Traditionally, cold iron is sort of an antimagic material, so it would make sense that it would be more difficult to enchant (and thus more expensive).
Directly from the Invisibility section in the CRB's Glossary on the PRD: "Invisibility does not thwart divination spells." Detect magic is divination. Seems pretty cut and dry that detect magic can see an invisibility spell's aura.
If PC makes his save, he is not counted as "affected" by the spell. It will keep forcing saves from creatures in the area until either a) It has killed 28 HD worth of creatures or b) all remaining creatures in the area have either passed their save or have more HD than the spell has remaining.
He did one thing, and one thing only: farming. Fifty years later and he has seen all that comes with his craft and can pull a crop through almost anything. In his quest to perfect his craft, however, he failed to learn any other skills. He has no particular talent for fighting (slow BAB), is not particularly resilient (low saves and HD), and barely has a working knowledge of most things other than his job (limited skill points and class skills). He does alright compared to most when the going gets tough, though. Years of work have made him used to pulling through the hard times whether its a dry spell that won't end or a brawl at the local tavern. He could go out and be an adventurer if he wanted to, but quite frankly, he is too old for that crap. Incidentally, I heard once that in the Eberron campaign setting the highest level NPC in the world was actually a lvl 20 commoner. She worked as a cook in Sharn and made the best food anywhere. Never saw where she was talked about though.
From PRD:
Holding the Charge: If you don't discharge the spell in the round when you cast the spell, you can hold the charge indefinitely. You can continue to make touch attacks round after round. If you touch anything or anyone while holding a charge, even unintentionally, the spell discharges. If you cast another spell, the touch spell dissipates. You can touch one friend as a standard action or up to six friends as a full-round action. Alternatively, you may make a normal unarmed attack (or an attack with a natural weapon) while holding a charge. In this case, you aren't considered armed and you provoke attacks of opportunity as normal for the attack. If your unarmed attack or natural weapon attack normally doesn't provoke attacks of opportunity, neither does this attack. If the attack hits, you deal normal damage for your unarmed attack or natural weapon and the spell discharges. If the attack misses, you are still holding the charge. Based on this, I would say that you can use the on-touch effects of Dispel Evil as part of a slam attack, but some people might rule it differently since it isn't a touch spell in the same way as Shocking Grasp and the like.
Though Tyranny sits upon a throne of bone
How's this for a starting place?
From the PRD: "Burst, Emanation, or Spread: Most spells that affect an area function as a burst, an emanation, or a spread. In each case, you select the spell's point of origin and measure its effect from that point. A burst spell affects whatever it catches in its area, including creatures that you can't see. It can't affect creatures with total cover from its point of origin (in other words, its effects don't extend around corners). The default shape for a burst effect is a sphere, but some burst spells are specifically described as cone-shaped. A burst's area defines how far from the point of origin the spell's effect extends. An emanation spell functions like a burst spell, except that the effect continues to radiate from the point of origin for the duration of the spell. Most emanations are cones or spheres. A spread spell extends out like a burst but can turn corners. You select the point of origin, and the spell spreads out a given distance in all directions. Figure the area the spell effect fills by taking into account any turns the spell effect takes." So, basically, you pick your point of origin, and it covers every space that could be reached along some 20 ft path from that point, not only straight lines from that point. In many cases, you can treat it just like a burst effect, since being a spread only makes a difference when there are actually corners to turn within 15 ft of the origin of the spell. As for additional saves, I have no idea what the spell does, so I can't help you there.
My first thought about reading all this was that it provides some really interesting opportunities for your group to develop their characters. It is definitely a bit messed up that they decided to burn all the villagers alive, but that's the choice they made, so they should definitely have to deal with the fall out from that. While you could justify alignment shifts and the like, why not get a little more creative? The group committed a terrible, though in their eyes necessary, act by killing innocents for the greater good. For many good aligned characters, or others with similar moral fiber, this could be a great source of shame and naturally they wouldn't want people to know about it. Even characters without a moral objection to it can't deny social problems that could arise if others knew what they did. Unfortunately for them though, the vampire does know. He knows *everything*. He watched may of them flee like cowards from him, and thanks to his dominating the villagers, he knows that the party torched the lot of them. What is to stop him from discrediting the group by spreading rumors of what they did? If he knows where they are headed next, he could try to beat them there and turn the town against them before they even arrive. You play it up right, and they will be hunting for him just to get him to shut up. As for individual punishments, there are a number of ways you could play those up. For the paladin, you could have her undergo a period where she must "fight her demons" and can't control her emotions as well after the trauma. Just change out her paladin levels for barbarian levels with the Lesser Spirit Totem rage power and tell her that until her character has come to terms with what happened, she can't control when she rages. Once she succeeds of course, you should let her choose between going back to the true path of the paladin, thus restoring her levels to their original state, and letting her hatred for evil flow freely, thus staying a barbarian and gaining control over her rages and progression once more. The cleric has failed to stop an abomination in the eyes of her god, and Pharasma is disappointed. Perhaps she had hoped the vampire would prove an adequate challenge for one of her clergy to prove that she is ready for greater things, but rather than returning the cursed soul of the vampire, the cleric sent her the many souls of the villagers to be judged before their time. Maybe instead of entirely stripping the cleric of his power, Pharasma worries that one of her own followers is straying from the path and sends one of her psychopomps to watch over and instruct the cleric of his flawed ways. The clerics powers could simply be linked to Pharasma through this new tutor and, if the psychopomp sees the cleric using it for unfit purpose or failing to act once more, it has the right to strip him of his powers, either temporarily or permanently. (For reference, all the psychopomps are statted in the back of some of the Carrion Crown AP books) The others I don't know enough about to know if there are any appropriate punishments, but try to be creative and, most importantly, discuss it with your players to make sure they are interested in playing through all this and are comfortable with what you are doing. Characters who always win and are never tested are boring, so use this failure to make it interesting!
That's because in game terms, there is no difference between mental and physical sight! Seeing is seeing! The only kind of distinction that is ever made is "Magical" and "Mundane" for anything like this. So even though PK is mentally seen, it is still SEEN, so TS SEES through it. True Seeing doesn't state that it covers mental sight because mental sight isn't a defined part of the game. [EDIT] Typo fixed
Darkon Slayer, are you willing to say that visually perceiving something is different from seeing it?
Actually, Mind blank protects "from all devices and spells that gather information about the target through divination magic (such as detect evil, locate creature, scry, and see invisible)." So Mind Blank could prevent True Seeing from functioning in the sense of making it unable to pierce through shape changes and the like, but it doesn't actually prevent you from just looking at the creature and seeing it in its current form. As far as prevent something from dreaming, that's the same as arguing that a creature's thoughts aren't real, thus True Seeing preventing sentient thought. The main difference between the two is that thoughts and dreams aren't truly "illusions" in any sense of the game mechanics, so they can't be caught by that catch all, and they don't fall into any of the other subcategories listed in True Seeing. Additionally, True Seeing specifically deals with how the creature is perceiving the world around it. PK is placing a false image into that creature's perception of the world in order to frighten it to death. While this image is 100% in the creature's head, it is also within that creature's perception of the world around it. More specifically, it is within the creature's visual perspective of the world. True Seeing specifically states it sees through illusions, so phantasms like PK still get caught by it, while dreams and the like don't ever encroach on the visual perceptions of the world in the same way.
Im with you mplindustries. Any Shadow illusion spell still works as normal, though anyone with True Seeing does know that it is mostly illusory. As I see it, its pretty obvious that TS does trump PK, both RAW and RAI. Recap of Logic: Phantasmal Killer is an illusion spell that causes the creature affected to see the most horrible thing their mind can imagine and, through this fear, kill them. It allows a Will save to disbelieve the illusion, just as most illusion spells do, with a successful save making the phantasmal killer completely ineffective. True Seeing allows a creature to see all things as they are, and specifically states that it sees through all illusions. From the Saving Throws and Disbelief section of the Illusion school of magic, any creature that has proof an an illusion spell of any type is not real, they automatically pass the save to disbelieve said illusion. It can be gathered from this that True Seeing gives the creature constant proof that an illusion it sees is not real and thus automatically pass the Will save to disbelieve. Since the Phantasmal Killer is seen by the victim, True Seeing automatically sees through it, meaning he has proof it is fake, and automatically passes his save to disbelieve. According the Phantasmal Killer spell, a successful save to disbelieve causes the spell to fail with no effect. If this seems overpowered to you, in my first post on this thread I talked about how this falls within the design philosophy of the game and you can refer to that. If you wish to split hairs about the difference of what is seen in the mind and what is seen with your eyes and how this changes things, you need to realize that is beyond the scope of the rules of the game. As the rules are written, True Seeing defeats any visual illusion, which includes Phantasmal Killer.
I don't really understand the argument "PK is mind affecting, so True Seeing doesn't apply". Patterns are also always mind affecting, but any visual patterns would be pierced by True Seeing. If this argument were true, then both patterns and phantasms would bypass True Seeing, but I find that very difficult to believe. It would be easier to say "sees through figments and glamers" since half the subschools of illusion are unaffected by True Seeing according to some of the people here, but the designers chose not to word it that way. Instead, they made a catch all "sees through illusions". Additionally, the power level of True Seeing with the interpretation that it can see through phantasms is completely in line with design conventions. A number of low level spells(silent image, invisibility, alter self, etc.) are being thwarted by a single higher level spell (True Seeing). This is completely allowable by the design philosophies within the game as can be seen by Mind Blank (thwarts all magical attempts to gain information about the target). True Seeing can also thwart spells higher level than itself, and while this initially seems rather powerful, it is also supported by the design philosophy of the game. Almost all, if not all (I haven't checked to see if it is actually all yet), of the higher level spells that are being thwarted are simply higher level variants of lower level spells. This can also be seen by the relationship between Wall of Force and Disintegrate as many higher level variants of Wall of Force, such as Force Cage, can be completely destroyed with a single Disintegrate, just as the base spell. There is also a hint of this in Mind Blank, as even Wish and Miracle, the most powerful spells in the game cannot thwart Mind Blank's perfect protection against divination. True Seeing is definitely a powerful spell, and it should be treated as such. There is a reason why it has a short duration with an "expensive" material component (250g is cheap, but you still have to have it). It does not shut down the illusion school by this interpretation as completely as people seem to think. Looking briefly over the spells in the CRB, many of the higher levels spells would still function in the area of True Seeing. My personal opinion, though, falls on this line of True Seeing: "You confer on the subject the ability to see all things as they actually are." The creature sees everything as it truly is. What the Phantasmal Killer would actually look like is nothing, as the thing created by PK isn't real. So not only would True Seeing thwart PK completely, the person with True Seeing would not even necessarily be aware of the attempt and would be unable to turn it with telepathy. TL;DR : In my opinion, the idea of TS beating PK seems to fall in line with the design behind the game as well as the wording of the spells.
I kind of miss how powerful monster defensive abilities like DR and regeneration used to be back when 3.0 released. I certainly understand why they changed them, since a character who couldn't completely bypass them frequently ended up being able to do very little, but these days, I don't even see the point of tracking something like fast healing on a creature 90% of the time since it would take it 2-3 rounds to heal back the damage from a single attack. In my experience, once the party reaches about level 5, things like DR just seem to fall completely behind in terms of keeping monsters alive when compared to just having a high AC or extra hit points. I'm also not a huge fan of spell resistance being applied to most spells. My first pathfinder character was a sorcerer, and I had to learn the hard way that if you are fighting lots of things with SR, you simply have to stack up your bonuses to penetrate it. Having a 50% chance of losing all spells to a d20 on what should be an easy fight was just frustrating, but minimizing that chance required valuable feats. Also, I think that being resistant to magic shouldn't make you resistant to fire just because the fire was made magically. I don't care where I got the fire. When I apply the fire to your body, you should burn.
False Life is a 2nd level spell that gives 1D10 + CL (Max +10). Greater False Life is a 4th level spell that gives 2D10 + CL (Max +20). A linear progression would suggest that an 8th level False Life style spell would only grant 4D10 + CL temps (avg. 22 + CL), while a geometric progression would suggest 8D10 + CL temps (44 + CL). Stacking temps can be a valuable way to keep a normally fragile character alive without impacting the economy of actions. I once had a wizard who through a variety of buffs could gain temps equal to his maximum hp. I don't think any spell with an hour/level duration that gave any 5+ temps/level could be balanced based on what is already created. Even the cure spells don't have the ability to give the flat 10 hp/level until after they had scaled up through five previous iterations. In my opinion, for a spell to grant such a large number of temps, it needs to be fairly high level (6+ at least), have a short duration (either rounds or minutes per level), and have a standard action cast time.
There are actually a couple of two item sets in ultimate equipment. I don't have it with me, but I think Celestial Armor and Celestial Shield get a bonus when used together, and there is something like Crown of Heaven and Rod of Heaven that have extra powers when used together. I think it can definitely work, you just have to make sure the benefits are good enough some characters will consider wanting to use the set items over an assortment of their choosing in the same slots without making it the obvious choice.
I don't really know how you can read the Int bonus to AC as being separate from your normal Dex bonus to AC. It specifically calls out adding the Int bonus to Dex. It doesn't completely ruin their ability to wear armor, although it certainly allows you to build a character who gets no benefit to AC from most armor. I have personally played a duelist whose AC went down if he put on any armor other than Bracers of Armor (this was back when APG was new, there was no silken ceremonial armor or anything like that). At lower levels, a duelist can definitely use light armor since his Dex to AC won't be crazy from Canny Defense yet. I think the change was intended to boost duelist AC before Canny Defense catches up, and now it even helps after that with the armors that have no max Dex bonus.
The druid can just throw away the steel gauntlets that would come with his dragonhide full plate with no loss to himself, so it doesn't really prevent them from using the armor if the gauntlets are steel. He just can't use the gauntlets
Returning: This special ability can only be placed on a weapon that can be thrown. A returning weapon flies through the air back to the creature that threw it. It returns to the thrower just before the creature's next turn (and is therefore ready to use again in that turn). Catching a returning weapon when it comes back is a free action. If the character can't catch it, or if the character has moved since throwing it, the weapon drops to the ground in the square from which it was thrown. Moderate transmutation; CL 7th; Craft Magic Arms and Armor, telekinesis; Price +1 bonus. I don't think Returning is supposed to go on ammunition.
I'm glad to see that its official Aasimars and Tieflings are immune to fairness. I always thought they were up to something.
You can keep making touch attempts until the you touch something the spell can discharge into. This is important to note because in the case of a sorcerer casting shocking grasp, if he attempts an attack but misses, he will hold the charge. If the next round he has to help pull the rogue up a ledge, when he grabs the rogue, the spell will discharge into the rogue. At least, that is my understanding of how it works. As for the wand, the charge would be expended until he touched something with it that could receive the spell. So against a specter, he could keep attacking the specter with it until he hits, or he could touch a friend or himself to heal them instead without reactivating the wand.
I generally don't like retiring my characters once I've grown attached to them. I enjoy watching them grow in power and experience. |
