Hello everyone this is my first post on D&D Beyond. I am playing a multi-table D&D campaign and recently I have been given the opportunity to obtain the magic item Cube Of Force. but I have a question regarding the second type of magic barrier that this object can create.
The barrier in question blocks any type of non-living matter, with the exception of walls, ceilings and floors at the discretion of the player. my question at this point is a creature wearing metal / leather armor, or even just clothes can pass through this barrier ?. Technically according to the description no. as the creature is considered as living material while the armor is considered non-living material. in other conversations I have read that being the armor / object worn it should not be counted as non-living material.
This however reminded me that when a magical object or a spell affects both objects and creatures, when the effect directly or indirectly affects an object appears the phrase Object that aren’t being worn or carried, This specific phrase appears in every Spell and in any magical object that have This type of influence.
In this case the wording is substantially different in that it speaks of all Living / Non-Living matter does not even refer to creatures as living matter and makes no distinction at all. All that is living passes, all that is not living does not pass and vice versa with the barrier of opposite effect. I haven’t found any official WoTC references or Jeremy Crawford post test mention it, What do you think?
My DM has house ruled they do not have to be naked. The naked rule lets beasts etc. attack you but effectively stops most humanoids, giants, etc. We thought it 'uncool', so we house ruled.
My DM has house ruled they do not have to be naked. The naked rule lets beasts etc. attack you but effectively stops most humanoids, giants, etc. We thought it 'uncool', so we house ruled.
An unashamed Monk can still get to them so I don't see the need to house rule it.
RAW, since the description doesn't list any exceptions, blocking non-living matter does just that. If it is not alive, it can't pass through.
As mentioned above, there are a lot of workarounds for a creative DM to make use of. I liked the idea of uprooting a tree or alternatively throwing living trees or other living objects.
Also, keep in mind that creatures standing on both sides of the cube are likely to prevent the holder from being able to move at all without successfully pushing over at least one of the creatures blocking the movement of the cube. The person inside can also not use weapons to attack outwards with since the cube blocks everything both ways.
One of my characters has one of these and it has been one of the more difficult items to find an effective use for. It can be used for spell defense for a sniper; however, if the sniper gets hit and goes down the party can't heal them without running into the area of the cube to cast a spell or administer a potion. It also has a number of weaknesses that are pretty easy to exploit.
in my opinion the object in question is very useful instead. the character I am playing is a Thief / warlock, in this case I can block the enemies who want to attack me in close combat with the n2 barrier, I can block animals and other creatures with the n3 barrier, I can block the attacks of other spellcasters with the barrier n4 and I can block anything else with barrier n5. having in addition the flight boots I can do all that by flying and shooting darts from the crossbow or Eldrich Blast depending on the situation.
in any case my question was about something else
Let's assume that I adventurer has activated the Cube of Force, Barrier of Non-Living Matter ( Nonliving matter can't pass through the barrier. Walls, floors, and ceilings can pass through at your discretion) and that a bandit wearing full plate armor is running trought of me. does the barrier let the bandit pass or block him because the armor he wears is considered non-living material?
The charges are not a real limit in combat, it just keeps it from being an out of combat item.
There are a ton of uses for the Cube of Force, it's one of the more creative magic items.
For example, corridor full of any living things: 100k bat swarm, ooze, slime, fungus, or any other such thing.
Walk through the corridor with a) the Cube set to keep living things out, and b) the spell Spirit Guardians.
Oh, you might have to travel slowly - perhaps as low as 10 ft a round. But you will forever be known as "Bat Slayer". DM had to house rule that he got a set amount of XP for doing it, rather than calculating.
RAW, since the description doesn't list any exceptions, blocking non-living matter does just that. If it is not alive, it can't pass through.
As mentioned above, there are a lot of workarounds for a creative DM to make use of. I liked the idea of uprooting a tree or alternatively throwing living trees or other living objects.
Also, keep in mind that creatures standing on both sides of the cube are likely to prevent the holder from being able to move at all without successfully pushing over at least one of the creatures blocking the movement of the cube. The person inside can also not use weapons to attack outwards with since the cube blocks everything both ways.
One of my characters has one of these and it has been one of the more difficult items to find an effective use for. It can be used for spell defense for a sniper; however, if the sniper gets hit and goes down the party can't heal them without running into the area of the cube to cast a spell or administer a potion. It also has a number of weaknesses that are pretty easy to exploit.
Cube of Force From the description the person that triggered it can't move from where they are if non-living matter like armor someone is wearing is blocking the way. You push as hard and run as fast as you want but the specific rule in the cube stops all that. There is no way to "push over" anything using the force generated by the cube.
"If your movement causes the barrier to come into contact with a solid object that can't pass through the cube, you can't move any closer to that object as long as the barrier remains."
If you don't have a way to kill them smart enemies can easily lock your movement down. Let's see...a couple of goblins stake some arrows in the ground and one tosses an arrow on top of the cube real quick :) The magic "protecting" you literally says you can't move over and pull them out of the ground. Unless you drop the barrier of course.
in my opinion the object in question is very useful instead. the character I am playing is a Thief / warlock, in this case I can block the enemies who want to attack me in close combat with the n2 barrier, I can block animals and other creatures with the n3 barrier, I can block the attacks of other spellcasters with the barrier n4 and I can block anything else with barrier n5. having in addition the flight boots I can do all that by flying and shooting darts from the crossbow or Eldrich Blast depending on the situation.
in any case my question was about something else
Let's assume that I adventurer has activated the Cube of Force, Barrier of Non-Living Matter ( Nonliving matter can't pass through the barrier. Walls, floors, and ceilings can pass through at your discretion) and that a bandit wearing full plate armor is running trought of me. does the barrier let the bandit pass or block him because the armor he wears is considered non-living material?
in my opinion the object in question is very useful instead. the character I am playing is a Thief / warlock, in this case I can block the enemies who want to attack me in close combat with the n2 barrier, I can block animals and other creatures with the n3 barrier, I can block the attacks of other spellcasters with the barrier n4 and I can block anything else with barrier n5. having in addition the flight boots I can do all that by flying and shooting darts from the crossbow or Eldrich Blast depending on the situation.
in any case my question was about something else
Let's assume that I adventurer has activated the Cube of Force, Barrier of Non-Living Matter ( Nonliving matter can't pass through the barrier. Walls, floors, and ceilings can pass through at your discretion) and that a bandit wearing full plate armor is running trought of me. does the barrier let the bandit pass or block him because the armor he wears is considered non-living material?
The description of the cube of force doesn't make any exceptions for non-living matter carried or worn by a creature. It is still non-living matter. There is no general rule that anything worn or carried by a creature is considered a part of that creature. There are a lot of effects that indicate that you can't target something worn or carried. There are also a number of effects like Heat Metal which only require a manufactured metal object which includes metal armor worn by creatures.
As a result, as other have mentioned, the cube of force RAW, will block worn non-living matter from passing through just as much as any other non-living matter. So, no, a creature wearing armor, carrying a weapon or otherwise having anything non-living in their possession would be prevented from entering the cube of force unless they dropped the item. The creature could enter, the non-living items they carry can not.
Note that many DMs will consider any creature to be "living" from the perspective of this rule and thus constructs and undead might be able to pass through the barrier even though some folks might consider them "non-living".
The charges are not a real limit in combat, it just keeps it from being an out of combat item.
There are a ton of uses for the Cube of Force, it's one of the more creative magic items.
For example, corridor full of any living things: 100k bat swarm, ooze, slime, fungus, or any other such thing.
Walk through the corridor with a) the Cube set to keep living things out, and b) the spell Spirit Guardians.
Oh, you might have to travel slowly - perhaps as low as 10 ft a round. But you will forever be known as "Bat Slayer". DM had to house rule that he got a set amount of XP for doing it, rather than calculating.
Yes, if you have a perfect corridor of creatures all close enough to mow down within 20 minutes, all unintelligent enough not to compensate, in open enough terrain that you do not get caught in trees or shrubbery, yeah, sure. No one is saying that it is useless... merely very situational. And unless you have a similar 'I win' button that you can press within those 20 minutes, then it is still a real time limit. Note also that non-animate plants are not normally considered creatures, so they would not be affected by the guardians spell.
Does not have to be a perfect corridor - as per RAW we let floors and wall pass through.
I was specifically saying that it is NOT situational. Yest I gave our party's best use of the Cube, but we use it almost every single large battle. It took us a while to figure out when and how to use it, but it is quite frankly over-powered for Rare. As a DM, I would consider it Very Rare, because of how useful it is. It almost always gives us, at the very least, an emergency place to rest and recuperate in the middle of a battle.
But most often, it allows us to engage in strategic battlefield manipulation. Often one character's entire contribution to a battle is spending his action to turn it on, then switch to a different effect - which the enemy is not aware of but our party does know about and can therefore take appropriate actions while the enemy is wasting their actions.
For example, we can get opponent's to waste counter-spells while the cube is set to block Spells and we are buffing/healing. Then we change it to keep living things out when they charge, while we counterspell their mages!
The worst thing about it is that when it is set to keep either everything or spells out, there is little the enemy can do short of use a Misty Step/other teleport to get inside the sphere, and the wielder is a good melee fighter. Spells to end it early eat charges, but it has so many that it is unlikely to end it in the middle of combat.
The charges are not a real limit in combat, it just keeps it from being an out of combat item.
There are a ton of uses for the Cube of Force, it's one of the more creative magic items.
For example, corridor full of any living things: 100k bat swarm, ooze, slime, fungus, or any other such thing.
Walk through the corridor with a) the Cube set to keep living things out, and b) the spell Spirit Guardians.
Oh, you might have to travel slowly - perhaps as low as 10 ft a round. But you will forever be known as "Bat Slayer". DM had to house rule that he got a set amount of XP for doing it, rather than calculating.
Yes, if you have a perfect corridor of creatures all close enough to mow down within 20 minutes, all unintelligent enough not to compensate, in open enough terrain that you do not get caught in trees or shrubbery, yeah, sure. No one is saying that it is useless... merely very situational. And unless you have a similar 'I win' button that you can press within those 20 minutes, then it is still a real time limit. Note also that non-animate plants are not normally considered creatures, so they would not be affected by the guardians spell.
Does not have to be a perfect corridor - as per RAW we let floors and wall pass through.
I was specifically saying that it is NOT situational. Yest I gave our party's best use of the Cube, but we use it almost every single large battle. It took us a while to figure out when and how to use it, but it is quite frankly over-powered for Rare. As a DM, I would consider it Very Rare, because of how useful it is. It almost always gives us, at the very least, an emergency place to rest and recuperate in the middle of a battle.
But most often, it allows us to engage in strategic battlefield manipulation. Often one character's entire contribution to a battle is spending his action to turn it on, then switch to a different effect - which the enemy is not aware of but our party does know about and can therefore take appropriate actions while the enemy is wasting their actions.
For example, we can get opponent's to waste counter-spells while the cube is set to block Spells and we are buffing/healing. Then we change it to keep living things out when they charge, while we counterspell their mages!
The worst thing about it is that when it is set to keep either everything or spells out, there is little the enemy can do short of use a Misty Step/other teleport to get inside the sphere, and the wielder is a good melee fighter. Spells to end it early eat charges, but it has so many that it is unlikely to end it in the middle of combat.
When you set it to keep everything out is when the giants put rocks on top of it. :)
If your party keeps everyone close, then they are in a perfect position for area of effect spells. If they set it to block spells then the opponents can easily rush and ranged attacks work fine. I found the most useful setting was to keep out living things since it kept melee attackers away from spellcasters/ranged attackers. However, since it requires the character's action to press the button there is a cost to using it. On the other hand, it can be situationally awesome, much like an effective casting of hypnotic pattern against the right set of opponents in the right formation who fail their saves :) (for example, if you are fighting a group of undead without ranged attacks, then there are settings that can be used to block all melee attacks and the opponents can be effectively eliminated at no risk. However, in that case, the encounter was just set up in such a way that the abilities of the cube worked particularly well).
Personally, I haven't found the item to be neither OP nor particularly difficult to deal with from a DM perspective. I've also found it a bit hard to use effectively from a player perspective but that may simply be due to the different kinds of encounters that I have played or run.
The charges are not a real limit in combat, it just keeps it from being an out of combat item.
There are a ton of uses for the Cube of Force, it's one of the more creative magic items.
For example, corridor full of any living things: 100k bat swarm, ooze, slime, fungus, or any other such thing.
Walk through the corridor with a) the Cube set to keep living things out, and b) the spell Spirit Guardians.
Oh, you might have to travel slowly - perhaps as low as 10 ft a round. But you will forever be known as "Bat Slayer". DM had to house rule that he got a set amount of XP for doing it, rather than calculating.
Yes, if you have a perfect corridor of creatures all close enough to mow down within 20 minutes, all unintelligent enough not to compensate, in open enough terrain that you do not get caught in trees or shrubbery, yeah, sure. No one is saying that it is useless... merely very situational. And unless you have a similar 'I win' button that you can press within those 20 minutes, then it is still a real time limit. Note also that non-animate plants are not normally considered creatures, so they would not be affected by the guardians spell.
Does not have to be a perfect corridor - as per RAW we let floors and wall pass through.
I was specifically saying that it is NOT situational. Yest I gave our party's best use of the Cube, but we use it almost every single large battle. It took us a while to figure out when and how to use it, but it is quite frankly over-powered for Rare. As a DM, I would consider it Very Rare, because of how useful it is. It almost always gives us, at the very least, an emergency place to rest and recuperate in the middle of a battle.
But most often, it allows us to engage in strategic battlefield manipulation. Often one character's entire contribution to a battle is spending his action to turn it on, then switch to a different effect - which the enemy is not aware of but our party does know about and can therefore take appropriate actions while the enemy is wasting their actions.
For example, we can get opponent's to waste counter-spells while the cube is set to block Spells and we are buffing/healing. Then we change it to keep living things out when they charge, while we counterspell their mages!
The worst thing about it is that when it is set to keep either everything or spells out, there is little the enemy can do short of use a Misty Step/other teleport to get inside the sphere, and the wielder is a good melee fighter. Spells to end it early eat charges, but it has so many that it is unlikely to end it in the middle of combat.
When you set it to keep everything out is when the giants put rocks on top of it. :)
If your party keeps everyone close, then they are in a perfect position for area of effect spells. If they set it to block spells then the opponents can easily rush and ranged attacks work fine. I found the most useful setting was to keep out living things since it kept melee attackers away from spellcasters/ranged attackers. However, since it requires the character's action to press the button there is a cost to using it. On the other hand, it can be situationally awesome, much like an effective casting of hypnotic pattern against the right set of opponents in the right formation who fail their saves :) (for example, if you are fighting a group of undead without ranged attacks, then there are settings that can be used to block all melee attacks and the opponents can be effectively eliminated at no risk. However, in that case, the encounter was just set up in such a way that the abilities of the cube worked particularly well).
Personally, I haven't found the item to be neither OP nor particularly difficult to deal with from a DM perspective. I've also found it a bit hard to use effectively from a player perspective but that may simply be due to the different kinds of encounters that I have played or run.
In my opinion the object in question is very useful instead. the character I am playing is a Rogue(swashbuckler) / warlock(Hexblade), in this case I can block the enemies who want to attack me in close combat with the n2 barrier, I can block animals and other creatures with the n3 barrier, I can block the attacks of other spellcasters with the barrier n4 and I can block anything else with barrier n5. having in addition the flight boots I can do all that by flying and shooting darts from the crossbow or Eldrich Blast depending on the situation, and depending on the barrier that I have active at that time.
My character, a Hexblade Paladin with the Polearm master feat, just found one of these. Since it's a 15 ft cube with him in the center, that makes it 9 squares
X X X X O X X X X
Since my character is a polearm master, he's got a 10 ft reach, so he can set the cube to 2, and then wade into melee. At 10 feet he can attack someone, but they can't hit him back as they can't get into melee. Of course they could cast a spell, or try a ranged attack, but he's got an AC of 19 and a cloak of displacement.
This gives him another round of protection from melee attacks.
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Hello everyone this is my first post on D&D Beyond. I am playing a multi-table D&D campaign and recently I have been given the opportunity to obtain the magic item Cube Of Force. but I have a question regarding the second type of magic barrier that this object can create.
The barrier in question blocks any type of non-living matter, with the exception of walls, ceilings and floors at the discretion of the player. my question at this point is a creature wearing metal / leather armor, or even just clothes can pass through this barrier ?. Technically according to the description no. as the creature is considered as living material while the armor is considered non-living material. in other conversations I have read that being the armor / object worn it should not be counted as non-living material.
This however reminded me that when a magical object or a spell affects both objects and creatures, when the effect directly or indirectly affects an object appears the phrase Object that aren’t being worn or carried, This specific phrase appears in every Spell and in any magical object that have This type of influence.
In this case the wording is substantially different in that it speaks of all Living / Non-Living matter does not even refer to creatures as living matter and makes no distinction at all. All that is living passes, all that is not living does not pass and vice versa with the barrier of opposite effect. I haven’t found any official WoTC references or Jeremy Crawford post test mention it, What do you think?
If you activate side 2 and a creature wants to move through it they have to be naked.
Or what they are wearing has to be "alive".
My DM has house ruled they do not have to be naked. The naked rule lets beasts etc. attack you but effectively stops most humanoids, giants, etc. We thought it 'uncool', so we house ruled.
An unashamed Monk can still get to them so I don't see the need to house rule it.
RAW, since the description doesn't list any exceptions, blocking non-living matter does just that. If it is not alive, it can't pass through.
As mentioned above, there are a lot of workarounds for a creative DM to make use of. I liked the idea of uprooting a tree or alternatively throwing living trees or other living objects.
Also, keep in mind that creatures standing on both sides of the cube are likely to prevent the holder from being able to move at all without successfully pushing over at least one of the creatures blocking the movement of the cube. The person inside can also not use weapons to attack outwards with since the cube blocks everything both ways.
One of my characters has one of these and it has been one of the more difficult items to find an effective use for. It can be used for spell defense for a sniper; however, if the sniper gets hit and goes down the party can't heal them without running into the area of the cube to cast a spell or administer a potion. It also has a number of weaknesses that are pretty easy to exploit.
in my opinion the object in question is very useful instead. the character I am playing is a Thief / warlock, in this case I can block the enemies who want to attack me in close combat with the n2 barrier, I can block animals and other creatures with the n3 barrier, I can block the attacks of other spellcasters with the barrier n4 and I can block anything else with barrier n5. having in addition the flight boots I can do all that by flying and shooting darts from the crossbow or Eldrich Blast depending on the situation.
in any case my question was about something else
Let's assume that I adventurer has activated the Cube of Force, Barrier of Non-Living Matter ( Nonliving matter can't pass through the barrier. Walls, floors, and ceilings can pass through at your discretion) and that a bandit wearing full plate armor is running trought of me. does the barrier let the bandit pass or block him because the armor he wears is considered non-living material?
The charges are not a real limit in combat, it just keeps it from being an out of combat item.
There are a ton of uses for the Cube of Force, it's one of the more creative magic items.
For example, corridor full of any living things: 100k bat swarm, ooze, slime, fungus, or any other such thing.
Walk through the corridor with a) the Cube set to keep living things out, and b) the spell Spirit Guardians.
Oh, you might have to travel slowly - perhaps as low as 10 ft a round. But you will forever be known as "Bat Slayer". DM had to house rule that he got a set amount of XP for doing it, rather than calculating.
Cube of Force From the description the person that triggered it can't move from where they are if non-living matter like armor someone is wearing is blocking the way. You push as hard and run as fast as you want but the specific rule in the cube stops all that. There is no way to "push over" anything using the force generated by the cube.
"If your movement causes the barrier to come into contact with a solid object that can't pass through the cube, you can't move any closer to that object as long as the barrier remains."
If you don't have a way to kill them smart enemies can easily lock your movement down. Let's see...a couple of goblins stake some arrows in the ground and one tosses an arrow on top of the cube real quick :) The magic "protecting" you literally says you can't move over and pull them out of the ground. Unless you drop the barrier of course.
The description of the cube of force doesn't make any exceptions for non-living matter carried or worn by a creature. It is still non-living matter. There is no general rule that anything worn or carried by a creature is considered a part of that creature. There are a lot of effects that indicate that you can't target something worn or carried. There are also a number of effects like Heat Metal which only require a manufactured metal object which includes metal armor worn by creatures.
As a result, as other have mentioned, the cube of force RAW, will block worn non-living matter from passing through just as much as any other non-living matter. So, no, a creature wearing armor, carrying a weapon or otherwise having anything non-living in their possession would be prevented from entering the cube of force unless they dropped the item. The creature could enter, the non-living items they carry can not.
Note that many DMs will consider any creature to be "living" from the perspective of this rule and thus constructs and undead might be able to pass through the barrier even though some folks might consider them "non-living".
Does not have to be a perfect corridor - as per RAW we let floors and wall pass through.
I was specifically saying that it is NOT situational. Yest I gave our party's best use of the Cube, but we use it almost every single large battle. It took us a while to figure out when and how to use it, but it is quite frankly over-powered for Rare. As a DM, I would consider it Very Rare, because of how useful it is. It almost always gives us, at the very least, an emergency place to rest and recuperate in the middle of a battle.
But most often, it allows us to engage in strategic battlefield manipulation. Often one character's entire contribution to a battle is spending his action to turn it on, then switch to a different effect - which the enemy is not aware of but our party does know about and can therefore take appropriate actions while the enemy is wasting their actions.
For example, we can get opponent's to waste counter-spells while the cube is set to block Spells and we are buffing/healing. Then we change it to keep living things out when they charge, while we counterspell their mages!
The worst thing about it is that when it is set to keep either everything or spells out, there is little the enemy can do short of use a Misty Step/other teleport to get inside the sphere, and the wielder is a good melee fighter. Spells to end it early eat charges, but it has so many that it is unlikely to end it in the middle of combat.
When you set it to keep everything out is when the giants put rocks on top of it. :)
If your party keeps everyone close, then they are in a perfect position for area of effect spells. If they set it to block spells then the opponents can easily rush and ranged attacks work fine. I found the most useful setting was to keep out living things since it kept melee attackers away from spellcasters/ranged attackers. However, since it requires the character's action to press the button there is a cost to using it. On the other hand, it can be situationally awesome, much like an effective casting of hypnotic pattern against the right set of opponents in the right formation who fail their saves :) (for example, if you are fighting a group of undead without ranged attacks, then there are settings that can be used to block all melee attacks and the opponents can be effectively eliminated at no risk. However, in that case, the encounter was just set up in such a way that the abilities of the cube worked particularly well).
Personally, I haven't found the item to be neither OP nor particularly difficult to deal with from a DM perspective. I've also found it a bit hard to use effectively from a player perspective but that may simply be due to the different kinds of encounters that I have played or run.
In my opinion the object in question is very useful instead. the character I am playing is a Rogue(swashbuckler) / warlock(Hexblade), in this case I can block the enemies who want to attack me in close combat with the n2 barrier, I can block animals and other creatures with the n3 barrier, I can block the attacks of other spellcasters with the barrier n4 and I can block anything else with barrier n5. having in addition the flight boots I can do all that by flying and shooting darts from the crossbow or Eldrich Blast depending on the situation, and depending on the barrier that I have active at that time.
My character, a Hexblade Paladin with the Polearm master feat, just found one of these. Since it's a 15 ft cube with him in the center, that makes it 9 squares
X X X
X O X
X X X
Since my character is a polearm master, he's got a 10 ft reach, so he can set the cube to 2, and then wade into melee. At 10 feet he can attack someone, but they can't hit him back as they can't get into melee. Of course they could cast a spell, or try a ranged attack, but he's got an AC of 19 and a cloak of displacement.
This gives him another round of protection from melee attacks.