Spell, Wall of Force, “Invisible Dominion”
Spell
Wall of Force, “Invisible Dominion”
Impose a boundary that the world itself must obey.
Wall of Force is an imposed condition on space. A path exists, then does not. A charge commits, then stops. There is no masonry to break and no visible gate to force.
The spell does not defeat power by meeting it head-on. It decides where power is allowed to go.
Wall of Force Rules
Wall of Force
Level 5 Evocation — Wizard
Effect
You create an invisible wall of magical force at a point within range. It may appear in any orientation: horizontal, vertical, angled, free-floating, or resting upon a solid surface.
You choose one of two forms:
- a hemispherical dome or globe with a radius of up to 10 feet; or
- a flat surface composed of ten contiguous 10-foot-by-10-foot panels.
Each panel must be contiguous with another panel. In either form, the barrier is 1/4 inch thick.
If the wall cuts through a creature’s space when it appears, the creature is pushed to one side of the wall, with the caster choosing the side.
Nothing can physically pass through the barrier. It is immune to all damage and cannot be ended by Dispel Magic.
A Disintegrate spell destroys the wall instantly.
The barrier also extends into the Ethereal Plane, blocking ethereal travel through it.
Wall of Force
Evocation [Force] — 5th-level arcane spell
Effect
The spell creates an immobile, invisible wall of pure force. The wall forms a flat vertical plane with an area of up to one 10-foot square per caster level.
The surface must be continuous and unbroken when it is created. If any creature or object interrupts the wall’s surface at that moment, the spell fails.
The wall is immune to Dispel Magic, although Mage’s Disjunction can dispel it.
Unlike its 3.5e counterpart, this wall can be damaged. It has hardness 30 and 20 hit points per caster level. Weapons, supernatural abilities, and damaging spells can therefore break it if they overcome those defences.
Disintegrate automatically destroys the wall. A sphere of annihilation or rod of cancellation also destroys it immediately.
Breath weapons and spells cannot pass through the wall in either direction. Dimension Door, Teleport, and similar effects can bypass it.
The wall blocks ethereal creatures as well as material creatures, although an ethereal traveller can potentially go around the barrier where surrounding terrain permits. Gaze attacks can function through it.
Mythic Wall of Force
The mythic version increases the wall to hardness 40 and 30 hit points per caster level.
A non-mythic Disintegrate spell or rod of cancellation does not permanently destroy the entire mythic wall. Instead it suppresses a 10-foot-square section for 1 round, after which that section reforms at full strength.
One side of the wall, chosen by the caster, also repels creatures within 5 feet as the repulsion spell, using the saving throw DC Wall of Force would have if it normally allowed one.
Wall of Force
Evocation [Force] — Sorcerer/Wizard 5
Effect
The spell creates an invisible, immobile wall of force in a flat vertical plane. Its maximum area is one 10-foot square per caster level.
The wall must be continuous and unbroken when formed. If its surface is interrupted by an object or creature as it is created, the spell fails.
The defining legacy property is durability: the wall is immune to damage of all kinds. Ordinary attacks cannot wear it down.
It is also unaffected by most spells, including Dispel Magic. It is destroyed by Disintegrate, a rod of cancellation, a sphere of annihilation, or Mage’s Disjunction.
Breath weapons and spells cannot pass through the barrier in either direction. Dimension Door, Teleport, and similar effects can bypass it.
The barrier blocks ethereal creatures as well as material ones. Gaze attacks can operate through it.
Wall of Force Rules Desk
The most important disputes around this spell arise because its wording and counters are not identical across rulesets. These are the distinctions that matter at the table.
| Question | 5.5e | Pathfinder 1e | D&D 3.5e |
|---|---|---|---|
| Can ordinary attacks destroy it? | No. Immune to all damage. | Yes. Hardness 30 and 20 hp per caster level. | No. Immune to damage of all kinds. |
| Does Dispel Magic remove it? | No. | No. | No. |
| Does Disintegrate destroy it? | Yes, instantly. | Yes, automatically; mythic walls have a special exception against non-mythic Disintegrate. | Yes, immediately. |
| What does Antimagic Field do? | Suppresses the overlapping portion while the antimagic remains there. | Wall of Force is specifically unaffected. | Wall of Force is specifically unaffected. |
| Can spells pass straight through? | Apply clear-path, Total Cover, area-of-effect, and any more-specific spell rules. | Spells and breath weapons explicitly cannot pass through. | Spells and breath weapons explicitly cannot pass through. |
| Can teleportation bypass it? | The wall itself does not impose a universal teleport ban; resolve the individual teleport effect. | Dimension Door, Teleport, and similar effects explicitly can. | Dimension Door, Teleport, and similar effects explicitly can. |
| Can it be permanent? | No permanent option in the spell. | Yes, through Permanency. | Yes, through Permanency. |
| What shape can it take? | Flat panels, hemispherical dome, or globe; any orientation, and it can float freely. | Flat vertical plane. | Flat vertical plane. |
Why Wall of Force Is So Powerful
Wall of Force replaces a contest with a boundary. The enemy’s armour, strength, reach, speed, and appetite for violence may remain completely intact; none of those qualities matter if the enemy cannot reach the part of the battlefield where they are needed.
Divide the Battlefield
Split one dangerous encounter into two smaller ones and force enemy groups to act without supporting each other.
Isolate the Main Threat
A creature does not have to be defeated immediately if it can be made irrelevant while the rest of the encounter is resolved.
Seal a Route
Doors, stairs, bridges, alleys, tunnels, galleries, and choke points become far harder to contest when the barrier itself cannot simply be battered aside.
Protect What Cannot Move
The spell can buy time for wounded allies, ritualists, prisoners, civilians, vulnerable objects, or an objective that must survive an assault.
Tactics
Wall of Force rewards geometry more than raw magical power. The best placement is rarely the one that merely stands between the caster and an enemy. It is the placement that makes the enemy’s current plan stop working.
Cutting an army in half, blocking the only direct route to a ritual, separating a commander from bodyguards, or sealing a monster away from vulnerable allies can matter more than dealing damage.
The spell does not automatically end a threat. It changes when, where, and under what conditions that threat can participate. Concentration, teleportation, dedicated counters, and alternative routes still matter.
Five-second answer: Wall of Force is battlefield control made nearly absolute. It creates an invisible boundary that ordinary movement cannot cross, and the decisive question is usually not how much damage the wall can take, but whether the enemy has a specific way around or through it.
Common Wall of Force Questions
Can you see through Wall of Force?
Yes. The barrier is invisible. Seeing something on the opposite side, however, does not by itself mean every attack or magical effect can cross the boundary.
Can you walk or fly through Wall of Force?
No. Ordinary physical passage through the barrier is prevented. Going around an exposed edge may still be possible where the wall’s shape and surrounding terrain allow it.
Can an ethereal creature pass through Wall of Force?
No. Force effects are specifically capable of obstructing ethereal travel, and Wall of Force extends into the Ethereal Plane.
Can Dispel Magic remove Wall of Force?
No. Resistance to Dispel Magic is one of the spell’s defining properties.
What is the standard direct counter?
Disintegrate is the most consistent named answer across the rulesets represented here, although the exact interaction with a mythic Pathfinder wall is different.
Can teleportation get around the wall?
Sometimes. Teleportation is fundamentally different from physically crossing the barrier. The exact answer depends upon the rules governing the particular teleportation effect being used.
Invisible Dominion in 1454
In a world where artillery is making old assumptions about masonry increasingly dangerous, Wall of Force is the dream of every fortress engineer: a defensive line with no stone to fracture, no timber to burn, and no gatehouse to batter.
Universities and court scholars classify force-working among the most severe branches of learned natural philosophy because it appears to create no substance at all. Instead, it imposes a geometrical prohibition: here is a line, and ordinary matter may not cross it.
Free Imperial Cities, princely courts, mercenary captains, mining companies, wealthy guilds, and rulers with dangerous prisoners all have reasons to seek practitioners capable of such work. A caster who can close a breach, divide a street, seal a treasury corridor, or isolate a rampaging creature for even a few minutes possesses strategic power far beyond the apparent simplicity of the spell.
The same magic is politically unsettling. A council chamber divided by an invisible barrier is still a council chamber. A prisoner visible through empty air is still imprisoned. An open gate that cannot be crossed is, for all practical purposes, closed by a law of nature.
Historical and Mythic Echoes
The fantasy of an absolute barrier becomes especially potent in the fifteenth century because real fortification is entering a period of violent change. Great masonry systems such as the Theodosian Walls demonstrated how layered walls, towers, ditches, and controlled approaches could turn space itself into a weapon. Gunpowder artillery increasingly threatens that older confidence in stone.
Wall of Force imagines the defensive engineer’s impossible answer: a fortification reduced to pure boundary, with the mass of the wall removed while its prohibition remains.
There is also an older mythic idea behind the spell. In ancient Greek practice a temenos, or sacred precinct, was space deliberately separated from ordinary space and understood as belonging to a divine power. Wall of Force makes that idea brutally literal: the distinction between “inside” and “outside” is no longer merely ritual, architectural, or social. The boundary itself has become enforceable magic.
Related Magic
The defining truth of Wall of Force: it does not ask whether something is strong enough to break through. It asks whether that thing possesses a rule that allows it to ignore the boundary.
Rules Sources and Attribution
- Current rules: System Reference Document 5.2.1, Wizards of the Coast LLC. SRD material is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence. See the official SRD.
- Pathfinder rules: Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook and Mythic Adventures. Reference: Pathfinder Wall of Force and Mythic Wall of Force. Relevant Open Game Content is used under the Open Game License v1.0a.
- D&D 3.5 rules: Revised (v.3.5) System Reference Document. Reference: Wall of Force. Relevant Open Game Content is used under the Open Game License v1.0a.
SpiralWorlds editorial rulings, setting material, historical comparison, tactical commentary, page structure, and “Invisible Dominion” presentation are separate from the reproduced or summarised rules material.