Fair enough -- though one idea I had is that maybe the fact he's a necromancer is something he conceals from everybody. One of Norgorber's domains is secrecy after all. Wait and see what the class looks like is a good plan though.
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Prediction: remastered Eibon Ruiz will be a Necromancer.
Birthday party for a friend tomorrow. Sunday I dunno. :-)
Ah.:-) In my latest iteration, I started adding spells to the Endless Grimoire at about level 19. Soon as I got to 101 spells, it threw an error. I submitted a bug report. Wolf Lair acknowledged it. Suggested that if I want to own all spells up to rank seven I should use Archives of Nethys for my spellbook, and just pay the money for the spells in HLO. I guess that'll work. They know you, by the way. "Oh dear, you're uh, trying to build one of Ravingdork's rule flexing monstrosities, aren't you?" :-)
Upon reflection, the Staff Nexus staff doesn't require a theme the way a Personal Staff would. So Light and Sure Strike would be fine there. And with Light in the staff, you could put some other cantrip in its place. I'd go for Electric Arc or Daze. Agree on the doubling rings. I've got him up to level 18 in HLO. No "complexity" problems yet -- and there is a possible way to eliminate such problems -- you can "suspend" items. If you suspend something, you can't use it, but it doesn't count against your complexity rating. Not sure how well that would work with this guy, but I haven't actually tested what happens when he buys lots of spells either. Speaking of that, how do you prioritize a characters purchases? I suppose if you're just building him at level whatever that's not much of a problem, but I find that building them a level at a time you can't always buy gear when it becomes available (for example +1 weapon potency rune at level 2 is 35 GP, and he doesn't have that much at that point. In Eibon's case, I put gear ahead of spells, only buying spells additional to his free ones when needed. So here we are and he only has a few purchased. :-)
Apparently the "only use one grimoire at a time" thing was an anomaly rather than an error. When I added the grimoire this time and put a spell in it, there was no adverse reaction from HLO.
Found a potential flaw with doubling rings. You have to be wielding both weapons. So staff in one hand, bastard sword in the other. Can't use the sword two-handed unless you drop the staff. Staff loses its bonuses until you pick it up again. Not a big deal, I think.
HLO has its faults. So does pathbuilder. To be fair, I do things in HLO that I very much doubt most people do. The most pertinent of those, I think, is taking one of your high level characters and building him from the ground up. What will he look like at level 1? Level 2? And so on. I have an awful lot of characters in that app. Doesn't seem to bother it any, unless I do something to get that "complexity level" up too high -- and other than trying to fill three spellbooks with spells I haven't seen much that does that. The PITA, frankly, is usually my fault. What's that woodworking rule? Measure twice, cut once. I tend to get to where I should measure once at least -- stop and think about how I want to do whatever and what problems might arise -- and instead of stopping and thinking just jump right in. And get halfway done and find something that I didn't expect happening. Twice now with Eibon I've deleted all the files and started over from scratch. Like I said, my fault. Oh, and two of the last three bug reports I sent in for HLO turned out to be EBKAC. :-( Pathbuilder is much better for sussing the possible progression out without getting clunky. It doesn't, afaik, have a problem with clicking the "yeah my wizard knows all these spells" buttons all at once. What I don't like is that it sometimes shows you that the character has something -- some spell, some piece of gear -- at level one that he wouldn't actually get until level six. If you want to build level 18 Eibon in HLO, it's pretty easy. If you want to know how he got to level 18, you pretty much need to use both pathbuilder and HLO. Well, maybe "need" is too strong. I understand the cost problem, but I've spread HLO costs over many years, and I'm retired and have no dependents, so I can pretty much spend my money (though I'm no Elon Musk) where I want to. It's a choice though, and I can't say you're wrong not to spend the money on it.
I just discovered that you're only allowed to use one grimoire at a time. So when you get your endless grimoire you have to transfer any spells in your first spellbook (I was going to just keep the free advancement and curriculum spells in the spellbook) to the grimoire. Not a big deal, doesn't cost anything, though HLO apparently has no mechanism for it, so I have to do it the hard way, deleting the spells from the spellbook (or maybe just deleting the spellbook, I haven't tried that) and then adding them to the grimoire. There's something to be said for the way Pathbuilder does spells, since it doesn't seem to care what kind of spellbook/grimoire you have, it just tracks which ones you say are in it.
Reminder that swearing is against the forum rules, everyone! I do solemnly swear that I will not swear in these forums. :-)
I got a notice yesterday from Rochester Gas and Electric that my average per day electricity has increased 50% during the last three days over the previous usage. So I turned the thermostat up a notch and the AC shut off.
Hm. How did I miss this? :-)
On further reading, there seems to be no connection in the rules between the Staff Nexus staff and the Personal Staff, even though both were introduced in Secrets of Magic. Also, upgrading your "makeshift" nexus staff only allows you to give it more charges, not add spells to it. You could, of course, merge the nexus staff with a Personal Staff or with any other magical staff, although you should be the magical staff's minimum level (5 for the Personal Staff, 4 for a Staff of Healing, for example).
So it is. :-) I was going to work up a Personal Staff for a "test" wizard in HeroLab (if you look in "Magical and Alchemical Items" under equipment, the Personal Staff is in there) but I ran into a snag: HLO won't let me buy it. Throws an error. So either I'm doing something wrong, or it's bugged. We'll see. According to da roolz a Personal Staff has the following traits: Unique; Magical (though the staff owner can replace this with one of the magical traditions if he wants); a single trait (like an energy trait or an elemental trait, for example) -- all the spells need this trait; a school trait. Remember this is legacy stuff, so "school" means necromancy or transmutation or whatever -- " Pick the one that best reflects the spells, usually the one most shared among them." So the spells don't all need to have the same school trait. I think school trait should just be ignored as far as we're concerned. Now it occurs to me to wonder how Impossible Magic is going to handle this. I'd hate to see "must have a school trait; only spells from that school's curriculum are allowed".
It occurs to me that "Personal Staves", being described in Secrets of Magic, may be legacy content, but "Staff Nexus", being described in Player Core is not. But Staff Nexus refers to Personal Staves, so maybe we should consider that content "grandfathered", at least until Impossible Magic comes out.
IANAL but it seems to me these two positions are contradictory. If Diamond wants the contract to remain in place, I'm pretty sure the contract requires that they pay Paizo when they sell Paizo's product. Not sure what should happen if a judge terminates the contract. Obviously it would be better for Paizo if they get both a terminated contract and get their stuff back, or at least the amount of money Diamond would have paid on the sale of the consignment. Would Paizo be okay if they just got a confirmed terminated contract and had to eat the ten mil? Only Paizo can answer that one.
[Personal staff comments] Heh. It just didn't occur to me that SoM, and hence Personal Staves, is legacy content. So I'd agree with waiting for Impossible Magic to see what that says. If you're going to keep it, though, what's your theme? Light and sure strike don't have a common trait. In fact sure strike has no trait that would lend itself to this. You could pick light as your theme, but there's no rank 1 spell with that trait. You could pick electricity, which would give you electric arc and maybe thunderstrike as your rank 1. I thought of picking one of Norgorber's domains, but that only gives focus spells, which I don't think you can use here (you'd be treating them as a regular non-focus spell).
One thing I just noticed I got wrong. I said "if he wants to use the staff he has to expend a spell slot". That's true for ranked spells, but he can cast the cantrip without expending any charges. It may or may not be true that he doesn't have to charge the staff at all if all he wants to use it for is the cantrip.
Bad news. Hopefully to be followed by good news soon. Speaking of soon, in our current legal system that word means "some time in the next decade or two". So much for swift justice. :-(
Minor musings: Wouldn't Eibon's paranoia require him to heighten his "disguise magic" spells to the maximum available level, to make it harder for someone to defeat the spell? Yeah, I know, this would play Hell with his current "spells prepared" list. Reading the Personal Staff rules, a couple of things occur to me:
2. Ordinarily, the minimum level for a personal staff is 5, but Staff Nexus overrides this, allowing you to create your staff at 1st level. Okay, fair enough. You would need Crafting but not Magical Crafting. Can you hire someone else to create it for you? I dunno. The basic staff, yes. Staff Nexus though says "Your thesis maintains that early and intense adoption of staves from the first days of study can create a symbiotic bond between spellcaster and staff, allowing them to create remarkable magic together. You've formed such a connection with a makeshift staff you built, and you are ready to infuse any staff you encounter with greater power." So it seems to me that you have to make it yourself. 3. Upgrading a Personal Staff, for a "Staff Nexus" mage: I would expect that Eibon, for example, could upgrade his personal staff. So at level five, he could pay 160 GP (does he need to pay to upgrade his 'symbiotic partner'?) to get an additional rank 1 spell slot; 250 GP at level seven to give him 2 first and 2 second rank slots, and so on. He could, in theory, end up with a personal staff with one cantrip and 2 spells of each rank up to 7. It would cost 40,000 GP though. He probably can't afford it. 4. Personal staves must have a "theme". By which I mean they must have a single trait that is common to all the spells in it. Looking at the two spells already allocated to Eibon's staff, the only traits they have in common are Concentrate and Manipulate, and both of these IMO fall afoul of the "can't be too broad" rule for the chosen trait. So I would recommend either Vitality or Void. Vitality gives a total of 14 spells to choose from (aggregate of all spell ranks) not including Legacy spells for which AoN doesn't show an equivalent remastered spell. Still it's a nice selection of spells. If you choose Void, there's 12 spells from which to choose, including Void Warp that's currently one of his chosen spells. I'd pick Vitality, I think, given this thing will be merged with a Staff of Healing. 5. The basic staff requires charging via expending spell slots. Once you merge it with another staff, the charging rules for that staff apply. 6. In building Eibon, I didn't give him a staff of healing until level 5, so for his first four levels if he wants to use the staff he has to expend a spell slot. It has to be a wizard slot, as that's all he has at these levels. He gets one charge at levels one and two, and could get two charges at levels three and four. 7. As a magical staff, this thing should have a name, the magical trait or a spell tradition trait (eg, divine), and one other trait, its "theme". Also, SoM says it requires a magical school trait, but those go away in the remaster. Not sure how to add a name or traits in HLO or PB. 5. I note that Impossible Magic, which looks to be Secrets of Magic Remastered, is due out the end of next month. That might well change the available spells list. 6. In HeroLab, you merge the staves in the build process, basically assuming that you will always merge them, so no need to worry about it during prep, and no need to worry about carrying two staves during some part of the prep process. Dunno about Pathbuilder. I'm guessing it's similar. Works for me.
I have a suggestion. In my efforts with Eibon, by the time he will find a bastard sword useful (level 11, when he gets Weapon Proficiency), he already has +1 striking on his staff, and also on his handwraps (I kept the handwraps from a previous build). So he buys the bastard sword, transfers the fundamental runes from the staff to the sword, and buys doubling rings, and now he has +1 striking on both sword and staff, as well as on the handwraps. He can keep the handwraps, or sell the runes and toss the wraps (no resale value). I sold the runes. :-) Now he doesn't have to worry about upgrading two sets of fundamental runes. BTW, I found that doubling rings don't work with handwraps, probably because they aren't a weapon. No need to upgrade to greater doubling rings, as all that does is allowing doubling property runes, and you can't put property runes on a staff of healing anyway.
Interesting. I either missed that when I read the module, or forgot it. Probably the latter.
See that little word "should" in what you quoted? It's a opinion. I offered no rules reference in support of it. As for logical reasoning, nothing I said is illogical. AFAIK there is no feat requirement nor any class choice requirement for acquiring rituals. That's a general statement. There may be specific rituals with such requirements.
It's actually not nearly as bad as it used to be.
It seems to me that a description of a spell or ritual, including instructions on how to cast it is, in-game, a formula of sorts. Not "formula" as the rules use the word, perhaps, but it's the same concept.
Except that they're explicitly not spells "A ritual is an esoteric and complex spell that anyone can cast." -- Pathfinder Player Core, page 389. Apparently Paizo disagrees with you.
You can select which rulebooks you want to allow with Herolab, so including "legacy" content in ostensibly remastered characters does work. OTOH I've been having some weird problems with the program. I have a habit of taking a high level character sheet and trying to build that character from the ground up, actually starting a new file at each level. It works, but lately... the most recent thing is that some options seem to disappear for no good reason that I can see. I think it's some kind of messed up interaction with the server. For example, I got this one character up to 9th level, and decided he need an Endless Grimoire. Now ordinarily there's a whole submenus under the magic items menu for grimoires, but it wasn't there when I went to do it -- on any of the nine characters, level 1 to level 9. So I quit and closed the tab. The grimoires may or may not come back when next I try it. If not it'll be time for a bug report.
Not really. I was playing around with one of Ravingdork's pre-Remaster characters, and trying to find Remaster spells in the course of updating the character. That's the only one that didn't have a Remaster version. Heh. In one case, two Rank 3 spells on his list were replaced with one Rank 2 spell, which I thought was interesting. Anyway, this old brain remembers many things, some of which may have actually happened. Like "it's okay to use Legacy content, even for Remastered characters". Not sure Herolab or Pathbuilder agree, though, particularly the latter.
Good points. Thanks. :-)
"Innate" means "inborn; natural". "Inborn" means "existing from birth". I would not expect to pay to learn such things. Focus spells you would get as a part of training for leveling up -- including to level 1 if you get one then. Rituals are just more complex spells, which is why I think that learning them during the game (i.e. after character generation) should cost the same as regular spells -- or perhaps more, since they're "complex". I dunno, maybe there is more to it than that. 2. Formulas should work the same way as what? Spells. Never mind, though. I forgot that formulas are already covered. "For the Price listed on the table, you can buy a common formula or pay an NPC to let you copy their formula." Thanks for the comments. :-)
Is there an equivalent in Player Core to the Core Rulebook Divine Spell Death Knell? I haven't found one.
Ah. That makes sense. :-)
Just my opinion, but... 1. It seems to me that rituals are spells, so learning a rank 3 ritual should cost the same as learning a rank 3 spell. 2. Formulas should work the same way. 3. Rarity affects the learning process in whatever way the GM decides, anything from "no effect at all" to "add x% to the cost listed in the rulebook" to "go on a quest to find someone who knows how to do whatever it is you're trying to learn", to whatever the GM decides. 4. I have a vague memory which may be bleed-over from another system that uncommon spells or formulas should cost twice as much as common ones of the same level, while rare items should cost ten times as much. In such a case though I would expect the cost to include finding the right teacher or whatever (see #3). Comments? Recommendations? Falcon 231 does not apply. :-)
Here's the list with just the remastered names or equivalents, except I left the legacy names in for air walk and death knell. You'll make changes to this, I'm sure. Arcane Prepared Spells DC 39, Attack +29; 9th foresight, implosion, massacre, falling stars; 8th contingency, dessicate, mystic armor, hidden mind; 7th dispel magic, eclipse burst, false vitality, resist energy; 6th toxic cloud, mislead, marvelous mount, truesight; 5th slither, darkvision, mariner’s curse, see the unseen; 4th blindness, translocate, fly, unfettered movement; 3rd illusory disguise, one with stone, ghostly carrier, wall of wind; 2nd translate, deafness, invisibility, tailwind; 1st disguise magic (x2), enfeeble, sanctuary; Cantrips (9th) void warp, divine lance, light, shield, telekinetic projectile Divine Prepared Spells DC 39, Attack +29; 7th death clutch (execute); 6th raise dead; 5th breath of life, spiritual guardian; 4th air walk (no remastered equivalent?), talking corpse; 3rd cleanse affliction (x2); 2nd death knell (no remastered equivalent?), silence; 1st bane, bless; Cantrips (9th) guidance, stabilize Arcane Ritual DC 39; 3rd Rune Trap (8th warp mind; 7th eclipse burst) Divine Rituals DC 39; 6th commune; 5th call spirit, create undead (heartless), resurrect Cleric Domain Spell DC 39; 9th (1 focus point) sudden shift Wizard School Spell DC 39; 9th (1 focus point) scramble body Extra Credit: :-) Staff Spells DC 39;
Hope this is helpful.
I am an idiot. I made checking how his spells change with the remaster way too hard, and the list I sent you way to ugly. So I did what I should have done in the first place -- copied your list of his prepared spells to an OpenOffice text file, and added the trap related spells. Then I went through and checked each spell or ritual. If it came up as apparently the same name, I double checked that it was actually in Player Core (or PC 2, though I don't think any of them are). If it has a new name, I wrote that in the text file, and made the text red. Makes for a much neater list. Let me see if I can reproduce it here. Arcane Prepared Spells DC 39, Attack +29; 9th foresight, implosion, massacre, meteor swarm (falling stars); 8th contingency, horrid wilting (dessicate), mage armor (mystic armor), mind blank (hidden mind); 7th dispel magic, eclipse burst, false life (false vitality), resist energy; 6th cloudkill (toxic cloud), mislead, phantom steed (marvelous mount), true seeing (truesight); 5th black tentacles (slither), darkvision, mariner’s curse, see invisibility (see the unseen); 4th blindness, dimension door (translocate), fly, freedom of movement (unfettered movement); 3rd illusory disguise, meld into stone (one with stone), spectral hand (ghostly carrier), wall of wind; 2nd comprehend language (translate), deafness, invisibility, longstrider (tailwind); 1st magic aura (disguise magic) (x2), ray of enfeeblement (enfeeble), sanctuary; Cantrips (9th) chill touch (void warp), divine lance, light, shield, telekinetic projectile Divine Prepared Spells DC 39, Attack +29; 7th death clutch (finger of death (execute[i])); 6th raise dead; 5th breath of life, spiritual guardian; 4th air walk ([i]no remastered equivalent?), talking corpse; 3rd neutralize poison (cleanse affliction), remove disease (cleanse affliction); 2nd death knell (no remastered equivalent?), silence; 1st bane, bless; Cantrips (9th) guidance, stabilize Divine Rituals DC 39; 6th commune; 5th call spirit, create undead (heartless), resurrect Wizard School Spells DC 39; 9th (1 focus point) call of the grave (scramble body) Other DC 39 9th glyph of warding (rune trap ritual); 8th warp mind; 7th eclipse burst Arcane Ritual DC 39; 3rd Rune Trap Okay. Wasn't sure I could do color, so I used italics instead. Doing it this way made it obvious that there are two divine spells that appear to have no Remastered equivalent: air walk and death knell. Not sure what to do about that. Maybe I missed something.
Hm. Wouldn't he still have to buy the spells? Did you just give him the base one, or did you upgrade it as he levels? On another note, something occurred to me reading about Eibon's trapped items. First, it's hard to find but the Legacy Glyph of Warding Hazard has been replaced by the third rank ritual Rune Trap. Aon links Glyph to Rune Trap, but not Rune Trap to Glyph, so if you're looking at Glyph there's no link to Rune Trap, which is why it took me a while. The next part is that in his gear list you show a scroll case (no scroll cases by default in the remaster) which is presumably empty and a healing potion which is presumably legit. Both of these are trapped. Both have Disguise Aura cast on them. So you need to always have two Disguise Aura spells prepared. But then you say, in the section on trapped items, that you have fake copies of both of these items, which will also need Disguise Aura on them (I think). Then there's the traps. And also the traps on the spell books. Not sure about how often you have to do the traps. The description of Rune Trap doesn't mention a duration. If it's "GM choice" or the rules don't say I'd want to say they last until triggered or dismissed. So he'd only have to do them once (downtime?). Also needs one secondary caster. And now I'm going to bed. :-)
Heh. Herolab has this interesting thing it attaches to builds called "complexity level". It ranges from 1 to 10, and if it ever gets to 10 the server will, we're told, prevent you from doing much of anything with the character ("This includes adding equipment, choosing abilities, enabling certain character options, and various other situations. Basically, the character’s complexity cannot be increased beyond the limit, so the only option is to first reduce its complexity to make room for the new choices.") If it goes over the limit your character will be "quarantined" and you'll have to contact customer service to get it back. I noticed when I added the third spellbook to Eibon that the complexity rose to 5 from 1, which is where it started. Hm. According to your spell calculator, there are 241 common and uncommon Arcane spells in the Core Rulebook, and 229 in Player Core and 49 in Player Core 2. Total 278. So yeah, three spellbooks. AoN led me to believe it was more. Guess I didn't refine the search well enough. Of these, 75 are free -- 64 from the general addition of free spells at each level, and 11 from the Protean Form school. So his third spellbook will have three spells in it.
I need to be more awake. :-( No, total of seven skills for Wizard with INT +4 is not wrong. The rule is 2 + INT mod + Arcana. It's not a bug in HLO. The problem is in your Pathbuilder, you selected Society twice: once from his Wizard skills and once from Skilled Heritage. I don't know why PB didn't flag it. I clicked on the red T at level 1, and now PB says his wizard skills are one short, but the T is still red. :-)
Bastard Sword? My first thought would have been Short Sword, but okay. What about his staff? What does he do with it when he wants to use the sword? Drop it on the ground, I guess. Or use the sword one-handed and hold the staff in his off hand. Hm. Can he cast spells with the staff while wielding the sword?
There can't be two!Sure there can. You're thinking of kings, not princes. Or sword-wielding immortals. :-)
Okay, I've updated my Pathbuilder build for Eibon as best I can. What's missing is Pathfinder Agent Dedication at level 6, which at that level would give him Trained in Pathfinder Lore and expert in Society. The downside to missing those things is that Leverage Connections at level 15 throws an error. BTW, this build goes all the way to 20. Crap. It's late, I'm tired, and I screwed up. Eibon can't take Pathfinder Agent Dedication at level six because he needs a 2nd Cleric Dedication Feat first, and the ones on his list are already at the minimum level for them (Divine Breadth at 8, Expert Cleric Spellcasting at 12, Master Cleric Spellcasting at 18. His non-dedication Feats are also at their minimum level, so I can't move any of them down. So he's either got to give up on Pathfinder, or give up one of his other higher than level 6 class feats. I think. Heck with it, I'm going to bed.
He needs a level 17 Ancestry Feat (unless I missed something). I'd recommend Shadow Pact. What do you think? He needs a level 19 General Feat. Candidates: Diehard, Fast Recovery, Feather Step, Fleet, Toughness, or Ancestral Paragon, though I don't know which Ancestry Feat I'd take. Any ideas?
That Spell Value SS is awesome. Thanks for that. :-) Nice narrative on Reveal Machinations. I like it! Yes, the Pathfinder Dedication fixes the skill increase problem -- but I couldn't fit the dedication in until Level 10. Is that what you found? I don't see Pathfinder Agent Dedication in Pathbuilder. :-( Is there a way to add it manually?
Eibon at level 10: Eibon Ruiz 10
Spellbook 1 contains 100 spells. Spellbook 2 contains 72 spells.
At Level 5, Eibon's Spellbook 1 contains 18 Cantrips, 9 first rank spells, 5 second rank spells, and 3 third rank spells.
And at level 5, he looks like this (RD's version may be different, we'll see :-)): Eibon Ruiz 05
Okay, here we go. Eibon Ruiz Remastered, at level 1: Eibon Ruiz 01
Glyph of Warding is a legacy Hazard item from several APs. Looking at it in AoN there's no link to a Remastered version, but poking around I found Rune Trap, a Rank 3 Ritual that seems to be functionally identical. Rune Trap links back to the legacy Glyph of Warding entry. On another note, Eibon's Wizard School was Necromancy. Going by the focus spell and its Remastered equivalent the corresponding Remastered school would be the School of Protean Form, which seems to me more about fleshwarping then Necromancy per se. Originally trying to Remaster the character I switched his School to School of the Boundary, which via the focus spell corresponds roughly to Conjuration. Which school makes more sense for this character? I think I now have a fairly complete list of all the magical stuff associated with Remastering this character. Anyone interested (RD?) drop me a note if you want it.
I don't suppose it makes a lot of difference but according to AoN, Clear Mind replaced Remove Fear and Sound Body replaced Restore Senses. If you look up Restoration it shows as a legacy spell with no link to a Remastered replacement. Maybe AoN is wrong. <shrug>
3. One spell I looked for doesn't have a "Remastered" equivalent. I don't remember which one. It was Restoration (Spell 2). I also found that the Legacy True Staff of Healing has 3 rank 6 and 3 rank 7 spells, while the Remastered version has 3 rank 6 but only 1 rank 7. :-(
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