Some of those are great wards and some of those are nonsense. I do agree there are good early spellbook wards, but for the moment I'm going to play devil's advocate on a few of them that don't belong on that list.
Alarm wards a point in space not an object, so DM ruling required
Arcane Lock works on chests, doors, and portals, so DM ruling required
Continual Flame?? Why on earth? Okay well I guess you could if you really wanted to.
Explosive Runes is just foolish.
Grease lasts one min per level which isn't exactly cost effective at low levels.
Invisibility suffer the same problem for the above
The others I've used before to great effect.
An arcane lock can be defeated with Disable Device. Its a reasonable and believable risk mitigation, but its not 100% effective. That's why you need defense in depth - acknowledging that defense in depth is costly.
NM, didn't read your comment in the right context. Yes, to be effective a wizard is going to have to have a warding strategy involving casting actual wards, misdirection, forged spellbooks etc. How far you go will pretty much determine how effective it will be.
Some of those are great wards and some of those are nonsense. I do agree there are good early spellbook wards, but for the moment I'm going to play devil's advocate on a few of them that don't belong on that list.
Alarm wards a point in space not an object, so DM ruling required
Arcane Lock works on chests, doors, and portals, so DM ruling required
Continual Flame?? Why on earth? Okay well I guess you could if you really wanted to.
Explosive Runes is just foolish.
Grease lasts one min per level which isn't exactly cost effective at low levels.
Invisibility suffer the same problem for the aboveThe others I've used before to great effect.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and assert that warding the place the spellbook is stored counts as warding the spellbook. So if it's in a box, and the box is arcane locked, that counts. If it's in a room and the room is alarmed, that counts too.
Just my $.02
First of all arcane lock would permanently lock the door which I'm sure would make the innkeeper rather displeased with you. I said Alarm which is not permanent.
Your following statements make no sense to me.?
Every thing in the game can be defeated with something. Nothing is 100% effective.
Alarm wards a point in space. A fixed point in space. I do not consider the spell book in that case to be warded. I consider the room to be warded and the spellbook to be in the room. I don't consider it such because I view a warded object as being actually warded not as it is behind a space that is warded.
Its semantics there. The only real difference is that a simple telekinesis can move the book and not set off the alarm.
I've read the thread and your comment still doesn't make sense to me. I'm presuming that is your clarification. That doesn't make sense to me either. We were discussing at low levels. A high level character would take different precautions all of which are just as cheap and consume just as little time, but offer more protection and more comfort. I guess I'm trying to figure out your point.
A low level wizard who is burning up his spells to dispel magic the arcane lock that he put there the night before to remain safe is a fool or has assassins coming to kill him.
Some of those are great wards and some of those are nonsense.
Nonsense! Well, okay, so there are some wacky ones (like continual flame), but you can't deny that a glowing spellbook is more likely to become lost can you? :P
Alarm wards a point in space not an object, so DM ruling required
My mistake. A stone of alarm should work in the spell's place. If I'm not mistaken that can be placed on an object specifically. What's more, you can use the alarm spell on an object as part of the creation of a magical trap (see the trap creation rules in the environment chapter).
Arcane Lock works on chests, doors, and portals, so DM ruling required
Not really. Put the book in a sleeve buttoned shut (or a chest) and suddenly you need to reach through a portal to get to the book.
Continual Flame?? Why on earth? Okay well I guess you could if you really wanted to.
A glowing spellbook is easier to find than a non-glowing one. Consider it a ward against getting lost. Also wards away the superstitious.
Explosive Runes is just foolish.
Not if you have spells in there you don't want falling into the wrong hands, or better yet, book ward cast on it (so the explosion(s) hurt the perp, but not the book).
Grease lasts one min per level which isn't exactly cost effective at low levels.
Can it be made permanent?
Invisibility suffer the same problem for the above
But this one I KNOW can be made permanent. Combined with continual flame, no one knows it's a book at a glance, just a mysterious glowing light. :P
The others I've used before to great effect.
As have many others I'm sure.
We're talking about low level mages that can't drop the cash or the permanency spell for invisibility.
The usage of arcane lock works fine until they steal the box.
Granted a glowing book is easier to find and the barbarian will stay away from it.
Book Ward doesn't work on force damage which is sadly what explosive runes does. I know I checked. I thought the same thing. I thought I would have great fun making extras and then randomly trapping pages and then ask the dm how many the poor sap got through before he gave up.
Grease cannot be made permanent.
That is it. The next wizard I roll is making undead bunnies and using perma invisibility and continual flame on them.
Ohhhh. I was commenting on the current discussion about the nature of protective wards and wondering about you stating that taking simple cheap precautions was unrealistic and evidence of insanity.
I've been trying to figure out why you've been stating the obvious and now I know. Thanks for the clarification.
Even a high level wizard can make good use of cheap low-level spells if he/she incorporates the wards into an overall strategy of protection which involves direct wards, misdirection, illusion, aura manipulation, "forged" spellbooks, etc. Of course there is nothing that is impossible to defeat, but every strategy of protecting a place or thing boils down to making the thing not worth the effort to steal.
Unless the wizard has an enemy who has made it their singular purpose to steal the spellbook then a reasonable strategy with a few basic wards, some misdirection and illusion will keep their spellbook safe enough for all practical purposes.
But then again, who cares about "practical purposes" anyway.
My own wizard has a couple layers of ward, misdirection and illusion to protect his extra spellbooks, as well as other things he doesn't carry around with him. He also has them arcane marked and recallable. So far that's been more than enough to ensure that he has never lost his spells. And he hasn't invested any major amount of gold to do it.
Agreed and those precautions are typically enough unless you know you've got a lunatic with a dire obsession with your spell collection. There isn't really any reason to go overboard. It seems that different people have definitions of overboard here though.
My question is why would you care if a player is blowing all his spells on protection. So he's choosing to roleplay a self destructive paranoid. So what? In most groups I've run you've got at least one character that exhibits some form of mental illness at least in function.
You've got the rogue that will not stop stealing things from the group just to prove they can. The anti social character that spends half the campaign talking about how he is better than everyone else and at least one character who is secretly plotting the destruction of his friends. Who cares if the wizard likes to sleep in a warded rope trick all the freaking time? If he's willing to drop the spells and give up his overall effectiveness to act like a nut then by jove call him a nut and don't worry about it.
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Regardless of whether or not his spellbook is protected, once the wizard casts one or two spells at low levels, he is already relegated to being a commoner.
Wow! Commoners can cast up to four cantrips at will per day now? It is not in the RAW, as far as I can see?
As I said I read the thread.
I've been trying to figure out why you were stating them when they were understood. They were not relevant to the questions that I asked except for in a general manner. i.e. like how gravity is relevant to a discussion of a baseball game.
I've been reading you use logical fallacies as well as meatrace so I don't see why you get to act superior when you make bold broadband statements that don't support your supposed facts.
Darkwing you and I have very very different views of balance and what a dm should and shouldn't be doing and apparently what constitutes as fun in a rpg. We seem to have some kind of disconnect in this discussion. I make an argument and you drag in someone else's as if it was mine. Since you cannot seem to address the points that I am making I don't really see the point in continuing this conversation.
I sincerely would like you to point out where you feel I've used logical fallacies. I'm not perfect, but I try to be.
Most of your arguments seem to support a perspective of how a game should be played that is not universal to either the core argument or mine. Due to this difference in variation you attribute values to the nature of game that are not necessarily present in anyone else. Since we cannot attribute an absolute value of right and wrong to gaming styles there is no means to determine your assumptions that you use to determine your conclusion. Therefore you're guilty of the fallacy of false cause and misplaced concreteness. Since you seem to exhibit these due to your deterministic perspective in seeing absolute value of right and wrong based on varying perspective I don't really see the point in arguing, but hey you asked.
Ward's for spellbooks?
Here's a few low-level ones:
Alarm (wards against unauthorized access)
Arcane Lock (wards against unauthorized access)
Arcane Mark (wards book from getting lost by identifying it as yours)
Book Ward (wards against acid, fire, and water)
Continual Flame (Wards against darkness)
Explosive Runes (wards against unauthorized access)
Grease (wards against grasping)
Illusory Script (wards against reading)
Invisibility (wards against sight)
Misdirection (wards against divination)
Nondetection (wards against divination and scrying)
Obscure Object (wards against scrying)
Phantom Trap (wards against curious passerby)
Prestidigitation (wards against dirt)
Secret Page (wards against reading)
Sepia Snake Sigil (wards against unauthorized access)
Shrink Item (makes it easier to conceal)
Symbol of [Anything] (wards against unauthorized access)And that's just 3rd-level and lower on the wizard's list.
That's my favorite!
How efficient is it to use those spells though? That's a lot of low level spells. How many and which ones should the paranoid wizard use?
I think meatrace was specifically talking about a spell that is designed to do one thing, protect the spellbook. I could be wrong, but that's how I was reading it.
Actually, we can. So, the degree to which players are forced into doing things that aren't fun (such as being wall flowers)
we cannot attribute an absolute value of right and wrong to gaming styles
Case and point. You just defined everyone's notion of fun. You don't seem to see varying perspective therefore this conversation serves no purpose.
To follow this silly string to its end and nothing more.
How do you define the actions that lead to "wanting to actually contribute positively to the game"?
I tend to play wizards, and while it's just my experience, GMs aren't really out to steal your spellbooks.
For the most part, low-level wizards are part of a band of murderous hobos. They don't have a home, per se, or lots of extra cash or spell slots for securing their books.
Getting captured by someone who doesn't want you dead right now is the most common way of losing your book(s). If that happens, the whole party lost all their goodies, and you have a set of problems far worse than just losing your book.
Spell Mastery is great for that, but you have to wait for it until you have some levels, to be useful. Spells like Gaseous Form can get you out of a jail, but even then, it's risky. Escape spells are always good, but even preparing them with Spell Mastery may not happen easily. If you're bound and gagged, and don't have the feats, that won't help you, either.
As a GM, I don't really like stripping the players of all their stuff, then leaving them in a prison. Prison break scenarios in a magical setting are either too easy or too hard. I have trouble coming up with something that gives them a fair chance, while still being believable.
Prison break scenarios in a magical setting are either too easy or too hard. I have trouble coming up with something that gives them a fair chance, while still being believable.
Either the prison isn't capable of holding them in the first place, or the dm has to conveniently make sure all of the guards are either elsewhere or suddenly incompetent. I've seen it successful, rather not obviously contrived, only when the party has been split up.
Prison break scenarios in a magical setting are either too easy or too hard. I have trouble coming up with something that gives them a fair chance, while still being believable.Either the prison isn't capable of holding them in the first place, or the dm has to conveniently make sure all of the guards are either elsewhere or suddenly incompetent. I've seen it successful, rather not obviously contrived, only when the party has been split up.
Good point. If a few of them are jailed, but not all, then it can be fun.
I guess my point here is that stripping PCs of what they need to function is usually a party foul. Sure, it may happen, especially at low levels, but for the most part, losing your most important gear shouldn't be a complete shutdown. Spellbooks fall in that category, and only extreme stupidity or really bad luck should land you in such a helpless position.
Might as well roll a new wizard with an intact book.
I used to have guidelines for prison magic defenses, but I haven't used prisons in so long that I would have to recreate them now. It was probably as far back as 2e days. But based on the size or wealth of the town they might have different means of dealing with magic up to and including anti-magic shells in the largest, wealthiest towns. Most small towns though wouldn't have much other than perhaps some magical locks.
I really don't like the whole "your party is captured and you wake up in prison cells" scenario. I think everyone probably goes through that once or twice in their gaming careers, but once or twice is enough for me.
Back to the wizard protecting a spellbook. The whole point of visiting the warding of spellbooks was to rebut the idea that wizards had to hide in extra-dimensional spaces to avoid the spellbook stealing hordes who roamed the world like mosquitoes. If the warding is more trouble and more expensive than casting mage's magnificent mansion every day (or other similar things) then the argument becomes moot.
I haven't played my wizard in a long time and since my 2e group frequently researched and created our own spells, he had some custom wards for his main and hidden spellbooks. Back in those days wizards typically had their "real" spellbooks and their "travel" spellbooks which had a subset of their spell collection since bags of holding weren't common enough to carry magical libraries around. Looking at the wards and things available in PF it looks like I could duplicate what he had done pretty easily, but a few of the spells would have to either have special long-duration versions, or else have permanency cast on them, so the cost might be more than I'd like.
But would it end up being cheaper and more practical than sleeping in inter-dimensional spaces every night?
Yeah, I think so actually. But everyone has their own tolerance level for this stuff. In that old group our wizards used to take pride in the cleverness of their wards and alarms. But then again, most of them had some sort of home castle, tower or fancy mansion with guards and sometimes even families to watch over stuff while they were out adventuring.
Ah... the good old days... :)
All this discussion is making me think about protecting my gravewalker witch's poppet though...
I asked you to define the actions.
I defined everyone's definition of "fun" as "wanting to actually contribute positively to the game".
So your definition of contributing positively to the game is making sure that everyone (or as much of everyone as possible - even when one's self has to back down a bit) has a good time?
So your definition of fun is making sure that everyone (or as much of everyone as possible - even when one's self has to back down a bit) has a good time?
Back to the wizard protecting a spellbook. The whole point of visiting the warding of spellbooks was to rebut the idea that wizards had to hide in extra-dimensional spaces to avoid the spellbook stealing hordes who roamed the world like mosquitoes. If the warding is more trouble and more expensive than casting mage's magnificent mansion every day (or other similar things) then the argument becomes moot.Yeah, I think so actually. But everyone has their own tolerance level for this stuff. In that old group our wizards used to take pride in the cleverness of their wards and alarms. But then again, most of them had...
I find the notion, typically, of the roving hordes of spell book stealing fiends to be silly as well and its a sad defense against the arguments that wizards are the "god" class imo. One thing to keep in mind though with pathfinder most of the protective ward spells are now very cheap and with the massive number of spells a higher level wizard gets access to he really doesn't have much excuse not to have one or two running.
I like the warding abjuration style mages more. They, imo, require more finesse than the blasty or summony types.
As far as determining power levels in class comparison though it just seems silly. The set up usually assumes that the wizard is prepared or in his element. Of course he's going to win then. That's the equivalent of wandering around without armor on when a high level rogue or assassin is after you. Wizards have very few hit points starting out as such they rarely get caught with their pants down.
I find in pathfinder the classes to be reasonably balanced compared to most rpgs.
Poppet's probably safe dude. If they know enough to go after the puppet they probably know enough to kill you ;) Although imagining the interrogation would be fun. Yes I know they could build a complex magical trap. I just see a rogue poking it repeatedly try to determine its value.
Jak, Yeah, I doubt my GM is going to target the poppet, and my witch is a sorta flighty dude, so I dunno how much I'm going to do about warding the poppet, but I'll give it at least a bit of thought.
Other than buying lots of scrolls, I'm not sure there is any way to "back up" a poppet... I'm gonna have to start digging...
That is an odd one short of the scrolls. But then the poppet doesn't have seem to have anything in regards to its structure. I wonder if the poppet is even important except for housing the spirits which I doubt would lose anything from its destruction except for a method to interact with the witch. Gah that's a weird one.
Do you find yourself using the ranged touch attack ability at all?
My witch just leveled up to gain the ability to do the ranged touch attack in the last encounter of our last session, so not yet. But I plan on it. I do think that making it a two-round action to use a spell is way too expensive, but I'll try it out before talking to my GM about it. No other class archetype has to literally take two rounds to use one of it's main archetype abilities. The action economy cost is really sky-high on gravewalkers. I think it's probably unbalancing (in a bad way) but I wanna try it out before I decide for certain.
I agree. I was very much looking forward to playing with the gravewalker and then saw that two turn cost. Not much is worth that kinda wait especially when you consider that ranged spells keep up with the touch ones quite well.
Sorcerer (Cross-blooded draconic silver/orc) 20
Feats: Spell Focus (Conjuration), Greater Spell Focus (Conjuration), Empower Spell, Elemental Spell (Cold), Quicken Spell,
Traits: Magical Lineage (Caustic Eruption).
25 points (Human)
S 8 (-2)
D 10
C 16 (10)
I 10
W 10
Ch 18 (17)
I prefer Con in a group for survivability.
Lvl 20 your main spell is caustic eruption, preferably as a cold spell.
Empowered Elemental (Cold) Caustic Eruption. 20d6 x 1.5 =105 +40 =145 cold damage in 30 foot radius.
Next round: same.
145 +145 = 290
Plus: 10d6 x 1.5 =52 +20 = 72 points of damage
290 + 72 =362 cold damage in 2 rounds.
This generally kills about anything you'll ever fight. Save DC with headband, inherent bonus, and ability points from level is usually +12 (Cha 34) +4 (double Spell Focus for Perfection) +7 spell = DC 33 Reflex save.
You have roughly 21 spell slots to use to cast this with lvl 7,8, and 9 spell slots. Damage continues to compound. Very little can withstand that much damage. The next round they will take another 142 without you even casting for a total of 504 damage from two spells. Almost anything is dead from that, especially groups of things. With your party also hitting the creature, not much lives.
That's the build I'm using right now. Pretty much destroys what we're facing before they have a chance to retaliate unless they are immune to cold. Even resistance only provides moderate protection.
I removed some posts. Calm down, folks.
Case and point. You just defined everyone's notion of fun. You don't seem to see varying perspective therefore this conversation serves no purpose.Actually, we can. So, the degree to which players are forced into doing things that aren't fun (such as being wall flowers)
we cannot attribute an absolute value of right and wrong to gaming stylesI defined everyone's definition of "fun" as "wanting to actually contribute positively to the game". That's a definition I'm going to stand behind.
Somethings ARE bad.
Rather than trying to nerf a character whether it be the fighter or wizard why not just change the way you are GM'ing. That way you don't have to go out of your way to try to control how someone RP's.
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The wizard has some nice toys to play with if they're prepared, but that is based on the situation. I still want my martial friends around to hold stuff off while I cast my spells. The wizards has got some fundamental weaknesses.
Not every campaign is going to allow you to spend gold or time ensuring your wizard has every thing you need to kick butt. There is always going to be a situation where the wizard is going to have to rely on his companions to survive.
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The wizard has some nice toys to play with if they're prepared, but that is based on the situation. I still want my martial friends around to hold stuff off while I cast my spells. The wizards has got some fundamental weaknesses.
Not every campaign is going to allow you to spend gold or time ensuring your wizard has every thing you need to kick butt. There is always going to be a situation where the wizard is going to have to rely on his companions to survive.
I've played and GMed enough wizards to know that no character is ready for anything.
In the case of wizards, it's usually not having a spell to cast that will help much, if at all. There's only so much they can do, even at high levels, particularly after they've been through a few encounters and don't have a lot of spells left.
They're good at pulling out last minute scrolls to save the day, but that, too, is situational. Whatever your role in the party, sometimes you just can't bring the awesome, and your buddies have to make up the difference.
I've yet to see a god wizard that didn't make at least one of the following errors
1.) Provide NO backup or protection for his spell book(s) in case they get stolen/damaged
This is an assumption on your part. There are a lot of things that can be done that are probably not mentioned. Just like my fighters don't worry about how often they keep their swords sharp, the wizards don't go into much detail on how the protect their books, unless they are hyper-paranoid.
2.) Misinterpret the crafting rules to give significantly more wealth to the character than his WBL
According to Paizo, the official ruling is that Crafting does allow you to exceed the WBL. It's now part of the FAQ. I don't agree with it, but it is official and therefore it is officially no longer a valid argument for RAW discussions.