a few odd questions


Rules Questions


not sure ill be adding it into my campaign but ive ran into the deck of many things, and im unclear on the details of how it works, mainly with the amount drawn and the jester/fool cards, it says they are discarded, but what exactly does that mean, that they are gone for good and never to be in the deck again? just for that player and other players will be able to run into it? also with how everything is worded, I cant tell what the limits are on using it, like can a player encounter it, and only draw from that deck once for whatever number they declare? or can they use it as often as theyd like over and over?

Next question is about the pricing of magic items, sorta, it was sorta, but in looking for answers, found a better question, but ill get this one out of the way, would a flaming masterwork rapier cost 8,320 or 2,320? the dilemma that came up was I saw someone say, that even though masterwork gives an enhancement bonus, its not able to allow a magic effect on a weapon, you have to separately give it a magic enhancement bonus, which makes it +2 for the price chart, not +1, but is that correct?

Next wanted to make sure that I was doing things right, or seeing them right, is it possible to, as a rogue, with the right feats and skills, level as a shadowdancer on level 6? and furthermore, I wanted to ask exactly how multiclassing worked on a few certain aspects I don't think I saw detailed, like saving throws, do those stack, or does the greater one rule? whats the deal on leveling, isn't 20 supposed to be like the max, I know you can go beyond it, but its the sorta primary max level in a way, and so I assume its total levels, so 5 levels of rogue and 5 levels of shadowdancer is level 10 in that aspect right? so does that mean you never get to reach 20 on both classes?

thanks for any answers and such, always appreciate it


You can't have just a flaming masterwork rapier.
You need to have a flaming masterwork rapier +1, so the total is 8,320.

Yes you can go in at level six if you have all the prereqs. Saving throws stack and bab stack. In all classes you don't have a set saving throw, you see they are all +numbers. So all those pluses add up together. And yes you couldn't hit 20 in both classes, now a shadow dancer only has ten levels. But yes multi classing means missing out on the high levels powers. Now most games I know of don't get close to 20. A lot of my games end just a few levels higher than we started. So take that into account when planning your build. You might never get high enough level to get an ability.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
alkatrazshock wrote:

whats the deal on leveling, isn't 20 supposed to be like the max, I know you can go beyond it, but its the sorta primary max level in a way, and so I assume its total levels, so 5 levels of rogue and 5 levels of shadowdancer is level 10 in that aspect right? so does that mean you never get to reach 20 on both classes?

The VAST majority of campaigns that start out at level 1, rarely ever get past 12 without ending for any of a variety of reasons.

Shadow Lodge

alkatrazshock wrote:
not sure ill be adding it into my campaign but ive ran into the deck of many things, and im unclear on the details of how it works, mainly with the amount drawn and the jester/fool cards, it says they are discarded, but what exactly does that mean, that they are gone for good and never to be in the deck again? just for that player and other players will be able to run into it?

I think "discarded" means gone for good, though I'm not sure.

alkatrazshock wrote:
also with how everything is worded, I cant tell what the limits are on using it, like can a player encounter it, and only draw from that deck once for whatever number they declare? or can they use it as often as theyd like over and over?

Only once per character. "Cards must be drawn within 1 hour of each other, and a character can never draw from this deck any more cards than she has announced" - once you have announced you will draw 2 cards, and you draw 2 cards, you can never draw more cards from that deck.

alkatrazshock wrote:
Next question is about the pricing of magic items, sorta, it was sorta, but in looking for answers, found a better question, but ill get this one out of the way, would a flaming masterwork rapier cost 8,320 or 2,320? the dilemma that came up was I saw someone say, that even though masterwork gives an enhancement bonus, its not able to allow a magic effect on a weapon, you have to separately give it a magic enhancement bonus, which makes it +2 for the price chart, not +1, but is that correct?

Yes, you need at least a +1 magic enhancement before adding special properties. There's no such thing as a Flaming Rapier, only a +1 Flaming Rapier, which is a +2 equivalent weapon and costs 8,320gp.

alkatrazshock wrote:
Next wanted to make sure that I was doing things right, or seeing them right, is it possible to, as a rogue, with the right feats and skills, level as a shadowdancer on level 6?

Yes, since you can get the 3 feats required, 5 ranks in stealth, and 2 in dance on reaching level 5. Then at level 6 you are qualified to take a level in shadowdancer.

alkatrazshock wrote:
and furthermore, I wanted to ask exactly how multiclassing worked on a few certain aspects I don't think I saw detailed, like saving throws, do those stack, or does the greater one rule

They stack.

alkatrazshock wrote:
whats the deal on leveling, isn't 20 supposed to be like the max, I know you can go beyond it, but its the sorta primary max level in a way, and so I assume its total levels, so 5 levels of rogue and 5 levels of shadowdancer is level 10 in that aspect right? so does that mean you never get to reach 20 on both classes?

A rogue 5 shadowdancer 5 is considered character level 10.

You can go beyond 20 if you really want but then you have to multiclass. You can be a rogue 12 shadowdancer 10, but not a rogue 22. This is very uncommon, though - most people end campaigns well before level 20 and the game doesn't work that well far beyond 20. More info here, Ctrl-F "epic".


Weirdo wrote:
alkatrazshock wrote:
not sure ill be adding it into my campaign but ive ran into the deck of many things, and im unclear on the details of how it works, mainly with the amount drawn and the jester/fool cards, it says they are discarded, but what exactly does that mean, that they are gone for good and never to be in the deck again? just for that player and other players will be able to run into it?

I think "discarded" means gone for good, though I'm not sure.

alkatrazshock wrote:
also with how everything is worded, I cant tell what the limits are on using it, like can a player encounter it, and only draw from that deck once for whatever number they declare? or can they use it as often as theyd like over and over?

Only once per character. "Cards must be drawn within 1 hour of each other, and a character can never draw from this deck any more cards than she has announced" - once you have announced you will draw 2 cards, and you draw 2 cards, you can never draw more cards from that deck.

alkatrazshock wrote:
Next question is about the pricing of magic items, sorta, it was sorta, but in looking for answers, found a better question, but ill get this one out of the way, would a flaming masterwork rapier cost 8,320 or 2,320? the dilemma that came up was I saw someone say, that even though masterwork gives an enhancement bonus, its not able to allow a magic effect on a weapon, you have to separately give it a magic enhancement bonus, which makes it +2 for the price chart, not +1, but is that correct?

Yes, you need at least a +1 magic enhancement before adding special properties. There's no such thing as a Flaming Rapier, only a +1 Flaming Rapier, which is a +2 equivalent weapon and costs 8,320gp.

alkatrazshock wrote:
Next wanted to make sure that I was doing things right, or seeing them right, is it possible to, as a rogue, with the right feats and skills, level as a shadowdancer on level 6?
Yes, since you can get the 3 feats required, 5 ranks in stealth, and...

alright, thanks for the answers everyone, does anyone know the exact details of the discarded term though? I just find it too vague for me to act on it with confidence, and don't want to rob someone of the good card if it does go back for new people, I agree that I think its gone for good, otherwise seems like they would say it would go back to the deck for someone else, but like I said, its vague so id like a pretty fer sure answer on how it works, also what is people's opinions of the other deck of many things that exist, I saw a few other versions, ones with way more cards and such, do you think they are better to use than the core rulebook deck of many things, or would you still to the one listed over the community made ones?


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The correct answer to all questions regarding the Deck of Many Things is 'Don't touch it'.

Shadow Lodge

Yeah, the Deck can be devastating - it can kill PCs, cripple them, or give them boons that are unbalancingly powerful to all but very high-level PCs (in which case, why are they risking the first two?). I would not recommend using it unless you are very experienced, or else not very invested in your campaign and the current set of PCs.

I'm not sure what the community-designed decks look like but they might be better if they have less drastic effects.

Silver Crusade

By all means the GM should introduce a Deck of Many things. However, the players who fail to follow Zhayne's above "Don't touch it" answer are fools. Seriously, the Deck is bad news for players. Some fools will be irresistibly drawn to it, and they will probably be removed from the campaign.

From the GM's perspective, a Deck of Many Things is how one removes unwise PCs (and players) from the campaign. So long as that's your goal, use it!


Zhayne and Magda are correct, but watch out for the rare, lucky player who draws only good cards and consequently unbalances the party.


Gilarius wrote:
Zhayne and Magda are correct, but watch out for the rare, lucky player who draws only good cards and consequently unbalances the party.

Or the player who knows The Trick ... Augury.

Since Augury can accurately predict the future, you can use it to guarantee only good cards.

If Bob draws one card, what will happen? "Weal."
If Bob draws two cards, what will happen? "Weal."
If Bob draws three cards, what will happen? "Weal and woe."
"Bob, draw two cards."

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Gilarius wrote:
Zhayne and Magda are correct, but watch out for the rare, lucky player who draws only good cards and consequently unbalances the party.

A GM who puts out a Deck of Many Things has only himself to blame for whatever havoc it unleashes on his campaign.


I'm not sure augury will affect an artifact, certainly not one that is beloved (according to some fluff) by the gods of chaos.

One of my favourites since 1e :). It used to be that DoMT would disappear after one person drew from it, relocating somewhere else as fresh as new. That doesn't appear to be the case now, so my views may be outdated, but I would say that the discarded cards are only absent for the current characters draws.


dragonhunterq wrote:

I'm not sure augury will affect an artifact, certainly not one that is beloved (according to some fluff) by the gods of chaos.

One of my favourites since 1e :). It used to be that DoMT would disappear after one person drew from it, relocating somewhere else as fresh as new. That doesn't appear to be the case now, so my views may be outdated, but I would say that the discarded cards are only absent for the current characters draws.

Well my group is in the situation that we all started pathfinder together recently, since the base set for the ACG came out, ive played that, and that was the first pathfinder I played, I just about 2 months ago branches into legit real pathfinder so to speak, and clearly its quite different, I joined the same group that my group joined as it started, right after I started my own group so we could get more playing and learning in, and I could learn both the player side and the GM side, the group ive started really is just for learning and fun, I mean I think our first night, we spent like 4-5 hours in the tavern of the town gambling together XD me playing as the "house" so to speak, as well as NPC's , so I no one is gonna be thrilled by dying to a deck of many things card, but im not even sure we are too close to level 2, so if there was ever a time to be permanently destroyed .... >.> it wouldn't be that hard to recreate ones character, but its definitely not something I plan to do all the time, I just wanted to maybe throw it in a room, and see what the players would do with it, which actually brings me to ask 2 more questions below, but yeah we are mostly just learning the different things, like one session I encorperated a puzzle, and another a riddle, and I even did some chase scenes as well, and non-lethal encounters, just trying to introduce everyone to the different things as we all learn together.

1. what would I tell them if they casted detect magic or detect evil on the deck? just that it has magical powers for detect magic? or do I tell them the description it gives me in the book as well as the rules? and for detect evil, is the deck considered evil? and if so, do I just say, yes the deck is evil and that's it or?

2. What happens with people wanting to draw from the deck, like clearly I don't wanna say exactly what the deck does, hence the experiment, but the deck says a person who wants to draw has to state how many cards they draw and then cant draw again, so what if someone wants to just walk up and draw right away, not saying a number, do I magically stop them? should I just come out and say that they can only draw X cards once and to say how much X is before doing so? or do I just count it as drawing a single card? and what if people want to pick up the deck and look through it, I assume if they can pick it up, they wont know what any of the cards do if they can look through it, itll just look like a bunch of cards, but would the deck count them picking up the stack as drawing the entire stack?

pretty much replying to everyone by the way, not just the one for the comment, thanks for anymore answers

Shadow Lodge

The Deck is dangerous but not evil and won't show up with Detect Evil.

Deck of Many Things wrote:
Aura strong (all schools); CL 20th;
Detect Magic wrote:
3rd Round: The strength and location of each aura. If the items or creatures bearing the auras are in line of sight, you can make Knowledge (arcana) skill checks to determine the school of magic involved in each. (Make one check per aura: DC 15 + spell level, or 15 + 1/2 caster level for a nonspell effect.) If the aura emanates from a magic item, you can attempt to identify its properties (see Spellcraft).
Detect Magic wrote:
Identify the properties of a magic item using detect magic: 15 + item's caster level

So if the party casts Detect Magic, they will detect a strong aura and will have to make a DC 25 Knowledge Arcana check to determine the school (all), and a DC 35 spellcraft check to identify the deck and its properties (drawing rules and at least some of the specific cards, good and bad).

Given that the Deck of Many things is infamous I'd probably allow an easier check (DC 25 Arcana or maybe History or Local) to have a general idea of what it is based on rumour. ("You think you heard of an deck of cards that can bestow great fortune or misfortune on those who draw from it.")

There's no real guideline for what to do with people who try to draw from the deck without knowing what it is. You could treat it as a single declared draw, you could make it physically impossible to draw from the deck without stating a number of cards, you could decide that anyone trying to draw from the deck gets a magic sense that they have to pick a certain number of cards to draw, you could have the deck in a container that cryptically alludes to the drawing rules ("Set the size of your hand, draw forth, and test your luck"), or you could ask the player to clarify how many cards they are drawing before they do so ("I draw from the deck" "How many cards?" or "I draw a card." "Just one?")

Picking it up shouldn't count as a draw and I would even allow them to look through it without counting it as a "draw" - but remember to shuffle the deck before anyone actually draws from it.


Weirdo has some good suggestions here. Another method would be to have a genie appear and act as the dealer as soon as anyone interacts with the deck. That way you can have a method of explaining the rules of the deck and prevent players from messing it up.

However, a much better idea would be to ignore the existance of this item for about 6 real years of playing and then decide if you really want to mess a game up.


Gilarius wrote:

Weirdo has some good suggestions here. Another method would be to have a genie appear and act as the dealer as soon as anyone interacts with the deck. That way you can have a method of explaining the rules of the deck and prevent players from messing it up.

However, a much better idea would be to ignore the existance of this item for about 6 real years of playing and then decide if you really want to mess a game up.

well as I said, the group just started mostly, im aware of the randomness of the deck, what it could do to the group, and if there was ever a time to experiment with it, now is that time, a character death wont be much at all to recover from, and as GM, even if its frowned upon, I can always "cheat" and rewind time due to faithfulness to one's diety, or make the whole event the dream of the spellcaster of the group, as though he was forseeing the moment of finding the deck, etc. we are all just new to the game, and id like to experiment and get everyone familiar with certain items and situations, and just see who does what and if they learn from it and such, im trying to introduce everything to all of us, magic items, intelligent items, combat encounters, non combat encounters, puzzles, investigations, chase scenes, gambling, just anything we can, one's first adventure is probably pretty doomed anyways, we learn something we did wrong every week, so im just trying to learn and deal with as much as possible while making it fun


Weirdo wrote:

The Deck is dangerous but not evil and won't show up with Detect Evil.

Deck of Many Things wrote:
Aura strong (all schools); CL 20th;
Detect Magic wrote:
3rd Round: The strength and location of each aura. If the items or creatures bearing the auras are in line of sight, you can make Knowledge (arcana) skill checks to determine the school of magic involved in each. (Make one check per aura: DC 15 + spell level, or 15 + 1/2 caster level for a nonspell effect.) If the aura emanates from a magic item, you can attempt to identify its properties (see Spellcraft).
Detect Magic wrote:
Identify the properties of a magic item using detect magic: 15 + item's caster level

So if the party casts Detect Magic, they will detect a strong aura and will have to make a DC 25 Knowledge Arcana check to determine the school (all), and a DC 35 spellcraft check to identify the deck and its properties (drawing rules and at least some of the specific cards, good and bad).

Given that the Deck of Many things is infamous I'd probably allow an easier check (DC 25 Arcana or maybe History or Local) to have a general idea of what it is based on rumour. ("You think you heard of an deck of cards that can bestow great fortune or misfortune on those who draw from it.")

There's no real guideline for what to do with people who try to draw from the deck without knowing what it is. You could treat it as a single declared draw, you could make it physically impossible to draw from the deck without stating a number of cards, you could decide that anyone trying to draw from the deck gets a magic sense that they have to pick a certain number of cards to draw, you could have the deck in a container that cryptically alludes to the drawing rules ("Set the size of your hand, draw forth, and test your luck"), or you could ask the player to clarify how many cards they are drawing before they do so ("I draw from the deck" "How many cards?" or "I draw a card." "Just one?")

Picking it up shouldn't count as a draw and I...

alright, thanks, that helps me learn a lot, just from that, ive been pretty informative whenever detect magic has been cast without checks, I remember reading somewhere it was a pretty automatic thing while holding an item, I think in the beginner box, I wasn't aware that it actually created checks, still finding new stuff everyday, thanks though


Well, long ago...

We used to use the DoMT as sort of an opening act for a light hearted campaign that started at medium to high levels. So if a PC is completely destroyed or unplayable, you haven't lost anything in which you have a lot of emotional investment. You just started a new PC.

Some of the less severe bad things and even some of the good things, made pretty decent adventure hooks.


alkatrazshock, it's not the character deaths or ruinations that are the problem as a GM: it’s the ones that gain something unbalanced. You can end up with a party where one PC is effectively 5 levels ahead of the rest, ruining everyone's fun in playing.

If you're going to apply it and then rescind the effects, go ahead. But don't tell the players that it's not serious in advance - it's a lot of fun for you if they get worried!

Shadow Lodge

Gilarius wrote:
Weirdo has some good suggestions here. Another method would be to have a genie appear and act as the dealer as soon as anyone interacts with the deck. That way you can have a method of explaining the rules of the deck and prevent players from messing it up.

I like this idea - especially if you expect the fun will be with what the characters do with the deck instead of figuring out what the deck does.


Gilarius wrote:

alkatrazshock, it's not the character deaths or ruinations that are the problem as a GM: it’s the ones that gain something unbalanced. You can end up with a party where one PC is effectively 5 levels ahead of the rest, ruining everyone's fun in playing.

If you're going to apply it and then rescind the effects, go ahead. But don't tell the players that it's not serious in advance - it's a lot of fun for you if they get worried!

well the hope is itll be fixable anyways, if they gain a magic item, I could have it stolen, if they level, I could allow everyone to level the same, etc. im sure it wont escape handle and ruin fun, but yeah, I plan to surprise them quite a bit with it, don't want them to know much of anything, it will be funny to see the first of the group draw like a gain +2 ability score card, causing everyone to immediately draw in hopes of getting the same, and then see someone get the thing where they have to beat that wraith or whatever or forever be destroyed :p but yeah, ill definitely make sure no fun is ruined

Shadow Lodge

Be careful, and make sure you know your group. Partly rescinding the effects might disappoint luckier characters, especially if you only undo the biggest benefits (like if one PC gets to keep +2 to a stat, but another has to give up his major magic weapon). The players might feel that by taking the risk they've earned the reward.

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