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Nope. It was in the middle of a desert underground. We flooded the dungeon with water, drowned most anything that cpuldnt breathe water and couldn't escapse and forced out anything could THEN killed them as they left. It was kinda humorous actually... like how I got around a room with waist high water an filled with blood ooze swarms (the little ooze swarm that suck blood). Just shaped reverse gravity (since it makes 5×5×5 squares ypu shape) into a column then covered the cieling so the water went to the cieling.When it comes yo.create water.... me and a few friends destroyed.our poor GMs dungeon with it... turns out he didnt expect me (oracle) out cleric amd our Loradin to flood the dungeon with create water...Did he expect there ever to be heavy rainfall there?
I guess your GM doesn't know that deserts have flash floods.
Unless, of course, your GM did know that and the dungeon was sealed to prevent water from getting in. Or the bad guy didn't realize that and then deserves to have his place flooded.
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It's very different from dimension door. Dimension door doesn't require line of sight or line of effect. But let's see - it comes up when a wizard could have already teleported for a level, and d-doored for several. It requires additional wild talents to be practical - 2 to 5. A couple of elements will be affected by terrain and it only carries one person. I don't see it being at-will as being overpowered.An example would be ride the blast, which basically turns your blasts into at will, self only dimensional doors.
This seems like it could be a potential problem since it means you move 10-20 times faster than a horse, and you could do a cross country trip in a couple days (and I mean 'America' cross country, not of these tiny kingdom junk). You are ACTUALLY going 54-108 mph, and that is disregarding the difference between land speed and in game movement speed (since you are moving 10x faster than a horse, but your actual speed is only roughly twice than a horse)
Although, I suppose, that from a game design perspective, you would need to put your party in your pocket (pokepathfinders) if you didn't want to go solo. And even that sounds inconvenient since they have to get out when the fight starts. Still, it is a type of movement only rivaled by teleportation, and it allows you to do scouting along the way.
You don't necessarily need line of sight with the blast either. There is an infusion for that (snake, which allows you to change the direction and shoot into square you can't see; it can be fairly good even outside of this, since it ignore cover, even from allies/enemies), and if you are just using the blast for movement, you are more than high enough level to put it on without using any burn.
And I did say that it was only limited by the single person (although, when brought up, someone always says 'put them in your bag of holding').
Honestly, I am not the one that first brought this up. I got this from a Mark Seifter post back in the occult playtest forums.
Don't tell the GMs who banned d-door at will, but ride the blast, particularly for air, can take you about as far. ;)Well by fixed I meant mainly that:
1) Not all demon flavor by default
2) Got rid of some of the things that DMs tended to ban it for (dimension door at will and all) but still gave it cool options.
And you must admit...sometimes, it serves VERY similar purposes to at will dimensional door- If you REALLY wanted to, you could rocket through an entire dungeon, straight to the boss, while ignoring practically everything. What is going to stop your movement based on the GIANT BOLT OF LIGHTNING? Who is honestly going to stop you more more than the split second needed to move out of the way before you use your superior speed to get away? From the looks of it, a wind user could have a snake blast that allows them to go 270' in a round (240+30 base speed, maybe 300 with their haste)
My problem with detect magic isn't so much that it breaks narrative, but that you have to hear players say "I detect magic" every 5 minutes.
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My problem with detect magic isn't so much that it breaks narrative, but that you have to hear players say "I detect magic" every 5 minutes.
You only have to hear it once. 'I'm going to cast detect magic and recast it when it drops.' You only have to hear that once. Do rogues bother you with all that trap detecting? We should really do something about those darn rogues...
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My problem with detect magic isn't so much that it breaks narrative, but that you have to hear players say "I detect magic" every 5 minutes.You only have to hear it once. 'I'm going to cast detect magic and recast it when it drops.' You only have to hear that once.
Walking around with Detect Magic up requires concentration. Which means you'll be moving at half speed. The rest of your party may not appreciate how you're slowing them down.
Do rogues bother you with all that trap detecting? We should really do something about those darn rogues...
A lot of parties don't have a rogue or really anyone with detect traps. And most DMs just tell you when to roll the perception check anyway. On the other hand, almost every party will have a detect magic guy.
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And you must admit...sometimes, it serves VERY similar purposes to at will dimensional door- If you REALLY wanted to, you could rocket through an entire dungeon, straight to the boss, while ignoring practically everything. What is going to stop your movement based on the GIANT BOLT OF LIGHTNING? Who is honestly going to stop you more more than the split second needed to move out of the way before you use your superior speed to get away? From the looks of it, a wind user could have a snake blast that allows them to go 270' in a round (240+30 base speed, maybe 300 with their haste)So you can move really really fast. Unlike dimension door, you are still more-or-less beholden to the laws of physics, and also unlike dimension door, this ability only applies to you. So let's say this Kineticist bolts through the entire dungeon, bypassing every trick/trap/treasure/encounter along the way. She's now alone at the big bad boss at the end of the dungeon, now what does she do? Well, nothing really. She tosses some kinetic blasts at the boss, it shrugs them off because it was designed for a whole party to fight and the Kineticist's damage alone is less than impressive, and the hast Kineticist promptly gets the wind beaten out of her.
Ride the Blast is no doubt a very handy ability, but to compare its utility to something on the level of Dimension Door is silly. Just because the Kineticist can do it whenever and how often she wants does not necessarily mean that she's going to actually NEED to use it that often.
...seriously, I've acknowledged the logistical limits when involving parties from the very first post. Why does everyone focus on that? I've noted it, noted solutions to the problem, and acknowledged that those solutions have limits and problems of their own. Is my keyboard broken, and I stop typing halfway through each post?
Also, I am unsure how much you are bound to the laws of physics (you know...turning yourself into pure energy and moving along with the blast), but that is more semantics. Without extensive scrying, I would generally imagine you are doing about as well as dimensional door when it comes to movement in closed spaces. Some slightly lower utility...but overall, it serves a fairly similar purpose as at will, self only dimensional door.
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Because Detect Magic is an at-will, unlimited use cantrip now, I simply turned it into a sense that all spell-casters simply have. Yes, they have to concentrate with the minor hassles that imposes, but otherwise they all can sense magic. In a world where this is so prevalent, the counter-measures are also commonly employed to obscure the aura when/if it is important to do so.
Creates some extra work for me, but I like the flavor and so it isn't a problem.
From the looks of it, a wind user could have a snake blast that allows them to go 270' in a round (240+30 base speed, maybe 300 with their haste)
With extreme range they can go 960'+60' fly = 1020' per round. Long snake blasts are limited in that you need to know the layout before you go. I wouldn't let somebody just twist and turn as they go.
One of the reasons that we harp on the single-person aspect of it is because you keep comparing it to d-door, which is multi-person. Unless you have a party of kineticists this is useless. Many GM's don't let people ride in a bag of holding. Even with a portable hole and a bottle of air, this tactic takes some extra actions. All of these limitations make it not OP.
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My problem with detect magic isn't so much that it breaks narrative, but that you have to hear players say "I detect magic" every 5 minutes.You only have to hear it once. 'I'm going to cast detect magic and recast it when it drops.' You only have to hear that once.Walking around with Detect Magic up requires concentration. Which means you'll be moving at half speed. The rest of your party may not appreciate how you're slowing them down.
Do rogues bother you with all that trap detecting? We should really do something about those darn rogues...A lot of parties don't have a rogue or really anyone with detect traps. And most DMs just tell you when to roll the perception check anyway. On the other hand, almost every party will have a detect magic guy.
I rarely see people running through the adventure with no effort taken to look around. Concentration is a standard action while normal things like find trap and find concealed/secret doors are move action. So the rogue, people actually looking around and the caster end up with the same move.
As to parties with no trap finding, you play in different groups than I. That'll get you killed around here.
As to "DMs just tell you when to roll the perception check anyway", see the reply to parties with no trap finding'.
As to "On the other hand, almost every party will have a detect magic guy", I would find it EXTREMELY odd to be in a group that couldn't do both.
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Yeah; my groups tend to go through dungeons methodically, not quickly. So a slower pace suits the trap detectors and the magic detectors just fine.
From the looks of it, a wind user could have a snake blast that allows them to go 270' in a round (240+30 base speed, maybe 300 with their haste)With extreme range they can go 960'+60' fly = 1020' per round. Long snake blasts are limited in that you need to know the layout before you go. I wouldn't let somebody just twist and turn as they go.
One of the reasons that we harp on the single-person aspect of it is because you keep comparing it to d-door, which is multi-person. Unless you have a party of kineticists this is useless. Many GM's don't let people ride in a bag of holding. Even with a portable hole and a bottle of air, this tactic takes some extra actions. All of these limitations make it not OP.
I am unsure if extreme range applies to snake. That is its own infusion, and snake has its only language that allows it to go 120' (it is predicated on the idea that you have the first range booster, of course, since that is a prereq, but it has the range on its own).
And yes, you will likely not get too far in tight, winding corridors. You can get around the first bend though (And then have it shoot straight until it hits a wall and you just end there)
There are limits here.... but a GM seems like they would have to purposefully make the design difficult to do much more than a minor, momentary delay.
There would no need to delay the Kineticist at all, is the point. Her being farther ahead than the rest of the party does her no good. Either she waits around for them to catch up, or she keeps advancing until something smacks her down like The Rock suplexing a toddler. If she's running ahead of the party and grabbing the loot and leaving a mess, you run across the table and smack the player for ruining people's fun, but other than that it would absolutely be in her best interest to stick with everyone else.
At best this would be useful for scouting as it would allow her to quickly escape if trouble rears its ugly head, and even that can be stopped cold by a locked door.
There might be ways to deal with the blocked door (impale infusion, earthglide, simply blowing it up with raw damage since your main class feature is all about one big hit), but yes, that is one of the problems.
But if there is a hallway filled with tripwires at all levels and swinging axe blades, I think this ability can fill a similar role to d-door.
Yeah; my groups tend to go through dungeons methodically, not quickly. So a slower pace suits the trap detectors and the magic detectors just fine.
That sounds like a pain for both the players and DM. So every time the party enters a room they have to repeat the same phrases and roll the same dice whether there is anything there or not. And how do you handle really long corridors? Does the party move 30 feet and then say they are checking for traps and roll again, ad nauseum.
Assuming the party isn't being somewhat perceptive anytime they are exploring out of combat seems silly.
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Yeah; my groups tend to go through dungeons methodically, not quickly. So a slower pace suits the trap detectors and the magic detectors just fine.That sounds like a pain for both the players and DM. So every time the party enters a room they have to repeat the same phrases and roll the same dice whether there is anything there or not. And how do you handle really long corridors? Does the party move 30 feet and then say they are checking for traps and roll again, ad nauseum.
Assuming the party isn't being somewhat perceptive anytime they are exploring out of combat seems silly.
Much like I said "'I'm going to cast detect magic and recast it when it drops.'", rogues state 'I'm looking for traps' and maybe others are saying 'I'm looking for doors'. You don't roll every 5' or anything.
As to "being somewhat perceptive anytime they are exploring out of combat seems silly": The party isn't at it's best while it's literally running through the area and is limited to passive checks only. They also most likely are taking Unfavorable conditions/Terrible conditions as it's not as easy to notice something that way as compared to taking your time.
So your running group would get a passive check most likely at minuses while my group would get the passive check then the active one when they are on top of it, most likely with a straight up roll or possibly Favorable conditions. The thing to remember is "Try Again: Yes", but if you've already run past it that's no use.
Something got me confused. How does Magic Aura help someone using an illusion spell to disguise themselves as someone else sidestep being caught via Detect Magic? Can't Magic Aura only affect items? I feel like I'm missing something really obvious here.
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Something got me confused. How does Magic Aura help someone using an illusion spell to disguise themselves as someone else sidestep being caught via Detect Magic? Can't Magic Aura only affect items? I feel like I'm missing something really obvious here.
It doesn't help. People tend to forget the "objects only" aspect of Magic Aura. You would need to use Nondetection(has other problems) or Mask Dweomer (good, but requires a witch or a ring of spell knowledge to keep up without blowing through gold constantly).
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What good does knowing the mayor has Illusion magic on him do the party anyway? That could be a thousand things, most of them completely innocuous.
Hell, in any given ballroom or whatever I'd probably have a dozen vain nobles with Hats of Disguise that eeeeever so slightly touch up their less attractive features. Look 10 lbs lighter, remove unsightly blemishes, cover a bad haircut, etc.
Sleeves of Many Garments are probably a common sight as well. Oh no! Lady Elizabeth and I are wearing the same dress! *Shazam*
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At-will abilities are valuable due to how the game works.
Because if you strip the game down to the underlying mechanics, PF/D&D is a game of attrition as defined by Joris Dormans and Ernest Adams in their book Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design. The game works by having a GM gradually wear down a party's resources until they reach the climax of the adventure or adventure segment.
No it's not. The game is designed around single encounters. An encounter has a CR. An encounter string does not.
The people designing classes never got the memo, but the game hasn't been designed for attrition since someone invented the notion of level appropriateness for encounters.
I believe that in the GMing book for 3rd edition it was stated that a CR=APL encounter should expend 20% of a party's resources. Therefore the party shouldn't normally face more than 4 encounters per day, because the 5th will exhaust all their resources and a TPK is on the cards(at least, that's the theory). Pathfinder continues the same setup as 3rd edition, so I think that it's fair to say that the game is designed with daily resource expenditure in mind. It might not do this well, but it's there.
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Spheres of Power fixes a lot of problems mentioned in this thread. If you're sick of hearing about it so often, take that as evidence of how good it is.
It has at-will abilities that can be powered up with a limited pool of points, so you can play a mage all day every day, but you can't steamroll everything all day every day. You can be a healer all day long, but you don't have infinite healing. You can create far more water faster, but it requires a point from that pool. You can detect magic at will, but only after a 10 minute casting time. You can have detect magic as an hours/level constant effect, but only by using more talents (essentially spells known) and spending multiple pool points.
It rewards specialization. Some of the things that negate plots are still there, but not every caster will have access to them. Instead of desert survival plots being ruined by all clerics, it's ruined by druidric casters with a bent towards water. Magical secrecy isn't ruined by a blaster wizard. It's ruined by a detection specialist who has far fewer options in combat. You can do anything, but not everything.
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I believe that in the GMing book for 3rd edition it was stated that a CR=APL encounter should expend 20% of a party's resources. Therefore the party shouldn't normally face more than 4 encounters per day, because the 5th will exhaust all their resources and a TPK is on the cards(at least, that's the theory). Pathfinder continues the same setup as 3rd edition, so I think that it's fair to say that the game is designed with daily resource expenditure in mind. It might not do this well, but it's there.At-will abilities are valuable due to how the game works.
Because if you strip the game down to the underlying mechanics, PF/D&D is a game of attrition as defined by Joris Dormans and Ernest Adams in their book Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design.
No it's not. The game is designed around single encounters. An encounter has a CR. An encounter string does not.
The people designing classes never got the memo, but the game hasn't been designed for attrition since someone invented the notion of level appropriateness for encounters.
The CR=APL =>-20% equation was the design goal, but 3E did not actually meet that goal. And at the same time, the objective of the game shifted from "acquiring treasure" to "overcoming encounters". In the same vein, spells that trivialize expedition logistics were shifted down several levels.
Spheres of Power fixes a lot of problems mentioned in this thread. If you're sick of hearing about it so often, take that as evidence of how good it is.
One of us! One of us! Gooble gobble, gooble gobble.
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I think the idea of Pathfinder as a game of attrition doesn't work in practice. Good players conserve their limited-usage abilities to make them last all day, and the party is going to look for a natural breaking point to fall back and recuperate before they become worn down and are at risk of death. A GM has to push the party past their comfort zone and towards their limit on a regular basis for those at-will abilities to really start shining. Almost no one plays like that; there's the tacit understanding that the GM is trying to avoid TPK.
There's also the issue of level. Higher level characters get more limited use abilities, generally with more uses, and those abilities are far more powerful. This also gets supplemented by magical items. Even worse, these high-level characters have access to more strategic abilities that make it easier for them to control the narrative and proactively avoid being pushed beyond their limit. This makes the divide between at-will and limited-use an even wider gulf.
I can get the concern; when an ability has limitless use it can open up options that simply weren't possible before. A consequence of at-will cantrips is that wizards can have detect magic going all day long by continually recasting it. While the ability itself is not particularly powerful, being at-will fundamentally changes the way it can be used and opens up new possibilities. It's understandable why authors would be mindful of what abilities they allow to be at-will. However, I do agree that they're generally a bit too conservative, especially at higher levels where many "limited use" abilities have durations of over an hour.
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I have a couple of problems with that. First you have to counter a spell with another spell. Second it make things more convoluted that they should be. Third the whole planning that kind of stuff is annoying, it doesn't show how smart the GM is, it doesn't show how much the Gm know the system, it is just a burden to have to do this kind of things. And that is just a cantrip. But well, I suppose my rant is more about magic in PF in general.
Welcome to caster supremacy?
But in all seriousness, any undercover villain (or hero for that matter) that doesn't mask their true alignment and any suspicious magical auras they're carrying around isn't even trying to stay hidden. Magic and alignment detection have been omnipresent throughout D&D's history.
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Because Detect Magic is an at-will, unlimited use cantrip now, I simply turned it into a sense that all spell-casters simply have. Yes, they have to concentrate with the minor hassles that imposes, but otherwise they all can sense magic. In a world where this is so prevalent, the counter-measures are also commonly employed to obscure the aura when/if it is important to do so.
Creates some extra work for me, but I like the flavor and so it isn't a problem.
So characters with Detect Magic at will have octagons in their eyes as well as rods and cones? ;)
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Something got me confused. How does Magic Aura help someone using an illusion spell to disguise themselves as someone else sidestep being caught via Detect Magic? Can't Magic Aura only affect items? I feel like I'm missing something really obvious here.It doesn't help. People tend to forget the "objects only" aspect of Magic Aura. You would need to use Nondetection(has other problems) or Mask Dweomer (good, but requires a witch or a ring of spell knowledge to keep up without blowing through gold constantly).
And even if it worked on people, it would have to be a very small person. 5 lbs/level
At-will abilities are valuable due to how the game works.
Because if you strip the game down to the underlying mechanics, PF/D&D is a game of attrition as defined by Joris Dormans and Ernest Adams in their book Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design. The game works by having a GM gradually wear down a party's resources until they reach the climax of the adventure or adventure segment. This design pattern creates tension, influences decision-making, and helps prevent encounters from getting stale since any encounter might differ in intensity depending on how long a party has gone without resting. In a game pattern like this, any resource that never runs out or replenishes quickly is very valuable.
I do agree that in many cases, some at-will abilities have been overvalued or undervalued. Balancing at-will versus limited-use is fairly difficult because even a slightly overpowered at-will ability can throw off the game. Because of this, Paizo and WotC has traditionally been conservative about the power level of such abilities or found ways to implement them as limited-use.
Which pathfinder modules or AP books are designed with this in mind?
Modules and APs are pretty much all I play, and I haven't seen this yet. There's almost always an opportunity to rest when I run out of spells. The only time I've really seen an adventure of attrition is with home-brewed campaigns.
The whole encounter system is built around D&D/PF as a game of attrition. The original designers deliberately built the math of the game such that a CR=APL encounter uses up 20%-25% of a party's resources. This way, a GM or adventure author can plan accordingly to adjust the challenge and interest curve of their adventure.
This is not AP/Module specific, but many modules have time limits or scenarios where time is of the essence. Some adventures might make it easier to rest than others, but the game of attrition is still at play. Encounters are designed to wear you down, and a character with fewer resources is less effective.
The original designers deliberately built the math of the game such that a CR=APL encounter uses up 20%-25% of a party's resources.
I've heard this claimed, but I've never seen any evidence of it.
Most finite resources (barbarian rage, spells per day, bardic performance) increase in quantity as you level up. But the number of rounds a battle takes does not, in my experience, increase as you level up. So the chance of running out of resources after four battles seems to decrease every time you level up.
I am unsure if extreme range applies to snake. That is its own infusion...
Extreme range is a form infusion. Snake is a form infusion too. So, yes, they don't stack.
However, Snake and Air's Reach work just fine, as the latter is a utility talent.
And yes, you will likely not get too far in tight, winding corridors. You can get around the first bend though (And then have it shoot straight until it hits a wall and you just end there
The difference between a Snake blast and a Snake Ride the Blast is that you are going along with the latter. There is nothing that says your senses are impaired while you are using Ride the Blast.
Do you have all of your players declare their end point before they start moving? If someone enters a patch of spike stones, do you require them to finish all of their movement taking tons of damage, or do you let them change their mind/direction once they stumble into that first square, taking a little bit of damage?
And what you do in your games doesn't really matter. The rules are explicit. You can decide how your character moves ONE SQUARE AT A TIME.
I see absolutely no rules-related restrictions that would prevent someone from using Ride the Blast and Snake to get around complicated obstacles pretty easily.
Just throw in a few closed doors if you're worried about it.
Players will likely miss all of the hidden things zooming through the area like that too in any event--or the kineticist will get himself killed flying into a magical trap far from his much slower comrades.
It's really nothing to worry about I don't think. It's a high level trick that requires fairly significant investment and isn't going to solve every problem; and it may well create more problems for the players.
Yeah; my groups tend to go through dungeons methodically, not quickly. So a slower pace suits the trap detectors and the magic detectors just fine.That sounds like a pain for both the players and DM. So every time the party enters a room they have to repeat the same phrases and roll the same dice whether there is anything there or not. And how do you handle really long corridors? Does the party move 30 feet and then say they are checking for traps and roll again, ad nauseum.
Assuming the party isn't being somewhat perceptive anytime they are exploring out of combat seems silly.
The trap finders simply state "I'm on the lookout for traps, taking 10 as we go" ONCE and no time is wasted for anyone AT ALL. In fact, it's actually FASTER as there are no dice rolls involved!
The original designers deliberately built the math of the game such that a CR=APL encounter uses up 20%-25% of a party's resources.I've heard this claimed, but I've never seen any evidence of it.
Most finite resources (barbarian rage, spells per day, bardic performance) increase in quantity as you level up. But the number of rounds a battle takes does not, in my experience, increase as you level up. So the chance of running out of resources after four battles seems to decrease every time you level up.
It's not recommended a GM always do 3-4 CR=APL encounters in a day. It's better that they use many weaker encounters, especially for a very large dungeon.
Bardic performance and rage duration in rounds based on level is a deliberate advantage given to these classes. It gives more sustainability to their main class feature. This is important because the barbarian is a martial class (whose advantage is sustainable combat contribution) and the bard's combat and spell ability begins to fall off at high levels.
Spells and similar abilities follow a different pattern than rage and bardic performance. As spellcasters gain stronger spells, they can use their weaker spells more frequently. However, at any level, a spellcaster can only use their strongest spells 1 to 3 times a day.
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The whole encounter system is built around D&D/PF as a game of attrition. The original designers deliberately built the math of the game such that a CR=APL encounter uses up 20%-25% of a party's resources. This way, a GM or adventure author can plan accordingly to adjust the challenge and interest curve of their adventure.
This is not AP/Module specific, but many modules have time limits or scenarios where time is of the essence. Some adventures might make it easier to rest than others, but the game of attrition is still at play. Encounters are designed to wear you down, and a character with fewer resources is less effective.
This is contradictory. You can't claim with one side of your mouth that the game is designed with attrition concepts to keep limited and unlimited abilities balanced and claim with the their side of your mouth that modules and APs are not designed this way. Either the game is designed to use attrition or it isn't. It can't be both. I've played many modules and APs and I haven't seen any where you can't find a place to rest to regain abilities. It is extremely rare for a published adventure to have non-stop no-resting action. There might be a time limit in terms of making crafting unavailable (such as in Carrion Crown; but you can still craft on the go), but there's always time to rest. There *might* be one aspect of an adventure that doesn't let you do this, but if the game is designd around attrition then you should expect to see *every* AP and module designed this way.
Spells and similar abilities follow a different pattern than rage and bardic performance. As spellcasters gain stronger spells, they can use their weaker spells more frequently. However, at any level, a spellcaster can only use their strongest spells 1 to 3 times a day.
Spells 1-2 levels lower are typically almost as potent as at level spells, and "weaker" spells scale with level, making them almost as strong as the "strongest" spells. So the claim that spell casters only gets 1-3 uses of their strongest abilities is not entirely correct (in fact, it's really only correct if you ignore large parts of a spellcasting class).
Look, I don't really care what the "original" designers did. I don't care what WotC did. I care about what Paizo did and does. This ain't D&D. This is Pathfinder. Paizo did a lot to change the game, and if attrition was a part of D&D, it most assuredly is not a part of Pathfinder.
But let's say you're right. Let's say it is an integral part of the game. If this is the case, then it doesn't matter if it was designed into the game if it never gets used!
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Paizo did a lot to change the game, and if attrition was a part of D&D, it most assuredly is not a part of Pathfinder.
It still is a part of the game - if you cast all your best spells, you are no longer as powerful. It's just one that's severely undermined by factors like wands of cure light wounds, and the ability of parties to retreat and rest up under most circumstances.
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Paizo did a lot to change the game, and if attrition was a part of D&D, it most assuredly is not a part of Pathfinder.It still is a part of the game - if you cast all your best spells, you are no longer as powerful. It's just one that's severely undermined by factors like wands of cure light wounds, and the ability of parties to retreat and rest up under most circumstances.
If it's easily undermined, then it can't be used to claim as a balancing factor for unlimited and limited abilities. If it is going to be used as a claim to balance them, then there needs to be evidence of t actually being used in the design of published adventures.
I've yet to see this design built into published adventures.
Sure, a GM at home may take advantage of it, but that's not really a claim to "designed into the game." For example, I could claim that Words of Power is designed into the game, but almost no one uses it and there are barely any (if any at all! I can't think of one!) published adventures that actually use it. So it would be wrong and misleading to claim that Words of Power is a balancing factor for the massive utility power of casters (because WoP has very limited utility) vs those of other classes.
It doesn't matter if a rule is there; if it isn't utilized as part of the published adventures and primary aspects of the game, then it isn't part of the design. And in the case of the concept of attrition, not only it is not utilized, it's often flat out ignored as if it was never there.
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I'm ok with limited use abilities. I'm also ok with unlimited use abilities.
The problems arise when one uses a single unlimited use ability to justify many many limited use abilities (to the point where those limited use abilities no longer seem limited) and also give those classes unlimited use abilities.
For example, the fighter has one unlimited use ability: full BAB attack. That's about all it gets. And this is used to justify every other class' limited use abilities, despite the fact that some of these other classes also have a full BAB attack option.
Now if the fighter was good enough, it *might* justify the barbarian or the ranger or the paladin's limited use abilities in a fashion that applies to the 50-100-150% design concept. But it doesn't. Those other three classes are maybe at 90% of the fighter when their limited use options go away, but they still have the unlimited option and can keep going.
Then you have the 3/4 BAB classes, whose limited use abilities get to 10+ per day by level 5, which is about 1/3 of the way through an AP. At 10+ limited uses per day, you're not really limited anymore based off the 3-4 encounters per day concept. Especially when 3/4 BAB attacking is still a very viable option and it's unlimited. And you have unlimited cantrips!
And the 1/2 BAB classes *might* be at 50% when they're out of power, but this is such a rare event that it is only noticed when people talk about it on the forums. Effectively, game play never sees this except maybe at very low levels - but then by level 4-5 you start getting to that 10+ limited uses per day, and it doesn't really feel limited anymore. On the opposite side, when at full power these classes are way above 150% power level. They're maybe at around 150% power level compared to the fighter after 2-3 encounters into the day.
The designers of this concept may have thought that they were designing it appropriately, but that didn't happen. It may be the theory, but in practice it changed - and as many of our Paizo developers like to remind us, this is why playtesting is important, because it shows the flaws in this "design."
So characters with Detect Magic at will have octagons in their eyes as well as rods and cones? ;)Because Detect Magic is an at-will, unlimited use cantrip now, I simply turned it into a sense that all spell-casters simply have. Yes, they have to concentrate with the minor hassles that imposes, but otherwise they all can sense magic. In a world where this is so prevalent, the counter-measures are also commonly employed to obscure the aura when/if it is important to do so.
Creates some extra work for me, but I like the flavor and so it isn't a problem.
Also remember that with the Permanancy spell, permanent mage Sight is a thing.
But, yes, the party should EXPECT that nobles, politicians and people of importance have anti-charm and anti-divination defenses up ALL THE TIME. The consequences of being able to read troop deployments from an officer, a noble's political moves, a merchant's dealings, and the like should have simple defenses against such things very, very common.
By making an Amulet of Non-detection actually treat the wearer as the caster, you actually make it effective, too!
Seriously, the party should be surprised if wealthy and important sorts DIDN'T have such things worked into their noble insignia or routine wear. It'd be the same as having a bodyguard, except even MORE important, since one bit of leaked information could ruin a family/business/war/intrigue op.
==Aelryinth
To be fair, I have casters run out of spells all the daggum time. But, uh, they tend to be really lavish about it - ridiculously so, really. They tend to cast most rounds of combat, unless impossible or directly impractical. Which really isn't the "best practice" style action to take.
This is contradictory. You can't claim with one side of your mouth that the game is designed with attrition concepts to keep limited and unlimited abilities balanced and claim with the their side of your mouth that modules and APs are not designed this way. Either the game is designed to use attrition or it isn't. It can't be both. I've played many modules and APs and I haven't seen any where you can't find a place to rest to regain abilities.The whole encounter system is built around D&D/PF as a game of attrition. The original designers deliberately built the math of the game such that a CR=APL encounter uses up 20%-25% of a party's resources. This way, a GM or adventure author can plan accordingly to adjust the challenge and interest curve of their adventure.
This is not AP/Module specific, but many modules have time limits or scenarios where time is of the essence. Some adventures might make it easier to rest than others, but the game of attrition is still at play. Encounters are designed to wear you down, and a character with fewer resources is less effective.
Bookrat, you do not understand. PF/D&D's attrition isn't meant to screw the players. It's designed to create tension -- to make the game more exciting or more relaxed. That's why AP/modules offer rest points, which function as release valves for the tension. AP/modules vary in how they offer rest points depending on how intense the author wants the adventure.
Forgive me. I'm trying my best to explain as elegantly as possible. I don't mean this in a condescending way -- game design gets really complicated and many aspects aren't intuitive.
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The question here is not about tension, it's about whether resource attrition actually makes unlimited use abilities more valuable compared to having those same abilities with limited use. And if adventures offer enough rest points that running out of resources is rarely a real threat, then unlimited use abilities don't have a significant advantage.
For example, my group prefers a lot of investigation, exploration, and social encounters, and relatively few combat encounters. That means that limited-use combat abilities run out really infrequently, and making things like an Inquisitor's judgment unlimited would not significantly increase their utility after about level 4 when you get a second daily use. This is independent of the tension that can be created by spending an hour or two of table time wandering through the haunted forest as the sun slowly sets before we actually confront the night hag coven.
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I like "per Encounter" limits rather than "per Day" limits. It makes more sense to me in most cases. ("Wha-? That combat feat I just performed I can't do any more, even though it uses up zero resources?")
And unlimited vs limited really depends on game/group/GM style. Some people are really great at planning their adventures to keep pressure on and maintain a sense of action, and some aren't. Nothing wrong if you're the latter, it's just not your gaming style.
In games where limited resources are, for all intents and purposes, unlimited (due to hand-waving, availability of safe places to rest, etc.), I don't see the harm in simply making almost everything unlimited. It changes the nature of the game-play, but knowing that you can plot accordingly.