Empress's page

Which I agree with, for abilities that state a level and what replaces them and do not say it is optional. Which is not the case for the Vivisectionist's Bleeding Attack.

Bleeding Attack
A vivisectionist may select the bleeding attack rogue talent in place of a discovery.

But you can carry on reading it as you wish, I am done wasting time on this discussion.

So every Vivisectionist has the Bleeding Attack Class Feature and any stacking consequences that it creates. It doesn't matter whether or not they use that Class Feature to select the Bleeding Attack Rogue Talent.

No they don't. Every Vivisectionist has the ability to replace a Discovery with Bleeding Attack or ignore it altogether.

Another thing of note Empress is that there are no duplicate or conflicting FAQ. If you think two FAQ conflict, adjust your interpretation.

What two conflicting faqs are you referring to? Please reread my posts and point out to me which two faqs I thought conflicted. I asked you for a reference in regards to your claim about what the Devs said and I am open for it. Until then, please do not try to deflect it into another direction.

Yeah, I can't really take that one to back your statement that the Devs said the Qinggong Monk is a special case as he doesn't mention it and is talking about using feats to gain Archetype abilities.

Devs have also said it’s a special case and not to apply it to other stacking questions.

Do you have a Source? Would be interested in having a look at that.

The more people say that the Qinggong Monk is a special case the more I believe they say that because a faq exists for it. If it didn't people would stop calling it special and say that it cannot stack either.

Qinggong Monk is a unique case because you you get to choose how features are replaced. I have re-read the Vivisectionist and Dimensional Excavator descriptions and, despite your comments, neither states that parts of the archetypes are optional.

The table Class Features Changed or Replaced on the SRD have the Vivisectionist's Discoveries listed as (X). Unless they made a huge mistake when typing it there.

"Bleeding Attack

A vivisectionist may select the bleeding attack rogue talent in place of a discovery."

He may select the rogue talent or take the discovery, that is clearly optional. Therefore I'd still allow it in my games but the character would not be able to benefit from the bleeding attack feature.

Depends on your GM. The Qinggong Monk archetype's FAQ for instance touches on the subject of optional replacements.

"Can a qinggong monk take a second archetype if the character doesn’t swap out abilities the second archetype requires?

Yes. However, the other archetype takes priority over the various abilities granted at each level, and the character can’t delay taking an ability that the other archetype replaces—he must allow the second archetype to replace the standard ability at the standard class level."

Given that the features shared between the Vivisectionist and Dimensional Excavator are marked (X)=optional replacement for the Vivisectionist I'd allow them to be combined with the Dimensional Excavator taking precedence.

The official rules are very clear. Many spells have a cap on their effects. Unless something specifically says it changes the cap, the cap remains. You are very unlikely to get any sort of official response or FAQ, and if you do it would likely be "No reply needed".

And as many times as I've seen people repeating incorrect information despite being shown multiple times that they are wrong, redundancy in a thread is not a problem. What you wish would happen doesn't matter. I wish people would actually make their own decisions/rulings instead of running to the message boards for every little problem. But that isn't likely to stop any time soon.

And I have, Jeraa. If you kindly refer to my first post I did not ask for a new but rather if someone knew of one they could refer me to.

Empress wrote:

Hm, no. I understand that. It just seems unfair that the investment "goes to waste" after a certain level as Spell Specialization is but one option a caster get when it comes to the increase to caster level.

Signature Spell comes to mind and I am sure many others are out there. Does the trait really becomes obsolete apart from a +1 to caster level checks to overcome spell resistance? It really shouldn't.

Spell Specialization can be moved to a different spell every level, so it never goes to waste even if you take it early, as you can always move it to the next big blast spell. Additionally, Signature Spell can be applied to spells other than those with damage caps and you can pick ahead of time what spell you want to apply it too. A +1 can mean quite a bit depending on the spell it is applied to, outside of just damage (Army out of Time comes to mind, which makes unbelievably powerful use out of caster level) and some damage spells have infinite scaling (such as boneshaker). Others are very powerful the quicker they obtain their caster level maximums, like Shocking Grasp, Scorching Ray and Magic Missile. Classes that make the most of this usually try and rush caster levels to get the maximum benefit quicker than normal.

Additionally, consider that Burning Hands is a 1st level spell, and the fact that it’s maximums exist to ensure that it isn’t the best blast spell in the game. If the spell had the ease of breaking it’s scaling, you’d see it paired with all the metamagics you would want to throw onto it as your spellcaster gained levels with damage numbers rivalling higher powered blast spells at considerably lower cost. Empowered, Intensified, Maximizied, Quickened, Dazing. These can be easily added to Burning Hands thanks to its low spell level, and while it is lower and therefore more easily saved against, Reflex is one of the lowest saves on average, so even Burning Hands can reliably land the stun going into the higher levels. You should always be moving onto the next big...

Thank you for your post Waifu, this is much more in line with what I was hoping to get by posting here.

All in all I'm still going to allow traits/feats to break the cap in my games.

I’m not sure you’ll find a FAQ that explicitly states what you’re looking for. It seems like you might be misinterpreting the spell description.

When it says “(maximum 5d4)”, that doesn’t mean the caster level is limited to 5th, rather that the damage ceases to scale higher than 5d4, regardless of how high your caster level gets.

When Wizard B casts burning hands, he does so at CL 7, but still only doing 5d4, just like a 7th level wizard would. A 20th level wizard casts burning hands at caster level 20, by still only ever does 5d4 damage.

There’s a feat that explicitly increases the damage cap of spells, Intensified Spell. Note how it treats damage caps and caster level as distinct concepts.

Hm, no. I understand that. It just seems unfair that the investment "goes to waste" after a certain level as Spell Specialization is but one option a caster get when it comes to the increase to caster level.

Signature Spell comes to mind and I am sure many others are out there. Does the trait really becomes obsolete apart from a +1 to caster level checks to overcome spell resistance? It really shouldn't.

Ok, so this came up. Given the following scenario:
Wizard A is your average level 5 schmuck the can cast Burning Hands.
Wizard B is also level 5 and took Spell Specialization Burning Hands.

Wizard A casts Burning Hands for 5d4 in a 15ft cone.

Can anyone point me to an FAQ that explicitly states that Wizard B does not cast his Burning Hands at 7d4 in a 15ft cone?

I am willing to give the player the ability to keep the damage slightly above the by RAW cap due to the feat investment, just wanted to know if there is an actual ruling on the matter.

Kindly keep "your two cents" to yourselves as I am mainly interested in official rules.

Thanks for the replies, guys.
The Drawback is a consideration to a potential BBEG I am designing as the group is part of an organization and follow the same religion.
I might just add a Scroching Ray to his arsenal.

As per the Drawback:
"You are fanatical in your beliefs, ruled by emotion over reason. When you attack a creature that you know worships a different religion than you do, you take a –5 penalty on the attack roll and a +2 trait bonus on the damage roll with your first attack."

1)What happens if this first attack is a spell?
2)What if this spell deals damage but does not require an attack roll, such as a Fireball?