Archamus's page

The description of the touch spell also says free action to use. You cannot take physical actions while paralyzed.

Good point.

I agree the whole 'cannot touch yourself while pinned' thing might be absurd but RAW is full of absurdities. I modify RAW for my games all the time. The problem is that this thread is not about house-rules. It is about RAW and to a lesser extent RAI.

I still just haven't seen a clear cut case of it not being allowed by RAW. Everyonce in a great while situations like that seem to show up on here and this one of them for me anyway.

Archamus, yes to all of them. By RAW you are allowed three types of actions: Free yourself, verbal actions, mental actions. All three of those action types are physical and are thus not allowed.

In order to separate the issues slightly: Do you think you can use Lay on Hands on yourself if you are paralyzed? Only mental actions can be taken while paralyzed.

- Gauss

Short answer, no.

Long answer, I don't think characters are always automatically touching themselves. I just think that touching yourself is so arbitrarily easy that it is nearly impossible to prevent it. Paralyzation should do the trick though.

Howevery, by RAW if you can manage to cast a touch spell while paralyzed, there is an argument for being able to use it on yourself since the description of touch spells says, "touch one friend or use the spell on yourself". Of course you can also read 'use the spell on yourself' as meaning touch yourself, but it isn't explicit.

I can easily see RAW going both ways on this and strictly RAW I side slightly in favor of not being able to use it while pinned. I reach that conclusion because I think it's the intent of the rules though.

By RAW it requires a free hand and a touch, so pinned means you can't reach out and place your hand on yourself. But also by RAW there is no reason two fingers touching together wouldn't count as a touch. So you can use it. And saying that pinned means you can't move and thus can't touch your fingers together is a very weak argument. It seems fairly well accepted that that is referring to move actions and not all movement. If it was all movement, then casting spells with verbal components would be out, and it wouldn't make sense to be able to attempt a combat maneuver to free yourself since that requires movement.

I just get riled up when I see absurdities that in the end don't even make a valid point, like painting bears while pinned. Or blowing all out of proportions what someone has said, even adding to their statement, in order to give it implications far outside of anything they said.

Gustavo, exactly my point. You do not discharge because you are always in contact with yourself. It clearly spells out that you must touch yourself. It makes Malachi's version where a person is in constant touch contact with themselves unusable.

- Gauss

Does the pinned condition prevent a character from touching their fingers together, snapping their fingers to a catchy tune, or doing a one handed clap?

Malachi: that is still revolutionary.

How is that revolutionary? That's exactly how touch spells have always worked.

You can automatically touch one friend or use the spell on yourself

You can automatically touch one friend, not possible while pinned since you're unable to move to do so; or simply use the spell on yourself. No mention of touching yourself there, since you already are.

My experience is that every edition of D&D that ever required you to touch for a spell considered that if you could restrain the caster from touching himself you can stop him from gaining benefit of a spell. Your idea is that you are always touching yourself is a new one at least from my experience.

In my experience this has never been the case. The benefit of restraining the caster is keeping him from casting in the first place.

For that matter, this would change grapple rules too. If you grapple someone holding a spell would you (using your rules) automatically discharge the spell? The implication from your interpretation is that yes, you would. After all, you are touching the person holding the spell arent you?

The grapple rules would still work normally. I think this was addressed in the succubus level drain question. Grappling wouldn't automatically discharge the spell since touch spells don't work that way, but the caster could certainly attack on his round.

Once pinned the caster would not be able to make that attack, since it doesn't fall under the actions he's allowed to take. If for some reason he wanted to discharge the spell on himself he could simply use the spell on himself, just like the touch spell description says.

The fact that it's delivered by touch is completely beside the point.

It seems that is the primary issue being discussed. Even in your own counter to Mr. Silverclaw, the fact that it is delivered by touch is the primary argument you're making. You just choose to approach that point with a specific interpretation of what free hand means.

It seems like a big part of the problem here is a lack of a definition of free hand. To me it seems fairly straight forward that it simply means your hand isn't holding anything, but that clearly isn't the way everyone here feels about it. Many are reading it as requirement for a free arm as well to move about and touch yourself somewhere other than your hand.

I can't find any clear definition of free hand though. Under the Draw and Sheathe items section it seems like it simply means an empty hand.

How about this part of the spell Ill Omen?

A target who can speak and has at least one free hand and who is aware of the spell and its effects (such as from a Spellcraft check to identify the spell as it is cast) can negate one reroll by spending a move action to utter a brief prayer or good luck charm to appease the spirits of ill fortune.

Other than the new class, just reflavor things. Flask of acid is a little clockwork ball that whirs for a moment on impact and then little valves open and spray acid out. I think a lot of alchemy items can be reflavored for a clockwork theme.

Also, there is a third party class, the Clockworker, by genius games I believe. It is basically the summoner class reflavored and tweaked for a clockwork/steampunk theme.

Best argument. Love the step by step approach. By RAW, it doesn't say. But you provide an excellent interpretation... especially number 2). Reading this has changed my mind about Lay on Hands while pinned.

Great job!

Yeah generally once Grick chimes in it seems like the argument is over. Although you always have those who just want it to work they way they want it to work so badly, that they just won't admit the conversation is done.

On this one though, while I think Grick's interpretation of it is the most accurate and probably the correct way of handling it, I still think the other side's argument has some validity.

You need a free hand to use the touch, but there is nothing saying the touch has to be over a wound, requires a specific manner of laying the palm solemnly on someone's chest, requires the arm to have free movement as well etc. It can easily be read as requiring a touch from a hand not holding anything. So if your GM doesn't read anymore into the free hand than that some part of a hand not holding an object needs to touch the recipient, then sure go ahead and LoH while pinned.

As someone else pointed out earlier, the free hand bit almost seems like flavore text. So this seems to come down to asking your GM how they want it to work more than some other rules questions do. Maybe your GM treats it as the solemn palm placement. Maybe different body parts need to be touched based on the gods domains. Thematically someone who worships a god of love might need to lay on lips instead of a hand, but the free hand may need to cup their cheeck as they do.

This all brings up a whole new question though. What if you're playing an octupus-like race in an aquatic campaign? They simply lose an entire class feature!

This was not as interesting as I thought it was going to be when I misread the title as Raging Beard.

he finds it a bit "cheesy" and "munchkin-y".

I thought touch spells were the only reason for this ability, and that looking creepy was just a bonus perk to it.

RAWy-RAW-RAW isn't a good idea to aim for at all.

Also, why are you in this section of the messageboard? It is for rules. If you don't like the rules or want to be helpful in helping to interpret them, then please either don't post here, or be civil and post the way you think they're intended and leave it at that.

Oh, and note that the 5d3 str damage is per _turn_. But don't worry, the bile will LOOK crude and artificial!

(oh, and note too that poisons are not weapons, tools or spell components by the rules. just have to point that out).

It seems like you are just trying to be argumentative. As you point out the spell cannot be used as a weapon, which I would say covers the creation of poison. But even if you don't think that section of the spell description covers creating a poison to damage someone, then you can always just refer back to this bit:

It cannot deal damage or affect the concentration of spellcasters.

RAW is very clear here. D20 has keywords to help with these situations. They clearly define this situation. As Ughbash pointed out with his snippet of rules, the phantasm is not a visual illusion that harms you. It is a "mind-affecting" effect that harms you. Mind affecting is the keyword that is important to the game mechanics here. True Seeing does not see through mind affecting effects. You should be able to see through the illusion aspect of the phantasm, but the save isn't against an illusion, a glamer, or a figment. It is against a mind affecting effect. So if you fail that save, then somehow your mind doesn't allow you to believe your eyes. A cool GM would probably give you a bonus to the save versus the mind affecting aspect of the phantasm though. I know I would.

Not everything in the Illusion school of spells is purely illusion. Shadow magic is its foray into conjuration and a few, like phantasmal spells reach reach into the realms of enchantment.

Also RAW True Seeing is only good for vision. Everything about the spell makes that clear. The spell name indicates this and it constantly restates that it is vision only throughout the description. You are focusing on one aspect of it and inferring things that just aren't there. The illusion aspect of it is powerful and cool, but that is just one of the perks of the spell. It's focus is vision. It does some other fun things for vision too, such as see into the ethereal plane and see in darkness.

Every instance describing how it affects the sense that I could see in the spell description:
"see all things as they actually are"
"The subject sees through normal and magical darkness"
"sees the exact locations of creatures or objects"
"sees invisible creatures or objects normally"
"sees through illusions"
"sees the true form of polymorphed" (I didn't realize it did that, nice!)
"can focus its vision to see"
"True seeing, however, does not penetrate solid objects" (Just like vision, so a ghost sound behind a bush would be terrifying, until you walk around so you could see the sound somehow)
"X-ray vision or its equivalent" (Just normal illusion peircing vision)
"viewer see through mundane disguises"
"spot creatures who are simply hiding"

There are only two reference in it which could possibly affect something other than vision. One is the word "notice". The other word, and the only clear indication of sound, is this part "clairaudience/clairvoyance" which it says True Seeing doesn't work with. Of course that part is only referring to a spell name, but I just wanted to point out that the only clear indication of a sense other than sight explicitly is not affected by True Seeing.

The saying "I see through your lies" doesn't correlate to a spell description. Spell descriptions are designed to be clear and explanatory. They will be as literal as possible. Figures of speech like often make no sense and are rarely literal. Using that argument is like trying to make the claim that excrement is a good building material, because there is the saying (altered for the kids) "defecating bricks".

I mean 10th level, not 18th.

"A master summoner's class level is halved (minimum 1) for the purposes of determining his eidolon's abilities". Does this apply to the level requirements for evolutions as well, ie the flight evolution would require an 18th level summoner?