Hypothetical: A Spirit Naga stole a magic hookah with a genie inside. Once it became the genie's master, it imprisoned the genie and hookah in Leomund's Secret Chest. The party encounters the Spirit Naga and kills it, then discovers the smaller replica chest. How do they free the genie and get granted a wish spell to prevent the Spirit Naga from regenerating if the chest can't be dispelled while the Spirit Naga is dead? Did I create a paradox my party can't solve?
doesn't say anything against other people not retrieving it, and depending on your parties level they could cast etherealness, or if they aren't a high enough level and if one of your players is a class that can cast it hand them a scroll, if they can't cast it give them a oil of etherealness, or have them pay for someone to retrieve it. there are several things you can do, those are the most obvious
If the party knows what they've found -- that is the replica of a secret chest -- and how it works, maybe let them find some way to go to the ethereal plane to retrieve the chest's contents. You can say that the replica would act as a tether/locator and let them get close enough to find it once they get there.
If you cast Dispel Magic while the chest is on Ethereal Plane then it is irretrievably lost. Likewise if you destroy the replica.
They can go to the Ethereal Plane and try to somehow find it such as through Locate Object or similar divination. Tip: most likely the chest will be where the Spirit Naga last dismissed it to the Ethereal Plane. If the Spirit Naga has a lair then it's like in the Ethereal Plane that overlaps their lair.
They can also just wait for the Spirit Naga to rejuvenate and somehow coerce it into recalling the chest or strike some kind of deal. Or find a place of antimagic or stop it speaking and put the remains there, lock it up. It's trapped forever and cannot use dimension door to get out. Or find a group of people strong enough to keep killing it so the party can go find some other way to use Wish against it.
Or, if the party are so inclined: just leave.
It's a really shit situation, no doubt: the wish to stop it returning is in a chest very difficult to get to while the naga is dead but you need the wish to keep it dead. It's immune to charms so you cannot control it to make it give you the genie and it can teleport with dimension door so you're unlikely to imprison it for long and while you could fashion a prison or go find a wish elsewhere: it will come back to life in meantime and cause trouble again. Now, technically this is not a paradox but it is a rather crap situation, however.
The options have become very limited. However, getting to the Ethereal plane is easier than getting another Wish, so maybe find a way to do that?
Or don't have a DM that gives a spell like this to monsters with key items the party needs because the whole purpose of Leomund's Secret Chest is precisely this: making it so nobody gets your stuff even if you die or they try to dispel it. It's what they call a "dick move".
Haha, nice answer. The conclusion of which being : I am a DM who made "dick move" so my party can't possibly solve the quest I gave them. But! You gave me a great idea of how to make this make sense. This post is a smaller post from a giant thread I started with a bunch of questions related to my campaign named "Spiralia: my stupidly ambitious homebrew campaign". The Spirit Naga isn't actually the person who cast Leomund's Secret Chest, nor the one who controls the genie. Just an ally of a greater villain. So then the greater villain will be the next target after the party escapes the Spirit Naga's lair with the replica chest. It's totally do-able. Thank you for your reply!
doesn't say anything against other people not retrieving it
The rules say how things work, not how they don't work. There's nothing in the spell's effect that would allow another creature to retrieve the chest.
and depending on your parties level they could cast etherealness, or if they aren't a high enough level and if one of your players is a class that can cast it hand them a scroll, if they can't cast it give them a oil of etherealness, or have them pay for someone to retrieve it.
Those spells only move you to the Border Ethereal, the part of the Ethereal Plane that overlaps the Material Plane. That's not where the spell is hiding the chest, since it'd be easy to find and there'd be no risk of it being lost.
The only way the spell makes sense is to assume the chest is kept in the Deep Ethereal, which would require something like Plane Shift or Astral Projection to reach. And once there it's like finding a needle in a haystack since the Deep Ethereal is an infinite 3D plane of fog.
The easiest way to get the chest is to revive the owner. Barring that, you're looking at Wish. The spell is designed so no one but the owner has any reasonable chance of getting the chest.
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Hypothetical: A Spirit Naga stole a magic hookah with a genie inside. Once it became the genie's master, it imprisoned the genie and hookah in Leomund's Secret Chest. The party encounters the Spirit Naga and kills it, then discovers the smaller replica chest. How do they free the genie and get granted a wish spell to prevent the Spirit Naga from regenerating if the chest can't be dispelled while the Spirit Naga is dead? Did I create a paradox my party can't solve?
doesn't say anything against other people not retrieving it, and depending on your parties level they could cast etherealness, or if they aren't a high enough level and if one of your players is a class that can cast it hand them a scroll, if they can't cast it give them a oil of etherealness, or have them pay for someone to retrieve it. there are several things you can do, those are the most obvious
If the party knows what they've found -- that is the replica of a secret chest -- and how it works, maybe let them find some way to go to the ethereal plane to retrieve the chest's contents. You can say that the replica would act as a tether/locator and let them get close enough to find it once they get there.
If you cast Dispel Magic while the chest is on Ethereal Plane then it is irretrievably lost. Likewise if you destroy the replica.
They can go to the Ethereal Plane and try to somehow find it such as through Locate Object or similar divination. Tip: most likely the chest will be where the Spirit Naga last dismissed it to the Ethereal Plane. If the Spirit Naga has a lair then it's like in the Ethereal Plane that overlaps their lair.
They can also just wait for the Spirit Naga to rejuvenate and somehow coerce it into recalling the chest or strike some kind of deal. Or find a place of antimagic or stop it speaking and put the remains there, lock it up. It's trapped forever and cannot use dimension door to get out. Or find a group of people strong enough to keep killing it so the party can go find some other way to use Wish against it.
Or, if the party are so inclined: just leave.
It's a really shit situation, no doubt: the wish to stop it returning is in a chest very difficult to get to while the naga is dead but you need the wish to keep it dead. It's immune to charms so you cannot control it to make it give you the genie and it can teleport with dimension door so you're unlikely to imprison it for long and while you could fashion a prison or go find a wish elsewhere: it will come back to life in meantime and cause trouble again. Now, technically this is not a paradox but it is a rather crap situation, however.
The options have become very limited. However, getting to the Ethereal plane is easier than getting another Wish, so maybe find a way to do that?
Or don't have a DM that gives a spell like this to monsters with key items the party needs because the whole purpose of Leomund's Secret Chest is precisely this: making it so nobody gets your stuff even if you die or they try to dispel it. It's what they call a "dick move".
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Haha, nice answer. The conclusion of which being : I am a DM who made "dick move" so my party can't possibly solve the quest I gave them. But! You gave me a great idea of how to make this make sense. This post is a smaller post from a giant thread I started with a bunch of questions related to my campaign named "Spiralia: my stupidly ambitious homebrew campaign". The Spirit Naga isn't actually the person who cast Leomund's Secret Chest, nor the one who controls the genie. Just an ally of a greater villain. So then the greater villain will be the next target after the party escapes the Spirit Naga's lair with the replica chest. It's totally do-able. Thank you for your reply!
good point, traversing the ethereal plane is possible for one of my PC's.
The rules say how things work, not how they don't work. There's nothing in the spell's effect that would allow another creature to retrieve the chest.
Those spells only move you to the Border Ethereal, the part of the Ethereal Plane that overlaps the Material Plane. That's not where the spell is hiding the chest, since it'd be easy to find and there'd be no risk of it being lost.
The only way the spell makes sense is to assume the chest is kept in the Deep Ethereal, which would require something like Plane Shift or Astral Projection to reach. And once there it's like finding a needle in a haystack since the Deep Ethereal is an infinite 3D plane of fog.
The easiest way to get the chest is to revive the owner. Barring that, you're looking at Wish. The spell is designed so no one but the owner has any reasonable chance of getting the chest.