Gingerbread Witches Tricky Treat and Beguiling Gift

[Balkoth]

Gingerbread Witches can make special Tricky Treats at level 4:

Quote:

At 4th level, a gingerbread witch learns a unique hex that lets her create a piece of candy or a similar sweet as a full-round action. If eaten by the witch or a single creature she designates when she creates it, the sweet functions as goodberry or a polypurpose panacea (as determined at creation).

Polypurpose panacea is this spell:

Quote:

School transmutation; Level alchemist 1, sorcerer/wizard 1

CASTING

Casting Time 1 standard action
Components S
EFFECT

Range personal
Target you
Duration see below

DESCRIPTION

This creates one of several cantrip-level effects relating to your health, well-being, and entertainment. The panacea has no side effects (for example, the intoxication panacea does not cause a hangover). When you use polypurpose panacea, choose one of the following effects.

Analgesic: You do not feel minor aches and pains, such as from arthritis, a cold, or a hangover, for 1 hour. For the duration, you gain a +2 resistance bonus against pain-related spells.

Clarity: You get a +1 competence bonus on a single attack roll, saving throw, or skill check within 1 minute. You must choose to use the bonus before making the roll to which it applies.

Hallucination: You have pleasant hallucinations for 1 hour, such as wandering lights, music, playful surreal animals, and so on. You can tell these are not real, but they are distracting, and you take a –2 penalty on Perception checks for the duration.

Intoxication: You feel comfortably intoxicated for 1 hour, as if you had a few alcoholic beverages.

Lucid Dream: If you take this panacea within 1 hour of going to sleep, you have a lucid dream that is under your control and lasts for an hour.

Resistance: You gain a +1 resistance bonus on saves for 1 minute.

Sleep: You enter a pleasant and restful sleep for at least 1 hour unless wakened. If you would normally begin sleeping at this time, when the panacea ends you continue sleeping normally.

Sobriety: You become completely sober for 1 hour, negating any penalties to your actions for being drunk (GameMastery Guide 237). Magical and alchemical methods (such as detect poison) still detect you as inebriated. Time spent under the effect of this panacea do not count toward the time necessary to sober up (it merely delays your intoxication).

Tenacity: You gain 1 temporary hit point for 1 minute.

Wakefulness: You remain awake for 2 hours without feeling sleepy, and without side effects such as jitteriness. You gain a +5 resistance bonus against sleep-related spells such as lullaby and sleep. This use of the panacea merely delays your need for sleep and does not count as rest or sleep. You can use it multiple times in succession, but as each effect wears off, you are as tired as you would be had you not used the panacea.

A Witch player wanted to do the following: create a treat with the effect of Sleep and then cast Beguiling Gift on an enemy to get them to eat the treat.

The question is then: does the enemy (assuming he fails the Beguiling Gift save) get a saving throw to avoid falling asleep?

On one hand, the spell says nothing about a saving throw. On the other hand, even drinking poison would give him a saving throw.

[Weirdo]

The rules do not allow a save.

However, the likely reason that this spell lacks a save is that it is personal range and thus not expected to be used on an unwilling target. It is reasonable to houserule that personal-range spells, if used offensively through an ability like tricky treats, do have a saving throw.

[Tacticslion]

EDIT: ack, ninja'd by Weirdo!
He is correct: the below was in response to the OP, not Weirdo. My post has been edited to reflect this.

There is no save.

The spell is personal and thus has no save entry. The "save" against this effect was a will save against beguiling gift. This is probably fine, because she has sunk so much of her build (spell, he'd) into this one trick, and it's not going to function for many encounters (the low DC and two full round actions). Also, this isn't poison and poison is broadly considered to suck, anyway (way too expensive for what you get).

That said, unless she was convincing that it was harmless (a bluff), it may well provoke a bonus to the will save of the one being affected by beguiling gift. Also, it is perfectly fine for a GM to rule that a save would apply (it would be DC 11+relevant modifier because it's a first level spell).

[Tacticslion]

Actually, I want to play the build, now...

[the David]

It takes a full round action to create a Tricky Treat, you also have to designate who it is intended for.
It takes a standard action to cast Beguiling Gift, opponents can resist it with a will save. It's just a first level spell, so the will save will be pretty low. Unless you use Heighten Spell ofcourse, but that would cost you a feat and a higher level spell slot.

You're using a full round action and then a standard action to maybe take down an opponent, provided that the opponent rolls really low on his will save.

There is some potential for abuse, but most of the time you'll just use a standard action to cast some other spell.

[QuidEst]

Polypurpse Panacea gives options, and the choice made at creation seems to just be Goodberry vs. Polypurpose Panacea. So if a GM doesn't like it, it's reasonable to rule that the person eating it chooses which option to use from the spell.

Anyway, Spell Hex helps out on DCs at high levels.

[Tacticslion]

Man, literally the only interesting ability, there, is the Tricky Treats ability. :/

[Balkoth]

Just as an FYI, this was for something out of combat. She was trying to get a guard to fall sleep and prepared the treat ahead of time.

QuidEst wrote:

Polypurpse Panacea gives options, and the choice made at creation seems to just be Goodberry vs. Polypurpose Panacea. So if a GM doesn't like it, it's reasonable to rule that the person eating it chooses which option to use from the spell.

If you gave it to a troll or something, how would they know what effects even exist?

Tacticslion wrote:

Man, literally the only interesting ability, there, is the Tricky Treats ability. :/

She liked the idea of being able to bake stuff and make treats for the party.

[Tacticslion]

I know! That sounds awesome!

Everything else just sounds... blech!

[Mark Seifter]

Like QuidEst said, technically polypurpose panacea lets the alchemist (or other drinker) make decisions about which version to use when she drinks it, not when she brews it (part of what makes it such a neat spell). So because of that, the guard would actually pick which effect he wanted, and probably wouldn't pick the sleep. Thus, no save is necessary.

Not to say there aren't other alchemist self-only effects that can cause problems on unwilling targets due to the save thing, just not this one.

[Balkoth]

Wow, thanks for the quick clarification!

[Tacticslion]

Mark Seifter wrote:

Like QuidEst said, technically polypurpose panacea lets the alchemist (or other drinker) make decisions about which version to use when she drinks it, not when she brews it (part of what makes it such a neat spell). So because of that, the guard would actually pick which effect he wanted, and probably wouldn't pick the sleep. Thus, no save is necessary.

Not to say there aren't other alchemist self-only effects that can cause problems on unwilling targets due to the save thing, just not this one.

Thanks for the quick response!

... that makes it a kind of poorly named ability, then, though. There is no real trick inside of that treat, unless she just slips it to the wrong one.

I get the pun, and it's really clever, it's just not indicative of the ability itself.

EDIT: word choice; less excessive, more accurate

[Vikjunk]

Tacticslion wrote:

... that makes it a kind of poorly named ability, then, though. There is no real trick inside of that treat, unless she just slips it to the wrong one.

I get the pun, and it's really clever, it's just not indicative of the ability itself.

Just give the guard a treat that isn't designated to them. They have to keep making a fort save until they succeed or be nauseated each round.

Also they are effected by a scar hex like effect if they fail the first save for a number of days as the characters witch level. So the guard would be easy to scry and can be targeted by any harmful hexes as long as they are within a mile of the witch.

So it can be pretty tricky if a player is smart enough to exploit it. Either to use it as an opening move to try to get the drop on an intelligent enemy by trying to make him waste a turn or two while they try to get rid of the nauseated condition. Or as a way of spying on someone, since they may not connect that the treat was magical and just think your witch is a bad cook. So the witch can most likely get away while the creature is trying to get rid of the nausea.

[Mark Seifter]

Tacticslion wrote:

Mark Seifter wrote:

Like QuidEst said, technically polypurpose panacea lets the alchemist (or other drinker) make decisions about which version to use when she drinks it, not when she brews it (part of what makes it such a neat spell). So because of that, the guard would actually pick which effect he wanted, and probably wouldn't pick the sleep. Thus, no save is necessary.

Not to say there aren't other alchemist self-only effects that can cause problems on unwilling targets due to the save thing, just not this one.

Thanks for the quick response!

... that makes it a kind of poorly named ability, then, though. There is no real trick inside of that treat, unless she just slips it to the wrong one.

I get the pun, and it's really clever, it's just not indicative of the ability itself.

EDIT: word choice; less excessive, more accurate

I didn't name the ability, but Vikjunk is correct as far as I can tell. The tricky part is "Anyone else that eats the sweet becomes nauseated (Fortitude negates); a creature nauseated by the sweet can attempt a new saving throw each round at the end of its turn to end this effect. A creature that fails its initial save is also affected as per the scarUM hex for a number of days equal to the witch’s witch level, except that at extended range, the witch can use only harmful hexes on the creature." The goodberry/panacea option is the treat.

[Tacticslion]

Ah, gotcha. That makes sense. :)

[the David]

QuidEst wrote:

Polypurpse Panacea gives options, and the choice made at creation seems to just be Goodberry vs. Polypurpose Panacea. So if a GM doesn't like it, it's reasonable to rule that the person eating it chooses which option to use from the spell.

Anyway, Spell Hex helps out on DCs at high levels.

Well, it does say "as determined at creation", not "as determined at consumption". I'd assume the person creating the Tricky Treat also gets to determine the effect, much like the creater of a potion gets to determine the effect of a potion.

Polypurpose Panacea does designate the iser instead of the caster. That's odd.