DM Alexander Kilcoyne's Sargavan Saga

Game Master Alexander Kilcoyne

Hang in there, glorious leader. We aren't going anywhere until you get back. No worries.

Everythings ok it was just a very spontaneous two day trip to another town with limited internet access (and sleep). I just got home (5PM here) and have a family dinner to go to at 7PM- once i'm back from that at 11 or so my games will get updates- and then i'm off to Southampton to visit my friend James (EngineHouse here on the forums) and go to a friends birthday.

I'm not normally this busy. More frequent posting should resume monday.

Spoke with AK just now on Windows Messenger. He just got back from his travels, so he says we should have an update tonight.

I may have been over-optimistic, as I have to catch up on my Russian and move all my things back into the flat tonight too (long story but the short version is my landlady is an airhead). Update will be on monday latest, as promised.

DM AK - if you could cast your eye over my first post and make sure you're happy, then I'll play out the rest tomorrow :)

Looks great :)

Oh well - at least he gave it a good old go.

Two auto-misses out of ten attacks makes a raging Mwangi a sad panda :(

Unlucky- it is a risk the others will have to contend with though!

Heh - dice played well with me the first trial so it all evens out in the end.

Does tie in quite well with the wildly swinging barbarian image ;)

Hi, DM Aron Marczylo here and friend of DM AK.

Unfortunatly I'm here to tell you that Alex won't have any decent net access until late friday night.

Just here to pass on the message.

In about a couple of hours I will be leaving to go on vacation for five days, give or take a day. During that time, I will probably have some limited internet access, but since it will be via my smartphone, posts -if any- will be scarce and short. Please fell free to DMPC Kieran if or when necessary and I will be back to posting as usual once I am back.

No problem. I'm happy to wait to allow you to post and i'd rather not DMPC you in the trial as its Kiera's chance to shine.

Keiran is up first, so I will wait to post my first action. He has to decide to either go first (ahead of the 'imp') or wait till I go next. hint: 'Run Forest Run!'

I am returned. :-)

I just want to make sure I am not holding things up, as I was waiting for the "imp" to take its turn. I think it fell the same turn I caught up, so it still gets to go.

Nope its just me. I know I am GMT+0 but I am keeping some very stramge hours at the moment; bedtimes usually between 7 and 10AM and I just woke up. I always prefer things in initiative order anyway and of course your action is dependent on the monkey.

... your action is dependent on the monkey.

Words to live by, man....Words to live by.

I am adding a new house rule to all my games. The house rule concerns Detect Magic. My change is in bold.

Detect Magic

School divination; Level bard 0, cleric/oracle 0, druid 0, inquisitor 0, magus 0, sorcerer/wizard 0, summoner 0, witch 0
CASTING

Casting Time 1 standard action
Component: V, S
EFFECT

Range touch. (previously 60 feet cone)
Duration concentration, up to 1 min./level (D)
Saving Throw none; Spell Resistance no

Care to share your reasoning on it, AK? I'm sure you've put some thought into it and am trying to come up with an situation where this will make a great deal of difference. Avoiding infringing on invisibility or illusions? Traps? Doppelgangers (Do they have an aura?)? That kind of thing?

Ouch!
I would also like to understand why you are making this change. It makes it MUCH more difficult to find a magic item in a pile of stuff. It makes finding lingering auras very difficult and makes it rather dangerous to use Det. Magic to tell is a creature is summoned or not.

Do these changes effect identify or other spells that reference Detect magic like Detect Charm?

Fair questions, i'll try and explain.

My reasoning on it is that Detect Magic as written, trumps high level magical traps. It also takes a LOT of the fun out of investigation, especially in intrigue sections. Now finding out who the Doppelganger is at a party of nobles is much harder when your likely to be thrown out of the party for inappropiate touching... That and Detect Magic can completely negate the danger and mystery of illusions.

I'm aware Magic Aura can negate this and my villains have historically often made good use of it, but in some situations its not feasible.

Other Detect spells are unaffected; as is Arcane Sight (which is like a souped up detect magic and is in an appropiate level spell slot).

I don't imagine finding magic items in loot to be affected unless you happen to be on a strict time limit, which is rare. I imagine that will be handled just like it is now.

A lot of what it comes down to is a cantrip foiling higher level magics. That isn't appropiate and i've been considering this change for some weeks now.

Edit: It also means the woefully underused Arcane Sight gets some love.

Most of the actual uses of detect magic I've seen have been on treasure, and, as you say, there are few (but not no) instances in which you don't have time to do so at your leisure. The one situation I can think of that would be utterly destroyed by this house rule is using it to try to find an invisible creature to target its square. Doesn't come up too often at pre-arcane sight/true seeing/etc. levels, and most of the time the bad guy will move out of the way of the cone before the 3 rounds are up; but it can at least let you know if they're still in the room and what side of it they're on or if they've left.

It also destroys the hope of detecting a magical trap safely, as its likely you will now have to move into proximity and trigger the trap either by proximity or trap to find it with detect magic... Muhahahaha...

You can still find it with Perception, though. Although this removes any hope of a back-up method, should the rogue roll a 1 on a Perception check. If you don't make the Perception DC, the party's just screwed.

You can still find it with Perception, though.

Which is exactly the way it should be and why I want to make the change. I don't want the wizard doing the trapfinder's job with a cantrip.

I tried searching the forums, but I did not see a definitive answer, so I thought I may as well ask, since I am interested in the Duelist PrC and Kieran will become one at some point. The ability the question is about is Canny Defense.

Does an armor's Max Dex Bonus apply to the Int-based AC bonus Canny Defense grants, i.e. does it limit the total Dex + Int AC bonus a duelist has?
Also, does that Int-based bonus apply to AC only, or does it apply to CMD as well (like, for example, dodge, deflection, monk Wis-based, circumstance, etc bonuses do)?

There are also a few cursed items which cannot be held for three rounds to detect magic without the curse triggering.

It could be argued that touching and picking up are not necessarily the same thing, but that needs to be specified rather carefully.

There's also the vacuous grimoire -- and for that matter, tomes and manuals -- which would commonly be found in sizeable libraries. Going through and touching each and every book before the party does some research would be a little tedious.

What about glyphs and symbols and sepia snake sigil? Or explosive runes for that matter? Are they traps or spells? What if, heaven forfend, something happens to Kieran and the party has to operate without a rogue for some amount of time? By RAW, only rogues can even perceive such traps.

Honestly, I'm not sure I'm all that opposed to the change, but I'm playing devil's advocate here, trying to find all the corner cases before they might come up in game.

What if, heaven forfend, something happens to Kieran and the party has to operate without a rogue for some amount of time? By RAW, only rogues can even perceive such traps.

From what I can tell, anyone can use Perception to locate a trap, be it mundane or magical. Only rogues with Trapfinding -an ability which Kieran does not actually get- can use Disable Device to disarm a magical trap, however.

Traps

Glyphs and symbols have a line in the spell descriptions that specify that only rogues can use Perception to find them.

Magic traps such as glyph of warding are hard to detect and disable. A rogue (only) can use the Perception skill to find the glyph and Disable Device to thwart it.

Magic traps such as symbol of death are hard to detect and disable. A rogue (only) can use the Perception skill to find a symbol of death and Disable Device to thwart it.

As the magic user/rogue in another game you run AK, I'd have thought the magic that is part of a magic trap is contained and hidden in the traps construction, maybe in some sort of container, and the magic auras only released when the trap is sprung. That is different from using magic itself to hide the trap. I never really thought that detect magic could be used to take the place of perception, or other spells designed to find traps. I'd rather agree something like that, rather than changing the mechanic and going for touch. After all, if you want to see if an enemy is using magic weapons, armor or other items, your won't be going up and touching the thing.

Soory, but you shouldn't make the game so good for lurkers...

Hmm... Had not noticed that. Does that mean any rogue or a rogue -or anyone, for that matter- with the Trapfinding class feature or an equivalent? Trapfinding does include magic traps in its description, but it refers to granting the rogue the ability to disarm them specifically, so I am leaning towards the former, i.e. only rogues can perceive traps such as glyph of warding or symbol of death, but only rogues with Trapfinding can disarm such traps.

It would seem that there are:
a) Mundane traps (like, say, a poison needle trap), which anyone can both perceive and disarm.
b) Magical traps (like, say, one that lets a fireball blow up in your face), which anyone can perceive, but only characters (be they rogues, urban rangers, etc) with Trapfinding or an equivalent can disarm.
c) Spells that act as traps (like, say, glyph of warding or symbol of death), which only rogues can perceive, but only rogues with Trapfinding can disarm.

The terminology's not uniform. Glyphs and symbols refer to rogues specifically for perception and disarming, but explosive runes refers to Trapfinding for disarming. Explosive runes also doesn't have the caveat that only rogues can find the trap.

So without Trapfinding, Kieran can perceive a magical trap but only warn us not to go that way; there's no way to disarm it. If Kieran is somehow disabled, the rest of the party can't even perceive the trap to avoid it.

Canny Defence is not limited by max dex.

Glyphs are a potential issue but by the levels where almost all of these corner cases come into play you have access to much better divination than detect magic.

So with glyphs, this change to detect magic stops a cantrip trumping spells of much higher level than it. This is exactly what I am going for.

Deevor, i've proposed the change to my SS game for the same reasons actually.

Edit: Dispel magic is a good way to disarm a glyph...

It would seem that there are:

a) Mundane traps (like, say, a poison needle trap), which anyone can both perceive and disarm.
b) Magical traps (like, say, one that lets a fireball blow up in your face), which anyone can perceive, but only characters (be they rogues, urban rangers, etc) with Trapfinding or an equivalent can disarm.
c) Spells that act as traps (like, say, glyph of warding or symbol of death), which only rogues can perceive, but only rogues with Trapfinding can disarm.

It looks to me like some trap-spell descriptions copy/pasted some 3.5 boilerplate text merely intended to conveniently reference how Trapfinding worked at the time, not override how it would work in the future PFRPG. So, if I were running a game, I would personally houserule it that (c)-type spells actually act like (b). Not saying other interpretations are wrong, just pointing out something you might not have noticed.

I agree. Consider that house-ruled too- thats just copy and paste error from edition to edition.

I can see your reasoning on this and will be happy to play under this rule. That said I think there is an easier way to do this.

1. make doppelgangers et all su abilities sq or ex. Presto now nothing short of true seeing or various "force to normal form" tricks will reveal them.

2. Using Det magic or any other spell to find an illusion means the caster is interacting with the illusion and has to make a save. Fail the save det magic returns nada. No different than if the caster shot the suspect wall/etc. with a crossbow.

3.Glyphs et all. Add a line to the trap spells stating that det magic cannot find them. Or call it a spellcraft vs 15+caster level to detect the trap spell. So Identify with the +10 to spellcraft has a chance of finding them but otherwise you have to use higher level spells, be heavily invested in spellcraft or rely on a rogue.

I kind of like the ranged nature of det mag. It makes low-level casters feel buff. But like I said I am happy to roll with this house rule.

Thats a lot more fiddling than i'm comfortable with. We've established the only thing it really changes are interactions with far greater magic than itself (a cantrip) which is exactly why I wanted to change it in the first place.

Arcane Sight is available from level 5 onwards for an arcane caster- This Spell

Thats a lot more fiddling than i'm comfortable with. We've established the only thing it really changes are interactions with far greater magic than itself (a cantrip) which is exactly why I wanted to change it in the first place.

Arcane Sight is available from level 5 onwards for an arcane caster- This Spell

All good. Do you mind if Jakob swaps out Detect magic for guidance then?

What do divine casters get?

What do divine casters get?

True seeing. 5th level.

How does it affect a targeted dispel on an enemy if we can't actually identify what buffs it might have up?

You can also use a targeted dispel to specifically end one spell affecting the target or one spell affecting an area (such as a wall of fire). You must name the specific spell effect to be targeted in this way. If your caster level check is equal to or higher than the DC of that spell, it ends. No other spells or effects on the target are dispelled if your check is not high enough to end the targeted effect

How does it affect a targeted dispel on an enemy if we can't actually identify what buffs it might have up?

dispel magic wrote:

You can also use a targeted dispel to specifically end one spell affecting the target or one spell affecting an area (such as a wall of fire). You must name the specific spell effect to be targeted in this way. If your caster level check is equal to or higher than the DC of that spell, it ends. No other spells or effects on the target are dispelled if your check is not high enough to end the targeted effect

It would make targeted dispels dependent on toughing the target for three rounds. In other words it prevents divine casters from using targeted dispel magic in combat. Arcane casters can still use the ranged Identify or the nifty Arcane Sight spell to pick out individual buffs.

This will have the effect in play of making 'kill the wizard first' an even more vital tactic.

Joana wrote:

How does it affect a targeted dispel on an enemy if we can't actually identify what buffs it might have up?

dispel magic wrote:

You can also use a targeted dispel to specifically end one spell affecting the target or one spell affecting an area (such as a wall of fire). You must name the specific spell effect to be targeted in this way. If your caster level check is equal to or higher than the DC of that spell, it ends. No other spells or effects on the target are dispelled if your check is not high enough to end the targeted effect

It would make targeted dispels dependent on toughing the target for three rounds. In other words it prevents divine casters from using targeted dispel magic in combat. Arcane casters can still use the ranged Identify or the nifty Arcane Sight spell to pick out individual buffs.

This will have the effect in play of making 'kill the wizard first' an even more vital tactic.

Won't be able to take a confusion or dominate off an ally either.

Jakob Mulle wrote:

Won't be able to take a confusion or dominate off an ally either.

Well you could guess and hope it was a dominate person rather than a dominate monster.

Joana wrote:

Jakob Mulle wrote:

Won't be able to take a confusion or dominate off an ally either.

Well you could guess and hope it was a dominate person rather than a dominate monster.

Metagamey, unless you could identify the spell as it was cast. Without a Spellcraft roll or a detect magic -- maybe a Knowledge (arcana) check -- the PC shouldn't know anything more than "Some strange arcane power is making my friend attack his own allies!" I wouldn't allow a divine caster to know enough about arcane spells to say, "Hm, must be confusion. Dispel, but leave up the buffs we already cast on him!" Detect magic allows the PC to say, "Some evil aura is confusing my friend's thoughts. I hope my god will grant me power to free him from that effect, whatever it is. Dispel the dark purply aura!"

Jakob Mulle wrote:

Joana wrote:

Jakob Mulle wrote:

Won't be able to take a confusion or dominate off an ally either.

Well you could guess and hope it was a dominate person rather than a dominate monster.

Metagamey, unless you could identify the spell as it was cast. Without a Spellcraft roll or a detect magic -- maybe a Knowledge (arcana) check -- the PC shouldn't know anything more than "Some strange arcane power is making my friend attack his own allies!" I wouldn't allow a divine caster to know enough about arcane spells to say, "Hm, must be confusion. Dispel, but leave up the buffs we already cast on him!" Detect magic allows the PC to say, "Some evil aura is confusing my friend's thoughts. I hope my god will grant me power to free him from that effect, whatever it is. Dispel the dark purply aura!"

Exactly. This kind of forces meta-gaming. Though I suppose Detect charm is a partial solution. It will not help with non charm type spells though.

We really need to get Picklebeard a wand of Identify.

Identify works as detect magic, though. So shouldn't it also default to touch-only? Otherwise, it really nerfs divine casters vis-a-vis arcane, since arcane casters get first- and third-level spells they can detect magic with at range and divine casters get nothing but a 5th-level spell that only partially works as detect magic.

Identify works as detect magic, though. So shouldn't it also default to touch-only? Otherwise, it really nerfs divine casters vis-a-vis arcane, since arcane casters get first- and third-level spells they can detect magic with at range and divine casters get nothing but a 5th-level spell that only partially works as detect magic.

AK mentioned that this change only effects the 0lvl det magic so det charm/undead et al and Identify will still be ranged. But yeah Wizards/Witches get a boost relative to Divines.

Survivable though. It just means a more cautious play style as removing effects will be harder and it frees divines from really needing spellcraft. So it could be a wash. We will have to use ranged weapons to detect Illusions and just eat the magic traps as their find DC's are well beyond all but a dedicated rogue.

It definitely changes the flavor of divine casters. Arcane casters become more the masters of all magic, arcane and divine, whereas divine casters aren't even masters of their own arena.

I'm not at all sure that arcane casters oughtn't to have a significant advantage over divine over arcane secrets, barring a cleric of, say, Nethys who can get identify as a first-level spell anyway with the Magic domain. However, it rubs me a little the wrong way that a high-level cleric can't detect a simple bless effect on the cultic soldiers cast by a 1st-level evil cleric or an entropic shield or some other divine spell they've been casting themselves for twelve levels.

Not that it would probably ever be worth 3 rounds to detect such things, in all likelihood, but it seems off that wizards are better at dealing with divine magic than clerics. Removing harmful spells effects seems like part of the classic cleric "healing" schtick. And it seems weird that you can bestow or remove a curse but not detect one.

I've never seen detect magic used in combat for such situations, because if your spending 3-4 rounds in combat concentrating on detect magic its likely something has gone horribly, horribly wrong.

Spellcraft checks to identify spells as they are cast/when you fail a save on them will be unchanged.

To your cleric concerns however, lets be realistic. You know if your ally has suddenly gone quiet and is attacking your allies after the vampire gazed at him, that hes been dominated. I've never someone cast detect magic to figure it out.

Also, clerics are actually better equipped than wizards to identify harmful effects; I point you towards a very underused and little-known spell that is only second level, lasts an hour/level and requires no rounds of concentration.

Link

I'm happy for you to swap out Detect Magic in light of this change I was going to ask if anyone wanted to.