Question about 3rd party spell

[RexDart]

My DM has included a number of spells from the "Legends and Lore: Spells and Spellcraft" book on the list of spells available to players.

"Syron's Dancing Shield" appears to be a particularly good spell - 3rd level Sorcerer/Wizard or Bard. I suspect it's copyrighted, so I won't quote the whole thing, but the primary effect is +10 deflection bonus to the caster's Armor Class, vs. 1 attack per round per 3 caster levels (so, 3 attacks at 9th level.)

There's also this bit, which I will quote: "The disk cannot deflect two or more simultaneous attacks. For example, if two or more opponents choose the delay or ready action and attack the caster at the same time, the disk can only deflect one of the attacks."

A couple questions come to my mind:

1. This seems like a really good spell, perhaps an overpowered one? It does require a 100-gp-value material component, so you might be deterred from casting it in literally every fight. I suppose.
2. The "simultaneous attacks" bit is interesting, and again maybe a limiting factor, but requires the opposition to both know what you cast and be able to direct two opponents to take advantage of that knowledge by setting up such an attack.
3. I've never seen a reference to "simultaneous" action like this in any other context. Is there any general rule that covers this? And if so, is there any generalized tactical advantage to doing it?

It's a pre-3.5 book, which I suspect may have some bearing on things.

[Kayblis]

This is a 3rd party source, so it's not published or reviewed by WotC. This means you'll find a few weird rules, as it's made by people outside the official dev groups for D&D. This is one such case, yet it's pretty well-explained.

So it's a 3rd level spell with a material component, that gives a huge AC buff with conditions. It's very strong, but not gamebreaking at all. You get exactly what it says on the tin. The only unique bit is the Simultaneous action, but it actually goes in detail to explain what it means. It's not a D&D term, the 3.5 system operates in a stack model where everything happens either "right before" or "right after" something else. This piece of ruling for simultaneous actions looks like it means "on the same initiative, with both sides attempting to act together". It's a decent ruling, and almost supported by default in 3.5 thanks to Ready actions. If you ready an attack on an enemy with the condition of "when my friend charges from the other side", you can get flank bonuses on both your attack and your friend's, and that's close enough to simultaneous.

In short, the spell explains what it needs done, and it works. Enemies can attempt to figure it out, and if it's a common spell it'll probably be common knowledge to try to overwhelm someone using it. Adds options in combat and a bit of tactics.

[JNAProductions]

This is a 3rd party source, so it's not published or reviewed by WotC. This means you'll find a few weird rules, as it's made by people outside the official dev groups for D&D. This is one such case, yet it's pretty well-explained.

So it's a 3rd level spell with a material component, that gives a huge AC buff with conditions. It's very strong, but not gamebreaking at all. You get exactly what it says on the tin. The only unique bit is the Simultaneous action, but it actually goes in detail to explain what it means. It's not a D&D term, the 3.5 system operates in a stack model where everything happens either "right before" or "right after" something else. This piece of ruling for simultaneous actions looks like it means "on the same initiative, with both sides attempting to act together". It's a decent ruling, and almost supported by default in 3.5 thanks to Ready actions. If you ready an attack on an enemy with the condition of "when my friend charges from the other side", you can get flank bonuses on both your attack and your friend's, and that's close enough to simultaneous.

In short, the spell explains what it needs done, and it works. Enemies can attempt to figure it out, and if it's a common spell it'll probably be common knowledge to try to overwhelm someone using it. Adds options in combat and a bit of tactics.

I mean... You say "Not published or reviewed by WotC" as if being such is a big deal.

There's a LOT of jank in official materials!

But yeah, it seems to explain itself reasonably well. Are there any situations you can think of where the rules wouldn't be clear?

[Khedrac]

2. The "simultaneous attacks" bit is interesting, and again maybe a limiting factor, but requires the opposition to both know what you cast and be able to direct two opponents to take advantage of that knowledge by setting up such an attack.
3. I've never seen a reference to "simultaneous" action like this in any other context. Is there any general rule that covers this? And if so, is there any generalized tactical advantage to doing it?
The short answer is "no", but then this is 3.5 where the assumption that the character is constantly spinning to check all directions (not sure, L&L: S&S may be a 3.0 era book when there was facing etc.).

I think the logic goes like this - the DM describves the shield as swinging round to (try to) block the incoming attack so the players go "what happens if two of us attack simultaneously?" with the answer "the shield blocks just one of you " and a roll of dice to determine which.
This is very much a style of play thing, many people play 3.5 so that if the rules don't support is in an obvious manner it cannot be done (indeed this is what the books promote - it is also the biggest problem I have with 3.5) and as such are unlikely to try this.

As for the spell, it looks liek it is supposed to be an upgraded version of shield with limitations. Making it a deflection bonus means it stacks with shield (which I think a mistake) but also means it works for touch attacks (reasonable when you consider what it does). If you remove the stacking then I think 3rd level reasonable, adding in the components really makes it a BBG spell (how often to players cast stoneskin? My characters never do as you never know if it is worth the component, and this is another reason to love heart of earth) at this point he level is probably about right (if the spell is a max of 1 min/level).

[RexDart]

Thanks for the insights! I was mostly curious about the "simultaneous attack" language and whether it was some tactical concept of general application that I had somehow missed.

[Saintheart]

The only footnote I'd add here is that there is one possible variant of 'simultaneous attacks' might come from a spell effect, e.g. the Splitting bow enhancement which basically creates two arrows out of one and both hit at the same time. It would seem reasonable to rule that as a simultaneous attack and that the disk only defends against one of those projectiles.

Also, people seem to be interchangeably using the word 'simultaneous attack' and 'simultaneous action' as though any of these were game terms or types of action that the spell is inventing. I don't think the spell description is doing that. All it says is:

The disk cannot deflect two or more simultaneous attacks. For example, if two or more opponents choose the delay or ready action and attack the caster at the same time, the disk can only deflect one of the attacks.

It's not creating a new type of simultaneous attack action, it is just saying that if your opponents set things up so they attack you at the same time, the disk only deflects one of them. And it's worded as an example, not a complete statement of the situations in which a simultaneous attack might come. As it is, in un-expanded D&D there isn't much point to delaying or readying for a simultaneous attack mainly because you get the flanking +2 more or less from just existing in a certain square.

[Fizban]

"Syron's Dancing Shield" appears to be a particularly good spell - 3rd level Sorcerer/Wizard or Bard. I suspect it's copyrighted, so I won't quote the whole thing,
It's under the OGL, as are most non WotC 3.x books, which means you could actually post all the OGC content online if you wanted, much like how all the Pathfinder content can be found in one SRD. Particularly with many of the companies having gone out of business and their works being completely unavailable nowadays, and other content simply being absent online, such a project would be natural.

But there don't seem to have been any attempts at making a similar 3rd party OGC SRD, I guess because by the time the internet was really up and running no one cared and/or the entire community was polarized into viewing 3rd party content as inferior? (I suspect it's that one, who wants to spend weeks transcribing stuff just to have people tell them it's trash?). Or there's enough confusion about which words precisely don't count as open gaming content (what parts of the spell description are "derived from the SRD" and which are "description"?) that it was too intimidating for people to attempt.

Not an on-forum project anyway.

1. This seems like a really good spell, perhaps an overpowered one? It does require a 100-gp-value material component, so you might be deterred from casting it in literally every fight. I suppose.
Yup, entirely dependent on how much of a deterrent the 100gp component is vs the limited number of attacks and whether the +10 is sufficient to matter. At the level it's first gained, 100gp is too expensive to cast with any regularity, but the +10 is significant. At higher levels it lasts for more attacks, but a straight arcanist's AC is likely low enough that the effect won't be as good at stopping attacks, but it's still cheaper and lower level than Stoneskin. Stopping ranged touch attacks via the deflection bonus is also good, but 3.5 splats add a 4th level spell that stops all of them without fail at no cost (Ray Deflection).

Myself, I probably wouldn't use it, one because I have a thing against arbitrary floating magical shields, and two for being too fiddly and swingy. If a player asked for it maybe, but I'd more likely rebuild the spell from the ground up, depending on whether the primary focus is "floating magical shield" or "try to stop one attack per round" or "limited use deflection bonus."

2. The "simultaneous attacks" bit is interesting, and again maybe a limiting factor, but requires the opposition to both know what you cast and be able to direct two opponents to take advantage of that knowledge by setting up such an attack.
The standard presumption of such things must always be that the "visual" description is sufficient to suggest such tactics, and if you can see that you didn't describe it sufficiently for the players to realize they can do what they want to do, you tell them outright. They see the disk block an attack, then not respond to any more attacks until after the caster's turn, they know it only blocks one attack per round and can modify their plans accordingly.


However, in this particular case the simultaneous action mention is entirely moot. The spell blocks one attack per round, and readying actions so that two attacks hit at the same time doesn't stop it from blocking one of them, so why even bother? You'd be better off readying (or delaying) to sequence your attacks so that the weaker attack wastes the block and the stronger goes through.

3. I've never seen a reference to "simultaneous" action like this in any other context. Is there any general rule that covers this? And if so, is there any generalized tactical advantage to doing it?
It crops up here and there as part of specific things (probably mostly in examples of readied actions), but there is no special mechanical benefit to readying simultaneous attacks other than the obvious practical applications- giving the target no time to respond between attacks, mucking with their own immediate or readied plans, messing with effects that have discharges or only happen X per turn, etc. Unless you've got an obvious reason, there's no reason to do so.

The Deadeye Shot feat in PHB2 lets you sneak attack once per round every round easily by readying your attack to coincide with that of an ally- but if your power level expects sneak attacks to be full attacking, well none of the many "get a single sneak attack" feats are going to be worth it.


This is a 3rd party source, so it's not published or reviewed by WotC. This means you'll find a few weird rules, as it's made by people outside the official dev groups for D&D. This is one such case, yet it's pretty well-explained.
If you check the credits for the 3.5 books you'll find that as time goes on, the original writers disappear and are replaced by new writers. Quite literally, a huge amount of the 3.5 content people swear by was made by people from "outside the original dev groups." And it shows. I'd also take exception with the phrasing of "reviewed," considering some of the obvious problems that went to print and how errata stopped- quite notoriously, just when Tome of Battle desperately needed someone to explain just what Iron Heart Surge is actually supposed to do.

Meanwhile, plenty of 3rd party content does have the occasional credit from those early writers (particularly licensed non-OGL content). And if we're being honest, the extremely conservative nature of a lot of 3.0 3rd party content is way closer to the original devs' work than late or even mid 3.5- ridiculed for being underpowered for non-casters, making casters trade huge amounts of casting for minor benefits, and then also having a scattering of ridiculously overpowered individual feats/spells/features/etc. Mid-late 3.5 is practically a whole new edition of its own, being written by at least two or three camps with different ideas about which direction it should be going, in my opinion.