Buried alive - Need Help

[mlangsdorf]

Plan 4: Walk-Out. Force Dome has a base cost of 3 and a 10 minute duration. The wizard can cast a radius 4 Force Dome for 11 FP, which covers 7 hexes and prevents the monsters from entering it. He recovers 9 FP before the duration expires, and the cleric recovers 2 FP (or more) in the same time period. Force Domes can be cast inside of each other, so everyone can just crowd up against the walls while the wizard casts another.

They only cover 5 yards every 10 minutes this way, but they can see where they're going and only casting 6 spells an hour. It takes a day and half to cover the 500 yards, but they only cast 100 spells and the chance of disastrous critical failure is under 5%. And even if the wizard does forget how to cast Force Dome, you can always fall back to tunneling with plan 3b.

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by Culture20

What are the acid spiders eating that there are so many so large?

Adventurers, obviously.

[Daigoro]

It seems to me that Shape Earth would be more efficient than Earth to Air for tunnelling (unless someone said that before).

Other ideas- make a stone bunker, not attached to the ground, then Shape Earth to drag it to an exit as the PC's shuffle along inside.

Kill a few acid spiders, then drape the PC's in the corpses- Walking Dead style.
If the corpse or blood is corrosive, maybe Apport them into a shell of spider bodies, shuffle along inside as before.

[gudmo]

The Shape Earth vs Earth to Air issue depends greatly on wether the GM allows the target of shape stone to shift from one cy to another cy.

If not (As might be in this case) this means 1 casting per minute, the GM in question might take delight in critical failures (part of the reason why we're there in the first place) and as such this might not be a good idea.

These spiders are the Acid Spiders from Dungeon Fantasy Monsters except these have Armor Piercing bite (3) which makes them extremely deadly.

Their numbers (300+) and their size (SM +0) plus their long legs as per monster description makes any running next to impossible.

Still many constructive ideas here, tonight is the night :D

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by gudmo

The Shape Earth vs Earth to Air issue depends greatly on wether the GM allows the target of shape stone to shift from one cy to another cy.

The 2nd paragraph of the Shape Earth spell specifically talks about the Move of earth and stone, so I don't see how that should be an issue. If he's against the mass transport of the material, you could still say you're shaping flat stone into a trench with a stone canopy, but all in the same hex. Earth to Air would be required for tunnelling into a solid mountain, not along a stone surface where the material has somewhere to go.

[gudmo]

Well the spell does say you can move 1 cy of material.. But it is implied and perhaps up to debate if this material is always the same during the spells duration. i.e. you cannot move material away for example to create a tunnel but you can select a 1 cy of stone and shape that any way you want.

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by gudmo

The Shape Earth vs Earth to Air issue depends greatly on wether the GM allows the target of shape stone to shift from one cy to another cy.

If not (As might be in this case) this means 1 casting per minute, the GM in question might take delight in critical failures (part of the reason why we're there in the first place) and as such this might not be a good idea.

These spiders are the Acid Spiders from Dungeon Fantasy Monsters except these have Armor Piercing bite (3) which makes them extremely deadly.

Their numbers (300+) and their size (SM +0) plus their long legs as per monster description makes any running next to impossible.

Still many constructive ideas here, tonight is the night :D

I agree with Daigoro, the text in the spell talks about moving stone around to try and cover targets etc to me that infers you can shape and move this stone to flow around and through the intervening space.

So I think it would be reasonable to say you can move stone from one area to another and have the party in the intervening space. Now you'll have to create an initial area to be your dump space to do that (with Stone to Air). But once you've done that I think you should be able to have a bubble of space the party occupies that is moved forward by taking stone from the front and adding it to the back.

You'll need to refresh the air of course (and you need to take the barbarian with you).

Now weather your GM agrees is another matter of course!


As to running and acid spiders, the SM+2 ones are Mv9 or super jump 10 yards, so yeah I wouldn't fancy trying to beat one in a race, but if you're trying to cut down on your magic mining time, i'd think getting out the immediate vicinity sneaking a bit you should have enough of a head start if it comes to a mad dash. (worst case scenario is to bury yourself again I guess)

They have a perception of 12 , 360 and infra vision so yeah that's pretty good for spotting your heat signatures in a cold cavern. But a bit of distance and the range penalties will kick in.

What might help is they only have infravision so when you do come up int the cavern away from the grouped, waiting spiders you could maybe create intervening rock formations that will mask your heat signatures. What's the cavern like does it have rock formations in it or is completely empty and open?


Maybe you can spoof them by creating a heat signature away from you, they are IQ5 and "wild animal" afterall. Now I'm not very good on GURPS spells so you may not being able to create fires far away enough from you to do that.

But what's the entrance you came through like, can you seal it up behind quickly if you need to?

Anyway good luck, and let us know how it works out!

[gudmo]

Accoding to Basic Set Infravision lets one see into the infrared spectrum and the "option" of seeing only in Infravision is a 0 point limitation.
The description in DF Monsters doesn't state this limitation so I assume they see both.

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by gudmo

Accoding to Basic Set Infravision lets one see into the infrared spectrum and the "option" of seeing only in Infravision is a 0 point limitation.
The description in DF Monsters doesn't state this limitation so I assume they see both.

Well I could make some vague zoological argument for why giant acid spider's infravision should be heat only, but lets face it it's better to assume the worst!


But TBH unless this cavern in well lit, that's not really going to help them spot you at a distance anyway (their better off with infravision vs. heat signatures against a cold back ground).

If it is dark what are you using to see your way?

[JoelSammallahti]

I thought you were really buried alive and thought the SJGames GURPS Forum was the best place to ask for help. Like you called the police already and your family but they all thought it was a prank call and Facebook just landed you a bunch of likes and snarky comments and now this forum is your last chance.