"Finding the Path" for 3 February 2012

[Viktyr Gehrig]

Hello and welcome to the 3 February 2012 installment of Finding the Path, E.N. World's monthly Pathfinder advice column. My name is Viktyr L. Korimir and each month I'll be choosing a handful of your questions about the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game and answering them to the best of my ability-- what the rules say, what the rules mean, and how to get the most out of them-- plus a heaping spoonful of my own half-baked ideas, unfounded opinions, and baroque house rules. If you like what you read here, you should check out my House Rules Lab page on d20PFSRD.

This month: More Musings on the Mechanics of the Magus, some Strange Swarm Shenanigans, Double Dipping Dragon Disciple, Conditional Cavalry Combat Calculations, and as an Appendix, an Arrangement of Adventure Paths.

After last month's column, I really caught a lot of flak for my response to the Magus question-- in fact, more than half of the correspondence I received about the column was about the Magus.

#1: Aren't you only allowed to enchant a weapon once with the Magus' Arcane Pool? And doesn't adding flaming and frost cost two points from your Arcane Pool?

You're missing something very important about how Arcane Pool works, and if you're playing this way at the table you're seriously nerfing the Magus:

At 1st level, a magus can expend 1 point from his arcane pool as a swift action to grant any weapon he is holding a +1 enhancement bonus for 1 minute. For every four levels beyond 1st, the weapon gains another +1 enhancement bonus, to a maximum of +5 at 17th level. These bonuses can be added to the weapon, stacking with existing weapon enhancement to a maximum of +5. Multiple uses of this ability do not stack with themselves.

At 5th level, these bonuses can be used to add any of the following weapon properties: dancing, flaming, flaming burst, frost, icy burst, keen, shock, shocking burst, speed, or vorpal.

At 5th level, the Magus can spend one (1) point from his Arcane Pool to gain up to +2 enhancement bonus to the weapon he's wielding. That means that, assuming the Magus is already wielding a magical weapon, he can add flaming and frost to it just fine. What he can't do is activate his Arcane Pool twice to give it +4 in special abilities.

Yes, I totally assumed that a 6th level Magus would have a magical weapon-- and I should have made that clear last month. If the Magus doesn't have a magical weapon, he has to use +1 of that enhancement bonus on making the weapon magical before adding any other qualities. Mea culpa.

#2: Your answer seems to imply that a weapon can have the flaming and frost enchantments active at the same time. Isn't there a rule against this?

I heard this question a lot. Enough that I started to question my own judgment on the matter, read and re-read my primary sources, and finally came to one final, inescapable conclusion:

You're making that up.

Upon command, a flaming weapon is sheathed in fire that deals an extra 1d6 points of fire damage on a successful hit. The fire does not harm the wielder. The effect remains until another command is given.

Upon command, a frost weapon is sheathed in icy cold that deals an extra 1d6 points of cold damage on a successful hit. The cold does not harm the wielder. The effect remains until another command is given.

That's the text, in its entirety, for both the flaming and frost properties. There's no rule saying you can't have both enchantments on a weapon. There's no rule saying that a given attack cannot do both fire damage and cold damage at the same time, no matter how illogical that might seem.

Now, I've had this conversation privately numerous times, and it's gone one of two ways. The first way happens a lot, and the second... happened all of once, ever, in the entire time I've played this game.

The first way, is that people say that it doesn't make sense and that common sense dictates that you can't do that. Thing is, folks, common sense ain't Rules As Written; that's a House Rule, and while you may think it's a good House Rule, it pays to always know the difference.

For the record, while I don't think this is a bad House Rule, I see absolutely no need for it. I simply don't see any benefit whatsoever to taking the time to make this rule, write it down, and explain it to other people. And, really, I can imagine how a magical effect can cause fire damage and cold damage at the same time.

The second way this conversation goes... baffled me.

[MENTION=82944]R.C, Jr[/MENTION] points out, going back to the earlier quotes, that flaming and frost-- and every other elemental damage enchantment-- require a command word to activate. (Not that anyone I know ever actually played it this way.) Once activated, the energy aura around the weapon persists "until another command is given." Now, I've always taken that to mean that the enchantment has two command words: one command turns the aura on, and the other command turns it off.

What R.C, Jr suggests is that each energy enchantment has a separate command-- and that giving the command word for a second enchantment is "another command", thus allowing weapons to only have a single active energy enchantment at any given time.

Perfectly accurate to the Rules As Written, and it never even occurred to me to read it that way. Since I've never heard of it, I'm guessing most people don't play it that way, and I really have no idea how to contact the original SRD authors to ask what they meant, so... your guess is as good as mine. If you really have a problem with multiple energy types on the same weapon-- whether it's a balance problem, like the original poster had, or a thematic issue with conflicting energy types, that's one way of handling it.

#3: [MENTION=475]NiTessine[/MENTION] wanted to know about swarms, specifically about whether or not swarms were vulnerable to torches and weapons with energy enchantments.

This is a tricky one. D&D 3.5's SRD had this in its entry on Swarms:

Swarms are extremely difficult to fight with physical attacks. However, they have a few special vulnerabilities, as follows:

A lit torch swung as an improvised weapon deals 1d3 points of fire damage per hit.

A weapon with a special ability such as flaming or frost deals its full energy damage with each hit, even if the weapon’s normal damage can’t affect the swarm.

A lit lantern can be used as a thrown weapon, dealing 1d4 points of fire damage to all creatures in squares adjacent to where it breaks.

But Pathfinder's PRD... doesn't list Swarm as its own Bestiary entry. It reprints the rules for the Swarm subtype but not the specific rules about the vulnerabilities of swarms... making your torches and your energy weapons useless against the engulfing numberless hordes of vermin with their dripping mandibles and their tiny hearts full of hate--

-- Sorry. Some of us couldn't afford to get into the good daycare.

Way back in 2009 someone asked James Jacobs about this, and he first said that the designers did this on purpose and then later took it back and said this should go into the Errata. Two printings later... and it's still not there.

So, by the Rules As Written, torches and flaming swords don't do squat to swarms. And in this case, the Rules As Written are wrong. Really, really wrong. If you're running a Pathfinder game and you're planning on using swarms against your players, I would very highly recommend that you add the 3.5 rule quoted above to your game as a House Rule.

#4: Does a sorcerer of the crossblooded archetype (dragon/something) from Ultimate Magic qualify for the requirements of the Dragon Disciple PrC by RAW? If so, what happens to the Bloodline Powers from the dragon bloodline and/or the other bloodline?

Kind of a nice followup to last month's question about Crossblooded Sorcerers.

Let's look at our relevant rules here:

A sorcerer must pick one bloodline upon taking her first level of sorcerer. Once made, this choice cannot be changed.

Spellcasting: Ability to cast 1st-level arcane spells without preparation. If the character has sorcerer levels, he must have the draconic bloodline. If the character gains levels of sorcerer after taking this class, he must take the draconic bloodline.

A crossblooded sorcerer selects two different bloodlines. The sorcerer may gain access to the skills, feats, and some of the powers of both bloodlines she is descended from, but at the cost of reduced mental clarity and choice (see Drawbacks).

So... yeah. A Crossblooded Sorcerer selects two different bloodlines. As far as I can tell, having part of a bloodline as a Crossblooded Sorcerer counts as having the bloodline. Like I said last month, by the Rules As Written, a Crossblooded Sorcerer can't use Eldritch Heritage to gain the bloodline powers he passed up.

Which is what makes the following really messed up:

A dragon disciple adds his level to his sorcerer levels when determining the powers gained from his bloodline. If the dragon disciple does not have levels of sorcerer, he instead gains bloodline powers of the draconic bloodline, using his dragon disciple level as his sorcerer level to determine the bonuses gained. He must choose a dragon type upon gaining his first level in this class and that type must be the same as his sorcerer type. This ability does not grant bonus spells to a sorcerer unless he possesses spell slots of an appropriate level. Such bonus spells are automatically granted if the sorcerer gains spell slots of the spell's level.

At 1st, 3rd, 9th, 15th, and 20th levels, a crossblooded sorcerer gains one of the two new bloodline powers available to her at that level. She may instead select a lower-level bloodline power she did not choose in place of one of these higher-level powers.

Dragon Disciple doesn't say that it only advances your Draconic bloodline powers. So every level of Dragon Disciple you take allows you to take bloodline powers from your other bloodline instead. Which really seems like it isn't much of a big deal, except for one little thing:

At 3rd level, a dragon disciple gains the breath weapon bloodline power, even if his level does not yet grant that power. Once his level is high enough to grant this ability through the bloodline, the dragon disciple gains an additional use of his breath weapon each day. The type and shape of the breath weapon depends on the type of dragon selected by the dragon disciple, as detailed under the Draconic sorcerer bloodline description.

At 5th level, the dragon disciple gains blindsense with a range of 30 feet. ... At 10th level, the range of this ability increases to 60 feet.

At 9th level, a dragon disciple gains the wings bloodline power, even if his level does not yet grant that power. Once his level is high enough to grant this ability through the bloodline, the dragon disciple's speed increases to 90 feet.

... Okay, three little things. You might recognize those as the 9th and 15th level bloodline abilities from the Draconic Bloodline, and the best part of the 20th level ability. You get those from your Dragon Disciple class features, so you're free to pick your other bloodline ability at the appropriate levels; the best part is:

Once his level is high enough to grant this ability through the bloodline...

Doesn't say anything about actually gaining that ability through the bloodline, only being high enough level to. So you can give up your breath weapon-- say for Strength of the Abyss or New Arcana-- and still get to use it twice a day. You can give up Wings, you must give up Wings, and still get a 90 foot fly speed. Give up Power of Wyrms for Demonic Might and you still get your blindsense and your telepathy. Perfectly legal.

And there's no way in Hell I'd allow it. Now, a smarter rules lawyer than myself might argue that the Crossblooded archetype's "select two bloodlines" isn't the same thing as picking a bloodline-- since you get some of the abilities of each-- and thus doesn't qualify for Dragon Disciple, but that seems kinda weaselly and I'm more of a Viking Hat DM. A more common sense approach might be to say that the Rules As Intended were for the Dragon Disciple class to advance the Draconic bloodline only, which is a pretty good House Rule.

Or you might just let it go, because RAW knows there's no other reason to ever take Crossblooded.

#5: How about answering what kind of bonuses you get if you go into combat mounted?

Well, there's a whole lot of them... but they all come from feats and class abilities, and without knowing the character's abilities, I can't answer that.

You get the +1 to melee attacks for being on higher ground. I would normally say that you gain the +4 AC bonus for soft cover, but...

Cover: You can react instantly to drop down and hang alongside your mount, using it as cover. You can't attack or cast spells while using your mount as cover. If you fail your Ride check, you don't get the cover benefit. Using this option is an immediate action, but recovering from this position is a move action (no check required).

... so, yeah. No cover unless you can make a Ride check and you're willing to give up an immediate action and your move action for next round.

On the other hand? You're sitting. That's +2 to your AC versus ranged attacks, but -2 to AC versus melee attacks. (Makes sense. You ever try fencing with a horse? Their footwork sucks.) Unless your horse really hates you-- I get that a lot-- it's not considered an enemy so you don't get the +4 AC bonus versus ranged attacks.

So when mounted, you get a +1 bonus to melee attacks and a +2 bonus to your AC against ranged attacks, but you take a -2 penalty to your AC against melee attacks. Your mount gets nothing unless you have the Mounted Combat feat.

By the way... did you know that you can ride creatures "ill-suited" as mounts with only a -5 to your Ride check? Friend of mine-- hey, Mike!-- always wanted to build a character around this concept: a Goblin with the Leadership feat, with an Ogre cohort, using Mounted Combat and Indomitable Will to negate attacks. Turns out a Goblin's Ride check is a Hell of a lot higher than an Ogre's Will save.

One of many, many characters I refused to let him play.

#6: A simple question: Can you advise what Paizo adventure paths one can follow i.e. what adventure names sit within published campaigns and what are those published campaigns called. I have tried to find out on the Paizo website, but have been unable to simply buy a whole campaign. While the information is there, I got exasperated and bored before finding this out.

Paizo Adventure Paths: all in chronological order, with links to the product page in the Paizo store.

Well, folks, that's it for this month. See you next month with another fresh batch of PC problems and DM dilemmas, vivisected for your entertainment. If you have any comments or questions you'd like to ask, you can send an email directly to me at viktyr.korimir@gmail.com with [Finding the Path] in the subject line and make sure to include whether or not your message is okay to publish.

Your friendly neighborhood rules lawyer,

VLK

Archive:

• "Finding the Path" 7 January 2012 - The limits of readied actions; psionics; challenging a stealthy party; comprehend languages and tongues; mixed heritage Sorcerers; and the Magus class.

 

[Lou]

Not making this up

#2: Your answer seems to imply that a weapon can have the flaming and frost enchantments active at the same time. Isn't there a rule against this?

I heard this question a lot. Enough that I started to question my own judgment on the matter, read and re-read my primary sources, and finally came to one final, inescapable conclusion:

You're making that up.

Perhaps not.

Please turn with me to the Magic Weapons section of the d20srd. Note footnote 5 under Table: Melee Weapon Special Abilities. Note also footnote 2 under Table: Ranged Weapon Special Abilities.

"Reroll if you get a duplicate special ability, an ability incompatible with an ability that you’ve already rolled,[emphasis added] or if the extra ability puts you over the +10 limit. A weapon’s enhancement bonus and special ability bonus equivalents can’t total more than +10"

Incompatibility is not explicitly defined, but hot/cold are generally considered incompatible.

So was this incompatibility limitation carried over to Pathfinder?

Please turn with me to the Pathfinder PRD on Magic Weapons. Footnote 4 of Table: Melee Weapon Special Abilities and footnote 3 of Table: Ranged Weapon Special Abilities show that indeed, this incompatibility idea was carried over into Pathfinder:

"Reroll if you get a duplicate special ability, an ability incompatible with an ability that you've already rolled, [emphasis added] or if the extra ability puts you over the +10 limit. A weapon's enhancement bonus and special ability bonus equivalents can't total more than +10."

One could make the argument that this limitation only applies to randomly generated magic weapons and not magic weapons made by players. This argument ignores the fact that the randomly generated weapon is only randomly generated by the GM in RL and must have been made by someone in the fantasy setting. Thus, incompatibility still applies.

Whatever incompatibility means to the GM.

 

[RangerWickett]

Sword Of Fire And Ice (Magic card)

 

[jeffh]

I was going to mention the exact same Magic card as Ryan did. Flavour it however you like - alternating bands of the two types, rapid oscilation between them, energy spreading from the wounds the weapon delivers, or as on the Magic card, two blades, one of each sort (or one that simply keeps the hot side hot and the cool side cool). In any case I don't see the conceptual problem, nor is there a passage anywhere in the stuff Lou quoted that suggests this is what is intended by "incompatible".

 

[Noumenon]

I've never seen either the torch or flaming weapon rule come into play against a swarm, so maybe it's just empty baggage.

On the other hand? You're sitting. That's +2 to your AC versus ranged attacks, but -2 to AC versus melee attacks.

Where are you getting this? I don't see "sitting" in the list of conditions.

 

[Lou]

Why the cards are interesting, they are not D&D from WotC or from Paizo, so they are clearly 3rd party d20 OGL ideas at best. They are also not standard magic items, but artifacts, exceptionally unique items that may break the standard rules. Thus they support the incompatibility of opposites like hot/cold rather than oppose it.

Since I have never played Magic, I must ask: When were these cards first published? Before or after the d20 OGL was published?

 

[jeffh]

Why the cards are interesting, they are not from WotC or Paizo, so they are clearly 3rd party d20 OGL ideas at best. They are also not standard magic items, but artifacts, exceptionally unique items that may break the standard rules. Thus they support the incompatibility of opposites like hot/cold rather than oppose it.

Yes, they are from WotC. Different game, but very much WotC; indeed, Magic is the reason they're famous, much more than D&D is.

And in Magic, "Artifact" means roughly what "Magic item" means in D&D.

Not that any of this is actually relevant to the point I was making, or that I take Ryan to have been making - that there is no compelling flavour reason for saying they're incompatible. (And I take it as already established that there isn't a compelling rules reason; no, "there's this passage that could be interpreted as meaning this, even though there's no explicit support for that interpretation anywhere" is not compelling.)

 

[TarionzCousin]

Sword Of Fire And Ice (Magic card)

I need one of these. My bard/warlock has been taking vicious damage from blue lately.

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

Incompatibility is not explicitly defined, but hot/cold are generally considered incompatible.

...

Whatever incompatibility means to the GM.

Fair enough. But there's a name for the GM applying common sense limitations to situations that are not explicitly defined in the rules. I approve of it, use it extensively, and encourage GMs to consider it in almost every question I answer.

It's called "House Rules".

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

Where are you getting this? I don't see "sitting" in the list of conditions.

My apologies-- I finished the column late last night.

Combat Modifiers. Table in the right-hand column, "Armor Class Modifiers".