Arithmancy at least you can have worked out before the game so you can simply roll the check for the spell (after all it's simple name exchange just put the DC beside the spell name) and eats a swift action.Arithmancy also has some built in limiters like, 'usable x times per day,' and a Spell Focus feat tax. Rip off both of those limitations and put them on Sacred Geometry, and SG is still too good, and Arithmancy still not particularly overpowered...
Yeah I saw Arithmancy and thought, "Alright, I can live with that, a bit of math fun and some in game stuff without slowing things down I like."
Then I saw Sacred Geometry and was like, "Oh... well that just happened."
After some practice, I wouldn't be surprised if you could do it in ~30 seconds each turn. I've practiced several rolls of 9 and it's taken 15 to 20 seconds. And perhaps a sensible GM would allow you to roll before your turn starts?
Chort, how many times have you failed to hit your number?
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So, correct me if I'm wrong but:
with 3 dice (taking the feat at level 3 having 3 ranks in the skill) every single roll can be arranged in 96 different ways.
(3 dice can be arranged in 6 different ways and +-*/ can be arranged in 16 ways so 6*16 is 96)That doesn't sound too bad...
With 7 dice, the number of possible combinations is now 20,643,840.
Actually you forgot to multiply by the number of possible groupings (parenthesis). Which is supported by the example. Granted some of these will be the same, but the possible groupings for a given order of three dice (3,2,6) are:
(3 / 2 + 6)(3 / 2) + 6
3 / (2 + 6)
I took a look at this when it first came out and couldn't come up with a formula for the number of groupings. I hand counted:
Dice..groupings
2.......1
3.......3
4.......11
5.......45
Formula for total permutations is:
n!*4^(n-1)*(groupings)
3 dice is actually 288 permutations. It's already 1,382,400 permutations by 5 dice. 6 dice has got to be somewhere north of 200,000,000.
There's no way I would allow this without a time limit.
Chort, how many times have you failed to hit your number?
After some practice, I wouldn't be surprised if you could do it in ~30 seconds each turn. I've practiced several rolls of 9 and it's taken 15 to 20 seconds. And perhaps a sensible GM would allow you to roll before your turn starts?
I have yet to fail. I must have thrown 50 times so far. Mind you, these have been pools of 8 or 9. And it'll only get easier as you pool increases, and really shouldn't slow you down as long as you "match 1's".
...but it might be trickier at a pool of 5. Although I've thrown that 5 times and still succeeded each time. It might also be more difficult/time consuming if there was only 1 target number. But 3? Very easy.
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Chort, how many times have you failed to hit your number?I have yet to fail. I must have thrown 50 times so far. Mind you, these have been pools of 8 or 9, so it might be trickier at a pool of 5. Although I've thrown that 5 times and still succeeded each time. It might be more difficult/time consuming if there was only 1 target number. But 3? Very easy.
Just to verify: you are using all your dice? Not discarding any?
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Just to verify: you are using all your dice? Not discarding any?Chort, how many times have you failed to hit your number?I have yet to fail. I must have thrown 50 times so far. Mind you, these have been pools of 8 or 9, so it might be trickier at a pool of 5. Although I've thrown that 5 times and still succeeded each time. It might be more difficult/time consuming if there was only 1 target number. But 3? Very easy.
I'm using all my dice. "Discarding" the remaining dice is a simple matter of matching similar numbers.
5/5 = 1
4-3 = 1
(6-4)-1 = 1
Then add/subtract/multiply 1's. It really goes very quickly.
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Wow, I can't imagine a full progression, prep caster ever passing this up.
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This is going to be somewhat difficult to explain in words how quickly you can see the patterns, but here's an example:
9 ranks in Engineering, attempting to cast effective level 5 spell. Prime numbers are 43, 47, 53
Here's my dice pool:
3 6s
2 5s
2 4s
1 3
1 2
Here's how I group it (After having thrown it many times, you'll know what kind of multiplication you're looking for instantly)
To get us in the ballpark 6*6 + 6 = 42.
Then group the remaining 6 dice:
5/5 = 1
4/4 = 1
3-2 = 1
So 42+1 * 1 * 1 = 43.
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When I first read this upon the arrival of my subscription materials, I too was stunned at the possibilities for power and game slow-down. I too wondered "who on earth wrote this feat?"
This feat appears to be tailor made to troll gaming groups. Imagine a player of a master summoner with two dozen minions on the field trying to do the math for his metamagic'd spells while also playing out the turns for two dozen minions he's summoned onto the battlefield. Every turn would eat up an hour of game time!
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Chort, I can see that this would be fine in your hands. But a lot of other players aren't nearly as fast/good at math as you are. Off the top of my head I can name 4 PFS players and one person in my home game that just couldn't make these calculations in a reasonable time. (There's probably dozens more I see regularly that fall in that category.) Three of them are self-conscious enough to realize they shouldn't try to use this feat. But the other two - if they see someone else using it to good effect - are going to take it no matter what. Maybe 7 or 8 minutes later they are going to declare they have a correct solution. I'll take a look and find it to be wrong 75% of the time.
Hence the reason I said I wouldn't allow this without a time limit.
When I first read this upon the arrival of my subscription materials, I too was stunned at the possibilities for power and game slow-down. I too wondered "who on earth wrote this feat?"
This feat appears to be tailor made to troll gaming groups. Imagine a player of a master summoner with two dozen minions on the field trying to do the math for his metamagic'd spells while also playing out the turns for two dozen minions he's summoned onto the battlefield. Every turn would eat up an hour of game time!
At first I thought "Busted for Summoners!" since they have more powerful spells at lower levels. Kind of like Spell Perfection. However, this feat's uses are somewhat hampered by:
"You can apply any number of metamagic effects to a single spell, provided you are able to cast spells of the modified spell's effective spell level."
Since they never can cast 7th, 8th, 9th level spells, they can never metamagic up to 7th, 8th, 9th.
Still, quite powerful for every class all the same.
Like that matters if your sole intent is to troll the group.
Chort, I can see that this would be fine in your hands. But a lot of other players aren't nearly as fast/good at math as you are. Off the top of my head I can name 4 PFS players and one person in my home game that just couldn't make these calculations in a reasonable time. (There's probably dozens more I see regularly that fall in that category.) Three of them are self-conscious enough to realize they shouldn't try to use this feat. But the other two - if they see someone else using it to good effect - are going to take it no matter what. Maybe 7 or 8 minutes later they are going to declare they have a correct solution. I'll take a look and find it to be wrong 75% of the time.
Hence the reason I said I wouldn't allow this without a time limit.
Agreed, and why I supported the idea of banning it in PFS. I would encourage also GMs in non PFS games to have strict terms for time limits, calculating it in advance, or just outright banning it in home games.
Whatever promotes efficient fun!
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One of the slowdown factors is going to be proving to the GM that your math adds up. Every time.
If the GM can't trust a player to be honest with his die rolls, that player should not be present in any capacity.
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Like that matters if your sole intent is to troll the group.
If someone's intent is to troll the group, they are soon out of my group.
One of the slowdown factors is going to be proving to the GM that your math adds up. Every time.
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If I run into any math buddies I'm going to ask them if there's a proof that with a sufficient number of dice you can always reach one of the three primes. I have a suspicion that's the case.
It gets tricky if you roll nothing but 1s (Which gets astronomically unlikely as the pool gets bigger) But even then, with 9 1s you're already reaching 27 (3 * 3 * 3) Obviously you'd whiff on that roll. But if you got up to a die pool of 20? I don't think you can ever miss it. Where it reaches the tipping point of "never whiff" I guess you'll need a proof?
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Like that matters if your sole intent is to troll the group.If someone's intent is to troll the group, they are soon out of my group.
I play games with friends. Hopefully other people play games with friends too? I love everyone in my group. Certain people have weaknesses like terrible attention span outside battle, some are terrible at math, (Who should never, ever, ever use Sacred Geometry...) but all of them are committed to everyone having fun. Because we like each other. I also think it helps that we take turns GMing separate campaigns so everyone knows what its like to be GM? Not everyone has an active campaign, but everyone has done it at least once.
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I expect Mike to be reasonable and to disallow this for PFS. Otherwise. I think that the number of people making "Not at my table" rulings will become legion. It is absurdly overpowered and is absolutely going to drag down the game.
Or maybe I'd just go Passive Aggressive. Give the person a reasonable amount of time (5 seconds sounds about right) then put the character on delay. And make sure that the person has the book, of course.
I'm more concerned about the power level, though. Free metamagic feats for wizards is just what they do NOT need.
Well in a play-by-post game it wouldn't slow things down.
It's not honesty, it's error.One of the slowdown factors is going to be proving to the GM that your math adds up. Every time.If the GM can't trust a player to be honest with his die rolls, that player should not be present in any capacity.
I don't ask my players to verify their attack and damage rolls every time, either.
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It's not honesty, it's error.I don't ask my players to verify their attack and damage rolls every time, either.
Yeah, it completely depends on your players though. There are some who are very quick with math, never forget what buffs are running, and never go through the annoying "Does a 23 hit?" "Yes." "Second attack is a 26, does it hit?" routine. But there are some who - despite being honest, trying hard, and being great role-players - simply can't add 3+8+d20 to save their (character's) life.
I'm not going to ban those players from my table, but I am going to check the math FAR more often (even/especially when they fail) than the first type.
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Anybody else know any other math based traits and feats?
Does Weapon Focus count? ;p
I'm pretty sure that "upon the numbers rolled" doesn't mean "upon some of the numbers rolled".
I'm trying to come up with an efficient algorithm although not with a lot of luck so far. However, for each dice result and effective spell level you only need one solution, so if you somehow got all the number-crunching done, you could just make a lookup table that would, for any result rolled, provide one of the (probably multiple) solutions.
I wonder if there are some quantities of dice that are optimal, because they have a higher probability of any roll having a solution? That would encourage you to not take any more ranks in Engineering than that lucky number.
Yes......that's good.
So you first calculate which combinations CAN give you the correct answer and after you are done with that you build a list which you than compare to your rolled results. At that point it's just a question of optimizing the search algorithm which the Internet should be full off.
Finding out what number of dice is best for a particular number should be easy enough, just numOfWrongResults - numOfCorrectResults, the lower the number the better.
Creation that list thou...hmmmm.
I can't think of any smart way to do it so I'd probably brute force it. Just create an table of all the possible combinations of the numbers and let every single one run against every single combination of +-*/.
Note how often you are correct and if correct save that line to an array, move how often you are wrong and discard it.
I don't have the time right now since I should be cleaning up my place, but if I'm motivated I'm gonna build it after my visitors are gone.
If i wanted to have a computer do it, i would have it behave liek it is navigating nodes, with a heuristic that prefers multiplication and will ignore 1s til you're just a few away, then you add or subtract until you get the number. It would behave like an A* search algorithm approaching the answer from every non-1 dice. It would need a priority queue to remember which of the navigations is currently the closest to completion.
basically this will take a long time, but with a heft heuristic it should be possible.
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Truth be told, nowhere in the description of the feat does it say it actually GIVES you the Metamagic Feats. Yes, you can Metamagically cast spells with them, but you HAVE to use the feat to be able to benefit as if you have them.
It doesn't make much of a difference, truth be told, but it's still a thing.
EDIT: Just reminding people, players picking this feat is a perfect opportunity to introduce a strict 'no electronic devices' ban on the table.
For those with a good die pool and fast with math, it's great and unbalancing. For those with low die pools or very bad with math, it will be frustrating and often blows spell slots to no effect.
Good thing it covers adding in additional metamagic before getting the level total, and caps it at 9th level. Would hate to see this applied level 8 or 9 spells, or to spells later charged with metamagic rods and such. (or are metamagic rods a gray zone for this ability?)
One thing is for sure, anyone that takes it will get an education in math quick.
Truth be told, nowhere in the description of the feat does it say it actually GIVES you the Metamagic Feats. Yes, you can Metamagically cast spells with them, but you HAVE to use the feat to be able to benefit as if you have them.
It doesn't make much of a difference, truth be told, but it's still a thing.
EDIT: Just reminding people, players picking this feat is a perfect opportunity to introduce a strict 'no electronic devices' ban on the table.
It says you have to pick metamagic feats you do not have. are you talking about using the feat normally or for prereqs? then yeah, you don't have them, but you can use them in the feat itself with out having them.
It says you have to pick metamagic feats you do not have. are you talking about using the feat normally or for prereqs? then yeah, you don't have them, but you can use them in the feat itself with out having them.Truth be told, nowhere in the description of the feat does it say it actually GIVES you the Metamagic Feats. Yes, you can Metamagically cast spells with them, but you HAVE to use the feat to be able to benefit as if you have them.
It doesn't make much of a difference, truth be told, but it's still a thing.
EDIT: Just reminding people, players picking this feat is a perfect opportunity to introduce a strict 'no electronic devices' ban on the table.
And the language allows you pick metamagic feats up later ("yet" being the keyword). Say if you want Quicken later on for use with your Staff of the Master...
Yeah, pretty nutty feat. Makes me glad that no one at my table will ever take it, as I put a hard limit on the amount of time someone has to take their turn, which is usually no more than a minute.
>Then again, if it didn't give you the metamagic feats, people would be shouting it's a pathetic feat... lol.
No, it would still be insane. You can quicken every 5 level and below spell every turn basically doubling your spell output for the cost of a few engineering skill ranks.
If this feat read
"attach quicken to a spell (if you have it), do some math with engineering, if you succeed you cast the spell for it's original spell rank" it would still be incredibly powerful.
Quickening only lets you use the spell as a standard action instead of a quick action with the feat. So it would be a waste of your time. You can not use quickening and another metafeat on any spells above 4th, so 5th level spells on are going to take a full round action to cast and have the possibility of not even doing what you intend them to do. You also need to sink ranks into Engineering.
Most of the time you are casting as a full round action, which is a HUGE drawback as if you take any damage you could easily fail to cast at all, and in addition to that you are not guaranteed to even get the metamagic you want.
Rules:
A spell whose casting time is more than 1 round or 1 full-round action cannot be quickened.
The spell would be a swift action provided you aren't a spontaneous caster. It's just.... math.
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I at first thought this was very elaborate trolling, but after some google use I have the following to say.
My apologies to the original poster for thinking you were a troll, you are not.
I have very very few things on my banned list but Sacred geometry and arithmancy are being added.
Too much table slow down for both and for sacred geometry way too powerful.
*Sigh* I know it is a splat rather than a core line book, but these feats seem to me to be complete jokes and phoned in.
I am a big Paizo fan, but honestly wow, this is just bad.
It is my opinion that printing things like this makes Paizo and Pathfinder look bad. This should never have seen print. I understand wanting unique mechanics and "Fun" feats, but the slowdown and power up is ridiculous.
It does mean I am not inclined to ever buy this book.
Let's chose a target of 11, seem a hard one:
start 14.26.13
4, 1, 3, 5, 4, 5, 2, 3, 4, 4, 3, 1, 3, 5, 2, 5, 1, 1, 5, 2
(4+5+4+3+5+5)/(4+5+4+3+5+2+3)=1 +( 1 + 2 + 1 + 3 + 2)= 11 / 1 - 11
14.29.28
3 minutes and something, beside the time spent deciding what spell I want tot cast, against whom , with what metamagic and so on.
Faster than I had thought.
Diego just using this as an example, not trying to bash you in any way.
If we assume between 3-4 minutes per spell that means between 6-8 minutes added per turn just by one feat, and that is not even considering things like arguments about magical lineage, spell perfection or any other effect that modifies metamagic.
Then add Arithmancy, and you are probably talking adding between 10-15 minutes per turn to a caster.
Just, NO.
Now the above is all my opinion, some people may not mind the extra time or the Wizard > (Wizard + Sacred Geometry + Arithmancy) effect, so please take it all with that in mind.
No offense taken. I am not endorsing the feat, I was testing the difficulty of generating a target number.
I think that this feat is broke, bit from a power level prospective and a time spent at the table prospective.
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This is, mechanically speaking, the most absurd feat since Antagonize.
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*facepalm*
Of course it's a feat chain. This wouldn't be Pathfinder if it wasn't.
I'm not sure how rolling d8s instead of d6s necessarily helps you. Then again, I'm pretty terrible at math, so there's a lot I don't understand.
Not having to use all the rolls seems like a pretty big benefit though.
>Then again, if it didn't give you the metamagic feats, people would be shouting it's a pathetic feat... lol.
No, it would still be insane. You can quicken every 5 level and below spell every turn basically doubling your spell output for the cost of a few engineering skill ranks.
If this feat read
"attach quicken to a spell (if you have it), do some math with engineering, if you succeed you cast the spell for it's original spell rank" it would still be incredibly powerful.
Quickening only lets you use the spell as a standard action instead of a quick action with the feat. So it would be a waste of your time. You can not use quickening and another metafeat on any spells above 4th, so 5th level spells on are going to take a full round action to cast and have the possibility of not even doing what you intend them to do. You also need to sink ranks into Engineering.
Most of the time you are casting as a full round action, which is a HUGE drawback as if you take any damage you could easily fail to cast at all, and in addition to that you are not guaranteed to even get the metamagic you want.
Rules:
A spell whose casting time is more than 1 round or 1 full-round action cannot be quickened.
The spell would be a swift action provided you aren't a spontaneous caster. It's just.... math.
When you take this feat, select two metamagic feats you do not yet have. When casting a spell, you can perform the steps below to spontaneously apply the effects of either or both of these metamagic feats, as well as any other metamagic feats you have, to the spell without expending a higher-level spell slot. Using a feat in this way increases the spell's casting time to the casting time it would take if the character were a sorcerer or bard (sorcerers and bards using this ability increase the spell's casting time by two categories); applying the Quicken Spell metamagic effect negates the increased casting time but still contributes to the modified spell's effective spell level. You can take this feat more than once; each time, select two additional metamagic feats, adding their effects to the list of possible effects you can apply to spells with this ability.
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>Then again, if it didn't give you the metamagic feats, people would be shouting it's a pathetic feat... lol.
No, it would still be insane. You can quicken every 5 level and below spell every turn basically doubling your spell output for the cost of a few engineering skill ranks.
If this feat read
"attach quicken to a spell (if you have it), do some math with engineering, if you succeed you cast the spell for it's original spell rank" it would still be incredibly powerful.
Quickening only lets you use the spell as a standard action instead of a quick action with the feat. So it would be a waste of your time. You can not use quickening and another metafeat on any spells above 4th, so 5th level spells on are going to take a full round action to cast and have the possibility of not even doing what you intend them to do. You also need to sink ranks into Engineering.
Most of the time you are casting as a full round action, which is a HUGE drawback as if you take any damage you could easily fail to cast at all, and in addition to that you are not guaranteed to even get the metamagic you want.
being a huge a+@&%%~ because you don't like something is not how pfs works btwI expect Mike to be reasonable and to disallow this for PFS. Otherwise. I think that the number of people making "Not at my table" rulings will become legion. It is absurdly overpowered and is absolutely going to drag down the game.
Or maybe I'd just go Passive Aggressive. Give the person a reasonable amount of time (5 seconds sounds about right) then put the character on delay. And make sure that the person has the book, of course.
I'm more concerned about the power level, though. Free metamagic feats for wizards is just what they do NOT need.
Most of the time it will be a full round action, so they could have the time it takes to get back to their turn to figure out if it works or not, which if they do it by then great, if not then oh well.
I would also let other players help them figure it out, so hopefully the fighter is a mathwiz in real life. If it becomes an issue just have them roll early.
Full round action =/= from 1 round action.
You start and end your spell during your round, so there is no extra risk of it being interrupted.
If they limit it to ONE of the metamagic feats you ALREADY possess, don't let you take it more than once, and GREATLY simplify the mechanic (such as making it a simple d20 check, or removing it altogether) then, and only then, would it be balanced.
(And make no mistake, it would still be on the powerful side of balance.)
At least the Arithmancy feat offers a balanced benefit and can be calculated well in advance.
>Then again, if it didn't give you the metamagic feats, people would be shouting it's a pathetic feat... lol.
No, it would still be insane. You can quicken every 5 level and below spell every turn basically doubling your spell output for the cost of a few engineering skill ranks.
If this feat read
"attach quicken to a spell (if you have it), do some math with engineering, if you succeed you cast the spell for it's original spell rank" it would still be incredibly powerful.
Quickening only lets you use the spell as a standard action instead of a quick action with the feat. So it would be a waste of your time. You can not use quickening and another metafeat on any spells above 4th, so 5th level spells on are going to take a full round action to cast and have the possibility of not even doing what you intend them to do. You also need to sink ranks into Engineering.
Most of the time you are casting as a full round action, which is a HUGE drawback as if you take any damage you could easily fail to cast at all, and in addition to that you are not guaranteed to even get the metamagic you want.
Rules:
A spell whose casting time is more than 1 round or 1 full-round action cannot be quickened.
The spell would be a swift action provided you aren't a spontaneous caster. It's just.... math.
"applying the Quicken Spell metamagic effect negates the increased casting time but still contributes to the modified spell's effective spell level."
This implies to me, that all Quicken does is negate the casting time being upped from Sacred Geometry.
Your interpretation is correct, mine is wrong. I remembered it upping the time to that of a spontaneous caster using metamagic and checked the language of Quicken, but on a second reading I agree you have the correct reading.
A quickened spell with or without sacred geometry would still be a swift action.
Am I reading it wrong?
A quickened spell with or without sacred geometry would still be a swift action.
Am I reading it wrong?
Sacred geometry increases the casting time.
A quickened spell with or without sacred geometry would still be a swift action.
Am I reading it wrong?
As Timothy Hanson points out above, Quicken has it's own interaction with Sacred Geometry. A Quickened Sacred Geometry spell cast by a non-spontaneous caster has the same action as it would normally (ie. if it was a standard before Sacred Geometry, with Quicken + Sacred Geometry it remains a standard, without Quicken it is a full round action). While a Spontaneous Caster would be forced to take the full round action, since Sacred Geometry further increases the cast time for them.
Though, new thought. Free Heightened Spells cast out of their lowest slot? As far as I can tell this would work. Great for certain long term effects.