It’s been a good long while since we held one of our patented “How would you call it?” quizzes. Previous examples of the genre include “Aid Another” (testing the limits of the help action) and “Utility Shot” (testing the limits of GM patience).
Today’s discussion is about the limits of size-changing magic. For your convenience, I’ll link the text of enlarge person (Pathfinder 1e), enlarge/reduce (5e), and this old M:tG ad (goblins). No doubt the learned readers of Handbook-World will turn to errata, forum posts, and developer commentary to support their positions. But I would also hasten to remind you that rule of cool is a thing, and helping your players feel like tactical geniuses whenever they show a modicum of creativity is generally a thing to be encouraged. Balancing fun moments against… well… balance is a tricky beast. That’s why articulating when and how you make these close calls can be a useful GM exercise.
So bearing all that in mind, here are today’s hypotheticals. Tell us how you’d run it at your table!
- I’m being swallowed whole. Will embiggening myself help me to break out?
- I ready my action to enlarge a ballista bolt mid-flight. How much extra damage does it deal?
- I saw this cool meme about Ant-Man defeating Thanos. Do you allow arseplomancy in your game?
- I’ve been poisoned! I’ll just increase my size so that it’s a non-lethal dose.
Oof. I certainly hope no one ever asks these questions in my games! But if they do, at least I’ll have this comments section to turn to for help.
You all know your marching orders. Pick any number of the oddball shenanigans listed above, tell us how you’d call it, then explain your rational. All clear? Alright! We who are about to argue salute you!
If I empty out a potion of Gaseous Form into the stomach of the monster that swallowed me, does it turn into vapor and leave me there?
Seeing as you are currently part and parcel of the creatures stomach contents, you also would be turned to vapor.
One possible take is that potions are taken with intent. Just like activating a wand or a scroll, it’s an act that requires the will of the caster. If someone dumps a potion down your throat without your consent, the person taking the potion is still “the caster.”
For some rules justification, look at the the word “willing” over here:
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/Magic/#TOC-Aiming-a-Spell
But then again, that’s a Cleric ruling, not a Wizard ruling. For the latter style of GMing, I might ask for a couple of possible outcomes from the table, then roll d100 to see what actually happens given the novel situation.
I would follow a couple of loose principles in deciding how these situations work:
1) A low-level spell can’t do the job of a higher-level one except in very specific and hard-to-reproduce circumstances. So a person who is enlarged while standing on a rickety rope bridge might fall to his death — that’s what he gets for standing there in the first place — but any way of *reliably* making Enlarge into a Save-or-Die is beyond the scope of the spell.
2) Things that seem like they would be particularly difficult or confusing, may well actually BE that way, even if the rules don’t mention the fact. Channeling magic into a rapidly moving target (lookin’ at you, ballista bolt) might be much trickier than a stationary one. And the fact that the moving ballista bolt suddenly has not only more mass, but a whole bunch of momentum and kinetic energy that it wasn’t given by whatever propelled it, may very well mean that it won’t do what you hope it’s gonna.
3) When it seems like there’s more than one plausible way something could work, go with the one whose long-term effects won’t suck the fun out of the game (this includes providing yet more ways for casters to make everyone else a footnote to the story.)
4) Players should remember that if it works for them, it will work for NPCs.
So, with all this in mind, here’s how I would play Claire’s Daily Dilemmas:
• I’m being swallowed whole. Will embiggening myself help me to break out?
Sure; you just got really tough to swallow. But enlarging something inside something else will never destroy either object; with a little thought about leverage and engineering, that would turn a first-level spell into Archimedes’ proverbial lever that could move (or wreck) the world. So instead, you get unceremoniously shunted outside the monster in a really foul-smelling pool of vomit.
If things are hermetically sealed and can’t be shunted outside one another, the spell enlarges or shrinks the object only until it hits an obstacle to further size change.
• I ready my action to enlarge a ballista bolt mid-flight. How much extra damage does it deal?
Typically, not as much as the player was hoping. Again, that would turn a trebuchet plus a few wizard-school dropouts into a world-changing, and easily repeatable, engine of destruction. The reason it wasn’t as easy as expected might be that channeling magic into the spell’s target takes a few seconds, during which the target needs to be…not stationary, but at least still in range, and traveling at speeds the caster’s senses can track. Also, there may be *limits* to how badly a first-level spell can laugh in the face of momentum and kinetic energy conservation. Exceed those limits, and yes, the bolt is bigger than before, but it’s also moving slower, to stay within a reasonable energy/momentum budget.
If the caster takes steps to counter these problems — such as racing along next to the ballista bolt on a souped-up witch’s broom or something, so that the bolt is essentially at rest relative to the caster — then I would let them get a more impressive result. Again, game balance; if you had to work hard and match your methods to the circumstances, you’re probably not setting a precedent that will sideline other players.
• I saw this cool meme about Ant-Man defeating Thanos. Do you allow arseplomancy in your game?
Again, the smaller object will either be shunted outside the larger one, or if that’s not possible, will stop growing when there’s no more room.
• I’ve been poisoned! I’ll just increase my size so that it’s a non-lethal dose.
Does the Enlarge spell also make people pass out from low blood sugar because the glucose in their blood is no longer an adequate “dose” to keep their cells running? Or does a Reduce spell make that fishbone you swallowed skewer your now-too-small stomach from within?
When cast on a living creature, the target and all its immediate possessions change size together…including whatever’s in its blood stream. (And the Square-Cube law can just learn to deal with it, because magic.)
1. If your being eaten by a large creature like a giant toad, and your mage can still see you, yes being enlarged will help. if your being eaten by a gargantuan purple worm, less so.
2. Enlarged weapons deal extra damage, so by pathfinder rules you deal 4d8 or 1d8 extra damage. In 5e you go from 3d12+9 to 6d12 +9 I think, which sounds better. if your killing something cool, you might get a little more.
3. That’s gross, so I would recommend not trying it on anything with more hitpoints than you, and if you are high enough level to have enough hitpoints to kill something like that, just stab them to death.
4. Not regular enlarge the poison would be bigger with you, but if you wanted to try, and had maybe a wild magic sorcerer with metamagic points, they could try and mess with the spell to not enlarge anything but the living target so if you got entirely naked and then enlarged it could work until the spell wears off. which would not be long enough to get the poison out of your system
Ranged weapons shrink back down when fired in Pathfinder.
Per the linked 5e spell, enlarging a *creature* merely adds 1d4 to its weapon damage, rather than treating it as wielding a larger weapon. No clear statement of what happens if you cast it on the weapon itself.
Also, 5e has no general-purpose rules for scaling weapon sizes… at best, there’s a suggestion under “monster creation” that doubling weapon damage is a good option for monsters wielding large weapons. I’m guessing that’s what you’re remembering.
1) Depends on the Creature doing the swallowing, but I’d probably lean towards doing a bit of damage (I’m not sure how much, I’d think about it in the moment), if that damage kills the creature then Chunky salsa else dump the character out the mouth of the creature, all this is unless the creature can accommodate your new size
2) Depends on the game, if I’m running for people I don’t know, I’d probably set some sort of High(ish) DC to target the arrow, and activate the spell at the right point, if success, and the bolt actually hits the target I’d give it maybe crit damage,
with my friends, I would gently remind them that when we want a projectile to hit harder many modern weapon systems have the projectile shedd mass, and we’d end up having a discussion about whether it would actually work,
3)see problem 1, doesn’t matter which end of the gut you’re stuck in
4) might give them an extra save to avoid/resist the poison effect, maybe with advantage, for thinking around the problem
“I’m being swallowed whole. Will embiggening myself help me to break out?”
Are you now bigger than the maximum size that the creature is allowed to swallow whole? Then yeah, I’d say that totally helps. It probably retches and vomits you up. Good call
No? Now you’re just bigger and still swallowed
“I ready my action to enlarge a ballista bolt mid-flight. How much extra damage does it deal?”
The ballista bolt slows down dramatically as it suddenly gains mass, without any matching increase in momentum. It flumps into the ground short of the target.
“I saw this cool meme about Ant-Man defeating Thanos. Do you allow arseplomancy in your game?”
Absolutely we do! So, a full size ant-man has tougher skin than a literal god, right? .. .. no? .. .. ah. Well.. roll a reflex save. If you make it, you pop out of his butt like a lubed up dildo, if you fail, on the plus side, Thanos will probably be kinda embarassed that he just explosively pooped out a fountain of once human slurry
“I’ve been poisoned! I’ll just increase my size so that it’s a non-lethal dose.”
The poison increases in size with you. Or you immediately fall unconscious and start dying of hypoxia due to lack of blood. Make your choice
I’m pretty firmly in the camp that spells only do what they say they do; spellcasters already get plenty of nice things without going out and giving them freebies too. And fortunately, I also play in 5th edition, where enlarge/reduce has a lot to say about what happens if you embiggen in a space too small for embiggening.
Let’s see, my initial thoughts on how I’d rule (in practice it might change based on arguments or extra time mulling it over).
I’ll speak from the POV of pathfinder 1e, since that’s the one I’m most comfortable with and thus best able to make a ruling consistent with the games internal logic.
1) I’m being swallowed whole. Will embiggening myself help me to break out?
What’d happen here would depend on when you got embiggened, the relevant points being A) Before you get swallowed (say after the monster bit you and used it’s Grab ability to get you in it’s mouth, but before it’s next turn), B) after you have already gotten swallowed or C) right as it’s trying to swallow you (hard to pull off, perhaps a readied action or a Contingency, through that’d be a pretty strange thing to use your one Contingency on).
For each:
A) Being made bigger would help here in multiple ways, firstly you get a bonus to both CMB and CMD from increasing in size/str (through for CMD the later half is countered by the dex penalty).
In addition to this Swallow Whole usually have a size restriction on who can get swallowed. If the embiggening makes you too big for the creature to swallow whole then it can’t and you are now safely immune.
My logic for not giving a bigger bonus if you don’t become large enough to be immune is that the monster can normally swallow creatures as big as you are now, so it makes sense that it can also swallow you.
B) once you have gotten swallowed things are a bit worse for you. You are now in the stomach which for most creatures are larger than their throat. You’d still get a bonus to your STR for trying to damage your way out.
Enlarge person has a provision for if the space is too small for you (make a STR check to break the enclosure, you fail your growth is constrained).
Creatures don’t have STR DC’s to break, and mechanically really shouldn’t. I’d probably give you a free hit with the damage there determining if you are free or not. I would probably either count it as a “two handed unnarmed attack” (that deals lethal slashing/piercing damage), or perhaps just have the result of the STR check count as damage directly.
Thinking it over I think the second option would be most fun, and taking a quick glance at typical swallow whole damage needed somewhat reasonable in it’s resulting difficulty.
C) I’m probably ruling this like A, but with a +2 circumstance bonus or a free attempt at breaking free. (if you become too big to swallow the enemy wastes their action, or you get stuck in their throat depending on what you where trying to do).
2) I ready my action to enlarge a ballista bolt mid-flight. How much extra damage does it deal?
There’s a voice telling me that this possibly shouldn’t work with the bolt just flying slower since it hasn’t got any extra energy.
However, in the interest of rule of cool and letting stuff players try work, I’m saying that it keeps it’s speed and you get to deal damage as through the ballista was one size category bigger (or however much bigger you made it).
3) I saw this cool meme about Ant-Man defeating Thanos. Do you allow arseplomancy in your game?
No, this doesn’t fit with the tone I’d like to have in the games that I run.
4)I’ve been poisoned! I’ll just increase my size so that it’s a non-lethal dose.
No, that’s not how poison works in pathfinder Enlarge person wouldn’t have made you immune to the posioned weapon if you had cast it ahead of time either.
As a sidenote I imagine getting enlarged would also enlarge the poison in your body just as it would your blood and clothes and paint on your skin and the fillings in your teeth and so on.
Swallowed whole — yes, within reason. If you’re in the process of being swallowed, it’s reasonable that becoming larger will make things easier. If you’re already entirely inside, not so much, since you’ve got nowhere to expand to (see Thanos question)
Ballista — eh, by the rules, it just means that the bolt does an extra 1d4 damage, which is a pretty poor use of a 2nd-level spell slot. I’d encourage them to use the 1st-level spell Catapult instead, since a crossbow bolt or arrow is a valid target, and the spell does 4d8 if cast with a 2nd-level slot.
Thanos — you’re expanding into a confined space, and he’s tougher than you are… this isn’t going to go well for you.
Poison — no. The poison is already in your bloodstream, so it scales with you. I might give advantage on saves if you’d been enlarged *before* being poisoned, but nothing for casting the spell afterwards.
I’ve used transforming from Medium humanoid into Small critter to escape from grapples on a couple occasions in my PF2e group. Perks of being a kitsune. Downside is it’s the same action economy as attempting to Escape (but without the failure chance), and it leaves me in small critter form and as a barbarian that’s less than ideal for continuing a fight.
Even as a Barbarian, suddenly gaining a +4 Adorableness has to help somehow, right?
I’m being swallowed whole. Will embiggening myself help me to break out?
While I would love to say OotS can be very entertaining, I likely would not allow something like: https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0638.html to always work. Instead, I am more likely to have the creature vomit the enlarging creature. If a player does want to attempt to enlarge itself inside another creature for the sole purpose of killing the other creature, I would likely role a percentile check in secret to see if that particular instance enlarging would have the desired effect or if instead the enlarging creature would be crushed.
I ready my action to enlarge a ballista bolt mid-flight. How much extra damage does it deal?
I would probably just have it increase the damage by the number of steps it increased. 1d4 > 1d6 > 1d8 > 1d10 > 2d6 etc. Note that warmages in my setting use this tactic aswell. However, I might put another limitation on players by requiring them to cast the spell before the to-hit roll is cast.
I saw this cool meme about Ant-Man defeating Thanos. Do you allow arseplomancy in your game?
See response to question 1.
I’ve been poisoned! I’ll just increase my size so that it’s a non-lethal dose. Many enlargement spells also increase Constitution (in addition to Strength). By raising the Constitution score, it would mean that your saving throw against most poisons also increases. So, yes by increasing your size, you might very well make it so that a save against a poison that would normally fail, now succeeds.
Swallowing whole? Yes, being suddenly enlarged will help your character break out. But if they don’t break out, they’ll simply suffocate faster and/or be further injured by the constriction.
Ballista bolt? Again, something of a double-edged sword. I’d simply double the damage. But the increase in visibility means it’s easier for a sentient creature to just get out of the way. Ballista bolts don’t travel quickly enough to be invisible in flight, and if a single target can sidestep a longbow arrow at ranges greater than point-blank, the same would apply to bolts. And in a fantasy setting where tactics like this would be common, soldiers would leave themselves room to move.
Arseplomancy? Nah. I understand the impulse but it’s too “adolescent power fantasy” for me. If a player wanted to build something around they concept, they’d have to go in through the mouth.
Poison: In this case, it’s not worth getting into an argument about caster control over precisely which foreign objects do or do not enlarge with the character. (“Can I Enlarge my way out of a bacterial infection?”) So unless the spell operates solely by enlarging only the body of the character, no possessions or the like, then there’s simply more poison, too.
Swallow and Thanos, give me a roll which one has higher resistance to rapid increase of pressure in tight spaces.
Ballista, I’ll have to tos a coin if I go with rule of cool or logic. Former says add a dice or two latter says that you get a nice midsummer pole in the field.
Poison, chemist brain goes, nope it’s in your blood stream so it grows proportionally to you, now give me that damn Con save or I’ll have field test of cafeine LD50 compared to with how I make mine. (lets see if I can get under that ~120 cups, if my memory serves)
Actually, I’ve had most of those happen in my games, so:
* Depends on what swallowed you. If it’s something soft and fluffy you can probably get away with minimum damage. If you are going to be enlarging through bones and plates or some kind of natural armor, then you are going to be taking damage. Purple worm? Minimum damage coming out through the muscle bands. Bullet? Not going to be pretty.
*Ballista, are you going to be standing down range from where it is launched? By the time you get the spell off, the bolt is already out of range from it’s starting point. Have you factored in the additional weight and mass of the enlarged bolt? Pretty much an enlarged bolt is going to be playing flying brick and cutting the distance/height it can actually travel by a significant amount. But, yes, if the enlarged bolt hits, it’s going to do a multiple of it’s normal damage.
*Most creatures/humanoids would notice something trying to crawl up in there. But if someone did manage to get up there and enlarge, then see the first point above. This is one I thank god I never had a player try.
*I shut this down with, when you enlarge, everything in you enlarges with you. Including the poison you ingested.
As a Pathfinder 1e specialist, I will use their rules:
> I’m being swallowed whole. Will embiggening myself help me to break out?
If you’ve been swallowed, only slightly. Enlarge Person stops enlarging you once you bump up against the limits of your enclosed space, so you can’t chestburst your way out. If the monster is capable of swallowing Large creatures, you can reach Large size, which will give you +2 STR and a +1 size bonus on grapple checks, functionally giving you a +2 on attempts to climb back out. (Yes, getting bigger makes it easier to squeeze through a throat – your greater bulk makes it harder for the throat to push you back down.) Your weapon damage dice have also gone up, and you have +1 melee damage from the STR increase, so cutting your way out will be slightly easier with a 1d6 dagger. If you have not yet been swallowed, you get that +2 if you attempt to escape the grab via a combat maneuver (but not via the Escape Artist skill). Your Combat Maneuver Defense (which the foe must beat to swallow you) increases by exactly +1 from size (your +2 STR is negated by a -2 DEX from enlargement). Though, if the creature is incapable of swallowing Large creatures, they automatically become unable to swallow you, so that’s something. Their grapple is maintained until you break it, they fail to maintain it or they choose to let go. After all, a base grapple might just mean they have grabbed your arm, not that you are completely restrained (that would be pinned).
> I ready my action to enlarge a ballista bolt mid-flight. How much extra damage does it deal?
Unless your ballista bolt is a person, you cannot enlarge it with Enlarge Person. If your ballista bolt IS a person… I guess the damage die for when they land goes up by one? And they’ll have a melee combat advantage once they land, assuming that they are not splatted by taking at least an equal amount of damage, and possibly some falling damage. (As a side note, anything that leaves the enlarged person’s possession shrinks again, so the projectile weapons of an enlarged person do the same damage they would otherwise – using Enlarge Person to make a ballista out of a crossbow looks cool but has no mechanical benefit, other than making it easier for you to be hit by return fire.)
> I saw this cool meme about Ant-Man defeating Thanos. Do you allow arseplomancy in your game?
No. Enlarge Person ceases to enlarge you once you hit the limits on an enclosed space. While that prevents this exploit, the rule is actually there for your safety, so you can’t accidentally crush yourself if you enlarge in an enclosed space. Trust me, that’s going to be more useful. (I’m not entirely sure what would happen if you did this with Reduce Person and then the spell expired in an enclosed space, since “you can’t expand beyond your confines” would let you continue to use the spell after its expiration. Probably you just take a bunch of damage and get kicked into the nearest space that can handle your size. The spell Blink does 1d6 per 5 feet shunted if you materialize inside a solid object, so that seems like a reasonable baseline.
> I’ve been poisoned! I’ll just increase my size so that it’s a non-lethal dose.
Everything on your person increases proportionally, including the poison. Unless you think your earlier Potion of Fly should fail to continue while you are enbiggened, or that healing potions should heal the Large less?
Oddly enough, I have actually used Enlarge Person while grappled by a giant crab, during one of my first sessions as a player. It gave me the +2 bonus on escape attempts (which proved successful) but not anything else.
I’m being swallowed whole. Will embiggening myself help me to break out?
Hm. If it was a rigid space, either the spell fails or you take crushing damage. In this case though… make a casting check. Succeed, you get vomited and are still big. Fail, your spell does nothing.
I ready my action to enlarge a ballista bolt mid-flight. How much extra damage does it deal?
Bolt loses too much speed to actually deal damage. Now, if you tried that with a catapult projectile as it was on the downward trajectory…
I saw this cool meme about Ant-Man defeating Thanos. Do you allow arseplomancy in your game?
No. See the swallow whole example, and also you can’t get that small. Ask again and you’re marked for death.
I’ve been poisoned! I’ll just increase my size so that it’s a non-lethal dose.
Much as this pleases the realist in me, the poison gets bigger too because magic. Now, if you ever try using reduce to take less fall damage, I’d be all for it.
1 and 3 are addressed by the text, since the spell says that if there’s not room to grow you attain the maximum possible size. It’s a little hazier if you’re reduced and the spell drops, but I’d probably rule that you only return to regular size when you can do so safely.
2 is also easy—you’re spending a spell and a reaction on this, and it takes your concentration, at least in 5e, and there’s rules in the DMG (I believe) for larger weapons; I’d just increase the damage by one die size for that bolt, and if my players started abusing the tactic to the point it wasn’t fun I’d have a talk with them above table about it
4 I’d probably rule that, just as the spell increases the size of your equipment, and increases the amount of blood and tissue in your body (or else there’d be a real problem!), it’s also going to increase the poison so that the relative dose stays the same. Especially if there’s not different dosage rules for different creature sizes already—unless you guys want to track how much a health potion dose you need based on body weight? That seems a little much even for me.
As for grappling, there are usually rules for how close in size category you need to be to grapple, right? If you can get that many size categories away, you’re golden, but otherwise you’ll have to depend on any bonuses to your rolls the spell gives you
I pretty much agree with Vegetalss4’s analysis.
1) Swallowed Whole: As preventative measure, it fails or succeeds based on the max size the critter can gulp. Once in the digestive juices, I’d say you’d have to make a Str. check vs break DC of (x)ft. thickness of leather and bone (unlikely) or (having reached maximum size of your enclosure) use the normal rules to carve your way out, dealing damage from within (but perhaps with a small Size bonus to damage).
2) Good idea, wrong spell (IMHO). Many of the enlarge-type spells lose their mojo if the projectile (fill in the blank with specific condition). Note that Pathfinder’s spell says explicitly that Mass returns to normal (thwarting thrown weapon base damage), but velocity is unchecked (missile weapons’ damage is still based on the power of the (enlarged) weapon that propelled it). Ergo, the solution (not my own invention) of shrinking cannonballs (or ballistae bolts) before firing them from muskets (or crossbows). RAW– they retain the acceleration of the weapon launching them, but they regain their original mass mid-flight. (Some DMs might require the missile to pass through an anti-magic or dispel magic field to resume their normal (huge) size before the end of spell duration, but that can be arranged.)
3) Nope. Not my kind of game. (However, my buddy Bruce’s campaign revels in that kind of stuff. Lemme give you his number.) Oddly enough, canonically, something very similar happened in the pages of West Coast Avengers in the late 80s, when Hank Pym (fighting evil as Dr. Pym, the Scientific Adventurer) deduced that the Ultron they were facing was constructed of a lesser metal than adamantium, shrank his teammate WonderMan, and threw him down the murderbot’s throat while it was monologuing. The indestructible WonderMan then resumed normal size and they one-shotted the villain.
4) As Vegetalss4 said above, nope. Nor does embiggening grant you another saving throw vs disease (“I have more antibodies, right?”) nor a chance to “burst free” of a cursed ring by making a Strength check vs soft gold (“It’s like shackles, I only need a Strength check.”) Offer the DM the last chocolate stout and a slice of pizza–your results may vary depending on the lateness of the evening.
…and yes, in season 5, ep.1 The Legends of Tomorrow pulled a similar stunt (chucking The Atom down his throat) to splatter Rasputin.
As for your questions it all depends on “how the enlargement works”, some ways will go in the PCs favor, some ways it will not.
Frex, if it’s a “Hulk out” scenario that only affects the person’s body and not items carried, then they’d definitely get a bonus versus poison, otherwise the poison increases along with them (IDC it’s magic).
If the ’embigging’ method has a “increases to fit size of container” wording, then it might not help at all with grapples (as they’d still have to be small enough to be swallowed whole). If it’s a “takes damage if crushed within container” (some versions have “bursts from armor” rules) then congrats, you deal the same damage to the thing you’re bursting out of that you take… oh, you have far, far, far less HP than a purpler worm? Too bad…
As for ballista bolts, does the ‘enlargement’ change the target’s mass? If yes, then it probably does more damage, if no then it will do less.
I’m not a fan of the ‘timey-wimey’ inconsistent physics rules of Ant-man, so let’s not even start talking about that hot mess of a movie.
.
Now I have a rejoinder question for Cleric: How are suffocation rules supposed to kick in to “break the grapple”? Who is supposed to suffocate?
Ah, does Cleric* mistakenly believe that crocodiles breathe water?
.* And definitely not the Artist or Author, no, no, it’s definitely Cleric that is mistaken… 😉
By RaW you can’t grapple a creature 2+ sizes larger than you, so it should break the grapple.
Depends on whether Fighter is Gargantuan or Large with artistic license.
1. Make a strength check to see if you embiggen to full effect. It might help by virtue of enlargening your weapon to do more damage cutting your way out.
2. no extra damage: The momentum you put in is fixed when you fired it, enlarge the object and speed decreases accordingly (unless it falls down and deals damage as a falling object, then it gets extra momentum by gravity)
speaking of gravity: P1e has a spell specifically for this: Gravity bow.
The text is, unfortunately, garbage.
3. see #1 Strength check (using your size adjusted stats, so probably: nope)
4. nope: you increase the amount of poison with the amount of blood.
Just an FYI. Your link to “Aid Another” is linking to the same location as the “Utility Shot” link.
Fixed. Thanks for the heads up.
Effects depend on timing. If cast while already swallowed, and the monster’s stomach has room for a bigger creature, no effect or a little damage to both parties. If cast while being swallowed, a bit more damage to the would-be swallower and the swallowee gets pre-emptively barfed. If the swallowee becomes too big for the swallower to swallow…it doesn’t end well, and considerably less well for the swallower. Maybe something like “swallower is dying, swallowee is still taking crush and acid damage until someone cuts the swallower open”.
Ask if their spell can enlarge the ballista instead. That’s easier to adjudicate.
No.
…Also, where did you find a spell that makes you more than one size category smaller?
Only in a system where size has an effect on poison damage.
Just th8link it works like a chicken nugget 🙂
The ballista bolt will drop to the ground over a short distance: its size and therefore mass has been increased, but its KE has not. This ruling also prevents any “shooting trees from a bow” shenanigans.
This does not in any way ruin fun because the heroes can use it to their advantage if the ballista bolt is being shot at them.
Not an unfair ruling – but given that the damage increase is small, it’s a pretty poor use of a 2nd level spell slot, and I’d be inclined to let it pass.
Fair.
1) Yes, it grants advantage on whatever skill checks/whatnot or an extra save against the effect. If you don’t escape though, as the rules of the spell state you don’t increase size after.
2) You *absolutely* can waste your up to 1 minute long spell increasing the size of a single projectile to increase it’s damage by an extra 1d4. Not sure *why* you’d do that though. *shrug* Heck, let’s make it more fair an give you a whole 2d4 for that. (Still a huge waste.)
3) You know there are plenty of size changing enemies right? So… naw. Let’s just stick with what I said for 1.
4) Haha, no. Poison damage/the poisoned condition is already weak enough as is.
Yeah, as I said in my own response – “Enlarge” will add a minor amount of damage… at the expense of your action, the action of the person making the attack, *and* a second level spell slot.
Using the same spell slot to cast “Catapult” on a rock will do 4d8 using just your own action… so “exploiting” the Enlarge spell in that manner is hardly game-breaking…
1) Each monster with a swallow ability lists the maximum size it can swallow. If that pushes you out of the range, sure, otherwise, you rely on the listed bonuses of the spell to strength or whatever to help you escape.
2) In 5e, weapon damage is added again for each size over medium. Ballistas are large and deal 3d10, so their “medium” damage is 0.5(3d10), so if we enlarge it, it’s 1.5(3d10), and as always for 5e, round down.
3) Demilichs are tiny and are the size of a human skull. No spell can make you smaller than tiny, and for occupying a 2.5×2.5 foot space, you can’t still be tiny and be realistically smaller. Against medium sized or smaller creatures, no chance on a physical level even. I would reject this just on a “not at our table” for further arguments with the specified orifice, but getting eaten by monsters is a more palatable trope. In which case, if our tiny player then returned to normal size while inside, I would follow something similar to the rules for Etherealness:
“If you occupy the same spot as a solid object or creature when this happens, you are immediately shunted to the nearest unoccupied space that you can occupy and take force damage equal to twice the number of feet you are moved.”
Perhaps instead dealing bludgeoning damage, and if you have an argument why the monster wouldn’t spit you out while this was happening, maybe the damage is symmetrical to you and the monster- expanding to full size inside a monster that can’t fit you is gonna hurt ya no matter what.
4) Enlarge spells don’t immediately kill you of dehydration or blood loss, so it seems your fluids (both bodily and ingested) grow with you, so the poison dose increases with you and you’re still poisoned.
I know my answers are kinda boring, but that’s my DM style. I love player creativity with approaches to solving problems and the like, but I don’t flex too much on “spells do more than what they say”. If I’ve got an elven fighter with a longsword in the party, I don’t want them to feel like they’re super cool graceful dramatic combat is overshadowed by goofy wizards with spells that only work because of Rule of Cool.
I love parties teaching monsters to use nets to fish rather than damming up the river and causing droughts, I love parties sniping from far away bad guys so they don’t risk as much, I love parties using illusory prey animals to distract the wolves and run away, I love all the lateral solutions, it’s just my philosophy to not allow spells to do more than what they say so that such things aren’t limited/dominated by our casters.
> I’ve been poisoned! I’ll just increase my size so that it’s a non-lethal dose.
I’ve run into the reverse of this in one campaign! Someone with the ability to grow to tremendous size used it to try and out-eat another PC in an impromptu contest. They lost, but the more interesting bit happened on the walk home when he tried to shrink back down.
“At first you feel full, then bloated, and your shrinking pauses for a moment, as if trying to adapt to the immense volume of food. The result is that thirty seconds later, the worst heartburn you’ve ever experienced begins, along with incredible belching as your stomach is flooded with acid to rapidly digest the mountainous overflow.”
The character had a very bad night, and a worse morning after and their player laughed their ass off. Good times!
1) Yes. The Large pox (and its cascade of upgrades) bestows the target with bonus Strength dice, which can aid in the opposed ([Strength or Dexterity] + Martial Arts) clinch. If you’re using Lunar shapeshifting instead of Infernal Desecrations, the answer is still most likely yes, as larger animal forms tend to have higher Strength ratings.
2) None. Conservation of momentum kicks in, reducing the bolt’s speed even as it increases in mass. That is, assuming you somehow convinced the Combo rules to let you apply size-changing magic in the middle of your Archery action to fire the ballista in the first place, which is unlikely. If you do have magic that can resize weapons up to warstrider scale, apply them first, then attack.
3) Treat it as a stunt for the Lunar popping out of the orifice to flurry a shapeshift action with a clinch to inflict damage using the larger form. (Normally a clinch has to be the first action in a flurry, but the stunt allows bending that rule). By the way, given where you’ve been, do you have any Sickness-keyword defenses?
4) Sorry, no. Lunars get shapeshifting as an innate power, but you have to buy Poison-keyword defenses separately. Assume your magic scales doses of poison up and down appropriately when you change shape. Be thankful, that’s the same reason you aren’t suddenly ravenously hungry after returning to human shape after days in mouse form- your servings of food eaten also scale.
-I’m being swallowed whole. Will embiggening myself help me to break out?
Depending on the size difference between the swallower and the attacker, probably. If a medium person is swallowed by something absolutely gigantic, probably not, but if the attacker is not much bigger than their meal, I might allow the Enlarging spell to force a CON save (or equivalent) from the attacker.
-I ready my action to enlarge a ballista bolt mid-flight. How much extra damage does it deal?
If someone has put in the time and gold to research a ‘Enlarge Object’ spell (cause all the enlarging spells I know specifically target creatures) I’d probably let this fly.
-I saw this cool meme about Ant-Man defeating Thanos. Do you allow arseplomancy in your game?
Absolutely not. Memes belong on the internet or in humorous one shots.
-I’ve been poisoned! I’ll just increase my size so that it’s a non-lethal dose.
Probably not. All the person’s gear enlarges with them. Enlarge spells don’t suddenly make people hungry, with only a medium-sized portion of food inside them. No reason to think the poison wouldn’t scale up too.
-I’m being swallowed whole. Will embiggening myself help me to break out?
If before, then yes as per normal,
If after, make a strength check to explode the creature from the inside per the enlarge person spell.
-I ready my action to enlarge a ballista bolt mid-flight. How much extra damage does it deal?
See this chart:
1
1d2
1d3
1d4
1d6
1d8
1d10
2d6
2d8
3d6
3d8
4d6
4d8
6d6
6d8
8d6
8d8
12d6
12d8
16d6
Love this chart, for whenever you increase or decrease somethings size category, you move its damage dice up or down the chart by TWO.
-I saw this cool meme about Ant-Man defeating Thanos. Do you allow arseplomancy in your game?
See answer 1
-I’ve been poisoned! I’ll just increase my size so that it’s a non-lethal dose.
no the poison increases in size with you.