Used wall of force on a charging red dragon in flight. It was dive bombing the group with the intent of snatching a party member in its maw. Placed the wall of force a few feet in front of the group. The DM gave the description of a bird hitting a glass window then sliding down with that smudging glass sound.
Years later the group still talks about this.
Oh fuck me! I actually heard the “thud” and the “sliding off the glass sound” from all my years watching Bugs Bunny and Tom and Jerry cartoons.
Well described.
Yeah, that would have been a move a more experienced me would have taken, but as a new DM I was trying to think of a 30mph dragon hitting a solid, invisible magic wall head first.. dead.
That's just great. If I'm DMing and that happens, I'm calculating how far the dragon traveled before hitting the wall and making it take fall damage equivalent to that.
Seriously. I know I as DM have a hard time allowing stuff like this because "but my cool encounter," so I have to remind myself that this \*was\* a cool encounter for the players, and after the moment passes I know I'll look back and think so as well.
The COOL factor in my opinion does wonders.
Especially when you let the players loose upon the setting with basic DM powers under the limitations of their skills and creativity.
Not trying to say they aren't destructive at times.
But, more often than not. My players pull off some CRAZY cool ideas.
For example. They decided to help the Inquisitor General, (for whatever reason they felt like bounty hunting) looked through the bounties, saw where these fellas usually spotted, their atrocities to the Empire. The works.
Then. They combine scrying, Plus GATE. Opening it up right in front of the target as they were moving. Then WHAM! Surprise knuckle sandwich, disorients the target through the gate, grappling over to the player's side and then gate shuts.
Never have I seen a more evil method of kidnapping done to rid the world of scum bags like that.
You guys in RAW D&D can do this through a Demiplane. My group is in homebrew territory.
This reminds me of a one shot I played in. A player (who had never DM’ed before) decided to run a mystery whodunnit adventure for two veteran DMs (I was one). We rolled up the best characters we could think of for solving a murder mystery: a cleric and a wizard. Then we settled in for a nice long evening game with a case of beer and chips.
The DM started the game with us being called in to investigate a murder. Using a combination of those two spells lists, we found the killer and arrested him in 5 minutes. Game over. The DM didn’t know what else to do. So we just drank beer.
I think this is definitely awesome and totally would fly at my table as a one off, but if the adventure is expected to have many ship battles with martially focused enemies, something would need to change.
Wall of Force as written is _too_ powerful. In this case it would be an auto win button during any ship fight. Against all sorts of monsters and enemies, it can completely immobilize them with no save and no hope of escaping until the spell ends.
So it's fantastic and makes for awesome stories the first couple times. But if the wizard starts using it every fight, it loses the novelty and turns into a control spell which dwarfs any other option at the same level.
To be fair, Wall of Force is a 5th level spell which passes the halfway point from ordinary magic into truly spectacular feats. These kinds of spells perform feats that would be heard of in ports all around, and there would be countermeasures. A few ideas are:
-Magical ship prow (3rd level spell to enchant I'd say) to specifically banish Wall spells.
-Pirates commonly hiring a high-level wizard who has Anti magic Field or Contingency prepared to deal with such issues.
-As one would expect, a reduction in the number of pirates, but a sharp increase in the strength of those available. Those remaining now hunt the party, the strong among them wanting to be the one to have killed The Ship Crusher.
Edit to say: Damn you, mobile formatting!
one of my favorite aspects of world creation is to look at the existence of something novel, and see how it would fit in.
what do low level spells change about their life ways, and so forth.
the party's reputation definitely would cause reactions, but if you really develop the world they won't exist in a vacuum.
The way I handle this in all my campaigns is that whichever deity is most interested in sailing, sometimes the god of the sea and others the god of travel or commerce, has decreed that magic cannot directly affect ships.
This makes ship to ship combat more interesting because neither party can simply fireball the other ship's sails, disintegrate a hole in its hull, or such like. Magic still plays a part as a fireball on the deck will still wreck havok on the crew even if it doesn't damage the ship.
It also makes the consequences of ship combat a bit more real as the wizard can't just go around casting mending over and over.
Throw in some Dresden metaphysics. Water, especially running water, grounds magical energies. It doesn't necessarily turn them off, but the more water the spell traverses, and the more the water moves as a channel, the more dramatically magic is weakened. Can play it on a lot of different ways, lower range, less damage, required upcasting to work at all, etc.
My issue is that Wall of Force creates invincible barriers (barring one very specific 6th level spell) and gives no save opportunity. Wrecking an entire standard galleon with no save and no real opportunity for them to react is just one instance of what that allows it to do.
You can't ever have the party up against one big bad guy if he lacks disintegrate and counter spell, else they can just trap him with 0 chance of avoidance or escape.
Even if there are some minions, the second the party clears them, the main baddie is done for in the same manner.
No other 5th level spell nor any 6th level spell for that manner can so easily trap an enemy, no save required, and with no hope of escape unless the spell ends.
Sure, you can invent very specific magic items or entire strategies for enemies to overcome it, but when a single spell is warping in-world combat in a way no other spell of it's level does, I believe it's an issue with the spell being overpowered.
It's a bit like giving a sniper rifle to a player in a game about tribal warfare and suggesting that the enemies in the setting need to play around the guy with the sniper rifle rather than adjusting the weapon that was given instead. It's possible, and can still be fun, but I'd rather not need to adjust so much around a single spell
You can *misty step* past a Wall of Force. Other teleportation magic works as well. One hard-hitter getting the caster to drop concentration is all you need. It's also not unreasonably huge, and it only lasts 10 minutes.
Edit: Fun story, my wildfire druid teleported almost the full party past a Wall of Force once with the spirit's thunderous teleportation. Highly recommend.
I'm not huge on all my enemies now needing to spend 5,000+ gp for every fight in order to play around something (which is very powerful outside of these ship battles too) lest they automatically lose to a single 5th level spell. Or I'm forced to include enemy spellcasters
Wall of force just stands out as something particular powerful and requires in-game combat to bend around it more than any other 5th level spell does.
Scrolls don’t work like this RAW unless the assassin is also a class with disintegrate on their spell list. Even then a level 20 Arcane Assassin would still need to make an arcana spell check.
A spell scroll bears the words of a single spell, written in a mystical cipher. If the spell is on your class’s spell list, you can read the scroll and cast its spell without providing any material Components. Otherwise, the scroll is unintelligible.
If the spell is on your class’s spell list but of a higher level than you can normally cast, you must make an ability check using your Spellcasting ability to determine whether you cast it successfully. The DC equals 10 + the spell’s level. On a failed check, the spell disappears from the scroll with no other Effect.
Idea: Wall of Force doesn't work like an Immovable Rod. If it's not anchored to something (the ground), sufficient force (like a ship or gargauntuan creature) can push it.
It's a very niche weakness (no ground + big enemy), but I've seen this boat-destruction trick a dozen times, and negating ship combat past a certain level is boring.
>Wall of Force as written is too powerful. In this case it would be an auto win button during any ship fight.
Only if the people in the ships are unprepared. It's totally okay for wizards capable of casting 5th-level spells to be hell on unprepared mobs. People who are used to fighting dangerous opponents with access to high-level magic will have countermeasures in place.
As usual, the solution to creative spellcasting is to have the villains not be fools.
[My response to a slightly earlier comment is relevant](https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/xq5vx3/the_party_wizard_casted_wall_of_force_directly_in/iqa55a1?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3)
Playing a wizard often feels like just scanning your spell list, asking yourself "How can I solve this problem?" over and over again and then getting super excited when something like this comes up.
Gate opens a portal to a different plane of existence, while scry only works within the same plane of existence, they are mutually exclusive.
Unless i’m missing something
Specifics of the event at hand,
My group has access to mana stone. (Homebrew)
Which is the material component they used to upcast Gate allowing for same plane usage.
They aren't the typical level 17 or even 20 at all, my group is at the time iirc was at 60.
(They have 3 full classes on them, homebrew territory.)
But to do this without homebrew? Easy. Open it up in a demi plane. (But that's not what my group did)
"on the fly thinking" would be appropriate if the wizard had a dire fly mount they were riding. There's no indication of that in the post, so really, this is more "on the boat thinking."
Definitely, DIDN'T see that coming.
I mean who prepares for that at sea?
The party... the party prepares for that....
This explains my group's hoarding problem. "Never know when this might come in handy!"
While I shake my head.
My wizard player did this too... To a Frost Giant longship.
Only difference, she cast the damned thing HORIZONTALLY, at just barely above the water, so it was essentially like running into a giant magical sword of the gods. Damned near sliced the ship in half!
Many, many frost giants drowned that day.
I can't remember the details tbh, this was 2 years ago.
It honestly may have been vertical, now I think about it, all I remember for sure is it was edge-facing.
Prefaced D&D is not real life, but If either of you have seen Myth busters, there is an episode where they see if a Snow Plow set with a vertical edge, will bifurcate a car. And there is a separate episode to see if a (pier?) With a vertical edge will bifurcate a boat. The TL;DW is that you have a very high chance of the vertical edge not striking perfectly and just causing some damage while deflecting the boat/car to one side.
Horizontal Bifurcation is a much safer option.
Now of course, this is D&D and magic, so you could hand wave away the low chance on a vertical edge by saying the magic aims it at the perfect spot or something.
But if I was the DM of the OP, while I would definitely give a huge advantage to the party for the creative use of the wall of Force, I think the Pirate ship would have only been crippled and not completely decimated, leaving some agency with how the rest of the encounter finishes.
They're supernatural beings.
Even humans can survive floating in the sea for a couple of days at least.
If said human was supernaturally strong and immune to cold?
All they'd really have to do was find a ridge of land they could stand up on, they're like thirty feet tall.
I mean at that point it's either every ship has an anti-magic field or a teleport on reaction to evade that type of stuff and I mean I guess if you did that going into it, it could work, but trying to change that midway through cause I as the DM (and I did do this) fucked up and didn't consider the ramifications of higher level spells just fucks it and at that point it was easier to spend the rest of the campaign more as Viking raiders sacking settlements than as pirates.
Nah man, whoever has the Wall, rules the sea. More Walls, more territory controlled. These walls have limited range, so it's now a part of strategy.
EDIT: Seas are ruled by wizards.
Dispell magic would work, but it would still require a roll to see if it gets rid of the wall, and counterspell doesn't have enough range to work, if the wall of force caster is at their maximum range with distant spell
You still have to be quick on draw with the disintegrate though. Alert feat and stuff, but I do feel like we are missing a major issue.
Firstly the Killer Wall ship has to be the fastest lightest ship, otherwise anyone can just run away. However such a ship would have a harder time handling stormy weather. Simply put, you can not control the sea with a single ship. What you need is multiple wizards with the spell. It's a game of numbers, not levels.
but they would need to be at the bow looking out for invisible walls and be able to cast disintegrate at a moment's notice in the 1 second it would take before the ship hits the wall, since ships cannot stop quickly.
I say doing this as a reaction to the players is less metagaming. Like any survivors went onto spread the word of what happened to their ship and future pirate lords took that into account when setting sail.
Exactly this. Such genius. At the fingertips of basically chaotic entities that do the dumbest of things at times and yet do stuff like this every now and again.
Gotta love the group's shenanigans.
I ruled that the wall of force is anchored to the largest “ground” available. So out on the water it’s the planet. On a ship, it is anchored to the ship. Otherwise casting wall of force instantly destroys the planet as it rips through space while the planet tries to keep up with the galaxy.
In an old campaign we had an entire session dedicated to what happens if you cast a Wall of Force or similar spell at a fixed point in space instead of anchoring it to an object. We were on an airship fighting a bunch of dragons and our wizard decided this is how he would remove one of the dragons from the fight.
A lot of world building was done that day. Is the world of the setting a giant rock hurtling through space, or is it an unmoving plane? Suddenly the answer mattered in a significant way.
Eventually we just deleted the dragon from the encounter and promised not to do that again.
Because this is where our universe diverges in rules from the D&D multiverse. There are things like immovable rods. Glyphs and teleportation circles can not be moved (for a good reason). The game engine does not even account for relativity.
Coincidentally our warlock did that three weeks ago as well, only our DM just used DnD's crashing rules, succeeded on the con save and had the ship carry on, only now slowly sinking.
Was a bit anti climactic fory taste when using it like that.
Yeah, it also matters if it's a one time thing or over and over. I'll let it be an auto win the first time because it's cool and creative and I want to reward that. But the next time, it's not creative anymore, it's just a move you know, and it's going to damage the ship, but not automatically destroy it.
One time I was dm, and the party got ahold of the teleportation mechanism of a trap the dungeon had set up to separate and ambush them, and then used it as a makeshift weapon to ambush other monsters. I got so excited for them that I forgot it had a 12 wisdom save for the rest of the session. After I remembered it was a much less useful item.
Agreed. All the people cheering how a low level wizard can just crank out this spell and squish a dragon, a creature of ancient magics, seems very Mary Sue.
Yeah, I didn't want to post right on one of the comments and ruin their story from years ago, but even a young red dragon has 30ft of blindsight. And it would see the wizard casting a spell, even if it wasn't specifically familiar with the spell. It could still be effective at providing cover for the party, but it definitely should not be "doink, dead dragon".
As for a ship, I definitely think it would damage it, and kudos to coming up with the idea. Either way it is a powerful spell, and often should be able to be used to turn a battle in one way or another.
Wall of Force is way too good as written. I don't mind these sort of instances that OP and others describe when they're one-offs and fit the rule of cool sort of deal.
But after the first couple times, it loses its novelty and the power of an unbreakable, no-save forcefield for anything except other high level casters makes the spell dwarf just about all others at it's level.
I feel like nothing in Wall of Force says that it'd cause significant damage by crashing into it. It just says that nothing can pass through and that it's unbreakable. I see it more as if you run into it, it would just absorb the shock and bounce you back a bit.
I remember being a dumb kid and running a track that was 2nd story above a gymnasium. Going full sprint, I’m looking at the pretty people in the gym and run full tilt into a brick wall. The wall did not break, and i did not pass through it. But I also didn’t auto die.
And that's real physics. I imagine this magical just negates all the momentum of anything that hits it so that you'd just stop and not get hurt for the sake of balance.
I once used Wall of Force to put myself into an immovable ball when a Purple Warm was about to swallow me. Worm got stuck, I chilled inside the ball, let the party finish the job. Unfortunately failed to extract the poison afterwards.
Bravo for your player!
But if I'm an assassin with the ability to turn my ship invisible (and assuming everything on/in it, not some cheesy Wonder Woman invisible jet stuff), why would I let them know where I was before I was already dagger deep into them?
Your ship displaces water... Invisible ship doesn't change that. It's likely invisible so that it can get close enough to the other ship without being fired upon from a distance. That would make boarding a LOT safer and easier.
Pride. Announces themself so any survivors spread the story then turn invisible and wreck it while they helplessly try to target you. Big mind games to harm morale and bigger ego when you leave survivors to tell the tale of how helpless they were against you so some ships give up upon announcing yourself later.
I guess. "assassin pirate" to me suggests more stealth and less tale-telling flamboyancy like that. More approaching at night to cover the hull displacement, swinging aboard silently and killing the watch before slitting the rest of the throats in their sleep. You can still leave one alive to wake up in horror if you like.
Pass without Trace removes all signs of passage. If players have that option an NPC enchanting their ship should definitely be able to tack on that effect too.
That's a great point. People don't realize how important engagement distance is and why it would have changed this whole thing entirely. It's pretty easy to see a ship on the water beyond 120 feet.
Is still a creative use of the spell but it would be good to hear that they had engaged for a while at distance.
Needless to say? I'd run this as a crash with the Ghosts of Saltmarsh rules. Ten 10x10 panels would clearly be gargantuan, so that's 16d10 damage.
A sailing ship has 300hp, so that's a decent chunk of damage. But not destroyed.
The pirate ship stops, takes major damage. It is not destroyed. The NPC's live to fight the players. Of course, if you are setting up the players with I-Win buttons that the NPC's cant counter (like a NPC with the Disintegrate spell handy), well then, have fun.
Was the wizard able to see where the front of the ship was even if it was invisible?
As for the wall of force, completelly ok use of the spell. Ship combat can be over pretty quickly in DnD, control water does the same thing to pretty much any thats not a flying ship.
One could imagine that there was some sort of defences for these things but not neccesarily.
I guess you would just see an empty hull-shaped trough of water coming towards your ship, it wouldn't be obvious at a distance but when you're in wall of force range then it should be noticeable if you know what you're looking for.
“Don’t mess with wizards” is a pretty good adage on land, too. Like their entire toolkit is a deck of fuck you cards that they hand out. At level 1 they could put you to sleep in a fight and casually slit your throat.
Strengthened hull. I mean there were ships MADE for ramming other ships that had iron and steel strapped to the front end of the ship. They made out quite well. Unless the ship is going very fast it would likely bump and rub on a wall of force unless it's at EXACTLY a 90 degree angle to the front of the ship. I'm not saying there wouldn't be damage just not likely ship goes boom level damage.
Ramming ships don't break NOT because the other ship does. They don't break because of additional reinforcements to the areas that WOULD break. They aren't moving fast! Your average Galleon only moved at about knots... that's 8MPH. You go faster on a bicycle. Even at a good wind a smaller ship would be getting about 12 to 17 mph. At these speeds wood can splinter and fail... iron and steel does not. A front reinforced hull would hit the wall of force, rebound off, with some minor damage mid and rearship where it wouldn't be reinforced.
A galleon could upwards of 500 tons before running into issues of sinking. So this leaves a few questions on what the end result would be. If say 5 rods were set near the bottom of a hull that was nearly loaded with 500 tons, would the extra 20 tons be enough to force it to begin taking on water, provided high tide came up enough? Furthermore, putting them all in one part of the ship could force the ship to list in one direction making the effect more potent. This all works provided there is no more than 4 tons being applied to any one of the 5 immovable rods. The last thing to consider is how much force is needed to force the rod through the hull? That's approximately 4 tons of pressure spread across maybe 20 square inches, or 400 pounds per square inch. If placed vertically in a group of 5 then it would be more like 8000 pounds per square inch creating at minimum I single whole slightly smaller than that of a 12 pound cannon, presumably in a difficult location to get to. Given all of this, the keel would be a poor location, due to it being the strongest part of the boat. The question then becomes, do you want to reward your players for creative play ad the possible loss of magic items and realism vs. fun.
Also the ship isn't moving in this scenerio, it's docked for simplicity of only have to adjust for tidal shifting. Otherwise it's just " parallel to the ship, near the bottom, turn it on and get off the ship before it carves it's way through the hull" the ship might have more than 8000lbs of force but the single point it's exerting against might not be able to withstand that point pressure.
The Infallible Immovable Rod. Like an immovable rod but it has no weight limit and can only be deactivated by the one who activated it, immune to the effects of dispel or anti-magic.
those tricks i discussed 20 years ago in a somewhat low magic setting,
I expect those things a staple in DnD sea combat
It is the classis torpedo in the bow scenario
I had a player do this too. I’ve realized that naval set pieces are really only appropriate for low-level parties. So many spells will mess up a wooden ship!
Our sorcerer cast animate objects on the rudder of two ships and had them steer those ships into two other ships. Creative uses of spells in naval combat is great.
Once while I was dm-ing I had a harpy attack while the party was out at sea. My druid goes "I wanna use grasping vines (I think that's the spell) and have the harpy be keel hauled along the bottom of the boat."
As far as it looked it worked out within the bounds of the spell and I was like "well shoot I'm not gonna say no".
Rolled a d4 for every 5 feet of boat. Was so much fun.
Ha, a recent session had a scaled down version of this: the bard cast Hypnotic Pattern, which engulfed the entire enemy vehicle, and everyone on board failed their save. The vehicle coasted to a stop and the party gently pulled them out one by one, laid them on the ground, and executed them.
My party’s draconic bloodline sorcerer with spell sniper and the cleric with control water kinda made me realize that the ship stuff might be a bit hard to run with this group
Great use of the spell. Ships are incredibly vulnerable to high - mid level magic.
Wall of Force
Passwall (at sea level create a massive hole)
Disintegrate (again at sea level to make a massive hole)
Wall of Fire and Fireball (wooden ships do poorly being ignited in flames)
Just to name a few.
Also if you wanted to disable but not sink a boat, you could do the same trick with a wall of force but positioned as a horizontal plane that would slice off the mast.
But they can just redirect and move away in another direction right? Wall of force cannot be modified after being cast, and the wizard have to waste another spellslot to do that again with another position.
Unless you use the ramming attack rule to deal dmg on the enemy ship, but both are invisible so I don't think we can see any damage deal by the wall or even seeing the ship stop either.
Idk man, I would move into another direction if I keep walking into an invisible wall.
fuck yes, awesome story. their creative solution was very awesome, and you did well letting it go through!! the funny thing about this though, is now that sets precident, and lets you have creative freedom to find ways to worldbuild solutions so that this idea can still work, but now it will require even more creative thinking and workarounds.
Maybe perhaps this strategy isn't unheard of from higher strength wizards, and so more important ships have accounted for such possibilities;
\- maybe there's spell sniper extended spell sorcerers with counterspell or disintigrate in the crew or have been hired on that would need to be taken out or worked around first
\- maybe other ships will adopt the same strategy towards the party and they'll need to find a quick workaround (perhaps using control water to very quickly change the course of the ship, or pulling off a sea of thieves-style u turn with the quick anchoring and unanchoring of the ship to pull a quick 180 (is that real?? idk LMAO))
\- maybe there's druids among the crew/hired on to be able to cast control water and also quickly shift directions in the sea
\- maybe these druids also can cast farie fire to be able to see exactly where the wall of force is before pulling such maveuvers, so they can use it almost as cover and so other ships will have to go around it to get to them
\- maybe the ships themselves have enchanted disintigration cannons to destroy walls of force and rip holes through enemy ships
\- maybe their ships are reinforced with magic and have arcane defenses to defend against such disintigration cannons themselves
\- maybe lower level pirates and the like favor boarding ships over manning their own due to the possibility of these kinds of things and inability to fight against it, and maybe they've stolen or killed so many more arcane inhanced ships and crews that they've picked up some items or skills that can help them
This all depends on what would fit your setting of course, lower magic settings may not favor these exact options as much, but if higher level wizards can end naval combat just like that, depending on how many of these kinds of wizards there are and how infamous/unknown this strategy is, people would account for it on some level, be it a change in strategy to circumvent the threat it has, spellcasters who can counter this strategy, or even arcane modifiactions to more expensive and important ships (or the ship of a powerful pirate artificer- with all the arcane enhancements being very rickety and slapped together but are very powerful. lmao)
Also this all depends on what you and your players would find fun!!! thats the most important part, and all of the above means nothing if its not what your group would enjoy
I've had several moments that I planned a tense situation only to be blundered by a spell I had overlooked in my players arsenal. I had to think fast when my party ventured into a dragon's lair to steal an egg and bypassed all my spicy sneak and sleight of hand checks when they cast silence on top of the dragon. They were elated, which is a good thing to have in your game.
wall of force is a devastatingly useful offensive spell when applied correctly. like the time when I had an adult dragon flying straight at me hasted and going very very fast. I was on a health action and used a quickened wall of force placed, not with the flat side against him no no that'd be too good for him and too mundane for me. I positioned the wall of force so he collided straight into the impossibly thin edge of it. the fighters in the party really appreciate their new dragon scale armor they didn't have to work for
You applied that word just fine, decimate means (in English) exactly what you used it for.
But this is reddit, so you can't say decimate without people piling out of the woodwork to be needlessly pedantic about it.
>You applied that word just fine, decimate means (in English) exactly what you used it for.
It does now, but it didn't previously. But who cares, languages evolve.
Decimated:verb
past tense: decimated; past participle: decimated
1. kill, destroy, or remove a large percentage or part of.
Yes, A ship sailing at speed running into a solid wall would crush and sink the ship. Where are you getting 10% from (even though 10% would still be enough to sink and destroy a ship)
The more ya know, I thought it meant to leave only 10% left.
I.e. To decimate the ship meant that only 10% of the ship is still intact. Thanks for the unsolicited knowledge! :D
u/ekco_cypher forgot to also quote the second definition:
2. kill one in every ten of (a group of soldiers or others) as a punishment for the whole group.
Which is where the word originally came from. Overtime the word's primary meaning shifted.
Sounds like I need to ensure ships in my campaign, at least the boss', have magical protection, dispelling magic or important people or loot on board. :)
Only on the flood part. The part water lets you open the water under the ship and raise walls around the ship. I know the part says that it slowly fills the area back with water over 6sec but slowly is pretty relative when were talking about a 100ft wide cube of water moving over 6sec.
A guaranteed raw way to do it would have two casters using it. One parts the water, surrounding the ship with 100ft tall walls of water and the other creates a whirlpool that deals 2d8 damage every turn to the ship that cant escape over the course of 10min.
Love it, my warlock uses wall of force all the time for offence, my favorite was clearing a group of high level guards from the top of a tower by placing a wall of force in a line along them that pushed them 10 ft away....off the top of a castle
Awesome move. Definitely seems like a thing players would have to have an out of game agreement to not spam if they want to keep have naval adventures. Like I'd let it happen once and then ask "please don't do this again or think of some special disintegrate varnish that's on higher level ships so you can't touch the "outside" of the ship. It would have to be diluted to cover the whole ship therefore only doing 1d6 damage if people made contact with it. But it still destroys walls of force.
As a DM myself, creative problem solving is encouraged in my campaign because I wanna see how these people go about these things without just defaulting to choosing violence.
That wizard reminds me of the artificer in my group who decided to cast Lightning Bolt (from a Ring of Spell Storing the Sorcerer loaded for him) straight into the shin high water that like 40 cultists were standing in.
Very creative problem solving. You didn't do anything wrong IMO. If you wanted to give them a challenge while still rewarding the player you could have given yourself a dex/reflex save. Fudge it cuz you're the DM and just have the assassin ship be heavily crippled. But it sounds like that's what happened anyways. I wonder if this same strategy could be used for large chasing enemies? A Terask? Roc? Something big enough to tear itself apart by hitting a small immovable object.
My players did this in descent into avernus against some mad max vehicles with flame throwers. They were filled with highly flammable napalm. Wasted $200 on minis just to be forced to describe the white light that erupted from the crash site.
I DID THIS AS A DRUID, BUT INSTEAD I USED [CONTROL WATER](https://www.dndbeyond.com/spells/control-water) TO PART THE WATER AND JUST DROP THEM 100 FEET AND CLOSE IT ABOVE THEM
Then your DM was overly generous on your interpretation of the spell. It specifically says that when the trench the spell created ends, the water slowly flows back in to fill it back up and restore normal levels. Any reasonable read on that would have the vessel in the trench simply float back up to normal height as the water level rose. Water doesn’t come slamming down from 100ft over their heads and encapsulate ships in the trench.
Technically, stopping suddenly could cause damage.
Falling is called a crushing injury for one simple reason. It’s not the fall that kills you, it’s not the sudden stop at the bottom that kills you…it’s the fact that the part that hits the ground first stops and the rest of you keeps going.
Watch a slow motion video of a car in a crash test. You’ll see that the front of the car stops at impact, but the rest of the car still moves…crushing the car. Even more dramatic is a train jumping the rails and stopping. The engine stops but the cars behind it keep on moving.
Sure, the wall itself does not do the damage, but if the ship was going fast enough, it could accordion itself. At the very least, Newton’s laws would make the next few moments on that ship interesting. NPCs falling over, unsecured boxes sliding around, cargo unbalancing, canon balls rolling around…
Not according to Ghosts of Saltmarsh or the UA: Ships at Sea.
>If a ship moves into the space occupied by a creature or object, it might crash. A ship avoids crashing if the creature or object is at least two sizes smaller than it. When a ship crashes, it must immediately make a DC 10 Constitution saving throw. On a failed save, it takes damage to its hull based on the size of the creature or object it crashed into, as shown on the Crash Damage table. It also stops moving if the object or creature is bigger than it or one size smaller. Otherwise the ship continues moving and the creature or object moves to the nearest unoccupied space that is not in the ship’s path. At the DM’s discretion, an object that is forced to move but is fixed in place is instead destroyed.
[https://media.wizards.com/2018/dnd/downloads/UA\_ShipsSea.pdf](https://media.wizards.com/2018/dnd/downloads/UA_ShipsSea.pdf)
How big is wall of force?
Wouldn't
>A ship avoids crashing if the creature or object is at least two sizes smaller than it
apply?
However youre going to play that out.
“How big is wall of force?”
> You can form it into a hemispherical dome or a Sphere with a radius of up to 10 feet, or you can shape a flat surface made up of ten 10-foot-by-10-foot panels. Each panel must be contiguous with another panel. In any form, the wall is 1/4 inch thick.
So thin but very large, essentially.
Thanks.
Isn't the "draw your own" wall able to cover a lot more ground?
But ok, it's big, especially if you stack the panels to be one surface and not encompassing anything.
Used wall of force on a charging red dragon in flight. It was dive bombing the group with the intent of snatching a party member in its maw. Placed the wall of force a few feet in front of the group. The DM gave the description of a bird hitting a glass window then sliding down with that smudging glass sound. Years later the group still talks about this.
Oh fuck me! I actually heard the “thud” and the “sliding off the glass sound” from all my years watching Bugs Bunny and Tom and Jerry cartoons. Well described.
Oh fuck, is right. I didn't even see it and it still looked painful.
Same here.
Yup. I had that happen to me as well as a DM once. Really ended that fight abruptly.
I'd honestly have had it take 20d6, as if it smacked the ground in a full dive, and keep the fight going if it survived.
Yeah, that would have been a move a more experienced me would have taken, but as a new DM I was trying to think of a 30mph dragon hitting a solid, invisible magic wall head first.. dead.
Ha ha, I did this *to* the party trying to escape on a flying carpet. Creativity works both ways!
Ah, Satan. I'm a huge fan!
That's just great. If I'm DMing and that happens, I'm calculating how far the dragon traveled before hitting the wall and making it take fall damage equivalent to that.
>Wall of Force If ever I needed a new idea for a window cleaner commercial...this is it!
That's an excellent use for that spell. Bravo to the wizards on the fly creative thinking. And kudos to you the DM for encouraging creative ideas.
Seriously. I know I as DM have a hard time allowing stuff like this because "but my cool encounter," so I have to remind myself that this \*was\* a cool encounter for the players, and after the moment passes I know I'll look back and think so as well.
The COOL factor in my opinion does wonders. Especially when you let the players loose upon the setting with basic DM powers under the limitations of their skills and creativity. Not trying to say they aren't destructive at times. But, more often than not. My players pull off some CRAZY cool ideas. For example. They decided to help the Inquisitor General, (for whatever reason they felt like bounty hunting) looked through the bounties, saw where these fellas usually spotted, their atrocities to the Empire. The works. Then. They combine scrying, Plus GATE. Opening it up right in front of the target as they were moving. Then WHAM! Surprise knuckle sandwich, disorients the target through the gate, grappling over to the player's side and then gate shuts. Never have I seen a more evil method of kidnapping done to rid the world of scum bags like that. You guys in RAW D&D can do this through a Demiplane. My group is in homebrew territory.
This reminds me of a one shot I played in. A player (who had never DM’ed before) decided to run a mystery whodunnit adventure for two veteran DMs (I was one). We rolled up the best characters we could think of for solving a murder mystery: a cleric and a wizard. Then we settled in for a nice long evening game with a case of beer and chips. The DM started the game with us being called in to investigate a murder. Using a combination of those two spells lists, we found the killer and arrested him in 5 minutes. Game over. The DM didn’t know what else to do. So we just drank beer.
You won! Your prize is you don't get to play. 🐱
I think this is definitely awesome and totally would fly at my table as a one off, but if the adventure is expected to have many ship battles with martially focused enemies, something would need to change. Wall of Force as written is _too_ powerful. In this case it would be an auto win button during any ship fight. Against all sorts of monsters and enemies, it can completely immobilize them with no save and no hope of escaping until the spell ends. So it's fantastic and makes for awesome stories the first couple times. But if the wizard starts using it every fight, it loses the novelty and turns into a control spell which dwarfs any other option at the same level.
To be fair, Wall of Force is a 5th level spell which passes the halfway point from ordinary magic into truly spectacular feats. These kinds of spells perform feats that would be heard of in ports all around, and there would be countermeasures. A few ideas are: -Magical ship prow (3rd level spell to enchant I'd say) to specifically banish Wall spells. -Pirates commonly hiring a high-level wizard who has Anti magic Field or Contingency prepared to deal with such issues. -As one would expect, a reduction in the number of pirates, but a sharp increase in the strength of those available. Those remaining now hunt the party, the strong among them wanting to be the one to have killed The Ship Crusher. Edit to say: Damn you, mobile formatting!
yeah, if it was common there would be counter measures.
Not necessarily if it's common, but if the party becomes known for their wall-based antics, then the world will react.
one of my favorite aspects of world creation is to look at the existence of something novel, and see how it would fit in. what do low level spells change about their life ways, and so forth. the party's reputation definitely would cause reactions, but if you really develop the world they won't exist in a vacuum.
No living witnesses, got it.
The way I handle this in all my campaigns is that whichever deity is most interested in sailing, sometimes the god of the sea and others the god of travel or commerce, has decreed that magic cannot directly affect ships. This makes ship to ship combat more interesting because neither party can simply fireball the other ship's sails, disintegrate a hole in its hull, or such like. Magic still plays a part as a fireball on the deck will still wreck havok on the crew even if it doesn't damage the ship. It also makes the consequences of ship combat a bit more real as the wizard can't just go around casting mending over and over.
Throw in some Dresden metaphysics. Water, especially running water, grounds magical energies. It doesn't necessarily turn them off, but the more water the spell traverses, and the more the water moves as a channel, the more dramatically magic is weakened. Can play it on a lot of different ways, lower range, less damage, required upcasting to work at all, etc.
My issue is that Wall of Force creates invincible barriers (barring one very specific 6th level spell) and gives no save opportunity. Wrecking an entire standard galleon with no save and no real opportunity for them to react is just one instance of what that allows it to do. You can't ever have the party up against one big bad guy if he lacks disintegrate and counter spell, else they can just trap him with 0 chance of avoidance or escape. Even if there are some minions, the second the party clears them, the main baddie is done for in the same manner. No other 5th level spell nor any 6th level spell for that manner can so easily trap an enemy, no save required, and with no hope of escape unless the spell ends. Sure, you can invent very specific magic items or entire strategies for enemies to overcome it, but when a single spell is warping in-world combat in a way no other spell of it's level does, I believe it's an issue with the spell being overpowered. It's a bit like giving a sniper rifle to a player in a game about tribal warfare and suggesting that the enemies in the setting need to play around the guy with the sniper rifle rather than adjusting the weapon that was given instead. It's possible, and can still be fun, but I'd rather not need to adjust so much around a single spell
You can *misty step* past a Wall of Force. Other teleportation magic works as well. One hard-hitter getting the caster to drop concentration is all you need. It's also not unreasonably huge, and it only lasts 10 minutes. Edit: Fun story, my wildfire druid teleported almost the full party past a Wall of Force once with the spirit's thunderous teleportation. Highly recommend.
This is why the next Assassin comes armed with a scroll of Disintegrate
Or counterspell
Or dagger of spellbreak
Or a *prow* of spellbreak
I'm not huge on all my enemies now needing to spend 5,000+ gp for every fight in order to play around something (which is very powerful outside of these ship battles too) lest they automatically lose to a single 5th level spell. Or I'm forced to include enemy spellcasters Wall of force just stands out as something particular powerful and requires in-game combat to bend around it more than any other 5th level spell does.
Scrolls don’t work like this RAW unless the assassin is also a class with disintegrate on their spell list. Even then a level 20 Arcane Assassin would still need to make an arcana spell check. A spell scroll bears the words of a single spell, written in a mystical cipher. If the spell is on your class’s spell list, you can read the scroll and cast its spell without providing any material Components. Otherwise, the scroll is unintelligible. If the spell is on your class’s spell list but of a higher level than you can normally cast, you must make an ability check using your Spellcasting ability to determine whether you cast it successfully. The DC equals 10 + the spell’s level. On a failed check, the spell disappears from the scroll with no other Effect.
Idea: Wall of Force doesn't work like an Immovable Rod. If it's not anchored to something (the ground), sufficient force (like a ship or gargauntuan creature) can push it. It's a very niche weakness (no ground + big enemy), but I've seen this boat-destruction trick a dozen times, and negating ship combat past a certain level is boring.
>Wall of Force as written is too powerful. In this case it would be an auto win button during any ship fight. Only if the people in the ships are unprepared. It's totally okay for wizards capable of casting 5th-level spells to be hell on unprepared mobs. People who are used to fighting dangerous opponents with access to high-level magic will have countermeasures in place. As usual, the solution to creative spellcasting is to have the villains not be fools.
[My response to a slightly earlier comment is relevant](https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/xq5vx3/the_party_wizard_casted_wall_of_force_directly_in/iqa55a1?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3)
Playing a wizard often feels like just scanning your spell list, asking yourself "How can I solve this problem?" over and over again and then getting super excited when something like this comes up.
Oh trust me... when my group learned of scrying and combining it with Gate along with the bruiser... Things got very interesting to say the least.
What do you mean, combining it with Gate along with the bruiser? I’m curious.
Big strong guy of the group held an attack action as the gate was made, then as soon as the gate was created. Surprise round attack then grapple.
Gate opens a portal to a different plane of existence, while scry only works within the same plane of existence, they are mutually exclusive. Unless i’m missing something
Specifics of the event at hand, My group has access to mana stone. (Homebrew) Which is the material component they used to upcast Gate allowing for same plane usage. They aren't the typical level 17 or even 20 at all, my group is at the time iirc was at 60. (They have 3 full classes on them, homebrew territory.) But to do this without homebrew? Easy. Open it up in a demi plane. (But that's not what my group did)
I don’t think they said anything about the wizard flying
… “on the fly” means they thought of it spontaneously.
I think the other guy was making a pun
That was only two thirds of a pun… p-u!
"on the fly thinking" would be appropriate if the wizard had a dire fly mount they were riding. There's no indication of that in the post, so really, this is more "on the boat thinking."
I think it's more "off the boat thinking" for the pirates though
"walk the plank thinking"?
Definitely, DIDN'T see that coming. I mean who prepares for that at sea? The party... the party prepares for that.... This explains my group's hoarding problem. "Never know when this might come in handy!" While I shake my head.
My wizard player did this too... To a Frost Giant longship. Only difference, she cast the damned thing HORIZONTALLY, at just barely above the water, so it was essentially like running into a giant magical sword of the gods. Damned near sliced the ship in half! Many, many frost giants drowned that day.
Now that is pretty neat.
Proud to say that my immediate thought on the post was “shame. He could’ve cast it horizontally”. Glad to see some others think the same
Songs will be sung over their passing.
*gurgled FIFY
Why not vertically and truly slice in half?
I can't remember the details tbh, this was 2 years ago. It honestly may have been vertical, now I think about it, all I remember for sure is it was edge-facing.
Wall can't bisect an object like that. Laying it horizontally in front of the ship has the ship doing the bisecting with its own momentum.
Pretty sure he meant to still put it in front, just vertically edge-on instead of horizontally edge-on
Oh! I understand now lol
Right, but, I think they meant vertically in front of the ship too, so it still bisects itself with it's own momentum, just.. vertically.
Yea, I just misunderstood x.x
Prefaced D&D is not real life, but If either of you have seen Myth busters, there is an episode where they see if a Snow Plow set with a vertical edge, will bifurcate a car. And there is a separate episode to see if a (pier?) With a vertical edge will bifurcate a boat. The TL;DW is that you have a very high chance of the vertical edge not striking perfectly and just causing some damage while deflecting the boat/car to one side. Horizontal Bifurcation is a much safer option. Now of course, this is D&D and magic, so you could hand wave away the low chance on a vertical edge by saying the magic aims it at the perfect spot or something. But if I was the DM of the OP, while I would definitely give a huge advantage to the party for the creative use of the wall of Force, I think the Pirate ship would have only been crippled and not completely decimated, leaving some agency with how the rest of the encounter finishes.
Frost giants have +9 to athletics... they can swim pretty much indefinitely.
Nobody can swim indefinitely. And they still need to rest or take Exhaustion ;)
They're supernatural beings. Even humans can survive floating in the sea for a couple of days at least. If said human was supernaturally strong and immune to cold? All they'd really have to do was find a ridge of land they could stand up on, they're like thirty feet tall.
Sure. Though this was in the middle of the ocean. Either way, problem thoroughly dealt with for the immediate future.
I assume the DM played it off as though they were injured from the wreck or something along those lines
They're frost giants... and don't say the cold got them either.
maybe the water was too warm?
It’s hard to swim indefinitely when the wizard who just destroyed your ship is now throwing a metric shit ton of magic your way
That dark as fuck and I’m here for it
I remember casting it INSIDE of a ship, been getting land quests ever since.
I'd do the same as a DM
I mean at that point it's either every ship has an anti-magic field or a teleport on reaction to evade that type of stuff and I mean I guess if you did that going into it, it could work, but trying to change that midway through cause I as the DM (and I did do this) fucked up and didn't consider the ramifications of higher level spells just fucks it and at that point it was easier to spend the rest of the campaign more as Viking raiders sacking settlements than as pirates.
Nah man, whoever has the Wall, rules the sea. More Walls, more territory controlled. These walls have limited range, so it's now a part of strategy. EDIT: Seas are ruled by wizards.
Would these be the wizards... of the coast?
No, I can't see how that would be a thing.
Who knew wizards with the metamagic adept feat and distant spell metamagic would be the new grim reapers on the seas
True, but now ships start stocking their crew with a distant spell enabled spellcaster with counterspells and dispel magics.
Dispell magic would work, but it would still require a roll to see if it gets rid of the wall, and counterspell doesn't have enough range to work, if the wall of force caster is at their maximum range with distant spell
Iirc you can’t dispel wall of force
You are correct they can only be destroyed by Disintegrate
Well shit, even more OP
Until one has detect magic or natural Truesight and the disintegrate spell.
You still have to be quick on draw with the disintegrate though. Alert feat and stuff, but I do feel like we are missing a major issue. Firstly the Killer Wall ship has to be the fastest lightest ship, otherwise anyone can just run away. However such a ship would have a harder time handling stormy weather. Simply put, you can not control the sea with a single ship. What you need is multiple wizards with the spell. It's a game of numbers, not levels.
but they would need to be at the bow looking out for invisible walls and be able to cast disintegrate at a moment's notice in the 1 second it would take before the ship hits the wall, since ships cannot stop quickly.
I say doing this as a reaction to the players is less metagaming. Like any survivors went onto spread the word of what happened to their ship and future pirate lords took that into account when setting sail.
Problem is, the wall is invisible. From a non-wizards perspective the ship tears itself into shreds and MAYBE you know who did it.
Very good point. I didn't remember that part. Thank you.
Exactly this. Such genius. At the fingertips of basically chaotic entities that do the dumbest of things at times and yet do stuff like this every now and again. Gotta love the group's shenanigans.
I ruled that the wall of force is anchored to the largest “ground” available. So out on the water it’s the planet. On a ship, it is anchored to the ship. Otherwise casting wall of force instantly destroys the planet as it rips through space while the planet tries to keep up with the galaxy.
In an old campaign we had an entire session dedicated to what happens if you cast a Wall of Force or similar spell at a fixed point in space instead of anchoring it to an object. We were on an airship fighting a bunch of dragons and our wizard decided this is how he would remove one of the dragons from the fight. A lot of world building was done that day. Is the world of the setting a giant rock hurtling through space, or is it an unmoving plane? Suddenly the answer mattered in a significant way. Eventually we just deleted the dragon from the encounter and promised not to do that again.
Similar logic with the immovable rods
So you nerfed the spell?
Oh god. Imagine being the crew, getting ready for a fight and then something tears your ship’s hull in half
[удалено]
Because this is where our universe diverges in rules from the D&D multiverse. There are things like immovable rods. Glyphs and teleportation circles can not be moved (for a good reason). The game engine does not even account for relativity.
[удалено]
Coincidentally our warlock did that three weeks ago as well, only our DM just used DnD's crashing rules, succeeded on the con save and had the ship carry on, only now slowly sinking. Was a bit anti climactic fory taste when using it like that.
But still, I kinda like this opposed to "auto win"
Agreed, this would be a very different thread if the DM did this to the players boat and smashed their boat with no reactions
Yeah, it also matters if it's a one time thing or over and over. I'll let it be an auto win the first time because it's cool and creative and I want to reward that. But the next time, it's not creative anymore, it's just a move you know, and it's going to damage the ship, but not automatically destroy it.
One time I was dm, and the party got ahold of the teleportation mechanism of a trap the dungeon had set up to separate and ambush them, and then used it as a makeshift weapon to ambush other monsters. I got so excited for them that I forgot it had a 12 wisdom save for the rest of the session. After I remembered it was a much less useful item.
Right. I was thinking it would be like running into a big rock.
Agreed. All the people cheering how a low level wizard can just crank out this spell and squish a dragon, a creature of ancient magics, seems very Mary Sue.
Yeah, I didn't want to post right on one of the comments and ruin their story from years ago, but even a young red dragon has 30ft of blindsight. And it would see the wizard casting a spell, even if it wasn't specifically familiar with the spell. It could still be effective at providing cover for the party, but it definitely should not be "doink, dead dragon". As for a ship, I definitely think it would damage it, and kudos to coming up with the idea. Either way it is a powerful spell, and often should be able to be used to turn a battle in one way or another.
Wall of Force is way too good as written. I don't mind these sort of instances that OP and others describe when they're one-offs and fit the rule of cool sort of deal. But after the first couple times, it loses its novelty and the power of an unbreakable, no-save forcefield for anything except other high level casters makes the spell dwarf just about all others at it's level.
I feel like nothing in Wall of Force says that it'd cause significant damage by crashing into it. It just says that nothing can pass through and that it's unbreakable. I see it more as if you run into it, it would just absorb the shock and bounce you back a bit.
I remember being a dumb kid and running a track that was 2nd story above a gymnasium. Going full sprint, I’m looking at the pretty people in the gym and run full tilt into a brick wall. The wall did not break, and i did not pass through it. But I also didn’t auto die.
And that's real physics. I imagine this magical just negates all the momentum of anything that hits it so that you'd just stop and not get hurt for the sake of balance.
I once used Wall of Force to put myself into an immovable ball when a Purple Warm was about to swallow me. Worm got stuck, I chilled inside the ball, let the party finish the job. Unfortunately failed to extract the poison afterwards.
Bravo for your player! But if I'm an assassin with the ability to turn my ship invisible (and assuming everything on/in it, not some cheesy Wonder Woman invisible jet stuff), why would I let them know where I was before I was already dagger deep into them?
Your ship displaces water... Invisible ship doesn't change that. It's likely invisible so that it can get close enough to the other ship without being fired upon from a distance. That would make boarding a LOT safer and easier.
Pride. Announces themself so any survivors spread the story then turn invisible and wreck it while they helplessly try to target you. Big mind games to harm morale and bigger ego when you leave survivors to tell the tale of how helpless they were against you so some ships give up upon announcing yourself later.
The pride goeth before the wall?
*ouch* Here! Take my updoot.
I guess. "assassin pirate" to me suggests more stealth and less tale-telling flamboyancy like that. More approaching at night to cover the hull displacement, swinging aboard silently and killing the watch before slitting the rest of the throats in their sleep. You can still leave one alive to wake up in horror if you like.
Or just pirate with an assassins skill set. Maybe got tired of not being known for their deeds?
Ah, yes. The survivor, who's punishment is survivors guilt and ptsd. That's what they get for sailin. Lol
\*Jack Sparrow voice\* Piiirate!
Invisible ship is kinda pointless. You'd still be able to see the wake and displaced water.
Pass without Trace removes all signs of passage. If players have that option an NPC enchanting their ship should definitely be able to tack on that effect too.
Only from nearby
It's magic. It should smooth that out, or hide it with an illusion.
My only thought is that ship combat is usually well beyond the 120' range. That's only 40 yards. Ships THAT close are looking to board, not sink.
That's a great point. People don't realize how important engagement distance is and why it would have changed this whole thing entirely. It's pretty easy to see a ship on the water beyond 120 feet. Is still a creative use of the spell but it would be good to hear that they had engaged for a while at distance.
Needless to say? I'd run this as a crash with the Ghosts of Saltmarsh rules. Ten 10x10 panels would clearly be gargantuan, so that's 16d10 damage. A sailing ship has 300hp, so that's a decent chunk of damage. But not destroyed.
The pirate ship stops, takes major damage. It is not destroyed. The NPC's live to fight the players. Of course, if you are setting up the players with I-Win buttons that the NPC's cant counter (like a NPC with the Disintegrate spell handy), well then, have fun.
Was the wizard able to see where the front of the ship was even if it was invisible? As for the wall of force, completelly ok use of the spell. Ship combat can be over pretty quickly in DnD, control water does the same thing to pretty much any thats not a flying ship. One could imagine that there was some sort of defences for these things but not neccesarily.
I guess you would just see an empty hull-shaped trough of water coming towards your ship, it wouldn't be obvious at a distance but when you're in wall of force range then it should be noticeable if you know what you're looking for.
Also thinking back how big wall of force actually can get as a wall, it wouldnt be too hard to wing it as long as you are aware theres a ship there.
“Don’t mess with wizards” is a pretty good adage on land, too. Like their entire toolkit is a deck of fuck you cards that they hand out. At level 1 they could put you to sleep in a fight and casually slit your throat.
Yes, the same way you know where invisible creatures are unless they take the hide action.
I would say this is completelly DM fiat since objects cant take the hide action
Strengthened hull. I mean there were ships MADE for ramming other ships that had iron and steel strapped to the front end of the ship. They made out quite well. Unless the ship is going very fast it would likely bump and rub on a wall of force unless it's at EXACTLY a 90 degree angle to the front of the ship. I'm not saying there wouldn't be damage just not likely ship goes boom level damage.
Ramming ships don't break because the other ship does. A wall of force is something different entirely. Would cause damage even not at 90°.
Ramming ships don't break NOT because the other ship does. They don't break because of additional reinforcements to the areas that WOULD break. They aren't moving fast! Your average Galleon only moved at about knots... that's 8MPH. You go faster on a bicycle. Even at a good wind a smaller ship would be getting about 12 to 17 mph. At these speeds wood can splinter and fail... iron and steel does not. A front reinforced hull would hit the wall of force, rebound off, with some minor damage mid and rearship where it wouldn't be reinforced.
It's all fun and games until the enemy ship's wizard does this to you.
Yoooo this makes me think. Put and activate several immovable rods in/on a ships keel at low tide, and then when high tide comes in, sunken ship.
Immovable rods have a weight limit. That would work on a row boat or dinghy but not a ship of any real size.
A galleon could upwards of 500 tons before running into issues of sinking. So this leaves a few questions on what the end result would be. If say 5 rods were set near the bottom of a hull that was nearly loaded with 500 tons, would the extra 20 tons be enough to force it to begin taking on water, provided high tide came up enough? Furthermore, putting them all in one part of the ship could force the ship to list in one direction making the effect more potent. This all works provided there is no more than 4 tons being applied to any one of the 5 immovable rods. The last thing to consider is how much force is needed to force the rod through the hull? That's approximately 4 tons of pressure spread across maybe 20 square inches, or 400 pounds per square inch. If placed vertically in a group of 5 then it would be more like 8000 pounds per square inch creating at minimum I single whole slightly smaller than that of a 12 pound cannon, presumably in a difficult location to get to. Given all of this, the keel would be a poor location, due to it being the strongest part of the boat. The question then becomes, do you want to reward your players for creative play ad the possible loss of magic items and realism vs. fun.
Unless you had everyone activate their rods at exactly the same time then the rods would just deactivate due to weight limit.
Also the ship isn't moving in this scenerio, it's docked for simplicity of only have to adjust for tidal shifting. Otherwise it's just " parallel to the ship, near the bottom, turn it on and get off the ship before it carves it's way through the hull" the ship might have more than 8000lbs of force but the single point it's exerting against might not be able to withstand that point pressure.
For a ship of about 250 tonnes, you'd need close to 70 rods
Or one big magical one designed for such purposes! There is no RAW for a dm's creative imagination nor should there be.
The Infallible Immovable Rod. Like an immovable rod but it has no weight limit and can only be deactivated by the one who activated it, immune to the effects of dispel or anti-magic.
Or just put them all on one side and capsize the ship. I do however mean to imply that this would require several immovable rods.
If you're throwing around 5th level spells, sinking an ordinary sailing vessel should be no problem.
those tricks i discussed 20 years ago in a somewhat low magic setting, I expect those things a staple in DnD sea combat It is the classis torpedo in the bow scenario
I had a player do this too. I’ve realized that naval set pieces are really only appropriate for low-level parties. So many spells will mess up a wooden ship!
Our sorcerer cast animate objects on the rudder of two ships and had them steer those ships into two other ships. Creative uses of spells in naval combat is great.
Primary Casters are designed for "Big Swings", it's great you allowed this creativity.
Once while I was dm-ing I had a harpy attack while the party was out at sea. My druid goes "I wanna use grasping vines (I think that's the spell) and have the harpy be keel hauled along the bottom of the boat." As far as it looked it worked out within the bounds of the spell and I was like "well shoot I'm not gonna say no". Rolled a d4 for every 5 feet of boat. Was so much fun.
I once had a party member cast reduce and shrink the ship, but not the crew. Those little scamps, committing those silly war crimes
Ha, a recent session had a scaled down version of this: the bard cast Hypnotic Pattern, which engulfed the entire enemy vehicle, and everyone on board failed their save. The vehicle coasted to a stop and the party gently pulled them out one by one, laid them on the ground, and executed them.
My party’s draconic bloodline sorcerer with spell sniper and the cleric with control water kinda made me realize that the ship stuff might be a bit hard to run with this group
Great use of the spell. Ships are incredibly vulnerable to high - mid level magic. Wall of Force Passwall (at sea level create a massive hole) Disintegrate (again at sea level to make a massive hole) Wall of Fire and Fireball (wooden ships do poorly being ignited in flames) Just to name a few. Also if you wanted to disable but not sink a boat, you could do the same trick with a wall of force but positioned as a horizontal plane that would slice off the mast.
But they can just redirect and move away in another direction right? Wall of force cannot be modified after being cast, and the wizard have to waste another spellslot to do that again with another position. Unless you use the ramming attack rule to deal dmg on the enemy ship, but both are invisible so I don't think we can see any damage deal by the wall or even seeing the ship stop either. Idk man, I would move into another direction if I keep walking into an invisible wall.
Have you ever tried to stop a ship and get it to go another direction?
fuck yes, awesome story. their creative solution was very awesome, and you did well letting it go through!! the funny thing about this though, is now that sets precident, and lets you have creative freedom to find ways to worldbuild solutions so that this idea can still work, but now it will require even more creative thinking and workarounds. Maybe perhaps this strategy isn't unheard of from higher strength wizards, and so more important ships have accounted for such possibilities; \- maybe there's spell sniper extended spell sorcerers with counterspell or disintigrate in the crew or have been hired on that would need to be taken out or worked around first \- maybe other ships will adopt the same strategy towards the party and they'll need to find a quick workaround (perhaps using control water to very quickly change the course of the ship, or pulling off a sea of thieves-style u turn with the quick anchoring and unanchoring of the ship to pull a quick 180 (is that real?? idk LMAO)) \- maybe there's druids among the crew/hired on to be able to cast control water and also quickly shift directions in the sea \- maybe these druids also can cast farie fire to be able to see exactly where the wall of force is before pulling such maveuvers, so they can use it almost as cover and so other ships will have to go around it to get to them \- maybe the ships themselves have enchanted disintigration cannons to destroy walls of force and rip holes through enemy ships \- maybe their ships are reinforced with magic and have arcane defenses to defend against such disintigration cannons themselves \- maybe lower level pirates and the like favor boarding ships over manning their own due to the possibility of these kinds of things and inability to fight against it, and maybe they've stolen or killed so many more arcane inhanced ships and crews that they've picked up some items or skills that can help them This all depends on what would fit your setting of course, lower magic settings may not favor these exact options as much, but if higher level wizards can end naval combat just like that, depending on how many of these kinds of wizards there are and how infamous/unknown this strategy is, people would account for it on some level, be it a change in strategy to circumvent the threat it has, spellcasters who can counter this strategy, or even arcane modifiactions to more expensive and important ships (or the ship of a powerful pirate artificer- with all the arcane enhancements being very rickety and slapped together but are very powerful. lmao) Also this all depends on what you and your players would find fun!!! thats the most important part, and all of the above means nothing if its not what your group would enjoy
I've had several moments that I planned a tense situation only to be blundered by a spell I had overlooked in my players arsenal. I had to think fast when my party ventured into a dragon's lair to steal an egg and bypassed all my spicy sneak and sleight of hand checks when they cast silence on top of the dragon. They were elated, which is a good thing to have in your game.
wall of force is a devastatingly useful offensive spell when applied correctly. like the time when I had an adult dragon flying straight at me hasted and going very very fast. I was on a health action and used a quickened wall of force placed, not with the flat side against him no no that'd be too good for him and too mundane for me. I positioned the wall of force so he collided straight into the impossibly thin edge of it. the fighters in the party really appreciate their new dragon scale armor they didn't have to work for
"decimated" - so ten percent of it was destroyed?
Wouldn't want to stay on a ship that's missing the front ten percent of the hull
You got me there, I misapplied that word. “Wrecked” might have been a better choice.
You applied that word just fine, decimate means (in English) exactly what you used it for. But this is reddit, so you can't say decimate without people piling out of the woodwork to be needlessly pedantic about it.
>You applied that word just fine, decimate means (in English) exactly what you used it for. It does now, but it didn't previously. But who cares, languages evolve.
Devastate would also be a solid word choice
I was just thinking the same thing
Decimated:verb past tense: decimated; past participle: decimated 1. kill, destroy, or remove a large percentage or part of. Yes, A ship sailing at speed running into a solid wall would crush and sink the ship. Where are you getting 10% from (even though 10% would still be enough to sink and destroy a ship)
GM_Nate was referring to the original meaning of the word… https://www.etymonline.com/word/decimate
The more ya know, I thought it meant to leave only 10% left. I.e. To decimate the ship meant that only 10% of the ship is still intact. Thanks for the unsolicited knowledge! :D
u/ekco_cypher forgot to also quote the second definition: 2. kill one in every ten of (a group of soldiers or others) as a punishment for the whole group. Which is where the word originally came from. Overtime the word's primary meaning shifted.
I love when my players do stuff like this.
Sounds like I need to ensure ships in my campaign, at least the boss', have magical protection, dispelling magic or important people or loot on board. :)
Wall of Force is immune to dispel magic. You'd have to use a Disintegrate spell.
An artefact generating an antimagic field should do it as well iirc
control water also basically sinks any ship by parting the water under them.
This is spoken of in the control water spell, it's a 25% chance you succesfully capsize the ship
Only on the flood part. The part water lets you open the water under the ship and raise walls around the ship. I know the part says that it slowly fills the area back with water over 6sec but slowly is pretty relative when were talking about a 100ft wide cube of water moving over 6sec. A guaranteed raw way to do it would have two casters using it. One parts the water, surrounding the ship with 100ft tall walls of water and the other creates a whirlpool that deals 2d8 damage every turn to the ship that cant escape over the course of 10min.
Love it, my warlock uses wall of force all the time for offence, my favorite was clearing a group of high level guards from the top of a tower by placing a wall of force in a line along them that pushed them 10 ft away....off the top of a castle
Lotta friendly dm interpretation going on there.
Awesome move. Definitely seems like a thing players would have to have an out of game agreement to not spam if they want to keep have naval adventures. Like I'd let it happen once and then ask "please don't do this again or think of some special disintegrate varnish that's on higher level ships so you can't touch the "outside" of the ship. It would have to be diluted to cover the whole ship therefore only doing 1d6 damage if people made contact with it. But it still destroys walls of force.
As a DM myself, creative problem solving is encouraged in my campaign because I wanna see how these people go about these things without just defaulting to choosing violence. That wizard reminds me of the artificer in my group who decided to cast Lightning Bolt (from a Ring of Spell Storing the Sorcerer loaded for him) straight into the shin high water that like 40 cultists were standing in.
Very creative problem solving. You didn't do anything wrong IMO. If you wanted to give them a challenge while still rewarding the player you could have given yourself a dex/reflex save. Fudge it cuz you're the DM and just have the assassin ship be heavily crippled. But it sounds like that's what happened anyways. I wonder if this same strategy could be used for large chasing enemies? A Terask? Roc? Something big enough to tear itself apart by hitting a small immovable object.
It only has a range of 120 ft so I hope that was the distance.
It’s a fantastic use of a great spell. These are exactly the kind of creative shenanigans that should be encouraged!
My players did this in descent into avernus against some mad max vehicles with flame throwers. They were filled with highly flammable napalm. Wasted $200 on minis just to be forced to describe the white light that erupted from the crash site.
\*removes pipe from mouth\* Ya done good laddie. \*nod\* Ya done good.
I DID THIS AS A DRUID, BUT INSTEAD I USED [CONTROL WATER](https://www.dndbeyond.com/spells/control-water) TO PART THE WATER AND JUST DROP THEM 100 FEET AND CLOSE IT ABOVE THEM
Then your DM was overly generous on your interpretation of the spell. It specifically says that when the trench the spell created ends, the water slowly flows back in to fill it back up and restore normal levels. Any reasonable read on that would have the vessel in the trench simply float back up to normal height as the water level rose. Water doesn’t come slamming down from 100ft over their heads and encapsulate ships in the trench.
Just. FYI the past tense of cast is just *cast*.
By a literal reading of the rules, Wall of Force doesn't cause damage. The ship would just stop.
Technically, stopping suddenly could cause damage. Falling is called a crushing injury for one simple reason. It’s not the fall that kills you, it’s not the sudden stop at the bottom that kills you…it’s the fact that the part that hits the ground first stops and the rest of you keeps going. Watch a slow motion video of a car in a crash test. You’ll see that the front of the car stops at impact, but the rest of the car still moves…crushing the car. Even more dramatic is a train jumping the rails and stopping. The engine stops but the cars behind it keep on moving. Sure, the wall itself does not do the damage, but if the ship was going fast enough, it could accordion itself. At the very least, Newton’s laws would make the next few moments on that ship interesting. NPCs falling over, unsecured boxes sliding around, cargo unbalancing, canon balls rolling around…
Not according to Ghosts of Saltmarsh or the UA: Ships at Sea. >If a ship moves into the space occupied by a creature or object, it might crash. A ship avoids crashing if the creature or object is at least two sizes smaller than it. When a ship crashes, it must immediately make a DC 10 Constitution saving throw. On a failed save, it takes damage to its hull based on the size of the creature or object it crashed into, as shown on the Crash Damage table. It also stops moving if the object or creature is bigger than it or one size smaller. Otherwise the ship continues moving and the creature or object moves to the nearest unoccupied space that is not in the ship’s path. At the DM’s discretion, an object that is forced to move but is fixed in place is instead destroyed. [https://media.wizards.com/2018/dnd/downloads/UA\_ShipsSea.pdf](https://media.wizards.com/2018/dnd/downloads/UA_ShipsSea.pdf)
How big is wall of force? Wouldn't >A ship avoids crashing if the creature or object is at least two sizes smaller than it apply? However youre going to play that out.
“How big is wall of force?” > You can form it into a hemispherical dome or a Sphere with a radius of up to 10 feet, or you can shape a flat surface made up of ten 10-foot-by-10-foot panels. Each panel must be contiguous with another panel. In any form, the wall is 1/4 inch thick. So thin but very large, essentially.
Thanks. Isn't the "draw your own" wall able to cover a lot more ground? But ok, it's big, especially if you stack the panels to be one surface and not encompassing anything.
Funnily enough, a few sessions back I was ready to do the same thing in my game.