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Originally Posted by VariousRen
1) a shallow dome (arch in rotation) that supported the 2nd story floor, which would be visible from the 1st story. This turns the tensile stress on the mortar into compression stress on the actual stone. Removing part of the dome would be a bad idea, the floor should be heavily compromised. Note that even if the floor collapses the walls of the tower will remain standing, and the upper floors will be fine.
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I like this answer. Having the floor collapse while the rest of the structure remains standing is a good narrative consequence, and will inject a bit of fear to both halves of the party (those on the first floor from the stones falling towards their heads and those on the second floor from the stones suddenly failing to support them). Thank you for this!
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Originally Posted by malloyd
The tower itself should be fine, the stresses causing it to stand up should be carried in the walls, not the intermediate floors. This is generally true, putting holes big enough for humans to fit through in the wall of anything really ought to require an Architecture roll to not bring part of the structure down and fill said hole and the surrounding area with rubble.
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Funny story, the half-elf leading the charge up the ladder to the second floor has Architecture, but she failed her roll when asked by the ritual air mage if disintegrating part of the floor/ceiling would be okay, to which I responded, "You're quite sure it will be fine." I feel like proceeding with this course of action was appropriate given the failed roll to discern that something might go amiss.
Quote:
Originally Posted by malloyd
The ceiling/floor that has been compromised might come down - timescale on that could be seconds (or less) - but since that amounts to the party mostly dies (and the enemies on the upper floor may have a reasonable shot at survival even if they are in a self sacrificing mood) you probably don't want to do that.
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Agreed. TPK is not what I'm going for here, but I feel like some consequences are warranted.
Quote:
Originally Posted by malloyd
If you want to discourage this sort of exploit in the future, you can go with some local weakening - have just a bit of the surrounding structure collapse on the caster immediately, inflicting a die or two of damage, and the floor give way under anybody who enters a hex adjacent to the hole (dropping them out of the fight for a while and inflicting the 1 story falling damage, and widening the danger zone) from there on out.
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This is a good idea for future applications of this spell in precarious situations like this. I appreciate the suggestion!