figurative scenario question

[leegi0n]

Hello Playgrounders -

Let's say that there is a party of 5 (ECL 14) on a bridge over a bay and advancing on them are 5 fire giants, plus an army, plus their commander. If I were to cast a wall of force 2-3 feet above the ground in a diagonal line to cut them off, would our other spellcasters still be able to cast under the gap? Could our halfling/gnome fighters squat and run under the gap?

I'm trying to block incoming spells and other aerials like boulders/arrows and stop these fire giants without stopping all of our other offensive options.

Could we summon creatures to the other side of the wall? Would grease work? Web? Slow?

Thanks for your help. I can provide an image if you'd like.

[Telonius]

I don't think you can create a diagonal wall, as-written:

The caster can form the wall into a flat, vertical plane whose area is up to one 10-foot square per level. The wall must be continuous and unbroken when formed. If its surface is broken by any object or creature, the spell fails.

If the DM's ruling that you can, great.

One unfortunate thing is that the Wall does block line of effect for most spells (exceptions Teleport, Dimension Door, and Gaze attacks are listed in the spell description). So if the wall is directly between you and your enemy, you're out of luck.

As to whether your guys can get underneath it, that's going to be DM call again. The description doesn't specify that it has to be anchored to something physical, but it does mention ethereal creatures needing to go under a floor to get past it. So that's a bit of a grey area. If the DM rules that you can create it in midair, great; your guys should be able to scoot underneath it if they're small enough. If not, they can use the "squeezing past (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/movementPositionAndDistance.htm#terrainandObstacle s)" rules.

If there is a gap below, you could crouch (or even go prone) to get an unbroken line of effect to a square on the other side of the wall.

[Halrax]

Checking the SRD's rules for line of effect, it looks like a hole of at least one square foot doesn't block line of effect, so a gap is enough to cast spells through (either way). 2-3 ft gap means 2-4 ft of cover, which is enough for cover's rules to come into effect and for people to squeeze through. Looking at the rules for Squeezing and Escape Artist, a small character can just go through, a medium character would count as squeezing (2 squares, -4 attack, -4 AC), and a large character would have to use the Escape Artist skill (DC 30, can't attack, -4 to AC, loses Dexterity and dodge bonuses to AC, says takes 1 minute or more but can probably just change that to 1 full round since it has no depth). It would be reasonable for a DM to force a ranged attack roll to aim a spell at the square of origin (base AC 5, +4 for cover, total AC 9) at lower levels but by ECL 14 that just wastes game time. It is important to remember for ranged touch attacks and for Reflex saves that have an origin on the other side of the wall. Remember walls of force only get one 10 ft square per caster level, and an army can just shoot around it or over it (and for arrows it's still just +4 AC, assuming the archers don't have the army blocking them). I personally don't like to hold up RAW or even RAI on a pedestal since a responsibility of a GM is to make rulings on their own, but that's what I could tell the rules are in this circumstance. Hope this helps.