The Learn A Spell general skill says the following:
I thought that when you added or swapped spells as part of leveling up, you could just pick from whatever the GM allowed, and they were free.
You didn't have to pay to learn them, interact with an NPC for several hours, then make a check to see if you succeeded.
What am I missing? If they are free, then I don't see why that passage should even exist, short of introducing unique or homebrew spells via an NPC or something.
Arcane sorcerers can have a spellbook and swap one spell from the book into their spell repertoire for the day. I assumed that that was what this was referring to.
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This only applies to Uncommon or rarer spells, I think. Sorcerers can select Common spells to add to their repertoire or swap when they level up. But if they want to learn an Uncommon spell, they have to find someone to teach it to them.
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I believe that is intended to reference uncommon spells which you have to learn before they are available for you on level up.
Arcane sorcerers can have a spellbook and swap one spell from the book into their spell repertoire for the day. I assumed that that was what this was referring to.
This.
Also, you probably need to pay if you come across any uncommon/rare spells and want to add them to your repertoire, since your class only allows you to add common spells by default.
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Where are the rules saying you can't learn uncommon spells for free? I thought uncommon was just a GM-can-restrict-it-if-he-wants kind of guideline.
Where are the rules saying you can't learn uncommon spells for free? I thought uncommon was just a GM-can-restrict-it-if-he-wants kind of guideline.
The Learn a Spell skill activity. For uncommon spells you have to have a teacher who knows it or a written source, and Learn a Spell is how you translate it into your book, a repertoire choice, or a Druid/Cleric prep option.
“You can gain access to a new spell of your tradition from someone who knows that spell or from magical writing like a spellbook or scroll.”
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*Reads Skill*
That doesn't actually say you can't learn uncommon spells by normal means. It just says you CAN learn them if you encounter them in some other way.
In particular, I'm wondering if, when I start a character at higher level, do they need to pay for Uncommon spells from their starting funds.
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Starting higher levels, it says you talk with your GM.
The starting at higher level WBL for the character indicates two methods:
Either you give the player a lump sum and they spend however they want or they pick x items level and get some money.
As for access to uncommon or rare items, it's GM discretion for character creation so officially by the rules, when creating a higher level characters...no you don't get uncommon stuff without GM permission basically.
At your discretion, you can grant the player character
uncommon or rare items that fit their backstory and
concept, keeping in mind how many items of those rarities
you have introduced into your game.
You can read about it on p. 511 at item selection for the section about Treasure for new characters.
The Lump sum method doesn't even allow uncommon stuffs in the first place.
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Starting higher levels, it says you talk with your GM.The starting at higher level WBL for the character indicates two methods:
Either you give the player a lump sum and they spend however they want or they pick x items level and get some money.
As for access to uncommon or rare items, it's GM discretion for character creation so officially by the rules, when creating a higher level characters...no you don't get uncommon stuff without GM permission basically.
At your discretion, you can grant the player character
uncommon or rare items that fit their backstory and
concept, keeping in mind how many items of those rarities
you have introduced into your game.
You can read about it on p. 511 at item selection for the section about Treasure for new characters.
The Lump sum method doesn't even allow uncommon stuffs in the first place.
I just spent HOURS recalculating my character's starting funds under the assumption that she had to pay for her uncommon spells, as well as a bunch of crafting formulas, both common and uncommon. All so that she might stand a chance of being accepted at whatever table she might end up at.
Are you seriously telling me that, though the Learn a Spell skill seems to allow me buy my way into uncommon spells, I'm still blocked because the Lump Sum option (which is what I was using) is only limited to Common items!?
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Rarity is specifically so the GM can decide what you can get. Having anything thats not common on your character sheet requires GM-permission.
If you could just add it and every GM would have to accept it, it would make the whole rarity system rather pointless, don't you think?
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Rarity is specifically so the GM can decide what you can get. Having anything thats not common on your character sheet requires GM-permission.
If you could just add it and every GM would have to accept it, it would make the whole rarity system rather pointless, don't you think?
They could do that with common items anyways. That's not really my concern.
I'm just trying to understand the rules and find some sort of baseline so that I can start making characters.
Not being able to take any uncommon anything without a GM limits nearly every character concept I have or could ever have.
I could understand disallowing rare items right away, and even making uncommon items harder to get, but this isn't that.
This wouldn't be as much of an issue if so many iconic spells and items didn't fall into that category.
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Clearly, the only SANE thing left for me (or anyone for that matter) to do is to ignore item rarity entirely (despite all the hard rules restrictions), make whatever characters I want, then check them with the GM once I have a game and GM to check them with.
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Clearly, the only SANE thing left for me (or anyone for that matter) to do is to ignore item rarity entirely (despite all the hard rules restrictions), make whatever characters I want, then check them with the GM once I have a game and GM to check them with.
Which uncommon items are so build-defining that your whole characer concept crumbles if you don't have access to them?
This is not meant to sound snarky, by the way. I'm seriously curious since uncommon items (or even spells) don't seem that important to me, but maybe I'm missing something.
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Clearly, the only SANE thing left for me (or anyone for that matter) to do is to ignore item rarity entirely (despite all the hard rules restrictions), make whatever characters I want, then check them with the GM once I have a game and GM to check them with.Which uncommon items are so build-defining that your whole characer concept crumbles if you don't have access to them?
This is not meant to sound snarky, by the way. I'm seriously curious since uncommon items (or even spells) don't seem that important to me, but maybe I'm missing something.
Concept is a that of a sorcerer spy who pretends to be a harmless old woman and hides her magic.
Uncommon SPELLS needed for the concept to be effective are detect scrying, dominate, false vision, glibness, magic aura, mind probe, and nondetection.
Uncommon ITEMS include the greater clandestine cloak.
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Clearly, the only SANE thing left for me (or anyone for that matter) to do is to ignore item rarity entirely (despite all the hard rules restrictions), make whatever characters I want, then check them with the GM once I have a game and GM to check them with.Which uncommon items are so build-defining that your whole characer concept crumbles if you don't have access to them?
This is not meant to sound snarky, by the way. I'm seriously curious since uncommon items (or even spells) don't seem that important to me, but maybe I'm missing something.
Concept is a that of a sorcerer spy who pretends to be a harmless old woman and hides her magic.
Uncommon SPELLS needed for the concept to be effective are detect scrying, dominate, false vision, glibness, magic aura, mind probe, and nondetection.
Uncommon ITEMS include the greater clandestine cloak.
Just ask your GM dude. The character you are talking about making is a perfect example of why these things are worth checking in on. There are two dangerous scenarios here if you don't find out what kind of game you are playing first:
1) None of those are going to be relevant in this game and you just wasted a bunch of resources picking useless spells. These sorts of things just aren't going to matter much in your standard dungeon crawl, for example. You are incredibly frustrated.
2) These spells are capable of break open whatever social/espionage based campaign your GM planned and make them incredibly frustrated.
So talk to your GM and see if they can meet you somewhere in the middle. If they can't, make a different character. This is also a good way to signal to your GM what kind of game you are looking to play, in case they can figure out a way to make those abilities relevant for you. If they think these spells won't cause problems, they can just let you take them at no additional cost.
But assuming you can build a character with no consideration for the specific campaign you are going to be playing in is some really bad player entitlement, IMO.
I don't think you actually need all of that? Scrying itself is an Uncommon spell, the standards for what you need to be too sneaky for an average wizard to find are much lower in PF2 than they are in PF1.
See, that's just the thing about rarity. The CRB chose to show us some cool beans that we can't have, not right out of the starting gate, anyway.
Would it have been better if they kept only common items and spells in the CRB and saved all the cool beans for upcoming publications?
IMHO, showing us some of the cool beans that we can't have at character creation creates a kind of built-in "promise of desire" effect. It shows us things we can try to get through our adventuring career, but that we can't have, right out of the gate. Unless the DM decides to handwave rarity.
I think that the fall out of things like Create Undead not being in the CRB at all would have been more severe than that.
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I don't think you actually need all of that? Scrying itself is an Uncommon spell, the standards for what you need to be too sneaky for an average wizard to find are much lower in PF2 than they are in PF1.
Scrying is so bad now that I don't know why anyone would want it.
"Yep, that's him alright."
"What's he saying?"
"Don't know, can't hear."
"Where is he?"
"Don't know, can't see around him very well."
"What's he doing?"
"Reading and picking his nose."
"Well, let me know when he does something interesting."
"It better be soon, this spell only lasts 9 and a half more minutes, and then--"
"What happened?"
"He walked out of the picture. I can't see him anymore."
"What?!"
"I guess he didn't critically fail his save. Too bad."
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Sorry-not-sorry, this whole "ask your GM" thing really, REALLY doesn't cut it for me in the rules forum.
There should be a baseline for acquiring uncommon spells/items/feats/etc for something as simple as, say, acquiring a Kukri to use as a weapon. This shouldn't require a feat to obtain either, especially not one tied to a class, because then you're just restricting the availability of the item or feature even further.
I really don't see the justification of rarity of certain things. Absalom really doesn't have weaponsmiths that produce uncommon items that cost 6 silver pieces? Wizards from Tien Xia really don't sell their research to the world at large?
The only reason a thing is rare is due to geographic location/culture or how abundant the resource the thing requires. So a huge trade city like Absalom shouldn't have a problem acquiring goods and research from all over the world that this book labels as "uncommon." Starfinder did a decent job at resource management with equipment based on level at least, though I still think that system had major flaws too. But at least there you could buy any item of your level+1 in major cities, level in smaller cities, and level -x in towns, villages, etc, and was fairly clear on what sort of stuff was available in resource-scarce locations.
But things like Kukris being rare in a location like Lastwall might make sense (cliche paladin shield and broadsword weapons, flails, and hammers would be common there) but Changdo, with its aescetic martial art schools, will find nunchaku, katanas, and sais; these items wouldn't be uncommon there. Quite the opposite. 1st edition even had that problem; an estoc doesn't necessarily take any more training than a longsword to master, but because the creators decided an estoc was more "exotic" it became a exotic weapon and made people jump through that one extra hoop just to be able to use it properly.
So I kind of went off on a rant there but TL;DR the arbitrary idea of rarity in a game system like this limits character creation and forces players to jump through hoops to make the character they want to play, which could ultimately turn people off from the idea altogether.
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I'd like to invite you to the areas of the book that deal with hitting things with other things until they stop moving. They're actually excellent.
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Clearly, the only SANE thing left for me (or anyone for that matter) to do is to ignore item rarity entirely (despite all the hard rules restrictions), make whatever characters I want, then check them with the GM once I have a game and GM to check them with.Which uncommon items are so build-defining that your whole characer concept crumbles if you don't have access to them?
This is not meant to sound snarky, by the way. I'm seriously curious since uncommon items (or even spells) don't seem that important to me, but maybe I'm missing something.
Concept is a that of a sorcerer spy who pretends to be a harmless old woman and hides her magic.
Uncommon SPELLS needed for the concept to be effective are detect scrying, dominate, false vision, glibness, magic aura, mind probe, and nondetection.
Uncommon ITEMS include the greater clandestine cloak.
Oh, and also a ring of lies. (Now that I'm home from work, I can actually look at the character sheet.)
I'd like to invite you to the areas of the book that deal with hitting things with other things until they stop moving. They're actually excellent.
I'll look into it.
Actually the book literally mentions this in the game mastery section. .. Obviously if you go to a dwarf town, Dwarven weapons aren't uncommon in dwarf town. They are common.
That's great for dwarf weapons, not so much for classic--yet esoteric--things like scrying or teleport spells.
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I do think it's a bit problematic that we're using the same system to define "this is a dwarf item that you'd need to get from a dwarf" and "adding this spell to the narrative seriously changes what is and isn't possible for the party to do and you should think carefully before making it readily available".
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This only applies to Uncommon or rarer spells, I think. Sorcerers can select Common spells to add to their repertoire or swap when they level up. But if they want to learn an Uncommon spell, they have to find someone to teach it to them.Nowhere does it say in the "Learn a Spell" listing that it only applies to non-common spells. I take it to mean any new spells you learn, including those on level up.
Sorcerers have specific language that overrides that and says they just get common spells at level up.
Wizards and other book casters (arcane evolution sorcerer, polymath bard) do have to use Learn a Spell for common spells that aren't provided for in a class feat, like the free limited spells that wizards do get at level up.
or that the word "free" doesn't appear in the section on levelling up in the Sorcerer write up. It is unclear.
Why do you think it needs to? The rules say you gain a spell slot and you add a spell to your repertoire. So.. you do that. Why would a cost factor in at all?
At third level a Sorcerer gains a general feat. It doesn't say that's free either. Do you think there's a gold cost associated with your feat?
What about when Sorcerers become expert in simple weapons at 11? That also doesn't say it's free.
Are all of these 'unclear' too?
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Actually, that's the text from when you select your starting spells. The wording here is confusing, too. "Common" spells or "other" spells? So any spell?
You're leaving out "other spells that you have access to." You don't automatically have access to anything beyond common.
I haven't gotten to the spell list yet, because so much is confusing, but is there a list of common, uncommon, rare, etc. spells somewhere? I haven't been able to find it.
It will be clearer when you look at the spell list. If a spell is not common, the first trait will specify the rarity.
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Sorry, I really don't see what you mean. It is possible to get access to uncommon and rare spells. If you have gotten access through a feat or some other means, those can also be included in your spell repertoire.At first level?
Lets say they make an elf book and in it there is an uncommon 1st level elf spell that all elves can treat as common. That would give access to the spell and you could take it at 1st. That wording is future proofing and it allows various things to grant access. A future adventure might have a spell that anyone that played it can take but for others it's uncommon or rare.