Meta-Interjection, to avoid misunderstanding:
(I'm sure the regular users know the following; it's addressed primarily to casual users or new players:)
If we write "can't be countered", this does not mean "can't be defended". In fact, the regular defenses against spells - depending on the spell either AC, Fortitude, Reflex, or Will - remain in place as usual; a Subtle trait leaves them unchanged. What is primary topic here is its interference with abilities like the reactions from Feat Counterspell (s. Player Core 1, page 186 or 201, URL pointing to CRB (legacy) description: https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=633). Expanded topic: General spell balance in connection with Subtle trait.
I really hope the find the time to look at subtle spells again, it fees weird, that a level 2 nobody could use this to cast ghost sound or another annoying spell at a big reception, and nobody with magic detection skills really has a chance of finding them.Yes they can be noticed. There are rules for this if there are observers that are actively seeking for it. You can imagine situations where this might be the case, eg guards looking for suspicious behaviour in a crowd because a fireball dropped last round. Then they get a roll.
What are they rolling? And against what DC? Sense motive requires you focus on one target with one action. Imagine putting players in a situation where there were 30 + potential targets all probably trying to get away from an obvious point of danger.
Well you didn’t randomly guess the right one out of 3 tries on the first turn, before everyone is running away, too bad!
Sense motive might work.
Our just a Perception check versus a Stealth or Deception DC. Details and appropriate modifiers are up to the GM. Depends exactly how the initiator describes Subtle as working.
This whole thing feels like a session-zero discussion to have.
I'm fine with it as it is currently written and don't think it's a problem. I'm my Golarion the kind of wizard who would be interested in abusing it is rare and even when they do try such tricks important people and places have security in place to dispell such effects should they become an issue.
If you want your game to work differently or your players and NPCs just love counter-spell make the changes that make it work for you.
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What you are really asking for is the uncommon tag to be put on it - which technically triggers that discussion.
Plus maybe an extra ritual spell that would Ward an area to defeat the effect.
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I don't know about anyone else, but I am getting a bit lost in all of these hypothetical situations where Subtle spells or Conceal Spell is being claimed to work or not work or possibly work depending on dice rolls and which are houserules and which are not.
Does anyone want to put forward a few concrete scenario encounters to better illustrate the mechanics?
Let's see if I can come up with some. Mind you, this is kind of off the cuff. I do have the arcane spell list up to reference.
So we know that there's no explicit means of countering conceal spell. They don't mention anything even though they usually do. If there's nothing to see, then there's nothing to see. The language in the spell claims the manifestations are hidden, but the subtle trait says the spell can be cast "without" them. So...yeah nothing to see, right? This is probably going to turn into a list of creative uses of this feat, maybe with some questions it raises.
1. You could use approximate to get an incorrect count of a given collection of items and nobody would be any the wiser. (Sorry I had to.)
2. If you were in a tight crowd, could you bump up against somebody and shocking grasp them without anybody being sure of who did it? Is having to reach out and touch somebody a manifestation, or is it an explicit thing you have to do, or is it an abstraction of the shortest possible spell range? I dunno!
3. Daze has a range of 60 feet and it doesn't specify that it's a beam or a ray or anything like that. You could torture somebody mentally in public without it being detectable.
4. The same could be said of tortuous trauma, which is explicit in its lack of external evidence.
5. Turn all the lights on and off like Nosferatu in that episode of Spongebob with illuminate.
6. Could you have somebody else in the party (somebody with more hit points) use a reaction to wave their arms around pretending to cast a spell when you cast using concealed spell? Would you need to roll a deception check for that? I guess. How long would it take to wave your arms around as 1 action? The lie activity takes a least a whole round, so I dunno! If I were a player, and my GM told me the rules did not permit me to wave my arms around and go "hbogobugugurhburughauoodlydoo" as a reaction, I'd feel cheated.
7. I want to scare some onion farmer that wouldn't let me sleep in his onion coop or whatever so I conceal cast TKP on anything I have a line of effect to from outside his window. I do this in the middle of the night. Suddenly he's got a poltergeist. Beforehand I conceal cast grease around his bed.
8. I stand around stoically, magically birthing trees in my space by conceal casting timber. The trees fall and vanish. Sometimes they fall on you. I lie and say I'm not doing it and I can't make it stop. To what end? No idea. It's funny.
9. I conceal cast noxious vapors and blame it on my familiar.
10. I'm so boring, I can make people fall asleep by being nearby.
11. Worse yet, sometimes magic items just stop working while I'm around.
12. Two jerks are trying to use a language I don't know to talk about me behind my back, but as it turns out I just cast comprehend language using conceal spell.
13. What if I conceal cast a spell without any obvious effects, such as fly? Surely there are a lot of spells that don't have any immediate or obvious indicators produced by their effects. You'll know when I fly off, but until the time comes you might not.
14. What if I'm being held at glaive point by some henchmen who have readied reactions to strike me if I start casting a spell? What does that reaction key off of? Surely it would key off the manifestations of the magic. If there are no manifestations, do I stand a better chance to get away because *poof* I just turned invisible without doing a four second light show. Can you react to a concealed spell or do you have to wait until the effects of the spell kick in?
I could go on, but uh...yeah.
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I could go on, but uh...yeah.
That's fine. This is a good mix here. Thanks.
So what I am seeing is that some of these are just for fun and harmless. Notably, 1, 5, 7, 12, and 13. I don't see any reason to prevent that from happening. In fact, I think it would be time consuming and pointless - as well as being a bit antagonistic - for the GM to have observers making perception vs stealth check to see if they notice the subtle casting. What are they going to think if they do notice that someone is casting a spell?
Some of these are for while combat is already in progress. 6, 8, and 14 most notably. This is where having a perception vs stealth check to see if the other combatants can notice the spellcasting going on - or correctly identify who is doing the casting - makes the most sense from a game balance perspective.
Then many others are for use in exploration mode or social encounters. Some are likely to start combat - such as casting Shocking Grasp against someone - whether anyone notices the spellcasting itself or not. A lot of these would be a good way to start a skill encounter rather than combat.
Can the party figure out which of the guests at the event is subtle casting Daze (or Malicious Shadow) before the victim dies from the attack: This will play out in 4 rounds. The 4-player party needs to gain 16 Detection Points. Standard skills are Perception DC X to sense motive and notice who is doing the casting, or Diplomacy/Intimidation DC Y to get people to leave the area and eliminate themselves as suspects.
I could go on, but uh...yeah.That's fine. This is a good mix here. Thanks.
So what I am seeing is that some of these are just for fun and harmless. Notably, 1, 5, 7, 12, and 13. I don't see any reason to prevent that from happening. In fact, I think it would be time consuming and pointless - as well as being a bit antagonistic - for the GM to have observers making perception vs stealth check to see if they notice the subtle casting. What are they going to think if they do notice that someone is casting a spell?
Some of these are for while combat is already in progress. 6, 8, and 14 most notably. This is where having a perception vs stealth check to see if the other combatants can notice the spellcasting going on - or correctly identify who is doing the casting - makes the most sense from a game balance perspective.
Then many others are for use in exploration mode or social encounters. Some are likely to start combat - such as casting Shocking Grasp against someone - whether anyone notices the spellcasting itself or not. A lot of these would be a good way to start a skill encounter rather than combat.
Can the party figure out which of the guests at the event is subtle casting Daze (or Malicious Shadow) before the victim dies from the attack: This will play out in 4 rounds. The 4-player party needs to gain 16 Detection Points. Standard skills are Perception DC X to sense motive and notice who is doing the casting, or Diplomacy/Intimidation DC Y to get people to leave the area and eliminate themselves as suspects.
Solid adjudicating. I was having fun with it because I really like the creative capacity of the feat, but even some of the fun things could be turned into socially significant activities. Blaming somebody else for a fart is only the beginning of the potential framejobs, I think.
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Something nobody else is talking about as the discussion seems mainly focused on pure offensive spells but I think is worth mentioning...
Charm/Suggestion/Compulsion type Spells when combined with this have essentially ZERO blowback unless the target Critically Succeeds the saving throw as bystanders will have absolutely no way of knowing a spell was cast at all and even if the target does CS that becomes a you-vs-them affair in which the opponent could assert you were trying to control them but since others witnessed it and saw no evidence of a Spell being cast that would make their claim seem dubious at best resulting in what is likely an eased Deception Check by the caster to Lie to the "witnesses" and make the victim look like a crazy person.
Charming the shopkeep, guards, king, priest, or members of the court is basically 50/50 free I-WIN button for a TON of roleplay interactions with Suble Spell since there is no save or defense against it where in the past the main thing preventing this kind of gameplay was usually that the person who is casting the spell is very clearly CASTING a Spell which outs them either to the intended target in the case of a S or CS and to other witnesses who see the Spell cast and would infer that some type of tomfoolery is going on.
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Charming the shopkeep, guards, king, priest, or members of the court is basically 50/50 free I-WIN button for a TON of roleplay interactions with Suble Spell since there is no save or defense against it
Charm absolutely does have a save against it. I'm not sure what you are meaning here.
where in the past the main thing preventing this kind of gameplay was usually that the person who is casting the spell is very clearly CASTING a Spell which outs them either to the intended target in the case of a S or CS and to other witnesses who see the Spell cast and would infer that some type of tomfoolery is going on.
That was already available before. It just took more feats. And was only available to Wizard.
I don't remember the game falling apart due to this previously.
Well, the king might well have a bodyguard whose job is to cast detect magic on them continually (as in the exploration activity). A shopkeeper, guard, or random priest probably wouldn't.
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Charm also still has the incapacitate trait, so it's near worthless on anyone with real power.
Regarding mind control concerns in general:
If the assumption veers towards that we now got "limitless Mind control without repercussion" I beg to differ.
Besides the obligatory defense (saving throw), emotion spells usually have at least one big flaw: These spells, unless explicitly stated (show me, if I err!), don't wipe the target's memory.
Which means, although the target might not immediately pinpoint the exact cause, they will remember sudden emotions, behaviours and/or proceedings out of line. And if that resulted in doing significantly harmful things, that likely will have consequences. Depending on context even tied to a certain person or moment...
My earthly equivalent: Investigating and scrutinizing one's actions after a point of being surprisingly intoxicated. They might not get every detail at once, they might not always find the drug they had been given, but there is a valid chance to trace back they were made a victim.
Unless maybe it was a very mild manipulation and what it made them do was still pretty close to what they might have done without being enchanted. Then again, this case seem not overly "imba" to me.
Concrete reciprocation:
[...]
Charm/Suggestion/Compulsion type Spells [...] have essentially ZERO blowback unless the target Critically Succeeds the saving throw as bystanders will have absolutely no way of knowing a spell was cast at all [...]
No way of knowing?! Unless ...
- In Case of Charm (Rank 1+ (Incapacitation)): "its friendship with you or the actions you convinced it to take clash with its expectations," ... and for me, a merchant that, one day from one minute to the other, becomes best friend to a random stranger - so much that he suddenly gives away their stuff for free - that's my definition of clash with expectations..
- In case of Subconscious Suggestion (Rank 5+ (Incapacitation)): the target or their allies analyze one particular action, which BTW couldn't "be self-destructive or obviously against the target’s self-interest". If it was a big thing, they might even come close to a critical question: Was there some link to a specific person that (by chance(?)) was 30 ft close, a few hours before the big thing?
And if it's not a big thing, again, what's the point?
- In case of Suggestion (Rank 4+ (Incapacitation)): ditto, just with additional proximity of time.
Additional relativization: A high diplomacy, deception, or high thievery char, maybe with one or the other skill feat, can do some very similar manipulations or thefts. And in this case in mundane ways - meaning with no magic to detect or dispell it.
[slowly drifting off-topic]
Side-Note: Speaking of kings and merchants...
Well, the king might well have a bodyguard whose job is to cast detect magic on them continually (as in the exploration activity). A shopkeeper, guard, or random priest probably wouldn't.
I immediately agree if we are talking about low security environments. For instance, the random fruit merchant. I don't see them effording magical detection and/or protection.
However, if this is about high-value deals, like those involving magical items, whose prices range orders of magnitude higher than most everyday stuff - this is a different story.
Let's remember that a single +1 Striking weapon has a regular list price of 100 gp - i.e. the equivalent of 100+ days lodging in a private room. Or about 2 years of comfortable standard of living. (And we're talking about a level 4 item. As you know, prices for more powerful items go up in a nonlinear fashion.)
So, in environments where these things are traded (*), I can easily imagine serious security measures to become common. Whether that involves regular detection during talks. Or insisting on additional witnesses with a watchful eye. Or even some system that facilitates non-negotiable delay between first contact and finalization of the deal. Like some sort of an escrow service to harden transactions against certain kinds of temporary mind manipulation.
(*): My earthly equivalent would be trading military goods, like Cruise Missiles. Not the ordinary retail business... ;-)
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The argument regarding Incapacitate is total bunk unless you're trying to say that the foil to a perfectly undetectable Compulsion is that all important or relevant NPCs in your game are just mysteriously higher level and more powerful than the PCs of your party which is a copout that I know you can't support, at best any given location will have perhaps a few dozen NPCs of such signifance that they even warrant having a real statblock let alone would be a fighting match against heroes who literally fight for/against Gods, sorry, no.
Also, the argument that any important RP interaction where this would be disruptive would necessitate there being a fleet of Spellcasters out there in the world who do nothing but follow other influential NPCs around casting Detect Magic any time the have an interaction or meeting with guests or whatever you might call PCs. Even the most paranoid and high-level BBEGs would likey not be able to summon the energy to suspend enough disbelief to justify such plot armor.
Wormtongue is certainly a viable PC now though which couldn't really be said before as, well, so long as it's a 2 Action Spell you're using almost nobody would ever know you're doing anything other than having a chat or perhaps scratching your nose as the VAST and OVERWHELMING majority of all other spellcasting is explicitly stated to be obvious to the point of being unmistakably magical and up until this new feature the best you could do is be a bit quieter about it and hope that everyone else in the room is literally under a Fascination effect to distract them.
I see you missed all the joking about 17th level npc grey guard mooks in galt and all the mid-level petty thieves running around absalom.
The other joke being that this has all been possible all the way through 3.5 and pf1 until the spellcraft faq. Of course, stealthy domination was hardly the worst thing the systems got up to and yet the world doesn't seem to have ended and society hasn't burned to the ground.
Honestly, this is minor stuff compared to the things you need to work around in other, higher powered systems.
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You do remember that the Sense Motive action exists, yes?
And that Charm and other 'compulsion' effects aren't really compulsion effects. Charm has about as much impact as a critical success on a diplomacy check. Dominate doesn't even let you give self-destructive commands. Which a GM could interpret to include things that would harm their own reputation or standing in the community. Or their livelihood. Or their kingdom's safety and security. Things like that.
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Also, I would point out - again - that none of this is new. Just fewer feats and less class restricted.
So crying that the sky is falling is a bit much.
But what if someone Charms me into thinking the sky is falling?!?
Charm doesn't really make you believe things, it just makes you fond of the caster.
So If I've magically convinced you "I'm great, you should want to be my friend" there are still limits of what you are willing to do to ingratiate yourself with such a on outstanding individual. Like there's a difference between "I will buy you a drink" and "I will invest in your venture".
Let's remember that a single +1 Striking weapon has a regular list price of 100 gp - i.e. the equivalent of 100+ days lodging in a private room. Or about 2 years of comfortable standard of living. (And we're talking about a level 4 item. As you know, prices for more powerful items go up in a nonlinear fashion.)
Let's also remember that such items are freaking everywhere.
A high humanoid adventure path, such as Agents of Edgewatch for example, has...
# WEAPON RUNES
+1 potency
+2 potency
+3 potency
striking
greater striking
major striking
property runes
special material
equivalent item (such as doubling rings or handwraps of mighty blows)
specific item (such as a holy avenger; excludes magical staves that do not possess fundamental runes and consumable weapons/ammo)
# ARMOR RUNES
+1 potency
+2 potency
+3 potency
resilient
greater resilient
major resilient
property runes
special material
equivalent item (such as bracers of armor)
specific item (such as breastplate of command)
That's a LOT.
Let's remember that a single +1 Striking weapon has a regular list price of 100 gp - i.e. the equivalent of 100+ days lodging in a private room. Or about 2 years of comfortable standard of living. (And we're talking about a level 4 item. As you know, prices for more powerful items go up in a nonlinear fashion.)Let's also remember that such items are freaking everywhere.
There is a lot of expensive jewelry out there IRL, but its merchants still spend a lot on security.