Doskious Steele's page

What is the round-by-round action economy impact of activating a spell-trigger item to cast a spell with a 1-minute or longer casting time? Specifically, can the activating character take any other actions between activating the spell-trigger item and the conclusion of the casting of the spell?

The rules regarding this, when examined closely, appear to me to be murky at best and downright contradictory at worst...

Activating a magic item is a standard action unless the item description indicates otherwise. However, the casting time of a spell is the time required to activate the same power in an item, regardless of the type of magic item, unless the item description specifically states otherwise.

In the same section, Spell-Trigger items are detailed:

Spell Trigger: Spell trigger activation is similar to spell completion, but it's even simpler. No gestures or spell finishing is needed, just a special knowledge of spellcasting that an appropriate character would know, and a single word that must be spoken. Spell trigger items can be used by anyone whose class can cast the corresponding spell. This is the case even for a character who can't actually cast spells, such as a 3rd-level paladin. The user must still determine what spell is stored in the item before she can activate it. Activating a spell trigger item is a standard action and does not provoke attacks of opportunity.

Contrast this to the entry immediately prior to Spell-Trigger items regarding Spell-Completion items, which calls out a specific exception to the activation time for Spell-Completion items:

Activating a spell completion item is a standard action (or the spell's casting time, whichever is longer) and provokes attacks of opportunity exactly as casting a spell does.

This juxtaposition would seem to indicate that while the activation time necessary for a Spell-Completion item is dependent on the casting time of the spell, the activation for Spell-Trigger items is absolute.

When we examine the sections detailing specific rules for Wands and Staves, though, there's additional confusion:

Activation: Wands use the spell trigger activation method, so casting a spell from a wand is usually a standard action that doesn't provoke attacks of opportunity. (If the spell being cast has a longer casting time than 1 action, however, it takes that long to cast the spell from a wand.)

Activation: Staves use the spell trigger activation method, so casting a spell from a staff is usually a standard action that doesn't provoke attacks of opportunity. If the spell being cast has a longer casting time than 1 standard action, however, it takes the full casting time to cast the spell from a staff.

These segments make it fairly clear that the spell it being cast from the wand or staff, and that the effects of the spell are not produced before the full duration of the spell's casting time. When we look at what is involved in casting a spell with a casting time in excess of one round, we discover the following:

A spell that takes 1 minute to cast comes into effect just before your turn 1 minute later (and for each of those 10 rounds, you are casting a spell as a full-round action, just as noted above for 1-round casting times). These actions must be consecutive and uninterrupted, or the spell automatically fails.

When you begin a spell that takes 1 round or longer to cast, you must continue the concentration from the current round to just before your turn in the next round (at least). If you lose concentration before the casting is complete, you lose the spell.

This raises the question of what a full-round action to cast a spell entails. For this, we turn to the Combat section:

A spell that takes 1 minute to cast comes into effect just before your turn 1 minute later (and for each of those 10 rounds, you are casting a spell as a full-round action). These actions must be consecutive and uninterrupted, or the spell automatically fails.

When you begin a spell that takes 1 round or longer to cast, you must continue the invocations, gestures, and concentration from 1 round to just before your turn in the next round (at least). If you lose concentration after starting the spell and before it is complete, you lose the spell.

The Combat section also provides information about spell-trigger items, but only under the header of Standard Actions (apparently under the premise that the vast majority of magical items one can activate take a standard action):

Many magic items don't need to be activated. Certain magic items, however, do need to be activated, especially potions, scrolls, wands, rods, and staves. Unless otherwise noted, activating a magic item is a standard action.

Spell Completion Items: Activating a spell completion item is the equivalent of casting a spell. It requires concentration and provokes attacks of opportunity. You lose the spell if your concentration is broken, and you can attempt to activate the item while on the defensive, as with casting a spell.

Spell Trigger, Command Word, or Use-Activated Items: Activating any of these kinds of items does not require concentration and does not provoke attacks of opportunity.

So, there is positive verification from the rules that Spell-trigger items do not require extended invocations, gestures, spell-finishing, or concentration.

Concentration cannot be lost on the casting action because it is not required due to the spell being cast from a spell-trigger item. Similarly, there are no gestures or utterances to persist, again due the the source of the spell being a spell-trigger item. If concentration were required, there would be an ironclad case to be made that the execution of other actions (combat, spellcasting, drinking a beer, whatever) would break that concentration and prevent the spell from being cast.

Since that is not the case, though, it seems to me that the action economy for using a staff to cast a spell with a 10-minute casting time would be: Round 1: Standard action to activate staff and start the casting of the spell. Rounds 2-100: Maintain the staff's non-sundered status and continue to hold the staff, while taking any other actions desired, potentially including other spellcasting. Round 101+: Enjoy effects of spell cast from staff.

If this is not the intended action economy for this kind of action, it seems to me that a clarification to that effect is necessary in the rules regarding the activation of spell-trigger items... That said, based on a number of rulings I've encountered regarding spell-trigger items in the past, I believe that the above conclusions are in line with the intended use of this class of item...

So I'm looking at creating a Wizard of moderate level, and I'd like to make sure that I accurately represent the number and nature of his spellbooks. Is anyone aware of any kind of spellbook creation utility or application that will provide a page count based on the spells I identify as known by my character?

I know that several options exist to generate spell cards and simple lists of spells known, but none of them that I've found appear to offer the (very simple) functionality of displaying the number of pages in a spellbook that would be necessary to contain whatever spells are selected.

I would greatly appreciate any assistance that could be offered, as I would like to avoid the need to develop my own (kludgey) solution using a spreadsheet or something similar, in favor of something that would hopefully provide more than just a page count (such as spell names/descriptions).

In the spell Compassionate Ally, what does it means by "ally"?

Does "ally" mean an friend of the Caster (e,g, a party member/NPC), or a friend of the spell target?

On the face of it, the text seems to frame the notion of an ally as an ally of the target creature, with no indication that this spell alters its perception of allegiance. I suppose that the spell could be moderately useful in this context, to occupy a dangerous creature for several rounds or to set up a better enemy positioning for AoE effects, but it seems to entail an intrinsic disadvantage in that if the target of the spell has healing items, those items will be used on an injured creature that most likely opposes the PCs, prolonging the fight and depriving PCs of potential healing resources.

On the other hand if the context of "ally" is an ally of the caster, while this interpretation makes the spell rather more useful, it is woefully unclear from the text of the spell alone. That said, with Charm Person being a 1st level spell and having a longer duration and a substantially greater potential impact on the behavior of a target creature, it seems to me that the fact that this spell is a 2nd level spell should entail a slightly more powerful spell. I would expect a spell that compels the target to aid another creature on its side of a fight to be first level, not second, since Charm Person has the same capability to induce a target foe to come to the aid of a caster's injured ally, but requires a shared language (or good pantomime) and an opposed charisma check. It seems appropriate to me that a second level spell should be able to compel a specific action directly out of a failed will save with a substantially reduced duration.

(Quotes from Rules Questions/ready To Charge? What Do You Mean I Can't Ready A Charge?)

nosig wrote:

In PF, can a character Ready a charge attack?

Depends. At my table I would allow it, as the rules need to be consistent and make sense.

If your PC were reduced to only being able to take a standard action (surprise round, slowed, you're a zombie, etc) then yes you could make a partial charge, and you could ready that partial charge action as a standard action.

It doesn't make sense to me that a PC could not voluntarily elect to reduce themselves down to just having a standard action. Thus as a DM I would allow it if they forgo the rest of their turn.

Straight RAW? I don't think it's allowed.

However, the idea that you would be MORE capable when slowed or the like is untenable for me. Thus I conclude that the only thing preventing one from doing so is that the writers felt the verbiage for its allowance was either too convoluted or was self-evident.

Thus I'd allow it, and really would have liked PF to 'patch' what I consider a flaw in the RAW,

James

DigitalMage wrote:

Presumably you could ready a charge in a surprise round yes?

And would you need to take that readied action in the surprise round or would it carry over to the next, full, combat round (so basically the readying character loses a while rounds worth of action just to have a charge or ready)?

That's actually a good question. I'd probably allow it (that is, allow the readied surprise-round charge to carry into the first normal round) as doing otherwise would seem awkward and it doesn't seem too unbalanced.

This issue about Charging has been a bone in my craw since before Pathfinder existed as a rules set. Like James, I was really hoping that PF would present different rules that made more sense, as I also cannot square the thought of Zombies being able to do something natively that Humans can't (without taking a feat).

The issue at the root of this conundrum is that allowing readied charges breaks the concept of restricting a charging creature's movement in a round in which it charges. If it was possible to ready a charge, under the existing rules, a creature could take a move action prior to readying the action to maneuver to a more advantageous position, and then ready an action to charge as soon as another creature starts to act.

While I'm uncertain that this is as game-breaking as has been suggested, two potential options present themselves:

(1) A creature can ready an action to charge or charge as a standard action by sacrificing (not taking) its move action for the round. The creature gains the standard benefits and penalties associated with charging.

(2) Add the following action: Standard Action: Short-Charge. A creature that Short Charges executes a Charge as a Standard Action (as opposed to a Full-round action), and takes a -2 penalty to AC until its next turn. The Short-Charging creature gains a +1 bonus to hit, however, rather than the +2 normally gained by charging. This action can be readied, as usual for standard actions.

Having recently started GMing a game which includes a Halfling Cavalier (with a medium mount for ease-of-access), I've been given cause to examine the rules surrounding Mounted Combat (in the Combat chapter, the Ride skill, the Handle Animal skill, and the Cavalier class).

The Ride skill includes the following, somewhat cryptic, entry:

Stay in Saddle: (DC 5) You can react instantly to try to avoid falling when your mount rears or bolts unexpectedly or when you take damage. This usage does not take an action.

Aside from the Unseat feat, which is so narrowly applicable that it fails entirely to provide any insight into the general question, there does not seem to be any method explicitly provided for unseating a rider.

Granted, the Ride skill entry above seems to imply that each and every time that a rider is damaged, the rider must make a Ride check (DC 5) or fail to stay in the saddle. However, inasmuch as the attacks are doing damage, it seems reasonable to me to think that these attacks are *not* executed with the *primary* goal of unseating a rider. This makes a fair amount of sense to me, since untrained riders should be relatively easy to unseat, whereas trained riders should not have any difficulty staying in the saddle (and in fact, if Ride is a class skill with one rank and the rider lacks a negative Dexterity modifier, the rider will never be unseated as the result of HP damage).

This, however, brings me to the flip side of the Ride skill entry: for a rider with a minimum +4 to Ride checks, aside from the Unseat feat, there does not seem to be any method of unseating them provided in RAW. Is this accurate, or have I overlooked something?

EDIT: The new Combat Maneuvers Drag and Reposition in the APG would seem to cover different methods of producing an effect that would result in the unseating of a mounted target, but nothing is mentioned in their entries or the errata for the APG to indicate any modifiers to the CMB check or CMD of the target of such a check in the event that the target is mounted. Is this correct, or are there modifiers to Drag and/or Reposition based on the target of the maneuver being mounted?

Rather than a tabletop mat or other physical item I use a VTT program, d20Pro, to manage encounters. For encounters with pregenerated maps, this works out very well; for encounters lacking pregenerated maps, this means that I need to find or create my own, either of which can be challenging at times.

Can anyone suggest a website where I could get/find generic images of jungle beach, jungle, jungle clearing, tropical hilltop, jungle/tropical river/stream, and jungle/tropical cliffside scenes? Or possibly share maps they've created for similar purposes?

I like to try to give my players a high-quality encounter setting to help really give them a good feel for where their characters are, so any help would be greatly appreciated.

(Edit: apologies if this ought to go into the Serpent Skull forum >.<)

In the thread here, I was involved in a back-and-forth interchange that addressed the RAW regarding how Invisibility, and the Total Concealment it grants against many opponents, negates Attacks of Opportunity against the Invisible creature even when the threatening creature has some non-visual means of detecting the Invisible creature (other than Blind Sight or effects that completely negate Invisibility such as See Invisibility, True Seeing, etc.).

To my way of thinking, this is a very visucentric way to handle the scenario, and Concealment in general, and I'm interested in exploring simple alternate rules that would make creatures with a sense other than vision less disadvantaged in the Total Concealment arena.

It seems nonsensical to me to think that, for example, in the absence of any barrier or opposition to the scent of a creature reaching another adjacent creature with the Scent ability, which uses Scent as its primary method of sensory perception (such as a Dog), the Scenting creature is still totally unable to attack at the creature it smells moving out of a space it threatens. Vision is the primary sensory conduit for social and interpersonal interaction for humans, but scent is the primary sensory conduit for social and interpersonal interaction for dogs (for example). (This is one reason why dogs sniff each other when they meet rather than just look at each other as humans do. Similarly, dogs can detect subtle shifts in emotion, mood, or position by olfactory cues rather than by way of the visual triggers used by humans.)

Why should the mechanics that determine if a generic creature can respond to certain events (such as events that can trigger Attacks of Opportunity) be constructed for and limited to visual cues and constraints?

That said, I admit to being stumped as to how to go about making simple-yet-appropriate changes. >.> Any thoughts?

First off, while this seems like a rules question to me, it could as easily be an Advice question, so apologies if it develops that I've put this thread in the wrong place.

The GMG has a very nice presentation of Drugs and Addiction:

When a character takes a drug, he immediately gains the effects, an amount of ability damage, and must make a Fortitude save to resist becoming addicted to that drug (see Addiction). While the initial effect represents the physical or mind altering effects of the drug, the drain represents both its side effects and the amount of time a dose remains active in a character’s body. As ability score damage heals at a rate of 1 point per day, a drug that causes 1 point of ability score damage remains in a character’s system for 1 day, though some might cause greater damage and thus remain active for longer. While taking multiple doses of a drug at once rarely has any benefit, taking additional doses as the effects wear off renew those effects but increase the ability damage and potential for addiction. (Emphasis mine)

This immediately brought to mind the question of how Drugs interacted with magic like Restoration, or Lesser Restoration -- if a character takes a drug, takes 2 Con damage, and then drinks a potion of Lesser Restoration, is the Con damage healed, and if so are the "beneficial" effects of the drug also mitigated? If Lesser Restoration does end the effects of the drug, can the character wait until the beneficial effects have worn off to restore ability damage? How, if at all, would this interact with the long term addiction effects?

~Doskious

I notice that the Drowning rules still make references to HP in a confusing and potentially frustrating way. I propose a simple revision to remove the references to HP and hopefully clarify the mechanism:

When the character finally fails her Constitution check, she begins to drown. In the first round, she falls unconscious (0 hp). In the following round, she drops to –1 hit points and is dying. In the third round, she drowns.

Unconscious characters must begin making Constitution checks immediately upon being submerged (or upon becoming unconscious if the character was conscious when submerged). Once she fails one of these checks, she immediately drops to –1 (or loses 1 additional hit point, if her total is below –1). On the following round, she drowns.

Change to:

When the character finally fails her Constitution check, she begins to drown. In the first round, she falls unconscious. In the following round, she gains the dying condition. In the third round, she drowns.

Unconscious characters must begin making Constitution checks immediately upon being submerged (or upon becoming unconscious if the character was conscious when submerged). Once she fails one of these checks, she immediately gains the dying condition. On the following round, she drowns.

Note that this writing has simply removed the references to HP from the text and has simplified it to a progression of worsening conditions that can clearly only be interrupted by outside forces (yes, for the purposes of my comment, the effects of a Contingency spell constitute outside forces). This also clarifies that the unconscious and dying conditions are not the result of standard HP loss and cannot therefore be "fixed" by casting healing magic; it also allows for the Paladin with 127 base HP and no wounds to be in the dying phase of this progression, have Water Breathing cast on her, and be at full health and ready to fight as the party swims around the reef without ambiguity, as opposed to perhaps being at some number of HP close to zero depending on how the GM reads the text...

Forgive me if I've missed a post (or worse, a section of rules) that answered this question, but are there any rules, guidelines, suggestions, or any kind of indication at all to tell me what magical items my character knows how to make?

This question is easily answered in the case of Scrolls, Potions, and Wands, and is slightly more obscure but still readily apparent about Staves. -- Since all of these items effectively exactly reproduce spells, it seems obvious that all that would be necessary is knowledge of the spell and the nature of the item in question, which directly follows from having the feat rather logically.

For the other creation feats, the ones that generate items which usually do not exactly reproduce a spell effect (Constructs, Rings, Rods, Weapons, Armor, and Wondrous Items), does the acquisition of the feat carry with it the implicit knowledge of the making of all of the items that are craftable via that feat? Does my 3rd level Wizard who just got Craft Wondrous Item already have the knowledge of the process by which a Mirror of Life Trapping is made? (This notion stretches the believability of the concept well out of proportion for me -- I know how to write scripts and code for simple applications - Perl and XML and LUA stuff - but I have a very vague idea how to write code for, say, Windows 7.)

If he doesn't automatically know what he can make, though, how would he come by this knowledge? Are there any indicators as to what to consult, or who to learn from, or how to research? How much would it cost him to research? Does it take time? Can he buy the plans from someone? Is the process similar to researching a new spell? Is it wildly different? Is there any guidance to be had on this subject in any sort of official publication?

~Doskious Steele