Berinor's page

There's scant evidence there's an afterlife, because the afterlife is non-material, and science - as it is practiced nowadays - is ill equipped to deal with non-material realities.

If you decide all of reality is material, well it's called an axiom.

It doesn't mean it's true. It doesn't mean it's false. It means it's the foundation of your reasoning.

You can be convinced reality is only material, but it's your conviction. And your conviction depends on your worldview.

In order for me to believe in anything specific, I need to have some kind of evidence that the person saying it is both honest and has reason to be right.

I have no reason to think spiritually-inclined folks don't earnestly believe what they're saying (other than some of those selling something), but alternative explanations of serendipity or tricky senses capture the reasons better from my perspective. Besides which, if the thinking is it has no way of interacting with the material world, that includes not being able to drive our actions, so there's no way that thing's existence could have an impact on whether we believe in it. And in that case, the simpler explanation is that it doesn't exist rather than that I happened upon it correctly by chance.

So if the definition of material is that which can interact with the things I can detect, I'll allow that non-material things may very well exist but I'll never believe in any specific one of them. Because my aversion to false beliefs is stronger than my ability to guess which ones are correct.

QL - I would advise you not to conflate, "In the absence of a good choice, people choose a supernatural explanation." with, "A supernatural explanation isn't a good one."

Of course, if supernatural forces interact with what we currently consider "material", understanding it might cause us to stop calling it "supernatural".

I think my difficulty (and why I'm finding myself falling in on OQ's side here) is if it's actually unobservable/undetectable by science (and not just undetectable without being clever like BNW's non-reflecting/non-radiating object) it's also unable to have any impact on things that are observable/detectable. Because science is a generic enough set of tools that (to oversimplify) all you need to measure with science is "will X make Y happen more/less often?"

If we just haven't asked the right questions or don't have the right way to measure Y, that's not on science as a toolkit. We just aren't using it right for that purpose yet.

The main thing you'll need to figure out is how to get sneak attack. As a tiny creature you'll have trouble flanking traditionally.

link to an older thread on this subject.... and the observation I had over there...

Duration of hats of disguise and rings.

If the item is just allowing the user to cast the spell on himself, and then has a limited duration... does that mean he can remove the item and have the spell still be in effect?

So a party of adventurers could make themselves invisible by passing a Ring of Invisibility around? Each putting it on, activating it, removing it and passing it to the next player?

Wow...

I always figured it was more limited than that...

If we have the magic item being used to "cast the spell" - then removing the item does not end the spell. When means one H.o.D. could be passed around a party of adventurers to cast the spell multiple times, each having a duration of 10 minutes.

Short term disguises got a big boost - though long term disguises will get damaged...

There was actually a FAQ for that too. Although it did come out after your original post.

Disintegrate wrote:

Only the first creature struck can be affected; that is, the ray affects only one target per casting.

That made me wonder why that line would need to be included. It seems odd, because I'm not sure how a ray could strike more than one creature or why they would need to specify that this spell works that way (presumably compared to other ray spells working differently?).

I think that's because the moment it hits the object/creature, it's no longer being blocked by that object/creature. It's clarifying that it doesn't just keep going. Standard targeting (not formally line of effect, but similar) implies the same thing about effects like ray of frost.

Too bad Hilary's mentor, Robert Byrd, died; otherwise he could have gone to the Klan rally.

He owned up to and denounced his past Klan involvement. I haven't checked the timelines, but I'd bet all that was before his connections with Hillary. There are contexts where this would be a highly relevant point, but talking about current support from Klansmen isn't really one of them.

Pillbug Toenibbler wrote:

It's much harder to do basic math, like ratios, when your head is planted so deeply in your own ass.

But I don't think the basic math matters. Why would it be harder to get 4/7 for an "activist" decision rather than 4/7 for a conservative decision?

Somebody's still got to get to a majority right?

Why not go all the way? If 5/9 (56%) is easy to get an activist majority and 4/7 (57%) is hard, imagine how hard it would be to get an activist majority if they needed 100% (1/1)! It's foolproof!

I'm absolutely voting for Hillary Clinton.

If I remember right about where you live, I encourage you to vote early. You can do it at any library and many are open for it nights and weekends.

No, it is not baked into the system. That is completely untrue and just what the establishment wants you to believe so they maintain their power. And neither candidate will get 51% of the vote this year because 3rd parties are going to take about 8-10%.

So you end up voting for a criminals and fools over and over and they keep laughing because they have convinced the public that there are no other options.

It's not so much baked into the system as an unintended consequence (at least from some founding fathers' perspectives) that's fairly apparent in hindsight.

The person with the most votes wins. That means that if you have three groups, two with 26% support and one with 48% support, as long as the 26's aren't diametrically opposed, they can get more of their agenda done by banding together.

Once such accumulation gets some level of validity and reaches a steady state (people align with those with whom they agree and there's some middle ground where people who don't align more strongly with one than the other) where about half vote on either side, attempting to form a coalition with any similarity to one of the prevailing parties means that you (1)don't build any meaningful coalition, (2)draw off a significant but not majority portion of that party, giving the victory to the party your coalition disagrees with, or (3)somehow draw off a majority and become one of the two parties.

From an individual's perspective, 3 is the best if I like what you're selling, but it's only beneficial if we're going to end up in 3 instead of 2. If the parties are close enough, maybe it's worth the risk since the downside isn't huge, but the idea of two parties is a consequence of the system we've got.

When it comes to committing war crimes, the Clinton's are not exactly guilt free:

"Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it.
—60 Minutes (5/12/96)"

567,000 dead Iraqi children
I think every US President in my lifetime has committed war crimes, and I have little doubt that Clinton MkII would be little different then Trump in that respect. Perhaps the Republicans commit more war crimes, but then are exonerated by democrats, such as in the case of torture.

Both Hillary and Trump are pushing for a presidency that will have many war crimes, and neither candidate is really denying that.

Are economic sanctions war crimes? I'm not arguing with the premise that no one's hands are clean - heavy is the head that wears the crown and all that. But there's a difference when it's the explicit strategy vs an accepted price of the strategy vs an accidental side-effect of the strategy.

But ultimately, there are no clean ways to deal with monstrous dictators. If you don't do anything, you're complicit (not the same as Guy's point above, but largely analogous). If you invade, you essentially guarantee innocent bystanders get killed and their lives get ruined in the war zone. If you impose economic sanctions and they don't cave, you're a part of inflicting avoidable hardship on innocents.

Isn't Michelle Bachmann the one who first claimed to have been a witch, and then claimed not to have been a witch?

The Trump campaign probably could use some supernatural help, come to think of it...

No, that was Christine O'Donnell from Delaware. Bachmann is from Minnesota.

To quote the age-old wisdom (that I suspect OQ considered but omitted for brevity): if you owe the bank $1000, that's your problem. If you owe the bank $1 million, that's the bank's problem.

Matthew McConnaghey (sp?) leads a revolt of runaway slaves and anti-slavery whites in Jones County, MI that, according to some (there seems to be some disagreement), seceded from the Confederacy.

Just because it caused me some confusion, I think that's supposed to be Jones County, MS. I would question a historian who told me about a county in Michigan that seceded from the Confederacy.

What option is there then, if you refuse to hold your nose and pick one?

Maybe we have a 3rd party, and they siphon enough votes from each person that no one gets enough electoral votes to win? Would we get a do-over at that point? Or would the one with the majority of electoral votes still win?

That's in the Constitution, actually. The House meets and each state has to agree on one candidate. Majority wins. If no majority in the first ballot, it gets limited to the top two.

Berinor wrote:

Kazuka wrote:

Berinor wrote:

Feral wrote:

If my choices are status quo and slightly worse status quo, I'll just be abstaining from voting altogether.

Please consider casting a ballot even if you leave the presidential election options empty. While I am short-term pragmatic with my vote (especially in this election) and feel strongly I need to prevent one of the candidates from winning, I respect people who demand that politicians earn their vote. But casting a blank ballot is an actually measurable way of indicating disapproval of all candidates rather than the apathy that people assume is the motivation (or lack thereof) behind not voting.

It can also get your ballot discarded, depending on local vote tallying rules.

The point is that they keep records of who votes and, while it's unlikely to get that much attention, a discrepancy between number of voters and number of votes in a given race says more than missing voters.

That way there's at least data to differentiate from apathy. Also, it means it's no longer reasonable to dismiss your complaints as just laziness.

The discrepancy depends on how they count the missing voters. If it's simply people who never submitted a ballot, a discrepancy would exist. But if it's people who never submitted a proper ballot, then your blank ballot automatically gets you cast as one of the missing voters.

It also, in their eyes, potentially marks you as too lazy to fill in a ballot, thus going right back to apathy and right back to dismissing your complaints as laziness. After all, you didn't actually put in the effort to vote legitimately.

Fair. If there's a better way to provide that feedback when there's no "no confidence" option I welcome it. Until then, I will continue to advocate for getting out and casting a ballot, even if your conscience or gag reflex prevents you from voting for any candidate on the ballot.

And they do record which voters came to the polling place to cast a ballot. I feel that "voted with invalid ballot" is closer to proper protest than "didn't even sign in". If candidates' data scientists can't tell the difference, that's on them.

Berinor wrote:

Feral wrote:

If my choices are status quo and slightly worse status quo, I'll just be abstaining from voting altogether.

Please consider casting a ballot even if you leave the presidential election options empty. While I am short-term pragmatic with my vote (especially in this election) and feel strongly I need to prevent one of the candidates from winning, I respect people who demand that politicians earn their vote. But casting a blank ballot is an actually measurable way of indicating disapproval of all candidates rather than the apathy that people assume is the motivation (or lack thereof) behind not voting.

It can also get your ballot discarded, depending on local vote tallying rules.

The point is that they keep records of who votes and, while it's unlikely to get that much attention, a discrepancy between number of voters and number of votes in a given race says more than missing voters.

That way there's at least data to differentiate from apathy. Also, it means it's no longer reasonable to dismiss your complaints as just laziness.

If my choices are status quo and slightly worse status quo, I'll just be abstaining from voting altogether.

Please consider casting a ballot even if you leave the presidential election options empty. While I am short-term pragmatic with my vote (especially in this election) and feel strongly I need to prevent one of the candidates from winning, I respect people who demand that politicians earn their vote. But casting a blank ballot is an actually measurable way of indicating disapproval of all candidates rather than the apathy that people assume is the motivation (or lack thereof) behind not voting.

Mekkis that is funny!

What I don't get is why people WANT to assign blame to a whole religion based on a few people's ideas. There are Christian liberals, they are in favor of this special protection for trans people. BUT it's the Christian conservatives SO it's a religious thing! As if to say everything these guys do is a religious thing from the time they get up to their choice of breakfast cereal. If right wing Christians are fighting left wing Christians on any issue it should be your first clue that it ISN'T religious, it is Right Wing vs Left Wing.

People in the same religion disagree, but that doesn't mean it's not connected to their religion, either culturally or religiously. Some Jews keep kosher, while others don't. That doesn't mean avoiding bacon isn't a religious thing.

Baptists believe people should choose to be baptized while Lutherans believe in baptizing babies. Since segments of Christianity disagree on the age and agency required to be properly baptized, does that mean I would be misattributing to say that it's a Christian thing to baptize your newborns? Because if the threshold for saying that something proceeds from the religion is that all (or 90%, or half) of followers believe something, you're going to remove a lot of actual rites from "Christianity" much less cultural traditions.

Personally why not just use the restroom you have the equipment for. You have boy parts use the mens room, you have girl parts use the ladies room. Seems simple enough.

If you're using the toilet by sitting down, it doesn't matter which equipment you have. And if you're living as one gender but haven't had any surgical changes yet (or never will - it's expensive and invasive), outing yourself when you use the opposite restroom would be, to put it lightly, upsetting.

The only situation that *seems* reasonable on its face is changing/shower facilities where everybody sees everybody naked. The argument goes that our daughters are going to see male "equipment". But as a cis man I do my best to avoid my equipment being seen in such facilities from simple modesty. I'm pretty sure someone who perceives themselves to have the wrong equipment will be more eager in hiding it.

So while I agree the birth certificate laws are absurd, simple equipment matching is appealing but misses some important corner cases.

Cole Deschain wrote:

I see this tangent of discussion is as fruitful as ever.

It is. I had no idea atheists viewed Christianity as this monolithic entity trying to oppress them. The ones I know are quite content to live and let life as long as you don't try to ram your ideas down our throats. The truth is we are a very fractured bunch without a single voice.

Sigh. We don't. Or at least I don't. As the overwhelming majority in this country, Christians wield a lot of power. From within their echo chambers of their congregations, it seems that everyone agrees with these policies, so they seem reasonable.

Some (I hope a few rather than many) bad apples cloak themselves in Christianity to oppress/take power and then gin up outrage when others disagree and they dress it up as something close to what people devoutly believe so they take up the banner. But it's mostly people naively assuming all their values are universal and trying to apply them to everyone. No bad intent required there.

Berinor wrote:

Sissyl wrote:

This is also the reason most dedicated atheists consider organized religion to be dangerous.

I wish you would say many instead of most. Atheists are about as far from being a monolithic group as you can get. Certainly the most vocal ones do. I certainly agree it can used in a dangerous way (from undermining education to sheltering/legitimizing abusers to terrorism), but it can be used in a positive way, too (building community, sharing values, encouraging charity and compassion).

I believe religion wields an outsized influence but is a tool, not inherently good or bad.

Dangerous is not the same as bad.

Tools can be both useful and dangerous. You just have to be careful how you use them.

Not in denotation, but in connotation it often is. And if I'm trying to win a war of hearts and minds, I'm going to be careful to say what I mean and also to not say what I don't mean. So I'll call it a powerful tool or force that can be misused rather than calling it dangerous and risk stoking fears that I'd like to ban it rather than temper it (and if everyone decides they don't need it any more I won't be sad).

This is also the reason most dedicated atheists consider organized religion to be dangerous.

I wish you would say many instead of most. Atheists are about as far from being a monolithic group as you can get. Certainly the most vocal ones do. I certainly agree it can used in a dangerous way (from undermining education to sheltering/legitimizing abusers to terrorism), but it can be used in a positive way, too (building community, sharing values, encouraging charity and compassion).

I believe religion wields an outsized influence but is a tool, not inherently good or bad.

Note to TCG: if you want us to spin this off into its own thread, I suspect folks would comply. I'm appreciating the fact that it's flying under the radar of religion/atheism threads and avoiding some of the attention and the vitriol that would come with it.

Berinor wrote:

I agree with this from personal experience, but if most of my experience with atheists were the folks who make a stink about it on the internet, I'd expect us to be, at best, demeaning toward people of faith. People who deride religion as being related to a "made-up sky fairy" to paraphrase what I have seen wouldn't be expected to play nice at church mixers. Just another example of the worst elements being the ones that are memorable or noticeable.

There are obnoxious members of all groups, that's a given. As far as militant atheists, a lot of their aggressive style comes from frustration.

You can only tell people that words from an ancient selectively edited book don't constitute proof so many times before copping an attitude.

True, but we should be careful about whether it's telling one person ten times or ten people one time. And just because it's from frustration doesn't mean it isn't harmful to their purpose. When someone says (or implies) their experience with atheists is negative and I care to correct that, I should understand where that experience comes from.

Aranna: I am sure it wasn't intentional, but as I understand your post, atheists would be a "harmful and aberrant behaving group". Personally, I have never seen that. The people I know who are atheists, which would perhaps be best explained as anti-religion (but certainly not anti-faith, what each person believes in is their choice), are generally wise, well-educated, empathic people with a very strong sense of morals and principles. Naturally, much of their morals are similar to christian values - but they believe religious organizations with political power are a serious problem.

I agree with this from personal experience, but if most of my experience with atheists were the folks who make a stink about it on the internet, I'd expect us to be, at best, demeaning toward people of faith. People who deride religion as being related to a "made-up sky fairy" to paraphrase what I have seen wouldn't be expected to play nice at church mixers. Just another example of the worst elements being the ones that are memorable or noticeable.

Sissyl wrote:

Aranna wrote:

Tacticslion said it best.

Thank you. Your my hero. I hate it when atheists throw bricks at me just because I am Religious.

Disregarding the misunderstandings inherent in the "belief in science is still belief", there is no need to throw bricks. We atheists get our share of bricks too, I am sure you are aware. But to answer your concern: As an atheist, I understand that my existence ends with death. And I am okay with that.

Out of curiosity what bricks get thrown at atheists? From my experience the secular world we live in is very friendly to atheists... You probably DO get bricks. It might help me to understand what they are.

Anecdotally, people say our morals are either nonexistent or have no anchor (and hence no meaning or permanence). Slightly more subtly, if America is losing its moral fiber by becoming less overtly religious, which is a common thread in some political circles, that's a sideways method of saying the same thing.

Anecdotes about organized prayer being discouraged in schools have a counterpoint of students being singled out as "different" if they choose not to participate (not a problem for confident adults such as ourselves, but a big deal in high school). I suspect it's a blind spot for the people writing it, but because my stance on what's right and wrong doesn't come from an external authority figure, my firmly held moral beliefs aren't protected by religious liberty laws like theirs are (see Hobby Lobby and Obamacare, although I disagree on multiple levels there). And while I suspect it wouldn't be enforced, there are still states with laws on the books requiring belief in a higher power to hold office.

Finally, studies make me nervous that if I tell acquaintances about my lack of religious beliefs it may put them off. Many have flawed methodology, but I believe there's a significant nugget of truth there. (You can find other examples of studies with simple Google searches)

I haven't personally suffered anything worse than offhand remarks not really meant toward me in my real life. There's a lot of hate on the internet directed toward (and admittedly from) atheists, though. I realize the whackos are the ones most likely to make an impression and write off random barbs that way. There are people with significant followings who make some of these "points" about atheists, though, and that bothers me.

And yes, the same applies to prominent atheists making hateful comments about the religious. I ignore them and apologize for them. Fortunately for me, since there's no organization, they don't hold any position of authority nor do I owe them allegiance.

Yes, it improves your chances of eventually succeeding on a slumber hex by a small amount. Specifically, it increases the target's chance of eventually failing their save by p(fail)[p(succeed) - p(succeed)2]. In the best possible circumstance, that changes a 50% chance of your hex working to a 67.5% chance. And as your hexes become more effective, the influence of misfortune becomes smaller and smaller. It really, really isn't worth taking a hex and wasting an entire turn just for the sake of pulling off that "1-2-3 combo" that seems to be held in inexplicably high regard.

And now you're just getting silly. If a combat ends quickly, that just means you can move on to other fun and interesting things. And if you seriously don't want to take away the GM's fun by killing their monster too soon, then I would suggest doing something other than targeting them with hexes for three rounds straight. Something like casting a spell. Witches still have spells, right?

I was offering an explanation that it's not exactly the same because your earlier post didn't seem to take that nuance into consideration. Whether going from 1/2 to 2/3 is worth the extra rounds and using up another hex selection is a judgment call.

And trimming a 10 round combat to a 5 round one is probably a case of moving on to other fun and interesting things. Going from 1 round to 3 rounds is letting this fun and interesting thing develop rather than being ended just as it begins. If the player enjoys throwing out hexes and saving spells, more power to him/her. If the GM spends a long time putting the NPC together in case of a successful slumber hex, it can feel like a waste if they get knocked unconscious before their turn comes up in initiative.

Edit: and if the combat is consistently ended in round 1, other players might be disappointed not to get to use their abilities. SoS/SoD spells can be extremely potent but they're not automatically fun (or unfun for that matter).

Avoron - it makes it so they need to save 2 out of 3 in order to avoid slumber instead of 1 out of 1. Those odds will be worse in most cases. Of course, the advantage is mitigated by allowing them another round of actions before you put them down, but from a gameplay perspective (rather than tactical optimization) I'd call that a win since it gives the GM more time to enjoy running their monster.

Edit: misspelled the other poster's name. Sorry! :-(

Changing something the most expedient way instead of the good way is simple laziness.

Or pragmatism. They're deciding what would be more problematic - changing the function of the item or changing the weight class of the item. They presumably decided the details of its capabilities were less important to them than making it fit in the niche it currently possesses (cheap item for high level folks or a relatively low level option). You're free to disagree, but I suspect constraints or a decision are the answer rather than laziness.

Breaking the time barrier clearly involves some other aspect beyond going really fast. Presumably some version of "tapping the speed force" or something like that. Plus, I have it on good authority that with the proper gear time travel can be attained at just 88 miles per hour, which is shy of the top speed on my Prius, much less the Flash.

Librain wrote:

More specifically, there's a number of people who prefer to be generous with their consumables, without having any assumption of other players paying them back. Are these people opposed to the proposed rule on any grounds other than their personal preference for play style?

I think I have made a fairly decent argument why this change shouldn't happen which isn't based on player preference or style.

At least in my opinion we would be going from if it ain't broke don't fix it to actually breaking it.

You have put together a fair point. Whether that gain in efficiency is a bug or a feature depends on your perspective. I think the entirety of my disagreement with you comes from my thinking it's a feature and your thinking it's a bug.

So any GM has no guidelines to use other than their own fiat to determine if something is Evil or not? How is that good game design? Ashiel's version, while requiring one to jump through hoops to make allignment reasonable, at least works.

The GM has plenty of guidelines but they're left intentionally fuzzy to allow for group variance without it being a big deal. There are many things left to the GM (or the group, depending on social contract) to determine. From my perspective that flexibility is the point of playing an RPG instead of a standard board game. And morality isn't simple in the real world, so I accept that it should be similarly complicated to codify in-game.

I know I'm coming to this late, but I'll still summarize since there are a lot of people who just came in to pile on rather than make an actual argument based on the rules.

...

Untrained: You cannot make an untrained Knowledge
check with a DC higher than 10.
As long as we are Untrained on a Knowledge skill, our ceiling will be DC10.
Untrained is defined, as we said before, by not having any single ranks in the skill.

After seeing all this, let's check what Bardic Knowledge says:

Bardic Knowledge (Ex): A bard adds half his class
level (minimum 1) to all Knowledge skill checks and
may make all Knowledge skill checks untrained.

Your paraphrasing is changing the meaning of things. To emphasize the point, if the untrained section on knowledge said "You cannot achieve a result higher than 10 with an untrained knowledge check" then bardic knowledge would be written incorrectly to deal with it. As it stands, a DC 25 knowledge check is a knowledge check you normally cannot attempt untrained. Because bardic knowledge is more specific than the general knowledge rule, that specific trumps general and you MAY make that knowledge check with bardic knowledge.

As it happens, this revealed an incorrect assumption I had. I had been thinking the rule essentially boiled down to your result can't be meaningfully better than 10. That's incorrect. If you're attempting a check with a DC lower than 10 and there are advantages for beating that DC, you may have them. So if there's a common low CR creature (e.g. ogre) with a base monster lore DC less than 10, you can gain additional pieces of information for beating that DC by increments of 5. At least by RAW.

I generally think these kinds of disagreements are better handled in PMs to avoid derailing the topic at hand.

That said, as a curious outsider, let me rephrase NN959's statement and follow up with a question (for the group, although I admit I'm curious what part you think makes his assumption a misrepresentation of your overall position rather than a subset of it).

If the proposed change is adopted, it will allow characters to delay personal consumable purchases until after they actually need them rather than as soon as they might need them as long as one of their comrades for the module where they need the consumable brought a spare. This means they can use that liquidity to purchase items for their build rather than contingencies. As a result, frontliners will be able to build up their survivability without draining their comrades' WBL.

Now, my understanding of your (Ragoz) position is that this proposal is ill-advised because it effectively endorses the idea that I might want a consumable you actually spent your gold on, meaning that if I need it while we're grouping together, your foresight lets me delay my expenditure until afterwards.

Am I misunderstanding? And isn't it just rewarding the group that you're a part of by making your foresight a clear boon for you rather than a mixed blessing where you helped the party work better, but you probably spent more on something that's gone now than the benefit you gained and I definitely spent way less on it than the benefit I gained?

thejeff wrote:

I don't think the real world works by objective morality. I have no problem with a fantasy world having one. I have no problem with magic having its own moral rules and definitions.

Indeed, but I have a problem with a stupid rule like 'rocks are happy' or 'evil spells are evil because I say so'.

Would you have a problem with a brief writeup of a deity that said "Paroz - LE - Domains: Fire, Sun, Community, Law"? I'm not told why he's evil and there's no reason that those domains are associated with evil.

I'm guessing that because deities have intelligence, you'd say there are motives or something that explains the evil. In other words, there's reasons not revealed in the writeup. That's the way I (and I think many of the folks on the opposite side of this discussion) feel about evil spells. They're telling us something through the fact that it's evil. From a rules perspective, it's the originator. From an in-world perspective there's more to it than we know right now and it's the responsibility of the GM to flesh it out if that's not a satisfactory answer.

Edit: to be clear, not the spells have intelligence. That the full extent of the spell's effect on the universe isn't included. Just like how fireballs presumably lead to infinitesimal global warming by adding a bit of heat to the world.

Orfamay Quest wrote:

Proof by definition. q.e.d.

Why is it defined as such?

Are you asking from an in-world perspective or a game design perspective? I suspect they have different answers.

Orfamay Quest wrote:

Sure there is. It's explicitly an evil spell, which means casting it is an evil action. That's not "nothing."

That's an archetypal circular argument.

But I have way, Way, WAY less of an emotional investment in this topic than some appear to, so by all means, have fun. :P

It's closer to an appeal to authority. Which you can reasonably call unsatisfying, but not a logical fallacy in this case. If you were arguing with the people making the rules, that would be a reasonable argument.

Is there a side effect of the spell that you would consider sufficiently bad to justify that it has evil baggage (which in some cases could be justified by the ends)? Is that inconsistent with the rules?

You liken the spell to a screwdriver. Is there a reason you chose that tool? What if the tool you chose was built in a cesspool of suffering? By using it are you complicit in that oppression? A reasonable argument would say that you are. There's greater context in the world that is not revealed/left to the GM. I think that's by design and this is an example of it.

Not really sure why this is even still an issue.

Permanency changes the spells' duration to "permanent". Permanent means it lasts literally forever. There isn't any rule (or even a hint) anywhere that states spells end before their duration, outside of certain exceptions (Dispel Magic/Antimagic/specific, spelled-out cases).

There's isn't any support for any view that holds that Permanent spells ever expire.
Houseruling otherwise is fine, but as this is the rules forum, those are the rules.

Magic items that get sufficient damage lose their magical properties.

Magic items, unless otherwise noted, take damage as nonmagical items of the same sort. A damaged magic item continues to function, but if it is destroyed, all its magical power is lost. Magic items that take damage in excess of half their total hit points, but not more than their total hit points, gain the broken condition, and might not function properly.

If a destroyed item is no longer a valid vessel for magic, it's not unreasonable to think the same might be true for other things. Because (I claim) the rules for being dead don't spell out all of that condition's consequences, there is room for questions about whether something like this lives in those gaps, as well.

To Diego Rossi's point, it's possible something would have a shortcut to restoring those abilities, but that's a feature of (in this case) make whole, not of the magic item. You can tell this because you can fully restore the item's physical form with spells like mending.

Blake's Tiger wrote:

wraithstrike wrote:

I don't think the rules cover it.

What? http://www.d20pfsrd.com/skills/sense-motive

If an NPC is lying, it's a free, passive SM roll vs. Bluff.

If you're trying to get a hunch about a situation, determine if someone is enchanted, or interpret a secret message, it takes an action (usually 1 minute per the rules).

I already knew where to find the skill just like everyone else does.

Where is the rules text that says it's passive?
I will rephrase that. Could you quote the rules text that says it's passive?

In the case of bluff, it's because it's an opposed role initiated by somebody else. So it's not actually passive, it's active for somebody else.

Ehhhh... same could be said for Perry White or JJ Jameson or any of the other successful, clever, intelligent people in a superhero's life.

I disagree. A personal assistant is generally much more available than essentially any other working relationship. A reporter (Clark Kent) or freelancer (Peter Parker) has a good reason to be away from the office at random and unexpected times. Kara might need to deal with logistics that are beneath Cat's notice sometimes, but her movements don't have anywhere near the independence of the others.

Berinor wrote:

I know you cited an adventure and alluded to another, but the 3.5 era one was as a licensed third party to the rules then and even a Pathfinder example could easily be an oversight. It's not unprecedented for them to slip through with broken rules and taking a position opposite the party line here is a smaller error than that.

James outright said that he has changed his mind since that 3.5 example.

Source.

James wasn't in charge of the rules then and he still isn't. Him changing his mind isn't the game changing, it's one (influential) person's interpretation changing. I respect his opinions and reconsider my own when they're at odds, but they're just that and not the source of truth.

Your entire posts is a series of claims and conjectures with no rules citations whatsoever.

In Pathfinder creatures and objects are separate things. A spell that targets creatures can't target objects and vice versa.

In an earlier post, you said creature and object are defined and mutually exclusive. I tried to find those definitions. Can you provide them?

I agree spells that target creatures can't target objects that aren't creatures. I don't believe corpses are still creatures (the ones that target dead creatures also involve their souls). But I'm not making a claim that they're mutually exclusive. My claims don't depend on it either way. But if there's a well-defined definition, we can easily see whether there can be any intersection.

While I believe individual spells are vulnerable to weird corner cases and so they can't be real proof of a general principle, they can sometimes give a glimpse into designer intent and are reasonable as data points. I put that as a buffer against being called a hypocrite for pointing out that spell descriptions like gentle repose and decompose corpse list the save and SR fields as (object) despite only being able to affect corpses, i.e. dead creatures.

I don't want to give the wrong impression. Even if this proved corpses were objects, it does not say anything about the disposition of spells on creatures as they die.

There are creatures that exist without a soul. Most notable are native Fey.

There definitely are. Certain types of constructs (e.g. animated object) are another example. Golems depend on how you think they're powered, I think.

I hadn't heard that about native fey. That's an interesting wrinkle since they'd be the only "living" example I know. Can you point me to where that's revealed so I can learn more. I admit, there's part of my curiosity that's from wondering about more context and how this affects my interpretation of the mechanics of creatures dying. That's not the only part, though.

(under all conditions I can currently imagine)

:-) I like this.

I also agree with the content of the post. But mostly felt compelled to comment on the scoping like a huge dork.

Enlarge person is an interesting example on permanent spells, since a simple reduce person from any level caster will get rid of it.

I consider the "spells with dead creature as a target prove that dead creatures are still creatures for spell targeting" to be an oversimplification. A dead creature is a specific type of object where the relevant feature for the spell is the creature it used to be. It's proof that magic can affect dead creatures, but not that they're affected the same way as creatures that are still living/undead/animated. We can get into an involved discussion on this, but I'd rather not.

As for Anguish's point about specific spells that don't work when adhering strongly to a claim that when the target no longer meets the target line's conditions, those are handled by assuming a condition applied by the spell doesn't invalidate the spell. I think that's still too broad and that such situations need to be adjudicated separately (creatures blinded after color spray are still zonked out because that's a delivery condition, for example).

I personally think the game left defining what happens with death vague because it's kind of on the outskirts of the game. Dead creatures usually don't remain relevant in the long term. I don't think it's deliberate, but it's not a central focus. And a full "dead" description is where I would expect something like this to live, not in the duration description. I also don't believe the "dead" condition comes close to

For my money, permanent spells on dead creatures should wear off eventually as the magic and body decay together. So breath of life would have no problem, raise dead would probably be fine, but sufficiently deconstructed bodies would maybe not keep the magic for resurrection and true resurrection. I'm comfortable with calling this a house rule, but not either the "it stays forever" or the "the magic leaves immediately with the soul" with a possible exception for breath of life.

You guys keep arguing, the devs will clarify it. Then there WILL be a correct answer, and it might not be the one you prefer.

Since my position is that each of these positions is consistent, I hope it doesn't survive clarification. :-)

I always got confused. Is Sebastian the same person/horse as Li'l Sebastian?

I don't think I was clear in my objection. The difference is that stopping predators isn't a normal capability of the target of the spell. Moving and attacking normally is. You usually get to move and attack normally and there are situations when you can't.

For example, there are car commercials that say, "We can get you approved, even if you have had past credit problems." No one would claim they can't get you approved if you have stellar credit. But setting aside the reputation/honesty of used car dealers, you shouldn't think they're implying they can get you a loan if you don't have either money OR income. I don't see a conclusive reason to know "even" isn't meant in that way here.