Watchdog spell and "hostile intent"

[naloth]

Originally Posted by Purple Snit

It states that it alerts to "anyone or anyyhing crossing with hostile intent". Intentions after crossing don't matter, so an intruder who startles and attacks won't trigger it.
Arrows from afar don't have "intent", they are inanimate objects; the people firing them have intent, but didn't cross it.
It isn't an omnipotent panacea against getting attacked while sleeping, it's intended like an alarm on your house, which won't pick up an intruder in the yard, only one who enters.
It's also "magic", so it works in magical ways, which aren't often logical ones.
If they want more security, post a watch, or get a dog. But there's no perfect protection against danger, which is as it should be.

That's too lawyer-ish for my taste. The prereq is Danger Sense so I'd suggest it alarms on things that Danger Sense would normally trigger on. Arrows, falling trees, or attack spells cast on the camp should trigger it. Anything that's going to attack such as aggressive animals, zombies, and golems seem like fair game too. Animals that wouldn't otherwise attack unless threatened and random strangers would be a judgement call. Someone friendly that crosses wouldn't trigger it, even though that person could turn hostile if provoked.

[RGTraynor]

Originally Posted by mburr0003

I found this spell caused too many arguments, not due to "poor GM interpretation" but due to "poor Player reading skills".

The event that triggered this change was that the party was ambushed by enemies firing into their camp, at night, from outside the boundary of the Watchdog spell. The Player who cast Watchdog thought it should detect the arrows and stones raining down on them...

I told him to reread the spell, he did and still argued it. The group then decided it was a 'kinda rubbish spell if it can't alert the caster to this type of ambush".

Sounds more like a group bound and determined to be nitpicky rules lawyers. I might well have ultimately responded with "Fine. Given the range of Watchdog, and the speed of an arrow's flight, the caster has about a fifth of a second's warning about the arrows that are in the process of peppering you all, in less time than it took me to get the word 'Given' out of my mouth."

[ehrbar]

"Well, see, as inanimate objects, the arrows don't have intent, hostile or not" seems like nothing more than a rules-lawyerly exercise to try to read the words "or anything" out of the spell text. They were a thing that was sent into the area with hostile intent, so the spell triggers.

Given the flight time of the arrow, I doubt it actually does much good.

[Anaraxes]

So, for the sake of clarity, replace the arrow with a timed bomb tossed through the spell boundary. Maybe it goes off in a hour.

If the Watchdog doesn't awaken anyone ("the bomb has no intent"), the mad bomber what bombs at midnight gets away and the bomb later explodes, doing whatever damage it does. If the Watchdog goes off when the bomb sails through ("it was delivered as an intended attack"), the party is alerted and has time to escape, defuse the bomb, chase down their assailants, or whatever.

[RGTraynor]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

So, for the sake of clarity, replace the arrow with a timed bomb tossed through the spell boundary. Maybe it goes off in a hour.

If the Watchdog doesn't awaken anyone ("the bomb has no intent"), the mad bomber what bombs at midnight gets away and the bomb later explodes, doing whatever damage it does. If the Watchdog goes off when the bomb sails through ("it was delivered as an intended attack"), the party is alerted and has time to escape, defuse the bomb, chase down their assailants, or whatever.

Well, look. There are a lot of participants in this forum. I doubt that there is any spell that one or more of us are unable to pervert, subvert, weasel-word or otherwise fold/spindle/mutilate into some scenario that either sabotages or enshrines it. Unlike with Mburr's group, I don't presume that a spell is useless just because it doesn't do everything I want it to do, and I certainly don't think -- for instance -- that the Watchdog spell is flawed because there might be the 1/10th of 1% of campaigns in which it coexists with time bombs, for pity's sake.

[Polydamas]

And again, its magic! Fickle or alien is the whole point!

[mburr0003]

Originally Posted by ehrbar

"Well, see, as inanimate objects, the arrows don't have intent, hostile or not" seems like nothing more than a rules-lawyerly exercise...

Watchdog is a spell that requires only Magery 0, has a single prerequisite, and is fairly inexpensive.

You argue for expanding the the scope of the of spell, outside of this board I've only ever seen the opposite from other GMs.

As well I take "or anything" when coupled with "hostile intent" to reference that which can have intent, but which would not be described as an "anyone" (so say, demons, monsters, wolves, mindless undead, etc).

Not that a rockslide that crosses the boundary has hostile intent. Or as you take exception to, arrows from afar.


Note, one of the rewordings I also offered the group had it detecting when danger crossed the boundary, but that was rejected. What we went with expanded the utility of the spell while eliminating vagueness.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

If it's going to attack the PCs it's hostile. If it's not going to attack it's not hostile. The Sell is endowed with the GM's meta-omniscience.

Usually you would use a Reaction Roll to determine how they would react, but you don't actually make that roll until the encounter happens so you know what modifiers would be in play.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Plane

Usually you would use a Reaction Roll to determine how they would react, but you don't actually make that roll until the encounter happens so you know what modifiers would be in play.

Yes, but you (the GM) make that Reaction Roll. The dice aren't actually hiding anything from you or controlling what you do. Trying to say "Well, they weren't hostile when they crossed the perimeter of the Watchdog. They only became hostile after they did that" is .......oh let's remember the Forum rules and call it bad GM'ing.

Besides, it wouldn't matter. Watchdog is an area Spell with an ongoing Duration and if someone becomes hostile in that area the Spell is triggered then and that is still before the GM announces that the hostile has successfully attacked the PC.

The PC would wake immediately without being Stunned and get normal Defenses.(which might be poor for being prone in darkness and wrapped in a blanket). You can probably kill the PC anyway. You don't have to rules-lawyer him out of the benefits of his Spell.

[StevenH]

For context, the situation was this:

Party had camped out in ambush around one of many shrines in a river delta system. At some point during some night their quarry (a "necromancer", according to them) was going to visit the shrine and do Something. (They figured the necromancer was picking a random shrine to do his nightly rituals.)

They set up a Watchdog spell around the shrine, while they were hiding in their camouflaged hunter's blind, waiting for the necromancer to show up.

So far, so good.

However, the necromancer didn't know they were there, and his first reaction would be to run away; he wasn't interested in trying to hurt them. (Even if he wanted to, it was just him against four armed to the teeth adventurers, so he wouldn't have stood a chance.)

So it made me wonder if he would have triggered the spell. I don't think he would have, since he didn't have hostile intent (although technically he'd be hostile as soon as the party attacked him, but then it's a moot point.)

As it turns out, he heard them moving in the bushes and bailed before he crossed the Watchdog line. They chased him, and when they caught up to him, had him dying of a mortal gut wound within about three seconds. The broken leg didn't help, either.