion that can bestow one negative level per round for the full round/lvl duration. For comparison, Enervation is one spell level higher, and gives 1d4 negative levels in a single shot (which is probably about as many as the skeleton could be expected to hand out for its duration), and the negative levels don't just go away when the spell's duration expires. It was mainly relevant to my build in that competition because I wanted Necromancy spells that created undead minions (for Corpsecrafter benefits), and most spells that summoned undead for a short duration were Conjuration spells for whatever reason.

...of course, then we get to the cheese (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/specialAbilities.htm#energyDrainAndNegativeLevels) :



...yup. Cast this spell while you're somewhere full of 1 HD creatures that are sleeping or otherwise incapable of preventing a skeleton from bad-touching them to death, and you've got yourself one wight per CL wandering around permanently where there were none before. Of course, this can be combined well with Command Undead and similar abilities.

EDIT: And needless to say, while the creation of the first such wight will take at most 24 hours, that wight's own bad-touches will turn commoners to additional wights in 1d4 rounds.

Oh yeah the ability to dish out negative levels and start the Wightocalypse is definitely awesome. I was more referring to the fact that I couldn’t see how being able to cast the spell as a Good/Exalted character would be useful, but it is possible.

[AvatarVecna]

Oh yeah the ability to dish out negative levels and start the Wightocalypse is definitely awesome. I was more referring to the fact that I couldn’t see how being able to cast the spell as a Good/Exalted character would be useful, but it is possible.

Ahhhh yeah that makes more sense. And...yeah it's hard to figure out how to take advantage of that.

[Zaq]

Am I the only one transfixed by the sheer trollitude of stone trap? I can't decide if it's better if you use it as a trap or just as a construction material.


Careful, that's a slippery slope that ends with you crashing anal-circumference-first into "Against every Wild Animal, Aquatic Creature and Robbers" - the absolute height of personal protection, on very special occasions (https://farm4.static.flickr.com/3514/3725756246_fcf68452ab_o.jpg).

Now there's a reference I wasn't expecting. You are a bad person for going there and I'm a bad person for laughing at it!

[Fizban]

Am I the only one transfixed by the sheer trollitude of stone trap? I can't decide if it's better if you use it as a trap or just as a construction material.
It makes more sense than actual falling block traps, which are far more trollsome and ridiculous and yet are used with abandon. I suppose if you set nigh impossible trigger conditions and cast it a very large number of times it could hold some stuff up. Which is more notable for crushing the Suspend spell really.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

A couple of load-bearing columns/walls held up by stone traps with you're own death as a trigger, and you've got a decent justification for the Load Bearing Boss trope (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LoadBearingBoss). As for motive? Pure spite.

[Malphegor]

Stone trap, my immediate reaction now to reading it on a friend’s copy today: wait, they codified and made a RAW version of ‘rocks fall, everybody dies’ for player use?

Also on skyships, I didn’t know there was a non-eberron flying ship outside of maybe the A&EG. Cool.

[The Viscount]

Am I the only one transfixed by the sheer trollitude of stone trap? I can't decide if it's better if you use it as a trap or just as a construction material.

It's this line that really gets me

The conditions for triggering a stone trap can be as simple or as elaborate as you desire. Special conditions can be based on a creature's name, identity, or alignment, but otherwise must be based on observable actions or qualities.

I'm picturing a DM using this spell dozens of times for Raymond Smullyan-style logic puzzles where there's multiple stones with separate triggering conditions and you have to find your way past.

The really wild part about stone trap is that it's a high level spell capable of dealing 20d6 (or more, depending on the really confusingly worded part about stuff stacked on top) damage, but you have to supply your own rock. Also you can only use rock, you can't drop a large quantity of metal for whatever reason.

[Thurbane]

Ah, FR splatbooks: where full casters get extra bells and whistles virtually for free; and mundanes have to invest 3-5 horrible feats and 12 cross-class skill ranks to get even a minor boost. :smallamused:

[Malphegor]

Oh, that suspension spell is better than I thought. 1d4+1day per level levitate, targets non-living objects.

Hey, do you know what's non-living? Most of my clothes, my belt for sure. Little bit awkward compared to true flight (I'll have to push off of walls and whatnot for horizontal planes), but hey, 45ft/round vertical version of levitation that lasts days.

It's designed for big stuff, but meh, for a level 4 spell a many days duration thing on non-living objects is rad, cast it one day then the next few days you're fine.

[Fizban]

Not convinced that works- Levitate doesn't actually say it can lift anything other than the target. Creatures have an expected convention that anything they're carrying within their capacity also goes with them, but objects can't carry anything. No mentions in the FAQ. Presuming it does work, it goes quite nicely with Deeper Darkness and Celestial Brilliance for "4th level week long spells that have no business giving you an effectively permanent ability by casting it on a stick in your bag."

[The Viscount]

Hey, do you know what's non-living? Most of my clothes, my belt for sure.

Most of your clothes? What clothes of yours are living?

[Efrate]

Ever look closely at an adventurers boots? Specifically the bottom? The amount of stuff you wade through in a standard dungeon alone on the soles is sure to create a primordial soup at the least.

[Malphegor]

Most of your clothes? What clothes of yours are living?

Symbiotes, intelligent item robes, potentially demons and fiends and such posessing them, I could be wearing the undead Raiment from Libris Mortis which is clothes but undead. I haven’t got any of these but in theory an adventurer could have a lot of living clothing on their person