Rope trick / Detect magic Question

[Echotracer]

So in talking to another gm we seem to have come onto a disagreement and I was wondering how this works.

A spellcaster casts Rope Trick on a 30' rope and climbs up into the extra-dimensional space. He pulls the rope up in after him. An hour or two later another character (say bob) walks by while using Detect magic, but otherwise has no way of seeing invisible things.

Will bob detect a magical aura from rope trick? If he does can he cast dispel magic at it and force the spellcaster out?



I'm under the impression that the rope trick spell was cast on the rope, making the rope magical for the duration. The rope along with the caster are in an extra-dimensional space, and thus "are hidden, beyond the reach of spells (including divinations), unless those spells work across planes". Detect magic says nothing about working across planes so they wont detect the rope, the spell on the rope, or anything inside leaving the spellcaster safe for now.

The other gm insists that the spell created an extra-dimensional space and that the spell remains there on that plane to maintain it. The 'portal, hole, or window" is in fact magical and Bob walking by will be able to detect the magical aura of the active spell and wonder what it is. If he doesn't see the portal, the rope is magical and not a "person" and because only persons fitting in the extra-dimensional space are immune to divination, detect magic will find the rope.

Following this logic. As the spell is maintaining the portal and is there for him to detect eather by the spell being outside or the rope not being protected by its extra-dimensional location, Bob casting dispel magic in the area or at the rope should end the rope trick spell early.

[Ols]

If we follow the rules strictly then spell description states: “Target: One touched piece of rope from 5 ft. to 30 ft. long” and it suggests that the spell (and its aura) is on the rope. Concerning detecting the rope in the extradimensional space. The description of Rope Trick states: “Spells cannot be cast across the extradimensional interface, nor can area effects cross it.” Since Detect Magic is a spell with an area effect, it can not detect anything in the extradimensional space including the rope. The same way Dispell Magic cant dispell Rope trick while the rope is inside. The only question remaining is: can Detect Magic reveal the entrance to the extradimensional space? It’s debatable, but I would suggest that the extradimensional space is not necessarily magical and the entrance should not be magical by default.

You should take into consideration that Detect Magic spell is widely available to most spellcasters. Thus, if we agree that it detects Rope Trick shelter, then Rope Trick shelter would be easily detectable by a wide variety of NPCs. I don’t think it is good. There are enough other means of Rope Trick detection. Like See Invisibility spell or secondary means (for example, footprints in the space where the rope was touching the ground ).

[Raphir]

This is a good one. If such a situation had just come about in the middle of a gaming session, I probably would've said that one could detect the portal. Having more time to consider it, though, I'm leaning to say detect magic wouldn't register anything if the rope was within the extradimensional space.

That being said, however, I think this sorta decision should have less to do with official rules, and more with game balance and, if you're using a campaing setting that's specific about it, how magic works on the world. Game balance is pretty straightforward: in most cases, you either want to favor the people hiding or the people searching.

I dunno about other GMs, but I'd say the likelyhood of including a rope trick in one of my npc's escape plan is pretty low, so favoring the rope trick usually means favoring the pc's, which is fair game for me if they're actually trying to avoid or flee from an encounter... For my usual players to do that, that probably means they're facing dire enough odds as it is. So yeah, from now on, I know how I'm gonna go about this problem, if it ever arises.

But again, if your game world is very specific in the way magic works, and it's logic would dictate whether the detect magic would register the rope trick, I'd say keeping the verissimilitude, even one as specific as that, is a more desirable goal than this particular instance of game balance.