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After replying to one of the other rules threads I had some questions I wanted to discuses regarding meeting the prerequisites for feats and the fly skill.
Question 1:
A fighter has 13 strength. He has the feat power attack. The fighter encounters a monster that hits him with an attack that reduces his strength score by 2 for 48 hours. With a strength of 11, he can no longer use power attack. The cleric casts the spell Bull's Strength on the fighter giving him a +4 enhancement bonus to strength.
The fighter is still unable to use power attack as the bonus does not last 24 hours and so does not count for meeting feat prerequisites, correct?
Question 2:
A level 1 wizard gets a wand of fly with 50 charges. Does the wand allow the wizard to put points in the fly skill?
Does the answer change if it was a rogue with a high use mage device skill?
Question 3:
A fighter acquires an item that lets him cast Dimension Door at will with infinite charges.
Does this qualify the fighter for the Dimensional Agility feat?
These are all academic. I'm just curious where the line for qualification is.
Q1. Ability score damage does not reduce the ability, it aplies a penalty to things the ability governs, so you do not lose the prereq for feats. If it did, your interpration would sound RAW to me.
Q2. Is the wand a reliable method of flight? How many charges must be expended to justify practice sessions? My instinct says a wand does not qualify, but Imknow of no citation to back this up. Same for rogue.
Q3. Sounds legit to me.
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Q1. There are several way in which an ability score might be reduced. The most common, Ability Damage, doesn't actually reduce the score, rather the character suffers suffers a -1 penalty to relevant statistics for every 2 points of damage. Penalties to ability scores work similarly, -1 to relevant stats for every 2 points of Penalty. The third type Ability Drain actually reduces the ability score.
Only Ability Drain would prevent the Fighter from using his feats. Temporary bonuses like Bull's Strength would not help in this case.
Q2. Is the wand a reliable method of flight? Can the Wizard/Rogue reliably use the wand to fly (within reason) whenever he wants? Can he reliably replace the wand (within reason) when it runs out? If the character has reliable enough access to flight to be able to fly pretty much whenever he needs to, then he should be able to take ranks in the Fly skill.
Q3. No. You need to have DD as a spell or SLA (or abundant step). Merely "reliable access", in this case, is not enough.
Q1: There is an argument (compelling but not unversally accepted) that if you don't have a permanent strength 13 you cannot choose power attack as a feat, but once you have it as a feat I cannot see why if your strength is reduced and you gain a bull's strength (that takes your strength above 13) you cannot once again use power attack. You meet the pre-requisite strength 13 and there is no difference between permanent and temporary ability scores.
All the FAQ clarifies is that temp ability bonuses affect all the same stats and rolls as a permanent bonus. The FAQ doesn't change that Temp bonuses do not actually change the score, they just grant a bonus to everything related to that score for every 2 points of bonus.
Since temporary ability bonuses do not actually change the ability score, they cannot be used to qualify for feats.
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Question 2:
A level 1 wizard gets a wand of fly with 50 charges. Does the wand allow the wizard to put points in the fly skill?Does the answer change if it was a rogue with a high use mage device skill?
You cannot take ranks in this skill without a natural means of flight or gliding. Creatures can also take ranks in Fly if they possess a reliable means of flying every day (either through a spell or other special ability).
"Every day" id different from "for a limited period", even if that period is relatively long (like 50 days for a fully charged wand of fly).
Winged boots or other similar items that can be used every day? Fine, you can take the fly skill. Something with a limited number of charges: you can't.
Note that as a GM I would ask the player to spend his daily use of the ability at some time during the day, either while adventuring or before going to bed.
I wouldn't require a spellcaster to memorize fly every day, but memorizing it and using it most of the days would be required.
If the group has a long period of downtime I would allow it off screen. I would even allow the rogue to learn the fly skill by buying at least 2 fully charged wands of fly and training for 3 months, or by paying the daily casting of fly for 3 months. Sadly in most campaign 3 months of downtime aren't common. With a cost of 16,000 gp for the boots and 11,250 gp for a fully charged wand, the boots are way better.
Essentially. ask your GM.
Question 2:
A level 1 wizard gets a wand of fly with 50 charges. Does the wand allow the wizard to put points in the fly skill?Does the answer change if it was a rogue with a high use mage device skill?
You cannot take ranks in this skill without a natural means of flight or gliding. Creatures can also take ranks in Fly if they possess a reliable means of flying every day (either through a spell or other special ability)."Every day" id different from "for a limited period", even if that period is relatively long (like 50 days for a fully charged wand of fly).
Winged boots or other similar items that can be used every day? Fine, you can take the fly skill. Something with a limited number of charges: you can't.
Note that as a GM I would ask the player to spend his daily use of the ability at some time during the day, either while adventuring or before going to bed.
I wouldn't require a spellcaster to memorize fly every day, but memorizing it and using it most of the days would be required.If the group has a long period of downtime I would allow it off screen. I would even allow the rogue to learn the fly skill by buying at least 2 fully charged wands of fly and training for 3 months, or by paying the daily casting of fly for 3 months. Sadly in most campaign 3 months of downtime aren't common. With a cost of 16,000 gp for the boots and 11,250 gp for a fully charged wand, the boots are way better.
Essentially. ask your GM.
What's the functional difference between casting Fly not every day, but most days, to fly around for a few minutes and using a wand of Fly not every day, but most days, to fly around for a few minutes? Both characters have spent exactly the same amount of time flying.
If you require downtime training for skills, that one thing, but making a Rouge train for 3 months flying for 5 min per day to learn fly, but not making a Wizard train for the same 5 min per day for the same 3 months is flat out wrong.
You could always buy a glider (500 gp) to learn to fly that way.
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Question 2:
A level 1 wizard gets a wand of fly with 50 charges. Does the wand allow the wizard to put points in the fly skill?Does the answer change if it was a rogue with a high use mage device skill?
You cannot take ranks in this skill without a natural means of flight or gliding. Creatures can also take ranks in Fly if they possess a reliable means of flying every day (either through a spell or other special ability)."Every day" id different from "for a limited period", even if that period is relatively long (like 50 days for a fully charged wand of fly).
Winged boots or other similar items that can be used every day? Fine, you can take the fly skill. Something with a limited number of charges: you can't.
Note that as a GM I would ask the player to spend his daily use of the ability at some time during the day, either while adventuring or before going to bed.
I wouldn't require a spellcaster to memorize fly every day, but memorizing it and using it most of the days would be required.If the group has a long period of downtime I would allow it off screen. I would even allow the rogue to learn the fly skill by buying at least 2 fully charged wands of fly and training for 3 months, or by paying the daily casting of fly for 3 months. Sadly in most campaign 3 months of downtime aren't common. With a cost of 16,000 gp for the boots and 11,250 gp for a fully charged wand, the boots are way better.
Essentially. ask your GM.
What's the functional difference between casting Fly not every day, but most days, to fly around for a few minutes and using a wand of Fly not every day, but most days, to fly around for a few minutes? Both characters have spent exactly the same amount of time flying.
If you require downtime training for skills, that one thing, but making a Rouge train for 3 months flying for 5 min per day to learn fly, but not making a Wizard train for the same 5...
The rules say that you need to have a way to fly every day so RAW a wand will never do.
I, as a GM, will be a bit more lenient, allowing it after a long period of training even if you don't have a way to do it every day after the training period (if you have read everything I wrote, I said: " I would even allow the rogue to learn the fly skill by buying at least 2 fully charged wands of fly and training for 3 months, or by paying the daily casting of fly for 3 months.").
With a pair of winged boots (or several other items, included the glider that BNW cited) you can get the same result without the need of a long training time.
The reason of the long training time is that the character that is using a item with limited charges will do that only for a limited period, while the guys with a way to fly daily will do it off or on screen for their whole career.
A wand can reliably be used every single day until it's exhausted, as long as a character has a reliable means of procuring another one, there's really no difference.
Sure, a situation could arise when a wand couldn't be used, but a Wizard could have his hands broken or spellbook destroyed and be unable to fly for extended periods, yet he's still considered to have reliable daily access; a Divine caster could change alignment and be unable to fly for extended periods, yet no problems there, either.
How could a character with a wand and reliable means of buying more, be less reliable than a caster?
After replying to one of the other rules threads I had some questions I wanted to discuses regarding meeting the prerequisites for feats and the fly skill.
Question 1:
A fighter has 13 strength. He has the feat power attack. The fighter encounters a monster that hits him with an attack that reduces his strength score by 2 for 48 hours. With a strength of 11, he can no longer use power attack. The cleric casts the spell Bull's Strength on the fighter giving him a +4 enhancement bonus to strength.The fighter is still unable to use power attack as the bonus does not last 24 hours and so does not count for meeting feat prerequisites, correct?
Question 2:
A level 1 wizard gets a wand of fly with 50 charges. Does the wand allow the wizard to put points in the fly skill?Does the answer change if it was a rogue with a high use mage device skill?
Question 3:
A fighter acquires an item that lets him cast Dimension Door at will with infinite charges.Does this qualify the fighter for the Dimensional Agility feat?
These are all academic. I'm just curious where the line for qualification is.
A1. The fighter loses the use of the power attack feat when his strength goes below 13. He regains it when he's boosted but loses the feat, (and all feats that have Power Attack as a prerequisite) when the spell's effects run out.
A2. I would allow it but I would require that he cast the spell at least 1/day for 30 days to qualify.
A3. I'd allow it, but if he loses the item, he loses use of the feat and any feat dependent upon it.
This would be a houserule, but a number of days/ charges sufficient to retrain a skill might be a reasonable benchmark for how musch is needed to qualify for taking the level in fly skill.