Cloister - How does it work?

[D.One]

We've been back to epic spells in another thread and I am again curious: How does cloister work, in game mechanics?

We know that it:

- Blocks divination magic below epic
- Blocks communication magic below epic
- Blocks transportation magic below epic
- Has an exception for summoning spells
- Has a duration of 1 week/caster level
- Needs a specific focus (Dorukan's Headband)
- Affects a huge area (An entire fortress, or even an entire city and its surroundings) and each and every creatures inside of the area.

Has anyone in any thread tried to build it within the Epic Spells' systen? I have my own ideas, but I'd like to see what's been done before I delve deeper into numbers.

[D.One]

OK, noboby came with any ideas, so I'll just go on and expose mine. It's crude, and we don't have really anything to confirm or deny it, but I think of these speculation more in the line of a spellbuilding exercise.

To build Cloister, I would star with the Conceal (DC 17) and the Ward (DC 14) Epic Seeds, taking Ward as the base seed, because of its area effect and longer base duration, as well as because Cloister have been said to be an abjuration spell.

I'd go with a +6 DC in Conceal to make it capable of blocking divination, and another (ad hoc) +6 DC to make it capable of completely blocking (no check needed) any divination bellow epic.

I'd go with an (ad hoc) +15 DC in Ward in order for it to block communication and transportation entering the area (we've had evidence of both communication and transportation exiting it, as well as transportaion within it).

Now, let's increase the area of the spell. Ward gives us a base are of 10 ft radius. Let's say a 6 mile radius is enough to encompass a city as big as Azure City and its surroundings (some big modern day cities can be covered by such an area). It means multiplying the base area by a factor of about 3000. Let's make it an (ad hoc again) +40 DC.

About the duration, Ward's base duration is 24 hours. We need a 1 week per level duration. Assuming a base level for calculations of 20 (most epic seeds do that), we would need to multiply the base duration by a factor of 140. Let's make it another (ad hoc) +30 DC.

The spell requires an unique focus. According to the Book of Exalted Deeds, a "Vow of Poverty" character could substitute 5 gp in material components for 1 xp. Considering Dorukan's Headband as a 5000 focus, let's make it equivalent to a 1000 xp spending, and make it an (ad hoc) -10 DC.

I have currently no real thoughts about casting time. It could be as low as 1 round (+18 DC) or as high as 10 minutes (-18 DC), but I have no evidence, so I opted, for now, to stick with the 1-minute default.

For now, I'm stuck with a DC of 17+14+6+6+15+40+30-10 = 118.

It's a bit high, and I've already made some guesses here.

Any thoughts about it?

[Quild]

Now, let's increase the area of the spell. Ward gives us a base are of 10 ft radius. Let's say a 6 mile radius is enough to encompass a city as big as Azure City and its surroundings (some big modern day cities can be covered by such an area). It means multiplying the base area by a factor of about 3000. Let's make it an (ad hoc again) +40 DC.

How do you figure?

Precision:
While discussing an anti-familicide with area effect, someone explained that the "increase range of 100%" is additive and not multiplicative.

[D.One]

How do you figure?

Precision:
While discussing an anti-familicide with area effect, someone explained that the "increase range of 100%" is additive and not multiplicative.

It is additive, +4 for each +100%. I based my assumption on the Eclipse SRD spell, which uses "Factors: increase mass by 1,000% (+40 DC), spread mass into paper-thin disk (ad hoc +2 DC)" to cover a 5-mile radius.

I know it rellies on a completely different game mechanics, but I thought +40 (equivalent to +1000%, or a factor of x11) was a sufficiently big number to represent "one entire city". It's not really precise, but I think it's reasonable. By all means, feel free to suggest any better ideas.

[Jasdoif]

Now, let's increase the area of the spell. Ward gives us a base are of 10 ft radius. Let's say a 6 mile radius is enough to encompass a city as big as Azure City and its surroundings (some big modern day cities can be covered by such an area). It means multiplying the base area by a factor of about 3000. Let's make it an (ad hoc again) +40 DC.

There are specific factors for increasing an area: +4 for each 100% increase in area. Fairly sure it's not kosher to ad hoc in that case. Now, verdigris suggests applying this to the radius is perfectly valid, which of course is exponentially less than doing so with the area....

A six mile radius would be 31,680 feet. So that's 3,168 times your base factor, for a 316,700% increase, for a +12,668 increase in your DC.

And now you see why comprehensive interpretations of Cloister using the epic spell rules/guidelines are not easy to find

[D.One]

A six mile radius would be 31,680 feet. So that's 3,168 times your base factor, for a 316,700% increase, for a +12,668 increase in your DC.

And now you see why comprehensive interpretations of Cloister using the epic spell rules/guidelines are not easy to find

Yeah, I kind of had seen that... hence, the number o "ad hoc"s

As you've noticed, changing the scale of the area (feet to miles) is the biggest problem here, thanks to the aditive progression of the area increases.

The same occurs with the duration, because, if I go with the aditive progression, it will end up more expensive than if I simply make it permanent.

I know that, without further info from The Giant (and I sincerely doubt we will have any on the matter), what I'm trying to do here is less Class and Level Geekery and more speculation.

EDIT: I wonder if, post-Seventh Book, The Giant would be interested in releasing a OotS DnD 3.5/Pathfinder supplement...

[Jasdoif]

I wonder if, post-Seventh Book, The Giant would be interested in releasing a OotS DnD 3.5/Pathfinder supplement...

He's said otherwise.

[Jasdoif]

Been thinking about this some more in the past couple weeks...and ultimately, I don't think the spell being wholly developed spell is at all likely. Because if Xykon could develop a spell that blocks divination and teleportation into a large area for weeks, he could instead use the Energy seed and develop a spell that fills a large area with continual fire damage that lasts for weeks; which would be far more in line with how Xykon likes to operate.

So the only way I can see this possibly fitting in with the epic spell rules...Is if Dorukan found some sort of shortcut in the nature of the universe, that trivializes the effort involved in shielding an area from divination and teleportation entering it.

Based on this being tied to the fabric of multiverse (or at least the Material Plane), Dorukan and Lirian's work on sealing the rifts, and the quiescence of the rift in Azure City....I'm going to posit that the gods introduced some "backdoors" while recreating the world, failsafes to use if they needed to keep the Snarl from being able to sense or move through new rifts on its own, and both Cloister and the Gates themselves make use of them.

[Lord Torath]

Is the Snarl affected by Cloister? Dorukan kept it running on his dungeon, and no one's been back to check on the rift in the ruins of his dungeon, so we don't know if The Snarl's be sending tendrils through there. I doubt anyone's been back to check on Lirian's rift, either. So could Xykon's Cloister be the reason The Snarl hasn't emerged from the Azure City rift? It just doesn't know the rift exists?

[D.One]

It indeed seems to exist some difference beetween the rift where Cloister was cast (Azure City) and the one not protected by it (Girard's gate), since the "Snarl" bursted from the latter, but not from the first one (yet). Unfortunatelly, we know nothing about Lirian's or Dorukan's gates' situation, to make more enlightened comparisons.

As for Cloister, the spell itself, building it "in the system" seems to be a nearly impossible task without any more intel from The Giant. There are, as noticed, too many variables to nail it precisely.

Anything I did here would be "D.One's Cloister", not really "Cloister".

[Psyren]

The biggest unknown when creating Cloister is what effect Dorukan's headband/circlet had on it. Clearly it is part of the spell - both times we see it cast, the headband is worn by the caster, and it lights up - which would make it relevant in some way. And Xykon's quip prior to casting it suggests he would be unable to do so without it.

Whether this means the headband is a critical mitigating factor that the spell needs to function, a mere nice-to-have focus, or even a major artifact that contains the entire epic spell within it and Xykon ddn't need to develop it at all, is completely up in the air.

[littlebum2002]

The biggest unknown when creating Cloister is what effect Dorukan's headband/circlet had on it. Clearly it is part of the spell - both times we see it cast, the headband is worn by the caster, and it lights up - which would make it relevant in some way. And Xykon's quip prior to casting it suggests he would be unable to do so without it.

Whether this means the headband is a critical mitigating factor that the spell needs to function, a mere nice-to-have focus, or even a major artifact that contains the entire epic spell within it and Xykon ddn't need to develop it at all, is completely up in the air.

Xykon already said it's just the focus for the spell. At least he guessed it was but it was sort of implied that he was correct.

[D.One]

I'm really sorry that I missed the opportunity to ask something about Cloister in the Interview - when I noticed the thread, it was already closed. We might have got some bit of intel to narrow down our work here.

[Psyren]

Xykon already said it's just the focus for the spell. At least he guessed it was but it was sort of implied that he was correct.

That only eliminates one option (artifact that casts the spell outright.) That doesn't tell us whether it is DC -25, or DC -25,000.

[D.One]

That only eliminates one option (artifact that casts the spell outright.) That doesn't tell us whether it is DC -25, or DC -25,000.

Or DC -0. The SRD Epic Spell Rules doesn't have a topic for itens as a needed focus for a spell. Any modifier here is ad hoc.

[littlebum2002]

That only eliminates one option (artifact that casts the spell outright.) That doesn't tell us whether it is DC -25, or DC -25,000.

Or DC -0. The SRD Epic Spell Rules doesn't have a topic for itens as a needed focus for a spell. Any modifier here is ad hoc.

This. I'm just curious, what makes you think there's any DC change at all for the focus? I'd off the bat assume it's just like every other focus: needed for the spell, but that's it.

[Psyren]

Or DC -0. The SRD Epic Spell Rules doesn't have a topic for itens as a needed focus for a spell. Any modifier here is ad hoc.

Right, it could be that as well. Which means we have no way of calculating Cloister's definitive DC is all I'm saying.

This. I'm just curious, what makes you think there's any DC change at all for the focus? I'd off the bat assume it's just like every other focus: needed for the spell, but that's it.

If an expensive material component can be treated as an ad-hoc mitigating factor (e.g. Mummy Dust) then an expensive focus can too. The epic spell rules mention numbers for neither. Without knowing how valuable Dorukan's headband was, we can't come up with a figure for how it affected the calculation.

[D.One]

Ok, people, it seems we have little chance of having any further info on the (game rules) details of Cloister. That said, I’ll change the approach here and straight up develop a version of the spell within certain premises. Let’s call it “D.One’s Cloister”, as I’ve mentioned earlier. Let’s say D.One, a wizard that has been travelling through many worlds in the multiverse, happened to visit OotS-world, and picked some scriptures with clues about Cloister, and then decided to try to re-develop it from scratch. The goal is just trying to come close to effect in the strip, without the (impossible) goal of being that spell.

Those are the premises:
1) Blocks divination magic below epic
2) Blocks communication magic below epic
3) Blocks transportation magic below epic
4) Has an exception for summoning spells
5) Has a duration of 1 week/caster level
6) Needs a specific focus (Headband)
7) Affects a huge area (An entire fortress, or even an entire city and its surroundings) and each and every creatures inside of the area.
8) Must have a Spellcraft DC of 71.

Let me explain that last one: My assumption here is that Xykon is a 27th level sorcerer (enough for him to be able to do most of the things he’s been seen doing), with 30 ranks in Spellcraft, a +4 sinergy bonus from 25 ranks in knowledge arcana, a +3 bonus from Skill Focus: Spellcraft, a +10 bonus from Epic Skill Focus: Spellcraft and a +4 bonus from INT 18 (I assume he is pretty smart, despite not showing that frequently, and most of the time assuming a lazy attitude). All that added brings us to a check modifier of +51, that, added to a roll of a natural 20, would be enough to succeed in a 71 DC roll. I believe our lich employs some magical items that can improve his results in the check, but I’ll assume that those items will be there to make his chance of success greater than mere 5% (natural 20), not to increase even further the possible DC of the spell.

I will repeat some of the things I detailed before, trying to elaborate further on then, and improve some points.

Let’s start with the Ward (DC 14) Epic Seed as the base seed of our spell, since Cloister is an abjuration spell. Based on the “Setting Epic Seed Spellcraft DCs”, we can deduce that the basis for the Ward seed is a 1st level abjuration spell. Since we want our epic spell to function akin to Dimensional Lock (in order to fulfill premise 3), which is a 8th level abjuration spell, we should add an (ad hoc) modifier of +14 (+2/spell level) here. However, Cloister does seem to permit teleportation out and within, which would male it weaker than Dimensional Lock at that, so let’s make the modifier +12 instead.

Since, in order to fulfill premise 2, we need the spell to block communication as well. Let’s see what spells we already have that could do the trick. Antimagic Field (a 6th level abjuration) can indeed block magical communication into and out of its area (among other things), so a weaker version of it, capable of blocking communication only, and blocking only communication from the outside (leaving communication within the area and inside-out unhampered) should do the trick, and be about +6 DC to Ward’s base DC.

Let’s add the Conceal (DC 17) epic seed, and add the +6 DC modifier that lets it block divination. The Conceal seed still allows for a dispute between caster levels for a divination to affect the target or area, which is not in line with Cloister’s more absolute (“No non-epic”) approach. Since DC 23 denotes a 5th level spell, and Mind Blank, a spell which completely blocks non epic divinations (including Discern Location), is a 8th level spell, a +6 modifier would be enough. Mind Blank, however, blocks also all mind-affecting spells and effects, which is far more powerful than what we need, so let’s lower the (ad hoc) modifier for “completely blocks non-epic divination, no check needed” to +4.

The exception to summoning spells doesn’t seem to deserve any modifier, and the ability to target “the area and every living target within it” seems to deserve an ad hoc modifier of +2, just for the extra hardness.

That said, effect alone, we have a Spellcraft DC of 61.

Now we get to the area and duration, the tricky parts.

Area first. Cloister’s area is, as Celia said, “up to several miles wide”. We have a base area of 10-ft radius for Ward, and each 100% increase in area should cost a +2 DC modifier. Since we are changing the scales from feet to miles, the DC cost for that would be enormous – “unfeasibly” enormous – which make me think maybe we can employ an ad hoc modifier to change the scale here.

We can use two situations as basis for that. First, the non-epic spell Control Weather (7th level), which affects a 2-miles-radius circle. Comparing it with the spells Obscuring Mist (1st level, 20-ft radius area) and Sleet Storm (3rd level, 40-ft radius area), both of which interfere with environmental conditions and whose effects could be reasonably emulated by Control Weather, we see that, in the worst case, a difference of 6 in spell level (+12 in DC) lead to a complete change of scale in the area, from 20-ft radius to 2-miles radius.

Besides that, we have an epic example, the Eclipse spell. It causes a sort-of darkness effect, even though a weaker one, that does not block torches, low light vision, light spells, etc. It combines a +40 DC (to increase mass from conjure) and an ad hoc +2 DC (to spread mass into paper-thin 5-mile radius disk) to increase the natural darkness area from 20-ft radius (if it used the “Change from target to area” modifier of +10 DC) to a 5-miles radius, which I think was kind of cheating. It is, however, official cheating. We can say the Eclipse spell used a modifier for the Spellcraft DC of +32 to change the scale of the area.

Combining the two approaches, we could say that an ad hoc modifier of +30 to the Spellcraft DC could be “Changes base area from 10-ft radius to 1-mile radius”, and then we could add “Increase area by 100%” 3 times, for another +12 to the DC, thus bringing our cloister to a 4-miles radius area for a total of +42 in Spellcraft DC.

Let’s talk about duration. Conceal's base duration (the smallest) is 200 minutes, and our goal is a duration of 1 week per caster level. We must first change a fixed duration to a “per caster level” duration. When we look at the modifiers for changing the shape of the area, we see that, with a +4 DC modifier, we change between “equivalent” areas, so it’s reasonable to apply the same principle here: a +4 DC modifier to change a duration from a fixed 200 minutes to a duration of 10 minutes per caster level.

Now we have to increase this duration. 1 week is more than 1000 times greater than 10 minutes, so we are again facing a “change of scale” problem. We have two situations where such a change occurs.

The Persistent Spell feat, with a spell level increase of +6 (+12 DC), changes the duration of certain spells to 24 hours (which can be considered roughly equivalent to 1 hour/level). Most of the spells affected by Persistent spell have durations of 1 round/level, 1 minute/level or 10 minutes/level.

The Charm Person (1st level) spell has a duration of 1 hour/level, and the Dominate Person spell (5th level), which also has a stronger effect, has a duration of 1 day/ level, meaning this increase of +4 in spell level (+8 DC) resulted in another change of scale for duration.

Combining both approaches, we can have an ad hoc modifier of +20 to the Spellcraft DC that changes the duration from 10 minutes/level to 1 day/level.

We must, now, use 6 “increase duration by 100%” modifiers, to an additional +12 to the Spellcraft DC, bringing the duration to 1 week/level for a total “cost” of +36 to the Spellcraft DC.

Our “D.One’s Cloister” is now at DC 139 for the Spellcraft check.

Let’s first change the casting time, from the base 1 minute casting time to a 10-minutes casting time (-18 DC). It’s not too long, and this is not a spell to be cast during combat, so it seems reasonable to have a longer casting time.

The spell requires an unique focus. The spell Mummy Dust lists “expensive material component” as a -4 ad hoc modifier. By comparison, we could rule that an unique focus could be worth an ad hoc -10 DC.

We can’t use backlash damage here (since we didn’t see Xykon or Dorukan take any damage when casting the spell), nor we can employ additional casters burning spell slots, since both of them cast the spell alone.

Now we will “jump some sharks”. Until now, we’ve only seen Cloister being cast in the vicinity of a gate or a “snarl rift”. I’ll go along with Jasdoif’s theory and assume Cloister is only possible because it employs some of the raw magical energies that leak from the gate or the rifts.

The Let Go off Me epic spell has a “limited circumstance” ad hoc modifier of -8 DC, and its restriction is that it only works on targets grappling the caster. Raise Island has a “sort of” circumstance modifier of “spell only works on liquid” for a -20 DC. I believe “only works in the vicinity of a tear in the fabric of the world itself” is worth a bigger modifier. How much bigger? Well, let’s just say double it, and make “only works in the vicinity of a tear in the fabric of the world itself” worth of a -40 DC modifier.

All that brings us to a 71 Spellcraft DC, which was our target. Thus, we have:

D.One’s Cloister
Abjuration
Spellcraft DC: 71
Components: V, S, Unique Focus
Range: 0 ft.
Area: Circle of 4-miles radius
Duration: 1 week/caster level
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: Yes
To Develop: 639,000 gp; 13 days; 25,560 XP. Seeds: Ward (DC 14), Conceal (DC 17). Factors: prevents non-epic transportation magic (except summoning) from the outside to the inside of the area (+12 DC ad hoc), blocks non-epic communication magic (+6 DC ad hoc), blocks divination magic (+6 DC), completely blocks non-epic divination magic (+4 DC ad hoc), targets both the area and all and every living creature in the area (+2 DC ad hoc), changes base area from 10-ft radius to 1-mile radius (+30 DC ad hoc), change radius to 4 mile (+12 DC), change the base duration from a fixed 200 minutes to a base duration of 10 minutes per caster level (+4 DC ad hoc), changes the base duration from 10 minutes/level to 1 day/level (+20 DC ad hoc), increase duration to 1 week per caster level (+12 DC). Mitigating factors: increase casting time by 9 minutes (–18 DC), requires an unique focus (Dorukan’s headband) (-10 DC ad hoc), only works in the vicinity of a tear in the fabric of the world (-40 DC ad hoc).


So, that's it. What do you think? Any suggestions?