Venture-Agent, Netherlands—Utrecht
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I recently prepped a scenario where the BBEG does a spell-like ability mid-combat, but the actual spell has a 10-minute casting time. I looked online, and while there is a bit of contention whether spell-like standard actions trump the spells they emulate, or whether they're still bound to the casting time of the spell, but the consensus seems to be that it's indeed the casting time of the original spell. In this instance, I mainly chalk this up to the author misreading the casting time of the spell, not actual malicious intent.
So, when an author is misimplementing rules, should I run it as written/intended, or do I correct for the actual rules? There have been instances of undead Barbarians, for example, but that's handwaved away by saying GMs can create special monsters that don't necessarily stick to the rules. But when an author makes assumptions about the rules, and he's wrong, should I stick to those tactics? On the one hand, the author presumably kept those rules in mind for their tactics and CR, making the encounter CR-appropriate, and doing away with them will make the encounter easier. On the other hand, it's simply not fair when the GM plays by different rules than the players. And there's also the idea that GMs should run things exactly as written.
A different example: a friend told me he ran an underwater combat where tactics said enemies take five-foot steps to flank the party, but since they didn't actually have a swim speed, they couldn't technically five-foot step. Stick to what's written and ignore the rules, or stick to the rules and change the tactics of the encounter?
Venture-Captain, Germany—Bavaria
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Whelp, good point. Feel stupid I didn't mention it, but this scenario didn't have a GM discussion. Or at least, not one I could find. It's 2-18 Forbidden Furnace of Forgotten Koor.
Ran this recently ignored the "use a spell-like ability that takes 10 minutes bit" I suspect the author was not aware that not all spell-like abilities take a standard action.
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In general I run the encounters as the tactics describe, even if that means breaking the rules. My assumption is that the encounter was balanced using the "wrong" rule, so I handwave the change to make it run as intended.
Usually that's in cases like this where an NPC does something a PC can't legally do. The author clearly assumed that the NPC could do it in 1 action, not 10 minutes. It's harder to puzzle out when the tactics call for doing something that makes the encounter easier. "Hmmm. She's supposed to start with a language-dependent spell but she doesn't speak common. Is that deliberate to make things easier or did the author not notice the language-dependent problem? That's when the GM threads come in so handy. Really surprised but I couldn't find one for 2-18 either.
Anyway, he'll almost certainly be engaged in melee long before he runs out of 3/day abilities like cone of cold. Just start with those.
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Venture-Captain, Germany—Bavaria
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In general I run the encounters as the tactics describe, even if that means breaking the rules. My assumption is that the encounter was balanced using the "wrong" rule, so I handwave the change to make it run as intended.
Usually that's in cases like this where an NPC does something a PC can't legally do. The author clearly assumed that the NPC could do it in 1 action, not 10 minutes. It's harder to puzzle out when the tactics call for doing something that makes the encounter easier. "Hmmm. She's supposed to start with a language-dependent spell but she doesn't speak common. Is that deliberate to make things easier or did the author not notice the language-dependent problem? That's when the GM threads come in so handy. Really surprised but I couldn't find one for 2-18 either.
** spoiler omitted **
I agree, and frankly, the other spell-like abilities are enough.
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Whelp, good point. Feel stupid I didn't mention it, but this scenario didn't have a GM discussion. Or at least, not one I could find. It's 2-18 Forbidden Furnace of Forgotten Koor.Ran this recently ignored the "use a spell-like ability that takes 10 minutes bit" I suspect the author was not aware that not all spell-like abilities take a standard action.
Have they ever clarified this? CRB says they are cast like spells, Bestiary says they take a standard 'unless noted otherwise'. :/
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Venture-Captain, Germany—Bavaria
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Have they ever clarified this? CRB says they are cast like spells, Bestiary says they take a standard 'unless noted otherwise'. :/Whelp, good point. Feel stupid I didn't mention it, but this scenario didn't have a GM discussion. Or at least, not one I could find. It's 2-18 Forbidden Furnace of Forgotten Koor.Ran this recently ignored the "use a spell-like ability that takes 10 minutes bit" I suspect the author was not aware that not all spell-like abilities take a standard action.
After all the research I have done on this, its standard unless the spell has a different casting time (noted otherwise would, in this case, mean "noted differently in the spell description").
I would love to get a proper faq on this one since it very much affects something like the universal monster spell-like ability, but that is the conclusion I have come to. Easier to assume that Authors often forget that some things have longer casting times.
This might be a local thing, but "the enemy is still casting the spell after this turn has ended" usually results in that enemy getting disrupted.
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Venture-Agent, Netherlands—Utrecht
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When I ran it last time (he only does it on high tier, I was prepping it on low), I completely overlooked the fact that it's 10 minutes casting. On low tier, you're absolutely right. The boss got one-rounded and didn't even hit once. :(
I've assumed SLAs are always the action the spell says they are. Demons summon other demons as a full-round, so that's what my baseline is.
Also, usually people go out of their way to interrupt castings if they're longer than a standard action. Could be Enlarge Person, but also things like Sleep or Summon Monsters, among other things. Either way, bad news if they go off.
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Technically the author can write any ability they like. If they create an adversary that can do something as a standard action then that's what it can do.
I'm not really sure what the problem is.
Incidentally on the specific point spell like abilities don't match spell description casting times unless the spell like ability specifically mentions that. This is clear under the rules for spell like ability. The Summon ability is 'like' the summon spells but isn't exactly the same. It uses a standard action by default. If it was a full round action the summon universal monster rule would give us this exception.
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Technically the author can write any ability they like. If they create an adversary that can do something as a standard action then that's what it can do.
I'm not really sure what the problem is.
1) It really bugs some people (eg, me) when Paizo apparently dislikes their own rule system so much that they fail to use it
2) Arguably more importantly, it is impossible to always differentiate "Well, THAT is clearly a typo and wrong. Don't do it" and "Well, of COURSE we understand the rules and, without telling you, we decided to just change them" and "Oh, are THOSE the rules? Who knew?"
Author threads prove that all 3 of these have occurred in the past.
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Venture-Agent, Netherlands—Utrecht
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Technically the author can write any ability they like. If they create an adversary that can do something as a standard action then that's what it can do.
I'm not really sure what the problem is.
Authors still have to base themselves on the Bestiaries, or have to write up variants, accounting for the change in power. If I had a creature that could spam Sleep as a standard action and ignoring any HD limit, that would certainly be possible, but that would drastically alter the CR of the creature. The creature I'm referencing is a standard Bestiary entry without any special powers. The spell it's supposed to do, Elemental Swarm, can really mess up players. Popping off a ninth-level spell as a standard action is clearly not intended in a tier 10-11 scenario.
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The creature I'm referencing is a standard Bestiary entry without any special powers. The spell it's supposed to do, redacted, can really mess up players. Popping off a ninth-level spell as a standard action is clearly not intended in a tier 10-11 scenario.
Spoilering because even though this is the GM forum someone might wander in here without realizing exactly what scenario this is referring to. Plus this is a bit technical.
Strictly by the Encounter Design rules in the Core Rulebook, even 8 Large Water Elementals (CR 5 each) only count as one CR 11 equivalent. In this case it would only push the total encounter CR up to 14. In reality things that far below APL are no more than speedbumps. They've got 104 HP and DR 5/- but are only hitting twice a round at +13(1d8+6) or +10(1d8+12) if they Power Attack. So they are speed bumps.
In this particular case, though, the real power is that he's almost certainly going to get enough elementals to form a wall between the PCs and Zahra and himself. Water Elementals aren't immune to cold damage so he can't cone of cold through them without doing significant damage. But he doesn't care. Having a wall of elementals should give him time to actually cast more than one cone, and they do significant damage (52 average DC 18 for half). Combined with the dimensional anchor the PCs aren't going to be able to get past the elementals to prevent the casting. So that's definitely going to bump up the CR. Probably to CR15 or so total.
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Venture-Agent, Netherlands—Utrecht
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Ah crap, should've indeed used spoiler tags. My apologies.
Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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My response kinda varies.
If the author is explicitly saying he's bending the rules, I'll go along with it. (I might grumble if it's not done elegantly.)
If the author is not explicit about it I'm assuming either mistake (rogues with tactics to sneak attack in poor lighting conditions) or malice (Josh Frost's Undead Barbarians).
In either case I'm going to consider going along with it anyway, if it's needed to make the encounter work. For example:
That would completely break the encounter and his build however, so I'm ignoring his lack of darkvision.
I'll try to do the most low-impact thing possible to make the scene still work as intended. All the while trying to keep the rest of the rules working normally, so players don't get their own tactics hamstrung because we're in la-la land.
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Venture-Agent, Netherlands—Utrecht
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I'm not sure if it's outright malice, but Joshua Frost had a tendency to say, "screw the rules, I have money am campaign coordinator," and do some questionable stuff.
It appeared in the Monster Codex as a legal source first, I'm not sure if there's a precedent before that point, or if Frost was the one to codify it. Still though, the ruling "it works because I say it works" doesn't do you any favours with the audience, especially if it keeps happening.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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or malice (Josh Frost's Undead Barbarians).I don't know anything about the situation or author in this example but Monster Codex clarified that Undead Barbarians do get Rage and the bonuses from it, with CHA replacing CON.
He did it about five years before the Monster Codex. He basically invented some rules.
Which is his right as writer of course, although I think it was a bit one-sided: undead barbarians are emotional enough to rage, but remain immune to mind-affecting spells so you can't use Calm Emotions? That's cheesy.
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They've always interpreted undead barbarians that way, it's nothing new.
