Barrier
A powerful invisible magical barrier
Barrier creates an invisible magical defense with its own HP. It blocks physical and magical attacks that must cross it, including weapons, projectiles, explosions, sound, heat, and most spells. It does not block mental attacks or spells that explicitly ignore barriers. A caster may maintain any number of Barrier castings on different creatures, objects, or areas. Their own Barriers cannot cover the same target or occupy the same boundary to combine their HP.
Barriers created by different casters may overlap or protect the same target. Resolve them separately in the physical order an attack crosses them. If two boundaries occupy the same position, the newest Barrier is outermost and resolves first. A feat that creates several Barriers in one casting cannot place more than one on the same target.
Defensive Order
When an attack strikes a barrier, resolve defenses in this order:
- the barrier loses HP;
- excess damage passes through;
- the target's or armor's DR reduces what remains.
A barrier reduced to 0 HP disappears immediately.
Psychic Stability
When Barrier is cast with blue mana as a Psychic power, its duration is 1 minute per caster level instead of 1 round per caster level. The stable mana holds the barrier's shape without requiring the high-level mastery a red sorcerer needs to produce long-lasting effects.
Barrier Forms
When casting, choose a form available at the spell's level.
Fitted barrier. A thin layer follows a creature's or object's silhouette and moves with it, protecting it from every direction. A Barrier fitted to an object protects only that object, not a creature carrying or wielding it. Because a Barrier fitted to a creature covers its equipment, it normally takes damage before armor DR. An effect created directly inside the protected silhouette does not cross the layer and is not blocked.
Fixed area barrier. The barrier forms an immobile sphere around a chosen point and protects the entire area in every direction. It is bidirectional: nothing can enter or leave without first overcoming it. An attack created inside can therefore damage the barrier while trying to escape. The caster can let one ally per tick leave without meeting the barrier.
Mobile area barrier — level 7 or higher. This form works like a fixed area barrier, but its center follows the target. If the sphere encounters a major obstacle it cannot contain or cross—a wall, low ceiling, or narrow opening—the protected creature cannot continue that movement while the barrier retains this form.
What Barrier Cannot Stop
Mental attacks do not need to cross the barrier, nor do spells that explicitly ignore barriers. Effects created inside a fitted barrier are not intercepted. Within an area barrier, however, any effect attempting to cross the boundary meets the sphere, regardless of direction.
Progression
| Spell level | HP per caster level | Maximum radius |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 10 | 5 ft |
| 3 | 20 | 10 ft |
| 5 | 40 | 20 ft |
| 7 | 80 | 40 ft |
| 9 | 160 | 80 ft |
| 10 | 320 | 160 ft |