Hey everyone, I'm currently crafting a character to run the Council of Thieves adventure path and I'm looking over the Player's Guide PDF. I'm reading through the traits section and I noticed something odd about the Infernal Bastard trait. This trait, which de-powers the base Tiefling stats, states: "Likewise, you do not have the ability to use darkness as a spell-like ability once per day—instead, you may choose any one 0-level spell that you can instead use at will as a spell-like ability."
I emphasized certain texts because from a straight reading of the trait, a Tiefling PC could replace Darkness with a 0-level spell from the Divine or Arcane spell lists. What's to stop a Tiefling PC from choosing Cure Minor Wounds and becoming an unlimited heal dispenser? Although it's utility in combat is minimal at 1hp per standard action, outside of combat the PC could simply spam at will CMWs at 10hp an in-game minute. This seems alot more powerful than the Darkness ability it would replace. Is my interpretation of the trait correct?
|
What stops you is the fact that Cure Minor Wounds no longer exists in the Pathfinder RPG. It was replaced with Stabilize, which cures no damage but stabilizes unconscious characters. All casters now have at-will 0-level spells, so all spells of that level are expected to be used infinitely throughout the day.
Cure Minor Wounds is not a oth level spell. A first level sorcerer or bard can cast 4 at will, wizards, druids and clerics 3 at will. having a someone that can cast 1 isn't game breaking
Heh double ninjaed
Doh! I'm apparently still running on 3.5e mode. Thanks for the clarifications. I need to look up Create Water now...
|
Cure Minor Wounds was eliminated from the PFRPG, primarily due to the fact that clerics get unlimited use of orisons (zero level spells). So, no, I don't think the trait is overpowered. Of course, you have those who argue that Create Water is broken...
Create Water is definitely broken.
If you go on casting it for a full day (24 hrs), it lets you create about 109000 litres (28800 gallons) of water per level. That is quite a lot of liquid, weighing (obviously) 109 metric tons and occupying a volume of almost 31 (THIRTY-ONE) 5-ft. cubes. Remember: per level!
A low-level but creative cleric can easily use all that water for very distructive (or disruptive, depending on point of views) purposes, before the 24 hrs pass and the water begins to disappear.
Why does this spell need to create that much water anyway?! If it had created half a pint of water per level nobody would have complained, and it would not have been useless (you can cast it once per round at will, so even if you need to water the party horses it is not a problem, it would just take some time to cast it). But as it is now, it is very problematic. I am considering changing the spell or making it a 1st level spell.
Well, the Create Water stuff is really more of an issue of setting verisimilitude than any real issue with mechanics, and most non-PC clerics have better things to be doing than cast Create Water constantly.
But really, this stuff has been said too many times in other threads already, and there's no real reason to say them again in this one.
|
|
Well, the Create Water stuff is really more of an issue of setting verisimilitude than any real issue with mechanics, and most non-PC clerics have better things to be doing than cast Create Water constantly.
Really? do they? I think that the average village cleric would make the village well superfluous, just with a small fraction of his/her time.
An easily-accessible spell like Create Water has an effect on the setting which is too drastic.
And, as always, if a PC can do something smart with their spells/powers, why shouldn't the NPCs do the same? They aren't supposed to be all dumber than the PCs and the magic has likely been around long enough to have had an impact on people's lifestyle.
But really, this stuff has been said too many times in other threads already, and there's no real reason to say them again in this one.
First, I've recently arrived to the boards, and I did not feel like reading and cross-checking the gazilions of posts that have been written since the dawn of times, sorry.
Second, if people keep saying it, evidently it means that it is perceived as a serious issue of game (un)balance.
Third, if people keep noting it, there is a small but non-negligible possibility that it might be revised in a future FAQs or second edition of PFRPG or whatever.
Last, it is always good to remind it since it is not immediately evident to everybody how disproportionate the spell effect is. In our group, the spell had gone virtually unnoticed until somebody did the math and pointed out a few easy applications, and suddenly it was a chorus of "WHOOOA, I can do that?!" and of course the cleric and druid started "experimenting". So, as a DM, I took some corrective measures. And now I am here to try and help my fellow DMs. :)
Like I said, it's more an issue of it doing odd things to the setting than any actual issue with the mechanics. (After all, how many uses are there in an average adventure for a large amount of water in half-liter increments? Rhetorical question, by the way.)
Still, this exact argument's five of the top six hits for "create water" in the messageboard search, so excuse everyone if they're a bit sick of the subject. EDIT: Wait, only four of the six are about that. Still, this is one of those arguments that always annoying when it comes up because there just aren't any new points to make about it.
|
If they stay up that FULL 24 hours, they need to make Con checks to stay awake, so your numbers may be a bit off due to the simplistic fact that a decent majority will fall asleep sometime short of 24. But that's neither here nor there.
As far as adventuring goes- Create Water replaces the need for people to worry about dehydration, something of which is hand-waved in nearly every game since even when it was a prepared spell it made enough water in one casting to stave off dehydration for the whole party. That, and most people couldn't find the dehydration rules.
In the game world- Any town with a friendly cleric or druid has no one that dies of dehydration, something which isn't a huge problem in any non-destitute fantasy town I've seen. Remember, any magic can have a huge impact on quality-of-life, and it's not always going to be free. In the desert, a group of evil clerics may have a vice grip on the water-business and wouldn't take kindly to PC's that start going around giving away free water. Hm, I think I've just come up with an adventure hook for my desert campaign...
And personally, if there is something that one or more of my players is doing in-game that is bothering me or changing the balance of power in some obscene way, I talk with them away from the table and ask them not to do retarded things with spells/items.
|
|
And personally, if there is something that one or more of my players is doing in-game that is bothering me or changing the balance of power in some obscene way, I talk with them away from the table and ask them not to do retarded things with spells/items.
Well, but if the mechanic is there and allows them to do something very (i.e. obscenely) useful/advantageous, why shouldn't they do it?
It's not that they're playing out-of-game or anything like that. Rationally, it is a smart thing to do and it makes sense that their characters would do it. Same for NPCs.So the only solution (IMO) is to modify the power or the spell.
See, is the same thing with divination spells. If you're going to have an investigative adventure and the casters have access to divination spells that could solve the adventure immediately, what do you do? Do you ask your players to refrain from using those spells since it would spoil the fun?
To me, that is plain silly.
What I usually do, is to adapt the adventure such that the divination spells are quite useful but not enough to solve it completely.
In D&D 3.5 when I used to run a high-level campaign, actually, my investigative adventures where such that using high-level divinations was necessary to start solving them (otherwise lower-level NPCs would have already solved the case -- that's why the PCs with their amazing powers where really necessary).
An alternative would be to remove or modify the divination spells in a way that fits your campaign or game style. But you have to do that before starting the campaign and make sure that everybody understands the change and was happy with them. I have done this as well in the past, making quite massive change to the spell system, and people liked it, I must say, since it allowed for a nice change of pace. But it required a lot of work.
But you can't just say "ok, you have the divinations, but please don't use, don't mess with them because you are spoiling the adventure...".
Same with Create Water. The alternatives are: change the spell or adapt the campaign such that the ample and easy access to water fits in it. The last one is intriguing, but it is too much work (IMO) just to accomodate a 0-level cantrip.
My two cents.
|
|
First- There are many ways around divinations, and high-level enemies could conceivably have such ways around said divinations.
Second- Notice that I used the word "retarded" when I referred to spell usage. But, to go along with your idea of allowing players anything under the rules, I have a player that would like to effectively have infinite money by selling items to shops and then stealing them back. As a warlock with an assortment of useful invocations/items/skills, he is entirely capable of doing it. Am I going to let him completely break the gold/level system, leaving the other characters in the dust and allowing him access to items he would otherwise be unable to afford? Hell no, because that would break the game. So I asked him politely outside of the game if he would so kindly make my life a lot easier by not pulling that stuff, stealing the spotlight for an hour while he pulls his many heists to gain loads of gold.
Here's a question- What are your players doing that is so detrimental to the campaign world with Create Water?
A low-level but creative cleric can easily use all that water for very distructive (or disruptive, depending on point of views) purposes, before the 24 hrs pass and the water begins to disappear.
No, they can't, not really. 31 5-foot cubes (even per level) really isn't that much. It also pretty much has to be created on site, and it's not like it's not obvious that someone's casting spells.
|
|
First- There are many ways around divinations, and high-level enemies could conceivably have such ways around said divinations.
Second- Notice that I used the word "retarded" when I referred to spell usage. But, to go along with your idea of allowing players anything under the rules, I have a player that would like to effectively have infinite money by selling items to shops and then stealing them back. As a warlock with an assortment of useful invocations/items/skills, he is entirely capable of doing it. Am I going to let him completely break the gold/level system, leaving the other characters in the dust and allowing him access to items he would otherwise be unable to afford? Hell no, because that would break the game. So I asked him politely outside of the game if he would so kindly make my life a lot easier by not pulling that stuff, stealing the spotlight for an hour while he pulls his many heists to gain loads of gold.
Here's a question- What are your players doing that is so detrimental to the campaign world with Create Water?
Just to comment on your second note, but I think you need to work around the warlock a bit. I usually look at it from the standpoint of 'ok, the shopkeep with all this money and stuff worth stealing knows about these guys that have certain powers, so it makes sense he would spend the money necessary to guard against them'.
I mean it's not like a shop that is going to spend 100s of GP (or 1000s) on your PCs items isn't going to protect themselves. Have them lock away the valuable goods in safes with high quality locks, Arcane Lock them, set alarms, hire guards, etc.
Basically, there's always a way to solve these problems in game rather than asking the PCs to stop out of game. I think the only time I've ever had to do that was when PvP was occurring, and that just helps no one. Heck, it should be easier to steal from the PCs. Maybe if your warlock IS lucky enough to get some items, the shopkeep could find out. High level divinations for example. Maybe eyes planted in the shop to observe (security cameras). Once he finds out who stole the goods, its a simple matter of hiring high level rogues to steal them back or even go so far as to assassinate. Heck, or just alert the local clergy, get them involved.
I had an interesting incident in Second Darkness. The PC playing a cleric of Cayden Cailean. Apparently, a cleric of said deity can create basic alcohol instead of water if he chooses.
Needless to say, the player wanted to mass-produce booze and sell it to the masses at half price, thus sending the brewers and the taverns out of business.
I pointed out to him that if he tried such low tactics, he was guaranteed to lose his divine powers. There is no way a Chaotic Good deity would tolerate such abuse of divine powers.
The golden rule is that a clerics powers are not his own. Abuse of those powers can have dire consequences.
|
|
Well, he's already broke in twice and didn't find where he kept the money, but he did find the wand he sold. It's one of those shop on the bottom, house on the top scenarios, he broke into the top when the shopkeeper was running the store during the day, and he broke into the store part during the night.
The thing is, I'm running a pre-written adventure, and this guy is the only shop that they can actually get access to, and he's relatively poor (although he's much better off than the rest of the town), but for the sake of the players I twisted it a bit so that they can sell some of the items that they find that they can't use, and I'm allowing them to purchase items from the only people that can leave the area they're in.
Either way, I was just using this as an example of something that is just better to take care of out of game. If I didn't, he was going to take around an hour of everyone's time every session trying to find this guy's secret chest of gold, when the module assumes that the players are here to help the people and not rob them blind so it makes no mention about this guy's shop other than his attitude towards the PC's.
And personally, if there is something that one or more of my players is doing in-game that is bothering me or changing the balance of power in some obscene way, I talk with them away from the table and ask them not to do retarded things with spells/items.Well, but if the mechanic is there and allows them to do something very (i.e. obscenely) useful/advantageous, why shouldn't they do it?
It's not that they're playing out-of-game or anything like that. Rationally, it is a smart thing to do and it makes sense that their characters would do it. Same for NPCs.
What can they do that is so obscenely useful or advantegous? This has been discussed in another thread, and I think the most useful thing we could come up, apart from fighting dehydration, was to fill pits to swim over instead of jump. At 2nd level, where that kind of obstacles are still big, it would take something like 8 hours to fill a 10x10x20 ft. pit, just to avoid the falling damage and som climb checks, should one fail the jump. You can cast the spell 7700 times per day, supposing a 12-hour workday, resulting in about 61 cubic meters of water per level. Yes, it's a bit of water, but it's not game-breaking. A cleric in a smaller desert community might keep the community alive on this water only, though
In other words, yes, dehydration becomes less of a problem and that might change the game world, but it won't do THAT much for the PC's. It is a useful spell, but it's not overpowered in adventures.
I hate to be inflamatory, but seriously. Create Water? Have we honestly argued away everything else?
There is/should be an unspoken contract between all players and DM's not to exploit this kind of thing. All spells are not created equal, and I'm sure either the cleric/druids deity/governing force would chafe at the abuse of their granted divine powers.
You can't isolate the rules, in this case a spell, from the setting. It's a storytelling game, and none of the rules exist in a vacuum.
Yes, looking at it rationally the spell could be powerful, BUT if we look at any PART of this game rationally it would start to fall apart. If it's a campaign, arguably taking low level characters that rise to power and challenge a great evil....why doesn't the "great" evil just use divination to snuff them out LONG before they come to power? Its completely possible according to the rules, but its not very fun.
Like I said, unspoken contract between the players and DM. We're here to tell stories and have a good time.
|
Cure Minor Wounds was eliminated from the PFRPG, primarily due to the fact that clerics get unlimited use of orisons (zero level spells). So, no, I don't think the trait is overpowered. Of course, you have those who argue that Create Water is broken...Create Water is definitely broken.
If you go on casting it for a full day (24 hrs), it lets you create about 109000 litres (28800 gallons) of water per level. That is quite a lot of liquid, weighing (obviously) 109 metric tons and occupying a volume of almost 31 (THIRTY-ONE) 5-ft. cubes. Remember: per level!
A low-level but creative cleric can easily use all that water for very distructive (or disruptive, depending on point of views) purposes, before the 24 hrs pass and the water begins to disappear.
Why does this spell need to create that much water anyway?! If it had created half a pint of water per level nobody would have complained, and it would not have been useless (you can cast it once per round at will, so even if you need to water the party horses it is not a problem, it would just take some time to cast it). But as it is now, it is very problematic. I am considering changing the spell or making it a 1st level spell.
Preach it, brother!!
I've done my share of posting about it, starting back with the PRPG Beta.
Stay away from using the 24 hrs, only say 8 hrs at 9600 gallons.
again?? really again? Cleric can not keep it up 8 hours every day. Gods may allow it sometimes in dire need but if you have a god, he's gonna get fired of "Oh might flimpus grant me your blessing of water" every 6 seconds for 8 hours. Thats clearly an abuse of your god given powers and you would be punished for it
again?? really again? Cleric can not keep it up 8 hours every day. Gods may allow it sometimes in dire need but if you have a god, he's gonna get fired of "Oh might flimpus grant me your blessing of water" every 6 seconds for 8 hours. Thats clearly an abuse of your god given powers and you would be punished for it
LOL, yeah, he might drown you in it.
it's true, people seem to forget unlike a wizard a clerics powers are not his own. He serves something, a god an ideal..something and if he strays from that he loses his powers
again?? really again? Cleric can not keep it up 8 hours every day. Gods may allow it sometimes in dire need but if you have a god, he's gonna get fired of "Oh might flimpus grant me your blessing of water" every 6 seconds for 8 hours. Thats clearly an abuse of your god given powers and you would be punished for it
Yes, because every cleric in every setting has a god and every god in every setting gets a psychic email every time every one of his cleric casts a spell.
Who's to say this is an abuse of power anyway. You might be keeping a lot of people alive by doing this, presumably a good god might at least be ambivalent towards it.
As a DM currently running CoT with 2 players that chose this trait, I just made the call that the 0 lvl spell had to come from the Arcane spell list. I see the natural spell ability of Tieflings to be more attuned with the arcane rather than a divine or spiritual connection.
again?? really again? Cleric can not keep it up 8 hours every day. Gods may allow it sometimes in dire need but if you have a god, he's gonna get fired of "Oh might flimpus grant me your blessing of water" every 6 seconds for 8 hours. Thats clearly an abuse of your god given powers and you would be punished for itYes, because every cleric in every setting has a god and every god in every setting gets a psychic email every time every one of his cleric casts a spell.
Who's to say this is an abuse of power anyway. You might be keeping a lot of people alive by doing this, presumably a good god might at least be ambivalent towards it.
actually yes yes he does, its benefit of ya know being omnipotent you know everything happens at every hour of every day with every one of your disciples, sorry but had to point this out! as for people worship a force that force usually has some semblance of intelligence or being and its just as apt to revoke its power as a deity is. anyway its abusing the spell if a player is abusing the spell punish them end of story.
While I agree with the idea of deities punishing clerics who spam spells without extreme justification, traditionally, polytheistic deities were never omniscient or omnipotent. Heroes (or villains) of sufficient guile and cunning have always had a chance to outwit even deities, at least in Greek, Roman, and other "western" mythological traditions.
God is omniscient. The "gods" were not.
|
|
While I agree with the idea of deities punishing clerics who spam spells without extreme justification, traditionally, polytheistic deities were never omniscient or omnipotent. Heroes (or villains) of sufficient guile and cunning have always had a chance to outwit even deities, at least in Greek, Roman, and other "western" mythological traditions.
God is omniscient. The "gods" were not.
While this may be true, it is generally accepted that the gods know the actions of the followers to whom they grant powers, of any situation strongly aligned with their portfolio (assuming no intervention from another god) and anyplace dedicated to worship of the god.
I pull this idea from the old 3.5e book on the goods (Deities and Demigods?), but I may be misquoting it since I don't have it on hand.Of course, you're always free to define godly interactions however you want in your world.
God is omniscient. The "gods" were not.
omniscient has nothing to do with it at all. Your asking for that spell to be granted. Sure your god or power may not give it to you himself he may have some other way of handling it. However he will notice.
Look at it like this. You drawing power for your spells from a "barrel" of power. Your god/force puts x amount of power into that he has x amount of clerics. Now somehow that barrel is emptying at an alarming rate. Someone is gonna cut the "leak" off
Even if you have no god you have an "ideal" abusing the gifts granted from that "ideal' could be enough to cut off your power as your no longer respecting that ideal but abusing it.
Actually, SoS, I'm right there with you. The idea of spamming divine power is utterly ridiculous and should come with severe consequences. I was just pointing out that omnipotent isn't the right word. The god's are powerful and fully capable of keeping an eye on where and how their power is being used, either thru their own abilities or by using intermediaries to keep an eye on things. But they aren't omnipotent or omniscient, just crazy powerful.
Ah sorry, funny thing the christian god being Omniscient is a new thing as well. Its something that crept in with the later new testament and after, and was not a part of the old testament IIRC.
Anyhow back to games. Just how powerful and how much a god can keep track of depends on the setting and the gods. Most gods in most worlds hear when their name is used in prayer. That includes casting
"Mighty Gozreh grant me the blessing of water" "Mighty Gozreh grant me the blessing of water""Mighty Gozreh grant me the blessing of water""Mighty Gozreh grant me the blessing of water""Mighty Gozreh grant me the blessing of water""Mighty Gozreh grant me the blessing of water""Mighty Gozreh grant me the blessing of water""Mighty Gozreh grant me the blessing of water""Mighty Gozreh grant me the blessing of water""Mighty Gozreh grant me the blessing of water""Mighty Gozreh grant me the blessing of water""Mighty Gozreh grant me the blessing of water""Mighty Gozreh grant me the blessing of water""Mighty Gozreh grant me the blessing of water""Mighty Gozreh grant me the blessing of water""Mighty Gozreh grant me the blessing of water""Mighty Gozreh grant me the blessing of water""Mighty Gozreh grant me the blessing of water""Mighty Gozreh grant me the blessing of water""Mighty Gozreh grant me the blessing of water""Mighty Gozreh grant me the blessing of water""Mighty Gozreh grant me the blessing of water""Mighty Gozreh grant me the blessing of water""Mighty Gozreh grant me the blessing of water""Mighty Gozreh grant me the blessing of water""Mighty Gozreh grant me the blessing of water""Mighty Gozreh grant me the blessing of water""Mighty Gozreh grant me the blessing of water""Mighty Gozreh grant me the blessing of water" gets old and that was just 30 of 60 used per minute
As you said when the emissary hears this over and over they are gonna want to look in and see just how it's being used. Keep folks alive in an emergency ok, abusing to run a village in a place it can't survive on it's on, not so much
|
|
There is/should be an unspoken contract between all players and DM's not to exploit this kind of thing. All spells are not created equal, and I'm sure either the cleric/druids deity/governing force would chafe at the abuse of their granted divine powers....
Like I said, unspoken contract between the players and DM. We're here to tell stories and have a good time.
Anytime I mention this in a thread, it seems to fall on deaf ears as well.
I hate to be inflamatory, but seriously. Create Water? Have we honestly argued away everything else?
snip
Like I said, unspoken contract between the players and DM. We're here to tell stories and have a good time.
What? You mean taking responsibility for the health of the campaign? Behaving like mutually supportive friends working toward a common goal in a collaborative environment? Trying to make sure everyone has fun instead of treating the game world like a cheap toy that can be broken and discarded? Are you really asking us to behave like...adults?
What are you? Some kinda Commie?
On the Create Water discussion, I'd like to provide some real-world comparisons to calibrate people's understanding of water volumes
An Olympic Size Swimming pool, 164 ft x 82 ft x 6 ft 7 in (50 x 25 x 2 m), has a volume of 660,000 US Gal (2,500,000 L) minimum (more if deeper).
The Fraser River in British Columbia, Canada (Fifth longest river in Canada) typically flows at a rate of about 4,000 cubic meters per second. The Nile River is about 1,050 cubic meters per second.
For 8 hours of continuous casting (once every 6 seconds), about 36,000 L of water are created per caster level.
Using approximations and averages, 1 acre of wheat requires a minimum of 1,850,222 L of water per crop of wheat harvested.
This means that to produce 1 acre of wheat will require about 51 days of casting, assuming that the water is completely absorbed by the wheat and does not disappear before being absorbed.
Using modern farming techniques in the USA, the average acre of wheat will produce 37.1 bushels of wheat (in some optimal situations this can go as high as 100 bushels per acre). 1 Bushel of wheat can produce about 60 lbs of whole wheat flour. In 1830, per capita consumption of flour in the USA was about 170 lbs. This means that 1 acre can feed about 13 people per year assuming zero wastage between the field and food actually consumed. Just for an example, in our world about 37% of rice is lost between field and dinner table in South-East Asia. This would mean that we can only feed about 8 people instead of 13. In China the figures is up to 45%, and in Vietnam it can be as high as 80%.
The long and short of it is, there's probably better/easier ways to change the climate/food supply in game besides repeated castings of Create Water.
Hehe, I just loved this post, hehe. Great stuff.
Anytime I mention this in a thread, it seems to fall on deaf ears as well.
There is/should be an unspoken contract between all players and DM's not to exploit this kind of thing. All spells are not created equal, and I'm sure either the cleric/druids deity/governing force would chafe at the abuse of their granted divine powers....
Like I said, unspoken contract between the players and DM. We're here to tell stories and have a good time.
Yes, I've noticed that as well. They'll come around, or they already understand it but don't admit it.
I hate to be inflamatory, but seriously. Create Water? Have we honestly argued away everything else?
snip
Like I said, unspoken contract between the players and DM. We're here to tell stories and have a good time.
What? You mean taking responsibility for the health of the campaign? Behaving like mutually supportive friends working toward a common goal in a collaborative environment? Trying to make sure everyone has fun instead of treating the game world like a cheap toy that can be broken and discarded? Are you really asking us to behave like...adults?
What are you? Some kinda Commie?
Color me pink-o!
I do believe that's exactly what I mean :-) .
|
|
I've finally found this interesting remark from James Jacobs about Create Water that dispels my doubts (or silly concerns, depending on one's point of view, since there are some in this thread that seem to imply that it is immature to discuss a spell in relation to its possible effects on the game world) in that it confirms that my idea of turning it into a 1st level spell is not totally crazy after all.
"Consumed" = a creature drinks the water. You could get an army of clerics casting the spell, but a day later the water vanishes. You'd need the clerics to keep at it 7 days a week. And it'd be a lot of clerics. Basically... this wouldn't be THAT much different than using more mundane means of agricultural engineering to irrigate land; it would just use a lot of clerics instead of ditch digging and aqueduct building, and would be a lot more prone to peril if a cleric sleeps in, say...
The spell probably SHOULD have been turned into a 1st level spell, or made so that the water vanishes in a few rounds if not consumed, though, to prevent this kind of relatively silly concept. Ah well.
(boldface mine)
Personally... I just scale the spell back to creating a single gallon of water.
Leave the higher ammount of water creation for the 3rd level spell: Create Food and Water.
I've finally found this interesting remark from James Jacobs about Create Water that dispels my doubts (or silly concerns, depending on one's point of view, since there are some in this thread that seem to imply that it is immature to discuss a spell in relation to its possible effects on the game world) in that it confirms that my idea of turning it into a 1st level spell is not totally crazy after all.
"Consumed" = a creature drinks the water. You could get an army of clerics casting the spell, but a day later the water vanishes. You'd need the clerics to keep at it 7 days a week. And it'd be a lot of clerics. Basically... this wouldn't be THAT much different than using more mundane means of agricultural engineering to irrigate land; it would just use a lot of clerics instead of ditch digging and aqueduct building, and would be a lot more prone to peril if a cleric sleeps in, say...
The spell probably SHOULD have been turned into a 1st level spell, or made so that the water vanishes in a few rounds if not consumed, though, to prevent this kind of relatively silly concept. Ah well.
(boldface mine)
I think the point of that was more "I can't believe I even have to type this bull@#*$, but if people are seriously pulling this @#$!....
I think this thread should return to what the OP intended it for, namely a discussion if the Infernal Bastard Trait could be broken. Discussion of a particular spell that can be taken with this trait does link it vaguely but to highjack the thread onto a topic suited to a seperate thread I think is a bit immature and selfish.
I think this thread should return to what the OP intended it for, namely a discussion if the Infernal Bastard Trait could be broken. Discussion of a particular spell that can be taken with this trait does link it vaguely but to highjack the thread onto a topic suited to a seperate thread I think is a bit immature and selfish.
Yep.
I think the point of that was more "I can't believe I even have to type this bull@#*$, but if people are seriously pulling this @#$!....I think instead that that is just your (potentially inflammatory) interpretation of a very clear official statement.
Sorry about that, the intent was not to be inflamatory, I'll edit it out and say it differently.
Well, I can't do that for some reason, so I'll simply apologize if it WAS inflammatory.
Sorry if I've offended anyone with my interpretation of someone else's statement.
I just can't imagine a DM ever allowing that in terms of either fluff or game mechanic, and calling the spell broken seems like a massive overstatement. Is it potentially abuseable? I guess, potentially, if the DM is very new and an experienced player feels like taking advantage of them, then yes.
I don't even get this argument. At all.
Like... yeah, he can make a lot of gallons of water that disappear. This can possibly bypass intended adventure mechanics, such as a drought, a dry well, a desert adventure, etc. etc. This is D&D. Magic has been able to completely break intended adventure plot lines since 3.0 came out, and it's the DM's responsibility to catch spells like that and not let them slip through loopholes of his adventures. It's why the Pathfinder APs make sure the concept of a secret place full of money would be logically sound in a universe where a wizard can spend five minutes and completely rob you without using even half of his daily effort. They make good use of spells like dimensional lock and false vision.
If you can't look at your own story idea and look ahead enough to discover your drought or dying crops idea would be solved by a level 0 spell and then rectify it (my first idea is that the spells have to make a caster level check, have magical backlash dealing damage, or can't work all due to the ancient magic working beneath the soil in the dungeon below the farm town accessible through the well) then your adventure kind of deserves to be taken off the rails by someone's clever thinking.
And if it's not about that, then... I guess it's about "Oh no! He can make all of the monsters in this dungeon's feet wet!" and then it's just plainly absurd.
What is wrong with having a magical way of doing something better than a non-magical way.
What is the point in having a magical world, if magic is always inferior to mundane ways of doing things.
|
Living in an unsustainable village existing only because of the daily dedication of a priest who was devoted himself to become the village well is a pretty precarious position. 'Oh no the priest is sick! Hope he gets better before we all die.'
Additionally- it might be just me, but if someone were casting (which must be done in a clear and strong voice) for up to 8 consecutive hours per day I'd start asking for fortitude checks with increasing DC after the first few hours to see how long before they lose their voice. Maybe I'm just a dick like that, but in my mind a person cannot speak continuously for 8+ hours without consequence.
But yeah- I like the Infernal Bastard trait. Seems fine to me.