Argothe's page

Greater Feint (Combat)

You are skilled at making foes overreact to your attacks. Prerequisites: Combat Expertise, Improved Feint, base attack bonus +6, Int 13.

Benefit: Whenever you use feint to cause an opponent to lose his Dexterity bonus, he loses that bonus until the beginning of your next turn, in addition to losing his Dexterity bonus against your next attack.

Normal: A creature you feint loses its Dexterity bonus against your next attack.

I don't understand the point of this feat. Is it designed to allow for sneak attacks as part of an AoO? It seems that the feat should cause the target to lose their dexterity bonus until the end, not the beginning, of your next turn. Otherwise the feat is basically useless for rogues. It seems reasonable to me that a rogue should be able to setup a full attack of sneak attacks every other round at the cost of 80% of their class feats by level 9 (Combat Expertise, Feint, Greater Feint, Skill Focus: Bluff) not to mention the need for decent Int and Cha.

Under the Sleight of Hand skill on page 105 the text offers the following use for Slight of Hand:

You can also use Sleight of Hand to entertain an audience as though you were using the Perform skill. In such a case, your “act” encompasses elements of legerdemain, juggling, and the like.

My question is why isn't this listed under the Perform skill and why isn't it a valid Bardic Performance type, especially considering that there are so few visual performance skills that Oratory(!?!) is required to be a visual performance so that there are more than three options for creating a Distraction?

It seems reasonable to me that Juggling/Legerdemain should be part of a bard's repertoire. I would also imagine that this mundane "magic" would include Houdini like escapes. I would suggest that the versatile performance substitutions for the skill be Sleight of Hand and Escape Artist.

Penalties are numerical values that are subtracted from a check or statistical score. Penalties do not have a type and most penalties stack with one another.

So bonuses from the same source or of the same type do not stack unless otherwise stated, but penalties do stack unless otherwise stated. The Ray of Enfeeblement entry specifically states that this penalty does not stack, but other spells like Bane and Crushing Despair have no such clause, meaning that multiple Bane spells even from the same caster now stack with each other.

"Each bardic performance has audible components, visual components, or both."

I can't find any reference to which perform types correspond to audible, visual or both. Is this meant to be left up the the DM?

"At 1st level, a bard can use his performance to counter magic effects that depend on sight. Each round of the distraction, he makes a Perform(act, comedy, dance, or oratory) skill check."

Does this mean Oratory is considered visual? Both?

"A bard must have a minimum number of ranks to use his Bardic Performance abilities. Consult the Bardic Performance section of the bard class description in Chapter 3 for more details."

The Bardic Performance section referenced does not address minimum skill requirements; all requirements are listed as simply level dependent...

Many Bardic Performances require audible and visual performance to function. Does this mean that a bard may use two perform skills - sing and dance for example - or that the bard must use a skill that is both audible and visual. If the bard is required to do something that is both audible and visual, which performance types qualify?

There is no versatile performance entry for Perform(sing). Is that intentional?

Help me settle a debate with my DM. We are arguing over whether or not a Lawful Neutral Wizard is capable of casting Animate Dead and if they are capable of casting it does doing so turn them evil?

Appearing on the same line as the school and subschool, when applicable, is a descriptor that further categorizes the spell in some way. Some spells have more than one descriptor.

The descriptors are acid, air, chaotic, cold, darkness, death, earth, electricity, evil, fear, fire, force, good, language-dependent, lawful, light, mind affecting, sonic,and water. Most of these descriptors have no game effect by themselves, but they govern how the spell interacts with other spells, with special abilities, with unusual creatures, with alignment, and so on.

A language-dependent spell uses intelligible language as a medium for communication. If the target cannot understand or cannot hear what the caster of a language dependant spell says the spell fails.

A mind-affecting spell works only against creatures with an Intelligence score of 1 or higher.

So the relevant questions:

1) Can a Neutral character cast a spell with the "Evil" descriptor?

2) If the answer to question 1 is yes, which section of the rules quote is enforced:
a) "Most of these descriptors have no game effect by themselves", or
b) "but they govern how the spell interacts... with alignment"

3) If the answer to question 2 is part b, what does interacts mean:
a) characters with opposing alignments are prevented from casting the spell, or
b) does casting a spell with the "Evil" descriptor force a character to become evil

4) If the answer to question 3 is part b, is becoming evil:
a) All or nothing, one casting and you are Evil, or
b) A gradual slider that can be counterbalanced by performing good actions

5) Are we missing other relevant rules?

Finally, I would appreciate it if answers to this topic could be restricted to PfRPG rules. I am not interested in the interpretation from other settings or older rules sets.

Thanks,

Argothe

The question posed by this thread has come up in a couple of other discussion. I thought it was time for it to have its own thread.

Thesis: Direct Damage magic is underpowered when compared other casting options and the direct damage output potential of non-casters.

Question 1: Should direct damage magic be improved to bring it back into balance or is it already balanced? In other words, should casters have damage potentials at least in the ballpark with other classes or should they stick to other niches?

Question 2: Assuming direct damage magic does need a boost, how can that best be accomplished?

My quick thoughts:

I have noted in a few threads on these boards that anytime the possibility arises to apply a penalty to a caster that might cause them to lose a spell a large and vocal section of the community backlashes against the concept and appears completely unwilling to consider the idea under any circumstances.

What I don't understand is why. Why are spell slots sacred (obvious puns about Clerics aside)? Why should casters be immune from losing a resource or having an action fail when every other class has abilities that can be rendered ineffective or be denied the ability to use key class features? Why is even the smallest chance of failure unacceptable? And why have I seen posters advocating for penalties to Caster Level and all of the negatives that would entail, including losing the ability to cats more potent spells, rather than face any chance of losing a spell for that rest period?

Frankly, I just don't understand this mentality. I have heard the argument regarding the "15 minute adventuring day" and I personally find it to be unsatisfying. The 15 minute adventuring day seems to be more a problem of DMs who choose to not follow encounter guidelines than it is a critic of the game's mechanics. While I would be happy to get into a deeper discussion of the 15 minute issue - I have yet to seen any of its advocates respond to the encounter guidelines argument - I am also curious to know if there is any other justification for granting spells this Holy Grail, untouchable status.