Remastered Trick Magic Item could be quite good?


Pathfinder Second Edition General Discussion


I noticed that Trick Magic Item might end up being pretty powerful in the hands of any spellcaster for using scrolls/wands of other traditions. Since spellcasting profiency is now universal and TMI lets you use your highest mental attribute, you would effectively activate them with the same DC and spell attack bonus as spells from your own slots.

So a cleric with a Wand of Synesthesia is a real possibility. And I think it should work on staves, so a staff holding spells from other traditions can actually become pretty useful. Scroll Trickster also looks much more appealing all of a sudden.

This all depends on how the feat will be worded exactly, but if it doesn't stray too far from its pre-master iteration, I think I want it for most of my casters going forward.

Liberty's Edge

That is a good point. I tend to use Trick for my Martial PCs with Assurance to reliably cast scrolls, especially the good ole Longstrider lvl2 in the morning and the like.

I will be looking at my Caster PCs differently.


I am pretty sure that this line would prevent that from happening:

Trick Magic Item wrote:
If you activate a magic item that requires a spell attack roll or spell DC and you don’t have the ability to cast spells of the relevant tradition, use your level as your proficiency bonus and the highest of your Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma modifiers.

In short, unless you have a dedication involving that tradition of spell, this would overwrite whatever spell proficiency you would be able to use, so Wand of Synesthesia would take a third action and only have a Save DC of Level plus Wisdom, which is easy to pass at any level, and only gets easier with levels.

I also don't think that this feat is meant to make you more potent with activated items than with actual slots, since being able to utilize Wisdom for a save DC of an effect that was originally Charisma feels quite imbalanced, and this is already balanced by the factor that you have significantly reduced proficiencies; removing that would make the feat too powerful.


But for the remaster you can no longer be proficient in one tradition and not in another one. You are only proficient in all spellcasting, period.

And I think there's plenty of balancing factors already in place. Using items costs money and requires hands, which is especially awkward for one use items like wands and scrolls. You still need to spend an extra action for TMI and succeed at a skill check. A high Occultism bonus isn't exactly something you frequently see on a cleric.

And that's even ignoring the fact that options already exist to use spells with other ability scores like a deity's granted spells for clerics or Divine Access oracles. Or Crossblooded Evolution. So I don't really think attributes are tied to specific spells as a balancing factor.


Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

I am pretty sure that this line would prevent that from happening:

Trick Magic Item wrote:
If you activate a magic item that requires a spell attack roll or spell DC and you don’t have the ability to cast spells of the relevant tradition, use your level as your proficiency bonus and the highest of your Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma modifiers.
In short, unless you have a dedication involving that tradition of spell, this would overwrite whatever spell proficiency you would be able to use,

I'm with Blave on this one. Using the wording of pre-Remaster TMI and pointing out how it makes a distinction between proficiencies of spellcasting traditions doesn't make much sense.

Manually updating/homebrewing TMI to what I expect post-Remaster TMI to be, it wouldn't have that distinction. A non-spellcaster using TMI would use their level and attribute modifier only, but any character that has general spellcasting proficiency is going to use that proficiency when using TMI to cast from off-tradition items.


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Blave wrote:

But for the remaster you can no longer be proficient in one tradition and not in another one. You are only proficient in all spellcasting, period.

And I think there's plenty of balancing factors already in place. Using items costs money and requires hands, which is especially awkward for one use items like wands and scrolls. You still need to spend an extra action for TMI and succeed at a skill check. A high Occultism bonus isn't exactly something you frequently see on a cleric.

And that's even ignoring the fact that options already exist to use spells with other ability scores like a deity's granted spells for clerics or Divine Access oracles. Or Crossblooded Evolution. So I don't really think attributes are tied to specific spells as a balancing factor.

It's not a proficiency thing, it's a "can you cast Occult spells" thing. Clerics cannot innately cast Occult spells, so they cannot cheese TMI with their own spellcasting. It's not a proficiency check, it's a class feature check.

The difference between TMI and those class-specific options are because those options are, well, class-specific, and are only a small subset of options. Whereas TMI is any spell/magic item published anywhere.


Again, this feels like you aren't considering how Trick Magic Item is going to change in the Remaster.

Separated casting proficiencies are going away. Post-Remaster Clerics don't have the ability to put Occult spells into their prepared spell slots, but they have just as much proficiency and ability to cast Occult spells as they do Divine ones. They could get said Occult spells from a Psychic archetype, or an innate spell from an Ancestry feat.

What does that fact mean for Trick Magic Item?


breithauptclan wrote:
Post-Remaster Clerics don't have the ability to put Occult spells into their prepared spell slots, but they have just as much proficiency and ability to cast Occult spells as they do Divine ones.

The bolded part is the same as the RAW for overwriting the proficiency bonus, meaning the unbolded part doesn't matter in determining what your proficiency for the activation is. The Cleric doesn't get their full spellcasting progression because you do not have a Spellcasting feature for Occult spells; it is for Divine spells, meaning you are forced to follow the RAW of the feat.

The feat is designed to let non-magic users (or magic users of different traditions) make use of tradition-based items, and implements a specific scale for feats. I highly doubt the feat was written with the intent of transferring spell proficiency between traditions so easily.

Now, if the RAW for TMI changes, then that is a different story. But RAW for the current print is clear: No Occult Spellcasting feature, then the altered/implemented spell attack/DC is in place instead of your original proficiency modifier. Really, the factor you can still use your Wisdom is bonus enough, instead of being forced to default to Charisma, as is the case for every other item type in the game.


Darksol the Painbringer wrote:
Now, if the RAW for TMI changes, then that is a different story. But RAW for the current print is clear:

Then I recommend that you re-read the title of this thread again.

Liberty's Edge

breithauptclan wrote:
Darksol the Painbringer wrote:
Now, if the RAW for TMI changes, then that is a different story. But RAW for the current print is clear:
Then I recommend that you re-read the title of this thread again.

But the OP stated "if it doesn't stray too far from its pre-master iteration, I think I want it for most of my casters going forward."

Pre-master iteration is what DS wrote.


My point is that since Blave and I are speculating about what the post-Remaster version of TMI may provide and Darksol is hollering that we are reading the current version of TMI wrong, that we aren't actually in contradiction and can stop arguing about it. We can instead continue speculating in peace about what the future version of TMI may bring and wait a few weeks to see if we are right or not.


breithauptclan wrote:
My point is that since Blave and I are speculating about what the post-Remaster version of TMI may provide and Darksol is hollering that we are reading the current version of TMI wrong, that we aren't actually in contradiction and can stop arguing about it. We can instead continue speculating in peace about what the future version of TMI may bring and wait a few weeks to see if we are right or not.

My bad, then. I thought we were arguing that because we can use proficiency for any given tradition that it would override the feat text, which I was trying to point out that, RAW, it is the opposite. If we were simply talking about hypotheticals, then I suppose I can drop that part of the discussion.

Even despite that, I don't think they will change this, since it seems to be an obvious and deliberate limitation set forth by the feat, unless Paizo feels the math won't break if they change it.

They might change the language slightly, maybe to specifically cite this as a possibility, but otherwise I don't think so.


My hypotheticals on the wording is that it will have the level + highest mental attribute bonus as a fallback for completely non-spellcasters.

For spellcasters though, I'm expecting it would use the standard shared spellcasting proficiency that the character already has. It would take more words for the feat and make it a lot more complicated in order to keep a tradition difference in that one feat. In addition to making it not match the new pattern of pretty much everything else in the game. Innate spells, archetype spells, probably even spells from spellhearts look like they will just be using 'spellcasting proficiency' with no tradition distinction.


They kind of have to change the language. Otherwise a single innate cantrip of the target tradition would fulfill the "able to cast spells of that tradition" condition in which case it would automatically use your spellcasting proficiency all the way up to legendary.

I just hope they retain using the highest mental attribute. But then again, I still think highest mental attribute should also be used for all innate spells because charisma is ridiculusly overloaded in comparison to the other two.


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Blave wrote:

They kind of have to change the language. Otherwise a single innate cantrip of the target tradition would fulfill the "able to cast spells of that tradition" condition in which case it would automatically use your spellcasting proficiency all the way up to legendary.

I just hope they retain using the highest mental attribute. But then again, I still think highest mental attribute should also be used for all innate spells because charisma is ridiculusly overloaded in comparison to the other two.

There is this rule:

Innate Spells wrote:
Certain spells are natural to your character, typically coming from your ancestry or a magic item. You gain the ability to Cast a Spell and use any spellcasting actions necessary to cast your innate spells; since this magic is innate, you can replace any material component with a somatic component. Innate spells don't let you qualify for abilities that require you to be a spellcaster.

While this is more for item activations than anything, it probably stands to reason that feats count as abilities in this case, meaning TMI will still require that you have such a feature, of which means you need to possess the Basic Spellcasting benefits of a given class at the bare minimum, if not be a member of that class, to do so.

I imagine the "highest mental attribute" thing will stay, but I would expect the proficiency levels of this feat to remain the same (level for trained, trained for master, expert for legendary), and still override whatever proficiencies you otherwise have.


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Can someone with the books please check what Trick Magic Item says now?


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Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber
Blave wrote:
Can someone with the books please check what Trick Magic Item says now?

Wording for TMI between CRB and Player Core appears to be identical, so no change to its function.


Thank you so much for checking!

So it seems to be an exception to the universal spell proficiency. That's a shame, really.

Liberty's Edge

I guess it would have been Too Good To Be True.


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The Raven Black wrote:
I guess it would have been Too Good To Be True.

Definitely; while spell proficiency has been streamlined, the factor you could utilize a non-traditional spell just as well as (if not potentially better than) a class who has that tradition would be extremely unfair as an advantage from this skill feat.

Yes, the feat is meant to let you utilize spells and effects that you otherwise couldn't before, but it has a set progression that is specifically worse for a reason, and that is so it's not that prevalent to "poach" spells from other traditions while maintaining your actual spellcasting potency.

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