Questions about Magic Jar

[Gronka]

This probably gets in to a sort of grey area, rules wise. This is for a witch character, and I would like to sort some of this out before it becomes an issue.

So say I have the feats "eschew materials", "silent spell", and "still spell".

I cast magic jar, so now I am a soul floating in this little jar. Can I cast a spell that has no components like this? (I realize that probably in this case, the only valid target for the spell would be my familiar, or possibly myself but even that's iffy because I have no life force to detect at the moment).

Next question: if I cast "share senses" to see through my familiar's eyes while I am magic jarred, would this allow me to target specific creatures with the magic jar attack?

The last question is are there any other ways to make sure I don't target a team mate with my magic jar attack? (I don't care so much about being able to hit a specific enemy; I just want to mitigate the chances of hurting my allies by wasting their and my turns).

[CMantle]

This is in no way an official ruling on the matter, but here's my opinion. The official ruling of ability to cast spells is:

"To cast a spell, you must be able to speak (if the spell has a verbal component), gesture (if it has a somatic component), and manipulate the material components or focus (if any). Additionally, you must concentrate to cast a spell."

You took care of the speak, gesture, and material component aspect of the spell. Now you have to consider the last one, concentration. Now, it appears you maintain your mental faculties while in the Magic Jar, so you *can*, theoretically, concentrate enough to cast a spell. That being said there are many things that break or threaten concentration, one of those being affected by a spell.

This section reads: "If you are affected by a spell while attempting to cast a spell of your own, you must make a concentration check or lose the spell you are casting." Then it goes on to detail the exact check for both spells that damage you, and spells that don't damage you. Spells that don't damage you threaten your concentration if: "the spell interferes with you or distracts you in some other way." I would argue that attempting to cast another spell while under the effects of Magic Jar would definitely fit this qualifier. Meaning you *could* cast a spell, but with a concentration check of "[Magic Jar's] saving throw DC + Spell Level of the spell you're attempting to cast"

On to your second question, there is nothing written within the text of Magic Jar that would make being able to see through your familiar help you target a specific creature. It would be similar as if you were blind and were trying to hit someone with "lightning bolt", and used share senses with your familiar to try and hit someone. At best you're having to triangulate (probably the wrong mathematical term for this) the position of the enemy from your familiar's eyes to your position. And Magic Jar is even less precise than a true targeted spell such as lightning bolt. That being said, I think you're being incredibly clever with the whole ordeal and I would allow it as your GM. However I'm not your GM.

Finally, your last question. I don't believe there is. Magic Jar is meant to be a pocket spell, not a go-to. Magic Jar is only safe when you're fighting enemies who are either 4HD below or above your party HD, so you can specifically target within those Hit Die ranges (how I interpret the spell to work). There is no way to target the range of HD that your teammates are included in without threatening to hit one of them, as far as I know.

[Gronka]

CMantle wrote:

Finally, your last question. I don't believe there is. Magic Jar is meant to be a pocket spell, not a go-to. Magic Jar is only safe when you're fighting enemies who are either 4HD below or above your party HD, so you can specifically target within those Hit Die ranges (how I interpret the spell to work). There is no way to target the range of HD that your teammates are included in without threatening to hit one of them, as far as I know.

Ah. Yeah, right now, my plan is to have a familiar (imp for the constant invisibility) hang out with the party with the magic jar gem around his neck, and then when I detect more life forces, have the imp tell the party to back up out of range.

This is really for like fights where we know there is going to be a lot of danger. In one of the PFS scenarios we had to fight a rune lord. We won, but 3 people out of 5 died and everything basically came down to one roll from a kineticist. I was looking for ways to make sure something like that didn't happen again. Being able to magic jar in to one of his minions would have at least kept my body safe

[Dave Justus]

It is my opinion that the phrase 'While in the magic jar, you can sense and attack any life force within ...' is the sum total of what actions you can take while you are in a magic jar.

Even if you don't agree, I would strongly suggest this not be used as a tactic in an environment like PFS. The polite thing to do is to not try and make the GM make hard edge case calls where things aren't clear. If you know that it isn't clear whether or not you can do something it is probably best to use a more standard tactic, for everyone at the tables sake. In a home game you have an opportunity to work this sort of thing out, not so much in a PFS type environment.

I would also say the even if the share senses works, there is no reason to believe that you would be able to correlate the physical beings you are seeing with the life forces your are sensing. You sense 4 beings, 3 weaker and 1 stronger. You see for beings, a Fighter, Rogue, Cleric and Wizard. You have no way to tell which of those 4 that you see is the weaker, or which of the presences you sense is the cleric, since the information on the presences specifically doesn't have a position information. Since your 'targeting sense' for the possession is the presence, the visual information doesn't help you at all.