| zarkof |
Since this post is about "Selective Spell", let's talk about it and avoid ranting about the rest.
1. Is the wording not clear enough? Personally, I don’t find it confusing and it’s rather explicit. Where is the part that leads to misinterpretation? Are we sure it comes from the feat and not from other rules?
2. Is it broken and un-applicable? I don’t find it “broken” because, since the wording is clear to me, it sounds obvious how to handle it. You extract people from an area spell effect. The un-applicable effects come from the spells on which you apply it, not from the feat functioning itself.
Let’s have a quick look on spells that have been shown as un-applicable or broken, and forget a little bit about applying word-specific rules to justify odd effects:
Anti-magic field (AMF): the description talks numerous time about a “suppressing” and “wink out” effect, something that doesn’t destroy or dispel magic, but simply phase it out IN the area. My interpretation is quite simple, if you don’t benefit from AMF, you can be affected by anything AMF normally “suppresses”. That doesn’t seem broken to me and doesn’t make the feat broken.
Confusion: you may simply remove targets from the area that would normally apply on all creatures, friendly or not. This looks similar to the functioning of channel energy, and looks like the intended use of the feat.
Control Weather: You manipulate the weather in an area by controlling direction and wind intensity. You don't target creatures, you don't alter creatures with magic, you don't create a magic weather, the weather effects are not even magical. The tornado, hurricane or whatever are only consequences of the spell, not spell effects.
Honestly, I could go over on the other spells but since these were listed as non-sense and highly game-disruptive, it seems enough to me.
I just wanted to point out that interpretation plays a major role in rule application, and that being short-sighted about wording usually leads to bad game rules interpretation. Sometimes, it could take thousands of pages of ruling to handle a simple situation that a GM intellect could simply do in 5 seconds. Is it worth the time? I believe not.
At the end, I’m open to debate on my interpretation, but it has the legitimacy to make “Selective Spell” applicable to me.