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Modron Lawyer wrote:

If you live outside the US, it's most likely legal to just run a DRM removal tool on the PDF you bought. Many countries have consumer rights that prevent the kind of arbitrary restrictions that corporations try to enforce on digital goods you paid for.

Our restrictions are not arbitrary, nor are we a corporation.

Oh, you're right.

Here's a better version:

If you live outside the US, it's most likely legal to just run a DRM removal tool on the PDF you bought. Many countries have consumer rights that prevent the kind of misguided restrictions that companies try to enforce on digital goods you paid for.

The restrictions are misguided because anyone with the intent to steal your content can do so easily anyway, as there are torrents with the complete pathfinder collection available to anyone who can use a search engine. The only thing you achieve with your DRM is to punish the honest customers, your fans.

Its always sad if the product one can legally buy is inferior in quality to the illegally pirated one, and especially so because the decision to make it inferior is only based on unfounded fears.

This is NOT a question about how to extract images from my new pdf. I simply want to decrease the file size so it performs better on searches, scrolling, etc. To change Decrease File Size, I need to change the security setting. To do that, I need a password. Do you provide these passwords?

If you live outside the US, it's most likely legal to just run a DRM removal tool on the PDF you bought. Many countries have consumer rights that prevent the kind of arbitrary restrictions that corporations try to enforce on digital goods you paid for.

A question though, what source book are you gaining your monsters in? As I understand it, the Monster Manual 1 is out-dated with monster's AC/Damage ratio and was fixed with the later Monster Manuals? I could be wrong, but this might be connected to how much healing your players need between battles.

My monsters are already deadlier than their vanilla versions. I usually edit them so they are at least 50% above the average dmg suggested in MM3, and sometimes lower recharge power's recharge die by 1. Sometimes I also make them more swingy - like 2d12 instead of 1d10 + 6, but it doesn't really change anything.

You could always try not letting your players take an extended rest.

Whenever they try to take an extended rest hit them with a wandering monster fight.

That doesn't really solve the problem. It just removes the dailies from most fights (which leaves them even less options than 4E has already), and at one point they must rest, and then, it will take another 3-4 encounters until the surges are low enough for anyone to be really afraid for their lives...

Interesting idea. Would Short Resting include returning to full hitpoints? Given that Surges would now be a fully renewable resources, you would probably want to build that in.

Yeah, that's kind of implied.

The one other thing worth keeping in mind that surges per combat might already be limited by what healing the party has available. If you have a regular leader (who can use Healing Word twice an encounter), then the Warden's 4 surges are somewhat useless - he can at most use three of them, via Second Wind and the two Healing Words.

And magic items.

Or vice versa. Say you have a group that normally has a decent amount of healing available. But your Wizard only gets 2 surges each fight - he could burn through those quickly, and suddenly simply cannot be healed outside of surgeless healing.

This isn't to say the idea can't work, of course - just make sure to keep these scenarios in mind!

Yeah, but is exactly the goal - every fight is dangerous for everyone. But yes, maybe squishies 2 surges, defenders 3 surges would be better.

There are no daily powers, and there are no healing surges. Instead, every character heals to full after each combat.

Now, part of what makes this work is that there really isn't much in-combat healing for them. There is no 'leader' origin, persay. There might be one or two who get very minor amounts of healing, and you will occasionally get a mutation that provides some form of healing. And each character gets Second Wind, which in Gamma World is a minor action once per encounter to heal half your hitpoints.

But overall, it treats each combat as a self-contained thing. Either you survive it, or you don't.

I'm not sure how portable that would be, since D&D characters can get much more reliable access to healing. But it does stand as proof that this sort of system can work.

Yeah, I kind of like that. But it's not like the cleric will just go away, so... yeah.

I'm not very happy with healing surges as they are - only recharging them at extended rests gives a hard limit, no character wants to no anything once he's down to 0 surges. Sometimes, a looming greater threat in the gameworld might convince them otherwise, but repetition makes that stale, too.

Another problem is that sometimes, the session might only include 1-2 fights, so they never reach 0 surges unless the fight is truly one-sided. And tracking stats over sessions is problematic for various reasons.

So I thought that the best way would be to just divide the number of healing surges by the expected number of encounters, and make them replenish every short rest. This would mean that for the party I'm currently DMing for, the Wizard has 2 surges (7/4 ~ 1.75 = 2) and the warden has 4 (14/4 ~ 3.5 = 4).

Did anyone here try a similar system? Comments?

Oh, and story- or non-fight-encounter-based loss of surges would just be a penalty/curse/... to the healing surges available each encounter, and would have to be solved/restored in story.

Is it possible to use (greater) Shadow Conjuration/Evocation to duplicate an empowered Spell?

Assume that the caster does have the requisite metamagic feat and the level of the metamagic'd spell is equal or lower the limit set by the shadow spell.

I originally posted this in the 3.5 board but didn't get any answers - maybe i'll get more now that I (hopefully) posted in the correct place...

Is it possible to use (greater) Shadow Conjuration/Evocation to duplicate an empowered Spell?

Assume that the caster does have the requisite metamagic feat and the level of the metamagic'd spell is equal or lower the limit set by the shadow spell.

Cool ideas. What I get from the discussion is that there is no clear consensus on the rules, nor additional sources to clarify, so the DM will have to house-rule anyway.

Not exactly what I hoped for, but thanks anyway!

The Prestidigitation cantrip lasts for an hour and can be used to do various minor magic tricks, in the spell text it uses soiling an object as example.

Imagine this situation:

Prestidigitation was cast half an hour ago, so it will still be active for another half hour. A noble holds a speech. Now, my caster wants to soil that nobles clothes using prestidigitation. Would any of the NPCs / bystanders present notice that the soiling of the noble's clothes was caused by prestidigitation? Does the caster have to use some additional gestures/words/... which would be noticeable?

Thanks for the explanation, that's a good way to look at it.

Modron Lawyer wrote:

Tanis wrote:

No, feats, class abilities etc. do not apply to wands.

Scrolls do, and so do Staves btw.

Ok, I saw the staff exception on p.459 of the PF Core book. But there's no mention about scrolls? Where do you have that from? And where's it written that class abilities do not apply to wands?

By the fact that wand DCs are stated as set. Also by the fact that staves are stated for their unique quality of applying caster factors to thier spells.

That argument doesn't really make sense in this context, as there is no mention for additional modifiers in the spell DC either:

The Difficulty Class for a saving throw against a sorcerer's spell is 10 + the spell level + the sorcerer's Charisma modifier.

Also, anyone got an idea regarding the difference between scrolls and wands that Tanis mentioned?

No, feats, class abilities etc. do not apply to wands.

Scrolls do, and so do Staves btw.

Ok, I saw the staff exception on p.459 of the PF Core book. But there's no mention about scrolls? Where do you have that from? And where's it written that class abilities do not apply to wands?

Does the fey sorcerer bloodline arcana apply to spells cast from wands? Suppose I have a wand of sleep, is the Save DC 11 or 13?