Mendeth's page

My halfling in full plate spends about 1 second of a full round of movement to go through that wall, yielding 50% chance to materialize, whereas my lvl 20 human monk who's put every feat into fleet feet and run, with an active expeditious retreat and blink who runs through a wall will spend only about 0.0375 seconds per 5 foot square. If the chances of materializing for these two characters by RAW are the same for each 5 foot barrier, I will argue that blink is indeed going extremely fast, but is somehow sensitive to barriers or material things occupying the same space as the character.

However. Ready actions are on a completely different time scope. If you line up a line of npcs from here to the end of the universe, and get everyone to ready actions, you can break the speed of light many times over in terms of propagating information. Not only that, but the information will be at the end of the universe the split second before it was sent. This is a truly amazing power, and the 0.0375 seconds of blinking (or less for that blinking cloud giant monk) is still a lot more time than it takes to do a ready action.

A paralyzed character has effective Dexterity and Strength scores of 0 and is helpless, but can take purely mental actions.

Strength of 0 has a carrying capacity of 0.

He is automatically overloaded, and cannot move.

Fly has carry capacity limits based on Str.

The subject of a fly spell can charge but not run, and it cannot carry aloft more weight than its maximum load, plus any armor it wears.

Additionally, Fly skill is Dex based. Your effective Dex is 0. You cannot use this skill while paralyzed.

The one about strength and carrying capacity seemed to be a nail in the coffin, but I can't find anything to back up the 0 strength score. On paralysis it says the character will be helpless, whereas helpless grants 0 dex. As the strength isn't affected, you'll be no more at overload under a paralysis effect, and I agree with the proponents of fly being a mental action.

I'm imagining a helpless log floating around, crashing into walls whenever he fails fly checks.

Oh, good call, I left out an important part. "A witch can only have one enrich in effect at a time. If another enrich hex is made, the first immediately ends.", just like the blight hex.

I think I'm going to have a closer look on the druid spell list for inspiration to spells for research.

Mendeth wrote:

VRMH wrote:

Maybe your witch needs to research a new spell: Rain of Manure

Rain of Manure:

...

This is... actually a really good homebrew. Nice.

Thanks!

@Corvino:
This is nice input to build upon! The bones of my fallen enemies don't account for that much yet, though, but it's a nice thought that if any enemy ever needs killing, I can hide the body and use it for good at the same time.

@WendyWitch:
You're right. Creation spells with duration goes away afterwards. That takes Ash Storm and Volcanic Storm off the table, I guess. I like the idea of hexes doing the job, so how about (copypaste from Blight, making a few changes):

Enrich (Su): The witch can bless an animal, plant creature, or plot of land, causing it to beam with life. Enriching an area takes 1 round, during which time the witch and her familiar must be in contact with the target. If it's used on a plot of land, the land comes to life the following day, and over the next week all plants in the area grow, at least enough to bear fruit. Anything will grow in that area so long as the curse persists. A witch can affect an area with a radius equal to her class level × 10 feet. Enriching a creature is a standard action that requires a melee touch attack. If used on a creature of the animal or plant type, the creature gains a +4 bonus on saving throws against poisons and diseases. Remove curse will break both forms of the hex, and the DC for the spell equals the DC of the hex.

Is it too good? Breaking with the spirit of the Witch?
I've seen the goodberry tree hex before, and thought it seemed weak and slow, as my healing hex heals way more hp per day. However, goodberries works as meals, so with this hex I could easily feed a large team of workers. It would be a really cool blessing for my favourite village, but as only one tree at a time can be used at a time, that is an expensive boon.

Yeah, Animate Dead could be swell, and only slightly disturbing for bypassers. The witch doesn't get it except through patrons, but my teammates may get it. It's not entirely clear from the spell what types of tasks they can be set to, but if the DM allows for an undead workforce, we may have a cheap castle in a couple of years.

One of the world's best fertilizers is bat guano. Summon Swarm's duration is concentration + 2 rounds. That could be all day if you want. Take care of any unwanted pests in the area then let them trail behind you like a kite. :)

This one sounds very cool. Just walk in circles around the places to fertilize, making sure everyone else stays far away. Are there any similar mechanism for frog-eaters? Rain of Frogs is just a cooler spell than summon swarm, and I just dinged lvl 6, so I may take that, at least if I can use it to fertilize some soil. The Internet says big birds eat frogs. Could be done, I guess, at least if my raven familiar flys around in a level telling birds about the frog feast.

Or go on a quest to honor the gods of farming or appease the gods of famine. I presume that there are companions involved as well?

My witch is still an agnostic, meaning he prays at different shrines but follows no main god. There is indeed a party, two sorcerers, a ranger, and an oracle of bones. We just staged a jesus/"true prophet" moment for our oracle to the god of death and fate, but we're not getting holy quests through him yet. The ranger is going to get some neat spells in some time (we just dinged lvl 6, he gets plant growth at level 10), and he has a holy artifact to a goddess of nature with mysterious and unknown powers. I don't know where she stands on farming, but at some point, maybe we can use that artifact for some terraforming.

Maybe your witch needs to research a new spell: Rain of Manure.

This is a very cool idea. How's this?

"""
Rain of Manure
School: Conjuration (creation) (or maybe summoning or calling); level 3 Witch
Casting Time: 10 minutes
Components: V, S, M(the fresh blood of a domestic animal, fresh manure from said animal, a rock from the ground to be covered)
Range: long(400 ft. + 40 ft./lvl)
Area: cylinder(40-ft. radius, 20-ft. high)
Duration: instantaneous
Saving Throw: none, see text; Spell Resistance: no

During a ritual sacrifice of a domestic animal using a local mineral, manure of the kind of animal sacrificed rains from the sky and hits the ground, making the ground muddy (see environment section of CRB). The depth of the mud depends on the sacrificed animal (chicken: 2 inches, dog: 6 inches, pig: 1 foot, to a maximum of cow: 2 feet). During a sunny day, the mud will solidify, making for fertile soil. The spell is dispersed by wind effects. A moderate wind will spread the manure half as thick over the double area, but manure thinner than 2 inches will disperse and get lost.
"""

This is not a spell for combat, nor is it a spell that can be cast as much as one wants, and the locals will fear the whole thing. It plays into the witch portfolio (I'm thinking pentagrams and goat sacrifices here). I may have overdone the cons, but I think it's important to make sure low level creation spells don't get abused. This one can still be used to cover a small town with s@!@, but I'm not sure that the area is big enough for proper fields. I just used the area from sleet storm and ash storm as a model. Let me know what you think.

That could be a way to go, although it seems improved eldritch heritage requires 15 cha. My witch has 11 cha, so it's not really an option, but that's still an interesting way to go.

I agree that knowledge nature should find mundane ways to do this, but it's still limited to me and my GM's imagination. We have already agreed that I can apply knowledge nature to the weather control major hex to terraform and promote growth, but my character just reached level 6, so this isn't going to happen for a while.

For the manual labour part, I may actually only need one person who's a trained farmer. From the profession skill, he can direct people to do work, and so with mounts and unseen servants, at least some of the manpower needed for plowing and sowing is present. Still, it could be easier to just hire some workers.

I'm playing a witch in a campaign setting where the area I'm in is poor and barren, good soil is sparse and I want to help out. Witches have famously a lot of rot and curse-potential, but they are powerful spellcasters and among their spells I'm sure there are options to enrich the land.

One such spell is Ash Storm. It happens to be a conjuration(creation) spell, meaning the cinder and ash raining down will stay on the ground afterwards. Cinder is a valid media for plant growth and ash is a decent fertilizer, so I think repeated use of this spell and some manual labour can convert a rocky area into a usable crop field.

Any other suggestions? Mundane means are also welcome.

I have always played with recognition of a spell component to make a spellcraft check, and if there is none, you'll need arcane sight or detect magic.

From RAW, the spell is what's needed to be seen clearly, and the visual effects of spells as they are being cast are not in the rules, so the only general way to be able to make that spellcraft check is by being able to somehow see magic. Other visual effects include obvious visual effects like magic missile or fireballs ("I rolled a 20! That explosion was indeed a fireball!"), but these apply after the spell has been cast, not during the casting.

I'm wondering how this is in terms of AoOs from the invisible Bob. When Alice tries to enter his square, she tries to leave her own which borders his. I think he should get an AoO from that, whether Alice ends up in his square or is prevented from entering it.

Also, while this auto detect method is cheesy, I think it's wrong if the invisible person should get a free nondetection pass for anyone going through his square without using improved overrun. In the non-cheesy scenario where Alice is fighting the invisible Bob and the monster Charlie, she tries to withdraw from Charlie, but moves without knowing it into the square of bob. Without the cheese on the platter, no one I play with would argue Bob should by default unnoticed allow Alice through.

So can Bob choose when he wants to block people and when he wants to sidestep?

Anyway, the no-go-thing in any scheme would be for Alice to end up in the same square as Bob.

So it is established that with alter self I can become an actual (venerable female) goblin, no disguise involved? And that I then can make a disguise on top of that, getting me the "minor changes only" bonus?

The new question in that case is where the +10 from alter self being a polymorph spell comes in. If I use alter self and disguise (possibly threefold aspect) to become a particular venerable female goblin, do the +10s stack? Do I simply ignore the penalties due to the transmutations? Must I choose between the +5 for minor changes only and the +10 from alter self, or does one trumph the other? Maybe if you alter yourself to become a generic venerable female goblin, and then use disguise self to look like a particular such, then you will be a similar goblin already and the minor changes only will apply?

I don't think RAW is clear on this, so I want to hear your opinions and rulings. It would be ok if alter self only gave a flat +10 bonus, no penalty discarded, as even though you physically become a goblin, you don't necessarily know how to walk or talk like one. But I'm not sure why it should be more difficult to look like a goblin than to look like a dwarf or and elf if the physical part is already done so I opt more for removing certain disguise penalties.

Also, I'm not sure if alter self can actually make you old, or just look like old. There should be stat changes with that, just like the size.

So what you're saying is that if I use alter self from a human to a goblin, without being trained in disguise (+10 from alter self, -2 from different race -8 for different size, total +0), at least half of everyone I meet should be able to recognize that I am not in fact a goblin?

Ok, I didn't remember the rules of transmutation spells, so thanks for that, a flat +10 bonus is nice to know when becoming a specific person.

I think however as SlimGauge that alter self should negate most penalties, as you can use disguise to appear as a generic member of a race, and it seems alter self does this perfectly for you. If you alter self from medium human to small goblin, you now are a goblin in all physical aspects except for special attacks and abilities. Thus, I wonder, if I alter self to a young male goblin with large ears, and I want to disguise myself as a specific goblin with large ears, won't I get the +5 for "minor changes only"?

If threefold aspect can remove some penalties, I think alter self should be able to do that also, although it would be easier to just handle the +10 bonus.

Disguise self is as far as I can see an effect that basically gives a +10 bonus on a disguise check, as well as cuts the time to make the disguise, while allowing for disbelief when interacted with. When making a disguise check, there is a table of modifiers ranging from "minor changes only" to "Disguised as different size category".

How do these modifiers apply when using Disguise self? Are they neglected, or is it as difficult to create an illusory disguise of an old man as it is to get into a costume and doing the right make up?

As for Alter Self (or threefold aspect), can you make yourself to a perfect look alike ("perfect" on disguise check), or just into a similar creature so you get the "minor changes only" bonus?

Mendeth wrote:

This method may not pick up Ghoul Touch, which paralyzes humanoid target on touch without save, but then sickens everyone in a 10 ft radius (fort. negates). In many ways a better spell than hold person, try it with spectral hand and true strike for any humanoid boss.

That's because ghoul touch has a fort save to negate.

Thanks, I checked it and that's the concensus, it seems, and I agree. The last time I used it I thought the save was only referring to the stench. I can't believe I got to use that combo to ruin a long term boss with it in 3.5, the reading is the same there, and my rules-savvy DM even pitched it to a forum when we did it. It always felt too OP. Still better than Hold Person, though, as it doesn't allow for more saves, but not fit for this thread.

Oh, wow, didn't realize the thread had been dead. I'm trying to stop playing with dead things, but unless one can sniff the rot it's not always easy to know, you know.

Next time, throw out Evil Eye first.

Sadly, vampires are immune to mind affecting stuff. I would have weakened my "friendly" PC first, but he already held me in a hold person and was readying his greataxe for a coup de grace, so I didn't really have that extra turn. He broke free from domination before the coup, though, so we were better off without it.

Miners. Equip this squad with pickaxes, and they will carve your group new ways through dungeons.

Train them in music, and they may become the background choir heralding you wherever you go.

What kind of people does your rogue inspire? What will they do for him? Maybe they believe the Messiah has cometh, and they need to travel around to spread the word, or maybe they're a bunch of lazy bums following you in hopes for free beer.

This method may not pick up Ghoul Touch, which paralyzes humanoid target on touch without save, but then sickens everyone in a 10 ft radius (fort. negates). In many ways a better spell than hold person, try it with spectral hand and true strike for any humanoid boss.

Just played my witch through a vampire encounter.
How it went: Misfortune (1st vampire, save success), 5-foot-step. Misfortune (2nd vampire, save success), 5-foot-step. Slumber (Friendly Dominated PC, save success). Misfortune (last vampire, save failed), Cackle!

How it looked: He simply walked two steps in the middle of the combat, waiting a short time before throwing his head back in laughter.

I'm gonna get him Ability Focus: Misfortune soon.

I love encumbrance, because as a player it makes me be more creative. I play a 14 str fighter (going for duelist) who really can't carry much more than his 12-14 weapons and his agile breastplate. How to solve this? i got a wagon, and bought a horse to drive it. We're playing in a low magic campaign, so at one point we had several thousand gp, but very little magical stuff to buy, so I filled this wagon with all the stuff I never could carry, such as ladders, ropes, pickaxes, hammers, nails, waterskins, food, anvils, etc. I love having all that and being creative with it, and I would never reasonably be carrying two anvils around without it, encumbrance rules or not.

All this intelligent item talk makes me think of Munchkins' "Two-Handed Sword".

My problem with both profession and crafting is the high level output. For crafting, making valuable stuff takes forever without fabricate, however epic your bonus is, and a 60 on a professsion roll for money gains your PC 30 gp a week. This is four times what a lvl 1 farmer can earn, which means that if you're an epic farmer, you can handle twice the area of land, and harvest a double amount of crops per season. In both cases, it's nothing compared to what a mid-level spell caster can generate, both in terms of items and food.

The arguments of the other aspects of profession are nice, though, and I like it for RP.

Also, their main listed attack is with daggers. Doesn't that imply it has hands to wield a wand?

Nice ones, thanks!

Of course, the way Gabriel Fox knows that song, Ragnar is both presented in a more flattering way, and victorious as well, but the original Skyrim version is probably sung other places, except with pther place names.

I'm playing Gabriel Fox, a fighter who is about to become a duelist. He's an intelligent CG braggart, and has invested heavily in bluff and sleight of hand (even skill focus bluff), as they seem to him to be good ways to help his otherwise bad luck.

Gabriel has an idol, a legendary hero called Ragnar the Red. Ragnar the Red was the mythical hero wielding the luckblade, and underneath his shirt he wore the celestial armor. He was friends with unicorns, and bested a red dragon in battle once, at least following the fairy tales my character knows. Thus, since the luck blade made Ragnar the Red more lucky, my PC is adventuring in a grand quest to find it for himself, trying to follow Ragnar's footprints.

So far, those footprints are few, and I would really want more stories to be able to tell about my idol, and thus I turn to you. In the campaign setting we're playing, most peoples have their own versions of the myths of Ragnar the Red, and arcane magic is outlawed, so no one really knows much about the luck blade. Thus he's an axe-wielding dwarf fighter, a rapier wielding swashbuckling human, or maybe a halfling rogue/duelist, "the Red" originating from maybe the blood on his blade, his red beard, his cloak or something competely different.

That's why I would like to hear the stories of your non-magic-wielding CG characters' great deeds, for flavor and inspiration to both me and my GM. Did they have great cohorts or allies? Did they go on epic quests for their awesome gear? Share your story! :D

Thanks for clarifications on AoO and cover.

The NPC class adept casts archetypical wizard spells like burning hands, mirror image and baleful polymorph as divine spells, preparing them like a cleric with access to her entire list.

Imo, the evil eye should be visible, it looks like the witch is angry with you, her eyes look very angry, scary or evil. That being said, there's no need for the target to look at the witch, but if he so did, I presume it would feel similar to being the target of a non-verbal intimidate, with only a bit different results.

Taking feat => get new hex => make new hex a major hex.
That's how I read the mechanics of it. As the feat says you can take any hex you meet prerequisite of, and most if not all of the prerequisite hexes are major.

Creatures, even your enemies, can provide you with cover against ranged attacks, giving you a +4 bonus to AC.

I had to look up the part where you don't get AoO against enemies with cover, but all I could find in the AoO-section of core is that you threaten any square you can make a melee attack against. I have heard of the cover rule before, though (even played with it), so if there's something I've missed, please enlighten me.

Threatened Squares: You threaten all squares into which you can make a melee attack, even when it is not your turn. Generally, that means everything in all squares adjacent to your space (including diagonally). An enemy that takes certain actions while in a threatened square provokes an attack of opportunity from you. If you're unarmed, you don't normally threaten any squares and thus can't make attacks of opportunity.

To contribute, when making the attack in a spring attack, you can actually share the space of an ally, even if you're both medium, as long as you end your movement in a free square.

This is that cheap ability you use to get the low level guard to open the gate, or to attack those other guards for you. The enchanter will keep using charm monster for the good ones, but now he has a cheap ability for small requests or charms, all day long. This way, it is a charm monster that doesn't let you capture the monster. You can use it over again on the same dude, so there really are some options there, although I agree it is not OP.

Unfortunately, "Using a whip provokes an attack of opportunity, just as if you had used a ranged weapon." You'd probably blow your parry on the unnecessary AoO, anyway.

Ah, that's a very good point. Normal reach weapons it is, then, if there's someone out there you can opt not to hit. Sadly, Whirlwind attack specifies only opponents as legal targets, so this won't be used on your allies who are flanking the bad guy.

This is a decent argument for home-ruling the parry ability. However, like any home rule, it's totally up the GM.

I also think trying to come up with a reasonable home rule is a different thought experiment than trying to get the majority of GMs to agree with a particular reading of the rules, RAW or RAI.

There are indeed a lot of ways to house rule this better, but what I'm really advocating is getting an official patch from the paizo team, but I have no idea how that will happen. Actually, I'm really just venting my frustration over this blatant lack of communication between the makers of crane style and the makers of parry, and I think RAI is a difficult task here, as it seems the intention was to make Parry almost worthless. :)

Yeah, but this is a fighter, not a barbarian. You gain the Rage class feature, you do not gain the barbarian alignment restrictions along with them, the same way you don't get trap sense and uncanny dodge.

I see.

One way to make that parry a better deal would be to make it an attack of opportunity, where the riposte is a part of it (meaning you don't spend two AoO to parry and riposte). This means you can't parry while flat footed (i.e. Against traps you haven't noticed), and it lets you use the acrobaticness of the duelist. Another simple option would be to make it similar to crane style. In duels, boosting AC to the point where the opponent needs a natural 20 to hit where the opposite is not the case will set the duelist up for winning, and not having to choose between fighting defensively and parrying would be very nice.

One would think they would change the duelist's parry after introducing crane style; a feat tree that lets you auto-parry, with all your other attacks intact, which you even can use together with cool duelist things like spring attack or acrobatic charge. One difference being that the duelist has to trade attacks for parries, they should at least be able to trade in more of them.

The best cheesing I can come up with is to forgo one of the attacks during a whirlwind attack, that way if you're fighting one big bad guy and a bunch of mooks, you can skip hitting one of them, and still get both a normal attack and a parry on the badass. Carry whips and use quick draw to in some cases get this parry while hitting everyone surrounding you (rapier to off hand, draw whip, forgo unproficient attack on enemy with cover, 15 ft away, drop whip, change hands on rapier again, continue with a normal whirlwind attack). You may even get this done with the whip in your off hand, as it's not actually attacking.

About RAI, the ones who wrote the parry ability obviously intended that the duelist should be in melee combat for it to work, but as it has not been updated after crane style, it seems like one of its strengths should be to deflect ranged touch attacks as well. RAW, that means if the duelist full attacks his ally, skipping an attack for parry, ending the full attack and using a move action, he will be able to parry that ranged touch attack, having, in effect, just used a standard action to set it up. Or he could just "attack the darkness". This is a ridiculous notion when all you're really doing is nothing, showing that there are a lot of loops to get that parry outside of melee anyway, the most effective on being to simply ignore the duelist parry and go crane style. This should be fixed.

No, it says so under ex-barbarians, you'll lose the ability to rage if you become lawful.

As I said, I don't think it's OP, it's just less fun. A boss using it is a fun possibly but not necessarily a challenging encounter, but if it's common, it takes the fun out of feat trees like vital strike. Giving an instant "+20 on Ac, natural 20 not autohit" on one attack per round still gives you the same effect, but still renders you defenseless against truly epic characters. Or add your attack bonus to ac or twice your level or whatever high number. Any effect like this should in my opinion allow for a d20.

I would be very sad if I got a true strike and a fortune hex on my Greater Vital strike, I throw a natural twenty for 60+ attack roll, and then the potential crit just fizzles because of the melee attack immunity of this lvl 5 monk. It does not make sense to me, and I don't think it fits the style of the pathfinder system, I think it's broken, but for most general use not over powered.

I don't see it as OP on a PC at all, but it doesn't fit that well with how I view the pathfinder metaverse. I really enjoy it being a system where NPCs strictly speaking have almost the same options as PCs, and if our group meets a group of fighters where everyone can deflect a melee attack per round, and maybe even one ranged, it's really no fun playing the fighter or barbarian of our group. They can focus fire casters, we can focus fire one at a time, but if it ends in a draw, with a low level hard melee hitter vs the low level deflect arrow and crane stylist, the rest of the fight is not even up to the dice. A major deity of swordplay still misses on that one attack. I don't like that. The same goes for deflect arrows, but I have never seen it used. When Corellon Larethian fires his bow of awesome on a level 2 monk, he hits. What I'm saying, I guess, is that there should really be a way of overcoming it, although on the other hand, in the universe where every fighter and monk has this, I guess feint finally becomes useful.

I also felt crane style was OP when I first saw it, because I compared it to the similar parry-ability of the duelist PrC. Crane style does pretty much the same, but without skipping your attack, and without rolling. I think they should both be similar and made as an attack of opportunity to counter the attack (and with riposte follow through with the same AoO, or maybe roll again to hit against AC).

So here's a possible mechanical explanation (as I see it) to why a wizard who can scribe a scroll into her spellbook can't cast it from the scroll.

Scrolls are spell completion items, which means that most of the spell is already cast, only a final bit is required from the user. A lot of spells that are both divine and arcane has a different requirement, that is, Divine Focus vs. material component. Thus, even if the wizard can spend an hour studying the scroll getting the gist of the spell, the divine finishing touch of the scroll (throwing a hand in the air shouting "Aaahhhh") doesn't work for her. She could, on the other hand, use an arcane finisher (pointing a finger, saying something like "A'ffharagst"), even on a scroll made by her wizard friend, because they have left a part of the spell for the user to finish which is about as sensible to her. She is able to recognize this difference and deal with it in written form, but is unable to finish casting the divine spell directly as that way of doing it does not make sense to her (she would be prone to failing at it, maybe pronouncing the aaahhhh wrong as anyone untrained in UMD would).

Nice, thanks! Antimagic field will work as a 10 min/lvl prison to the otherwise sleeping creature. I didn't think of it myself, but in that there will be a way of contacting or questioning the sleeper, it effectively distinguishes it from a more potent death effect, and I am satisfied. I didn't like the killing my witch off solution as this will undo every eternal slumber ever made by him, but antimagic field is temporary and local which I think makes it pretty smooth.

Transmute rock to mud and the other way around can work wonders against golems, although it's an expensive combo for a sorceress.

Ah, both are good points. Resurrection however says "restored to full hit points, vigor, and health", where vigor isn't really well defined, but as raise dead points out, curses aren't by default removed by dying. So I'm a bit uncertain of the powers of resurrection and true resurrection here.

It is super cool if eternal slumber works like a stasis with no easy way out (holding things with regeneration, for instance), but again it raises the problem, what happens if the witch regrets it? There still seem to be no voluntary undoing, and as a witch can't cast wish he must actually kill himself to dispel the sleep?

I'm playing a witch right now, and I'm greatly looking forward to reaching lvl 18 and putting people in an eternal slumber. However, there are a couple of problems with that hex.

In APG, it says the eternal slumber will only end when the witch dies. Does that mean if the sleeping creature is killed and raised, it will still sleep? If not, it shouldn't be too much of a problem to get a lvl 9 cleric ready with a breath of life as a simple and inexpensive solution. Does it practically induce a dead effect just with an extra few quick fixes?

Also, it seems there's no voluntary act on the witch' side to dismiss the effect, is this correct?

I know very little about your play style, but I can recommend acid fog. It's fantastic for control, gives you time to set up things if you need, and it's an excellent golem-slaying spell.

If you like greater invisibility for yourself, mislead is a great option.

More of a utility-option, really, but greater heroism is one of the strongest ways to buff skills without a bard. It can be used to help your rogue sack that epic trap, or to let yourself use magic device in a safer way. If you've bought 9th level scrolls or whatever, this can be a perfect buff for a boss battle.

For blasting, Chain ligthning is the pure one, while freezing sphere and disintegrate has some great utility as well. Create water -> control water -> freezing sphere is a super combo for drowning high CR-stuff in a cellar or its like.

Greataxes are racial weapons. They are nice for coups with weak half-orc casters following slumber hex or color spray or their likes.

First off the shadowbard is someone else using a bardic performance that happens to be similar to yours, so it will be unaffected by and not affect the other two.

virtuoso performance says one of the bardic performances immediately ends as the spell ends. Still, the lingering performance speaks only about the bonuses or penalties from an ended performance, so as the extra performance ends, the criteria for lingering are met and you can use your feat.

I guess both backing up and official clarification would be nice. I'm just looking to see if my stance is defensible, or if I really should put skill points in disguise to be able to use it effectively.

First off, I agree with you with the saves, sorry if that wasn't clear. Failed save usually means not realizing anything happened.

Secondly, the wording of the 3.5 spell is so to speak the same, except for the part about not disguising as other races. If a 3.5 wizard could "I win" a diguise situation by using the spell, a pathfinder wizard should be able to as well.

I like both to play rogues and wizards, and I have no problems with the wizard getting to emulate the rogue every now and then. The wizard is blatantly obvious when he speaks the arcane words for his memorized invisibility, while the rogue can hide as many times as he wishes. And again, the rogue stealths silently. Knock can open a closed lock, but it can't jam it. The rogue's diguise as a specific person of another race can last forever, and he's equipped to bluff his way out of most situastions as the pretend character, whereas the wizard can not do those.