Analysis's page

Every place I look people claim different conclusions about this, so I would really welcome an official ruling. Effectively, do features like the wizard Immortality Arcane Discovery, the alchemist Eternal Youth Discovery, or the Imperious sorcerer Immortal Legend ability, or the Solar oracle Final Revelation let characters live beyond their racial maximum or not?

The regular monk and druid Timeless Body ability explicitly says with those abilities you still die of old age, you just don't take aging penalties.

The Time oracle Final Revelation explicitly says you don't die from old age, as does the living monolith capstone and the effects of Numerian Fluids, and the Longevity mythic path ability.

At least one published NPC (Jatembe) has the Immortality wizard Arcane Discovery and is thousands of years old.

So for the abilities that do not say either way, which is it? Will a character with those die of old age or not?

It relates into several existing ones: create demiplane and resplendent mansion, mostly. It's intended to make persistent (as with demiplanes) mage towers which can be moved relatively effortlessly between locations (as with the resplendent mansion).

Align demiplane
School: Conjuration; Level: Sorcerer/Wizard 9, Witch 9
Casting Time: 10 minutes
Components: V, S, F (specific demiplane key)
Range: Long
Target, Effect, Area: See text
Duration: 1 day / level
Saving throw: None
Spell resistance: No (harmless)

This spell anchors a demiplane temporarily to a location on another plane, creating a boundary zone such that the outer edges of the demiplane all lead onto the host plane. The area of the host plane thus occupied by the demiplane becomes inaccessible for the duration, during which it cannot be affected in any manner and during which no time passes for it. Should this area contain anything other than mundane terrain, the spell automatically fails - this spell cannot be used as an offensive weapon in any way.

Before this spell can be employed, the caster must have access to a demiplane, this requirement would typically be met by creating one using castings of the Create Demiplane line of spells, along with Permanency as necessary. The resulting demiplane key // plane shift "tuning fork" can then be used as focus for the present spell.

The typical use of this spell is to make a demiplane act as a temporary real-world location. Demiplane islands can be placed into lakes, seas or oceans, demiplane towers or fortresses called up from mountaintops or plains, demiplane oases placed onto desert dunes, and demiplane caves made to open from tunnel complexes or mountainsides.

The demiplane remains a separate plane, retaining all planar properties, and remaining another plane for the purpose of adjudicating plane shift, scrying or teleportation effects. However, all points in the demiplane gains lines of sight and effect onto the parent plane in all direction, unless where blocked by walls or other physical obstacles.

Perhaps this is nitpicking, but curious on how it's being called: the Blood Arcanist arcanist archetype lets you choose one bloodline from those "offered through the sorcerer bloodline class feature". But for bloodlines like Imperious that are not available to every sorcerer, is this condition still fulfilled, even for a human arcanist? The reason I am unsure is because the bloodline "is available for human sorcerers" but thus not for just any sorcerer, and the arcanist is not a human sorcerer. Can a human Blood Arcanist choose Imperious for her bloodline (or analogously for the Kobold bloodline, etc.)?

Very interested so far. :)

What was really nice with the Advanced Class Guide was how the new classes had many options for previously available classes to access them, there were plenty of hybrid class-like archetypes like the ones providing spirit access to other classes.

Since the things here fit thematically with many existing options for summoning, spirit communication, magic and so forth, having something similar for these would be great, e.g. ways for shamans to access the medium spirits, summoners to access spiritualist phantoms, archetypes giving psychic magic-type casting to arcane and divine classes, and so on.

Additionally, it would be good to have rules from the start for which mythic paths work for psychic characters, including perhaps some new path abilities offering similar things that already exist for specifically arcane and divine spellcasters. Similarly, some sort of theurge-type prestige classes would also be interesting.

So, as of now, the playtest mostly contains abilities that enhance things that the core classes can do, which is both sensible and expected.

Some of the new bases classes rely to a greater or lesser extent on unique abilities (witch hexes, gunslinger deeds, alchemist discoveries and bombs...) which might need some support in order not to lose relative utility too much. If this cannot be done in Mythic Adventures, then perhaps as web enhancements or the like?

It wouldn't have to be much. Just some path option for each that, say, add your tier to class level for numerical progression, activator level and/or uses, or maybe remove restrictions such as ranges, uses per day and so forth.

Perhaps we can come up with some easy suggestions in this thread?

I like much of what I see in the playtest document, and will comment further on several things after doing some experiments. There is one thing that I would like to point out directly though: I am really missing some form of ability, either a mythic feat or a universal path ability, that lets a character live longer than their usual racial lifespan. Mechanically, it could be exactly the same as the Wizard Immortality discovery or the Alchemist Eternal Youth grand discovery.

There are some common arguments against this:

1. This is a fluff ability, so having it as a character option is a waste of a feat etc. that could have gone to increase combat efficiency

However, there are multiple class capstones (wizard, some druids and monks, time oracle, imperious sorcerer, alchemist) that does this already, so as the game is written so far, it is the kind of ability that gets taken as a feat, and it would be unfair to characters with those builds to assume it is an ability that every DM will provide for free. Currently, no other class/archetype combination than those described above, and certainly no multiclass or prestige class characters, can live beyond the time span their race gets, even when they become powerful enough to kill demigods, casually raise the dead or make their own pocket dimensions. Furthermore, it does have a rules effect. With an option like this in place, there can be, for example, martial characters with the experience of age (i.e. mental ability stat bonuses) still keeping up physically.

2. It is not needed since any NPCs that need to be Really Seven Hundred Years Old can just be DM fiated to be so with no rules needed, or assumed to have won the bidding for the Sun Orchid Elixir regularly.

However, I am sure I am not the only one who prefers that the rules for PCs allow for, in principle, everything that NPCs can do. We may be a simulationist minority, but in this case, a few lines of feat text is all we need to be kept happy. Furthermore, in a Mythic game starting at a level higher than first, being able to make a centuries-long backstory can help explain why this particular character has achieved Mythic power - it can be the culmination of very long training and exploration, or mean the character is a literal survivor of some past Golden Age. Not everyone will want this option, but for those who do, it will enrich the game.

To summarize, if possible, please add some generally accessible option to the final product that allows a character to escape death from old age without having to reincarnate into a kobold, become an Always Evil undead, or have all 20 levels of one of a handful of classes.

Has there been a definite ruling whether or not reincarnation spells or effects allow you to go beyond your natural lifespan? In the past, I've seen arguments that you still have an appointed time to die (as with Timeless Body), but the spell does say that the new body you receive is a young adult. In this case, what happens with physical and mental aging modifiers, respectively? And if this is doable, does it mean there exist druids and witches on Golarion that have reincarnated through centuries or millenia?

Were the Razmirans the first on Golarion to use false divine magic, or have there existed other groups using some variant of the Razmiran Priest archetype?

How about adding a trait that makes a creature long-lived or immune to aging? I can see arguments against it based on the fact that it provides little mechanical benefit, but I think I am not alone in wanting it.

So the Changeling race is effectively an immature Hag. I have some questions about them. I cannot find the answers in the published materials, and would ideally hope someone on the development team might chime in with their ruling on this.

- If a Changeling PC answers "the Call" and is transformed, she becomes a Hag. How should that be handled? Switch old racial modifiers with new? In particular, should she gain the Hag Monstrous Humanoid Hit Dice, or should I just treat the Hag traits as a template?

- If she does not answer "the Call", it eventually fades. As the Hag is the adult form, does this mean the Changeling remains young, or would she age as a member of her father's race?

- Do Hags die of age? There seems to be some very old ones around, notably Gylonna and Baba Yaga.

Suppose a PC has Leadership and the ability to animate dead. Could the followers granted by Leadership be undead minions in this case?

If so, how should I determine their corresponding levels? Is a common skeleton taken as a follower equivalent to an NPC of its hit dice, or should I make some calculation based on its CR instead? There are CR guidelines for cohorts, but none given for followers.

Libris Mortis discussed this for 3.5, and counted mindless undead as weaker than their HD for purposes of followers, but what is recommended for Pathfinder?

For context, I am intending this for effectively "background" undead that just guard the necromancer's lair.