Venture-Lieutenant, Minnesota—Minneapolis
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I would have expected that you could cast any spells you want during downtime, but only some of them carry over into the next adventure.
To take a not-at-all hypothetical case, what about a cleric with the Heighten Spell feat. Assuming another PC gives them an item and the 50 gp worth of Ruby dust, can they use their maximum spell slot to cast a Heightened Continual Flame on the item?
Page 21 of the guide specifically allows Continual Flame to be carried over between adventures.
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I think they should follow the same rules as rings of spell storing.
Tallow is referring to this FAQ regarding specifically spell-storing.
I would tend to agree with him. The same rules for Spell Storing mechanically should apply here.
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I would have expected that you could cast any spells you want during downtime, but only some of them carry over into the next adventure.
To take a not-at-all hypothetical case, what about a cleric with the Heighten Spell feat. Assuming another PC gives them an item and the 50 gp worth of Ruby dust, can they use their maximum spell slot to cast a Heightened Continual Flame on the item?
Page 21 of the guide specifically allows Continual Flame to be carried over between adventures.
The casting happens during the adventure though. Or rather, before you pack up and go home so a GM can sign off on it.
I suppose this is considered downtime. And I do see how this could be conflated with the time between when a player leaves the game table and goes home, and then shows up to the next table.
So, while this is not entirely defined in the rules, the relationship between adventure, resolving conditions, casting spells that last between adventures, and downtime activities is a bit amorphous depending on what you are trying to do.
My rule of thumb, though, is if you are trying to use arbitrarily added time to a session to avoid the limitations presented by downtime, or you are trying to use downtime to gain some advantage in the next scenario not strictly spelled out, then you are exploiting a loophole that goes against the spirit of the rules.
In other words, resolving conditions technically is part of the session. And if that resolution happens over several in-game days due to poor rolls, limited spell slots, limited gold, etc., then that's fine. Obviously things that happen on a day-to-day basis, such as natural healing and using any spells you might want to use to get rid of certain conditions (such as restoration for the 2nd negative level incurred from a [i]raise dead, then obviously those happen. And charged items (like staves) that just require ambiguous casting of spells you already know to charge it up between adventures, then that's fine.
But the line becomes creating extra in-game days during a session to purposefully get past the limitation of what you can carry between scenarios starts to become an interesting gray area. Where is the actual line? If you say there isn't a line, then please be careful, because I'm sure there are bunches of really powerful exploits that could take advantage of that.
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With no judgement on how this affects this particular item or other spell-storing items, doing what you suggest is a loophole designed to get around the intent of built in time restrictions and limitations. Anything after the closeout VC Briefing is downtime. And arbitrarily adding a day to the adventure simply to bypass the restriction of not being able to do something in downtime is an attempt to bypass the limitation and thus likely against the spirit of the rules.Is this how you handle conditions like disease also? There are many low level diseases that can be cured the hard way (just waiting it out and trying to get enough saves before death from 0 Con., looking at filth fever).
When a low lever character catches filth fever the party often sticks together after the debriefing and cooperates to ensure their fellow agent gets better. One party member rolls a Heal check and everyone else aids, repeating this until the poor character makes their saves or dies. Is this abusing a loophole?
No. Because in this case you are not arbitrarily adding in-game days to the session to get past the limitations of what you can do in downtime. Specifically, you have to resolve conditions before the session is over, and necessarily, because of the mechanics of how Diseases work, this might encompass several days or more of in-game time.
But those days you are recovering from disease, does not mean that you suddenly now have several actual days to do things that you ordinarily could not do during downtime.
Essentially, while its still the session, resolving diseases is part of downtime. Its just downtime things that you have no choice in. They must be resolved.
I suppose that's a good line. If you are forced to engage in certain downtime activities, like recovering from a disease, then you do those activities. But you don't get to choose to arbitrarily add in-game days to a session and you don't get to choose to do things during your downtime that aren't explicitly spelled out that you can do.
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Tallow, Is it fair to say the the GM at the start of the session: (Assuming this isn't one of the few series that are explicitly back to back.)
I'm just trying to figure out what you would consider an exploit or loophole? I'm under the impression that any gimmicks are already well controlled.
My initial stance was that yes, this would not be allowed and would be a loophole. That the first time you cast the spell should be a spell slot at the beginning of the scenario, and then if it doesn't get used during the scenario it certainly would carry over between scenarios and the next scenario you wouldn't have to use a spell slot for it.
But there are a lot of good arguments that are having me question my stance. Apparently if we go with my initial interpretation, we would have to start questioning Kineticist buffers, Cleric charging their foci, etc.
I'm still not sure its a good idea that you can say that you are all charged up at the beginning of a scenario without having actually used some of your resources at the beginning of the scenario to do so.
Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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How many days you have left at the end of the scenario after all bad guys stop breathing is really up to the GM.
Sometimes there's good reasons not to roll end credits immediately. A PC needs to recover from a disease. The PCs adventured in a remote location and it takes a week to get back to the lodge. Until end credits roll, you can still fill up a spell-storing item. Because it's still uptime and normal rules apply.
The spell-storing rules clearly aren't meant to lock down all carry-over from session to session, but they don't want players mooching off each other with it. Because that'd be Transfer Of Wealth .
This isn't downtime. That happens after end credits start rolling. As per the S8 Guide, Downtime is step 5 of the end-credits; XP is step 3. So during downtime you may have already levelled up.
So suppose you're a level 2 wizard with a ring of spell storing who's nearly at level 3. The adventure is over, you can put a level 1 spell into your ring, then you get XP, and then is downtime. You can't load your ring with a level 2 spell before next adventure.
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This isn't downtime. That happens after end credits start rolling. As per the S8 Guide, Downtime is step 5 of the end-credits; XP is step 3. So during downtime you may have already levelled up.
So suppose you're a level 2 wizard with a ring of spell storing who's nearly at level 3. The adventure is over, you can put a level 1 spell into your ring, then you get XP, and then is downtime. You can't load your ring with a level 2 spell before next adventure.
Oh, that would take too much foresight!
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I see you chqnged your stance a bit from what I'd composed my last post based on. My apologies for places I may have overstated your nee position. I still believe in the point and truth of my post, however.
For what its worth, I never considered allowing channel foci to be precharged before, but I think most are of rather short duration anyhow, aren't they?
No worries.
I'm mostly concerned about the implications of showing up to a game fully charged for abilities that are supposed to soak up daily limit things to be able to do. It negates the daily limitation if you come pre-charged.
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Gah. The removed posts means that a key part of the argument for filling rings of spell storing, preserving flasks, and the like between adventures got eliminated.
I just want to point out the PFS FAQ about staves:
Do items like staves carry charges over between adventures?Yes. Note that if you have the ability to charge a staff with your own spellcasting, the indeterminate number of days between adventures generally means that you begin each adventure with the staff fully charged.
The principle here is clear -- you can cast spells during downtime, and you can use that to charge up a staff.
It would be inconsistent if you couldn't charge up other things. And, as others have pointed out, the language in the ring of spell storing FAQ doesn't disallow filling it between scenarios; it requires an inferrence to come to that conclusion.
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'm mostly concerned about the implications of showing up to a game fully charged for abilities that are supposed to soak up daily limit things to be able to do. It negates the daily limitation if you come pre-charged.
I don't understand that worry. If it can only be used one or a few times per day, then it can only be used one or a few times during the scenario. Things are working as they are supposed to. In what way is that exploitative?
I think the opposite is overly restrictive. It renders a lot of things unusable if the scenario doesn't happen to have built-in time in which you could charge things up.
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I'm mostly concerned about the implications of showing up to a game fully charged for abilities that are supposed to soak up daily limit things to be able to do. It negates the daily limitation if you come pre-charged.
You could also evade your daily limit by bringing along things like scrolls, wands, and potions. Are spell-storing items so much more efficient, in terms of action or gold economy, as to warrant extra concern?
Venture-Captain, Germany—Bavaria
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Gah. The removed posts means that a key part of the argument for filling rings of spell storing, preserving flasks, and the like between adventures got eliminated.
I just want to point out the PFS FAQ about staves:
Do items like staves carry charges over between adventures?Yes. Note that if you have the ability to charge a staff with your own spellcasting, the indeterminate number of days between adventures generally means that you begin each adventure with the staff fully charged.
The principle here is clear -- you can cast spells during downtime, and you can use that to charge up a staff.
It would be inconsistent if you couldn't charge up other things. And, as others have pointed out, the language in the ring of spell storing FAQ doesn't disallow filling it between scenarios; it requires an inferrence to come to that conclusion.
The FAQ is a very convincing argument, and consequently, this is how I deal with the situation.
Also worth mentioning is that the GM decides when the scenario ends, and the players sometimes to have options to prolong that point... so there would little reason to fight this.
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Venture-Captain, Germany—Bavaria
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Semi-related:
Can I cast days-per-level-long spells the day before I show up for the briefing?
If not, oh well. But a letter saying "show up to the Lodge on the 3rd Fireday of Desnus" would certainly allow for castings on the Oathday before.
No, mostly for the sake of sanity.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Minnesota—Minneapolis
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Semi-related:
Can I cast days-per-level-long spells the day before I show up for the briefing?
Yes, during downtime, but it doesn't carry into the session. See pg. 21 for spells that can be carried over between sessions.
BTW, a better example may be the Goodberry spell, especially at low levels.
In other words, it doesn't benefit you because of an existing rule from the guide.
Casting Raise Dead.
They made it official:
The length of this downtime is not defined, allowing PCs time to rest, recuperate, and recharge items like staves.
OK everyone, go back to your graves now.