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Thank you for all the responses and discussion!

A few clarifying notes.

- yes, the primary cases where spiritual allies were most effective were close-quarters fights. The GM has to invent an adjudication for how one might tumble, overrun, or bull-rush past the ally, as these are all opposed by the ally's CMD, and the ally doesn't have one (only an AC against touch attacks). Granted, this isn't impossible to invent.

- The major distinctions between chains of light and hold monster are spell resistance and the form of save. And yes, I was specifically whining about an encounter with a roper, whose SR27 and +13 Will is almost guaranteed to laugh at hold monster but needs to roll about an 18 for its +5 Reflex save to work against chains of light (which, being a Conjuration, ignores SR).

All that said, great responses, thanks again.

This is mostly a post to whine a bit about my own shortcomings as a GM.

One of my players has a high-level life-mystery Oracle.

At this point it's getting hard to challenge the party with whole classes of monster. I've whined before about the 4th level spiritual ally, and how powerful this spell is for battlefield control in any kind of tight quarters - I had to come up with some kinds of rules for how the spell related to CMB/CMD, so that it wasn't simply an ally-permeable forcewall that dealt damage to adjacent enemies.

The 6th level chains of light is an almost automatic destroy-one-opp-per-round for boss opponents, unless they have an immunity to paralysis or a godlike Reflex save. It doesn't seem like a spell you can get at 6th level should automatically doom things like CR12 ropers - and of course as an Oracle, she can toss off far more of these spells per day than any cleric could.

I'm not actually complaining that much. It's just a different class of thing to prepare for than, say, having a sorcerer character at the same level. There do not seem to be equivalent spells that are as effective at the same level on the wizard/sorcerer list. Perhaps I'm wrong. But I am used to - as a multi-decade D&D DM - having to work with the power of spells like greater invisibility, fly, scry, teleport, true seeing, and all manner of other sorcerer spells that eliminate entire classes of effective opponent. I'm just not used to having to discard the groups of opponents that those cleric/oracle spells also make powerless. There's just not a lot left to challenge PCs with, once you're in the 11-14th level range.

I'm hoping by posting this, not to complain about the game, but to know effective GM strategies and good opponents who would have a shot at providing a fun combat against PC groups containing an oracle at these levels, because while I do recognize a long-campaign GM is largely playing-to-lose the big fights, I'd still like to worry my players a bit. Any advice?

It's still imho pretty limited for a 9th level spell, but yes, the splatbooks do make it better, and for a sorcerer it becomes a free Wish (though only for creations/summonings, and only 80% likely to happen to opponents). In general the Shadow spells are incredibly useful to sorcerers (because they can replace a ton of utility spells, in addition to being sometimes-useful combat spells) and only moderately good for wizards.

And after all - this comes up because of a Pathfinder campaign set in Ptolus, where Renn Sadar's family bloodline lets him apply the Solid Shadows feat for free without the spell level changing, so when he casts _shades_ it's 100% real anyway, so the save-vs-illusion doesn't even matter. And if I decide his family blood also lets him cast shades of all the subschools, why, I'm the GM, I get to make that happen.

But thanks for perspective and info, in any case.

My opinion on Create Demiplane is that I don't see any reason to treat it differently than using _shadow conjuration_ to cast _create pit_ - anyone who believes in the extradimensional space (failing or foregoing their save) can fall into it or climb down into it; anyone who chooses to make a save and doesn't believe it's real is only 20% (or 80% for _shades_) likely to (and whether they fall into it or not, they take 20% of the falling damage, because damage is applied at 20% while the other effects either occur or don't). So if you make your save against the demiplane and then roll 81-00, you can't enter the plane.

I agree that the fact that it was changed from 3.5's wording to eliminate the sorc/wiz limitation but also leave intact the subschool ambiguity made intent of designers really difficult to discern, and it's too bad time has moved on so far, and there's no reason to think the FAQ would ever be updated (5e and PF2 are both compelling enough games - to different sets of gamers - that there's pretty much not even any edition wars going on anymore; everyone's dropped their support for older editions. Time moves on.)

This has come up now, in my PF1 campaign.

Without commenting on the very human limitations of the designers (which is what consumed most of this thread), I note that Ravingdork's spell list from 13 years ago reveals that Shades RAW (no limits) allows a huge number of spells, but Shades RAI (same limit as the lower level versions) allows far too few.

Incendiary cloud
Mage’s magnificent mansion
Phase door
Summon Monster VII - IX
Trap the Soul

and that's it. None of which are really worth it, even for a sorcerer using this spell to preserve known-spell slot access. No wizard would, I don't think, memorize or even bother to spellbook this spell if that's all it gave.

Even the fansite Shadow Conjuration Handbook (https://feeneygames.github.io/PFGuideArchive/archive/ShadConj.pdf) only came up with about three truly useful spells using the 3.5e wording (sorc/wiz but any subschool).

On the other hand, the lack of material component unbalances the maximal list, but the Wish rule could perhaps apply - if it's over $N, you have to use the material component for the shadow version.

But there's already a better 9th level spell for "I need an unexpected emergency utility spell", it's just expensive. But that's why it's "emergency". :)

I speculate that there was a bit of a sense in 3E of "once you're at ninth level spells, game balance is out the window anyway, let the DM and players argue it out, that's what they're playing at that level for", and PF1, even as it tries to balance higher-level play a bit, of course was put together and edited by humans who had to sleep and stuff (and thus clarification omissions happened).

I think I'd rather, for maximum game fun, allow Shades to run as-written - or at least as written in 3.5E where it was sorc/wiz only but any subschool - because it's a ninth level spell on the same list as Wish, it should have something to make it worth memorizing.

yep, that's right. The RAW is ambiguous, because it's not edited to remove the ambiguity.

I'm now obsessively searching for "sphere" and "spherical" in spell descriptions. :) Nothing else is quite this ambiguous - almost everything else says "sphere" or "spherical" in the "Effect:" block of the standard format, and most say "emanation" - though resilient sphere and especially telekinetic sphere are also interestingly vague, and tiny hut explicitly states the sphere slices through the ground beneath you, which neither emanations nor spreads do (but also says the interior of the sphere is a "hemisphere", which has interesting ramifications if cast by, say, a flying person).

Even if you called 'sphere' in the description a term of art governed by the rules on sphere-shaped spells (which I agree RAW doesn't require, since the text regarding spheres is under the spell-description section under "Area", which this "sphere of power" descriptive text isn't), it can still be a burst, emanation, or spread, and -- what I said earlier.

(Also "wall" is a type of effect that isn't defined in the magic chapter. This is important because e.g. resilient sphere is a sphere-shaped wall, like a wall of force, and like invisibility purge it is left unspecified whether it is an emanation, a spread, or something else. And its size is one-foot-per-caster-level diameter. That's a ten foot radius if cast at 20th level. If a resilient sphere intersects walls or other obstructions, what happens? Is the sphere bent by walls? Does it spread around corners? How about the similar, but movable, telekinetic sphere? What happens to walls caught partly inside the "globe" of effect?

I am now fascinated by the spherical ambiguities.

(all that was after digesting what everyone said, and having the time to go reread all the relevant rules pointed to)

As an evocation that targets only the caster, yet is described as a "sphere of power", and yet it has no spherical Effect section listed in the spell parameters, and has no clarification of whether that sphere is an emanation or spread, it is unique. ("N ft emanation centered on the caster" is enormously common language throughout, but they don't use that language here, and obviously could have.)

It's also counterintutive for me that it is an evocation and not either a divination (perceiving things that are hidden, like true sight - which, if it were, would cause my ruling to make sense) or an abjuration (suppressing another effect, like a special-purpose antimagic field, to which it seems very similar - but again, not an abjuration). It does, I suppose, "create something from nothing" as an evocation does - a "sphere of power" - and sphere effects are described in the rules, so I am thinking Mysterious Stranger makes the most reasonable inference.

I do find a few evocations that are a little similar in description - light and darkness - but those spells create illumination (or "radiate darkness" which is described as negating illumination) - and illumination is described elsewhere in the rules in depth (and, of course, being a mundane effect, most real-world players have some experience with the phenomenon.) While the rules don't say explicitly (at least not where I can find) that light is an emanation, it clearly behaves like one, by following line of sight rules.

At least I think so. FAQ clarifications have made baffling rulings before.

I agree it would make much more sense if invisibility purge clarified that the sphere was an emanation or was a spread.

Yet it is interesting that it doesn't say which. Can the caster choose? The rules are sometimes quite counterintuitive in this way - RAW FAQ clarifications have been fairly consistent that if it says something in 98% of cases and doesn't say it in the other 2%, then the rule is different in those 2% of cases, it shouldn't be assumed to be the same. Half the things in the FAQ are rulings where my reaction was "Huh, that's not how I'd have called this, but technically speaking that is an interpretation consistent with the precise wording here..."

The editing to define spells that affect areas as one of those things was in general fairly careful, and the fact that this spell was not at any point edited to conform to other evocations is, to me at least, interesting.

I nevertheless think it's just a missed edit, and it was likely meant to specify it is an emanation. But it doesn't say so, and I think every other spherical effect specifies emanation or spread (or burst, if no duration).

Either way, though, it's not a divination and shouldn't follow that rule, and it's a sphere and there is a rule for spheres, even if they're supposed to clarify whether they're emanations or spreads and this one doesn't.

Thanks to everyone for the responses!

"Area", the last word of the spell description, interpreted as a term-of-art limiting the shape of what is affected by magic through the standard effect rules, does make some sense.

But this is pretty clearly one of those cut-and-paste shortcuts from 3E. (The wording in 3.5e is identical to the Pathfinder spell description, even though "sphere of power" is not a term-of-art in PF, appearing nowhere else in the core rules.) There can't be a "right" answer in terms of designer intent, because the designers didn't review the 3.5 rule in this case to determine how to make it specific and correct for PF.

The absence of the standard paragraph limiting the power, though, makes it defensible to claim it should not be so limited. ("The spell can penetrate barriers, but 1 foot of stone, 1 inch of common metal, a thin sheet of lead, or 3 feet of wood or dirt blocks it." It's in the rules over and over, but not here.)

All other evocations that have a Personal range specify an Area if the effect extends beyond the caster's abilities, or else use terms of art like spread, burst, and emanation, which this does not - again, because Paizo didn't edit the 3.5e text at all to reflect the game terms.

I ruled on the fly, and will keep my ruling. The spellcaster was standing outside the structure the PCs were inside, and used the spell to make the PCs visible so that his goons could target them. I think - given that I was also allowing detect thoughts to operate through the spell area - that I shall clarify for the players that obviously all the stone walls involved were less than a foot thick since detection spells could penetrate them, so this spell could too. :)

(In the absence of three rounds being spent on detect magic to fix the spellcaster's presence and being able to target them with a dispel, it was correct to say they had no line-of-effect to the caster anyway and could not dispel the effect, even though the dispel could have penetrated the stone.)

I note, for the record, that Invisibility Purge is a duration spell, and its effects continue after casting, so re-casting Invisibility would have no effect, since all forms of invisibility are suppressed, not dispelled, while in the area.

I have a pair of related questions about Invisibility Purge that somehow has never come up before in anything I've run, and I can't find it on the forums. It is described as having a target/range of 'Personal/You', but that the caster is "surrounded by a sphere of power".

1. Does anything block the "sphere of power"? Can a cleric on one side of a brick wall cast the spell and render visible any invisible creature on the other side of the wall? It's not an emanation or spread, so nothing indicates that it can be blocked by anything - and indeed there is no spell effect to block, since the spell effect is only on the caster.

2. If within the sphere of the purge but unable to see the caster, can the spell be dispelled? A spell with a range of "Personal/You" normally can only be dispelled if the dispeller has line of effect to the caster.

I recognize I'm a bit late to the party, asking v1 rules questions, but either my search-fu has failed me or this hasn't been asked before (which of itself seems baffling).

Staves are spell-trigger items. The wielder needs the spell on their list in order to use the ST item.

For the first time in any campaign I've run, a random treasure selection came up with the staff of radiance, so I looked up the spells.

There's no character class that can cast all three - glitterdust, searing light, and daylight.

Am I misinterpreting what this means? I know you can recharge a staff if you can cast any one spell the staff holds, but you can only spell-trigger spells that are on your class list, yes? And thus is it the case that to make "full use" of this staff - to be able to use all three of the spells - you'd need either (a) to make Use Magic Device checks for at least one, (b) be cross-classed, (c) hand it back and forth between different casters, (d) take Unsanctioned Knowledge or other random weird way to gain a spell not on your list?

Or did I misread the rules, and you can use any of the spells on a staff if at least one is on your class's caster list? Where's that rule, if so?

Silence is just weird.

As a glamer, it "cannot produce real effects the way that other types of illusions can. Figments and glamers cannot cause damage to objects or creatures, support weight, provide nutrition, or provide protection from the elements." Except "elements(sonic)", of course.

protection from elements (sonic) is, of course, a legitimate spell, but sonic effects evidently aren't otherwise "an element", or "a real effect", because there's a glamer (a glamer!) that provides sonic protection of infinity - so except for the short duration, it's superior in all other ways to the higher-level protection from elements (sonic).

If my character is in the area effect of a fireball, he gets to use spell resistance and to roll a save even though he's not "the target" - in particular, the idea that you can't use SR to be personally unaffected by silence (an emanation), but you can use SR (and a save) if and only if you're the target - is very, very weird, and I believe applies to no other spell in the book.

There are other oddities. Silence does not increase your stealth or increase the difficulty of perceiving you, even in a completely dark room (invisibility, on the other hand, does, even in a completely dark room).

Everyone who responds by declaring the ease of simply walking twenty feet out of a silence spell apparently does not ever run games in dungeons or use maps that have walls, or rooms of limited size. Of course a villain defending in his lair ought to be aware of the potential for silence, and always design a lair so that silence doesn't autokill him (his rod of lesser metamagic can of course be knocked out of his hand, and his CMD probably isn't very good.) But every DM has to be an expert at designing these lairs.

But I still can't quite get over the fact that a third level abjuration spell can, as its entire effect, provide 20 points of protection from sonic for one individual, but a second level illusion(glamer) - which, remember, "cannot produce any real effect" - provides infinite protection from sonic for an entire party, as well as completely nerfing a spellcaster who can't move out of the area and doesn't have the right magic item in hand.

But it is what it is.

That correct formula makes it very reasonable. A cloak of elvenkind resistance +4 is only 625 gp more expensive to upgrade to than a cloak of resistance +4 is to create.

Nice. Thank you!

I started my current sprawling PF1e Ptolus (Monte Cook's 3e setting) campaign in late 2019. It's still going strong, with eight PCs of 12th-13th level (plus a set of four 3rd level auxiliaries, for cool low-level adventures I'd wanted to run but couldn't because the PCs passed the point where such adventures would be interesting.)

https://ptolusfourbyfour.obsidianportal.com/ if interested. The Pathfinder 1e additions to the 3e system feature fairly heavily (at least those which interest me; I am not that much of a steampunk person so there aren't for example gunslingers, as one might have imagined there could be. But then Ptolus is a genius setting that flexibly adapts to all kinds of different choices; there are simply so many good NPCs, organizations, historical details, and plot hooks strewn about and it clearly is meant for you to take it any direction you like.)

I appreciate the responses! The campaign is in Ptolus, and I'm certainly not changing groundrules for magic item creation/behavior with 13th level PCs, so the Unchained stuff is a nonstarter (while a fascinating idea for my next campaign, whatever other base system I might use) - but as the party has a wizard crafter, they might well be willing to just add the resistance to the existing cloak at +50%.

What I dislike the most is almost all of the specific bonuses you mention and almost all of the spell effects give Resistance bonuses, so they can't stack.

Same.

There's an even more general problem that if we stick to the wealth-by-level item generation rules, particularly with the extremely careful balancing done for the Ultimate Equipment guide, most magic items are useless by the time they're discovered, because PCs can do better magic on their own. I think I have almost never dropped a "allows the possessor to cast X once per day" item that the PCs had a reason to keep, because by the time such an item is possible in WBL drops, the spell is at least 1-2 levels below what the PCs can already cast, and they're certainly not going to use an item slot for a utility spell, not when this could be cashed in to get them closer to their +4 or +6 stat boost item.

As I'm still running 1st Ed (this is my last PF1E campaign, but it's still enormous fun) and trying to do it as much by the book as possible, I have just come to realize a property that may be what ultimately annoys me more than any other thing about 3.x/PF1 magic items.

Our party rogue is, with significant reluctance, finally going to ditch his cloak of elvenkind - a marvelous item, perfect for the character's atmosphere, an item taken from a body with story significance early in the campaign - because having failed yet another Fortitude save (and in this case being turned to stone), the player has realized this character can no longer afford not to have an item that grants him multiple points of resistance bonus to saving throws, and that means a cloak of resistance. Now, even though clearly that cloak of elvenkind was no longer serving much of a purpose - the maxed-out Stealth of this character is such that the cloak hasn't made the difference in a skill roll in several levels - this was great character-building.

I volunteered to look through the Ultimate Equipment book for alternatives... and what I found is not just irritating but, in context, is now pissing me off, quite apart from the lack of any alternative to this specific item.

Why? Because twenty or twenty-five different items give resistance bonuses to saving throws as one power among several - but with the exception of the cloak of resistance, and a few items that cost several times as much (e.g. the 75000 gp resplendent robe of the thespian), every other item that gives resistance bonuses gives them only for one specific sort of save - and further, gives this as one of several different powers that combine to make the item far more expensive than the much more useful cloak of resistance - such that these special-purpose bonuses (typically to poison, to fear, to disease, to mind-affecting effects, or occasionally another specific sort of saving throw) will wind up benefitting virtually no one, since by the time they could find or afford such an item, they'd already have a fairly buffed-up cloak of resistance since the item is among the most useful items for the price that anyone could obtain - or, more often, make.

Grr. What this ultimately does is remind me that certain items, like that cloak and like the stat-boosting headbands and belts, are simply far too useful for their price, and everything else is overpriced in comparison. And thus we come back round to one of the reasons why this will be my last 3.x/PF1 campaign.

Don't mind me, I'm just venting. Of course I could introduce an alternate item that gives a resistance bonus, to let the rogue keep his cloak. But ... I'm simply sad, because the player is so disappointed by being forced to give up such a satisfying plot-grounded and thematically appropriate magic item.

A rogue used a limning dagger on a shadow mastiff; I ruled that it worked, negating the creature's shadow blend power - but now I wonder if that was too generous. Shadow Blend states

Shadow Blend (Su) In any condition of illumination other than full daylight, a shadow mastiff disappears into the shadows, giving it concealment (50% miss chance). Artificial illumination, even a light or continual flame spell, does not negate this ability...

So if light and continual flame don't negate it, does faerie fire? The latter states

Outlined creatures do not benefit from the concealment normally provided by darkness (though a 2nd-level or higher magical darkness effect functions normally), blur, displacement, invisibility, or similar effects.

I'm a bit curious what others think, but I guess it's fairly straightforward that it ought to work.

Spells like Identify are an easy counter to the increased DC for cursed items.

Well, I mean, sure, if the PCs have some reason to think they should cast it. Why would they, though, if they make the roll and identify the item with a simple Spellcraft? (evil chuckle)

Paizo worked so hard to disambiguate how illusions work, and things keep coming up.

Mirror Image has a straight-up contradiction in its description.

"These images remain in your space and move with you, mimicking your movements, sounds, and actions exactly"

versus, a paragraph later:

"An attacker must be able to see the figments to be fooled. If you are invisible or the attacker is blind, the spell has no effect..."

The thing that's precious about this is that looking at the 3.5 rules, the paragraph about "must be able to see the figments" is unchanged, but the line about mimicking sounds was added - which suggests that Mirror Image having nonvisual elements is a deliberate addition. And yet.

Sigh.

Permit me to grumble once more that invisibility adds to your Stealth even in a completely dark room but Silence doesn't add to your Stealth even against a blind opponent... :) Pathfinder 1st gets a lot of things right, but it really screwed up how different effects and skills work on different senses... still love the system, though.

One last question for those who have long familiarity with the rules and metarule-intent...

Disarm and Trip can be done "in place of a melee attack", and as such, presumably, if done as the second or third or fourth attack within a full attack, they take a -5/-10/-15 as appropriate - that seems a pretty clear implication/deduction from the rules.

Would that apply to the bull rush CMB roll made as part of Shield Slam if the slammed opponent is knocked back into another creature?

So for example: our 11th level urban barbarian (BAB 11, has TWF, Shield Mastery, Crowdfighting, Shield Slam, WF: Shield and a bunch of other feats and rage powers. Attack rolls with the primary-weapon shield while raging and Power Attacking in a crowd are +24/+19/+14, CMB while raging is also +24 when using a shield to do a maneuver, because same bonuses) does a full attack, and on the second attack (rolled at +19) beats the opponent's CMD by 10, knocking him back 15 feet; that opponent impacts another opponent 5 feet away; the barbarian rolls a CMB to knock that other opponent back. I would expect to rule that roll is +15 -- that is, +24 CMB, -5 for it being the second attack, -4 for bull rush into secondary opponent.

Does that sound like the right adjustment for CMB? (It gets really wacky since that +24 includes the +1 for Crowdfighting but the secondary opponent isn't adjacent to him - but for simplicity I'm just keeping all the bonuses and penalties. The thing I'm checking for is whether imposing that -5 is expected by the rules.)

Thanks!

Relevant rule that I'm trying to clarify for the second case:

Combat Maneuver: Add any bonuses you currently have on attack rolls due to spells, feats, and other effects. These bonuses must be applicable to the weapon or attack used to perform the maneuver.

and

Shield Slam: Any opponents hit by your shield bash are also hit with a free bull rush attack, substituting your attack roll for the combat maneuver check (see Chapter 8). ... You may choose to move with your target if you are able to take a 5-foot step or to spend an action to move this turn.

(I assume that, as with most feats, the use of the shield slam is optional, and the feat owner can choose not to knock them back.)

So what are the classes, class options, race options, feats , spells, archetypes, etc. that you wished Paizo had done before 1e ended?

Two wishes regarding skills and their interactions with the rest of the game.

1. Certain low-level spells nicely complemented skills: Jump, Find Traps, and Identify, for example, gave large bonuses to some uses of existing skills, which was a great way to update these venerable spells to a modern edition. But I wish Comprehend Languages, Charm Person, Disguise Self, and perhaps even Cure Light Wounds and Invisibility had done the same, rather than making, respectively, portions of Linguistics, Diplomacy, Disguise, Heal, and Stealth skills mostly irrelevant.

2. The number of skills from 3.0 to PF1.0 was cut in half, and everyone got between one and three more skill points per level, and even more ways to boost skills were introduced - but DCs for skill checks didn't increase from 3.0 to PF1.0, which made things like e.g. Glyph of Warding, and most other spell-based and RAW-enviroment-based, DCs too easy to beat.

Also, assuming no size issue, let's suppose he shield-slams a hobgoblin and it flies back five feet and then impacts another hobgoblin. When rolling CMB against this second hobgoblin, what modifiers does he get to this roll beyond the -4?

- The attack bonus for his shield (he has the feat allowing the enhancement bonus on the shield to add to his attacks)?
- His increased strength from raging?
- Bless? Prayer? Heroism? (Probably all of those.)
- His additional bonuses (and penalties) to hit from rage-related feats?
- Weapon focus for his shield, which was the source of the original attack and bull rush, but which is nowhere near the second target?
- His penalty to hit from Power Attack?
- His penalty from Two-Weapon Fighting?

One player's barbarian now has Shield Master, dual-wields shields, and has Shield Slam (among other feats).

He naturally wants to have this explosive ability to bash everyone away in all directions with a full attack (he also has the Crowdfighting urban barbarian power) and he wants to do full attacks with two shields (his feat choices are all in service of this), bashing everyone away with shield bashes and free bull rushes from both shields.

Of course he won't be moving with the bull-rushed opponents because he's doing a full attack.

But the question becomes this. How would you rule the situation:

He has a Small or even tiny creature (let's say a stirge) adjacent to him. He does a Shield Slam, rolling twenty feet of bull rush. He declines to move with the bull rush (he has other opponents to hit, and this was his first attack of a full attack). Directly behind the stirge is a fire giant, size Large.

By the rules, he's allowed to do a combat maneuver check (at -4) on that giant, to have it also affected by the bull rush. But he never moves adjacent to it; the only thing hitting the giant is the Tiny stirge.

Would you rule the giant could be knocked back by the bull rush in this scenario? Is there a rule I missed that disallows it?

Now, tbh I would have liked to houserule this - and should have, in my latest campaign - that the DC for Aid Another shouldn't be 10, it should be the DC of the actual task minus 10 - otherwise by midlevel it's just an automatic +2 to every skill all the time when not alone or in combat. And Pathfinder skills are already too high.

But that's just me and this is, after all, a forum for rules-as-written. :)

"In cases where the skill restricts who can achieve certain results, such as trying to open a lock using Disable Device, you can’t aid another to grant a bonus to a task that your character couldn’t achieve alone."

This is mostly cut-and-pasted from 3.5e, which says

"In cases where the skill restricts who can achieve certain results (such as with Disable Device, Search, and Survival), you can’t aid another to grant a bonus to a task that your character couldn’t achieve alone. For instance, a character who doesn’t have the trapfinding class feature can’t use Search to help a rogue find a magic trap, since the helper couldn’t attempt to find the magic trap on his own." (emphasis mine)

The earlier edition seems clearer: the example is clearly meant to differentiate between "could you succeed on a 20 without further bonuses" and "could you attempt the task at all" - that it wasn't meant to be a matter of how skilled you are and whether the aider could succeed themselves on a sufficiently good roll, it's whether the skill description prevents you from attempting the task at all (note the use of the word "attempt" in the 3.5e original).

All of Survival, Search, and Disable Device (in 3.5e) have class-based or feat-based restrictions - Trapfinding or Tracking - and that's clearly what's meant by the restriction in the earlier edition.

So is the changed text deliberate and intentional in changing the restriction to be more restrictive?

Paizo was certainly free to change the nature of the Aid Another attempt, but this looks more like they just eliminated the skills that no longer exist from the earlier text, and then also eliminated the example, since class-based restrictions mostly no longer apply to skills - the only "restriction" on anyone attempting a skill any more is when a skill is "trained-only" - you no longer have to be a rogue to find a magic trap or a ranger to follow a trail - and I see no evidence that the Paizo team had any other intent than to streamline and simplify the existing 3.5e rule, but they made the text more ambiguous since it refers to far fewer restrictions now.

I wish they had replaced it with an explicit example, where you could not use Disable Device to assist opening a lock if you were not yourself trained in the skill, since it is trained-only. Alas, they didn't give an example to disambiguate.

Nevertheless, my read is that you can Aid Another with an 8 STR on a DC 20 attempt.

Locate Object/Creature have a Long range "centered on you (the caster)", take a standard action to cast, and have a duration of one or ten minutes per level.

I am presuming - but I realize it is only an assumption - that if (for example) one casts the spell looking for a specific known creature and that creature is not within range when the spell is cast, the caster can then move, and the divination effect moves with her, and if she moves such that the creature enters the range of the spell, she will detect the creature?

Our campaign takes place in a fairly sophisticated Waterdeep-like city (Monte Cook's Ptolus) about twenty square miles in size, where it is not uncommon to have flying wizards. So I am presuming the wizard can cast overland flight, cruise over the city with locate creature active, and find the person she's trying to find, if they're anywhere in the city and not otherwise protected from detection.

Does that match others' understanding? Is how this detail works clarified anywhere in a PF1e book? Or is the range/area fixed at the point of casting (that would be the other interpretation of the spell)?

I do like the idea of an elemental being akin to a spirit or force inhabiting a quantity of whatever element it is - in DC Comics, Swamp Thing, a "plant elemental", is explicitly this; the plants themselves comprising his body are incidental, and "he" is just a spirit that animates them - but I don't know that elementals are meant to be that in standard Pathfinder or Golarion or D&D cosmology, and very little in the descriptions of them supports that reading.

That said, nothing particularly says that it's wrong, either. Some versions and editions of our favorite hobby have said that a quantity of the appropriate element must be present in order to summon an elemental, but that's obviously not the case from 3rd edition forward.

An elemental does definitely manipulate its element, meaning that an earth elemental must have some ability to manipulate earth (and thus stone). The inability of an earth elemental to do the equivalent of dig (see non-PF SRD sources) or stone shape or create pit is, I suppose, mostly a game-balance limitation - summon a small elemental, talk to it, get the effect of a much higher-level spell - note my comment above about passwall.

I'm not answering the question here (because of course it's obvious RAW doesn't resolve it even on careful reading). I do wonder whether I agree about the differences being assumed based on [Su] versus [Ex] earth glide, but I'm intrigued.

When RAW isn't clear, the most important consideration is this -- "if we give an earth elemental this capability, is it overpowered?" I gave my earlier response with that question in mind - if it is able to pull party members through walls, it has to be at least inefficient and clumsy about it to avoid eliminating the need for passwall, and it shouldn't be able to instakill a target by trapping them underground or inside a wall.

(Also, "no larger than" needs to be part of the calculation: Small elementals can't pull Medium characters through a wall. Still means every all-halfling/gnome parties get the equivalent of passwall at third level, as does a party willing to invest in some reduce person wands... but that doesn't affect my campaign too much.)

Weird necro, but at least most of those guys are still around. It feels like you are stating your opinions as fact though. Do you have any sources to site on this that didn’t exist 10 years ago?

Nope. When RAW is insufficiently precise, everyone gives their own take. I simply hadn't provided mine yet.

Certainly the rules on incorporeals just in the main book seem clear, and some of the folks a decade ago seemed unclear about those.

But "X is a possible interpretation" doesn't require any additional rules to be discovered. It's just another interpretation, one that hadn't been made (or at least emphasized). Ditto for the metal exemption - something that is mentioned in the rules, though for what an elemental couldn't move through, not speculating on what it couldn't carry.

As for the rest, and for stating my opinion with some assurance: if I didn't believe my own opinions to be correct, they wouldn't be my opinions; my opinions would be whatever I did believe to be correct. ;) Of course they're just my take.

Funny enough I was wondering about this topic just last night. Could I summon an elemental to bury some treasure for me?

I'd certainly expect you could. Depending on where you bury it and what you bury, a xorn might well decide you're their DoorDash delivery person.

First, I realize this thread is a little old

Hold my beer.

(clears throat)

1. In general, you can bring other things with you when you move. This is true for monsters and PCs alike. It's specifically not the case for incorporeal creatures - they cannot interact with physical objects unless they have the ghost touch property, as covered by specific rules.

2. Items are not necessarily the same as characters. If you pick up a sword and turn invisible, the sword turns invisible. This is not true if you pick up the party halfling. So this makes things more ambiguous.

3. earth glide is not sufficiently described. The "essence" description above is one possible interpretation. "The earth simply acts like water" is another - the elemental's movement pushes the ground aside, temporarily, and it acts like a (viscous) liquid, its surface returning to look exactly as it did before.

4. It's also not clear at all how this power differs from the elemental's burrowing speed, beyond being a specification of how burrowing works for elementals specifically - can an elemental burrow without earth gliding?

5. If one were to buy the "earth=>water" argument, this provides a potential solution to the auto-burying power of a medium earth elemental: if a creature is abandoned in the earth after being grabbed and dragged by the elemental, the earth returning to its normal characteristics no longer has room for them, and thus causes them to "surface", squeezing them out to the nearest open air, possibly doing, say, 1d6/10 feet crushing damage that they're forced to travel. There is precedent; it makes this equivalent to what an air elemental can do in the opposite direction, where the crushing damage all happens at the end.

6. All that said, the problem I have with this interpretation is not combat-related: it provides a way for the fourth-level spell (summon monster IV) to duplicate the power of passwall, if you can tell a summoned elemental to move back and forth through a wall and carry each party member one at a time.

7. It is also a defensible interpretation of the rules that what cannot be carried by the elemental is not creatures but metal. In which case, the characters would simply have to place all metal items into a handy haversack or larger extradimensional space, then let the elemental carry them (holding their breath).

After all that, I don't know how I'm going to rule this.

You really need a rule that says "You can put only x pouches on your belt?"

Once the existence of a rule-based detail is established, ambiguities have to be resolved. If it is a mechanically different behavior to have an item on your belt than in your pack - if retrieving from a belt isn't the AoO-provoking move action that retrieving from a pack is - then it definitely does matter how many items can be stored in this more convenient way. Someone is going to ask "what's the limit" and I will need to give an answer.

Having beaten this to death, I still have the original question. If a scroll is in a scroll case and among a character's generic possessions (that is, assuming that one did not explicitly declare this specific scroll to have been on the character's belt or in their hand), can it be read in a single move action + standard action turn?

I've never ruled that it couldn't. But it still then bugs me that there is a rule for taking a scroll out of a scroll case ("a move action") at all, since a single "retrieve a stored item" action covers both removing the case from the pack and the scroll from the case.

Just to circle back to this - the thing I had to wrap my brain around was that in PF, unlike in D&D 3.x, Still Spell is irrelevant to casting a spell while grappled; the presence or absence of a somatic component does not affect the ability to cast a spell while grappling.

Still Spell is intended for casting spells in armor, and for casting spells while pinned, but does not interact with grappling at all. That's the intent of the rules, as near as I can tell.

I don't think we'll find a clear RAW, but I am planning to adjudicate it "attack roll bonuses and DR (as appropriate) apply to all simultaneous attacks, but damage bonuses apply to only one, chosen by caster before rolling." Splits the difference with no real justification, but... the bonus to hit/DR bypass/AC bonus are all sort of "conditions", while the extra damage is kind of "deliberate", and thus the extra damage only happens when you are deciding to apply it, which you can only do once at a time.

Sorta. Anyway, that's what I'm doing for now, after reading the commentary/feedback, for what it's worth.

zza ni wrote:

All the above statements can't be true at the same time, so we have to pick what agrees more with us.

Excellent point. I also need to adjudicate...

- Does the bonus to hit from smite apply to all attacks? (Probably yes)

- Now that I'm thinking about the concept of simultaneous d20s, would the Luck first-level domain power, if active, apply to all of the d20s rolled? That is, does each of the attack rolls rolled by this spell allow rolling two d20s and using the better one? I will probably allow it, though arguably it might not be intended to...

Separate from that: I am considering inventing the following and ruling it to be so at my table, to provide a bit of cool flavor and explain the "until expended" part (and to make up a bit for the spell being piercing instead of untyped).

"If the caster uses the spell to create an ice wall, the caster may, at any time during the duration of the ice wall before it is broken through, use a standard action to transform the ice wall into 1 javelin per caster level, hurling them from the location of the ice wall, at one or more opponents no more than ten feet away from each other. Both the ice wall and the target(s) must be within sight of the caster."

There's also the other part of the question: do all the javelins bypass DR? I suspect that answer is yes.

That tracks, actually. The same is true, isn't it, of Manyshot and precision-based damage?

I'm interpreting these the right way, right? My party of PCs has just reached 11th level...

Smite Evil (Su):

Aura of Justice (Su):

Holy Ice [Cleric/Oracle 5]

Does this mean that the holy ice spell cast by an 11th level cleric or oracle who's been given Aura of Justice by their 11th level paladin associate can spit eleven javelins at a boss target with this single spell, each one bypassing DR, each one getting the paladin's high-CHA bonus to hit, and then each javelin getting +11 to damage (+22 for evil outsiders)?

11th level characters, who focused on obtaining +6 headbands, for primary stats in the 24-26 range at this point in the campaign, provide this scenario: the cleric now gets +21 to hit (exclusive of bless, prayer, heroism, point-blank shot, or any other spells) with each of these 11 javelins, each bypassing DR and doing 1d6+12 damage.

I didn't miss anything here, did I? Just checking.

Curious what the RAW people would say. If several PCs are on one plane and a Life-mystery Oracle is on another, can the PCs cast Planar Binding to call the Oracle to their plane if the Oracle is using Energy Body as the spell is being cast (thus having the Elemental creature subtype for the N rounds while the power is active, and elementals being subject to Planar Binding)?

My inclination is "no", if for no other reason than Planar Binding has a 10-minute casting time and oracles can only use Energy Body for rounds/level/day.

Don't put your scroll in a box, in a bag, in the cart, on the ship, at the dock back in Town, on a different continent, on another plane.

Have it in your hand, on your belt, at your disposal. No more than a single move action.

Of course if you already have an item in hand, it is not an extra move action to bring it to hand.

Where do the rules define, and limit, "on your belt"? I might have missed it. How many items can be on your belt, and what says that it is not a move action to get an item from your belt? (In addition to the rule - at least it looks like a rule to me - that says scrolls are placed in scroll cases - though the scroll box provides an explicit alternative.)

If one knows before combat that one is going to use exactly one specific scroll, sure, but this question is in the context of clerics (who don't have a free hand to be holding a scroll) or wizards/sorcerers (who tend to have a plethora of scrolls available and don't already know which scroll they might need as a combat develops).

I want to be clear that I can easily make a rule to get around this. I just want to pick the brain of the people here to know how "standard" this difficulty is, and whether others interpret RAW this way.

"activating a scroll is a standard action (or the spell’s casting time, whichever is longer) "

So, carry your scroll case on your belt, retrieve a scroll as a move action, then activate it as a standard action, which would be the same round.
I'm not seeing the problem.

Retrieving a stored item (scroll case) is a move action regardless of whether it is stored in a pack, on your belt, in a _handy haversack_, in a _portable hole_, or anything else, as far as the rules are concerned - the HH just negates the attack of opportunity.

Taking a scroll out of a scroll case is also a move action, by the explicit description of scrolls in the Magic Items chapter.

It's not a problem if the DM decides "getting out a scroll" counts as "manipulating an item" and therefore as a move action, but since two well-defined subsets of the "get a scroll out" action are each explicitly move actions themselves, it's hard to see it as a single move action.

It would seem weird to have "retrieve from belt" not be a move action when "draw a weapon" is, and "retrieve a stored item" is. There isn't anything in the rules I can find that differentiates storing on your belt versus storing anywhere else, nor any limitation on how many scroll cases can be on your belt if one were to assume the belt were a privileged place.

So we've not been sticklers for this in all the years I've played 3.x, but it seems that scrolls are not designed to be used in a single round of combat. It is a move action to pull a scroll box from a belt or pack, and a move action to pull a scroll from a container - so then you wind up taking a second round to cast the spell.

The physical description of scrolls says "To protect it from wrinkling or tearing, a scroll is ... placed in a tube of [materials type list]."

Does a handy haversack allow you to safely store scrolls outside of scroll cases or boxes? It indexes them for you (you can just pull the one you want). Are they proof, in the haversack, against "wrinkling or tearing" if just tossed in the haversack?

How have other DMs played it? I don't expect there's a RAW; do you generally let a haversack-equipped wizard/cleric cast a spell off a scroll in a single round?

I apologize - and am grateful for all the clarifications.

The SRD should get that errata.

It's a tad counterintuitive, but livable, that Still Spell doesn't do anything for you when being grappled. (My players will be upset.) But since it does help you when being pinned, that's better.

Here's some weird wording.

"If a spell doesn’t have a somatic component, an arcane spellcaster can cast it with no arcane spell failure chance while wearing armor. Such spells can also be cast even if the caster’s hands are bound or he is grappling (although concentration checks still apply normally)."

That word "normally".

In context, "the normal concentration check for grappling still applies."

I cannot make that make sense. "Normally" and "still" are extraneous, but not only extraneous, they imply something that's not true.

Contrast this with

"(Nonsomatic) spells can also be cast even if the caster’s hands are bound or he is grappling (although concentration checks apply)."

It makes much more sense without those two words. With those words "normally" and "still", they're comparing nonsomatic spells to "normal" (somatic) spells - implying that a somatic spell cast while grappling would also have a concentration check - a check which "still" applies if a spell is nonsomatic.

What concentration check applies during grappling if the spell has a somatic component? There isn't one.

This is what I mean when I say it's incomplete editing.

eyelessgame wrote:

and use a scroll (using a spell completion item is not "casting a spell" and does not require a Concentration check to perform while grappled.)

Are you sure?

CRB, p. 490 wrote:

Activating a scroll spell is subject to disruption just as casting a normally prepared spell would be.

To me that says that the scroll requires a concentration check.

The rule is a bit hidden, but it's there.

Hm. You could be right. It might take a wand, rather than a scroll, to escape. What counts as "disruption" isn't really clearly defined in the rules - which is why I didn't think about that line - but I agree in retrospect.

(I had always wondered about somatic (and verbal) components of a scroll, but this seems to suggest they mirror actual casting of the spell.)

The SRD is not consistent - or at least is as close to deliberately deceptive as it ever gets.

Instead of attempting to break or reverse the grapple, you can take any action that doesn’t require two hands to perform, such as cast a spell or make an attack or full attack with a light or one-handed weapon against any creature within your reach, including the creature that is grappling you. See the grappled condition for additional details."

Emphasis mine. Note it says you can cast a spell, not just "cast a spell without somatic components", because casting a spell is among the category of actions that "doesn't require two hands to perform."

And under spellcasting, the one-hand-free rule is emphasized regarding somatic components:

"A somatic component is a measured and precise movement of the hand. You must have at least one hand free to provide a somatic component."

The one-hand rule is pretty obvious, because otherwise clerics could pretty much never cast spells in combat.

So that seems to settle it. You can cast a spell while grappled, because the rules specifically say you can, without qualification.

Except that then it says, in defining the grappled condition:

Casting Spells while Grappled/Grappling: The only spells which can be cast while grappling or pinned are those without somatic components and whose material components (if any) you have in hand. Even so, you must make a concentration check (DC 10 + the grappler’s CMB + the level of the spell you’re casting) or lose the spell."

Apart from the difficulty of the concentration check (which is slightly exaggerated by some in the thread above: a 20th level caster has about a +28 or +29 Concentration check versus a T-rex 10+32+spell-level, so a DC 48 Still teleport is not _impossible_... just nearly so), the rules have an inconsistency that I can't resolve.

This isn't specific-versus-general. All three references are specifically about spellcasting and about the rules for having a hand free - specifically called out as permitted in one place with a justification that is specifically spelled out in a second place, and specifically prohibited in a third place.

Note also that the third reference says "whose material components (if any) you have in hand." Except that you can, while grappling, "take any action that doesn’t require two hands to perform" - and retrieving a material component from your component pouch certainly qualifies, since that does not require both hands any more than casting a spell does (since it's normally part of the action of casting a spell) - making this a meaningless clause (unless it refers only to being pinned).

I'd like to think that the third quote is meant to refer only to being pinned. But that doesn't make sense either, because it's in the section about grappling, and it says "grappling or pinned" quite clearly.

But the nonsensical line about material components makes it crystal-clear that this is, basically, an instance of incomplete editing. There were two different, competing visions of how this should work, and they both got into the rules.

Anyone considering Still Spell really ought to read the RAW about grappling and concentration.

Granted, virtually all GMs houseruled this, but by RAW, Still Spell does not improve your situation at all if you are grappled. You still have to make a Concentration check that beats 10 + opponent's CMB + spell level. (It makes it possible to cast a spell while pinned - but you still have to make the concentration check - which you won't.)

This is true even for e.g. word of recall.

(It's not true for scrolls. You can pull out a scroll and cast a spell from it while grappled. You don't even incur an AoO from your opponent, since you can't perform attacks of opportunity while grappling. You just can't cast any spells yourself if the grappler has a decent CMB.)

Heh, it's been 12 years since this thread that I'm only now discovering, and I've been running PFv1 all this time ... and this rule goes straight into the bin in my game, along with the one where silence doesn't add to your stealth, but invisibility makes you harder to hear.

Pathfinder did a whole lot of things right, but they got these very, very wrong.

Just to add a bit to the absurdity:

While the wizard could not cast e.g. silent, still, materials-eschewed teleport while grappled without making this absurd/impossible concentration check, she could retrieve a stored item (this requires only one hand, particularly if one has a handy haversack, which no one doesn't), and use a scroll (using a spell completion item is not "casting a spell" and does not require a Concentration check to perform while grappled.) Nor can the creature grappling her react with e.g. an attack of opportunity, because you can't make an AoO while grappling, including against the creature you're grappling.)

This ... is all consistent with itself, but it sure ain't how I'm gonna run it.

I know the answer is almost certainly "not covered in the rules", but how in general do GMs interpret "kind" similarity for locate object? Is it based only on physical description, or can it include magical properties?

Would "the closest +1 anarchic longsword" work? That is, can you search for an item with a specific enchantment? In the real world two longswords can look very different from one another; does the *look* of the item matter? (Of course the caster would have to have handled a +1 anarchic longsword at some point).

How about "the closest +1 anarchic weapon"? How general can "kind" be, and can it be based just on enchantment? Or on enchantment at all? Or "the closest magic dagger"?

(It did occur to me that any D&D3/PF1 setting that includes any sort of secret society where everyone in the society wears or carries the same token to indicate membership, e.g. some nonmagical membership ring, is a setting where someone didn't think through the magical implications.)