Venture-Captain, California—San Francisco Bay Area North & East
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I think the spell Blood Money should be banned from society play. Players are avoiding the material costs on everything just with a single charge of a first level wand. Today they had to use a whole 3 charges to cast raise dead and two restorations, with a total of 1210 gold for the services.
It is overpowered and skews the expected expenditures over the course of the character.
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I think the spell Blood Money should be banned from society play. Players are avoiding the material costs on everything just with a single charge of a first level wand. Today they had to use a whole 3 charges to cast raise dead and two restorations, with a total of 1210 gold for the services.
It is overpowered and skews the expected expenditures over the course of the character.
Blood money does not actually work with raise dead or restoration. Take a look at the casting times of those two spells. The generated material components stop functioning long before the casting times are complete.
Now alchemical allocation, and its ability to leverage 2nd-level slots to generate 3rd-level spell effects, that's overpowered.
-Matt
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I think the spell Blood Money should be banned from society play. Players are avoiding the material costs on everything just with a single charge of a first level wand. Today they had to use a whole 3 charges to cast raise dead and two restorations, with a total of 1210 gold for the services.
It is overpowered and skews the expected expenditures over the course of the character.
Blood Money on a wand should not work. Yes the spell is a swift action - but all wands are at least STANDARD actions to use
And Blood Money says, "When you cast another spell in that same round....."
Unless you are doing a Swift or Quicken Spell, you are not casting in the same round.
So yes, Blood Money memorized as a spell can still cause the havoc, but that requires the people casting raise dead and restoration to have a mage, sorcerer, wizard or witch level - not so common.
A raise dead is a 10 strength damage hit - so you also need a arcane/divine caster with at least a 11 Strength. I would guess they did this over a series of days.
As to the long casting time And I believe a campaign person-of-power has ruled as long as the spell starts in that round it does not matter when it finishes.
but the baseline, is that a wand of Blood Money is almost useless. However, I don't disagree in an environment where there is concern about Gold Per Level that the spell should be looked at.
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Blood Money seems to be part of casting the spell. You cannot use Blood Money with a standard action wand since that effect's the spells casting time.
What everyone is trying to say is, you cannot use it from a wand, but you can use it normally if you have it.
It's pretty powerful spell in negating gold needed for components. I am not sure what's it doing in PFS. Perhaps there is some rule in PFS that limits it, but I can't remember which now.
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I think the spell Blood Money should be banned from society play. Players are avoiding the material costs on everything just with a single charge of a first level wand. Today they had to use a whole 3 charges to cast raise dead and two restorations, with a total of 1210 gold for the services.
It is overpowered and skews the expected expenditures over the course of the character.
There's several things wrong with how your players were using this spell:
School transmutation; Level magus 1, sorcerer/wizard 1, witch 1
CASTING
Casting Time 1 swift action
Components V, SEFFECT
Range 0 ft.
Effect 1 material component
Duration InstantaneousDESCRIPTION
You cast blood money just before casting another spell. As part of this spell's casting, you must cut one of your hands, releasing a stream of blood that causes you to take 1d6 points of damage. When you cast another spell in that same round, your blood transforms into one material component of your choice required by that second spell. Even valuable components worth more than 1 gp can be created, but creating such material components requires an additional cost of 1 point of Strength damage, plus a further point of damage for every full 500 gp of the component's value (so a component worth 500–999 gp costs a total of 2 points, 1,000–1,500 costs 3, etc.). You cannot create magic items with blood money.For example, a sorcerer with the spell stoneskin prepared could cast blood money to create the 250 gp worth of diamond dust required by that spell, taking 1d6 points of damage and 1 point of Strength damage in the process.
Material components created by blood money transform back into blood at the end of the round if they have not been used as a material component. Spellcasters who do not have blood cannot cast blood money, and those who are immune to Strength damage (such as undead spellcasters) cannot use blood money to create valuable material components.
1) As several people have mentioned the casting time from a wand is a standard action at minimum so you could only use this with a quickened spell.
2) From your post it appears they were giving the material components to someone else to use for the spell. You can't do this, it has to be a spell you cast.3) The casting time issue is a bit trickier. If there is a ruling on when in a spell's casting time the material component is consumed, I'd love to see the link. Otherwise, I'd go with the material component being consumed over the course of the casting (which in the case of raise dead or restoration means they would have evaporated before the casting was complete, causing the casting to fail.
If you use the "full-duration" component ruling blood money is quite reasonable. There's very few spells that can be cast as a standard action that have an expensive material component. And enjoy that strength damage when you cast it.
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You cast blood money just before casting another spell. As part of this spell's casting, you must cut one of your hands, releasing a stream of blood that causes you to take 1d6 points of damage. When you cast another spell in that same round, your blood transforms into one material component of your choice required by that second spell. Even valuable components worth more than 1 gp can be created, but creating such material components requires an additional cost of 1 point of Strength damage, plus a further point of damage for every full 500 gp of the component's value (so a component worth 500–999 gp costs a total of 2 points, 1,000–1,500 costs 3, etc.). You cannot create magic items with blood money.
I dont see a problem with using it with raise dead or restoration (assuming you had both spells on your spell list). You just have to specify how much blood you want to give up when you cast blood money.
One way to do it is to be an Elf and the archetype Ancient Lorekeeper for oracles. Then you can take blood money as a 2nd level spell.
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One way to do it is to be an Elf and the archetype Ancient Lorekeeper for oracles. Then you can take blood money as a 2nd level spell.
So you can use Blood Money for part of the components - Assuming they can be subdivided. I had not thought of that use.
And Raise Dead would take 11 STR 1 + 1 per 500GP (my previous error on that)
So have you figured out what creature you would have to turn into to have a 52 strength so you can use blood money to cast Wish spells for free? (possibly out-of-scope for pathfinder until retirement characters get to 18th level).
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Venture-Captain, California—San Francisco Bay Area North & East
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Hmm. I'm glad to hear all that. They were just using the wand on the barbar and handing the component over to NPC cleric to use the spell on (in this case) the magus. Knowing about the standard action and having to use the component on your own spells only will help.
I guess my follow up question is - should I get the chronicles back from them and fix them? I'll see them again next week so it won't be hard, but I'm not sure I'm allowed to apply the retroactive fix.
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I guess my follow up question is - should I get the chronicles back from them and fix them? I'll see them again next week so it won't be hard, but I'm not sure I'm allowed to apply the retroactive fix.
I would do so. I think it's only fair, as they are expensive spells to begin with. To be fair with them, I would allow them to refund the wand of blood money as they bought it thinking it worked one way and it doesn't.
I think the spell Blood Money should be banned from society play. Players are avoiding the material costs on everything just with a single charge of a first level wand. Today they had to use a whole 3 charges to cast raise dead and two restorations, with a total of 1210 gold for the services.
It is overpowered and skews the expected expenditures over the course of the character.
I don't think its unreasonable to go back and fix their chronicles. This is an insane abuse of raise dead and restoration.
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So yes, Blood Money memorized as a spell can still cause the havoc, but that requires the people casting raise dead and restoration to have a mage, sorcerer, wizard or witch level - not so common.A raise dead is a 10 strength damage hit - so you also need a arcane/divine caster with at least a 11 Strength. I would guess they did this over a series of days.
The strength isn't actually an issue. Cast ray of enfeeblement before hand...your strength can not go below 1.
Witch has raise dead on the spell list already...so guess you could find a witch who would technically do this combo for you I suppose.
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The strength isn't actually an issue. Cast ray of enfeeblement before hand...your strength can not go below 1.
You know that ability damage doesn't reduce your ability scores anymore, right?
For every 2 points of damage you take to a single ability, apply a –1 penalty to skills and statistics listed with the relevant ability. If the amount of ability damage you have taken equals or exceeds your ability score, you immediately fall unconscious until the damage is less than your ability score.
As soon as you take ability damage equal to or exceeding your strength score, you fall unconscious.
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Andrew, I'm not seeing that at all.
Material components created by blood money transform back into blood at the end of the round if they have not been used as a material component.
I'm using them as a material component that round. My searching through the rules doesn't find anywhere where the material component has to be used in relation to the spell. I could consume the components in the first round.
Also, I'm legit using them as material components in the round, therefore the Blood Money criteria isn't satisfied and therefore they won't turn back to blood.
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If you can't cast the spell in the same round as blood money then you can't use blood money to mitigate the cost of the material components.
So spells that take longer than a standard action are a no go.
It was confirmed by a designer that you can BEGIN casting a spell the same round as blood money, so it does work with longer cast time spells.
I'll try to find the quote.
Either way, we are getting into a rules forum discussion.
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It's not clear, really. But for those thinking of "oh no! free raise dead," remember the feat Ultimate Mercy for a paladin. It's not really all that much different.
I know this is far from official, but here's a James Jacobs post.
RPG Superstar 2013 Top 8
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If you can't cast the spell in the same round as blood money then you can't use blood money to mitigate the cost of the material components.
So spells that take longer than a standard action are a no go.
Except that the rules never state when during spellcasting components are consumed.
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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It's a bigger question than just this spell, of course. If I am trying to cast a spell with an expensive material component, and that spell takes, say, 10 minutes to cast, and I'm interrupted during the first round of casting, can I try again with the same material components?
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You cast blood money just before casting another spell. As part of this spell's casting, you must cut one of your hands, releasing a stream of blood that causes you to take 1d6 points of damage. When you cast another spell in that same round, your blood transforms into one material component of your choice required by that second spell. Even valuable components worth more than 1 gp can be created, but creating such material components requires an additional cost of 1 point of Strength damage, plus a further point of damage for every full 500 gp of the component's value (so a component worth 500–999 gp costs a total of 2 points, 1,000–1,500 costs 3, etc.). You cannot create magic items with blood money.
Bolded sentence. The requirement that the 2nd spell be cast in the same round is part of the blood money spell. Raise dead is not cast in the same round, as it takes multiple other rounds (and minutes) to cast the spell.
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I don't care when the components are consumed. See my above post. It has nothing to do with when the component is consumed.
If I can't cast the spell in that same round, then it blood money is useless.
And I don't care what a designer has to say. They aren't the developer, and their intent means diddly when it comes to what the spell does as far as a development and what the actual RAW has to say.
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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Andrew, I take it that you're interpretting "When you cast another spell in that same round..." to mean "When you begin and finish another spell in that same round..." as opposed to "When you are taking some sort of action that same round to cast..."
So you're understanding is that there is an implicit restriction that the spell have a casting time of a move or standard action? (Even a full-round spell won't finish this same round.)
If so, I don't think that's an obvious restriction; I'm reading it as allowing longer casting times, so long as you are casting during the round that blood money comes into effect. You might be right, but then I'm surprised that the developers wouldn't make that explicit.
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I don't care when the components are consumed. See my above post. It has nothing to do with when the component is consumed.
If I can't cast the spell in that same round, then it blood money is useless.
And I don't care what a designer has to say. They aren't the developer, and their intent means diddly when it comes to what the spell does as far as a development and what the actual RAW has to say.
That's fine. I'll make sure not to cast blood money + raise dead at your table (not like I have a character that does). In mine and Mortika's, it looks like it works fine.
To me, a designer answer is better than no answer. If a dev wants to step in and correct J Jacobs (and it has happened) then I will abide by that.
But once again, we are going into rules questions instead of PFS specific questions.
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I don't care when the components are consumed. See my above post. It has nothing to do with when the component is consumed.
If I can't cast the spell in that same round, then it blood money is useless.
And I don't care what a designer has to say. They aren't the developer, and their intent means diddly when it comes to what the spell does as far as a development and what the actual RAW has to say.
"cast" is quite a bit more unclear than "begin casting" or "finish casting". Just because you take it to mean "finish casting", doesn't mean "begin casting" isn't still a possible interpretation.
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RPG Superstar 2013 Top 8
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Andrew, I take it that you're interpretting "When you cast another spell in that same round..." to mean "When you begin and finish another spell in that same round..." as opposed to "When you are taking some sort of action that same round to cast..."
So you're understanding is that there is an implicit restriction that the spell have a casting time of a move or standard action? (Even a full-round spell won't finish this same round.)
If so, I don't think that's an obvious restriction; I'm reading it as allowing longer casting times, so long as you are casting during the round that blood money comes into effect. You might be right, but then I'm surprised that the developers wouldn't make that explicit.
I agree with Chris, and don't think that it is nearly as black and white as Andrew is making it out to be (though I don't think that he is necessarily wrong).
As a side note that I'm not sure adds much to the discussion, casting a spell is normally a standard action that provokes attacks of opportunity, but when casting a spell with a casting time of longer than 1 standard action "You only provoke attacks of opportunity when you begin casting a spell, even though you might continue casting for at least 1 full round." So we already have something in the rules that happens when you begin casting a spell that doesn't happen when you continue casting it.
http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/combat.html#_attacks-of-opportunity
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I'll agree, it isn't black and white.
But seeing as how allowing it essentially allows free raise deads, which are supposed to be quite pricey...
I'm going to rule conservatively on this one in the effort to maintain game balance.
Anything that upsets game balance like this, should be suspect that it works the way you think or hope it does.
And since the wording is not black and white, in PFS, I am not bound by RAW to rule it the way I feel it should be interpreted.
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My sorcerer gets Stoneskin as a bloodline spell next level. Now I really want to take this spell so I can actually use Stoneskin consistently. Too bad there's a pretty hefty real world cost, since you need RotR:AE. $59.99, or about $42 for the PDF. Talk about Blood Money!
(j/k I'm playing through RotR now and having a blast. I just don't plan on buying to book to use a single spell).
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But seeing as how allowing it essentially allows free raise deads, which are supposed to be quite pricey...
Again, Ultimate Mercy can do it at level 6 potentially already (with major shenanigans, it's even possible at level 5). The "blood money trick" can't even really do it until level 10 (going pure ancient lorekeeper oracle, or cleric with a level dip in wizard, sorcerer, magus, or witch).
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Well, let's think about that:
1. Ultimate Mercy - paladins can raise dead for free
2. The circumstances needed to even make blood money + raise dead possible are pretty crazy. You need a level 10 elf ancient Lorekeeper oracle, an 11th level witch that spends 2 of her prepared slots, a pretty high level Mystic Theurge, or a 10th level cleric 9/wizard 1. All of these seem to me are giving up a lot more than they are getting back for what essentially is a gimmick.
edit: what yiroep said...
So have you figured out what creature you would have to turn into to have a 52 strength so you can use blood money to cast Wish spells for free? (possibly out-of-scope for pathfinder until retirement characters get to 18th level).
This is beyond the scope of PFS, but if you magic jar into a titan and a few buffs, you can got to the 52 STR required for blood money + wish free combo.
But by that time, it might just be easier to bind efreets and then slaughter them.
Thankfully a wand of Blood Money is all but worthless because it bumps the casting time up to a standard action.
Are there even any immediate action spells with material components over 25gp?
Too bad there's a pretty hefty real world cost, since you need RotR:AE. $59.99, or about $42 for the PDF. Talk about Blood Money!
This brings up another good point. The players in question do have a copy of Rise of the Runelords, yes?
-j
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But seeing as how allowing it essentially allows free raise deads, which are supposed to be quite pricey...Again, Ultimate Mercy can do it at level 6 potentially already (with major shenanigans, it's even possible at level 5). The "blood money trick" can't even really do it until level 10 (going pure ancient lorekeeper oracle, or cleric with a level dip in wizard, sorcerer, magus, or witch).
How do you get it at level 5? I built a paladin for PFS specifically to have this ability at level 6 (and hey, 10 LoH/day is a pretty damn good healer so it's not like the character is worthless UNTIL someone dies)... but LoH per day=½ paladin level + CHA mod...
Feats:
Level 3: take Greater Mercy (requires Mercy class feature, so can't take it until 3)
Level 5: take Ultimate Mercy (requires Greater Mercy)
Start with 19 or 20 CHA (if you start with 19, put your +1 into CHA at level 4).
Be a Paladin with the Sacred Servant archetype: lets you get 1 extra LoH per day at 5th level.
LoH is ½ Paladin level + CHA mod per day, (so level 6 = 3 + 5 (CHA) + 1 (Sacred Servant)) = 9; get a headband of CHA for 10 LoH per day...
But if you were only level 5 it would be: 2+5+1+1... how do you get the 10th?!
You can't get it from Extra Lay on Hands because you can't take that feat at level 1: it requires that you have Lay on Hands, which requires Paladin 2...
Edit: I thought I'd found it with Bracelet of Mercy, but how does a level 5 character afford a 15,000g item (even if they have the gold, 14 scenarios = max 28 prestige = 11,750 gp max value.
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A quick note: there is, in fact, some Dev commentary on this spell.
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A quick note: there is, in fact, some Dev commentary on this spell.
Despite the number of rules questions he answers, James Jacobs is not a developer. He's a great source of Golarion info and GMing advice, but he is not a rules guy, and he says it himself.