Spell-like Abilities on Creatures from the Bestiaries


Rules Questions

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So, I've always understood a monster's spells or SLA's to be like a sorcerer's spells. If it says:

1/day: Freedom of Movement, Ice Storm

I've always believed it could cast one or the other.

Then I'm reading Reign of Winter. And in it, the tactics section suggests that the enemy casts Freedom of Movement before combat and Ice Storm on his first turn.

What the what, ya'll?


What's the confusion, exactly? FoM has a 10 min/level duration. You can carry it through multiple combats if you want.


Buri: I don't think that's the OP's confusion.

YuenglingDragon: Your reading is incorrect. The creature has both of those as spell-like abilities usable once per day (each).


It's not like a sorcerer's listing. They're each separate abilities that you can cast once per day.

Explanation by Rob McCreary!


YuenglingDragon wrote:
What the what, ya'll?

You know, there might be a better way to phrase your question so that other posters don't have to guess what you're asking.

Assuming your question really means "if he only gets one spell per day like a sorcerer with two spells known, how does he cast both of them?" then the answer is that he can cast use each SLA listed once per day. Other monsters have many SLAs, and some of those are given "at will" or "three/day" or whatever - each SLA gets its own specific number per day regardless of how many other SLAs are used (since each of those has its own uses/day too).

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Cheapy wrote:

It's not like a sorcerer's listing. They're each separate abilities that you can cast once per day.

Explanation by Rob McCreary!

Thanks, Cheapy!

DM_Blake wrote:


You know, there might be a better way to phrase your question so that other posters don't have to guess what you're asking.

Since several other people did understand my question, I feel like it was worded well enough. The "what the what" was added as a joking aside. The question was implied by the dissonance between what I explained to be my belief in the first paragraph and what was suggested in the monster's tactics section.

Personally, I find that asking a question at the 8th grade reading level gets you answers at an 8th grade level. The question as I wrote it has supplied two good answers in addition to your own, one of which even has a developer's explanation. I am well satisfied.

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