alyflex's page

There's a new 4th level spell named Familiar Melding

Can a character with Supernatural Abilities still use them when using this spell?

The relevant text from the spell is "You keep your Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma, level, class, base attack bonus, base save bonuses, alignment, and mental abilities."

I would say that it depends on the ability in question.

But if the ability is not dependent upon your body there should be no problem.

Madclaw wrote:

He took the belt off and I said he looses the bonus but he countered that since the bonus was permanent after 24 hours he shouldn't loose the enhancement and should be able to use another belt. Who's right?

I know there's rule 0 but I'm trying to get a standard ruling and I can't seem to find anything in the books.

well i would think that the permanent p[art would go away it basically means that you can still use bulls str, cats grace, etc. with those items after 24 hours. if he wants a true permanent enhancement tell him to get the books to increase his stats.

No that is not what it means. Even though the bonus is now permanent it is still and enchancement bonus, hence they wont stack.

The difference between temporary and permanent ability boost is this:

Temporary Bonuses: Temporary increases to your Strength score give you a bonus on Strength-based skill checks, melee attack rolls, and weapon damage rolls (if they rely on Strength). The bonus also applies to your Combat Maneuver Bonus (if you are Small or larger) and to your Combat Maneuver Defense.

Permanent Bonuses: Ability bonuses with a duration greater than 1 day actually increase the relevant ability score after 24 hours. Modify all skills and statistics as appropriate. This might cause you to gain skill points, hit points, and other bonuses. These bonuses should be noted separately in case they are removed.

I guess I'd go with:

Spell Failure wrote:

If you ever try to cast a spell in conditions where the characteristics of the spell cannot be made to conform, the casting fails and the spell is wasted.

With no ground in which to imprison, the characteristics cannot be made to conform.

That was the part I was worried about too, but then it is not clear which planes imprisonment actually works on as far as I can see.

Material plane: Yes
Shadow plane: ?
Positive/negative energy plane: ?
Plane of air: No
Plane of earth: Yes?
Plane of fire: Yes?
Plane of water: No?
Etheral plane: ?
Astral plane: No
Abbadon: ?
Abyss: ?
Hell: ?

What would happen if a wizard cast imprisonment in an extra-dimensional space?

Say inside a mage's magnificient mansion or similar.

Will the imprisonment work or will it fail since there is no ground beneath an extra dimensional space?

The rocks do not appear to push anything. They just crash into the target and do damage. Consider clashing rocks not to be singular massive chunks that push along the path but roiling masses of smaller boulders and rocks rolling together and crushing things in the way without pushing them.

It is true that the spell says nothing about pushing, which I believe lies more in the fact that it is expected that both sides of the clashing rocks will hit, and hence the pushing will negate each other.

Does anyone know of an index of all the materials that are available in 3.5 and PF. I know the core stuff like adamantine, mithril, and alchemical silver... does anyone know of any others and their special properties, if any?

Thanks

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/equipment---final/special-materials

Hey folks

I was wondering what your interpretation of the following would be.

(The relevant spells for your convenience)
Clashing rocks Prismatic wall

Say I'm fighting a balor.

First I cast prismatic wall right behind the target.
Next I cast clashing rocks, such that the rocks come from behind the prismatic wall and in front of the balor
As illustrated

Now the rocks behind the wall would hit the wall and disintegrate, but the rocks in front of the balor would hit it dead on, and considering their +28 bonus on str checks, would they then be able to push balor into the prismatic wall?
If yes, what if the balor makes it reflex save? it says it still gets hit by the rocks in the spell

I intended no offense. I forgot this was the rules thread. What I was trying to say is that as the DM you're the judicial system so you have to interpret the law. Words can only say so much. It's you're job to apply them case by case when they aren't completely clear.

I guess you get it so peace.

Peace to you too.

It does not appear that there are any clear rules regarding this. But since the general agreement is that shield other and imprisonment will not work I will respect that and go with that.

Thanks for a civilized discussion everyone.

If you're the DM and want to use this combo.... just fiat it and do it!

If you're a PC who wants to use this combo.... stop giving your DM a hard time and pick a different concept.

I am both in a sense. Our group is taking a break from roleplaying and just going full out lvl 20 munchkin to see what we can come up with, but all this is beside the point, and so is your comment.

I am not interested in bending the rules, but when they seem unclear and people say, this is how it is, I want to see the rules that support it.

So, he'd be the target of the spell. The effect of the spell is to transfer damage he'd receive to you. Sure ya wanna due that for your purpose?
To transfer some of your damage to him, you'd have to have him activate it; you'd then be the target and your damage would transfer to him.

That is true, I guess I just assumed it would go both ways, but I can see that is not the case.

"Several other general rules apply when spells or magical effects operate in the same place:...Sometimes, one spell can render a later spell irrelevant. Both spells are still active, but one has rendered the other useless in some fashion."

First, where do you get these general rules from? - I haven't seen them before.

Second, I would hardly say that imprisonment renders shield other useless. In fact quite the opposite.

Not sure it's a great fit, but along with, "If you ever try to cast a spell in conditions where the characteristics of the spell cannot be made to conform, the casting fails and the spell is wasted," I'd go with "he can't receive the damage, so the shield other is irrelevant, fails, or is effectively out of range. You take all the damage."

Note: I don't think these are exact rules matches. But, I think that they provide a basic framework within the concept of rules mastery that suggests that the ring doesn't work.

I would not say that this rule can be applied since the spell has already been cast.

How is it still a valid target with what I bolded. It specifically says no harm. That is not a paraphrase. If he loses hp he is definitely being harmed.

That is the whole point, the person in temporal stasis recieves half the dmg from the shield other effect, but since he cannot be harmed in any way, the dmg is soaked by temporal stasis.

I will also add that the person who activates the ring is the one that loses hp, not the one that is protected. Since the person in stasis can't take actions they can't activate the ring anyway.

But as I suggested earlier, the person in stasis could have activated the ring before he was imprisoned, which should not dispel the effect as far as I can see.

To the 2nd question same type affects don't stack so no. At best one ring would work until one of them was dead and then the 2nd person would start to take damage.

Fair enough.

Back to the first question. Temporal Stasis is a no. Imprisonment is a no since it works like temporal stasis.

PRD(Temporal Stasis):. Its body functions virtually cease, and no force or effect can harm it.

Well that was the whole point of using a target which is imprisoned... As far as I can see it should still be a valid target to activate a ring of friend shield.

First the new question, assume I equip a guy with a ring of friend shield, then cast temporal stasis or imprisonment on him. Will I then be able to let him soak half of all my future dmg?

Now the old question, which to some extend have been discussed here but with no conclusion.

Would it be possible to wear two ring of friend shield and thus reducing the dmg even further? if yes, how much would you recieve? 1/3 or 1/4?

Thx for the quick answers, that makes sense.

I have a problem with the following rule taken from invisibility:

A creature can generally notice the presence of an active invisible creature within 30 feet with a DC 20 Perception check. The observer gains a hunch that “something's there” but can't see it or target it accurately with an attack.

Consider a stealthy spy, with +30 to stealth. When fully visible this spy is able to sneak with 30 feet or his targets without them ever noticing, but the second he becomes invisible you get a hunch someone is there and it suddenly gets much easier to detect him.

Should the DC not somehow depend on your stealth modifier, instead of just beeing a static number?

Last night the party I'm GM'ing for went into delvehaven. were they encountered the deadly triceratops. The wizard had however prepared command undead and since the triceratop is non intelligent it only managed a suprise hit and then 2 more due to winning the initiative before the wizard cast command undead. Since there is no save for nonintelligent creatures it was an automatic succes. It then took him an extra round to bring it under control due to the fact that his first order to it was to back away which it did, while firing a searing darkness against the paladin. They then proceeded to the armory, where the triceratops made short work of the shadow mastiffs. After the shadow mastriffs howl, Jair came up in mist form to check on the intruders, when he saw that they had taken possesion of the triceratops. He lured the bard away and took possesion of him, and commanded him to attack the triceratops (which he fortounately resisted, it then commanded him to attack the wizard controlling it, which he did) Alas to no avail other than an unconcious bard. This was the point that our gnome got the bright idea that with a little handiwork the barding on the horse could be used to make a near tank out of their friendly triceratops.
Finally they decided that they needed to break the domination on the bard, which they used 2 dispel magic scrolls and 1 break enchantment charge before succeeding.

I was at this point dreading the effect this powerfull ally could have on the rest of the dungeon, although they would not be able to bring it the the lowest level due to the small stairs, they would have a serious advantage in the rest.
My worries would soon turn out to be unwarranted however, since the next real encounter, besides my quickened dolls was on the will-o'-wisp which materialised inside the triceratops and made an interesting yet short encounter. Upstairs there wasn't really anything to fight, and downstairs they were unable to bring it into the insect museum and beyond, so the wizard told the triceratops to attack anything who came close to it without the company of the wizard. This the gnome sorcerer completely forgot, when he chose to run from the mad fighter who was attacking his friends inside the ship-room and back to his huge new friend, only to be blasted with a bolt of searing darkness.
After a couple of rounds things got under control again, and they decided to rest. They went upstairs again cut the bridge on the first floor, and set the triceratop to guarding just outside the guest rooms they slept in.

At this point I decided that a little intervention would be in place next morning the fighter was the first to exit his room, which landed him a rough awakening by a triceratops. On the other side of the collapsed bridge he spotted 3 very white humanoids, 2 which was casually looking and a third who was in deep concentration.
The gnome came out from his room a bit further down the hall and unleashed a fireball wand at the 3 vampires on the other side, which caused them to flee, leaving the triceratops once again nonintelligent. The wizard however was still a good minute or so from having prepared his spells.
The triceratops began to pound in the door to the guest room with the fighter and the bard, the bard decided to make a silent image of another wall 5 foot from the backwall which they hid behind. 3 rounds later the triceratops had broken down the door and enough of the wall to be able to enter the room. Knowing their doom, the fighter braced his glaive for one last hit... And scored a critical hit for 82 points of dmg which killed the already wounded triceratop.

I thought it turned out awsome. I was just wondering if any other GM have experienced the players use of command undead on this mighty beast, and what the results from this was?

This sounded like a cool encounter but all the PC's have to do is cast a protection from evil on their gladiator and have that PC fight a Lemure one on one b/c the other summoned Lemures cant touch him! Thats what my PC's did and it was a boring fight until Mantrithor went crazy and the battle began. So I'm just saying that protection from evil is all it takes to negate Mantrithors tactic. Was that overlooked by the designers? Any reason for such an easy counter? Thoughts....

To me this whole challenge seemed so strange I decided to make my own rules.

"At the first round of the fight each wizard must summon at least 1 creature."
"If at any given time one of the 2 fighting wizards have no creatures in the arena, he must immediately summon a creature or loose the match."
"It is forbidden to attack the others creatures directly or the other wizard (anything that would break an invisibility is forbidden)."
"It is forbidden to hide ones creature from the crowd."

This gives a bit more homework for the gm, since he will summon lots of different beasts. Another point is that the GM must make sure that the fight wont draw out too long. I made the fight about 10 rounds long before Thrax lost and went beserk. Among the things thrax summoned was:
Dire Lion, Giant spiders, Dire bat, Riding dogs, Lemures, And a demon that could cast fear and stinking cloud (cant remember the name).

Slacker2010 wrote:

I was wondering if someone can explain if I am missing something.

EDIT: before reading below, Can an Intelligent weapon cast range:personal spells on its wielder?

No they cannot cast personal range spells on you. At least according to RAW, they are their own creature of the construct subtype and do not share any kind of "magical" connection to you to allow the sharing of spells.

In council of thieves the heroes find a glaive that is intelligent and able to cast divine favor, are you guys suggesting that this weapon can only cast divine favor upon itself and not the wielder?

I took a picture of each crux, but I don't know how to insert pictures into a post.

You could perhaps just post a link to a site where you upload the pictures?, I would really love to see the actual dices.

I believe ImageShack can be used to upload the pictures if you need a site http://imageshack.us/

...

This sounds very good. But as you say it's kindda hard to imagine without the crux, do you have any pictures of the crux you made? and perhaps a few words about how you made it. I have considered making one too.

Are the images in your link in order?

1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9

??

Also, those plus your Dull Square and Golarion sides totals only 11 sides.

The only order I was thinking of was that the Dull side and the final side would be opposite each other, the rest would just be randomly scattered around.

When I thought this crux up I thought of the 9 layers of hell + final side + dull side. Problem is that the symbol for the ninth layer is the same asmodeus symbol so gonna have to think of one more thing.

An idea I just thought off while writing this could be to include house thrunes symbol. The correct sequence would then be:

Golarion
House Thrune
8 layers of hell + final side which represent the ninth layer of hell.

House Thrune will be the second side since they are believed to be the place in golarion where the material world is closest to hell. (Besides the last master was a cleric of asmodeus instated as mayor by house thrune so it makes sense as far as I can see.

I'm a bit confused by this. Since "the final image of Asmodeus can only be activated by someone who worships him," how does one change the faith of the crux? Wouldn't the faith of the crux (or the previous master) always be be Asmodeus?

What I meant is that you have to have someone who worship whatever god is imprinted on the crux in order to open it.

To answer your last question: Yes the faith of the crux at the time the players find it will always be with asmodeus imprinted in it, but this can later be changed.

Thanks for the feedback guys, and I hope that clears up the few loose ends. =)

I am going to do the following:

Make 1 side of the crux a dull square
Make 1 side of the crux an ever changing image of golarion
As for the rest of the sides I'm going with the following symbols.

What do you guys think about the whole idea?
Any suggestions?

Another answer for billy would perhaps be that he thinks the door is incorporeal, in other words he knows that it is not a normal door, but he still fails to grasp the fact that it is an illusion.

From the Glossary under Death Attacks: Death attacks slay instantly. A victim cannot be made stable and thereby kept alive.

There are many death spells and effects in the game which deal hit point damage. What happens when the target gets into the negatives? Do they simply die outright?

The above text makes little sense to me in the context of the game since very few death effects outright kill the target anymore.

You think it is strange that they have written something that only applies to a few selected spells and effects? - Honestly I can't see the problem in that.

Just wanted to thank you all for the enlightening answers. :)

alyflex wrote:

Pyrotechnics does not consume a magical fire, which I would say a scorching ray is.

"Pyrotechnics turns a fire into a burst of blinding fireworks or a thick cloud of choking smoke, depending on your choice. The spell uses one fire source, which is immediately extinguished. A fire so large that it exceeds a 20-foot cube is only partly extinguished. Magical fires are not extinguished, although a fire-based creature used as a source takes 1 point of damage per caster level."

Doesn't say anything about a distinction between magical and non-magical fire.

...

About the instantaneous duration. That is actually a good point. But what does instantaneous really mean?

When you wanna counter another spell. You first have to realise which spell he is casting, which means that he have already startet the casting. We know that you can counter a magic missile with another magic missile. does this mean that you can cast your magic missile faster than the other guy? or do you cast the equally fast and your spell just manage to counter it somewhere between it leaving him and hitting you? or is there a third option that I havent thought of?

What I am trying to argue is that it seems to me that just because a spell is instantaneous does not mean that you can react to it. When the rogue for instance succeds on his reflex save against a fireball it is my understanding that this is because he has reacted to it. Why can't a wizard do the same?

Pyrotechnics immediatly causes the source to cause fireworks etc. so if you used a Scorching Ray as the fire source it (the ray) wouldn't do damage (because it has been used as a fire source) or will cause damage and be unavailable to be used as a fire source for the Pyrotechnics spell.
If it was possible to do what you suggest I'm sure that game designers would have thought of doing it and in all the scenarios, rules books, etc. I have seen it has never been mentioned. The rules of the game don't support the idea so still no.

Pyrotechnics does not consume a magical fire, which I would say a scorching ray is.

Ventriloquism to cast verbal spells I would say no.
Closing eyes again no. Are you sure everyone closed eyes at that exact moment of casting? Did everyone hear you? A good idea but not supported by the rules and a bit cheesy. A combat round is six seconds and a lot of flaling about happens during that time which is abstracted to a couple of "to hit" rolls, etc. If I had players who insisted on doing this then my GM run NPCs would do it and I would impose a blindness penalty too.
Detect Magic? Not an issue. If you want to...

Detect magic can scan a whole house in less than a minute, and since it can penetrate up to 3 feet of tree it would have no problem penetrating every single wall in a house made of tree.

As to the pyrotecnics our line of thoughts is that the one who does the scorching ray will take aim, fire and immediatly close his eyes. The second I see fire I will fire my pyrotecnics, and immediatly close my eyes.

Hi folks, here is a couple of questions:

The spell ventriloquism can that be used for making the verbal component of a spell? During our session my bard used ventriloquism several times, in order to camouflage his spellcasting, making the verbal component appear 40 ft away, which effectively turned all spells to silent spells. If the above is legal, will it enable the bard to cast spells while standing in a silence spell, since he can throw his voice outside the silence spell.

A side question to the above is, can ghost sound be used in the same way?

The next question; is a ray considered a weapon, specifically regarding the inspire courage ability from bards, which gives a +2 to all weapon dmg rolls.

Another question; we found that a very effective combat opener was for the arcane trickster to start combat with a scorching ray which my bard had readied a pyrotechnic spell on. Can me and my allies close our eyes, at the moment the pyrotecnics is fired, since we know that it is coming?
What about mid combat, will my allies have time to close their eyes if i scream pyrotecnics and blast away?

Finally our gamemaster thinks that all the detect spells are too powerfull. (we use detect magic through the whole treehouse in order to see any magic items inside and see if anyone is moving around. And to negate any magic traps whose aura hasn't been hidden.) Have you guys ran into the same problems with detect spells? and how have you handled it?

I can't help but notice that the Eidolons spell-like ability still has no caster lvl, is this an oversight or am I missing something? (the caster lvl would be relevant when you combine it with arcane strike)

Another thing that does not sit right with me is that the Eidolon pays no material cost, because it cast spells as spell-like abilities. This means that it can cast wish for free at higher lvls. Is this really what was intended?

Another idea we just got, which we like better is the following:

You cannot threat with a weapon you are not proficient with.

An improvised weapon has to be better than your unarmed strike to avoid giving attacks of oppertunity.

Hi

We noticed in our group that you need a melee weapon to threat another creature, but since my wizard only carries a crossbow he can't threat.
As a response I said that he just use the crossbow as an improvised weapon in melee, as far as we can see you DO threat with an improvised weapon. It does however seem rather cheezy.

Today my GM came with the counterargument that if you can use an crossbow as an improvised weapon, you can also use a belt or your boots, AND if you look under the improvised weapon description it says nothing about needing to wield your improvised weapon in your hands, so you could by RAW make an attack with you belt while its holding your pants up, or with your boots while they are on your feet, and thus you would always be considered armed.

Clearly this is not the intention with the rules, we are however a bit unsure what was intended.

my best bet is that the intention is that you can in fact use everything as an improvised weapon, but if the improvised weapon is worse than an unarmed strike, you provoke attack of oppertunity and you do not threat. If it is better, you do not provoke attack of oppertunity, and you threat with it.

Have we missed some rules in the book? - or do you guys have a better suggestion?

From the Prd combat section:

Accidentally Ending Movement in an Illegal Space: Sometimes a character ends its movement while moving through a space where it's not allowed to stop. When that happens, put your miniature in the last legal position you occupied, or the closest legal position, if there's a legal position that's closer

I would say that the 2 are squeezing, since they are 2 creatures of normal size in a single square. I would further say that the next time any of them take a move action they will automatically be moved at the end of the move action according to the above quote.

Advanced Half-Fiend Bugbear Fighter 1 [CR 5]
Str 28, Dex 23, Con 25, Int 16, Wis 18, Cha 13
HD 3d8+1d10+28 HP 47
AC 24 (+2 armor, +6 Dex, +6 natural, no shield)
Base Atk +3 Melee heavy flail +12 (1d10+13)

One thing to bear in mind is that a simple colorspray will still knock this badboy out for 1d4+1 rounds, since it only has 3 HD. So its a monster with who deals a ton of dmg but with the right kind of spells it will be no problem.

Hi, I know this item have been discussed a lot as it already is, and I'm not trying to open up that big discussion again.

My first question is this:
If I create a headband of Vast intellect at 3 lvl, I would be able to choose its skill, will I then be allowed to choose flying as a skill?, (it says in the skill description for flying that you cant take ranks in it before you have the means of flight)

Second question:
If I create it with Linguistics, will I then be able to new languages each time I take off the headband and then wear it for 24 hours?

Thanks for the quick answers =)

One more thing I just thought about is:
Would a ring of counterspelling(with dispell magic in it) work to cancel a counterspell from another wizard(using dispell magic of couse).

Hi, I have a few questions with regard to interrupting spellcasting:

Can you use a counterspell against a spell with a casting time of a swift action? - I know it says in the book that any metamagic feats does not change anything with regards to a counterspell, but what about spells like featherfall which already have a swift action cast time?

Another similar question is:
In 3.5 it was considered more optimal to ready a dmg spell against an enemy caster in order to interrupt a spell. Is it also possible to ready a dmg spell to interrupt a swift action spell?

Lastly:
Can dispell magic counterspell a prismatic wall? It says under primatic wall that it cannot be dispelled by a dispell magic, but can i be countered by it?

alyflex wrote:

Could anyone point me to where the above reference is written in the PRD, because I've been searching for quite a while now and still haven't found it.

I added the ellipses for clarity. It's from the Combat section of the PRD.

** spoiler omitted **

Ahh thanks a lot!

Could anyone point me to where the above reference is written in the PRD, because I've been searching for quite a while now and still haven't found it.

PRD wrote:

If you don't discharge the spell in the round when you cast the spell, you can hold the charge indefinitely. . .If you touch anything or anyone while holding a charge, even unintentionally, the spell discharges.

Maybe I'm not understanding what PRD is, but I thought it was the pathfinder reference document, but I have yet to find those lines in it:

First:
Can a monk use a wand with a touch spell, hold the charge untill the next combat even if there are weeks till that happen?

Second:
There seem to be a lack of information regarding what holding a charge is like:
Are there any visible effects?
Can a detect magic detect it?
What happens if a character holding a charge is hit by a dispel magic?
What if a character enters a grapple with someone - can he automatically use touch attacks against people who are grappling him?
What if you die, do you loose the charge?

Well just to make things a bit more complicated, the physics guy in me insist to tell you that glass is actually not a solid but rather a liquid or a meta stage between solid and liquid. =)