seebs's page

Okay, so, you know what 84 is?

6*14.

What if what the GM meant was that you get 84 points to allocate to your 6 stats, and they're doing a sort of linear-only point buy with a pretty high average?

So what if you have a dagger in each hand and a cestus worn on one? Can you punch as an AoO? You seem to think that would be ok. And yet both of your hands are occupied just as they are with a two-handed weapon.

A two-handed weapon does not occupy your right hand any more than a dagger occupies your right hand. It also doesn't occupy your left hand any more than a dagger in your left hand does. There are no differing grades of "occupy". Either a given hand is occupied or it isn't.

Punching with a cestus as an AoO with a dagger in your hand is just as possible by the rules as punching with a cestus as an AoO with a greatsword in that hand.

Take an object which is roughly the size of a sword pommel, and hold it in both hands. Now throw a punch with one hand without letting go of it.

There is a certain amount of "we assume the players consider how the physical actions would work" implied by the rules.

I am convinced that it is Just Plain Wrong for the source to be contingent like that. There's prior art showing that feats, class abilities, spells, and things like that are sources.

If I wanted to do this, well. First I'd establish whether the "double-dipping" thing was actually a problem. What's broken? Why is it broken? I don't think there's good evidence that "you can add this stat modifier twice" is significantly more powerful than "you can add these two different stat modifiers once each", and there are dozens of those. Similarly, I don't think substituting stat modifiers is all that bad.

But assuming we absolutely have to fix it, my first answer would be to declare that a bonus or modifier equal to an ability modifier which does not specify a type has the ability score as its effective type, so two things which add your wisdom modifier to a given roll don't stack unless at least one specifies a type.

Second choice would be just to declare that *in all cases*, the "source" of an bonus equal to an ability modifier is the ability itself. This doesn't break the "deflection bonus equal to your int modifier" case, because it turns out that *only* untyped bonuses are specified as not stacking when they come from the same source. Typed bonuses were already covered because they already don't stack.

But given the number of powers that people have identified which either are definitely broken now or at least look like they need to be tweaked to give one or more powers a type, I'd probably have gone in an entirely different direction. Say, declaring "ability bonus" to be a type, and then distinguishing between "your CMB includes your strength" and "add your strength bonus to your maneuver checks".

CMD would be the oddball because it already has two stats baked in.

The FAQ is as confusing as you want to make it.

The FAQ stops untyped bonuses from the same ability stacking.

While I feel that before this the wording was clear that it could stack, there were a number of people saying that you couldn't "Double dip". Both felt the rules supported them, now the rules clearly support 1 side. So taking RAW, yeah I feel it's a change, taking Rules as meant, it isn't a change. Also the bonus source thing is letting them have it be a type while not actually being a type.

That's why I think it's confusing. It's also a big part of why I think it's a bad rule. I don't think there was ever actually a problem that needed fixing apart from the ambiguity, and I don't think this gratuitously complicated way of fixing the ambiguity is helping.

Yes, we make players describe their choices about combat actions in more detail, because the game has more detailed rules for those actions. Disable device, there's no such rules. So demanding that people explain how specifically they would disable a trap is unfair; there's nothing in the rules to let them do so, at which point, you're imposing a special penalty on some skills, which is that the player has to be able to describe how to achieve their results in a way the GM appreciates.

The correct comparison, really, isn't between "I roll disable device" and "I take a five foot step then full attack". It's between "I roll disable device" and, once we've established that you're making a to-hit roll, "I roll to hit". If you're going to make people describe specifically how you want them to disable traps, you should make them describe specifically how they're attacking.

If you want to get the same effect that we see from all the hidden GM gotchas I see in trap threads, it should be something like:

Player: I roll to hit.
GM: How are you attacking?
Player: I think I'll swing my sword at him.
GM: He has a shield, so that doesn't work.
Player: Don't I get to roll for the attack?
GM: You have to describe an attack which would actually work before you can make the roll. He has a shield, so swinging a sword won't work.

I was just re-reading on metamagic feats, and found the following text: "use the spell level or the spell slot level, whichever is more of a disadvantage for the caster"

This rejoins the topic of making the game less and less fun to play, as more and more rulings like this topic-induced FAQ reduce the usefulness of its myriad of options.

If you find it fun, fine. Don't expect me to. No fun, no play, no buy, bye.

I actually think the metamagic ruling is right, and it's how I've always played them. It wasn't until a thread here that it even occurred to me to realize that you could in theory, rules-as-written, use a Pearl of Power I to regain a quickened magic missile.

"Devil's Advocate" wrote:

Source has always referred to the specific spell, feat, class/racial ability, not the some undefined broad category.

You start off admitting that there have been a small group that disagrees but then say your view is just how it has always been. A majority of people holding an incorrect view doesn't magically make that view correct. The FAQ just confirmed that the majority was wrong all along, at least with regards to PF, not that they were right and now it has changed.

I don't think this is the case. The design team has reached the conclusion that they don't intend double-dipping except when they do, but that doesn't mean that the "source" language was actually intended to mean that originally.

Blackbloodtroll: So untyped bonuses don't have a primary source anymore???

So far as I can tell, in every case except when it's an untyped bonus specifically equal to an ability modifier, the "source" is either (1) not defined at all or (2) the feat/ability/spell/whatever.

But if it's a bonus, and it's untyped, and it's equal to an ability score, suddenly instead the "source" is the ability score just so they can be "the same source" and not stack.

Note that as written, so far as I can tell, that applies only to positive modifiers. So if you have to things which give you an untyped modifier equal to your dexterity modifier to AC, they stack if your dexterity modifier is negative.

BigNorseWolf wrote:

. Everything else that was stopped from stacking was never intended to stack anyway.

The question that remains is why it is intended that one can not multiclass lore shaman and inquisitor to get twice wis to knowledge skills while it is possible to multiclass lore oracle and inquisitor to get cha + wis to knowledge skills?*

*wis from inquisitor only applies to checks for monster knowledge.

Why is it ok to get two different stats to something but not twice the same stat? Why not at least give half the bonus for the second time or something. Why is someone getting twice the same stat (that doesn't stack now) far worse than someone getting twice different stats.
There seems no balancing in this only a knee jerk reaction.

The above is just an example. There are several cases where it is hard to understand for some of us WHY it is bad if same stats stack but ok if different stats stack.

Two things:

1. If you add the same stat twice, it looks like you're adding the same thing twice which is SUPER BAD AND HORRIBLE, whereas if you add two pretty good bonuses on top of the other bonuses (you could have wis, cha, and int all applying to knowledge skills, I think), that's not two of the same bonus so it's totally different even if it's a higher total.
2. Specialization is already good. If I can add int*2 to something, that's probably better than adding int and dex to it. Although I'm not sure that holds when you consider PF's fairly steep scaling for point buy.

In short, if you can add two stats to something and that's fine, but can't add one stat twice, it's easier to end up with a +3 or so bonus in two stats, giving you a +6, but you're not allowed to add a +4 bonus twice and get a +8.

No I asked a simple question How is increase different from add? If it was, where's the rule. The rest spiraled out of control. Still haven't seen any actual rules on increase just RAI inferences about it. I was poking holes in the arguments that increase is somehow a 'thing' even though it's undefined.

I'm perfectly willing to drop the whole thing but I WOULD really like to see something in actual print defining a difference between increase and add.

There's no explicit rule, we're just falling back on conversational English.

At first level, my int is 16 and my BAB is 0. At 4th level, I increase my int by one point. My int is 17, my BAB is +2.

If I put on a headband of intellect, I have a +2 bonus to int. My int is now effectively 19, because it is 17 with a +2 bonus. The "increase" is really just a baked-in quality of the stat, while the "bonus" is a separate number which I add to it when I want to use the score.

And yeah, you can lose eidolon evolutions, at which point they revert, but the intended difference holds; an increase to the stat changes what the stat is, a bonus to the stat changes its computed value.

TriOmegaZero wrote:

graystone wrote:

Increase is different than add or gain a bonus??? I'm getting more confused the longer I'm in this thread... :(

Yes. Take two eidolons, one with 16 and one with 18. Both are adding a +2 enhancement bonus to each, for 18 and 20 respectively.

If the first one increases his 16 to an 18, he is effectively the same as the second, because it is as if he always had an 18.

So could you point me to the rule that defines increase, add and gain? I've only been using the normal language usages and I struggle to see the exception now granted to increase vs the others from meaning alone.

How is a 16 increased to an 18 different than gaining a permanent +2 stat bonus to your 16? They seem the same to me.

It's the other way around: Since there isn't a rule defining increases, they just get the default English meaning. An increase is a change to what a value is. Bonuses are the temporary additions we have rules for.

Increase is different than add or gain a bonus??? I'm getting more confused the longer I'm in this thread... :(

EDIT: As I pointed out in the magic creation rules, A stat increase is an ability bonus. A magic belt that increases your strength +2 is giving you an ability bonus.

We have language problems because a lot of these words exist both as general English words and as terms of art. That the same word can mean three mutually-exclusive things must be considered a bonus of writing in English. See what I did there?

A bonus makes something larger. Increasing is a kind of making things larger. However, "gives a +2 bonus to X" and "increases X by 2" are two different things! A +2 bonus to X modifies the effective value of X *while you have it*. You can lose the bonus. It is subject to stacking rules. And so on. You still have the base value of X, and the +2 bonus.

"Increase X by 2", you aren't maintaining a record of the increase as a distinct thing. You've just changed what the base value is.

So, for an example from another field, consider "salary" and "bonus". Say you have an annual salary of $50k. When the company does well, they give "bonuses". So if the company does really well and hands out a 10% bonus, that year you get $55k total pay; $50k salary, and a $5k bonus. But if the company doesn't do well next year, you only get $50k.

But an *increase* in salary means that your salary is now $55k. If the company doesn't do well, your salary is still $55k. And if there's a 10% bonus, it's now $5,500 because your salary was increased.

The eidolon ability, and level-up stat increases, are intended as increases. It can be useful to track the level-up ones as bonuses if you're recording character history and want to be able to explain how you got a 46 int, but they are not "bonuses" the way enhancement bonuses are. Even racial bonuses are more temporary, because you could reincarnate, in which case you'd usually lose your old racial bonuses and gain the new ones. (Well, modifiers, because they could be negative on either end of that.)

Right, see.

That's what I always thought "source" meant: Feat, spell, racial quality, class ability.

The special rule that, if and only if a bonus is untyped, and if and only if it is defined as equal to an ability modifier, it suddenly changes its source from the spell, feat, or ability which granted it to "the ability score" is... not really at all how any of the text has previously worked.

Maybe you could start from the top:

What *problems* are solved by preventing any double-dipping whatsoever, ever, except the ones that were intended and will now need errata to make them work again?

Were there specific things which were too powerful? Was there a reason they couldn't be fixed in some other, simpler, way?

This feels like the "three free actions around, one of which is talking" FAQ, where the actual problem was that weapon cords were ridiculously overpowered, and there were no other examples of serious free action abuse that anyone could think of.

So far as I can tell, the issues are:

1. A handful of cases where Inquisitor can get double-dipping of specific stat mods, which may or may not have been considered.
2. Fury's Fall + Agile Maneuvers.

And honestly, in the latter case, the result of this ruling strikes me as unambiguously bad for the game. If I have a +4 dex mod and a +2 strength mod, and I take fury's fall for a +2 net bonus to trip, and later I decide I like other combat maneuvers, taking agile maneuvers will reduce my CMB for trip by 2. That's a trap, and it's a ridiculous one. If Fury's Fall isn't too powerful, and Agile Maneuvers isn't too powerful, I don't think the combination is too powerful. With those numbers, Agile Maneuvers is +2 to all maneuvers, Fury's Fall is +4 to trip. Neither of those is an unreasonable bonus to give. Combined, you get a total of +8, which is +6 over what you'd have without two feats. And that's for tripping only, which is not necessarily the most important combat maneuver, and which is completely inapplicable on some opponents, and so on.

I am totally failing to see a problem here which requires something that clearly breaks a couple of intentional cases, breaks a lot of existing Inquisitor builds that so far as anyone knew were not actually a serious problem, and which does it by making the "type" and "source" language basically meaningless for at least some cases, in a way that strongly implies there might be other lurking cases later.

If two things give you an untyped bonus "equal to half your character level", does "your character level" become a "source"? What about class level in particular classes? Say, can I stack the +1/2 level initiative modifier from a diviner wizard with some other class which gives +1/2 level initiative modifier from that class's levels?

graystone wrote:

Mark Seifter wrote:

graystone wrote:

Mark Seifter wrote:

To be fair, unlike the monk flurry ruling, which also blindsided me as much as it did all of you guys and I fully agree needed to be rolled back, this newest FAQ has had a number of posts on the messageboard to this effect. They just haven't been official until the FAQ.

To be fair, they where both for AND against it. It wasn't all one sided. And none of them hinted at abilities as sources. So at least partly a blindside and partly up in the air.

I certainly didn't see anything from a designer, even an unofficial post, to the contrary. Do you happen to have a link? If not, no worries, I know it's hard to find all of them (having been in that position and seen the difficulty for myself more than once).

Sorry, edited last post with link while you where posting. ;)

Thanks! So it looks like, and correct me if I'm wrong, there was at least 100% unanimous agreement among unofficial rulings on things that don't use the "bonus equal to your X bonus" construction.

So for instance, the players double or triple dipping "add your Wisdom modifier to X" with inquisitors or adding Dex twice to Fury's Fall or other things like that, at least, had unambiguous cues from previous posts. Not that those unofficial clarifications like the ones in James Jacobs's or my thread are always going to be consistent (in fact, they come with warnings to the contrary). But this time, they all were, save for that facet.

The result may be consistent, but the way it's obtained is completely inconsistent, because it breaks the entire concept of "type" and "source".

And the "no double-dipping" rules have always struck me as sort of unconsidered and reactionary, for two reasons:

1. Nothing indicating that the problem is actually a severe one.
2. The alternative of "everything gets collapsed" produces serious traps for a lot of people.

This ruling produces a large number of cases where gaining an ability or feat *reduces* your competence at the thing it's supposed to be enhancing, and I don't think there are a lot of those that don't come from this ruling.

My thought on it for some time has been:

"Add a bonus" and "replace a bonus" are two separate things, and should probably stack. Even if the net effect is that you get a single bonus twice. If you can have the bonuses from two different stats on a roll, then replacing one of them with the other and having the same bonus twice isn't inherently busted.

A fix which matches my intuition for how to avoid breaking things would be to distinguish between "this computation inherently uses the modifier from a specific stat" and "add a bonus equal to the modifier from a given stat". So CMB uses your strength modifier. If you got a thing which let you add your dex bonus to CMB, that would be one base modifier, one bonus derived from a stat. And the bonus (in the sense of "an enhancement bonus" or "an untyped bonus") shouldn't stack with other bonuses of the same type, or same source if untyped, but the underlying calculation isn't a "bonus" in the same sense; it's just a computed value.

So my resolution of fury's fall + agile maneuvers is that agile maneuvers is not adding a bonus, it's changing the underlying computation of CMB, while fury's fall is adding a bonus. Only one of them is really a "bonus".

Basically, you have a confusion over the term "bonus" here that's comparable to the confusion over "level" that we occasionally see, like people asking why a spell says "1d6 per level" when the spell has a fixed level.

So my suggestion for a fix is to just recognize that terms like "combat maneuver bonus" or "attack bonus" are not the same kind of thing at all as a "typed bonus" or "untyped bonus". And that stacking rules only come into play when you are talking about the latter, and the initial computation of the score isn't affected.

So, for instance: Undead antipaladin? You use your cha modifier on fort saves, being undead, but that just creates your base Fort Save. It isn't a "bonus", even if it happens to be positive. Divine grace gives you a bonus equal to your charisma bonus. That can be added. But if you add another thing that adds a bonus, then you start thinking about stacking.

Then a general rule that if an untyped bonus is derived from a stat, it has an implicit type of "stat", and does not stack with other stat bonuses.

But the underlying values used to compute saves, attack bonus, CMB, CMD, and so on aren't "bonuses" in the same sense. They're just how the base value got computed.

wraithstrike wrote:

Paulicus wrote:

Those two were listed earlier as an example, they don't stack.

It sounds like, unless the ability specifically changes the 'type' of bonus granted by the ability modifier (i.e. paladins and their smite adding Cha to AC as a deflection modifier), then they don't stack.

Citation needed.

PS: I think you are correct, but I did not see an example that matched up with this one. I don't care if it does not stack, but now it seems they will need to clarify what the "source" is. By the rules this also seems like stealth errata, which I don't think is a bad term, but it should be noted as such officially. OK, I don't expect for them to say "stealth errata", but sometimes the FAQ is used to change rules so noting it as a "rules change" would be nice.

Rules changes, as of late, have been noted with "This will be reflected in future errata". Or at least, we're trying to get better about that. You'll see it in the ACG FAQs. The result of this particular FAQ, however (that ability modifiers don't add in multiple times), was unanimous consensus among the Design Team of how the rules currently work, so it doesn't have that tag.

I put it to you that if a FAQ requires more than one other thing to be errataed, you should consider it to be a "rules change" even if it was the intended rule, because clearly other rules were written with a different understanding of the intent.

I am still entirely unclear on this; so far as I can tell, the primary issue was agile maneuvers and fury's fall, and that is the only case I know of in PF where taking a feat can make you less good at something.

(Take fury's fall. Look at your CMB for trip attacks. Now take agile maneuvers, and look at what happened: You got worse.)

This ruling also seems to very confusingly conflate "type" and "source" in a way that I don't think does anything to make things clearer. It was previously consistent in FAQs that "source" referred to a feat, ability, spell, or whatever. We now have this very weird special case, and I can't see why. There is no evidence that there was a game balance problem with the extremely narrow cases in which people could get the same stat mod twice, and I've never seen an argument before that supported the notion of an ability score as a "source", really.

I don't know. I mean, obviously, no real effect on me, since I don't play PFS, and I'm free to ignore a ruling if I don't think it makes sense, but it's still a very strange answer.

Well, he's a zen archer, he's probably transcended the distinction between self and other.

I would probably let you substitute a swift for a standard, because that's not letting you take too many actions. Swift actions are weird because they're conceptually more expensive than move actions, even though they're faster. But RAW, no, you can't substitute them in at all.

Andrew Christian wrote:

So saying that Ability Bonus (enhancement) is a +2 Ability Bonus to your Ability is patently false.

Andrew, you seem to not understand what "I'm out" means...

On the argument, look at these.
Shield enhancement bonuses
armor enhancement bonuses
Are these not shield/armor bonuses?

No, they aren't.

They're enhancement bonuses coming from shields, and enhancement bonuses coming from armor.

You can have one armor bonus, and one shield bonus, and then you can have an enhancement bonus from each, which is a special rule.

It's why they stack.

No, it isn't.

"Shields: Shield enhancement bonuses stack with armor enhancement bonuses."

That's why they stack; because there is a specific rule that the enhancement bonus to AC from a shield stacks with the enhancement bonus to AC from armor.

Just because it has one type doesn't mean to doesn't have another.

Actually, it does. A bonus is untyped or has exactly one type.

Right. That thing we call a bonus that adds to a die roll is completely different from that thing we call a bonus that adds to a die roll....

You've said you've read and understood the argument about the complex equivocation, but I haven't actually seen a rebuttal to it.

I note: If we do accept that "wisdom" is a bonus type, then it turns out that the famous developer quote about the two bonuses coming from the same source is in fact wrong. Because sources and types are not the same thing at all.

But I don't think that the "Wisdom" in "Wisdom bonus" is the same kind of modifier as the "enhancement" in "enhancement bonus". For much the same reason that "college student" and "math student" are making fundamentally different kinds of claims about the student; one is telling you where they are a student, but not what they study, and the other tells you what they study, but not where they study it.

There's other cues to tell you these things are different. It's your Wisdom bonus, but an enhancement bonus. You can have multiple enhancement bonuses, which don't stack. But there is only one "your Wisdom bonus"; it's a feature of your character.

In the case of "Wisdom bonus", we're not being given additional information about the type of a bonus, but rather, we're being given a restrictive qualifier on the more general concept of "Wisdom modifier". You could in theory even have something which applies only "your Wisdom penalty". Because when you're talking about modifiers, "bonus" and "penalty" are used to denote "this value, but only if positive, otherwise zero" or "this value, but only if negative, otherwise zero".

But you'll note: There's no such thing as stacking rules for "modifiers" or "penalties". They don't have types at all.

So if "Wisdom bonus" is a typed bonus (type "wisdom"), what exactly are "Wisdom modifier" and "Wisdom penalty"? They can't be typed modifiers and penalties, because modifiers and penalties don't have types. There's no such thing as an "enhancement penalty" or a "racial penalty".

To quote the PRD:

"Penalty: Penalties are numerical values that are subtracted from a check or statistical score. Penalties do not have a type and most penalties stack with one another."

Penalties do not have a type.

So whatever "Wisdom" is in "Wisdom penalty" or "Wisdom modifier" or "Wisdom bonus", it cannot be a type. It's something else.

Conveniently, we already know what; it's an adjunct noun. It's telling you, not what kind of bonus or penalty we are discussing, but which bonus or penalty we are discussing.

English is ambiguous and sometimes there are what appear to be parallel constructs which are not actually parallel. The problem is that "<word> bonus" might be either a typed bonus or a thing denoting which bonus you are talking about.

So, for instance: "This gives you a +1 insight bonus" refers to a typed bonus, with the type "insight". "When you have two bonuses with the same type, use the higher bonus" refers to one of those two bonuses of an unspecified type. It does not refer to a bonus of type "same" or a bonus of type "higher". If you say "the higher of the two bonuses", again, not referring to a bonus of type "two".

When something is described as a <word> bonus, it usually means it's a typed bonus, and <word> is its type. So far as I can tell, you'd be allowed to invent new bonus types; that's why sacred and profane are so valuable. So if you wanted to be abusive and cheaty, you could make a new spell called something like "Stackity Stacking Bull's Strength", which gives a +4 fashion bonus to strength, and since "fashion" is not the type of any of your existing bonuses, it'd stack with all of them.

When we refer to your Dexterity bonus, we are not talking about a typed bonus with the type "Dexterity", but about your dexterity modifier if and only if it is above zero. If your dex is 8, you don't have a Dexterity bonus.

A thing which says "add your Dexterity bonus to ..." is not referring to a typed bonus, it's adding an untyped bonus equal to your Dexterity modifier only if positive.

And untyped bonuses stack when they come from different sources, and we have two FAQs which refer to bonus sources in contexts that allow us to infer that a given spell or ability is a "source".

It's not even really about keeping up with rules changes. I've been caught off guard by changes before. But when I find out, my response is usually more along the lines of "Huh. I didn't know they changed that." Not, "This can't possibly be how this works now because it worked differently 25 years ago."

*shrug*

To each their own, I suppose.

I have a hard time thinking that was a sincere attempt at portraying the other side's point of view, because it's pretty dismissive and not at all accurate.

A more accurate statement of my point of view would be:

"I am pretty sure this was different in the past, and I have no evidence that anyone consciously intended to change it, I just think that recent rulings were made by people with different intuitions about the rules."

I don't have my 3.0 books around anymore. If you could post what the language was in 3.0 that'd be great. Also, if you could link to FAQs, errata, or developer (specifically author) commentary on how the Ring functioned, that would help a tin, too. I don't think I can have an in depth conversation about what you're saying here without it.

I thought the part where I said that the wording was absolutely identical from 3.0 through Pathfinder made it pretty clear what the words were. As a hint: They were exactly the same as they are now. Nothing has changed since 3.0. The words are identical.

Though again, how it functioned even in 3.0 doesn't much matter since we have an official statement as to how it functioned in PF's direct predecessor, 3.5.

True. But we also have that old thread which suggests that it functioned differently in 3.0. Which tells us that the words didn't change, but the interpretation changed. In 3.0, the FAQ said "Note that most rings function continuously once activated, which allows for virtually unlimited use unless the ring produces an effect that can be broken." But then when someone asked Skip Williams about rings like that later:

"Skip, I'm looking at the various command-activated magic rings in the DMG that have no specified duration to their powers (like blinking, invisibility, and spell turning). Are these effects (a) unending until deactivated, or (b) limited in duration according to the prerequisite spell and caster level (for example, 150 minutes duration for a ring of spell turning), or something else entirely?

n general, it's the latter."

Which tells us that, sometime between 3.0ish and 3.5ish, the answer changed. And not just for one ring, but for rings in general; I don't think I've ever seen someone run a ring of spell turning as having a specific duration per activation, either.

But it's interesting to me that it's a change, because if there's a change in interpretation, without a change in words, that often indicates, to me, an unintentional change -- no one said "yes, it used to work like that, but this is better". Instead, I think this is a case where some people had taken it for granted that it was Answer A, and others took it for granted that it was Answer B, and none of them ever happened to talk the issue over with each other to reach a conclusion that a change was appropriate. Rather, they just kept ruling it differently without ever finding out.

I mean, for perspective: I've been playing 3E since before the PHB was released. Until this last couple of days, I had never seen anyone suggest that the ring of invisibility wasn't "until cancelled", and I'd seen a lot of discussions of it which clearly indicated that people thought it was; e.g., in the long thread about the character bleeding out while invisible, I don't think anyone suggested that the ring's duration might expire. But, from what you've said so far, in however long you've been playing no one has ever previously said "the ring of invisibility lasts until cancelled".

So if I can play D&D with a bunch of people for 14 years and never encounter a circumstance in which the question actually got brought up, it's not at all surprising to me to think the devs never talked about it either.

The article didn't speak to duration. But here's the thing, it did speak to a clear difference in how 3.5 treated the ring compared to predecessors.

I must be missing something. How does the article speak to differences between 3.5 and 3.0?

This is the same language and justification used by Paizo in the GMG. So here's the thing. That means we know Paizo is aware that 3.5 treated the ring differently, at least in some regard.

Okay, the thing I'm not getting here is, you keep saying "differently", but the article I thought we were talking about never said anything even remotely like "unlike in previous editions, the ring of invisibility..."

And nothing stated about it sounds like a "difference" from previous editions. It's a ring that lets you go invisible as many times as you want. That's valuable. 3E pricing reflects that, but then, so did 1E. The only difference I see is that 1E pricing didn't have to explain why it deviated from a very approximate set of guidelines.

Tacticslion wrote:

In which case, the interpretation is "I can become anyone so long as I don't know them." which, you know, is a really weird thing, and bizarrely internally self-limiting.

No, it's not. My point is that you vastly underestimate the number of permutations possible. And I think you have a peculiar view of what RAW means (in that you appear to think RAW is something different from what we know the RAI to be). If there's more than one way to read the literal words on the page, but we know exactly what the developers wanted to occur, then that's the RAW. We don't have to be beholden to some wonky interpretation because there is some way to parse the words on the page to force that interpretation.

If the developer statement of intent contradicts the plain sense of the words (which, sometimes, it does), then that's not RAW, it's RAI.

As to the ultimate purpose of the Ring of Invisibility, maybe you and Paizo disagree as to the ultimate purpose of it. You say it doesn't fulfill its ultimate purpose. I think it does that just fine. Because I don't think it's supposed to make you an unstoppable stealth machine. It has vast utility, but even vast utility is limited.

I don't really think the duration affects that. Note that there's specific language used for command-word activation, and this ring doesn't have it, so I don't think the intent is that activating it requires a spoken command. At which point you can just reactivate it every 20ish rounds forever, as long as you're conscious. But that mostly doesn't matter; I very rarely see invisibility last for more than a few rounds.

No evidence of intent for PF? Maybe. Pretty good evidence of intent regarding 3.5, considering the FAQ says exactly that.

Interpretation is not intent.

Intent means "when these words were written, what did the person who wrote them think they meant?"

And we have nothing on that. The people who did the 3.5 FAQ were not necessarily the people who wrote the words originally, and for that matter, they may have changed their minds. They didn't say what the intent was when it was originally written, they just made a ruling on what it should mean now.

What I'm looking for is a statement from one of the people who worked on the original 3.0 DMG as to what they thought they had said. It looks to me like a nigh-cut-and-paste of the 1e/2e item, and I honestly doubt anyone thought about it at all.

Whether it was how the item functioned prior to 3.5 really doesn't matter. Wording was changed and specific official answers were provided describing just exactly how it was supposed to function.

See, this is where I think the disagreement is coming in, because the wording wasn't ever changed. The 3.0 wording, which Wizards said meant "lasts until cancelled", and the 3.5 wording, which they said meant "3 round duration", are identical.

Pretty sure PF staff would be aware of that. They were aware of the WotC article discussing the pricing issue (since they nearly copypasta'd the relevant information).

I could find nothing in that article which spoke to the writer's understanding of the duration of the effect. Everything there is consistent with both interpretations. So even if we assume they've read that article, I still have no information which would lead me to believe that anyone at Paizo ever talked about that question, or realized it was a question. And I would be totally unsurprised if at least some of the Paizo people who've worked on PF have always assumed it was last-until-cancelled, since there was at least one time when those exact same descriptive words had been stated to work that way.

There were significant changes in how some words were used or understood during the 3.0-3.5-PF transitions, which means that many rules have changed even though their wording hasn't.

I don't actually care much (since I don't actually think I've had a character with such a ring in 20 years), but I notice a tendency for people to make much stronger claims than there's really evidence for. We have pretty good evidence that the people doing the 3.5 FAQ interpreted it as "it just casts the spell". We have no indication that it was understood that way at any previous time, and no indication that anyone had ever consciously considered the question of whether the spell duration change was supposed to affect the item.

That happens a lot. Make whole is specified in terms of mending. When Paizo made cantrips at-will abilities, they bumped the casting time of mending, but now make whole has a 10 minute casting time too... But the people who worked on the mythic rules refer to fixing a weapon instantaneously using make whole instead of spending a minute repairing it. So obviously, the person who wrote that description had no idea that make whole had gone from a standard action to a ten minute casting time.

Basically, I object to any assertion that obviously people were fully aware of the implications of rules changes, because it's so very obvious that they often aren't. The game is too large for anyone to really know the whole thing and keep it in mind.

Quote:

Furthermore, the 1e/2e ring didn't last 24 hours. It lasted forever until cancelled. So it was clearly not based on the spell duration, then.

No, it lasted 24 hours.

Quote:

The wearer of an invisibility ring is able to become invisible at will, instantly. This nonvisable state is exactly the same as the wizard invisibility spell, except that 10% of these rings have inaudibility as well, making the wearer absolutely silent. If the wearer wishes to speak, he breaks all silence features in order to do so.

It worked exactly the same as the wizard spell. The wizard spell had a duration of 24 hours, not forever. So the ring lasted 24 hours. Of course, you could always reactivate it. Doesn't change that a single activation only lasted at most 24 hours.

No, see, you're still doing the question-begging thing. Look back at that 3.0 FAQ saying "until cancelled". The 1e rules were a lot more informal than 3e/3.5e. When they say "exactly the same as", they are talking about the state itself. Not its duration. Just the rules for it, because so far as I can recall, 1e didn't have rules for "invisibility" outside of that spell and references to it.

There are lots of things which, from 0e through 3.0e, were consistently understood as "this effect references a spell to describe its mechanics, but it lasts until cancelled". That 3.5e FAQ is the first I ever saw one of the devs suggest otherwise.

That Rings of Invisibility are limited to three minutes at a pop does not in any way make them "sucky". And I'm not sure how they don't do what they're intended to do when the evidence at this point demonstrates that they're intended to turn a person invisible for up to three minutes at a time, an unlimited number of times a day, which is precisely what they do.

I don't think we've seen any evidence of intent on that issue.

We have evidence that at least one developer thought it was obvious that magic rings which grant a condition while activated have no duration limit unless stated otherwise. We also have evidence that at least one or two developers concluded that the ring probably made more sense, with how 3E's magic item rules work in general, if it is assumed to be a 3-minute duration.

But we have nothing at all that speaks to intent. The only people who could speak to intent would be the people involved in originally drafting that ring for 3.0; everyone else has been making rulings based on that text, but only the people who wrote it know what their intent was.

Given how widely opinions on how this ought to work vary, my guess is that this is a case where since the question almost never comes up, it may well be that none of the people working on the rules text ever happen to have discussed it with someone else who disagreed with them, but that doesn't mean they all agree.

Just to save all the old fogies from going nuts:

BECMI: Rings, Invisibility: the wearer is invisible as long as the ring is worn. If the wearer attacks or casts spells, he or she will become visible. The wearer can only become invisible once per turn.

A turn was 10 minutes.

Solved!

Nice catch!

I went and looked at 2e, and found:

The wearer of an invisibility ring is able to become invisible at will, instantly. This nonvisible state is exactly the same as the wizard invisibility spell, except that 10% of these rings have inaudibility as well, making the wearer absolutely silent. If the wearer wishes to speak, he breaks all silence features in order to do so.

You'll notice that this wording was a little more verbose, and in this one, it's completely clear that they're describing the state as being the same as the spell, not describing the ring as casting the spell. The 3E wording doesn't look to me like it was intended to change this, but we've gotten gradual developments in rulings and interpretation since then, and by 3.5, the people making rulings thought it implied a 3 minute duration. It'd be interesting to know whether anyone at Paizo even considered this question; my guess is "no", because most of the time no one bothers to look at stuff that everyone already knows.

I would say that, given the existing state of the rules, it's pretty clear that the ring requires a standard action to activate, which makes it less good than it would be if it were "use-activated", but you can activate it as often as you want, so it's still pretty powerful.

My guess is that the person who originally wrote those words in the 3E book did not have spell duration in mind, but that doesn't mean they'd object to that ruling, just that they'd never thought about it.

seebs wrote:

fretgod99 wrote:

Compare to the Ring of Freedom of Movement. That Ring allows the wearer to act "as if continually under the effect of a freedom of movement spell." Here's an effect they clearly wanted to be continuous, so they specifically state that.

You keep collapsing distinctions.

There are options other than "with exactly the duration of the spell" or "always on and lasts forever".

I'm aware of that. All that was being pointed out is that they are clearly capable of making the intent to distinguish duration when sticking to the spell's limitations is not desired. That's why I noted that it's an effect that they wanted to be continuous.

Uh. That's pretty much exactly what I was saying. You're saying "distinguish duration", but the ring of freedom of movement is not primarily distinguishing duration. It is distinguishing activation from "continuous". The description's point is not to say "this lasts a different amount of time than the spell would", but "this effect is automatic and does not require activation".

I don't see the distinction between items which simply duplicate a spell and other items. The Ring of Invisibility just duplicates a spell.

This seems to me to be begging the question. Your premise: The ring of invisibility just duplicates a spell. Your conclusion: The ring of invisibility just duplicates a spell. I've always read the ring as, when activated, giving you the same effect as the spell. It's not "continuous", because you have to use a standard action to activate it. However, that's not the same as duplicating the spell.

My previous understanding was that it referred to the spell to describe what being invisible meant, the conditions under which the invisibility was broken, and so on... But it would never have occurred to me to assume it was intended to also have a limited duration, just because that's not how rings in general have worked in D&D.

To put it another way: "This ring casts invisibility on the wearer on command." Short, clear, and unambiguous. Why does it instead say "By activating this simple silver ring, the wearer can benefit from invisibility, as the spell."? I always assumed it was because the ring is activated, and then provides an effect. The effect's behavior is like the spell, but that's not the same as "the spell has been cast at caster level 3".

There are items which explicitly state that they have specific, limited durations. Interestingly enough, almost never do these specific, limited durations which are explicitly mentioned actually match up with the precise limitations of the spells being duplicated. If the general position is that magic items which duplicate spell effects follow the same restrictions as the relevant spells, there's no need to mention the duration of the effect in the entry. So, coincidentally perhaps, none of these items in question mention a duration....

That makes sense. I think you may be right about the intent. I learned these items a long time ago, and I think the last time I'd looked into this was around the era of the 3.0 answer from Wizards stating that, in general, if an item says it gives you an effect and does not state a duration, the effect lasts until cancelled. It seems to me that the 3.5 ruling is a significant change, and for many items a very significant nerf. On the other hand, it's not an inherently bad ruling, it's just a surprise.

It would be really interesting (to me, anyway) to find out what the various people involved in 3.0, 3.5, and Pathfinder thought. Did they all read the item the same way? Did they read it differently? Was this an intentional change, or is this just something where different people ran it differently and it never came up so they never noticed the discrepancy?

(I've found a lot of those over the years in D&D. There's always new cases where, if you ask the people who work on the books, it turns out they never agreed with each other and they never found out they didn't agree.)

Found an old thread.

2004-era, in which there's two contradictory quotes from Wizards, one suggesting that rings are continuous once activated unless stated otherwise, one suggesting that in general they follow spell durations.

Compare to the Ring of Freedom of Movement. That Ring allows the wearer to act "as if continually under the effect of a freedom of movement spell." Here's an effect they clearly wanted to be continuous, so they specifically state that.

You keep collapsing distinctions.

There are options other than "with exactly the duration of the spell" or "always on and lasts forever".

The ring of invisibility makes you invisible, but the invisibility is broken if you attack. But it only makes you invisible when commanded to do so. The ring of freedom of movement doesn't require activation; it's just always on.

I would say that "continuous or use-activated" clearly intends to mean "constantly on, and not of limited duration", or else the pricing wouldn't have to vary with spell duration.

So, the argument for limitless duration is as follows:
1. Distinction between items which simply duplicate a spell (wands) and other items.
2. Existence of items which state that they have a specific limited duration.
3. Pricing guidelines for items without such usage limitations.

The argument from things like the ring of freedom of movement isn't a persuasive counter, because the distinction there is not between "unlimited use" and "limited use", but "unlimited use which requires activation" and "continuous use whenever the ring is worn".

But we actually have FAQ answers that talk about "sources".

Two on this page.

"Two, it doesn’t specify whether the dodge bonus stacks with itself, and because this creates a strange place in the rules where bonuses don’t stack from the same source but dodge bonuses always stack. While we haven’t reached a final decision on what to do about this talent, we are leaning toward this solution: the dodge bonus only applies against the creature you sneak attacked, and the dodge bonus does not stack with itself. This prevents you from getting a dodge bonus to AC against a strong creature by sneak attacking a weak creature, and prevents you from reaching an absurdly high AC by sneak attacking multiple times in the same round."

"This doesn't violate the general rule for stacking penalties--each evil eye effect is basically a different source, even though they stem from the evil eye hex (the evil eye hex is much like 5 separate weak hexes under a common umbrella). In the same way that multiple castings of bestow curse on the same target should stack as long as they do different things (penalize Strength, penalize Dex, penalize attack rolls, take no action, and so on), multiple uses of the evil eye hex stack as long as they're targeting different game statistics."

In each case, it is the class feature or specific ability which is the "source" of the bonus. So, bestow curse is a source. The evil eye hex is a source. The "offensive defensive" rogue talent is a source.

These are not types (like "dodge" or "alchemical"), they are not basic ability categories (like "exceptional" or "supernatural"). And, with the single exception of one offhand remark from James Jacobs, I have never seen anything in 3.0, 3.5, or PF rules which suggests otherwise.

Honestly, I like 5e's rule, which is that when you drop an opponent you can choose to not-kill-them and just leave them unconscious. No special roll, you just get to do that. Simpler, no fancy damage types to track, and in practice it's good narrative.

Raphael Valen wrote:

-yay for necromancy- anyway i have a question about the realistic likeness. when they turn into the person, is it like full plumbing? lol for instance a male kitsune turns into the queen of a contry or something, would he have full female plumbing or is it just a illusion? lol either way would be intersting RP moments lol

It does specifically say that when they turn into a person (their one and only) it has to be the same sex; so yes that includes plumbing. When they fake the appearance of a specific person they have met, it's an illusion so it doesn't.

Where does it say that the appearance is an "illusion" rather than a more-nuanced shapeshift?

It isn't required that the item precisely duplicate a spell or anything. Thematically, the spells will usually make sense for the item. I don't think it's an ironclad rule, but as a GM, I wouldn't let you pick prerequisites which didn't somehow make narrative sense.

As an aside, if we always discuss a 1st party and a 3rd party, what the heck is the 2nd party?

You are.

First party = Paizo, second party = Paizo's customer, third party = someone else.

So far as I can tell, they can't, the demiplane is always yours personally.

http://paizo.com/products/btpy88yj

Look specifically at:

Fifth Printing to Sixth Printing (v5.0) - Download (2.2MB zip/PDF)

Which says:

• Page 219—In the Adding Spells to a Wizard’s Spellbook section, in the Spells Gained at a New Level paragraph, delete the last sentence of the paragraph.

I didn't know about this, but I totally endorse it because I'm playing a diviner, and I have long since run out of divination spells.

I have two major objections to that pricing.

The first is that alignment/class restrictions are not an appropriate modifier to allow on a self-crafted item, because the only reason those things are "worth less" is that they have lower resale value. They aren't weaker, and letting people get every magic item they craft for 30% off with no penalty to them is not an intended use of the guidelines.

The second is that the item's already priced, and it's 120k.

From the 3.5 books:

Third Eye Conceal

Conceal: While worn, a third eye conceal protects the wearer from view by all devices, powers, and spells that detect, influence, or read emotions or thoughts. This power protects against all mind-affecting powers and effects as well as information-gathering by clairsentience powers or effects (except for metafaculty); this item affects the wearer as if he enjoyed the benefit of the psionic mind blank power.

Strong telepathy; ML 15th; Craft Universal Item, psionic mind blank; Price 120,000 gp.

There's one in Magic of Faerun which has additional functionality, is based on the arcane power, and runs about 200k.

So basically, permanent mind blank is worth 120k. And since there's a couple of examples to look at, you should use those items as a pricing base, not the horrifically-abusable "pricing guidelines". Since, after all, the first guideline is to check for existing items.

And no one can talk to a horse, of course, unless they're a gnome or a druid using wild shape or a monk of at least 17th level or a familiar which is basically equine and whose master's effective wizard level is at least seven, ...

Hmm. That doesn't really scan.

You can, but:

1. You have to name the horse "Mister Ed".
2. You have to travel with three other human PCs and a large talking dog.
3. You have to solve mysteries.

Sorry, them's the rules.

Per casting? Prestidigitation gives you unlimited minor effects for an hour per casting...

If you apply that "most disadvantageous" principle the way it's written, you get weird situations. For example: you're casting a fireball with +1 metamagic, casting it defensively (Concentration check) and into a Minor Globe of Invulnerability.

It's still considered a 3rd level spell for Minor Globe of Invulnerability purposes.

It's considered a 4th level spell for Concentration DC purposes.

So basically we now have a spell that's both 3rd and 4th level at the same time.

Yes, we do. That's pretty much always been the case. The FAQ just clarifies it.

Except for Heighten Metamagic, metamagic feats do not increase the level of the spell. A level 2 spell metamagicked to hell and back is still level 2. Someone with a 12 INT could absolutely cast it.

If this were true, they could also recover it with a level 2 Pearl of Power. Which, the FAQ makes very clear, they can't.

You are welcome to argue that it's "sloppy", but it's still pretty unambiguous that the skill ranks provided by the item are instead of actually getting additional ranks to spend.

I knew an old woman who swallowed a horse.
She died, of course.

Isn't it just a lot easier to use planar binding to bind an efreeti and get free wishes that way?

Oh, come now, you can't expect GMs to allow a munchkin behavior like that. :)

No, there is no point at which you apply the effects of each square to creatures. You first determine which creatures are in the area, then determine the effect on each creature.

THE EFFECT OF THE SPELL IS ON CREATURES, NOT ON SQUARES.

It is not "For each square within 10' of the wall, each creature in that square takes 2d4 damage". It is "2d4 points of fire damage to creatures within 10 feet and 1d4 points of fire damage to those past 10 feet but within 20 feet."

If you have determined that the creature is within 10' of the wall, then the creature is not more than 10' from the wall. There is a single number: Distance from the wall to the ogre. That's it. You compute the distance, singular, and then you apply the effect corresponding to that distance.

You compute the area, from the computation of the area you find the set of affected creatures, then you resolve the effect on each creature. If the effect relies on distance, then you resolve the distance once and apply the effect once.

This comes down to exactly the same problem as your previous thread: You're trying to get extra bonus damage on creatures that take up more squares. And that is not how the game works. There are two options if you want it to work that way:

1. We change the game to work that way, and the game is entirely wrecked from a game balance perspective and ceases to be fun.
2. We change the game to work that way, then fix all the resulting balance issues and rework everything else from weapon damage to strength bonuses to patch up the errors, and end up with a game which actually isn't really different from Pathfinder except that it takes about 5x as long to run a turn from all the added complexity.

Neither of these is actually any good. You can't make this work. I don't know what the deal is here, maybe a creature with a 10x10 space used to steal your lunch money in school or something, but really, no, it is not going to become a good idea, ever, to try to get larger creatures to take more damage from AoE effects. We've been over the reasons for which this would break things, we've presented the math, and you're still going at it, and this is long past ridiculous.

For reference, the FAQ:

FAQ says:

The relevant text of the ability is:

"As a full-round action, he can make all of his attacks with his melee weapon at a –2 penalty and can also cast any spell from the magus spell list with a casting time of 1 standard action (any attack roll made as part of this spell also takes this penalty)."

The spell you cast when using spell combat has to be a magus spell you know, and it must be a magus spell prepared with one of your magus spell slots.

(Other magus abilities may modify what spells can be used with spell combat. For example, the broad study magus arcana explicitly states the magus can use spell combat to cast spells from the selected non-magus spellcasting class.)

I would point out that the FAQ here should probably be an errata, because that is absolutely not what the words "from the magus spell list" mean. "The magus spell list" is the set of spells that a magus can "cast" from a spell trigger device without a UMD check, and has nothing to do with the spells they know or have prepared.

But the FAQ does tell us what they intend the rule to be, so, good enough.

FWIW, I am all for using old threads instead of starting new ones on existing topics.

I think it's up to setting and character. Clerical spells are typically "sunrise" or "sunset" or something. Or you could pick midnight. Anything works as long as you're reasonably consistent about it.

I would say "ignore" means "keep rolling until a non-8", because otherwise you aren't really being struck by two rays.