eyelessgame's page

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.)

There was just this past weekend in my game a conversation between a sentient magic weapon and an inevitable on this topic. The two of them concluded that it was likely that the sentient weapon was an object, but that the inevitable (which is a construct) was both.

Back in the 1980s, Superman did this in one comic story - a villain had placed six kidnap victims into lead-lined boxes (with life support) scattered throughout the city, reasoning that Superman's X-ray vision could not see into lead boxes.

So Superman scanned the city for lead boxes - which are obvious to his vision, since it's the only thing he can't see - to find those large enough to contain human beings, then flew to each and ripped it open, thus finding and rescuing the hostages...

So I'm guessing there just wasn't anything else here to say.

The two edge cases I'm still trying to decide how to rule:

- reduce person is a buff for an elf rogue (+1 AC, +1 to hit, at a cost of an effective -1 to damage) but a massive debuff for a halfling rogue, because a Tiny creature cannot flank. I'm not happy with that.

- There's still no satisfactory clarity on whether a Medium character can move down a 5' wide hallway occupied by Tiny creatures.

--

I think, based in part on this discussion and then taking it further, I can bend the meaning of one of the quotes already given to solve the medium-versus-tiny problem...

Here are the relevant quotes.

"Very small creatures take up less than 1 square of space."

"You can move past them without provoking attacks of opportunity. "
"A Fine, Diminutive, or Tiny creature can move into or through an occupied square. The creature provokes attacks of opportunity when doing so."

I highlight with italics because I will rely on those words in an admittedly less-than-completely-kosher way.

I'm going to bend things this way...

- You can enter a space of a creature that is Tiny or smaller, regardless of your size, and stop there if you want. (Justification: you can't generally enter another creature's space because that creature takes up its space, which tiny/smaller creatures do not. Also, a condition (like a tiny and a larger creature sharing a space) ought to be legal regardless of who causes it to happen. If a tiny creature can move into your square and stop, it follows that you can move into theirs and stop.)

- Exception to the above: four Tiny creatures in the same space count as a Small creature, and small-or-larger rules apply for entering that space (e.g. acrobatics or overrun to move through, cannot stop) (Justification is clear: "four tiny creatures fit in a space". Once another Tiny creature can't enter, neither can larger creatures.)

- If you enter the space of a Tiny or smaller creature, they get an attack of opportunity on you. They do not get an attack of opportunity when you leave their space. (Justification: your distance to them counts as 0', which places you within their 0' threat range.)

--

I'm thinking about ruling this, to deal with my own tiny-flank frustration (I did read the Mouser, but it's a special class feature and it expends panache points and is thus overpowered for what I want)

A Tiny or smaller creature that is sharing the space of another creature may "move within the space" to flank that creature, if the creature has another enemy in the same space (thus also tiny) or adjacent.

Moving within the space can be done instead of a 5' move, or can be done as part of a move action. Either way, it incurs an attack of opportunity from the target being flanked (but not other creatures in the space). This counts as an "attack of opportunity for moving" (which can be avoided with e.g. Acrobatics) - that is, if the target already took an AoO for its move, they do not get another AoO.

This maneuver to flank does not grant a flanking bonus to any other creature, only to the creature doing the flanking (thus a tiny creature cannot provide a flanking bonus to a small-or-larger creature).

I realize that unlike the above, it's in direct contraction to RAW, so I'll think more about it and if I decide to do it for real I'll keep it to myself. :)

This is wonderful and exhaustive. My only question to all this:

When a dark creeper is killed while within a darkness or deeper darkness spell, does his flash of light still occur and blind people nearby? I.e. what level of effect is the flash of light?

There doesn't appear to be any guidance for what the equivalent spell level is for a supernatural (not spell-like) ability. It doesn't come up often, but it does here.

I'm a bit late to the party, but I had this exact question, and since there's no official rule, I'm treating darkness and light spells as an emanation, which makes perfect sense - so it "casts shadows" in reverse.

(The weird thing is that silence calls this out specifically: "20-ft.-radius emanation centered on a creature, object, or point in space" - which means silence doesn't extend around corners - but light and darkness spells, which could easily have used this wording, don't.)

So, I figure it makes the most sense for silence, light, and darkness all to be emanations. (It makes far more sense for silence to act like a spread instead of an emanation, but RAW says emanation. It's frickin magic, what do you want.)

That's very similar to how I am ruling it. I suppose if it has a CMD for dealing with Acrobatics, the same CMD can be used as a defense against bull rush or overrun.

Note that for spell written when the oracle was already a class, like Spiritual ally, the reason why it is a reasonable rule loses a bit of its value.

Ironically, if the spell had been more carefully edited, I would pay more attention to the explicit reference to Wisdom. As it is, given that the spell's language is ambiguous and doesn't follow standard guidelines, I'm also comfortable houseruling Charisma for the oracle.

And yes, the three rounds did involve help - after two evoked spiritual allies were flanking the opponent, the oracle's teammate - a paladin - cast knight's calling and the target rolled a nat-1 on its save - and because of that and the wording of the knight's calling spell, it could take no action (because it could do "nothing except move", but it also would only "move in a way that avoids attacks of opportunity", which was not possible since it was flanked by opponents. Also, the whole combat was taking place on difficult terrain, and I made bad decisions for the monster. So - yeah, just good tactics.)

But I was envisioning some five-foot corridors and, without a CMD or any clarification on what "occupies its space" meant, and the implied contrast with "allies" moving through its space, I was treating the spiritual ally like it was a moveable wall of force that allies could pass through but enemies could not, and which meanwhile flanked, did damage to opponents, and performed attacks of opportunity, all of which is just a bit overpowered for a 4th level spell.

And normally I'd have said "just treat it like a better spiritual weapon". Except that the language of the spell made my players, and initially me, _think_ it was an invulnerable and impassable force block. And now I have to backtrack, and they'll be upset.

"The spiritual ally occupies its space, though you and your allies can move through it, since it is your ally."

That is right near the top of the description. It implies things to the contrary for creatures who are not "you and your allies", but what precisely is that implication? That's really the core of the problem. The language invites you to treat it like a creature and not a spell effect - but there's not actually anything there to suggest that it is really to be treated as a creature.

But that one sentence just defies easy resolution. So does "The spiritual ally threatens adjacent squares and can flank and make attacks of opportunity as if it were a normal creature." Because a "normal creature" has a CMD and its attacks of opportunity can be bypassed.

And muddying the waters, the description says that the spell effect is "a construct of force". "Construct" is really unfortunate here because that's a type of creature, further suggesting that it should be treated as a creature, when the clear intent of the spell was just to be an upgrade of _spiritual weapon_, something that does more damage, and can flank and perform an attack of opportunity.

Oh, and one other thing - oracles can cast this spell, and they really ought to get to use their Charisma modifier, not Wisdom modifier, obviously.

So I know this is really late to be writing about, but there are some of us who still play and enjoy PF1.

This spell - spiritual ally - opened a huge can of worms when an oracle PC took it and used it in her first fight, because she popped three of them into existence around a foe that had a reason not to move immediately, and then got trapped in a way that... a far more powerful creature could have also been trapped. I'm now trying to make some rulings that make at least a little sense.

That the thing can make an attack of opportunity - what is its CMD for purposes of using Acrobatics to avoid the spiritual ally's AoO?

If an opponent tries to move through its space, what happens? You can move through anything that doesn't completely fill its space; you just might have to make some kind of roll. You might roll Acrobatics to avoid the attack of opportunity. You might try a grapple or trip or overrun or bull rush. But what happens if you try any of those things, against something with no defined CMD?

Allies can move through it. Can they stop in its space?

If opponents cannot move through its space at all, then doesn't that make the spiritual ally the equivalent of a moveable forcewall that your party can pass through but the enemy cannot? This seems ... overpowered. Far better than, say, interposing hand. Even without its ability to attack, flank, and make an attack of opportunity.

What perception powers does the ally have? Can it strike things the caster can't target? Can it make attacks of opportunity against other opponents than the one it was directed to target? (How does it know?) Against hidden opponents? Against invisible opponents? Against opponents with concealment? Cover? Can you hide from it?

Does shooting at an opponent adjacent to the spiritual ally get a -4 to hit because they're in melee? Does it provide cover to opponents behind it?

If your deity's favored weapon is a spear, does the spiritual ally have reach - and does it still threaten adjacent spaces, unlike a spear, as the spell explicitly says? If the weapon is a bow, can the spiritual ally still make attacks of opportunity? Can it make melee attacks with the bow? If the weapon is a whip, can the spiritual ally trip opponents? What CMB does it use, if so?

A lot about this spell needs clarification.

I started writing disambiguation of the spell - because I just know it will come up - and I came up with rather a lot of disambiguation. This is how I'll rule it unless there's a FAQ or 'official' ruling to the contrary.

- The target of the spell's intent becomes to move safely toward the paladin so that it may attack her in the next round, and moves only its speed and no more, using any of its normal movement modes. It does not run, charge, overrun, or bull rush.

- The target will avoid perceived dangers from anything other than a melee attack by the caster, including but not limited to anything that could cause damage - so the target will not move into any square that would require a skill roll, saving throw, attack roll, or any other possibly negative outcome. The spell does not, for example, compel the target to walk into the area of effect of a grease, entangle, antimagic field, or other hazard that the target can perceive.

- The target will make any automatically successful action that has only the effect of permitting the compelled movement safely. That is, the target will take the Withdraw action, if needed, in order to avoid attacks of opportunity; similarly, will make Climb, Acrobatics, Fly, or Ride checks to avoid a perceived obstacle, but only if their skill is sufficient to succeed with no chance of failure.

- The target is not compelled to take other actions to initiate movement (for example, if the spell is cast upon a target with the grappled condition, the target is not compelled to attempt to free itself form the grapple and then attempt to move.)

- The target will not expend any resource or use any power with limited charges or effect per day (for example, to activate barbarian rage in order to guarantee a Climb check success) in order to perform the movement safely.

- The target will not move through areas where it perceives an opponent may be readied to use any ranged attack, spell, or spell-like ability, damaging or not, such as crossing open ground between hidden areas, if the target is aware of an opponent covering the area. The target may make a Perception roll to perceive a danger, if the GM has not already adjudicated whether the target perceives a danger that it has not reacted to.

- The target will move into a square that might contain dangers they do not perceive, such as moving next to an invisible opponent, or through an area of darkness that conceals terrain with which they are familiar but which might conceal a danger they are unaware of.

- The target will strive to end its turn adjacent to the caster, regardless of the threat range of any weapon it may have in hand.

- The target will, if able and applicable, move through the caster's weapon threat range in order to reach a spot adjacent to the caster. If it does so, the caster may make her attack of opportunity as that movement occurs, rather than after the movement has ended adjacent to the caster. That is, the target will not avoid movement that triggers an attack of opportunity from the caster.

- The spell does not prevent the target's mount, rider, familiar, or any other creature that moves with the target from making an attack on the caster. An intelligent or independent mount of the spell's target might continue the move further and attempt to bull rush or trample the caster.

I stress this is my personal adjudication and not the result of anything official, so I'd be happy to learn that the suggestion is to rule it differently.

So um about Knight's Calling.

It seemed to be a tad overpowered for a first-level spell, only because it combines three different effects:

- Battlefield control (coercing an opponent's move)
- Loss of action (the target cannot attack; that is the *entirety* of spells like Command)
- Extra attack from the caster (if the target reaches the paladin, she gets to make an attack of opportunity)

But that's not my main issue.

Here's the description.

On its turn, the target moves its speed toward you, avoiding any other dangers along its path (including any movement that would provoke attacks of opportunity). The target may do nothing but move on its turn. If the target ends its move adjacent to you, you can make an attack of opportunity against the target.

I have so many questions.

- What counts as "danger"? Does a small chasm that requires a Jump check to cross count? How about crossing an area affected by Entangle or Grease? Or to scale a wall for which a Climb check is required? How about an area of darkness through which the target cannot see?

- Does the target take the Withdraw action if adjacent to an opponent? Strictly speaking this would violate "does nothing but move" since Withdraw is a full-round action, not a move action.

- Presumably the target cannot take move-equivalent actions, like draw a weapon or shield, while moving, since it says "does nothing but move."

- If the caster is armed with a reach weapon (say a longspear), what happens? By the wording of the spell, the target will stop once in threat range of the longspear, since to move the remaining 5' to be adjacent to the caster requires "movement that would provoke an attack of opportunity." But since the target stops without becoming adjacent to the caster, the caster cannot take the AoO awarded by the spell either.

Has anyone suggested a rewording of this spell that resolves some of this ambiguity? It is one of my players' paladin's favorite spells, and I'd really like something consistent.

I think I've answered my own question.

Searching the Bestiary I find other abilities that inflict negative levels but are not called Energy Drain - for example, a nabasu's Death-Stealing Gaze, which has a saving throw to avoid initially.

So - the nabasu's gaze produces a negative level that is guaranteed to eventually go away on its own, while a succubus' kiss - being called Energy Drain, gets only one save, a day later.