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I've been going around collecting all of the bodies we find to give them proper burials. I have not been able to find any real evidence of pathfinder burial customs, and do not believe that collecting the skulls counteracts giving proper burials. Is collecting the skulls (for speak with dead purposes) evil?

I've been going around collecting all of the bodies we find to give them proper burials. I have not been able to find any real evidence of pathfinder burial customs, and do not believe that collecting the skulls counteracts giving proper burials. Is collecting the skulls (for speak with dead purposes) evil?

That is an odd example. Not familiar with scaling items. And that item is the basis for the agreement that reducing what a spell like ability can do isn't the basis for any discount the item has in pricing?

Because, looking at some of the other items, it seems like some funky pricing is going on with the scaling items. Forgemaster's gauntlets for example, give a +5 bonus to two different though related skills, which should be priced anywhere from 5,000 to 6,250, are instead priced as 3,750. Gorgeous gorget gives a +5 to three skills, priced at 5,000. The formula seems to only be doing half cost for abilities past the first?

mehs wrote:

OmniMage wrote:

Eagle Cape

Feather fall - at will: 2000 gp
Beast shape 1 (eagle only) - 1/day: 6000 gp
+5 bonus on perception (in eagle form only): 2500 gp

In addition to that, it gives a fly speed of 80 when using beast shape 1, which is normally limited to fly 30. I would be tempted to raise the price because of that. I would lower the price of the skill bonus because its limitations.

Total: 10500 gp.

However, its priced at 7000 gp, so maybe the designer thought the item a lower price to be worth buying.

The beast shape being restricted to certain animals is an ad hoc restriction with an unknown price reduction. Oh and note it's beast shape as the spell plus the restriction of eagles only, so you only get 30 ft fly speed. Instead I calced the other two abilities, ring of feather fall and eyes of the eagle with the "50% increase for different abilities", and it came out to ~7000 right there with no room for the beast shape no matter what the price reduction was. Whereas if you calc them as similar abilities, you still have room for some ad hoc discount for the beast shape only turning you into a single specific animal.

For cloak of the hedge mage, I calced them as use activated. The 1800 vs 2000, which brings it to 2,520, within rounding range, etc.

This is flat out false. A spell that normally has more options never gets reduced in price for losing those options. Look at every item that has Endure Elements, but ONLY towards heat OR cold, not both. They still have the full cost of the spell, despite the fact that you are only benefiting from half of the spell

I'm having difficulty finding example of endure elements items that protect only from heat or cold that don't have so many odd effects that make pricing them hard. Can you provide some examples?

Featherscale Cloak is a bit odd. Feather fall and hide from animals are both level 1 spells, so each are worth 400 gp. A +5 bonus to swim is worth 2500 gp (5*5*100 gp). Beast shape is a lv3 spell, so casting it once per day is worth 6000 gp, which is more the magic item is priced as. The total would be 9300 gp. The designer must have lowered the price, possibly because you can only take the shape of a bird or fish.

I'm not sure if I should raise the prices for the level 1 spells because the item has a CL of 5. Each of them would then be worth 2000 gp each. The total then would be 12500 gp, so I'm pretty sure the designer lowered the price by more than a third. Must have thought they would buy something else than the item at that price.

The feather fall and hide from animals is only the user rather than the 5 people they could normally affect.

Calcing them as effectively level 1, caster level 1, if they were being priced as different abilities, then that's 600+600+3750=4,950, which leaves no room for the beast shape no matter the price discount. It's more of a proof by contradiction that no matter what ad hoc discounts there are on these items, they can't be using the "different, on body" penalty and are instead using a "similar, on body" x1. The arguement I am running on is that the books care more about if the abilities are similar thematically rather than statistically. Bonus to str and dex are similar gameplay wise, but different thematically because dnd was based on archetypes of dex=rogue, str=fighter, etc. Whereas the cloaks all give abilities very much within eagle stuff, novice wizard stuff, gozreh nature stuff.

Eagle Cape

Feather fall - at will: 2000 gp
Beast shape 1 (eagle only) - 1/day: 6000 gp
+5 bonus on perception (in eagle form only): 2500 gp

In addition to that, it gives a fly speed of 80 when using beast shape 1, which is normally limited to fly 30. I would be tempted to raise the price because of that. I would lower the price of the skill bonus because its limitations.

Total: 10500 gp.

However, its priced at 7000 gp, so maybe the designer thought the item a lower price to be worth buying.

The beast shape being restricted to certain animals is an ad hoc restriction with an unknown price reduction. Oh and note it's beast shape as the spell plus the restriction of eagles only, so you only get 30 ft fly speed. Instead I calced the other two abilities, ring of feather fall and eyes of the eagle with the "50% increase for different abilities", and it came out to ~7000 right there with no room for the beast shape no matter what the price reduction was. Whereas if you calc them as similar abilities, you still have room for some ad hoc discount for the beast shape only turning you into a single specific animal.

For cloak of the hedge mage, I calced them as use activated. The 1800 vs 2000, which brings it to 2,520, within rounding range, etc.

The basic pricing formula seems to give out a punnet square:

Similar, on body x1?
Similar, not on body x.75, x.5,
Different, on body x1 x1.5
Different, not on body x1

The first one is what I'm confused about, as there are several Canon items like cloak of hedgemage, Featherscale cloak, eagle cape, etc, that are almost definitely using the "similar, on body" x1. It's also just implied to be a x1 by the lack of specific example, though by similar token, different, not in body is only addressed briefly as an aside and as a counterexample rather than being specifically addressed.

Is there sufficient evidence for it existing?

Does an animal need to be domesticated to teach it tricks, and are there any FAQ's that state how it works?

As to the fireball thing, I think the logic is that the magic doesn't end when the pellet explodes. After all, for something to be seriously burned it needs more than split second contact with something hot. Theoretically, the spell continues to mess with how quickly heat transfer can take place and thus you could resist it with SR. With energy attacks (other than. Acid) the energy being created isn't the end and you have to keep manipulating the energy. That or it is saying that the energy is straight up magic and not true energy.

Yeeeeep, if you could post the link to anytime a Dev says "specific trumps general" I would appreciate it.

He is arguing that since "specific trumps general" isn't actually officially written in the books anywhere that we can find, then he isn't abiding by that unless I get Paizo to change it.

He says I need a specific line from paizo that "specific trumps general" or a line fixing the errata. The line of text it he is going off of seems to be based on a holdover from 3.0e when web was still affected by SR. Please help me get this resolved as flagging it for faq.

My GM and I are disagreeing about a line in the book

"Effect Spells: Most effect spells summon or create something and are not subject to spell resistance. Sometimes, however, spell resistance applies to effect spells, usually to those that act upon a creature more or less directly, such as web."

My Dm is taking this to mean that monsters pretty much always have SR, that acid splash, acid arrow, mudball, etc all have to make a cl check to overcome SR if they target a creature with SR.

Im pretty sure that the writers made an when they used web as a specific example. Thoughts?