Anti-Magic Shell surrounds the caster with a faintly shimmering magical sphere that moves with him. The sphere completely repels all forms of water - liquid, solid, and vapor, ice snow, sleet, and steam are unable to penetrate the area of protection. Forms of water encountering the protective bubble are pushed aside if capable of being moved. Attempting to force the barrier against an immobile form of water (a solid wall of ice, for instance) strains and ultimately collapses the spell. An obvious core-spell deriviative, this spell was implemented to flesh out the Water Elementalist's list of utility spells. And to make the resident Enchantress with a fondess for water spells happy :) While speaking of "Anti-X Shell" spells, I'd like to mention a bit of intriguing oddity that I noticed while briefly researching the above spell. The various existing Shell spells cannot be forced against their respective anti-materials - in other words, you cannot use Anti-Plant Shell to pin a Shambling Mound against a wall. Trying to do so brings down the spell, and leaves you with an upset creature to deal with :) Now, noted in the Protection Scroll versions of these spells is that pushing aside these anti-materials requires an application of force. A Protection From Plants scroll notes that: if it is pushed towards plant life that is immobile (a well-rooted shrub, brush, or tree, for instance), the sphere cannot be through or past it unless the reader has enough strength and mass to uproot the plant under normal conditions. This is a big difference from the spell versions which seem to imply an all-or-nothing approach to Shell pressure effects. How do the spell versions function? Imagine a caster of Anti-Plant Shell walking towards a Shambling Mound who is determined to hold his ground. What happens the the Shell hits the Mound? Is the Mound pushed aside by the spell effect, or does the caster find himself unable to push past the Mound? The answer seems to be the former, as the latter would provide for some unforseen consequences of the spell. If the Shambling Mound can actively manipulate the Shell, then what's stopping it from pushing/rolling the shell (and the caster with it) off the side of a cliff? That's obviously not the intention of these abjuratives :) Anyways, the point was to illustrate the the only way to actively stop the forward motion of an Anti-X Shell is when the anti-material has noplace to bounce/recoil away. My Anti-Water Shell should not be capable of being pushed around by the high-pressure stream from a Decanter of Endless Water, for example - the water simply encounters the surface of the protective bubble and splashes away without moving the bubble/caster in the least. However, were the Decanter mounted to a stable surface (say, embedded into a wall) and the caster walked up to it, the second that the Shell "caps" the nozzle the water would be unable to go anywhere else (like the standard "pinned to a wall" limitation) and the spell would drop. One final note - the Protection From Water scroll notes that the user can walk across ice without slipping. This is, IMO, a spell ruling mistake. If the ice cannot be pushed away from the protective bubble, then the spell should fail. Attempting to walk upon ice, pushing it against the ground (the "pinned against the wall" limitation, remember?), should result in the caster unable to approach the ice past a certain limit, and ultimately drop the spell if the caster keeps pushing. You could say that this is simply an exception that makes the rule to Anti-X spells, but granting the Protection Scroll the additional ability to protect the reader from the material even if it gets into the Shell (at the reader's feet) is more than I'm willing to allow. OK, one more note. Since we've determined that anti-materials cannot push around Anti-X Shells unless the material has nowhere else to go, then using a Protection From Water scroll to walk on water shouldn't work either. The reader would simply sink like a stone, and the water pressure wouldn't push the Shell to the surface to bob like a cork. IMC, the Protection From Water scroll will function more like my Anti-Water Shell, and by extension more like the standard Anti-X Shell spells. |