Enlarge person spell, how would use handle this...


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion


Have a player in my game who uses a bow as their main weapon. He is part cleric and as the ability enlarge person, he is wanting to craft large arrows since arrows would shrink to their normal size and do normal damage.

Looking for thoughts from GMs on how they would handle this. I've never had this sort of request before. My thinking would be hauling these larger arrows around could be an inconvenience and get in the way when he is normal size. Plus the added weight of the larger item.


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It's really a nonissue...

For one, the Efficient Quiver, or whatever it is called, is quite popular and has extradimensional spaces... making the size irrelevant. If it can hold javelins and bows, it can hold large arrows. Even without the magic quiver, it is easy enough to just drop it and pick it up, or let it grow with you and the arrows shrink to large, who cares, sames difference...

Secondly, carrying a large quiver of large arrows really shouldn't be where you start looking for realism. Seriously, THAT is hard to believe... out of everything, a large quiver of large arrows? It sounds like you just don't want the person to do it... for whatever reason.

At that point, just say no. Don't give any BS excuse about it being unrealistic... just tell them no. Maybe you are afraid the extra damage will upset balance or some other BS.


Carrying around larger arrows is a common way to circumvent the contradicting nature of Enlarge/Reduce Person in which archers are given the middle finger. I'd allow it, and don't see any reason not to. Enlarging means they're taking a -2 accuracy penalty so the increase in dmg isn't all that.

Enlarge Person wrote:
All equipment worn or carried by a creature is similarly enlarged by the spell. Melee weapons affected by this spell deal more damage (see Table: Tiny and Large Weapon Damage). Other magical properties are not affected by this spell. Any enlarged item that leaves an enlarged creature's possession (including a projectile or thrown weapon) instantly returns to its normal size. This means that thrown and projectile weapons deal their normal damage. Magical properties of enlarged items are not increased by this spell.
Reduce Person wrote:
Melee and projectile weapons deal less damage. Other magical properties are not affected by this spell. Any reduced item that leaves the reduced creature's possession (including a projectile or thrown weapon) instantly returns to its normal size. This means that thrown weapons deal their normal damage (projectiles deal damage based on the size of the weapon that fired them).


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Large arrow: "weight" is doubled for Large sized weapons, so 20 Large common arrows would weigh 6 lbs.

Enlarge Person says the creature affected doubles its height and weight is multiplied by 8. This effect also changes the size of gear. If the Cleric has the arrows ON them when they size change their arrows become Huge; even if they revert to Large once fired, they'd take a penalty for using the wrong sized ammo in their bow initially.

That being said, if the Cleric removes the quiver of Large sized arrows, uses Enlarge Person, then re-equips the quiver, they would be Large sized and appropriate for the now-enlarged bow they're wielding. This doesn't seem to be at odds with the RAW so those actions should be fine. The Cleric DOES need to carry Medium sized ammo as well though for times when the character and their bow are not enlarged. So long as they have the carrying capacity to spare, I don't see an issue.


OldSkoolGamer wrote:

Have a player in my game who uses a bow as their main weapon. He is part cleric and as the ability enlarge person, he is wanting to craft large arrows since arrows would shrink to their normal size and do normal damage.

Looking for thoughts from GMs on how they would handle this. I've never had this sort of request before. My thinking would be hauling these larger arrows around could be an inconvenience and get in the way when he is normal size. Plus the added weight of the larger item.

I personally would allow it. The Cleric is taking a -2 penalty just to be able to fire arrows that deal 2d6 damage instead of 1d8. Damage dice aren't generally what makes for most of the damage. It generally comes from adding up static bonus.

As for the weight, it's not even that heavy. A large weapon weight double what a medium weapon would. A quiver of 20 medium arrows is 3 Lbs. Which means a quiver of 20 large arrow would be 6 lbs, which is aproximatively the weight of 3 javelins.

The Efficient Quiver VoodistMonk mentionned is also an excellent solution.


Those large arrows would never be the right size unless he makes a point of dropping the quiver before casting Enlarge Person on himself. Since his equipment would be enlarged with him, the arrows would become huge and still be unusable with his now large bow. And, of course, those arrows would be completely unusable when he is not enlarged.

So the whole process would be too much trouble unless he has a few rounds to set everything up just right.


Anything involving Enlarge Person generally takes time to setup... and they should probably be rewarded for that investmemt.


Step 1. Hire a hireling, or else work out a deal with another PC

Step 2. Establish a plan that the hireling or other PC carries a quiver of Large arrows for the PC Cleric

Step 3. Before a battle the Cleric Casts Enlarge Person on themselves; the hireling or other PC then hands them the arrows.

In cases where the party is ambushed or caught Flat Footed the Cleric may need to do slightly less damage. Otherwise this method would only eat up 1 round of what is a 1 Minute/CL spell. I'm with VM in that the PC(s) should be rewarded for such foresight and preparation.


I would go ahead and allow the damage as though the arrows were large, it's not all that much extra per shot, and there are far easier ways of getting 2-3 extra points of damage per shot.


Definitely not RAW, but it seems to me this is one of those times when the devs were inconsistent in their thinking/rules. It seems to me that even if the large arrow shrinks to medium, it should still do more damage, as it was being launched from a larger bow with greater than normal strength for the character. If that wasn't/isn't the case, then why wouldn't the small arrow that grows to medium do normal medium sized damage with reduce person?

My point, when you find an inconsistency in the rules, gonna be to make a house/table/GM call that creates consistency. Either have all effects go on weapon size at point of impact, or have it go by size of attacker, not a bit of both.


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On the main topic: As mentioned, the Cleric would have to drop the quiver with the large arrows, spend the rull-round action to buff themself, and pick up the quiver again. Since the damage change is +3.5 (longbow) or +4.5 (hornbow or either in combination with Gravity Bow), but there's a -2 to attack rolls, this is comperable to Deadly Aim, and thus definitely within the realm of a 1st level spell.

On Enlarge Person vs. Reduce Person: Looking at the respective versions from 3.5, Reduce Person was almost fully copy pasted from 3.5, but Enlarge Person's part about projectiles was changed - where the 3.5 version said "Melee and projectile weapons affected by this spell deal more damage (...) Any enlarged item that leaves an enlarged creature’s possession (including a projectile or thrown weapon) instantly returns to its normal size. This means that thrown weapons deal their normal damage, and projectiles deal damage based on the size of the weapon that fired them.", the PF version says "Melee weapons affected by this spell deal more damage (...) Any enlarged item that leaves an enlarged creature’s possession (including a projectile or thrown weapon) instantly returns to its normal size. This means that thrown and projectile weapons deal their normal damage."

Most notable, the two texts use the exact same wording for the size change, but with a different "this means that" interpretation. Which makes me wonder whether this was a deliberate nerf, or a change made ebcause of some idea of realism. As in one of the Paizo devs thinking "It doesn't make sense that the spell says the projectile shrinks, but also says it keeps the increased damage. Imma change it." and simply forgot to also change Reduce Person. Since the spells try to give reason for their effects on projectiles, but give different, mutually exclusive explanations, I actually think this was an oversight and not a deliberate choice to nerf archers. As the change to Enlarge Person was an intentional edit for PF, that's the 'correct' version, and Reduce Person should be adjusted to match it.
This actually matches the description of Gravity Bow, which (flavor-wise) alters the projectiles, in line with the concept that in PF the damage is based on those, not the weapon that fired them. To my knowledge, Gravity Bow is a Paizo invention and didn't exist in 3.5.


I had an sorc/ zen archer / arcane archer that did this. He carried two efficient quivers like is said above, then also cast gravity bow. I found it to be a pretty easy solution.


I think they did this to stop a player from picking up a 200Lbs(1600LBs enlarged) rock and tossing it.

In the spell text it reads doubling its height and multiplying its weight by 8.

However in all other texts a size increase from medium to large weight of all weapons and armor is only increased by 2 along with carry capacity by 2 so it evens out.

So you could homebrew it and just say a rock or anything else would only be x2 instead of the x8 and allow a person to just use the enlarged arrows.

The down side to this is that you can still pick up that 200Lbs rock, making it 400 with enlarged and you only need base 8 STR. (8+2 from enlarge = 10 STR, 100 max heavy load x2 from size increase x2 from dead lift)

You could say that a level 1 spell can only effect so much mass and the rock would not be effected, but then you couldn't do it to a large friendly NPC and make them Huge.

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