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A character gets stuck to a handled firmly attached to wall with sovereign glue.

  • Can the character use shadow step to get away from the wall?
  • Can the character use teleport to get away from the wall?
  • Can the character use dimension door to get away from the wall?

This seems to be a collision between the RAW of teleport like magic and sovereign glue:

The glue takes 1 minute to set. Once it has done so, the bond it creates can be broken only by the application of Universal Solvent or Oil of Etherealness, or with a wish spell.

The description of shadow step is relatively short. The functional part for this question is:

... as a bonus action, you can teleport up to 60 feet..

The teleport spell is similarly worded:

This spell instantly transports you and up to eight willing creatures of your choice that you can see within range, or a single object that you can see within range, to a destination you select.

Clarification

The question was assuming that the character can be joined to the handle by use of the glue in the first place. In order to for this to be true in 5e, it would require a house rule. That was the intent of the original question. The tags have been updated to reflect this.

The answer by Rubiksmoose and comment by LordHieros elucidated that the assumption is preempted by RAW in regards to creature/object.

GcL
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    @LordHieros That's an interesting interpretation of object and an approach to the question I had not expected. That would make an excellent question by itself. – GcL Feb 02 '18 at 13:13
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    I agree, so here it is: https://rpg.stackexchange.com/q/114690/40470 – LordHieros Feb 02 '18 at 13:25
  • Are you only asking about those 3 specific spells, or any kind of teleportation? (Not that I think it affects the answer.) – V2Blast Dec 06 '18 at 01:32
  • @V2Blast those three specific mechanisms were the only ones available to the players at the time. – GcL Dec 06 '18 at 02:34

3 Answers3

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RAW: Sovereign Glue does not allow a creature to be glued

This viscous, milky-white substance can form a permanent adhesive bond between any two objects. 

The description of Sovereign Glue says quite clearly that it is to be used with objects only. In 5e living creatures are creatures not objects (dead creatures, however, possibly are objects depending on how you interpret Crawford's various tweets on the matter).

Allowing creatures to be glued, while completely within the power of a DM, makes this a houserule issue and the DM would have to decide how to handle the new interaction this causes.

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Rubiksmoose
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  • That begs the question, why aren't creatures objects? Object seems like the super class of all physically manipulable things. Where creature is a specific kind of object with more specific rules. The definition of 'object' in the 5e context apparently isn't consistent between different readers. – GcL Feb 02 '18 at 15:20
  • Looks like there is an extant issue addressing this: https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/95532/what-is-considered-an-object – GcL Feb 02 '18 at 15:20
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    @Grosscol In this case the answer is simply because that is the way the designers chose to define the terminology. Dead creatures are considered objects for what it is worth, but not living ones. – Rubiksmoose Feb 02 '18 at 15:42
  • This is weird because a severed hand would be considered an object and therefore subject to the glue, whereas an attached hand would not. That just seems unnecessarily pedantic to me. I haven't voted either way, but it makes no sense that the glue couldn't be used on a person. – Lino Frank Ciaralli Dec 05 '18 at 19:06
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    @LinoFrankCiaralli The creature/object distinction is important for many 5e rules. The fact that the designers specifically chose to mention one and not the other is likely significant and not overly pedantic to point out (IMO). The fact that there are edge cases (dead bodies, severed limbs) in the creature object dichotomy does not mean that the distinction is not worth making. – Rubiksmoose Dec 05 '18 at 19:09
  • @LinoFrankCiaralli also, if I were a betting man, I would bet that the designers specifically avoided including creatures in the description to avoid problems just like the one that OP brings up here. – Rubiksmoose Dec 05 '18 at 19:10
  • Oh I agree with you. It just seems like it creates a whole slew of new problems in that for some reason, the glue would work on a dead creature, but not a living one. Just seems inconsistent and kind of ridiculous. – Lino Frank Ciaralli Dec 05 '18 at 22:25
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As mentioned by Rubiksmoose, sovereign glue only works on objects, not creatures.

That being said, I'll leave my original answer below, provided that the glue working on creatures is the only house rule your DM made. Ultimately, it will be his or her call, though.

No, you can't break the connection with any kind of teleportation, unless the description of this teleportation explicitly states so.

The description of Sovereign Glue (DMG, p. 200) explicitly states:

Once it has done so, the bond it creates can be broken only by the application of universal solvent or oil of etherealness, or with a wish spell.

Specific overrules general, so even if you had a means of teleportation that stated something like "breaks any attachments to objects or creatures too large to teleport along", you couldn't teleport away from the glue.

However, I don't know of any means of teleportation that has something even remotely similar to this in its description, so according to RAW, the answer is clearly a strict No.

So, what are your other choices?

  • use one of the means that are described in the description
  • cut off your hand, or flay your hand
  • cut out part of the wall
  • remain there forever and die.

Mind you - Sovereign Glue is a legendary item, so it should be accordingly powerful.
In fact, your DM might even rule that chopping off your hand or carving out a piece of the wall is impossible, since you are glued to the wall, and that bond cannot be broken by any means other than those explicitly mentioned in the description.

V2Blast
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PixelMaster
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    "Your DM might even rule that chopping off your hand or carving out a piece of the wall is impossible, since you are glued to the wall". Eh. It's "the bond [the Sovereign Glue] creates" that can't be broken; the bond between your arm and hand was not created by the Glue, but rather by flesh and bone, which can be broken by all sorts of means. – Mark Beadles Feb 02 '18 at 01:09
  • how do you define the glued area then, though? Can you just leave like one layer of molecules and they're all that's glued together? Keep in mind that we're talking about a legendary item here. It shouldn't be super easy to overcome. – PixelMaster Feb 02 '18 at 01:46
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    The rarity of an item is irrelevant to how easy it is to circumvent it. Just about every item with a legendary tag can be easily overcome with an Antimagic Field. Armor +3 is overcome by routine dice rolls. The Ioun Stones can be overcome by basically any level appropriate Rogue. The point is: If a character is stuck to something with their hand, nothing is stopping them from cutting off their hand to get free. After all, the HAND is still stuck to the glue. A simple Ring of Regeneration would fix this problem. I can't upvote this with the last paragraph in place. – Lino Frank Ciaralli Feb 02 '18 at 04:28
  • The Oil of Etherealness applies the effect of the Etherealness spell, wouldn't that do the job too? – Danila Smirnov Feb 02 '18 at 05:38
  • @DanilaSmirnov of course it would, the oil is specifically listed in the item's description ...? – PixelMaster Feb 02 '18 at 05:50
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    @PixelMaster maybe I wasn't clear. Would casting the spell work, since only the potion is mentioned, not the spell? Both the spell and the potion produce the same effect. – Danila Smirnov Feb 02 '18 at 06:11
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    Mind you, the oil doesn't mention that its effects allow the removal of Sovereign Glue. Only because that item specifically mentions it can you even use it at all. There's no RAW-supported reading that would suggest that the Etherealness spell would have a similar effect. – PixelMaster Feb 02 '18 at 06:25
  • Maybe the oil is just acting as a solvent for the glue and you're not actually using it on yourself to become ethereal? I think we need some sort of confirmation on that. @DanilaSmirnov – John Hamilton Feb 02 '18 at 07:03
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    All of this arguing is moot, because as Rubiksmoose points out in (what should be) the correct answer, Creatures are not Objects and so a character/creature can never have his/her/its hand stuck to anything with Sovereign Glue. – Nick Brown Feb 02 '18 at 19:13
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No, you can't break the bond. This is indeed a case of "specific beats general" and the glue specifies that the bond can only be broken by doing X. So RAW, no, you can't break the bond by teleporting.

The spells, don't mention being able to break the bond, but they do mention being able to bring objects along... (If nothing else, then your gear.)
So I'd argue that, no, you can't break the bond, but if the handle isn't bonded to the wall with sovereign glue, but just really stuck in there, then you can bring along the handle, as weight pressing down on it, etc, really has no bearing on its ability to be teleported.
(But I'd probably have the player explicitly try to bring along the handle, if he didn't I'd just laugh my ass off while describing how he tries to teleport away but his hand is stuck to the handle. And then come up with something about how he's "halfway between two places and has to step back to the wall, unless he wants to risk the consequences.", then if he chose to keep going I'd have him leave behind his hand/part of his arm.)

Actually, I'd almost argue that the bond created by sovereign glue kind of makes the handle part of you. You're stuck with it, so to speak. xD
"To have and to hold, not even death will do you part."

nbsp
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    Is this implying that teleport et al. can break objects that the caster is holding or attached to? – GcL Feb 02 '18 at 12:54
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    No, it's not implying that teleport can break objects. And yet... Let's take the example of two interlocking iron rings: The rings aren't bonded to each other, they're distinct objects and yet, you can't separate them. But what I argue is that you can teleport away with one of the rings, but leave the other behind. A chain is indeed a single object, but each individual link/ring in the chain is also an individual object... It's simply a matter of perspective. – nbsp Feb 03 '18 at 22:45