James Jacobs's page

If you are just going to take all the wealth away, why give it out at all?

I believe we should begin with establishing Batman's alignment.

Steve Geddes wrote:

I was just pondering when Paizo will have produced more AP instalmlents than Dungeon issues? (Or if that has already happened). That seems like some kind of corporate milestone worth acknowledging.

We only ever did 3 Adventure Paths in Dungeon Magazine. We passed that milestone 18 months after we started Pathfinder.

(That said, there were about 56 issues of Dungeon—about 1/3 its entire print run—published by Paizo.)

I meant the number of dungeon magazine issues, not just the number of adventure path issues. It seems to me AP57 will be something worth acknowledging, although I'm not sure in exactly what sense.

The rules lay in those of instantaneous durations. The magic from fireballs creates fire and then quickly dissipates. The burns the fire creates, however, do not go away with the magic. The magic of an instantaneous bull's strength would increase strength, then the magic would go away, leaving behind the result of increased strength.

The logic between the two examples is identical.

Except

"there is no magic here anymore, but the burns from the magic fire somehow still persists"
and
"there is no magic here anymore, but the enhanced strength from your magic strength spell somehow still persists"
require different levels of logic--the second one requires you to be incredibly obtuse as to how magic works.

Core Rulebook, Magic chapter:
Instantaneous: The spell energy comes and goes the instant the spell is cast, though the consequences might be long-lasting.

"Might" meaning "we can't detail every example of instantaneous magic and say whether or not it is long-lasting, mainly because we have a limited amount of space and we expect the GM is not a robot and has a reasonable idea of whether or not the consequences of a particular instantaneous spell should be long-lasting."

Other than damage-causing spells and cure spells, here's a selection of instantaneous-duration spells from the Core Rulebook. Do some of these have long-lasting consequences? Yes. Is it obvious that those consequences are not ongoing magical effects that can be dispelled? Yes.

animate dead: the spell creates a new monster, and that monster doesn't instantly revert to a corpse once the spell is done, and can't be dispelled
atonement: spell removes an existing penalty, and there isn't an ongoing "I removed your penalty" effect on the target that you could dispel
augury: the spell gives you information and that info isn't magically stored in your brain as a magical "data chunk," it's just like any other memory, and trying to dispel it has no effect
banishment: the spell sends a creature away, there is no lingering "I have been sent away" debuff on the monster that you can dispel
bless water: the spell creates a nonmagical object (holy water), which can't be dispelled.
break enchantment: similar to atonement, this instantly ends an effect, and while "I no longer have a curse or enchantment on me" persists, without a duration, that's not a magical effect you can dispel
contagion: the target contracts a (nonmagical) disease that persists as if the target had contracted it nonmagically, there's nothing to dispel on the target
dimension door: the target is transported and the magic then ends, there isn't a "I was in Magnimar a minute ago but now I'm in Sandpoint" lingering effect on the target that can be dispelled
dispel magic: the spell destroys an existing magical effect and then it's done, it isn't an ongoing "I'm a specialized antimagic field that only works on one specific magical effect on this dude" debuff that could be dispelled.

For the specific example of the enhance body word of power, it has a duration (1 round/level), so clearly it's intended to be a *temporary* buffing spell. Why, if you linked it to an instantaneous spell, would you think a *temporary* buffing spell would last forever and be undispellable because "instantaneous" can sometimes mean "creates a forever alteration to a creature or object that persists without magic and can't be dispelled"? Why would linking a *temporary* buffing spell to an instantaneous spell make the *temporary* buff become better than a permanent (dispellable) buffing spell? Why would you think sticking a low-level instantaneous word onto a 2nd-level round-based buffing word would let you create a permanent, undispellable buff?

It's a deliberate misinterpretation of how effects do work and should work. Stop it.

I know for a fact that not everyone at Paizo hated LA. Sean K Reynolds posted in this very thread, and he put a lot of work into Level Adjustment, monster classes, and so on. But maybe he moved on to whatever magical new system they're working on.

I'm sure in any industry, you'll find people who look back and say, "well, it was a good idea at the time." LA is one of those things.

LA is really only needed for players and GMs who insist "OMG EVERY PC MUST BE BALANCED AGAINST THE OTHER." But that's a pipe dream--you can't even balance the damage output of a human bard vs. a human sorcerer.

There's no reason why you can't have a level 1 human, level 1 werewolf, level 1 drow, and level 1 kobold playing in the same group... as long as the players agree to it and everyone is having fun. If the players can agree on that, you don't need an LA mechanic. And if the players can't agree on that, no LA mechanic is going to prevent some minmaxer from creating a super-cheesed monster PC that'll blow an "equivalent" level human PC out of the water.

I talked to Paizo and they told me this was intentional so you lazy buggers have to write the whole name instead of using abbreviations. :P

I'm guessing the announcement will be that all Paizo employees get a month-long, all expenses paid trip to Tahiti and overtime rate for all days spent out of the office on such a sabbatical.

What?