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Gm recently made a ruling based on some questionable wording of the Natural Armor rules and various effects, that unless something that grants an Enhancement Bonus to Nat Armor explicitly says you have an effective bonus of +0 like with Barkskin or Ironskin, then you need to have at least 1 Natural Armor before any enhancement bonuses apply. The object in question was an amulet of natural armor.

Is there any place in the rules that can point out if this is or is not the case explicitly?


Nowhere does it specify only from the spell. If the spell was worded to make that clear, yes no issues. But it isn't. It specifies "alignment" and only "alignment" no modifiers, not anything else. It's doesn't say it's a magical aura simulating having a subtype of the alignment. It specifically says "alignment" and only that. Something the Blade has already.

Yes there are any number of ways the spell could be altered to work in a way counter to what I'm saying, but as it's written, it imbues a sword, with something the Black Blade already has, and not a word is made about the "alignment" from the spell, being in any way different from the "alignment" the Black Blade has. It is the exact same word being used for both with no modifiers on either.

In the Black Blade section it doesn't say "character alignment" it simply says it is the same "alignment" as the magus.


That makes no sense. All the Align Weapon spell is doing is giving the weapon an alignment. That's it. the Black blade already HAS an alignment, and so should function exactly as it would if the alignment came from the Align Weapon spell.

Let's take Bull's Strength. It adds +4 STR to the target. So a thing with a base 16 STR, is now identical to another thing with 20 STR. The spell simply adds something to one, which the other already posses making them equal.

All Align weapon does is take an existing weapon, and add an alignment, which then allows it to bypass DR. The black blade already has the alignment attached to it the exact same as if it had the spell cast on it and so should function the exact same way. just like a person with 16 Base STR and Bull's Strength, functions the same as someone with a base 20 STR.

From the spell itself

" A weapon that is aligned can bypass the damage reduction of certain creatures"

And the Black Blade IS aligned, just through means different then the spell but with the same result.


I'm not saying it will bypass any DR. Just DR that is bypassed by it's alignment. It is a Chaotic Good aligned weapon. And so should bypass DR as if it had both Chaotic and Good Align Weapons spells on it.

The spell gives it an alignment, that's it, just an alignment, which the sword already has. So why doesn't it count if it has the exact same thing the spell gives it?


But again the Align Weapon spell, simply says alignment, that's it. The the Black Blade HAS an alignment. And the align Weapon spell specifically says it can't be used on weapons with an alignment. Meaning it should count as already having the spell on it for it's given alignment.

The creature part, yeah doesn't apply. The Align Weapon part, should still apply as it's described.


Okay the creature part makes sense, but the Align Weapon spell bypasses the DR. The blade already HAS an alignment. Wouldn't that count just like having the AW weapon spell for that alignment cast on it? Since the spell flat out says it cannot be used to alter the existing alignment of a weapon?