| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
This seems like it could be a thinly veiled "where does life begin" bait thread, but I'll give the OP the benefit of a doubt and withold flagging it until they have a chance to clarify their meaning. I strongly encourage caution and prudence to any who decide to participate.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
In the Pathfinder rules, something can (mechanically) be considered living, but not a creature (such as mundane plants, for example), or a creature, but not or never living (chiefly undead and constructs, respectively). If nothing else, I'm pretty sure an egg does not yet qualify as a creature in the game's rules (it does not have a creature statblock). A grown hippogriff is most certainly a living creature.
Why do you need to know the distinction for an egg, Vipersfang? What's happened in your game to give rise to this sort of question? Some context might allow us to better help you get things on track.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I would agree with Ravingdork. An egg is mechanically an object, and wouldn't be a target for most spells. Even if you wanted to target a nearly-hatched creature inside a shell, I think you'd have line of effect issues.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Even if what's inside the egg counts as a living creature, the egg itself is undoubtedly an object. Since the spell has a range of touch, there would be no way to safely cast the spell on the hippogryff.
Even if what's inside the egg counts as a living creature, the egg itself is undoubtedly an object. Since the spell has a range of touch, there would be no way to safely cast the spell on the hippogryff.
If this is going to be a discussion about total cover, then I have to ask: Why could you not target the creature inside the egg, but you can target a knight completely enveloped in full plate? Is it not a similar circumstance?
I suspect it'd be easier just to say that, until it hatches, both the egg and it's contents should be treated as an object for the purposes of game rule mechanic interactions.
|
Even if what's inside the egg counts as a living creature, the egg itself is undoubtedly an object. Since the spell has a range of touch, there would be no way to safely cast the spell on the hippogryff.
Sounds like OP needs to invest in a few liters of quality vinegar and a sterile room to work in before casting the spell :p
I'd rule that the embryo inside the egg is both alive and targetable by the spell Curse of Lost Time. Ravingdork makes a good point that we generally allow the caster to choose whether they are targetting the armor/clothing of a person or the actual person with a Touch spell.
However, the spell only ages the target "briefly", so that it becomes clumsy and enfeebled for a round, an hour, or indefinitely. Since there is no description of how much aging happens, I take that to mean that the aging is pretty trivial, but it throws off the target's system to make it weak for a time.
So I'd let them use the spell, make the egg age by less than a day, and give the creature within Enfeebled 1 and Clumsy 1. And those conditions are likely to last until the spell is dispelled, given that an embryo is going to have a fortitude save of zero.
It's difficult to say exactly how this would work given what the spell does. I disagree with how Sapient interprets the curse. If a being critically fails the save, they are enfeebled indefinitely, so I don't think it's that the aging is by a trivial amount. Rather, I think that the aging is normally temporary. You are effected by the curse, and it ages you into an elderly being, but then the curse ends and you de-age back into your normal self.
This seems especially true when you look at how it effects held items. If your sword is effected by the curse, it becomes shoddy and you can't repair it until the curse is lifted. This implies to me that "old-ness" is being forced on the target of the curse, and can't be fixed through normal means. If you were to scrape the rust off a sword that is afflicted by the curse, it would just immediately become rusty again as old-ness is still being forced on it.
This actually makes me wonder what the effect would be if you cast the curse on a child. And I don't think it would age them to what they would be if they grew up naturally. Rather, I think they would still be a child, but a child afflicted with the qualities of an elderly person. A weaker body, lower energy, wrinkles, grey hair and the like.
Like imagine how kids shows show kid characters who become old versions of themselves (whether it be in a dream sequence or through time shenanigans, or whatever). They don't ever actually look like adults. They look like children with wrinkles. That's what I think the curse would do to you.
In that regard, I don't think that the curse would help hatch the egg faster. It would just...afflict the egg with old-ness. Make the shell brittle and damaged and almost certainly kill the Hippogriff, which the egg would no longer be able to support.
That said, if you had a different spell that did just age things by a certain amount (probably a MUCH higher level spell than Curse of Lost Time), I think it would work. While I would treat the egg as an object and not a creature for most other purposes, in that case the reason objects would take damage is because inanimate objects tend to whither away with time. But an egg would, of course, hatch long before the effects of time damaged it. So as a GM I would say "Yeah, an egg is an object, not a creature, but in this fringe case it behaves more like a creature because of the nature of what it is".
I don't think it's that the aging is by a trivial amount. Rather, I think that the aging is normally temporary. You are effected by the curse, and it ages you into an elderly being, but then the curse ends and you de-age back into your normal self.....
I don't find that interpretation to be unreasonable. The text is rather unclear as to what is happening narratively. I see the spell as affecting living things differently than objects, but who knows. It does say "briefly ages", which would imply a short process of aging, not a short period of being old. But again, the intent is not clear.
I don't really agree with the idea of applying some aspects of aging (wrinkles, bad backs, etc) without other aspects (physical growth, hormonal changes, etc). I would argue that temporarily inflicting old age on an embryo inside an egg would kill it. It would be if had lived a long time, including getting large, and thus breaking the egg.
There is still the question as to whether the embryo can be targeted by a touch spell through the egg. I think it can. Touch attacks don't require skin-to-skin contact.
If the player wants to speed up the aging of the egg into a fully grown hippogryph I would argue that this is more the room for a carefully researched occult (maybe primal) ritual, not a spell
of course with the right sources (gm set sidequest npc) can lead to a whole sidequest line
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
As I see it, since the spell in question is a curse, and a curse is, by definition, meant to inflict misery and suffering, trying to use that spell to speed-grow a living being should end in misery and suffering.
All GM fiat of course, but trying to 'game' a spell like that ought to get the 'Evil Genie granting a Wish' treatment.