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How do "imbue with spell ability" and "spellcasting contract" work when cast by spontaneous casters such as oracles?
The issue is the spells specifically refer to prepared spells of which (most) oracles have none.
School evocation; Level cleric 4
Casting Time 10 minutes
Components V, S, DF
Range touch
Target creature touched; see text
Duration permanent until discharged (D)
Saving Throw Will negates (harmless); Spell Resistance yes (harmless)
You transfer some of your currently prepared spells, and the ability to cast them, to another creature. Only a creature with an Intelligence score of at least 5 and a Wisdom score of at least 9 can receive this boon. Only cleric spells from the schools of abjuration, divination, and conjuration (healing) can be transferred. The number and level of spells that the subject can be granted depends on its Hit Dice; even multiple castings of imbue with spell ability can't exceed this limit.
HD of Recipient Spells Imbued
2 or lower One 1st-level spell
3–4 One or two 1st-level spells
5 or higher One or two 1st-level spells and one 2nd-level spell
The transferred spell's variable characteristics (range, duration, area, and the like) function according to your level, not the level of the recipient.
Once you cast imbue with spell ability, you cannot prepare a new 4th-level spell to replace it until the recipient uses the imbued spells or is slain, or until you dismiss the imbue with spell ability spell. In the meantime, you remain responsible to your deity or your principles for the use to which the spell is put. If the number of 4th-level spells you can cast decreases, and that number drops below your current number of active imbue with spell ability spells, the more recently cast imbued spells are dispelled.
To cast a spell with a verbal component, the subject must be able to speak. To cast a spell with a somatic component, it must be able to move freely. To cast a spell with a material component or focus, it must have the materials or focus.
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Mark, do you think a trait that would reduce the Burn of a Kineticist's burn by 1 point when every they used burn too powerful for a Trait?
I thought of calling it Feel The Burn.
Mark already determined an ability called Feel the Burn was far too lame to be associated with the Kineticist, so I have a hard time thinking he'd approve.
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Did the rules team ever reach a conclusion about whether or not you can combine flurry of blows with spell combat?
From my research on the boards, these appear to be the two most sensible arguments for and against:
Main argument for:
The spell combat faq says "You can make as many weapon attacks as you would normally be able to make with a full attack" and a flurry of blows is a 'full attack action'.
Main argument against:
Spell combat is described as a variant of two-weapon fighting, and two-weapon fighting does not work with flurry of blows.
Btw, "we're still chewing on it" is a perfectly valid answer. =)
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What do you think of this question?
Also, perhaps an odd question, but do you ever let people tour the Paizo offices/Has anyone done so since you came on board?
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When is/was your work with Ultimate intrigue done? When have you put in your final say? Is that the same time it's to late to change anything, even a typo?
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Was wondering, for both pushing and pulling infusions... Do they provoke attacks of opportunity? It says that you attempt a bull rush or drag maneuver as part of the attack with them, which normally both of those maneuvers require heavy feat investment to allow provoking an attack of opportunity with them.
However, you aren't touching them and the normal physical limitations due to direct contact with them would (I would think) no longer apply. The target is being moved by a force and likely the target is freaking out and leaving themselves open.
Basically... are the multiple feats needed to cause attacks of opportunity to be provoked or no?
They follow the usual rules for bull rush and drag other than the exceptions listed, so you'd want Greater feats to make them provoke. Of course, the +4 bonus from those feats is something you probably want to have if you're focused on pushing or pulling anyways; +4 tends to really alter your chances.
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Does the telekineticist's Kinetic Blade do damage to the object being held like their normal blast does? That could be problematic.
It isn't a thrown object like in telekinetic blast (which mentions damaging a thrown object) but rather a focal point, so I wouldn't think it would. It has other dissimilarities as well, in the sorts of objects you use, for instance.
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Does a nonmagical arrow overcome cold iron and silver DR, when shot from a +3 bow?
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Can Kinetic Blade be used with the Archmage ability Mage Strike ?
It uses its own swift action and is not a charge, attack, or full attack action, so it wouldn't work, and the same holds true for most other abilities that grant an extra attack as a swift action.
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When using Ride the Blast can the character continue to take actions after or are they limited as per the Dimension Door spell where they can no longer take any other actions until their next turn ?
It doesn't say that it's as dimension door, so I see no reason to apply those limitations. Quickened ride the blast + kinetic whip full attack FTW!
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They don't use Somatic Components. They use Sssssssomatic Componentsssss, instead.Yeah, that's what I concluded in my games as well!It leads to a further question of how nagas are managing their somatic components...Clearly, nagas do some sort of rhythmic snake dance for their somatic components.Hypnotism, for example!
Yessssss!
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Hey Mark, this is my first time coming across this issue, as I've never used the ability before, but where would Spell-Scars (Magus arcana) go on the stat block? Under Spells and SLA's? Special Attacks, or Special Qualities? Or would they go under gear as if they were scrolls?
Huh, interesting. I think gear isn't a bad place for it, since they're basically scrolls, but I'm not sure, and it's for a Player Companion anyways.
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Hi Mark,
At last night's game, my Alchemist player threw a <confusion bomb> at a <desert giant>, which is immune to fire.
Now, I'm under the impression that there's a general rule that if the target is immune to the damage of a certain attack, it also avoids any effects that go along with the attack—e.g., if your DR negates the damage from a snake bite, you don't have to bother with the poison. So a couple questions: (A) That is the general rule, right? (B) Would it apply in this case? (In the moment, I allowed the confusion effect to apply and told the player I'd review the question for the future.)
Thanks!
The general rule for attacks that do physical damage is that if they fail to do damage (such as by hardness or DR), they count as a miss and avoid all riders. However, it's not clear to me whether energy attacks vs. energy resistance automatically apply the same rule, since, awkwardly, the rule itself is buried in the damage reduction ability. For the kineticist, I decided to call out which effects were added even if a creature avoided all damage (or was even immune to the energy type), but things like confusion bombs are still inconclusive, as you have discerned. Clearly something like smoke bombs would work even if a creature didn't take damage since it still creates the smoke on a miss.
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Hey Mark, Merciful Foliage allows kineticist blasts to deal nonlethal damage without a penalty to attack rolls, is this (currently) the only way to deal nonlethal damage with a blast ?
Or if you take the attack penalty can you use any blast to deal nonlethal ?
Typically spells and SLAs don't allow that attack penalty, and with the wild and unrestrained nature of elemental energy, I think it's sort of fitting. That said, I'm sure it'd be fine to allow it anyway in a home game for ones that make more sense to allow nonlethal (basically the physical blasts).
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If you were to create stats for a Void elemental, what properties would you give it?
It would probably be something more like a negative energal, since the void element is associated with the Negative Energy Plane, but with a gravity twist, since the confluence of the gravity in the black holes on the NEP mixed with raw elemental energy is how the void element formed.
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Did you make the Storyteller Archetype for the medium or was that someone else?
Guilty as charged. The freelancer for medium archetypes wrote some really good medium archetypes, but based on the freelance cycle vs the class design cycle, they were for the playtest version and needed to be replaced. I wrote all the replacements.
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d) The Ecclesitheurge was an attempt at this, but with genuinely no offense intended, I (and many others)thought it terrible!
No offense taken, especially since I wasn't even at the company when the archetype was written. However, as a general fan of the more "cloistered" side of clerics myself as well, I (and many others), think the archetype is pretty cool. Its existence won't stop me from working on other similar options in the future, of course.
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FCBs were a mistake for the simple reason that that paizo tried to get away from favored classes when converting over to 3.5 . The playtest was years ago, but I remember that reasoning.
Here I think you're referring to racial FCBs being a mistake for the same reason that Jason moved away from racial favored classes. I totally agree. When Pathfinder removed racial favored classes, I was quite happy, as I enjoy being able to play characters of the race and class combination I choose without an added mechanical disadvantage for not picking a particular class, and so do most players, I'd wager. But as you say, racial FCBs (and particularly, the fact that they're often more powerful than the standard options) just puts us in the reverse situation as we were before (now certain classes push one or two races, rather than certain races pushing one class). It would have been better if the FCBs were available to all races, or perhaps if these more-powerful racial FCBs only existed to intentionally spice up race/class combinations where the race ordinarily has a really bad synergy with the class in question. Of course, this latter option leads to future troubles if someone puts out racial options that patch up the synergy in other ways. Take changelings. With a Con penalty and irrelevant bonuses, the base changeling race is arguably the worst race in Pathfinder that doesn't have an Intelligence penalty at being a witch (I suppose a +2 Str +2 Cha -2 Con or +2 Str +2 Cha -2 Dex race might be out there that's worse, but I'm not aware of such a race off the top of my head). If it had a ridiculously powerful witch FCB, that would help, but then if some bozo such as me comes along and puts out an option to get Intelligence on changelings, suddenly now it's overpowered (in this case, I wouldn't have inserted that changeling ability if I knew that it had a stellar FCB, but sometimes it's hard to keep track of the compensatory rules elements in other sources).
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Hi Mark, I noticed that all the FAQs for Occult Adventures are dated 15 August 2015. Are FAQs and erratas for books usually handled 'in bulk'?
If say there was a rules question (for occult adventures) that generated 29 FAQ flags in 4 days, when should we realistically hope for a response or FAQ?
Also, is this the kind of thing that meetings are called for and scheduled, or discussed over the break-room table at tea time (which is perfectly fine, mind you - my own brain tends to want to work better at tea time than during work meetings for some odd reason).Also, does 'psychic magic' fall under the purview of Nethys' portfolio? And how does he feel (or how do you think he would feel) about this new 'up-and-coming' area of magic?
They are almost never handled in bulk, and normally we would instead do them once a week. I managed to get those occult ones as a special feature on that day due to the FAQ queue breaking that week, on the grounds of "We might not have the queue back for a while, and I don't know what's at the top, but we can still do all the relevant ones we've collected, even if many of them aren't necessarily top priorities."
The PDT tends to do extemporaneous meetings more often than scheduled ones.
I'm not in charge of Golarion lore, so I can just say from my own interpretation of Nethys as "the god who explored every aspect of magic until it fractured his mind" that he would definitely consider it to be a type of magic under his portfolio, as he is the god of magic, not just arcane magic.
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In regards to the dwarf and half-Orc Kineticist favored class bonuses: why the change to only work on elemental overflow? They are much more limited than elf(earth and fire only, respectively).
This makes those choices yet another thing you can't chose at your first level in your favored class, a surprisingly strange and confusing thing.
I think you are misunderstanding: the errata is saying that the bonus only applies to blasts that elemental overflow damage applies to, i.e. Kinetic Blade and Kinetic Fist do not get the bonus damage.
The trade-off between elf being more general is that the half-orc and dwarf bonuses scale faster (1/3 level vs 1/4 level).
This is true: You never get the FCB to kinetic blade, frex, under any circumstances. This is part of the balancing factor between ranged and melee kineticists, and it appeared that way in the book mainly because I failed a Perception check that someone had changed my initial FCBs for those two races (which initially didn't add to damage but instead to earth attack rolls at a very slow fraction and to saves against coup de grace at a very fast rate) and thus didn't give them the wording check that they needed to make sure they had the i's dotted and the t's crossed. IMO, the fact that the bonuses only happen conditionally doesn't stop you from taking them at 1st level.
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Is pagecount your archnemesis?
Pagecount is just a number, not an archnemesis, in the same way that clowns aren't Batman's nemesis, the Joker is. The archnemesis related to pagecount has a name, and its name is "Copyfitting"! ;)
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Hi, Mark.
I spent a good chunk of time this weekend with a pencil, my hardcover of the Advanced Class Guide, and my copy of the ACG Errata document. I was hand-correcting the errata in my copy.
On the plus side, this gave me a chance to see all of the errata in their full context. I also was reading a fair amount of non-errata passages in the book that I'd mostly glossed over in previous readings.
I was curious about one such feat: Kick Up. I thought it had a weird set of prerequisites: it's swashbuckler-and-slayer only.
I was curious as to the design decision behind the specific classes prerequisite. I can think of many concepts for fighters, rangers, rogues, or other classes for which this feat would seem a natural fit. One other thing that threw me was that the artwork depicting this feat showed Seltyiel the iconic magus using it. But he'd be barred from this feat for not having swashbuckler or slayer levels.
Thanks for your insight!
I agree that the specific classes chosen were kind of weird, but the initial decision was made before I got here, and the feat didn't come up in the errata discussions (until now, I guess). I'll at least try to make sure that's on the list for discussion if/when the next errata rolls around (though with the last one so recent, that's unlikely to be for a while), so at that point, remind me and I'll tell you why if I find out.
If I use omnikinesis to switch out a defence talent that has burn already invested, does that burn transfer over to the new talent or is it lost?
Thanks for the answers. They make sense now, though why your original FCBs for Kiniticists were changed I don't know or could even fathom a reason for...
I guess someone really, really wanted to focus on damage.
What would be the best way to transport an area of land to a demiplane?
Such as, if I wanted to bring a graveyard or grove of trees to my demiplane (either as a new section or replacing an already existing area) would it fair to say a modified Create Demiplane spell (using same area of effect) to transport it? And if not made permanent with Permanency then after the duration it phases back to where it was?
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Mark I had a few questions in the Kineticist Guide Thread, What are your thoughts? The was for Omnikinesis was a spelling error I mean Wasn't
Going based on your previous answers can we assume they changed the archetypes in some way? Or was there not enough pagecount for the changes?
FAQ today?
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What would be the best way to transport an area of land to a demiplane?
Such as, if I wanted to bring a graveyard or grove of trees to my demiplane (either as a new section or replacing an already existing area) would it fair to say a modified Create Demiplane spell (using same area of effect) to transport it? And if not made permanent with Permanency then after the duration it phases back to where it was?
Do something really evil on it and the whole thing might get sucked into Ravenloft...
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Have you ever played the game Magicka? Gather Power and composite blasts in particular remind me of it.
I haven't played it. Should I check it out?
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Mark, do you think a trait that would reduce the Burn of a Kineticist's burn by 1 point when every they used burn too powerful for a Trait?
I thought of calling it Feel The Burn.I have Kineticist question, would a swarm be affected if it entered a Kineticist's square when he was useing gather power? If so how much damage would this do to the swarm.
Mark how would you write a power for a Kineticist to channel his blast damage into a melee weapon he was carrying inflicting the damage on whom ever he hit with his weapon.
I think that the trait you describe is not a good idea to include in any form, particularly not as a trait. The kineticist's blast is when the energy becomes damaging, and it can hurt swarms starting from level 1 even. You could make a balanced form infusion as you describe, but it would take some careful thought to do so, likely as a melee-only standard action deal (it could also be a weapon enhancement similar to conductive but worded to allow melee that lets you add the basic blast damage to the weapon 1/round).
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Have you ever played the game Magicka? Gather Power and composite blasts in particular remind me of it.I haven't played it. Should I check it out?
If nothing else it's like $2 on Steam so you wouldn't lose much by trying it.
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How do "imbue with spell ability" and "spellcasting contract" work when cast by spontaneous casters such as oracles?
The issue is the spells specifically refer to prepared spells of which (most) oracles have none.
** spoiler omitted **...
They probably don't work, which is OK by me since oracles get some oracle-only spells too (and wizards get some wizard-only spells based on prepared spells, etc).
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Did the rules team ever reach a conclusion about whether or not you can combine flurry of blows with spell combat?
From my research on the boards, these appear to be the two most sensible arguments for and against:
** spoiler omitted **
Btw, "we're still chewing on it" is a perfectly valid answer. =)
I think it doesn't work for a separate reason to the arguments you presented: Spell combat and flurry of blows are both their own actions, rather than mods for the full attack action, so you have to have chosen to do one or the other.
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hi Mark!
does the eidolon's large Evolution statck with enlarge person spell?
While most size changes don't stack, I think the evolution actually makes it a true Large (or Huge) creature from then on, so it would stack with another size change.
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Roleplaying games tend to pull from fiction. What fiction do you think is most Pathfinder like? Aside of course from the Pathfinder tales.
That's an interesting question. I feel like the Golarion setting pulls from a variety of different genres, although it's heavy on "pulp". The actual way the game itself usually plays out is usually fairly different to most fiction, even Pathfinder Tales due to some of the gamist constructions of it. Even relatively background things like being wounded are far more interesting impediments in any book you come across than in a typical game of Pathfinder with CLW wands (even if the book series has amazing healers, those healers still have limits that get taxed).
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Have you ever played the game Magicka? Gather Power and composite blasts in particular remind me of it.I haven't played it. Should I check it out?
I remember it being really laggy and buggy when I tried it, but it might have improved since then. (We're talking four or five years ago at this point.)
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What do you think of this question?
Also, perhaps an odd question, but do you ever let people tour the Paizo offices/Has anyone done so since you came on board?
I think that ninjas with still mind to replace (which I think don't exist?) can take them based on the precise wording, but they were created before ninjas, and so I wouldn't be surprised if this wasn't intended. It's certainly curious that it mentions any ki user if it wasn't meant to be forward-looking, but needing still mind makes it more accurate to say "ki users with the still mind class feature" or something like that.
Occasionally fans will check in as guests to tour the office; it's rare, but it's more common certain times of the year.
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When is/was your work with Ultimate intrigue done? When have you put in your final say? Is that the same time it's to late to change anything, even a typo?
The process has many steps, but the design team finished development last week, and we finished changes for copyfitting this week after the book's layout. We'll still wind up with questions from editing for a while yet. Eventually, the book will go for approvals, which is when all the honcho-est honchos flip through, and so we occasionally have questions from that, and then after that, to the printers, at which point any change is too late.
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Does a nonmagical arrow overcome cold iron and silver DR, when shot from a +3 bow?
The text of: "Ammunition fired from a projectile weapon with an enhancement bonus of +1 or higher is treated as a magic weapon for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction. Similarly, ammunition fired from a projectile weapon with an alignment gains the alignment of that projectile weapon." would somewhat imply not, though "The enhancement bonus from a ranged weapon does not stack with the enhancement bonus from ammunition. Only the higher of the two enhancement bonuses applies." seems to state that it gains the enhancement bonus. Then again, there are ways to gain an enhancement bonus that aren't "true" enhancement bonus like greater magic weapon, and those don't count as special materials. But usually those tell you that they don't. I'm going to say the text goes both ways. Personally, I'd like there to be some reason to buy +5 arrows, but that bias aside, I think the text leans more toward making the arrows bypass.
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If I use omnikinesis to switch out a defence talent that has burn already invested, does that burn transfer over to the new talent or is it lost?
I would say you're out of luck in that case, by the rules, but at the point that you're doing this at level 20, there's enough other parts of the game for other classes that work on the basis of "talk to your GM" that maybe your GM will give you a freebie.
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I think that ninjas with still mind to replace (which I think don't exist?) can take them based on the precise wording, but they were created before ninjas, and so I wouldn't be surprised if this wasn't intended. It's certainly curious that it mentions any ki user if it wasn't meant to be forward-looking, but needing still mind makes it more accurate to say "ki users with the still mind class feature" or something like that.What do you think of this question?
Also, perhaps an odd question, but do you ever let people tour the Paizo offices/Has anyone done so since you came on board?
That was my thinking as well. Might be a good nearly insignificant FAQ to look into next time you do a "FAQ Bundle" or a two-fer? I like those little "quality of life" FAQs.
Occasionally fans will check in as guests to tour the office; it's rare, but it's more common certain times of the year.
Neat. I could be headed to Seattle for other reasons some time so maybe I'll stop in and terrorize you guys. =p
Thanks for the answers. They make sense now, though why your original FCBs for Kiniticists were changed I don't know or could even fathom a reason for...
I guess someone really, really wanted to focus on damage.
It was when I was out sick, and they're perfectly reasonable FCBs; I feel it was on me: I should have noticed that it was different when I got back in, and it was my responsibility to make sure kineticist wording was correct. I just was out of that chapter by then, so I didn't see it.
What would be the best way to transport an area of land to a demiplane?
Such as, if I wanted to bring a graveyard or grove of trees to my demiplane (either as a new section or replacing an already existing area) would it fair to say a modified Create Demiplane spell (using same area of effect) to transport it? And if not made permanent with Permanency then after the duration it phases back to where it was?
I feel like adding a similar-looking graveyard or grove of trees to your demiplane is within the bounds of what you could already do with the higher versions of the spell, but there are side consequences of being able to actually pull out a chunk of the world (in terms of things like "Well, that antipaladin's castle is too well defended and he's terrorizing the lands, so I'll just suck it into a no-entrance, no-exit, no-magic demiplane and make it permanent. Adventure complete.") that would make actually doing so a significant power boost that wouldn't be appropriate for anything less than a mythic version, if then. I'm always worried about caster options and that kind of situation.
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Mark I had a few questions in the Kineticist Guide Thread, What are your thoughts? The was for Omnikinesis was a spelling error I mean Wasn't
Going based on your previous answers can we assume they changed the archetypes in some way? Or was there not enough pagecount for the changes?
Omnikinesis doesn't need any change, but you're absolutely right about metakinetic master. Looks like we missed that one in development, and I missed it in my mini-playtest because it wasn't level 19. Choosing either the breath of life metahealer or the level 17 "heal both" metahealer and reducing the total burn from the chosen metahealer from 2 to 1 (your choice of who doesn't take it) would be most thematically similar to metakinetic master, though allowing you to apply two mercies (or metahealer abilities) to the same heal would also be an appropriate choice. If you get to level 19 with your chirurgeon, I think your GM should let you use one of those two options.
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FAQ today?
Jason's car wouldn't start so he's not in today, and since it wasn't an expected thing, we couldn't plan ahead for it. Thus not this week. The good news is that I'll most likely have the next snapshot by the time we do the next FAQ, so I'll be able to see any new FAQs that popped up since Robot Chris built the last one.
Snapshot?
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Snapshot?
Snap Shot ;)
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Snapshot?
The tech team still couldn't fix the FAQ Queue, so Robot Chris, in her capacity as Community Glitter-Robot, scraped every FAQ thread up to a certain point by hand and built an Excel file that acts, essentially, as a snapshot of what the FAQ Queue looked like at the time she built it.