Universes of Imagination™ - Adventures

The first house rule issue is proving difficult to work through. A two phase round is still too cumbersome and has been abandoned. Instead, I am looking at some sort of AoO when an opponent chooses a full-round attack. The second issue deserves a more nuanced response and I think I have finally come up with one that might work.

Let's take the Detect Secret Doors spell first. I am proposing to make a Detect Architectural Anomalies spell (can anyone come up with a better name???)

It would still be a 60 ft cone spell, etc. During the first round the caster would notice all the anomalies in the spell area. "There is a crack in the wall there, a hollow space seems to be behind that wall, there is a hole in the wall over there, …" The crack may or may not be the edge of a secret door, the hollow space may have been hollowed out by water naturally or may be a room or passageway, the hole may simply be a hole in the wall or it may be a peep hole or where a lock mechanism is or the place from which a poisoned arrow might be launched.

In the second round the caster may choose to concentrate on a particular anomaly. If the caster beats the search DC of the door or trap with her Concentration check, then she can say definitively whether it is a secret door or a trap or a natural anomaly. The spell itself gives her a +2 circumstance bonus on this check and having Knowledge (architecture and engineering) as a class skill gives an additional +2 competence bonus. Even a failure might still give the caster a sense that it is probably a 'whatever', GM's discretion. Alternatively, the caster can simply ask a party member with the appropraite skills to check it out!

I am also proposing to combine all the 'aura' based detect spells into a single set of spells. But more on this in the next post.