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For some reason I thought Tears to Wine had Personal range, but it actually targets a liquid, whose volume increases with levels.
It doesn't take many levels to get it to affect enough liquid to serve an entire army, for quite a long time. A 11th level cleric with a Bead of Karma could give the whole party +10 bonus on many relevant skills with a 2nd level spell, for hours. A Shaman could do the same, with a 1st level spell.
Does all this make sense?
It is a spell that has a duration of 10 min. per level. I've run the math before and I want to say that once a caster hits 11th level or so they can reasonably make any spell that has a duration of 10 min. per level last all day using only 1 spell slot (via a combination of rods of extension and pearls of power).
So, in that sense it seems reasonable. If you're asking if it seems OP that this a thing you can do... well that's quite different.
It might be a problem. The part that jumps out at me is that its an enhancement bonus. This means that stacking with other spells and effects could be a problem. However, its an enhancement bonus to the skill check its self. Meaning it would stack in most cases.
IOW. if you are wearing gear that gives a +6 enhancement bonus to intelligence and then cast this spell. The two effects would stack giving you a +13 to all intelligence based skill checks. The only limiting factor I see is that beads of karma are 20k a pop. So, at the very least it could get quite expensive to fully take advantage of it (before 15th level).
1 cu ft / 2 levels = 7 cu ft at CL15
1 ft^3 = 7.48 gallons
7 ft^3 = 52.36 gallons, or 6702.08 ounces
So at caster level 15, you would have enough to nearly fill a 55 gallon oil drum.
Since it does not actually say how much you need to drink in the spell description, it looks like it's up to GM interpretation as to how much you actually have to drink in order to gain the benefits. Personally, I'd say 8 ounces minimum.
If you choose to go with 8 ounces, it could serve 837.76 people. Or if you choose 16 ounces, you're looking at serving 418.88 people. Regardless, a CL15 would easily be able to serve their entire party and then some.
The standard serving size for wine and mead 5oz. I know, I know, but there are standards. It also makes the math easier, which is why the standard is 5 anyway, it gives you 5 pours from a standard bottle. 1 cubic foot is about 200 ounces, so you're serving plenty at minimum level.
I am curious whether or not the conversion to alcohol is permanent with only the buff having a duration, or if the alcohol reverts after the time limit, or if the alcohol stops giving the buff after the time limit and the buff lasts till the end of the time limit from moment of casting. It's a cool spell regardless of my confusion.
I am curious whether or not the conversion to alcohol is permanent with only the buff having a duration, or if the alcohol reverts after the time limit, or if the alcohol stops giving the buff after the time limit and the buff lasts till the end of the time limit from moment of casting. It's a cool spell regardless of my confusion.
The spell doesn't specify anything other than 10m/level. Personally, I'd say the liquid exists for 10m/lvl, and so does the buff it provides, and even if you drink the wine 1 minute before the spell expires, the buff itself would expire with it.
I think any other type of ruling would allow for abuse, because you could have the buff last for the duration from the time you drank it, and the wine can last for a long time. Like, imagine if your CL15 caster had Extend Spell MM rod, so now it's lasting for 300 minutes, so that's 5 hours. So the party fills up their+ Wineskins with +10 Int/Wis skill for 300 minutes and each of them takes a drink at 8am... so that +10 lasts til 1pm when the spell expires, but just before the spell expires, the party takes one last drink, and has the buff last another 300 minutes until 6pm and that's 10 hours of +10 Int/Wis checks for a level 1-2ish spell and 1 charge from a 3,000gp MM rod. That's just straight up abuse of an already powerful spell.
You wouldn't even need shenanigans with the most generous ruling. 1 cubic foot of wine would give you enough buffs throughout the day that it's duration would never matter even as a first level bard casting the spell. Unless a first level bard gets 0 cubic feet that is.
I'd say the buff lasts 10 minutes per level from time of casting, but the wine is permanent. Mostly due to the "This spell does not prevent subsequent natural decay or spoilage" line, and I don't like reverting ingestable items. Players like to be tricky with that sort of thing. Locking the buff duration to point of casting rather than ingestion does seem necessary though.
I went with 1 drink = 1 pint. Since 1 Cubic Ft = 59.8441524 Pints (US), you get ~60 drinks per cubic foot.
/cevah
Mead appears to sell for 2 gold per gallon. At 7.48 gallons per cubic foot, we get 7.48 gold per caster level except on odd levels. Selling spells as a service gets you 10gp per caster level times spell level, so even if cast as a first level spell you're still making less money selling your mead than selling the spell itself. It's probably easier to find places to sell the mead, but I don't think it's too big a problem.
I have used the spell as a character, and after some discussion with the ref the rulings were:
- it affects all the party members who are willing to drink it, and as many irrelevant NPCs as you want to give it to.
- the buff duration is calculated from the time the spell is cast.
- it’s average quality wine, and it fills whatever container you cast the spell into. Unless that’s a large barrel most of it will overflow, and be lost. If you don’t have some sort of sealing process standing ready it will be rough drinking tomorrow, and undrinkable the day after.
Keep in mind that tears to wine (unlike create water) doesn't actually generate any liquid. It merely converts an existing liquid for the duration of the spell after which it returns to whatever it was before. It changes back on its own since the duration isn't instantaneous (the same as any other transmutation spell).
I don't see how the spell would suffer from spillage unless the original liquid has these issues. The character would need to provide the liquid to be converted which presumably is already in a container of some sort. As for it spoiling, just because it is subject to natural spoilage that doesn't mean its actually around long enough to be a problem. Unless mid quality wine normally goes bad a few hours after it's been made. I think the line is there to make clear that there isn't any sort of preservation effect in place. So, if you entered a plane where everything ages faster than normal the wine would similarly age.
My GM ruled that the physical transmutation was permanent, both because of the "natural decay or spoilage" language and to avoid drinkers ending up with stomachs full of blood or sewage or acid or whatever at end of spell duration, which is clearly not the spell intent. However, my GM also ruled that the spell effect was so strong and the buff so good (at higher levels) that only the first person drinking of the wine within the spell duration gets the buff effect (for the remainder of the duration), after which the rest of the wine becomes nonmagical. This is obviously a house rule, but it seemed reasonable to me, as a strong buff that could effect hundreds seems overpowered for a spell of this level.