Data point. Force cage lasts 2 hours per caster level. V is a reliable level 17.
Holy crap, these are powerful characters.
But she’s lost her 9th level spell slot.
“Thor’s ding-a-ling”? What a wimpy dwarf.
What’s it going to take to dispel that Forcecage? If they wait until it expires, Durkula and co. have no opposition to their plan to rig the vote.
V can dismiss the Forcecage. S/he didn’t do it for the sake of the joke. I expect it’ll be done next strip, but hopefully after they’ve done some planning and preparation.
As far as V’s level goes, there is the Ioun stone that Blackwing is wearing. It should boost V’s caster level by one. The question is whether V took that into account when s/he came up with the 34-hour duration. If not, then it’ll actually be 36 hours and V is level 17. Otherwise V is only level 16.
One possibility is that Elan can cast Mass Cure Light Wounds on all the vampires from within the Forcecage. He should be able to cast it 2 or 3 times. Since their attackers are almost all just spawn, that might be enough to take out most of them.
V has to have been taking the stone into account. Level 17 is a Big Friggin’ Deal for a spellcaster, and if e were that high, we’d have some more dramatic indication. E’s also superhumanly intelligent, and so wouldn’t forget a detail like that.
That was an extremely foolish action to cage themselves in at all, especially with the solid version, and especially with only one vampire in with them, and especially since that spell costs 1500 GP per casting. But then, that’s a sign of low Wis, not low Int.
The cage is the solid form, not the barred form, so spells like Mass Cure Light Wounds shouldn’t be able to penetrate it. But it’s not a bad choice for a first action once the cage comes down, especially if any party members have taken damage by the time of Elan’s initiative roll.
The clerics can each do a little positive energy channeling to whittle down the vamps. Or is that only in Pathfinder?
In 3.5, what clerics do is Turning Undead. It either works or it doesn’t, according to a way-too-complicated mechanic involving the cleric’s level and the levels of the undead involved, and if it works, the undead flee, and if it doesn’t, nothing happens. There are some feats and such that let you use Turn Undead for other purposes, but they’re all from splatbooks, and none of them is particularly relevant for fighting undead.
Had V used the bar form, they’d be cage-fighting sixteen vampires right now who spent a round going into Gaseous Form.
Can Vampires use gaze attacks on animals?
The gaze attack has the same effect as Dominate Person, which only affects humanoids, so the cat and the bird are immune.
The effect is Dominate Person so, no.
While not exactly moving the plot forward, I get get a laugh out of the comic.
If they can see and talk through the forcecage, you’d think Elan could cast that Mass Cure Light Wounds though it too. Unfortunately that seems to violate the rules. since apparently only the barred form will let spells through. The cage is invisible but it doesn’t say if it transmits sound.
I would have guessed the cage would block spell-like effects such as the Dominate gaze but… guess not?
A force cage is a more elaborate version of wall of force. The description of wall of force specifically exempts gaze attacks from being blocked by it.
Aren’t Minrah and Sandstone-ula talking via sound in panels 2-4? Which seems to be counter to the idea of a Forcecage, but I’m not writing the comic.
EDIT: So, could a Shout get through, or Horn of Blasting then? (Though, jeez, talk about friendly fire.)
In order for sound to get through, the cage would have to vibrate along with the air. But that’s bringing real physics into a fantasy game, which is a very bad idea. The laws of physics mainly spend their time crying in the corner in OotS-world.
My guess is that ordinary talk will get through because the plot requires it, but sonic spells won’t. But I’ve been wrong before about such things.
They Have, in fact, taken a step backwards. They need to get back in pursuit, not wait out the spell.
As Miller correctly points out, Wall of Force (and Forcecage is just a cube of said walls) blocks spell effects but explicitly allows gaze attacks to pass through it. Without a specific exemption, I would assume that sonic spell/spell-like effects would be blocked like any other spell.
Even if sonics could pass through it, I wouldn’t assume that means bard spells could pass through it. Bards just create magic with the music as their “verbal” component. If Elan could “use sound waves” to pass a Cure Wounds through the cube then V could (by the same logic) use sound waves to pass a Power Word through the cage.
Elan couldn’t get any bard spells through, but he could presumably get his bardic music abilities through, since they’re not spells. It wouldn’t help much, though, because most of those aren’t offensive, and the few that are don’t work on undead.