My question is about exactly what it says in the subject. Magical Lineage allows you to treat one spell as 1 level lower for purposes of metamagic. Merciful Spell has a 0 level adjustment, meaning a 1st level Merciful spell for which you had Magical Lineage would become a 0-level spell, thus becoming usable at-will.
While that would be pretty straightforward for something like, say, Magic Missile, my question has to do with Cure/Inflict Light Wounds.
Since either of them could be considered damage dealing spells, depending on the target, would they be viable candidates for Merciful Spell? And if they were, how would it affect them? The damage types would remain the same, so they'd still be Positive/Negative energy, and thus affect their respective targets the same way. But is there a rule or precedent for saying a metamagic feat can't be applied to a spell if it's used in a certain way, or that it has no effect if used in a certain way?
Barring anybody pointing out any rules I may have missed, it seems one way to gain unlimited healing/damage, depending on your target.
My question is about exactly what it says in the subject. Magical Lineage allows you to treat one spell as 1 level lower for purposes of metamagic. Merciful Spell has a 0 level adjustment, meaning a 1st level Merciful spell for which you had Magical Lineage would become a 0-level spell, thus becoming usable at-will.
While that would be pretty straightforward for something like, say, Magic Missile, my question has to do with Cure/Inflict Light Wounds.
Since either of them could be considered damage dealing spells, depending on the target, would they be viable candidates for Merciful Spell? And if they were, how would it affect them? The damage types would remain the same, so they'd still be Positive/Negative energy, and thus affect their respective targets the same way. But is there a rule or precedent for saying a metamagic feat can't be applied to a spell if it's used in a certain way, or that it has no effect if used in a certain way?
Barring anybody pointing out any rules I may have missed, it seems one way to gain unlimited healing/damage, depending on your target.
Considering nothing stops you from throwing heighten on spells with no area I don't see why you couldn't throw merciful on whatever.
I do however believe their is some sort of weird 0 level spell rule that stops this but it isn't coming to me so I gotta say "go for it" at the moment.
I don't believe magical lineage will let you reduce a spell's level below its starting level.
My question is about exactly what it says in the subject. Magical Lineage allows you to treat one spell as 1 level lower for purposes of metamagic. Merciful Spell has a 0 level adjustment, meaning a 1st level Merciful spell for which you had Magical Lineage would become a 0-level spell, thus becoming usable at-will.
While that would be pretty straightforward for something like, say, Magic Missile, my question has to do with Cure/Inflict Light Wounds.
Since either of them could be considered damage dealing spells, depending on the target, would they be viable candidates for Merciful Spell? And if they were, how would it affect them? The damage types would remain the same, so they'd still be Positive/Negative energy, and thus affect their respective targets the same way. But is there a rule or precedent for saying a metamagic feat can't be applied to a spell if it's used in a certain way, or that it has no effect if used in a certain way?
Barring anybody pointing out any rules I may have missed, it seems one way to gain unlimited healing/damage, depending on your target.
I'm pretty sure there was a recent thread that shot down this approach.
Magical Lineage only treats the spell as one level lower for metamagic. It doesn't actually make the spell a level lower, ie it doesn't turn a 1st level spell into an orison/cantrip.
: Magical Lineage: One of your parents was a gifted spellcaster who not only used metamagic often, but also developed many magical items and perhaps even a new spell or two—and you have inherited a fragment of this greatness. Pick one spell when you choose this trait. When you apply metamagic feats to this spell, treat its actual level as 1 lower for determining the spell's final adjusted level.
For example, if you cast your Lineage spell with the Enlarge Spell metamagic feat the level adjustment would be +1 (Enlarge) - 1 (Lineage trait) = 0 level adjustment.
The issue of unlimited healing comes up reasonably often. The reason Paizo removed Cure Minor Wounds when it brought in unlimited Orisons/Cantrips per day was to prevent unlimited healing. Any attempt to selectively interpret feats, traits etc is not going to achieve the aim of unlimited healing.
I don't believe magical lineage will let you reduce a spell's level below its starting level.
Where does it say that?
@Gallow: he is aware, that is why he is applying merciful to it, Cure light +1 merciful +0 magical lineage -1 = 0
The wording on the trait is a bit unclear on the matter. Maybe I'll have to search for the thread where it was discussed, and hope that perhaps there will be (or was) an FAQ and/or Developer comment on the matter.
The trait says "When you apply metamagic feats to this spell, treat its actual level as 1 lower for determining the spell's final adjusted level." It doesn't seem hard to interpret the RAW of that meaning that it reduces the level of the spell when you apply metamagic to it. Merciful just happens to have a level adjustment of +0, which doesn't invalidate the ability.
I think the wording stating that you treat it's ACTUAL level as 1 lower is where it gets tricky. Unfortunately, a clearer way of phrasing the trait escapes me.
For the most part, though, while unlimited healing could be game breaking, I don't see it as being overly powerful for any of the other 1st level damage spells. At best, you're using Merciful Shocking Grasp, Magic Missile, or Burning Hands every round. Those spells have fairly low damage caps, and they'd only deal nonlethal damage. Making them spammable would just give low level casters something to do every round, when their spell usage and selection would otherwise be very limited, especially compared to the fighter who gets to swing his sword every round. It's usefulness would drop off signifigantly at higher levels, but may still be handy.
Of course, now I have an amusing mental image of a Magus running around smacking people with a Merciful club Spellstriking a Merciful Shocking Grasp. Tazer anyone?
Wouldn't merciful CLW do nonlethal positive energy damage, i.e. only heal nonlethal damage?
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There's a post on this thread where Jason says:
Unlimited healing at the cost of a feat and an orison slot is just too good. This is a fix. It is neither elegant, nor my preferred solution (which would have been to catch this before it went to print, but mistakes do slip through), it is simply a fix for the OP system.
I am looking into other ways to do fixes like this that do not require a book reprint, but that is a dangerous ground to walk into, especially unprepared, but that is a topic for another thread.
That was in regard to another combo that provided orison healing, though not through the lineage trait. However, I think you can see the intent here pretty clearly.
I couldn't find the alleged post that limits magical lineage from reducing a spell level below its original level though :/
@Omelite, healing is no negative damage I believe.
as for the initial question, that use doesn't seem intended and if I were a GM confronted with it I would say something that includes the word "munchkin" a few times.
But as discussion that is purely based on RAW it is something that is 50% unclear and 50% in need of errata.
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I don't believe magical lineage will let you reduce a spell's level below its starting level.Where does it say that?
@Gallow: he is aware, that is why he is applying merciful to it, Cure light +1 merciful +0 magical lineage -1 = 0
The point is considering the slot of CLW as +1 instead of simply 1. I'd leave the "+" part only to metamagic, as the original spell slot does not constitute a modifier (thusly being subject to magical lineage influence).
In this case magical lineage cannot lower the metamagic modifier to -1 (no lower spell slot, ever - or at least no orison spell level, ever) and is simply wasted if combined with merciful which does not add any significant value to the spell slot used.
I agree that's a matter of unclear wording, and it should be quickly taken into FAQ/errata revision.
Merciful Spell
"You can alter spells that inflict damage to inflict nonlethal damage instead."
CLW
"channel positive energy that cures 1d8 points of damage"
Cure light wounds does not "inflict" damage, it channel positive energy thus merciful spell has no effect if used in its healing application.
the only time it does work is against undead in which case yes you can use a merciful cure light wound to inflcit non-lethal damage to undead who are immune :)
and yes the effect are separate
a cleric that channel positive energy MUST chose to have it heal or inflict it cannot do both at the same time.
But what about a Merciful Inflict Light Wounds? It would still be negative energy, nonlethal or not, so could it be used to heal undead?
But what about a Merciful Inflict Light Wounds? It would still be negative energy, nonlethal or not, so could it be used to heal undead?
except inflict used to heal undead is treated as the same as CLW to heal living i.e. not "inflciting" damage.
even if you allowed it to inlfict non-lethal healing, undead are immune to non-lethal i.e. it has no effect on them so the spell has no effect on undead
Undead are immune to nonlethal DAMAGE. As this is the only circumstance where nonlethal HEALING could possibly exist, they don't have a specified immunity to it. If nonlethal healing did exist in such a form for the undead immunity to nonlethal damage to apply, then it would also allow nonlethal healing to apply to living targets from a Cure spell.
Undead are immune to nonlethal DAMAGE. As this is the only circumstance where nonlethal HEALING could possibly exist, they don't have a specified immunity to it. If nonlethal healing did exist in such a form for the undead immunity to nonlethal damage to apply, then it would also allow nonlethal healing to apply to living targets from a Cure spell.
I still say healing does not inlfict damage therefore there is no way merciful spell can even apply in which case there is no such thing as non-lethal healing
I don't believe magical lineage will let you reduce a spell's level below its starting level.Where does it say that?
@Gallow: he is aware, that is why he is applying merciful to it, Cure light +1 merciful +0 magical lineage -1 = 0
Merciful is irrelevant. You can't turn a level 1 spell into an orison regardless of what you do. All you can do is modify the effects through metamagic.
And as per Jason quote above, do you really think the designers would allow unlimited healing? If you have to go to all sorts of weird twists and turns of the rules to try and achieve it you really need to have a long hard think about whether you are doing is within the spirit of the rules even as you go into contortions trying to twist the wording of the rules.
In this case, as in many others where rule ambiguity is concerned, it's not necessarily something I'm trying to pull off. I'd never allow it to fly in any game I ran, and I'd speak against it if any GM of mine allowed it.
That said, I'm merely trying to interpret the rules in any possible way they could be interpreted without blatantly breaking them. It's through things like this that loopholes and such get discovered and pointed out to the developers to be fixed. It's a sort of 'system stress test' or extended playtest.
I don't believe magical lineage will let you reduce a spell's level below its starting level.Where does it say that?
@Gallow: he is aware, that is why he is applying merciful to it, Cure light +1 merciful +0 magical lineage -1 = 0
Merciful is irrelevant. You can't turn a level 1 spell into an orison regardless of what you do. All you can do is modify the effects through metamagic.
And as per Jason quote above, do you really think the designers would allow unlimited healing? If you have to go to all sorts of weird twists and turns of the rules to try and achieve it you really need to have a long hard think about whether you are doing is within the spirit of the rules even as you go into contortions trying to twist the wording of the rules.
Exactly. In 3.5 there was the cantrip "Cure Minor Wounds", that healed 1 HP per cast. It was mostly used to stabilize people and stuff (you only could cast a few cantrips per day, just like normal spells). In PF where cantrips became unlimited that was changed to "Stabilize" without the healing component, exactly to prevent the unlimited healing situation.
"We're out of combat, I spend the next hour to heal everyone with my cantrip"So yeah, I doubt the devs will allow unlimited CLW if they already removed CMW.
I guess another question is that while unlimited healing may not be valid, what about for the purposes of damage with other spells? That's much more the intention of Merciful Spell anyways. Would Magical Lineage (Shocking Grasp) + Merficul Spell allow me unlimited Merciful Shocking Grasps?
As I pointed out before, allowing unlimited Merciful Burning Hands, Shocking Grasp, or Magic Missile wouldn't exactly be game breaking.
I think the Magical Lineage trait hadn't been created with a +0 metamagic in mind, but I think I'd allow a non-lethal cantrip like that.
Probably not burning hands, as that is an aoe and makes no sense really to be non-lethal.
But it's twisting the rules a bit, so you should definitely talk to your GM about it.
I like my idea of creative applications for a nonlethal Shocking Grasp, especially when combined with a Magus Spellstrike. Because tazing people can be hilarious.
I would laugh right in the face of anyone who tried to pull this on me if I were DMing. It's obviously not the intention of this trait to lower the actual spell level, just the cost of applying metamagic by 1. If there's no metamagic boost then this trait doesn't do anything.
You can twist around it to make it not that useful ...
You know as soon as you do this this, some other zero adjustment metamagic feat will come out and throw a monkey wrench into the whole thing.
I don't believe magical lineage will let you reduce a spell's level below its starting level.Where does it say that?
JJ and/or SKR has clarified this in previous threads on the subject. If it hasn't made it into the FAQ already, hopefully it will soon.
I like my idea of creative applications for a nonlethal Shocking Grasp, especially when combined with a Magus Spellstrike. Because tazing people can be hilarious.
be aware your treading on the monk's territory since non-lethal usually applies a penalty to normal attack roll and your making it a touch spell meaning its always going to hit.
although at the higher end so much is immune to non-lethal prob not a huge issue might unbalance low end games though.
I was pretty sure you could apply metamagic to any spell regardless of whether it would do anything or not, If you want to maximize a sleep spell for teh lulz I wasn't sure anything stopped you.
I was pretty sure you could apply metamagic to any spell regardless of whether it would do anything or not, If you want to maximize a sleep spell for teh lulz I wasn't sure anything stopped you.
So what are you suggesting?
That merciful truestrike 0 level cantrip
Merciful sleep
Mericful color spray
Mericful shield
All level 0 unlimited use cantrips?
I'm pretty sure that the spell must be a valid choice for the metamagic in order to prepare it as a metamagic'd spell. So in the case of Merciful, it would have to be a damaging spell. Your options for 1st level damage spells are Magic Missile, Shocking Grasp, Burning Hands, and Inflict Light wounds.
Merciful Spell has a 0 level adjustment
This is false. From the PRD:
Merciful Spell (Metamagic)
Your damaging spells subdue rather than kill.
Benefit: You can alter spells that inflict damage to inflict nonlethal damage instead. Spells that inflict damage of a particular type (such as fire) inflict nonlethal damage of that same type. A merciful spell does not use up a higher-level spell slot than the spell's actual level.
It's not that it has a +0 level adjust. It has no level adjust. Therefore, you cannot reduce it with Magical Lineage, as the spell was not adjusted. This "trick" has been discussed before with Magic Missiles and other level 1 damage spells in the past. Fortunately for everyone else, it doesn't work.
That was it! It doesnt work because you dont have zero level spell slots so you cant spend one. Thanks fozbek.