This feels like a rules patch which is so concerned about a specific potential abuse of a loophole that it crushes the spirit of what the spell is supposed to do in a lot of applications. Many of the plans considered at Und-Uzgar become outright impossible under this ruling even though they were completely reasonable at the time and well within the spirit of what the spell should allow; the bar on the doors would now be too heavy to Substance of Shadow, and the doors themselves both too heavy and too large. It would probably be more reasonable to just say "this spell enables a lot of shenanigans but the GM isn't going to let you outright abuse it".
"Spirit of what the spell is supposed to do". The source material says a hard limit of 10kg, and it's touch instead of ranged.
The cycle of Substance of Shadow has gone around at least three times now. I try to describe the limitations in a concise and easy-to-picture way, someone takes it a little further than I intended, I shrug it off, then someone takes it a leap further and introduces the vorpal quarry blades. Then we start over, except this time it's the strategic deletion of structural foundations. Then it's the two ton invisible floating wrecking ball. And now I finally give no benefit of the doubt and give explicit and unambiguous weight and dimension limits that are still significantly more than what the source material would give you, and then here we are.
I'd like to just say 'be sensible with this', but that didn't work
. Draw the line at something as nebulous as
abuse and people keep looking for the point just before that, or even better, take it as an invitation to debate what 'abuse' means.
Look, I get where you're coming from. From that side of the game it probably seems like an interesting and fun and unique aspect of the game being locked away. But I'm not doing it because I'm The Trunchbull and this thread is my very own Crunchem Hall. I'm doing it because I keep giving inches and keep having to walk back miles so now nobody gets those inches, no matter how fun it would have been if it had
only been those inches.
I've been rewriting this post for like twenty goddamn minutes now so please understand that any bitchiness left in it is aimed at the situation in general, and not at you personally.