# Rope Trick [Best Uses & Best Defenses Against]



## Quidam (Jun 8, 2004)

One of my players just took Rope Trick and the party is greatly enjoying the safe recuperation time it's been giving them.  The PC in question is just about to turn 8th, at which point the spell really starts to gleam.

What have been the most clever uses you've seen for this spell?  The best defense against it?  Handy way to esape from drowning, though the air'll get stale before too long...  Anyone ever enchant a rope with this spell?  1/day, 8th caster level?

Have at.



> Rope Trick
> 
> Transmutation
> Level: Sor/Wiz 2
> ...




[edit]cleaned up the srd quote[/edit]


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## Bill Muench (Jun 8, 2004)

Nothing spectacular, but I have enchanted a rope with the spell before. 

*The Funambulist's Bolthole:* This five-foot length of knotted silk rope has a spliced loop (bight) at one end. Once per day when jerked twice as a standard action, the rope rises vertically into the air and creates a _rope trick_ 5 feet off the ground that lasts for 12 hours. The bight remains at the bottom and the knots make the rope easy to climb (DC 5). Like any _rope trick_, the rope can be pulled into the extradimensional space.
Moderate Transmutation; CL 12; Craft Wondrous Item, _rope trick_; Price 9,600 gp; Weight 1 lb.


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## Darklone (Jun 8, 2004)

The best defense is not to allow bags of holding in there


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## Bauglir (Jun 8, 2004)

We once knocked an enemy unconcious, brought him up into a rope trick, and then had someone outside get a good fire going under the hole.  Then we brought the enemy round, pointed out this fiery portal, and told him that if he didn't tell us everything he knew we'd throw him through this portal to hell.


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## Neil Aitken (Jun 8, 2004)

Our party once travelled across an ocean and a continent using Feathers, Fly, and Rope Trick.  Not as convenient as Teleport, but still effective.  

The BBEG never suspected his remote island fortress would be infiltrated by a band of migrating birds.


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## Thanee (Jun 8, 2004)

The good old through the door trick, by casting rope trick halfway through a door, climb up on one side, climb down on the other.

Altho the 3E version might not really support this kind of use anymore. 

Bye
Thanee


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## random user (Jun 8, 2004)

You can use it to escape a brig on a ship (though better get off while still on the ship unless you have some way to deal with being in the middle of the water).

If you can get the cast off, you can often avoid being digested/suffocated/etc by whatever huge creature swallowed you.

If you need to scale a slick wall you can cast the rope trick and climb it to scale it.

If you are crossing a (short) bridge and are worried it may collapse on you, you can use the rope trick as an anchor.  (I suppose you could tie on more ropes to the end of the rope trick rope for longer bridges.)

If you have a small chasm you can use the rope on the rope trick to swing across.

Rope trick is one of my favorite spells as it is very flexible and can be used in many ways that the DM usually hasn't thought of


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## Evilhalfling (Jun 9, 2004)

For counters to - 
In the 3rd campign with the players using extended ropetricks as THE way to camp, they found a country which is well known to have close ties to the dreaming (a plane from my own cosmology) when used here the rope trick is 
actually inside, although seperated from the dreaming. It is as safe as normal dreams, which is not perfectly safe, and moving shapes are visable on the non portal sides of the space.
The only time it was actually breeched was by a non-physical dream, which was immediatly destroyed by a dreamcatcher (one use item hitherto seen as useless) 

Animals - including familiars? and druid friends are unnerved by the space and may refuse to use it unless absolutley necessary.

For uses of -
The spell was cast next to a fallen tree or ramp, the rope was then laid on the ramp and this allowed a wolf comapion to "climb the rope" Im not sure that all DM's would allow this but it seemed so inventive that I let them get away with it. 

Breaking a dominate person spell - tieing a PC up and crossing a planar boundary.


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## Majere (Jun 9, 2004)

Rope trick can be spotted by detect magic.

Bags of holding and haversacks etc are non-dimensional spaces and thuc can be taken into a rope trick. Portable holes cannot.

Majere


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## Sir Whiskers (Jun 9, 2004)

Thanee said:
			
		

> The good old through the door trick, by casting rope trick halfway through a door, climb up on one side, climb down on the other.
> 
> Altho the 3E version might not really support this kind of use anymore.
> 
> ...




I suggested this half-jokingly during a recent session, and the GM shot it down immediately. He saw it as a pretty twinky way of avoiding a pretty nasty door trap. Oh well...


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## Sir Whiskers (Jun 9, 2004)

Majere said:
			
		

> Rope trick can be spotted by detect magic.
> Majere




But only by spotting the "window". Once the rope has been pulled up, everything and everyone in the extradimensional space are hidden from any spell that does not cross a dimensional boundary. 

Of course if an enemy finds the rope trick (whether through detect magic, see invisible, true seeing, scrying, etc.), they can set up a pretty nasty ambush. The occupants of the extradimensional space can only see in a very limted area directly below them.


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## Speaks (Jun 9, 2004)

Best use of a rope trick .. I wish I had thought of this one.  The party was fighting a fiendish legendary T-Rex and the party geomancer gets bitten and swallowed whole.  He makes the check and cast rope trick in the belly of the beast.  When the  next person gets swallowed he pulls that guy into the space.  They just waited it out until the rest of the party killed the T-Rex.

Speaks


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## thorian (Jun 9, 2004)

If your tired of your party always hiding in a rope trick...

The bad guy has been scrying on the party, watching their tactics.  When they use rope trick and hide inside, he seals off the exit with a cube of force, wall of stone, iron or ice, enlarge a previously reduced stone cube, etc.  There are many ways.

Now the wizard uses the Transdimensional Spell metamagic feat on his fireballs.  Now the party is stuck inside dying, with no way to get out.  This cured my party of camping in a rope trick for quite a while.


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## Centaur (Jun 9, 2004)

thorian said:
			
		

> If your tired of your party always hiding in a rope trick...
> 
> The bad guy has been scrying on the party, watching their tactics.  When they use rope trick and hide inside, he seals off the exit with a cube of force, wall of stone, iron or ice, enlarge a previously reduced stone cube, etc.  There are many ways.
> 
> Now the wizard uses the Transdimensional Spell metamagic feat on his fireballs.  Now the party is stuck inside dying, with no way to get out.  This cured my party of camping in a rope trick for quite a while.




Thats just mean, I like it, I think I'll use it.  Oh wait, I'm the only one who ever uses Rope Trick.  Damn.......


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## Felix (Jun 9, 2004)

I like to use the thing as a platform for my Magic Jar spells. I just have the familiar hold the gem outside the window to create line of effect twixt me and a victim.

-thorian-



			
				srd said:
			
		

> ...Anything inside the extradimensional space drops out when the spell ends. ...



And because the spell is 1 hour/level (D), they can leave the ropetrick any time they want... they'll just be standing inside your cube of force (which will block spell effects, transdimensional or not) or on top of the wall of force/iron/stone/ice. You can't force PCs to stay inside the thing.


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## Saeviomagy (Jun 9, 2004)

Just one point:

There is nothing to stop a bad guy from entering the rope trick space.

So - if your bad guys can see invisible (or get a spot check result of 40 or so) and can get to the opening, they can still ambush the party, and it's only a little bit more difficult than ambushing them in a room with a single door.


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## thorian (Jun 9, 2004)

Felix said:
			
		

> And because the spell is 1 hour/level (D), they can leave the ropetrick any time they want... they'll just be standing inside your cube of force (which will block spell effects, transdimensional or not) or on top of the wall of force/iron/stone/ice. You can't force PCs to stay inside the thing.



I meant to place the cube of force below it, abutting the window of the rope trick.  You are right about the (D).  You could at least get the jump on them, and a round or two since dismissing a spell with a (D) in the duration is a standard action, and they may spend some time trying to figure out what is going on.  (I guess my players didn't figure out the spell was dismissable.)


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## Darklone (Jun 9, 2004)

Speaks said:
			
		

> Best use of a rope trick .. I wish I had thought of this one.  The party was fighting a fiendish legendary T-Rex and the party geomancer gets bitten and swallowed whole.  He makes the check and cast rope trick in the belly of the beast.  When the  next person gets swallowed he pulls that guy into the space.  They just waited it out until the rest of the party killed the T-Rex.



Nice idea... he must have rolled a reall good concentration check though


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## Tormenet (Jun 9, 2004)

It is a good spell for Tarzaning across those nasty pits.

I also used it to ambush a column of bady guys.  They were approaching a bridge and we set up on the far side.  We went into a _Rope Trick_ and I told my familiar to fly under the viewing portal when the enemy reached a certain point.  The bird did so and I jumped down and lobbed a _Fireball_ into their lead elements.  Ultimately, we fled the encounter with our tails between our legs, but it was a mighty good start.

Tormenet


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