And I think because of the power-gamer mentality that sadly exists, permanency might not be allowed at any point.
I don't think that's the reason. Something being overpowered in a few ways is a bad reason to ban something. There are good reasons not to allow permanency not to exist. Its dispelable and is a little hard to keep track of, and if its wiz/sorc only its giving a very powerful class a nice feature. Its also a little expensive, and doesn't really enter play. If you allow it for everyone it may create expectations, and that's not always a good thing. Lots of reasons have been given in the thread beyond being a little overpowered. Its also complicated and would require exceptions and specifics and possibly numerous FAQs just for PFS, which again, aren't always a good thing.
The worst part is, this sort of mentality can paint a target. That's not something we ever need.
Venture-Lieutenant, West Virginia—Charleston
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I really don't see any benefit from unbanning Permanency. The only area where the game is considered too hard right now is in low-level season 3/4, the levels at which permanency is irrelevant. Most 5-9s and 7-11s are appropriately challenging, given the availability of Raise Dead and the skills of the players.
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I think the objection that I'm hearing isn't that permanent spell effects are a problem from a combat power perspective, but from the perspective that there are plots that are challenging at lower levels via the assumption that powerful divination magic is unavailable.
Permanent combat buffs (enlarge, reduce, etc) are a slightly different beast, and if someone opts to squeeze all the time in confined spaces, or have to use a dispel, that's up to them. The other permanent buffs available at minimum casting levels are pretty minor by the time they are affordable.
The inherent problem for organized play in 3.5 days related to XP management is moot.
Tying permanency to Fame solves a lot of the plot issues and is reasonable within an organized play environment. Just-so type nerfs written into the mod may not be a way that everyone might like to deal with it, but is also possible when needed and disclosed. Other creative solutions for some degree of integration is possible.
The hesitation in dispelling such spells is part of the organized play culture, but I'm not sure that it's sufficient to set it aside entirely.
It sounds like the big question marks are arcane sight and see invisibility. Both are available to the caster only, and even scroll of permanency or similar tactics run into the minimum caster rule. These are available at 11th and 10th level respectively, which is beyond the point where plot issues relying on their absence should be significant.
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Permanency is part of the game. If there are balance issues with it, shouldn't you already be taking those up in the rules' section and asking for devs to look into it?
The question should simply be: 'what in the nature of organized play denies the use of this part of the core rules, and can it get adapted to fit if that's the case?'
Sometimes, rules are written without PFS in mind. Some rules require adjudication by GM, like it can be done in a homegame. for example, the last option for bestow curse is purely left to a GM to decide. Sadly, that is not always the case for PFS, and such rules don't work in organized play.
Some things exist almost purely to be used for NPCs.
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Sometimes, rules are written without PFS in mind. Some rules require adjudication by GM, like it can be done in a homegame. for example, the last option for bestow curse is purely left to a GM to decide. Sadly, that is not always the case for PFS, and such rules don't work in organized play.Permanency is part of the game. If there are balance issues with it, shouldn't you already be taking those up in the rules' section and asking for devs to look into it?
The question should simply be: 'what in the nature of organized play denies the use of this part of the core rules, and can it get adapted to fit if that's the case?'
The implication here is that permanency is written without PFS in mind, and the special nature of organized play demands that permanency be excluded from organized play because it is incompatible or otherwise creates tremendous difficulties.
What is that incompatibility or tremendous difficulty?
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Easiest way to think about it: Permanency is effectively item creation, which is banned in PFS.
Why is it a better analogy to see it as item creation than purchasing?
Item creation was problematic in Living Greyhawk because of the distortion in character power that resulted from the combination of XP bleed and wealth creation, and despite the impact on adventuring time that LG had. Item creation in organized play tends to demand a fairly significant bookkeeping surcharge as well. The fact that the PF rules for item creation are a bit of a mess probably didn't drive the decision to keep item creation out of PFS, but I suspect it is a contributor to why it has stayed out of PFS.
In contrast, permanency has none of these factors. The list of possible permanent spells is defined, at least for the CRB spells, which could be established as a limit. There is no wealth generation. There is no XP loss. You pay your money and get a resource. Status tracking is sufficient for paperwork.
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You may not be able to craft items, but you can buy them. And you can purchase other spells to be cast upon your PC. Making it analogous to purchasing an item makes sense
Still not sure i agree with it, and if it were opened up for use it should be across the board, not just one class.
Wizards have enough toys already. I'd rather not be tempted with permanency with my wizard. I would also not like to feel obligated to purchase permanent enlarge person or greater magic fang on melee characters. It would, after all, be available through spellcasting services.I'm pretty sure I told you that if the list spells that could made permanent was altered for PFS the issue you mentioned wouldn't come up as a problem.
Its adding specifics. Worst part is, what if you miss something? Should we have a small page in the book or a FAQS devoted to a single spell?
And what do you call the 'Additional Resources' page?Its adding specifics. Worst part is, what if you miss something? Should we have a small page in the book or a FAQS devoted to a single spell?Wizards have enough toys already. I'd rather not be tempted with permanency with my wizard. I would also not like to feel obligated to purchase permanent enlarge person or greater magic fang on melee characters. It would, after all, be available through spellcasting services.I'm pretty sure I told you that if the list spells that could made permanent was altered for PFS the issue you mentioned wouldn't come up as a problem.
Usually? Long and hard to read.
I should add, permanency is core, which doesn't have a section in the additional resources page. Its dealt with in your guide to society play isn't it?
If I can ask, there are many things banned from society play. Why crusade for permanency so much? Things that are banned in society are usually banned because they don't always work well with this sort of play. Permanency in my experience doesn't always work out well in a home game, much less in an organized play where the DM and players are going to vary greatly, and the scenarios can't be built to the party. I could ask why Vivisectionist, or Buccaneer, or why not ban paladin? We could just have little notes on the side of the additional play to let them in. Constant exceptions and small excerpts can really grow.
If I can ask, there are many things banned from society play. Why crusade for permanency so much? Things that are banned in society are usually banned because they don't always work well with this sort of play. Permanency in my experience doesn't always work out well in a home game, much less in an organized play where the DM and players are going to vary greatly, and the scenarios can't be built to the party. I could ask why Vivisectionist, or Buccaneer, or why not ban paladin? We could just have little notes on the side of the additional play to let them in. Constant exceptions and small excerpts can really grow.To be honest? I think the biggest reason for me is the fact that it's in the core rulebook. I also see potential to use it without giving characters an overpowering edge in society.
Core rulebook isn't super balanced. It has wizards in it. Cheap, constant, at will, see invisibility, dark vision, or arcane sight is pretty powerful I think. We could argue for hours about balance however.
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If I can ask, there are many things banned from society play. Why crusade for permanency so much? Things that are banned in society are usually banned because they don't always work well with this sort of play. Permanency in my experience doesn't always work out well in a home game, much less in an organized play where the DM and players are going to vary greatly, and the scenarios can't be built to the party.
I've taken on the permanency crusade because I suspect it is prohibited based upon assumptions that are no longer valid. It's part of the core game. PFS only modifies the core game when it's necessary to do so due to the nature of organized play. It other words, by the design of the campaign, it should be permitted unless there is a reason to exclude it. I don't see that reason.
What are your experiences with how permanency doesn't work out well in a home game?
Being part of core doesn't make it balanced, nor good for society play. I really can't say that enough.
Well, in the case of building a fortress out of permanency, that was kinda cool, but not relevant to PFS I don't think. Up until he started carrying around items in his bag of holding...
The big problem we had is the expectation you suddenly create that someone may have a permanent arcane sight or see invisibility. Everyone having dark vision made a mess because only supernatural darkness hurt the party, and every foe from the point on had to have darkvision or we would jump them in the darkness. Arcane sight made most anything magical moot, or had an altered or hidden aura just to avoid us. There was that time a guy was playing an enlarged character who couldn't fit in anything ever, and created collateral damage by existing. The cantrips aren't so bad, but they're also easy to put on a wand or scroll and cheaper to do so. In that vein why allow a small exception to something that's easy to replace?
Anthropomorphic animal just sounds wrong to me and is easily abused for body horror and is creepy. Magic fang is cheaper than an amulet of mighty fist, but when its dispelled people freak out sometimes. Invibility gets out of hand easily for reasons of being invisible. Symbols get put on portable surfaces. We had a guy spend forever trying to figure out what to do with a permanent prismatic wall.
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This issue like many others is a matter of perception of what unbalancing is. To many people, apparently including the campaign leadership, allowing permanency is an example of an unbalancing game mechanic when viewed from the perspective of organized play. It doesn't matter what reason they (MJM) give for their view/s, some players will argue that those views are at least misplaced or at worst wrong. But again, that is *your* interpretation of game balance. Many others will agree with the banning and encourage it to remain. We can even play this same "game" with rules that are legal and some thinking they should be banned. In the end, those doing the "arguing" are an extremely small minority of the player-base and may not represent the community at large.
The fundamental issue with permanency is that it can render some spells/effects like invisibility inconsequential. Like it or not, there are many common design aspects that would be rendered useless if a good portion of PCs were running around with permanent affects. Its hard enough to design good scenarios/encounters, we shouldn't be striving to make rules decisions that make it harder on authors/developers. Our leadership has to try and balance making new material as legal as possible without negatively impacting game balance. Personally, I don't really have an issue with things like darkvision since a good number of characters start out with that as a permanent effect anyway, but anything with a limited duration and/or circumstantial usefulness becomes problematic if it is permanent. In a home game where the GM is free to do whatever they want, this is not a problem.
Also, while PFS bans some rules that are considered core, they try extremely hard not to modify rules as printed, allowing or banning material in whole. So the solution of allowing permanency, but modifying its list of allowable effects, is not in the tradition of how game mechanics are judged.
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I strongly suspect it's banned not for any rationale but for the same reason Druids use scimitar (a curved sword only used by horse peoples)
And for the same reason high school is four years long:
Because college is four years long
Because the first colleges in England and America were four years long
Because Oxford was four years long
Because in 15XX, a particularly influential nobleman decided that four years was long enough for his son to be at Oxford and no one wanted to disagree.
Because That's The Way We've Always Done It!!!
Yes lets make WIzardfinder even more WIzardfinder.I find this sentiment humorous, if only because I find Pathfinder wizards to be stunted, frustrating mockeries of what RPG wizards can be...as if you had asked me to play soothing, beautiful music, and then handed me a kazoo.
Wizards are however still a tier one. Its a nice place to be. Ultimate power and whatnot. They have many options, and full casting is a very nice thing to have in pathfinder.
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Yes lets make WIzardfinder even more WIzardfinder.I find this sentiment humorous, if only because I find Pathfinder wizards to be stunted, frustrating mockeries of what RPG wizards can be...as if you had asked me to play soothing, beautiful music, and then handed me a kazoo.
-Ben.
That's because you understand the covenant of the true magical arts ;)
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While the effect in and of itself may not be game breaking (and I will argue that point later), what you are forgetting is that if someone has permanent darkvision, detect magic, see invisibility, etc., then they no longer have to use their resources in order to have those spells up. They don't have to use the spell slots, they don't have to use their extend rod, etc every time they want to cast the spell.
Secondly, usually it's only the casters that have these spells up (eg see invisibility), since your fighter types don't even have them. You let fighters have see invisibility up all the time and encounters with invisible enemies become trivial. Right now at least the guy with see invisibility up has to do something so that his teammates can see the invisible enemy (faerie fire, glitterdust, throw flour on it, whatever), which affects the action economy.
Also, frankly, permanency is too cheap. Until recently, the only way to get see invisibility on say a fighter was the hand of glory, which is an 8K item that does it once per day. Items that give you see invisibility permanently are even more expensive and now you want to be able to pay spellcasting services around 8k to be able to do so?
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Frankly, it costs resources, they are just a one time cost rather than a periodic cost. This one time can be easily adjusted but on the other hand detect magic can be kept up by a caster permanently already without costing resources so why not pay to hand that over to the rogue?
At that point it's really just a matter of whether or not you need to yell it out to the rogue or not when a spellcaster is present, and more importantly grants those abilities when there is no caster to provide that support.
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Keeping detect magic up does cost resources - you have to concentrate on it which means you cannot take a standard action. And you have to recast it every so often as its max duration is a minute per level. Which means out of combat you move at half speed to keep up detect magic and in combat you cannot take a standard action. Those are things that affect the action economy even if they don't directly affect resource usage.
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You can't purchase see invisibility through spellcasting services as it is personal spell that targets you. Permanent arcane sight would wreck scenarios.
-Automatically pinpoint invisible creatures(invisibility spell will register)
-Automatically see through disguises of NPCs(misdirection, alter self, other shape changing/alignment hiding)
-Standard action to determine if a creature is a spellcaster and reveals how powerful of spells they have access to
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You can't purchase see invisibility through spellcasting services as it is personal spell that targets you. Permanent arcane sight would wreck scenarios.
-Automatically pinpoint invisible creatures(invisibility spell will register)
-Automatically see through disguises of NPCs(misdirection, alter self, other shape changing/alignment hiding)
-Standard action to determine if a creature is a spellcaster and reveals how powerful of spells they have access to
You buy a scroll of it, UMD it to work and then pay the NPC to cast Permanency on you.
Continue the conversation.
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You can't purchase see invisibility through spellcasting services as it is personal spell that targets you. Permanent arcane sight would wreck scenarios.
-Automatically pinpoint invisible creatures(invisibility spell will register)
-Automatically see through disguises of NPCs(misdirection, alter self, other shape changing/alignment hiding)
-Standard action to determine if a creature is a spellcaster and reveals how powerful of spells they have access to
Since when can detect magic or similar detect invisibility? I doubt any GM is gonna allow a zero level spell that just about every spellcaster has to do something that a specific higher level spell does specifically. If the detect magic could do that, then why bother creating a see invisibility spell?
Besides detect magic doesn't see through diguises, it simply tells you there is magic and its of this school. Therefore you don't know what aspects of what your are seeing are lies or truth (maybe the lady is useing such magic to appear younger then she actually is and thus is being completely honest in who she is and what she is telling you)
If pf allows you to detect a spellcaster by detect magic then that is an upgrade from the original(and should have increased the level of the spell)
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You can't purchase see invisibility through spellcasting services as it is personal spell that targets you. Permanent arcane sight would wreck scenarios.
-Automatically pinpoint invisible creatures(invisibility spell will register)
-Automatically see through disguises of NPCs(misdirection, alter self, other shape changing/alignment hiding)
-Standard action to determine if a creature is a spellcaster and reveals how powerful of spells they have access to
You buy a scroll of it, UMD it to work and then pay the NPC to cast Permanency on you.
Both see invisibility and arcane sight can only be made permanent for the caster, not for another target. This is listed in the permanency spell.
A character can UMD a scroll of scroll of permanency, but the scroll has to be of sufficient CL and it must have been made with sufficient material component for the effect for which permanency is desired. The minimum CL rule blocks any use of permanency from a scroll when the needed CL is higher than 9, subject to introduction of a CL10+ scroll of permanency through other legal sources.