Odd question: Move Terrain and permanent Sunlight, (or any other area enchantment).

Anaraxes · 04-11-2024, 04:00 PM

I'd lean toward assuming a magical metaphysic that the Continual Sunlight spell is attached to a location, rather than the contents of that location. That is, the spell's area is a place in space. (It's magic; we don't have to worry about planets rotating or revolving around their sun, or any of that sort of thing. If extra math floats your boat, feel free to have "a place" mean the complicated path of a continually moving point that conveniently maintains a fixed relationship to the continually moving place it was cast.) So, the new terrain is sunlit, if it's inside that original area. Terrain moved out is no longer lit. The area of the Continual Sunlight is independent on what happens to be inside that area; the light is just created in that area and falls on whatever it falls on.

An alternative metaphysic would be to assume that the ground in that area is temporarily enchanted so that sunlight falls on it. This would be the interpretation that leads to rulings that the sunlight follows the original dirt, or that you wind up with holes in the lit area where the original terrain used to be. I've no argument with people that want to the spell to work that way.

But one caution is that the same questions about moving the lit terrain would apply to every other object in that area. If a human in the area gets sunlit, and walks outside the area, do they have their own individual sunbeam following them around, while leaving a hole behind? Does the ground and the human standing on it each get their own sunbeam? Etc. I think this interpretation, where the light is attached to the thing it was illuminating when the spell was cast, is going to get more complicated. I'd rather keep it simple.

04-11-2024, 04:00 PM	#3
Anaraxes Join Date: Sep 2007	Re: Odd question: Move Terrain and permanent Sunlight, (or any other area enchantment I'd lean toward assuming a magical metaphysic that the Continual Sunlight spell is attached to a location, rather than the contents of that location. That is, the spell's area is a place in space. (It's magic; we don't have to worry about planets rotating or revolving around their sun, or any of that sort of thing. If extra math floats your boat, feel free to have "a place" mean the complicated path of a continually moving point that conveniently maintains a fixed relationship to the continually moving place it was cast.) So, the new terrain is sunlit, if it's inside that original area. Terrain moved out is no longer lit. The area of the Continual Sunlight is independent on what happens to be inside that area; the light is just created in that area and falls on whatever it falls on. An alternative metaphysic would be to assume that the ground in that area is temporarily enchanted so that sunlight falls on it. This would be the interpretation that leads to rulings that the sunlight follows the original dirt, or that you wind up with holes in the lit area where the original terrain used to be. I've no argument with people that want to the spell to work that way. But one caution is that the same questions about moving the lit terrain would apply to every other object in that area. If a human in the area gets sunlit, and walks outside the area, do they have their own individual sunbeam following them around, while leaving a hole behind? Does the ground and the human standing on it each get their own sunbeam? Etc. I think this interpretation, where the light is attached to the thing it was illuminating when the spell was cast, is going to get more complicated. I'd rather keep it simple.