Surreptitious casting, AP#110 (bis)

[Wheldrake]

Bonjour,

I just found this forum and am crossposting here in hopes of getting a dev comment or two.

I posted this to the rules forum: http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2txxa?Surreptitious-casting-AP110

I can imagine a lot of possibilities with this sort of surreptitious casting, maybe using bluff to pull off the spell without anyone noticing a spell being cast. But as per the recent faq on arcane manifestations, there would presumably be a magic lightshow of floating glyphs and runes accompanying said casting... unless one of the tricky feats intended to disguise spellcasting were used. And D. on p37 of AP#110 has no such feat.

So is her attempt to "surreptitiously cast" doomed to failure? Or is there some other game mechanic going on that I've missed somehow?

The "Conceal Spell" feat would be perfect here, though D. doesn't have all the prerequisites. Still, it would be pretty easy for her to have them... are we simply to conclude that the designer of AP#110 didn't take into account the recent faq on arcane manifestations?

[Rysky]

Dood, we answered you in your other thread. If you assume that there's an extravagant light show and fireworks for every single spell then yeah there's no point in casting them sneakily, but that's not what the FaQ says.

[Wheldrake]

OK, Rysky, I'll bite.

Faq on arcane manifestations:

Although this isn’t directly stated in the Core Rulebook, many elements of the game system work assuming that all spells have their own manifestations, regardless of whether or not they also produce an obvious visual effect, like fireball. You can see some examples to give you ideas of how to describe a spell’s manifestation in various pieces of art from Pathfinder products, but ultimately, the choice is up to your group, or perhaps even to the aesthetics of an individual spellcaster, to decide the exact details. Whatever the case, these manifestations are obviously magic of some kind, even to the uninitiated; this prevents spellcasters that use spell-like abilities, psychic magic, and the like from running completely amok against non-spellcasters in a non-combat situation. Special abilities exist (and more are likely to appear in Ultimate Intrigue) that specifically facilitate a spellcaster using chicanery to misdirect people from those manifestations and allow them to go unnoticed, but they will always provide an onlooker some sort of chance to detect the ruse.

So yeah, it doesn't specifically say there is an arcane light show, but the art strongly suggests it. What is does say is that "these manifestations are obviously magic of some kind, even to the uninitiated" and then mentions "special abilities" which do allow surreptitious casting. The strong inference is that without such "special abilities" there is no game mechanic allowing it.

I like the new bluff usage from the Spymaster's Handbook, but even that doesn't appear to address arcane manifestations.

[Rysky]

Pathfinder art strongly suggests plenty of things.

None of which is outright rules.

And you are inferring way too strongly, since the bit afterwards says "but they will always provide an onlooker" as in someone watching them.

Just because the art, being, ya'know, art, shows a lot of effects for the viewer's benefit doesn't mean an actual caster causes a whole cutscene every time they want to cast a spell in game.

[Adam Daigle]

Hi there! Sorry I missed this thread (and the previous one that prompted you to post this here).

First I want to say that the inclusion of the NPC in question and the encounter were totally me adding to the adventure Tito wrote, and I don't want him getting blamed for my mistake.

I admit that I wasn't aware of the FAQ in question when I designed this encounter. It slipped past me and I'm sorry if it caused any confusion for you or any other readers. You got a ton of great advice from folks in the longer thread about how to deal with the situation, and I support the good suggestions there.

All that said, unless you're running this adventure for something that absolutely needs to be by the letter of the law, the encounter is frankly more fun (and kinda unnervingly creepy) the way it's presented, so if you need an "ignore the FAQ" card for this one encounter...
it's sitting on the table.

Don't you want to pick it up?

Are you sure?

[Rysky]

-_-

[Adam Daigle]

I don't know what you're adding to this with your solitary emote (and lack of actual words), but I approve of some of your contributions to the original thread, so thank you for those.

[Rysky]

You're right, my apologies.

And you're welcome.

[Mark Thomas 66]

Magic

[Wheldrake]

The thing I take away from all this is:
- surreptitious casting is a thing, but it's locked behind a special feat or two.
- the NPC in question could easily be modified to have one of these feats, in which case there is a mechanic in place to determine whether or not the "attempt" is successful.
- without one of those tricky feats, you have to look much further to find a feasable scenario where the NPC could cast suggestion without automatically being flagged as casting a spell, like through a slightly-ajar door leading to another room, so that the arcane manifestations aren't visible as such to the PCs.

Saying "it's magic" doesn't deal with the situation, because there has been this FAQ on arcane manifestations specifically designed to prevent non-magic-users from being walked all over by spellcasters. I'll agree that it makes a great story for the NPCs to be able to cast "suggestion" and not be immediately identified as using magic, but if you do that, then you also have to allow PCs to do similar shenanigans to hapless NPCs. It seems the FAQ was specifically designed to prevent that from happening.

Given that spellcasters already outshine martial characters by several orders of magnitude, it's certainly not unreasonable to disallow surreptitious casting. Personally, I'd prefer to have some internally consistent ruling to deal with such situations. As things stand, only one of the two special feats allows it. I would have prefered a base system for surreptitious casting *without* a feat, and have the feat give a bonus of some kind.

As a house rule, one could easily imagine using the new bluff usage called "perform inconspicuous action" apply in these cases, with the feat giving a bonus on success. Without such a rule, it's use the feat or... fail. Or have tricky terrain advantages to make it possible.

This example from AP#110 shows just how problematic the recent FAQ on arcane manifestations can be. The bottom line is, if it's good for the DM, it's good for the players. So discerning DMs need to decide how they're going to run it, and stick by that ruling.

YMMV.

[Rysky]

1) Minor nitpick, Manifestations apply for all casting, not just arcane.

2) casting through a cracked door is one option, simply casting when no one is looking is another.

[Wheldrake]

Rysky wrote:

1) Minor nitpick, Manifestations apply for all casting, not just arcane.

2) casting through a cracked door is one option, simply casting when no one is looking is another.

Ah, but how do you really determine that nobody is looking? PF doesn't use facing, so that doesn't help. Is it just DM fiat?

The new "perform inconspicuous action" usage of the bluff skill seems to suggest exactly that: you use misdirection (a classic maneuver of real-life stage magicians) to avoid anyone noticing what you're doing.

Again, Rysky, I speak of "arcane manifestations" not to limit it to arcane spellcasters, but simply to refer to any use of magic, whether arcane, divine, psionic, spell-like or whatever. Doesn't change the gist of the problem.

It would be nice to have a baseline mechanic for this sort of thing.

[Rysky]

Perception. Is how you notice or look at stuff. And your players could just say they're keeping an eye on the person.

And if you say "Arcane Manifestations" you ARE limiting it to the arcane. Which will confuse people if you're talking about all types of manifestations.