According to Paizo, we can’t use prestidigitation to create sparkles, floral scents or other flavorful effectsc

Heads up

I’ve been talking to Jon, who is the Paizo Community and Social Media Specialist, in email and I sent him the following message:

“Hello,

Thanks for reaching out.

I do have a question

While I am sure reasonable GMs will let your character do things like create sparkles, illusionary rain in a 5x5 space while your character performs a sad song, glowing eyes or create floral scents, the concern is with PFS, GMs who are very strict and only allow “RAW”, and WM/Living Worlds. Those three things are why I feel prestidigitation needs to allow for fun flavorful magic tricks like the ones I listed.”

Here is his response:

“Hi Captainrelyk,
Thanks for the reply. I can understand why you would want something like that with more flavor. Unfortunately, PFS needs to run with a much wider eye to things like game balance, and while you may use such a power for purely roleplay reasons, someone else might use it to break the game or create a shortcut somehow that causes issues for the GM running the game. PFS needs to be balanced at a much higher level than a regular game of Pathfinder, as may players are competitive about playing the game.”

I’ve seen people told about using the cantrip to create sparkles and other harmless sensory effects like the cantrip’s 5e counterpart; but, at least according to John, it isn’t allowed. Make with this what you will

If need be, I can provide a screenshot of the email as proof

It’s possibly I might have misinterpreted this, hence why I copy pasted the whole thing

Jon is not on the list of people who are allowed to make campaign decisions. See this page.

Why are you bothering Jon about this sort of thing?

I have seen you posting here and several community discords and it sure seems to me like you do absolutely nothing but go around sniffing for fights about organized play.

Cannot help but notice you dont have a single organized play character registered.

I think a lot of your concerns are purely theoretical and if you actually played the campaign you would feel pretty silly about the amount of concern youre projecting over purely hypothetical situations that would never ever come up as negative realities in a game.

I beg of you - either make a character and play some games so you can be disabused of this toxic fantasy of yours about how terrible our campaign is or just STOP please.

Why are you bothering Jon about this sort of thing?

I have seen you posting here and several community discords and it sure seems to me like you do absolutely nothing but go around sniffing for fights about organized play.

Cannot help but notice you dont have a single organized play character registered.

I think a lot of your concerns are purely theoretical and if you actually played the campaign you would feel pretty silly about the amount of concern youre projecting over purely hypothetical situations that would never ever come up as negative realities in a game.

I beg of you - either make a character and play some games so you can be disabused of this toxic fantasy of yours about how terrible our campaign is or just STOP please.

I wasn’t bothering Jon, he reached out to me first

CaptainRelyk, I have seen your posts and questions on a fair number of discords and on the forum, so please assume that I have seen most of it, particularly since you tend to ask the same question in a lot of spaces, and many of us are active in more than on discord.

As many have been trying to explain to you, this is not an org play issue, many aspects of the rules that you worry about, are written so the GM has some freedom to adjust things to their table.

My suggestion would be to accept the very nature of table variation, and that playing in a collaborative game like Pathfinder, the GM is going to have to be the final arbiter on a lot of things. That will also affect things related to your character. How certain spell effects can look like, or if you ever have the chance to meet your patron... those are aspects of storytelling that are within the hands of the GM.

Organized play has to keep a tighter rain on some aspects, as many, many people have been explaining to you already, but in many regards, the way that your table GM interprets things will not always interact with that.

Table variation is always going to be a part of this hobby, and your appeals to authority are a bit tricky. Everyone can argue and petition for a rules change, and posting on the forum is generally a good way for the developers to see it, but especially as far as organized play is concerned... it helps to have some experience by actually playing it.

Only wishing to play, if the game meets your specific requirements, or even asking for a lot of major changes to the cost and availability of certain options, is going to severely limit your ability to play this game within the constraints of the organized play campaign.

Arguing for a rules change or update in order to convince some of the people who Westmarch Style campaigns/Living worlds is also not really a very productive step, as there is no pressure for them to accept every update or not even introduce any houserules or changes they might like. But that subject also feels like an appeal to authority to me.

Frankly speaking, very few people can influence a GM like me on how to run their game, outside or inside of org play. And trying to convince them by running to some of the designers and so you can use their answers to reinforce your argument, is very likely to cause the exact opposite of what you want.

Just. Stop.

You said you wanted to be better. You wanted to improve and find a place in the community. This is not that. This is the creepy stalker ex who won’t leave you alone and responds to every post on your Facebook.

This is not news to anyone who has read Prestidigitation.

The simplest magic does your bidding. You can perform simple magical effects for as long as you Sustain the Spell. Each time you Sustain the Spell, you can choose one of four options.
Cook Cool, warm, or flavor 1 pound of nonliving material.
Lift Slowly lift an unattended object of light Bulk or less 1 foot off the ground.
Make Create a temporary object of negligible Bulk, made of congealed magical substance. The object looks crude and artificial and is extremely fragile—it can't be used as a tool, weapon, or spell component.
Tidy Color, clean, or soil an object of light Bulk or less. You can affect an object of 1 Bulk with 10 rounds of concentration, and a larger object a 1 minute per Bulk.
Prestidigitation can't deal damage or cause adverse conditions. Any actual change to an object (beyond what is noted above) persists only as long as you Sustain the Spell.

Just. Stop.

You said you wanted to be better. You wanted to improve and find a place in the community. This is not that. This is the creepy stalker ex who won’t leave you alone and responds to every post on your Facebook.

This, a million times this.