When you summon a monster, they can't use some of their powers due to:
A summoned monster cannot summon or otherwise conjure another creature, nor can it use any teleportation or planar travel abilities. Creatures cannot be summoned into an environment that cannot support them. Creatures summoned using this spell cannot use spells or spell-like abilities that duplicate spells with expensive material components (such as wish).
Yes, this means that True Seeing is out *cries*, and so is Continual Flame, Commune and Wish. As is Dimension Door (teleportation effect) and Plane Shift.
Those were the ones I spotted in the summoning list.
Great guide so far. I'll get back to you with a few more thoughts in a bit. For now, a couple of thoughts about spells:
1. Hydraulic Push = fire extinguisher?
2. Flaming Sphere and Pyrotechnics make an AMAZING combo.
3. Rage is a hilarious debuff against enemy casters.
4. Would Disintegrate work through Summoner's Conduit?
I have loved disintegrate for many years now!
I don't think that's right. They *resume functioning* when you leave the Astral Plane, which means that you start needing food, water, and start aging again when you come back home. It doens't say that you have a suddenly boomerang "it all comes back at once" effect. If it did, then anyone who spent 3 days in the astral plane would instantly die of thirst on returning home, which I don't think is the intent.
For instance, take the Astral Plane.Timeless: Age, hunger, thirst, afflictions (such as diseases, curses, and poisons), and natural healing don't function in the Astral Plane, though they resume functioning when the traveler leaves the Astral Plane.That means, while on the Astral Plane, you don't age, you don't get hungry or thirsty. If you are Poisoned or Diseased, they stop negatively affecting you (but you are still Poisoned or Diseased). If you have Regeneration, Fast Healing, or you sleep to regain spells, you don't regain HP. A Troll on the Astral Plane doesn't regenerate.
Time still passes though, so while you may live for 10,000 years on the Astral Plane, 10,000 years pass by on the Material Plane. If you ever return to the Material Plane, you will rapidly age 10,000 years and feel the hunger and thirst of 10,000 year of not feeding or drinking.
On planes with this trait, time still passes, but the effects of time are diminished. How the timeless trait affects certain activities or conditions such as hunger, thirst, aging, the effects of poison, and healing varies from plane to plane. The danger of a timeless plane is that once an individual leaves such a plane for one where time flows normally, conditions such as hunger and aging occur . If a plane is timeless with respect to magic, any spell cast with a noninstantaneous duration is permanent until dispelled.
It may have helped if I had posted the whole Timeless Trait originally, but I assumed anyone who was curious, would have gone an looked it up.
But yes, if you visit a Timeless plane, and return to a plane with normal time, you need to eat, drink, use the bathroom etc, before you return, because it will all hit you at once when you do so. The best way to handle the effects of a Timeless Plane, I think, is buying a Ring of Sustenance.
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As far as Spellcraft as a replacement for Read Magic - decipher scroll is a DC 20 + Spell Level meaning that to decipher a level 1 scroll you're looking at a 21 DC. INT 5 + 1 Rank + 3 Class Skill Bonus + 2 Racial Bonus is 11 at level 1, 13 if you decide to put Skill Focus into it as a Half Elf, or 15 if you do that as an Elf. As an Elf at worst you're looking at a 45% fail chance and at best a 25% fail chance. The odds aren't terrible, but that is 1...What prevents you from taking 20 when deciphering scrolls with spellcraft? It takes you 20 rounds but it isn't likely that there will be many situations that will require you to decipher the scroll in 1 round anyway.
That is why read magic is useless.
According to the take 20 rules it is assumed when you take 20 that you are trying and retrying over again. I interpret that as meaning you can't take 20 unless you can retry. Spellcraft does not specifically list "decipher scroll" as something you can retry...
Does that mean that you can retry by default?
Edit: looks like you can
Nothing is stopping you from taking 10 unless you're in combat. So as result you only need 10 + spell level. So at level 1 a wizard with 15 int (+2) 1 rank + 3 class skill will have + 6. So they're 5 short in making the roll. But at level 5 this is decreased you'll have higher int (through item and/or higher base int item). So lets assume 18 (16 base + 2 item)4 mod + 5 rank + 3 class = 12 granted they succeed at level 2 scrolls, but they're 1 short for level 3. But next level it's auto pass, as for higher level you'll need assist or use a short time buff.
Im about to roll my first wizard and my plan is to be a Gnome Illusionist obsessed with clocks and has the eventual plan to make a Clockwork golem. I seem to notice that most illusion spells get rated as bad. Im new to pathfinder and new to wizards so im wondering if the character wil be gimp.
Im about to roll my first wizard and my plan is to be a Gnome Illusionist obsessed with clocks and has the eventual plan to make a Clockwork golem. I seem to notice that most illusion spells get rated as bad. Im new to pathfinder and new to wizards so im wondering if the character wil be gimp.
The problem with illusion spells is that there are whole sections of the Bestiary that are outright immune to them because they are Mind-Effecting. Creatures like Undead are immune to Mind-Effecting effects, so your illusion spells won't work at all on those creatures with few exceptions.
This isn't in the rules exactly, but some of the older GMs may be predisposed against illusionist (I know mine is) and ad-hoc nerf the illusion spells on the spot.
Great guide so far. I'll get back to you with a few more thoughts in a bit. For now, a couple of thoughts about spells:1. Hydraulic Push = fire extinguisher?
2. Flaming Sphere and Pyrotechnics make an AMAZING combo.
3. Rage is a hilarious debuff against enemy casters.
4. Would Disintegrate work through Summoner's Conduit?
1. Not a bad idea. Don't know how often it'll come up though.
2. That is definitely a good idea. Also states that magical fires are not extinguished, so I really like this as a good early game combo.
3. Rage must be used on willing targets. I'm not exactly sure where the benefit is regarding casters specifically either, except for the fact that they will get less use out of the strength bonus.
4. I don't see why not.
Im about to roll my first wizard and my plan is to be a Gnome Illusionist obsessed with clocks and has the eventual plan to make a Clockwork golem. I seem to notice that most illusion spells get rated as bad. Im new to pathfinder and new to wizards so im wondering if the character wil be gimp.
Two thoughts:
1. Don't forget that specialist doesn't mean you have to cast lots of Illusionist spells. The rest of your spell slots are free to be whatever they want to be.
2. There's no such thing as a "Gimped" Wizard because of my first thought. There are simply Wizards and more effective Wizards. If you're picking the right spells in general, you'll be useful to your party. Heck, even if you memorize only ONE right spell, it'll be an awesome moment when you cast it.
Well, I mean, there are obviously ways to gimp a Wizard and make a waste of space, but just remember, Wizards are powerful.
As long as you're not multiclassing into something awful and you keep your INT up, you'll be fine.
When you summon a monster, they can't use some of their powers due to:
A summoned monster cannot summon or otherwise conjure another creature, nor can it use any teleportation or planar travel abilities. Creatures cannot be summoned into an environment that cannot support them. Creatures summoned using this spell cannot use spells or spell-like abilities that duplicate spells with expensive material components (such as wish).Yes, this means that True Seeing is out *cries*, and so is Continual Flame, Commune and Wish. As is Dimension Door (teleportation effect) and Plane Shift.
Those were the ones I spotted in the summoning list.
Yeah, I need to fix those.
I'm sure I'll get around to it eventually.
Great, crazy thorough guide.
Are you sure, however, that you can stack reach spell? And, as like a level 4 spell, do reach reach reach shocking grasp?
Your analysis of the feat seems to imply that.
-Cross (I don't know whether or not it's true either way)
"Level Increase: Special. A reach spell uses up a spell slot one level higher than the spell’s actual level for each increase in range category. For example, a spell with a range of touch increased to long range uses up a spell slot three levels higher."
Pretty sure.
It's not exactly "Reach Reach" spell. It's just reach spell with a higher than +1 slot.
Your guide mentions that you don't know how the Harrowing rules work and you don't want to learn them. I'm playing a Harrower in the Serpent's Skull adventure path, and I can say this of it; you don't really need to learn to Harrow to play the class. While it's designed around Harrowing as part of it, most of it doesn't actually need you to Harrow to get the benefits, just have the Harrow deck, which can be simulated. You should read it over and ignore anything that requires actual Harrowing, and kinda look at it from that point of view. All of the class features don't actually require you to perform a Harrowing; you just draw cards and get benefits based on their alignment or stat, and nothing else. You can figure the class out more than easily enough without knowing how to Harrow at all, trust me! All you have to know is that the cards use the four-corners alignment grid (lawful is west, good is north, chaos is east, evil is south) and what each symbol means (hammer=strength, key=dex, shield=con, book=int, star=wis, crown=cha) and you can play it from there.
It is more fun with Harrowing, but not needed.
Hmm...
I dunno. I might check this out next week once I'm done with my next exam (Which is Tuesday.)
A great commenter has gone through the guide and made some great points along the way, forcing me to re-evaluate some of my thoughts.
As a result I'm probably going to go through and take another look at the entire Enchantment school again as well as a select few other spells that he made some good points on. Expect rating improvements on the Dominate spells and possibly some of the other mass holding spells. One of the reasons Enchantment got so harshly rated is because so many of the spells do not have any secondary effect if the target makes their save, but I also think that I developed a bit of jadedness to the school after rating 500 spells that I got sick of "Will save or lose" and "Mind effecting" features being on so many different spell names.
I also realize after his criticisms that I did put too much emphasis on "Fireball" as a candidate for dazing spell, and while that wasn't entirely my intention, I did fall for the redundancy of using it as an example time and time again.
I'm bringing this all up however because I'd like to have a little discussion about Shadow Spells
In my discussions with this commenter (Who posted as anonymous, I assume it's only one person) I did see his side of the argument on many of the spells with some exceptions. Some I'm still not quite convinced on though are the Shadow Spells, specifically Shades.
I'm not going to post the entire conversation here since my attempt just now made my browser crash, but it's all in the guide so you're welcome to read them (Though regarding the Shades subject it's kind of spread out over different spell comments.)
Some of the arguments for the spell include that Shades is versatile, it doesn't have any spell components, and why wouldn't I think that there shouldn't be some kind of drawback (Will save for full effect, can only duplicate lower level spells) when it has such versatility.
While I can be harsh in my language, I don't go into any spell trying to hate it (Most of the time.) I genuinely want to hear from you guys anecdotes where Shades' strengths made the real difference, and I want to hear situations where there was no way you could have just memorized the spell you duplicated.
That's the thing about Shades that gets to me. I can't think of a single spell in the Conjuration [Creation] or [Summoning] line that you wouldn't already have memorized in a lower level slot that you would need on the fly. If Shades was a Miracle-esque spell that could duplicate ANY lower level spell on the Wizard School and ANY Divine Spell 7th level or lower, then I'd be all for it with 5 gold stars (Actually, why DOESN'T Illusion have a spell like that when Miracle exists, especially if it has a chance of not providing a full effect?)
But is there a significant spell of those two spell categories of 8th level or lower on the Wizard's List only that you would probably not memorize but want around as a contingency?
I keep thinking that Shades is just another Hungry Pit if you need it (Heightened mind you, but still just another pit), or just a worse version of Summon Monster IX. Shades does have a slight upper hand when it comes to casting time on the Summon Monster spells, but is it worth the drop in power, especially when, in my opinion, Summon Monster IX itself is dropping off in its usability?
Lets have a discussion, and maybe I'll feel better about the spell and re-evaluate the entire line.
Benly hit it right on the head. The benefit of Shades is that it is every single conjuration spell of 8th level or lower. Because it is every conjuration spell, both Arcane and Divine, Shades is on par with Wish for candidate of being the mightiest Arcane spell. Hell, in lots of ways, it's vastly more powerful than Wish, because you don't need to provide any material components. Everything you cast via Shades, you cast for free. You can bring people back from the dead, for free, you can restore levels, for free, you can create a planar resort for you and your friends, for free.
Yikes. I don't think I ever considered interpreting it that way.
Is there anything to show that is the intended reading of the rules there?
I mean RAW you seem to be right, but I guess I just assumed that Shades was just an upgrade to Greater Shadow Conjuration. Especially since other similar duplication spells specifically state that they include the material cost of the spells they are duplicating.
Allowing ALL conjuration does definitely improve it on vast levels, though it does have some strange implications, I mean how is a teleport 80% real? (I mean would a successful save leave me saying something like "I didn't need that spleen anyway..."?)
Yeah, I'm kind of looking for an FAQ. I mean as a DM I'd probably go in favor of letting it duplicate any conjuration, especially considering the Divine Casters get a spell that's basically superior in every way.
But the fact that the text doesn't say anything like "Including X and Y" makes it seem slightly ambiguous as to its intent, as if it might have accidentally been put through with vague language.
However...
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/shades.htm
Looking up 3.5's version of Shades it states "This spell functions like shadow conjuration, except that it mimics sorcerer and wizard conjuration spells of 8th level or lower. The illusory conjurations created deal four-fifths (80%) damage to nonbelievers, and nondamaging effects are 80% likely to work against nonbelievers. "
Which suggests to me that it couldn't have been anything but intentional. Especially since here it also seems to be all conjuration spells inclusive, at least for Wizard/Sorcerer spells.
With that in mind I'll go ahead and give Shades a much better rating.
Also, it seems like my "80% real" qualm is already addressed in the text by essentially stating that it has a 20% fail rate against non believers for non-damaging effects.
Makes me want to make a Santa Claus illusionist.
"Ho ho ho My Dear Party Members, I can make everything all right. You just have to BELIEVE in me is all! Ho ho ho!"
A few things on the Shades to consider:
Another (albeit hidden) constraint, objects automatically make their will saves (since shades functions as greater shadow conjuration, which in turn functions as shadow conjuration, which states that objects automatically make their will saves).
Also, as with the other Shadow Conjuration spells, any spell it mimics gives spell resistance, even when there normally is none.
Also, with Create demiplane, at most it would save you 500 gp and a couple of hours, since the cost for making a demiplane permanent comes from the Permanency spell, which is a universal spell.
Planar Binding and the like normally don't have any sort of material components anyway. It doesn't negate the need for making an appropriate offer to the illusionary creature you summon though (which may include sacrifices/treasure, etc). Planary Ally, OTOH, lists "payment" as in the material components section, but then specifically calls it out that you must pay this in the spell description, so a DM might let you get away with casting it without making the payment on a technicality- but it seems iffy to me.)
OTOH, Shades also has another implicit ability that greatly extends its powers: it can duplicate Limited Wish, which opens up a whole lot more options outside of the conjuration school.
Wait... How does it duplicate Limited Wish? That's a Universal School Spell.
Your other points are good though. I'm kind of leaning toward Green for Shades, mostly because of its ability to duplicate Resurrection or Heal, especially for the former's ability to seemingly avoid the 10,000 gp fee, theoretically the only drawback being that they'd be resurrected with 80% of their damage recovered instead of full.
Actually, I suppose if Shades has the ability to do that I should be rating it Blue...
Oops, you're right on the Limited Wish. Been looking at different editions of D&D recently and got it confused. Sorry about that.
Oops, you're right on the Limited Wish. Been looking at different editions of D&D recently and got it confused. Sorry about that.
Heh, what's funny is that when Benly was bringing up that Shades should be able to duplicate healing spells the first thing I thought was "Aren't those Necromancy!?"
Unrelated to that but related to the guide, I was putting together a character for a potentially upcoming game and was reminded of a fantastic wizard feat the guide doesn't mention: False Focus. The prereqs are cheap, it lets you spam Animate Dead and similar lowish-to-moderate cost spells for free, and between all the various foci and material components you can end up gathering for niche spells it can save you a lot of cost and hassle in the long run. There's also weird shenanigans you can engage in involving False Focus and Fabricate but, well, they're weird.
The trouble with feats in general is that they're not terribly well organized on the SRD. I'm bound to miss at least a few in the process of finding them out.
And yes, having just read this feat I can already think of some great uses for it. For instance, Stone Skin: Communal is 100gp per creature effected, making it a free Stone Skin buff at the cost of one spell slot higher.
Animate dead is definitely an incredible option as well. While it will take multiple castings and you won't be able to create anything with higher than 4HD, you can eventually make your army with basically no cost (But I do think that is pushing the envelope into the naughtiest of metagame territory.)
(I'm going to go ahead and make a list of spells for my future evaluation of this feat right here since it's convenient to me)
Arcane Lock - which I somehow missed in my guide for the Spell Evaluation - is a lot better, and it's permanent.
Create Treasure Map is suddenly Free.
You can make a stash of Continual Flames.
Fabricate Bullets for your gunslinger.
Place Magic Mouths everywhere.
Nondetection is slightly more usable.
Make Pellet Blast overcome Damage Reduction without any monetary consequences.
Write in Illusory Script as much as you want...
There are some good possibilities up there, makes me think the Feat deserves about a green (Probably not blue, since it is competing with so many other feats though.)
Good ideas.
I went ahead and cited you in the guide where I added False Focus in. I hope you don't mind.
Finished updating a few of the spells and adjusting some of the ratings.
I did think a little harder on some of the spells and came to a lot of the same conclusions. Most importantly though I gave the dominate spells the ratings they deserve.
Still a little waffling on giving Dominate Monster a straight up blue since that tends to suggest it's something you should be memorizing a lot, but when I really considered the implications of the effect as a non-combat spell, you really COULD be memorizing it every day and using it.
And yes, you could use it IN combat as well, I just think there's a lot more risk there. In combat, as an enchanter, I'd turn to some of the level 8 options that are sure-fires first.
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Im about to roll my first wizard and my plan is to be a Gnome Illusionist obsessed with clocks and has the eventual plan to make a Clockwork golem. I seem to notice that most illusion spells get rated as bad. Im new to pathfinder and new to wizards so im wondering if the character wil be gimp.The problem with illusion spells is that there are whole sections of the Bestiary that are outright immune to them because they are Mind-Effecting. Creatures like Undead are immune to Mind-Effecting effects, so your illusion spells won't work at all on those creatures with few exceptions.
This isn't in the rules exactly, but some of the older GMs may be predisposed against illusionist (I know mine is) and ad-hoc nerf the illusion spells on the spot.
There are many illusion spells that aren't mind-affecting, beginning right at 1st level with Silent Image.
So I'm skimming your spell ratings: why do you think Major Creation's duration makes it useless? Even precious metals last a minimum of three hours at the minimum possible caster level, with base metals lasting nine hours and non-mineral objects lasting 18. "Rare metals" are the only things that can possibly last less than an hour and a half with it.
I suppose with a 3 hour length of time for Gold you could use the spell to swindle someone.
I'm thinking more along the lines of fabricating the Mythril into armor or something. With 1 round per level AFTER a 10 minute casting time it makes it hardly usable.
As for non-precious metals, I guess you could craft a sword or two if your party was suddenly weaponless and have it be meaningful.
I dunno, maybe with some imagination I'm sure there's something you can do with it. To be honest though I'm lacking in ideas.
This one I should give a little more thought than I have though, since you CAN just create the full object according to the text.
Oh, I agree that the "rare metals" duration is useless - it's just that that's the only one. For anything that's not made of mithral, adamantine, or alchemical silver, it should last long enough for a lot of purposes.
If you don't think "create pretty much any nonmagical item for a few hours to a day or more" is useful, well, that's your opinion, but saying that you're downrating it because the duration is too short is baffling when it lasts hours for literally anything except a very short list of specific materials.
Thinking about it a little more the usefulness of other objects is dependent on the limits of your creation I think.
If it has to be one object of a single material, that's certainly limiting the possibilities. For instance, what if I wanted to make a Bicycle (A crafty diviner who could see into the future might come up with that) Would I be able to create an object of both metal AND plant matter?
Would I be able to make an object complete with complimentary objects assuming that I haven't used up all my cubic space? For instance, could I make a Cannon complete with ammo? Or would I have to fabricate the ammo afterward? (Although I guess I'd have to use creation to make the ammo because apparently using fabricate counts as using the creation as a material component.)
You know the more I think about this spell the more I think about summoning ladders and other utility items, I think I might need to give it a better rating overall. Heck, even the minor version can make ladders. This is all assuming you've bothered taking the appropriate craft skill though, which kind of bumps it down.
As far as the problem being ONLY duration, I think I just poorly worded my description. I'd definitely like the spell more if the spell was permanent, or at least longer than a single memorization period.
I'm glad you have a realistic take on bonded items. I don't care for familiars when I play. It's a feat to get a good one, and I never found them all that useful. Sure, they don't suck, but they're just sorta meh to me.
A ring that lets me cast any spell I know? Priceless. I've played quite a few wizzies over the years, and never lost it.
Quick question: In the guide, the DC for some of the Poison/Disease attacks is increased if you have the Augment Summoning feat, such as the Dire Rat or Viper from SMI. I cannot for the life of me find this in the rulebook. Where does it say that the DC should be increased due to Augment Summoning?
Thanks in advance.
Ah, found it, thanks. I was looking under Diseases and Poisons.
The Bestiary states that the Nosoi "Despite their size and apparent lack of hands, they may use medium-sized drawing and writing tools without penalty". I can't see why they cant use wands if they can use a pen.
In your feat section, you might want to mention Fast Learner for humans out of ARG. In my opinion this is a Blue feat due to allowing a human to get both a skill point and a hit point each level.
I'm curious about something and correct me if and where I am wrong, but I can find no stipulation in the Advanced Race Guide saying that Drow share the same favoured classes as elves, in fact they have their own favoured classes, so...may I get clarification here?