Passwall's Five Rounds
Passwall is a Tier 3 spell with Close range. On a successful casting it opens a tunnel your height, running in a straight line up to Near distance through a solid barrier you designate. It holds for five rounds, then closes.
The math is the whole point. Five rounds is a clock. That window is enough to move a party through a wall, drain a flooded chamber into the next room, get eyes on what a locked door was hiding, or reach a lever nobody was meant to touch. Spend those rounds sliding figures one square left of a stone pillar and you have burned a Tier 3 slot to do what a step would have done.
Read the spell as an access tool, not a movement buff. Passwall changes what is reachable, not just where a token sits. A vault, a sealed cell, a sluice gate, a bypass around the guarded corridor: those are the uses that justify the spell, and the five-round limit is what makes them tense.
At the table: Put the treasure behind a wall with only one guarded door. When they cast Passwall, start the five-round countdown out loud and let the guards notice the new hole.
Related
- Spells Are Verbs, Not Damage Rolls
- The Comic Relief That Bites: Seeding Ancient Dragon Encounters
- The Seed Is a Trap You Set for Yourself
Daily field notes, weekly Issues. Follow @ItsAlrdyWritten or subscribe via RSS.