Astraea Valantor's page

I'm currently playing a low level Arcanist in a Reign of Winter game, so I can definitely empathize with the OP.

However, I haven't really felt useless when out of spells and I think it comes down to the basic principle I employ when playing as an arcane caster, which is to cast spells that will best help my party over the challenge.

Firstly, not every low level encounter needs you to cast a spell. Why waste a spell if the party are easily beating the encounter and taking minimal damage? So conserve those spells so that they are available to make hard encounters easier.

Secondly, have some ranged options. Cantrips such as Acid Splash are great (it also stops troll regeneration) and a light crossbow as back up. Don't forget alchemical items, especially if you've picked up some as loot. A well aimed tanglefoot bag can help your melee crew, and it can even bring down flying creatures.

Hang in there, it gets better!

I ran into this while DMing a Skull & Shackles campaign and adjudicated that making the initial save negated the need to make saves in subsequent rounds.

One reason for ruling this way is based on thinking about what would happen if a character failed the initial save, but made all the subsequent saves. If you take the other interpretation, they aren't even staggered for 1 round.

That also led me rule that the subsequent saves are made during the caster's turn, not on the target's turn as there is nothing in the text of the spell mentioning when the save should be made and it means the target will always suffer a consequence of failing the initial save.

Although thinking about it now, I guess the same outcome could be achieved by ruling the save occurs at the end of the target's turn.

I agree with Claxon. Paladin should be able to target themselves when using LoH as a standard action because they count as an ally for targeting purposes.

This should make most of the need to play shenanigans with the ready action moot, and while we can argue about RAW, a lot of it will come down to individual DMs.

My personal ruling would be to allow a player to use a standard to ready a swift action even if they had already used one in the current turn, with some caveats.
- The triggering condition must relate to actions taken by other characters (and cannot be too generic, etc.)
- The readied action must be relevant to the triggering condition. That is, it must have some plausible interaction with the trigger to justify interrupting the other character's action.
- If the readied swift action is taken after being triggered, the player does not have a swift action available to use on their next turn, just as if they had used an immediate action.

Effectively, this allows a player to use a standard action to convert one of their swift action abilities into an immediate action but with the additional downside of changing their place in the initiative order. I can't think of many reasons why you might want to do this though.

The problem with readying a swift action in this manner is that most GMs may not agree that the end of your turn counts as a triggering action.

Astraea99 wrote:

So from a RAW perspective, activating the "ability to cast fly... for a number of minutes..." takes a standard action. Obviously you can change this for your table, but this is consistent with how we ran it in our group when we had Witch with the Flight hex.

Except, there is no language for the 'ability to cast fly' in the hex entry. It merely says you "the shaman gains the ability to fly (as the spell) for a number of minutes per day equal to her shaman level". It would be a Spell-Like Ability if it was meant to exactly mimic the full mechanics of the fly spell. See the Witch hex "Flight" for very specific differences in language. A witch with Flight CAN CAST levitate once per day, and can fly (as per the spell)... not CAN CAST Fly.

--- snipped ---

Hexes that require an action to use default to a standard action. The Lure of the Heavens is a passive hex that is always functional. There are many hexes like that.

Ah my bad, looks like the source I was using had different wording from the SRD.

Given the actual wording, I'm inclined to agree with your position that Lure of the Heavens is a passive hex and doesn't require an action to activate.

I believe that the 2 situations are different.

It should be noted that the Shaman's Lure of the Heavens ability is a hex, and the Hex class ability explicitly states that "Using a Hex is a standard action that doesn't provoke an attack of opportunity unless otherwise noted.". This reinforces the general rules for Supernatural abilities.

So from a RAW perspective, activating the "ability to cast fly... for a number of minutes..." takes a standard action. Obviously you can change this for your table, but this is consistent with how we ran it in our group when we had Witch with the Flight hex.

For the alchemist however, the discovery gives them a permanent set of "functional wings, allowing him to fly... for a number of minutes..." as an Extraordinary ability, which are "usually not an action". So it's pretty clear that by RAW, the winged alchemist doesn't need to use an action to start flying.

YMMV.