| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Bards can’t use silent spell.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
They wouldn't automatically forego their saving throws simply because they've been misled as to what it does.
However, you should ask them something along the lines of "It tries to do something to you, do you resist it?", and if they say "No" then they've foregone said save.
As the mirror says "A creature not aware of the nature of the device always sees its own reflection." (and thus needs to make a save. Your players/characters are unaware).
I feel like this plan is easily foiled by a PC with See Invisibility or a high Perception (it's only a DC 20 to know there's an invisible creature in the room).
Just have him use Dimension Door to somewhere instead. =)
Bards can’t use silent spell.
?
Where do you get this idea from?
Bards can’t use silent spell.
Citation Needed
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
Silent Spell (Metamagic)
You can cast your spells without making any sound.Benefit: A silent spell can be cast with no verbal components. Spells without verbal components are not affected. A silent spell uses up a spell slot one level higher than the spell's actual level.
Special: Bard spells cannot be enhanced by this feat.
Silent Spell (Metamagic)
You can cast your spells without making any sound.Benefit: A silent spell can be cast with no verbal components. Spells without verbal components are not affected. A silent spell uses up a spell slot one level higher than the spell's actual level.
Special: Bard spells cannot be enhanced by this feat.
I've never seen that text before.
I believe I will continue to ignore its existence.
Eh. @OP: Go with Still spell and pass off the speaking as the magic words necessary to go into your book world.
*shrug* It's been around since 3.0.
I imagine it was just as unnecessary there too, but I never played 3.0 or 3.5.
Wow. I am not liking the fact that you are making a bard that bypasses the main reason why there are no stealth bards. Just use a wand of invisibility and use slight of hand. As for the Apocalypse stuff I do believe Golarion has a god of time so the characters could hassle him.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Silent Spell (Metamagic)
You can cast your spells without making any sound.Benefit: A silent spell can be cast with no verbal components. Spells without verbal components are not affected. A silent spell uses up a spell slot one level higher than the spell's actual level.
Special: Bard spells cannot be enhanced by this feat.
I never knew that, and it is a stupid rule which I will ignore, but thanks for the information. :)
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Now this book is meant to look like a volume the characters have encountered before and have been looking for since around 5th level. It is not the same book but rather is a blank book wherein a paper thin Mirror of Life Trapping has been situated. The big baddy touches the pages of the book and appears to disappear into its pages. He has in fact cast Invisibility using Silent Spell.
They might spellcraft it. Nothing stops a silent spell from being spellcrafted by the rules, and if you plan to make it a houserule I would inform them of this rule. Also if he just disappears they are likely to think he just teleported. In addition if they cast detect magic the aura of the spell he just used will be there. If detect magic only gives the strongest aura then arcane sight might work, but there is no reason to think "he is in the book". They might just take the book and leave also, and open it somewhere else.
He then waits for the characters to voluntarily enter the book (Thus no saves?) and uses Suggestion on those who are thinking twice about it. Now there's a REALLY good possibility that he will succeed in this, thus trapping the characters for an undetermined measure of time...in short, he wins.
Unless you modify the magic item they get a save or get pulled into it. Also once the first person is sucked in the other party members are less likely to go in because the equipment does not go into the mirror with the person. At level 13 they can get access to Analyze dweomer which would automatically identify the mirror. Suggestion is also a low level spell, and the chances of them failing a will save are not high.
Your entire plans works around you assuming you can guess what the players will do, and that almost never happens, especially with all of the things that have to happen for your situation to turn out like you want it to.
I never knew that, and it is a stupid rule which I will ignore, but thanks for the information. :)Silent Spell (Metamagic)
You can cast your spells without making any sound.Benefit: A silent spell can be cast with no verbal components. Spells without verbal components are not affected. A silent spell uses up a spell slot one level higher than the spell's actual level.
Special: Bard spells cannot be enhanced by this feat.
One that I was aware of, but one that I've never particularly been thrilled with.
I get the reasoning behind it, it's just not that great to me.
Tangent alert -
The Bard not being silent is strongly tied to the idea that their spells are based on their primary performance ability (usually singing, oratory, or some sort of musical instrument).
I believe some archetypes allow for silent spell as that particular Bard spells are tied to dance performance rather than a performance that must be heard, yet still spell could never be used by such a dancing Bard.
As I said: the reasoning behind it was pretty obvious since 3rd. Didn't stop it from being a massively "meh" rule, personally. It's flavorful, sure, but hardly a good mechanical design. But yes, this is very tangential.
(Rynjin, Joanna, and wraithstrike covered everything else that I would have.)
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
How do you not know what the feats in the core rulebook do? Do you just get your information on them online and never acually read the book itself?
Easily, actually. It's a reading issue, and happens to many (myself included) that often increases with age. Effectively, your mind thinks it knows where something is going! and thus tells your eyes and processors, "Hey, I've seen enough to know how this goes." and it more or less just shuts them off, leaving segments skipped based off of an almost unconscious presumption due to familiarity.
Not so much reading comprehension (which means you've read it, but don't understand it), but reading retention (you've read it but forgotten) or reading (you've read the passage, but your mind skipped that line for <too many reasons to lost>).
Heck, I read the Expanded Psionics Handbook, and loved it! for years before finally realizing it was "Neothelid" and "Phrenic" as opposed to "Neolithid" and "Phrenthic" - apparently, I had a pronounced tendency to add "th" for some reason.
While that's not a rules text issue, it is, at it's core! the same effect: the mind guessing and filling in the details, then moving the reader (me, in this case) on past the relavent text because it (thinks it) "knows" what's supposed to go there.
I never knew that, and it is a stupid rule which I will ignore, but thanks for the information. :)Silent Spell (Metamagic)
You can cast your spells without making any sound.Benefit: A silent spell can be cast with no verbal components. Spells without verbal components are not affected. A silent spell uses up a spell slot one level higher than the spell's actual level.
Special: Bard spells cannot be enhanced by this feat.One that I was aware of, but one that I've never particularly been thrilled with.
I get the reasoning behind it, it's just not that great to me.
I never knew this(following information).
Spells: A bard casts arcane spells drawn from the bard spell list presented in Spell Lists. He can cast any spell he knows without preparing it ahead of time. Every bard spell has a verbal component (song, recitation, or music).
Well, I do understand the rule now, but I still don't like it. A silence spell completely shuts down the spell casting because the bard can't even use silent spell to get past it.
edit: Of course I was not a fan of the bard until Pathfinder either so I mostly ignored the class.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
How do you not know what the feats in the core rulebook do? Do you just get your information on them online and never acually read the book itself?
It seems that everyone has a rule they don't know about. Even the devs(those guys that wrote the book) have cited rules incorrectly from memory.
I'm a bit iffy about a "paper-thin mirror of life-trapping", but if you just want to make it a book of life-trapping, you can change it as you like (such as "takes the gear with it").
Honestly, if you *want* this to happen, skip the fight. Have him offer them positions of power in his utopia, and then go straight for the book if declined. {be ready for them to accept though, you never know!}
When he gets to the book, after a "You can't stop me where I'm going!", I'd give the players a Perception check against his *Perform* skill, since he's probably rehearsed this. It would make even more sense for him to use an illusion of his form being absorbed by the book.
When they do wake up/get out, I'd suggest he should be long dead and buried.
Edit: Oh, and I wouldn't refer to it as "the bad guy won" to your players.
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I'm just going to ignore the technical difficulties with bard spells for a moment, because they're really just a minor detail and distract from the OP's main question.
I think your idea is pretty cool. It's a neat trap and a nasty story twist. It's also good that you're thinking about ways to reverse it.
Something to be really careful about is this. Some players build their characters with strong attachments to things in the setting; they serve a particular king, are trying to win the affections of a particular lady, protect their village and so forth. All of those things will be gone when they're freed. That's going to be a real shock to those players could potentially ruin their enjoyment of the PC and the campaign.
So I think it's good the keep the possibility of reversing the effect firmly in sight. A way of perhaps doing this is to start out by emphasizing how nice the magical utopia is, but then start subtly adding in details showing that there are also downsides. Then have them find clues that it might be possible to reverse it, by breaking the spell, travelling back in time through the mirror, or something else.
However, there may also be things in the utopia that they like, and going back and preventing it would cost them those. So it becomes a choice. The choice should be up to the players. They really have to feel that it's their choice to make; if they do it then the campaign goes back the way it was, while if they choose not to reverse, they stay in utopia. You're giving away a lot of power as a GM here!
You'll want to play up the idea that the choice is "balanced", although that's not necessarily really the case. If you notice that one player would be really happy about not going back in time, then try to subtly stack events so that you emphasize the downsides of utopia a bit more, so that the other players will also get on board the time travel express. But you have to do this with a poker face, and be sure to have at least one NPC whine ineffectually about it. If you don't, it looks like there was only one real option, while what you actually want is that the players felt that they had to make an actual choice.
I'm not normally good at time travel, but I suppose the mirror is the obvious choice as GM. (Conservation of the amount of plot devices and all that.) Decide that in addition to imprisoning people, it can be "overloaded" to send people back in time. Doing so will destroy the mirror in the process though, so this won't introduce a permanent time travel device for you to worry about.
Additionally, the PCs could learn a bit about the way history unfolded during their absence, that still has to happen if they go back in time. This is a great way to seed some plots for later.
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Welcome to the Paizo Boards, where you ask how to help with a story idea and instead everyone instead decides to give you advice on what you did wrong, how things don't work like that, or how to not do what you already planned on doing instead of trying to help answer the question you asked.
Time travel is a really cool idea, especially if you go with the theme that you have to avoid you old selves or there could be consequences. Trying to stop yourselves without letting yourselves know that you are there can be interesting.
If the bad guy used an item or ritual, there is always finding a counter item/ritual to undo the damage. Since this is a magic utopia, it might be fun to play with the idea that only magic uses loyal to him survived through the years and now magic is unknown for anyone not a part of his cabal. Expect of course the characters which can make interacting with the regular folk troublesome. (distrust, fear, etc). Maybe throw in an underground resistance...
Heck if the PC were well known maybe there is a cult or group that has been trying to free them for the last so many years...
|
|
Actually - if they do fall for the trap - you might tweak the mirror a bit. One could argue that since it's thinner than normal, it doesn't trap them for as long.
Also - if they could eventually figure out a way to go back and forth - you could have a whole Zelda: Ocarina of Time thing going on. The group needs to go back and forth to solve things etc.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Welcome to the Paizo Boards, where you ask how to help with a story idea and instead everyone instead decides to give you advice on what you did wrong, how things don't work like that, or how to not do what you already planned on doing instead of trying to help answer the question you asked.
Or welcome to the Paizo boards where some people dont know how telling a GM which things might go wrong is actually helping because it will help him to think of alternate solutions to problems, instead of being caught with his pants down.
I've never utilized time travel in a campaign with positive results; It's cliche by default, and it's one hell of a railroad. At the very most, hint to it as a possible solution, and only if all PC's seem enthusiastic about it should you proceed.
As for the trap itself: it's pretty cool, and would work great in a book/movie, but you need to make sure it's air-tight for a game. Like others have said before, Dimension Door would work better than Invisibility for the potential of being seen with a spell/Perception. Figure out how you'll compensate if a magic user rolls Spellcraft to figure out why the BBEG vanished, or if the PC that touched the book before him really went into the book as planned. And most importantly: come up with a backup plan. What happens if the PC's flat-out refuse to use the book? Suggestion might work on some of them, but what if the Cleric rolls a Nat 20 on his Will save? I'd feel very cheated if I were him if I was told "you still fail. Now touch the book."
I think the best contingency plan is to figure out a reason why the BBEG would want the PC's alive (maybe a ransom, or as hostages). Then, when the PC's turn to leave, the BBEG's elite guards come crashing into the room and total party wipe. The PC's wake up with no gear, no spell book, no holy symbol, etc. The BBEG greets them with a final monologue how he'd love to watch them beg for mercy, but he has other plans for them "call it a future investment". He then, one-by-one traps them in the book against their will. This would feel organic, it would be cinematic, and it would give your original plan a chance to come to life on its own, but still doom the PC's to the fate you had planned all along without making them feel railroaded.
The post-trap setting is pretty cool too - kind of Samurai Jack-esk (which makes it ironic that I opened with a warning against time travel). Would it be out of the PC's hands to just focus on fixing the current (i.e. future) world?
How do you not know what the feats in the core rulebook do? Do you just get your information on them online and never acually read the book itself?
It has more to do with the fact that I've never played a Bard, or taken the Silent Spell Feat.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
You know, what might be a better idea if you just want them trapped, is to make the entire floor the mirror. We've already pretty much established the foregoing the save thing probably won't work, so why not let him go "Fine. THEN REAP THE CONSEQUENCES! MUHAHAHAHAHA!", Dimension Door out, doors lock behind the party (make sure to point out the adamantine door beforehand), and the illusion making the floor appear as ordinary stone is dispelled.
They essentially have to make that Will save every round now, as they desperately attempt to get out.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Be careful not to confuse the story you want to tell with the story your players may want to create.
Having players not get saves for story purposes is a dicey proposition. A player with an arcane character could thwart this quite easily. A summoner's summons would already have caught the Bard between scent and see invisible. None of the Bard's magic should be powerful enough to flat force the party to comply instantly.
A Dystopia setting is wicked cool. Capturing that experience is worth doing. Forcing players to fail is less awesome.
Why not have him go through an actual mirror, revealing a true mirror world wherein he has already succeeded? Perhaps one material plane isn't enough for this guy. You could spin every relationship that the party has in their material plane with a twist. Maybe the hero's alter-egos went bad, or died trying. Their friends and allies feel abandoned or need rescuing or converting.
Just have the bard use quicken spell instead of silent.
Done.
Quickened spells still have components as normal. It wouldn't be any more silent than a normal spell.
Wands also wouldn't work, as spell trigger items are triggered by speaking a word. Command word items are also out, as they also require speaking.
You could make some kind of use-activated Invisibility item, however.
If only there were a ring of some kind that did that.
Well the normal Ring of Invisbility is command word-activated, but you could make a special one that is use-activated.
Would Mislead work? A Major Image of the BBEG disappearing into the Tome should look convincing I think, and if the PCs don't interact with the illusion before it disappears, they might not be entitled to a will save to disbelieve the Major Image.
Heck, I think even a Programmed Image should suffice. If said BBEG isn't high enough level to cast those spells, I think he could just grab one scroll. The Programmed Image can even be pre-cast from a scroll before combat.
Spellcraft says "I know what that spell is".
The rules say--> "A character faced with proof that an illusion isn't real needs no saving throw. If any viewer successfully disbelieves an illusion and communicates this fact to others, each such viewer gains a saving throw with a +4 bonus."
Now the GM might not say spellcraft counts as proof, but if he tells the party what just happened they can still ignore the caster in front of them.
If the BBEG is already invisible that might work, but if they hear the command word they might investigate. Detect magic or more powerful magic would let them know that the mirror(Abjuration), DD(conjuration), and an illusion(normally means trickery) aura are in play. A problem here is that the illusion school is to easy to pickup with spells. I tried looking for something higher up the chain than nondetection and magic aura, but I had no luck. The BBEG might be better off not even entering the room, but watching from another room. The following paragraph might also be useful.
The BBEG is better off fleeing into a hallway, and the entire hallway is the mirror of life trapping. However the mirror is not revealed until you get at least halfway into it. Or he could make it look like he went into the hallway with a programmed image. Getting someone to follow you into a hallway is probably easier than getting them to step into a book. More than likely the PC's will rush in blindly behind him, and not do a perception check for any traps, such as a the door closing behind them, and setting off a spell that block dimensional travel.
