Jason C Scott's page

I like the generalist as it is. It is versatile and with the changes made to the wish spells all of it's special abilities work well asn seem balanced to me.

I agree 100%, I would need one less house rule in my games.

There is a common theme in most broken rules/spells etc. They often have the words immunity, always or no save in them.

If we replace immunity to elemental damage with a high resistance bonus say 200 or so and replace other immunities with a save to negate with a large bonus to the saving throw. The simplest way to do this would be to change the definition of immunity in pathfinder.

If we look for instances with always and alter them so that they are opposed rolls with bonuses things become less broken.

A quick fix for spells with no saving throws would be to alter the definition of no-save to have it reflect a save allowed at a +10/15 or 20 to the DC. This would allow classic spells that have no saving throw and are not currently problematic to function closer to the way they were intended and mitigate some of the damage the problematic spells do.

None of these suggestions solve all of the problems we are seeing but I think they are a step in the right direction and would be somewhat easier than altering the text of all spells in the game.

Ideally we would do both, clean up the problematic spells in pathfinder and get our house in order and then alter the definitions so that other problematic spells introduced from elsewhere are less disruptive. Living in an OGL world we have to worry about what problems new materials can introduce.

I have to agree as well it was a good change to remove exp from magic item creation.

I have to agree with that. The leave on valuables behind approach to dungeon delving is helped out quite a bit by a mule team of skellitons. I had a lot of fun pulling out all of the elaborate furnishings etc from return to the temple of elemental evil. Those cultists sure knew how to live.

I liked the 3.0 durations on the buff spells. I find the utility of spells that last only a round per level to be severely reduced. I have not heard a good explanation as to why this change was made in 3.5. All I heard was second hand and the explanations were so irrational I assumed they were false.

I have tried several fixes for this in my games but have never came up with an ideal solution. Adding metamagic feats that increased the duration of spells by one category instead of simply doubling them proved helpful but it were not perfect. Casting spells as a ritual so that they took longer to cast but had longer durations proved to be cumbersome.

I would be interested in hearing about others attempts to deal with this issue in their games.

I like the fact that the exp cost for item creation was removed. I was doing a similar type of thing in my games but at a cost of taking 4x as long to create an item. That way it was at least possible for NPC non adventuring types to create magic items.

If my players want to play an a mercantile game I would certainly let them. It is their game after all. As long as everyone is having fun it is alright by me. By allowing items to be created "on the road" though slowly the new rules allow my item crafting players to create their items without demanding additional downtime from the rest of the players.

Playability is improved, player freedom is enhanced and the world is more realistic with the new rule set. I like the change.

I am always in favor of a change that removes immunities and grants a bonus to saves instead so in that regard I think that change to mind blank was a good one.

Divination mechanics could be cleaned up a great deal if we took the time and make them opposed checks between casters or allow saving throws vs all effects. Then divination and obscurement spells would grant bonuses and penalties to these checks and saving throws vs spells of their spell level or lower. Throwing around the words immunity and naming specific spells countered and not countered is not productive in the long term. In a world where new spells and abilities are constantly being added to the system these changes could save a lot of headaches. I would be quite surprised if the final release of pathfinder did not incorporate these kinds of changes.

As far as mind blank vs protection from evil go mind blank has a 24 hour duration making it useful as a daily protection spell. With protection from evils relatively short duration no one will have it always active and in place unless the power is granted by a magic item.

I agree that the spell had to be changed from it's 3.5 version and I like the idea of a longer duration on it's effects, I think a day per caster level is reasonable.

I would prefer saving throws and opposed caster level checks to be used as mechanics rather than a flat % die roll. I would like to see that for all spells not just this one.

It is my hope that artifacts will no longer be in a separate class from regular items and simply have higher caster levels listed in their stat blocks. I do realize that this is not going to happen any time soon due to the number of artifacts floating around.

Hello Eric

Here is how I have always interpreted the 3.5 rules and I think I am literally correct. For your belt as it takes up a slot you can ignore the Multiple Similar abilities portion of the 3.5 rules text completely. That should clarify things a great deal. In my opinion that rule will go the way of the dodo anyway when the final rules come out.

As far as the text vs the table goes I have always gone with 2x cost rather than +50%. I de-constructed a few items and they seem to follow this pattern.

I will be spamming the boards with what changes I think should be made to the item creation rules and I look forward to your feedback.

I have to agree that the cost reductions should go.

In my opinion the universe does not and should not care what class, race or moral code you follow.

I also believe in symmetry and by that I mean GM created and player created items should follow the same rules. Going to two sets of rules would add needless complexity.

I think the only reason we still see those cost reductions is because they already existed in 3.5. If the community does not express a clear bias towards keeping them in I think they will be gone in the final edit.

I think removing the spell was the right thing to do. Adding a new spell based on the feedback here seems more productive and less confusing to new players than altering an existing spell. I think that most would agree that the spell as written was problematic.

I do not think this ability is broken. It basically ties up the caster for a full round and he makes one attack. In a typical adventuring day it is not unusual for there to be 16 rounds of combat. It is quite a while before a caster has 16 useful spells ready to cast per day.

As far as damage goes this will start behind or rapidly fall behind the damage available to the martial classes who have no limit on the number of effective attacks they can make per day. The text states you add BAB to the damage and I would use it as written.

For the first few levels where a caster has very few spells this ability is quite a boost later on it becomes irrelevant due to the fact that it falls far behind the effectiveness of other available actions. It was needed at lower levels due to the fact that not all of a casters spells are useful in every encounter and at low levels we are looking at only 1 or 2 spells in a day where 4 or more encounters is the norm. When combat last 4 or more rounds per encounter that is a lot of time when the casters are idle or being quite ineffective due to their poor BAB and bias towards mental ability scores.

You have to encounter these undead and successfully command them, not really that easy at second level. I have to also agree that they are not terribly useful. I do not feel that the ability is worth being a level behind on spellcasting in either class.

Retaining them in your service for any reasonable length of time may create some interesting challenges. What effect does retaining a number of undead have on the area? Do they actually emit negative energy? Over a long time what effect would that have on an area? Would this attract other undead? Are there legal and or moral complications if they are discovered?

I agree with the save DC scaling by +1 per 5 damage over the massive damage threshold.

One thing to consider is that if an evoker loads all evocation spells on a given day he has a good chance of making every spell count in every combat encounter. The same thing can not be said for all the other schools.

I like the new wish.
Material components make more sense to me than exp.

Having to reduce an ability score is a good price to pay for raising another.

Given the spell no longer can create magic items or gold out of nothing it is far less problematic as a SLA.

The only thing I would like to see changed is the text stating that it is the most powerful spell a wizard can cast, someday it might not be.