Pathfinder Is Still Bad

[DSMatticus]

I think the reason those ruse spells have the harmless tag is the same reason any entry ever has the harmless tag - it tells you that the spell (or the spell that the ruse spell is pretending to be, in this case) is one of the ones people can technically resist but often won't. But yeah, the actual mechanics of the ruse descriptor don't interact with the harmless tag at all, because harmless does not appear to be a mechanical tag in the first place. All the ruse descriptor does is give you false results on your spellcraft checks unless you beat the DC (of the spell it's pretending to be) by 10.

[maglag]

If the charmed dude trusts you blindly, why bother with casting a spell in the first place?

"My friend's gonna cast a buff on you. With that two-handed axe. Please hold still to receive its effects. Trust me, I'm a wizard, and you don't have ranks in spellcraft or knowledge. It'll hurt, but again don't worry, it's part of the magic."

[Username17]

If the charmed dude trusts you blindly, why bother with casting a spell in the first place?

"My friend's gonna cast a buff on you. With that two-handed axe. Please hold still to receive its effects. Trust me, I'm a wizard, and you don't have ranks in spellcraft or knowledge. It'll hurt, but again don't worry, it's part of the magic."

This is the stupidest fucking argument. Look, how many fucking times has the DM asked the team's fighter to make a saving throw against enlarge person being cast on him by the team wizard? If the answer is less than "every single time," then charm monster lets you cast spells on the target without them getting a saving throw (at least, if they don't make their spellcraft roll). That is how fucking simple this is.

-Username17

[virgil]

This is the stupidest fucking argument. Look, how many fucking times has the DM asked the team's fighter to make a saving throw against enlarge person being cast on him by the team wizard? If the answer is less than "every single time," then charm monster lets you cast spells on the target without them getting a saving throw (at least, if they don't make their spellcraft roll). That is how fucking simple this is.

I could see a Bluff/Sense Motive being a reasonable argument. Granted, that doesn't change what it is in practice; you already required the victim to not be in combat & fail a Will save, so making them fail a saving throw isn't exactly unbalancing the equation. That makes the frothy attempts to nip the tactic in the bud kind of hard to understand, because it's not even doing something out-of-whack.

[ishy]

What things in Pathfinder interact with the (harmless) tag?

There is a small difference between how you get a saving throw. Harmful spells give you a saving throw, which you can choose to forgo while harmless spells allow you to choose to get a saving throw.

So if for whatever reason you can't choose (say you're unconscious) you don't get a saving throw vs a harmless spell (e.g. a healing spell), while you do get one vs a harmful spell (e.g. fireball).

[RobbyPants]

If the charmed dude trusts you blindly, why bother with casting a spell in the first place?

"My friend's gonna cast a buff on you. With that two-handed axe. Please hold still to receive its effects. Trust me, I'm a wizard, and you don't have ranks in spellcraft or knowledge. It'll hurt, but again don't worry, it's part of the magic."

Your equivocation is terrible.

The whole point of Spellcraft is to be able to tell if the guy wiggling his fingers and saying mumbo jumbo is casting Cure Light Wounds or Inflict Light Wounds. A lack of ranks in it does not leave people powerless to tell the difference between mundane happenings and magical spells being cast.

Has anyone in your gaming groups ever asked to make a Spellcraft check against the orc that is attacking them or against a barking dog to see if it's actually secretly a wizard casting a spell? Why would you even think this argument is apt?

[Kaelik]

What things in Pathfinder interact with the (harmless) tag?

There is a small difference between how you get a saving throw. Harmful spells give you a saving throw, which you can choose to forgo while harmless spells allow you to choose to get a saving throw.

So if for whatever reason you can't choose (say you're unconscious) you don't get a saving throw vs a harmless spell (e.g. a healing spell), while you do get one vs a harmful spell (e.g. fireball).

Except for that whole thing where the rules actually say that unconscious creatures never get a saving throw. But I mean, aside from that, your made up distinction totally applies to the one situation the rules specifically say it doesn't apply to and no others.

[Username17]

Granted, that doesn't change what it is in practice; you already required the victim to not be in combat & fail a Will save, so making them fail a saving throw isn't exactly unbalancing the equation.

Uh... no. In Pathfailure, casting charm monster is very unlikely to work once combat music has started. But Beguiling Touch has no such limitation. Beguiling Touch defines its own range, duration, and saving throw protocol. Only the effects of failing a save are inherited from charm monster.

The purpose of Beguiling Touch is that you do a touch attack and force a save that ends combat and lets you let loose your ultimate. And it doesn't cost spell slots. So around 4th level when it comes online you have a whole lot of extra battle ending effects and you're not gonna ever run out of spell slots.

-Username17

[virgil]

Uh... no. In Pathfailure, casting charm monster is very unlikely to work once combat music has started. But Beguiling Touch has no such limitation. Beguiling Touch defines its own range, duration, and saving throw protocol. Only the effects of failing a save are inherited from charm monster.

The purpose of Beguiling Touch is that you do a touch attack and force a save that ends combat and lets you let loose your ultimate. And it doesn't cost spell slots. So around 4th level when it comes online you have a whole lot of extra battle ending effects and you're not gonna ever run out of spell slots.

I'm looking at the PFSRD as found here, and...

Beguiling Touch (Sp): You can charm a living creature by touching it. Creatures with more Hit Dice than your wizard level are unaffected, as are creatures in combat and those with an attitude of hostile toward you.

Bolded for emphasis. This might've been an addition from errata, but it's all I have to go off of.

[ishy]

Except for that whole thing where the rules actually say that unconscious creatures never get a saving throw. But I mean, aside from that, your made up distinction totally applies to the one situation the rules specifically say it doesn't apply to and no others.

Really? Where does it say that? All I know is that unconscious creatures are automatically willing. Which is not the same thing, like at all.

[Kaelik]

"Voluntarily Giving up a Saving Throw
A creature can voluntarily forego a saving throw and willingly accept a spell’s result. Even a character with a special resistance to magic can suppress this quality."

But no, tell me how you always have the unconscious party members roll saving throws to resist the teleports that would take them to safety.

[ishy]

"Voluntarily Giving up a Saving Throw
A creature can voluntarily forego a saving throw and willingly accept a spell’s result. Even a character with a special resistance to magic can suppress this quality."

But no, tell me how you always have the unconscious party members roll saving throws to resist the teleports that would take them to safety.

You seem to be very very confused here Kaelik. Teleport is saving throw:none for creatures. This is the rule text relevant for teleport when it comes to creatures

Some spells restrict you to willing targets only. Declaring yourself as a willing target is something that can be done at any time (even if you're flat-footed or it isn't your turn). Unconscious creatures are automatically considered willing, but a character who is conscious but immobile or helpless (such as one who is bound, cowering, grappling, paralyzed, pinned, or stunned) is not automatically willing.

Note how that has absolutely nothing at all to do with saving throws.

[MGuy]

"Voluntarily Giving up a Saving Throw
A creature can voluntarily forego a saving throw and willingly accept a spell’s result. Even a character with a special resistance to magic can suppress this quality."

But no, tell me how you always have the unconscious party members roll saving throws to resist the teleports that would take them to safety.

You seem to be very very confused here Kaelik. Teleport is saving throw:none for creatures. This is the rule text relevant for teleport when it comes to creatures

Some spells restrict you to willing targets only. Declaring yourself as a willing target is something that can be done at any time (even if you're flat-footed or it isn't your turn). Unconscious creatures are automatically considered willing, but a character who is conscious but immobile or helpless (such as one who is bound, cowering, grappling, paralyzed, pinned, or stunned) is not automatically willing.

Note how that has absolutely nothing at all to do with saving throws.

ishy are you arguing that he's right or that he's ~right? Because being willing vs being automatically willing is the same thing as far as this damn conversation goes.

[Kaelik]

You seem to be very very confused here Kaelik. Teleport is saving throw:none for creatures. This is the rule text relevant for teleport when it comes to creatures

No, this is just more rules that you don't know, but think you do.

Spell with "Will negates(object)" still have a saving throw for creatures, because the object tag does not exclude creatures. The reason Teleport has both none and will negates is because the rules for personal target spells:

"If the target of a spell is yourself (the spell description has a line that reads Target: You), you do not receive a saving throw, and spell resistance does not apply. The Saving Throw and Spell Resistance lines are omitted from such spells."

So Teleport offers you no save at all, but it offers a save to creatures who you try to teleport. Just like Disintegrate offers a save to creatures.

If a spell has Target: You and Y, then it will have saving throw None and X, and none applies to you, and X to Y. If a spell targets creatures or objects, but doesn't have You in the target line, then it still offers a save, even if you can target yourself.

[tussock]

On another note, I recently found the Disease and Poison rules from Pathfinder Unchained, and I kinda like them. Instead of messing with ability damage that is a pain to calculate at low levels until lesser restoration becomes available, at which point most poisons cease to have any real impact on gameplay, you have diseases and poison tracks (physical and mental for disease, and six ability tracks for poison). Healing is also harder to do than with the standard rules, so this looks pretty lethal at low levels and might even fvck with mid-level parties that are not sufficiently prepared. Any thoughts?

It's a 3000 word essay, I give it a C for being about what it's supposed to be about.

Like, that's a list of about 24 new conditions, plus a few new forms of being unconscious or disabled. There's already way too many conditions, they barely reused the ones they already have that do basically the same thing, and forgot to combine the disease rules with the poison rules (mental disease can obviously be Int damage or whatever, eh).

Anyway, that is bad. I did a similar thing for a game with 3 steps and most effects in the game folded fairly neatly into readily usable condition tracks associated with "stat damage", so Wisdom poisons Distracted, Charmed, and then Dominated you and an Enfeeblement spell made you Fatigued, Exhausted, or whatever I called the third one (and those things included encumbrance steps).

But there's barely enough conditions to go around even then (even with too many of them) and not enough things really do stat damage in the first place to bother. It also turns out having a bunch of tracks to, well, track, is a pain in the ass, and bypassing hit points by stacking Dex damage (or a Slowed, Entangled, Immobile track) on a dragon is stupid no matter how that comes into play, even if you don't allow disabled and death that way.

The Star Wars Saga game put everything like that on one flavour-free condition track, which you can at least use in a long game without wanting to gouge your own eyes out, but it turns out that parties either had to focus on overwhelming it or had to ignore it and do HP damage instead, where a mixture didn't really work. Which is ultimately just not very interesting compared to having Charm spells.

...

A better version is where the poisons and diseases and whatever else just give you specific normal conditions from a reasonable condition set. So Ungol dust is a poison that causes a Frightened effect for ten minutes and then Shaken until cured, end of story. No good ever really came from stacking fear effects into bigger fears in the first place, all you really need is where Shaken people have a penalty to saves vs Fear effects (if not everything), and Frightened people have a bigger one. Ditto for Fatigue and Exhaustion and everything else.

[OgreBattle]

Having a "Str/Dex/Con" poison feels kind of weird as really anything that is sapping my strength is going to make me move slower and get tired faster. And I figure no two people are going to come to the same conclusions as to what the difference between INT, CHA, and WIS damage is. Shoot food poisoning makes it harder for me to mentally focus on things, so is that physical or mental or both?

Whenever I read D&D3.PF stuff going for more unified condition tracks or having "stomach ache" stack with "stabbed with a sword", it seems like a hitbox system really is the way to go.

You have 10 hitboxes, certain things do stun damage that is recovered quickly and KO's you, certain things do fatal damage that is recovered slower and kills you.

You then have 'elements' to your damage that look at how many boxes the target has ticked, and then applies a condition based on that. So paralysis poison may just deal a box of stun if you're at 100%, but will immobilize if you have X boxes full, burrito magic makes you shit your pants if you're at 9 boxes ticked, and so on.

[Mord]

burrito magic makes you shit your pants if you're at 9 boxes ticked

Damn that burrito magic!

[Username17]

Bolded for emphasis. This might've been an addition from errata, but it's all I have to go off of.

Nope. You're right and I'm wrong. Missed that, Beguiling Touch - and by extension the entire Manipulator subschool - is completely useless. It's a touch attack that doesn't work on people who have been attacked. Never take that.

Ishy: stop digging.

-Username17

[ishy]

So Teleport offers you no save at all, but it offers a save to creatures who you try to teleport. Just like Disintegrate offers a save to creatures.

Nope.

You can bring along objects as long as their weight doesn't exceed your maximum load. You may also bring one additional willing Medium or smaller creature (carrying gear or objects up to its maximum load) or its equivalent per three caster levels. A Large creature counts as two Medium creatures, a Huge creature counts as four Medium creatures, and so forth. All creatures to be transported must be in contact with one another, and at least one of those creatures must be in contact with you. As with all spells where the range is personal and the target is you, you need not make a saving throw, nor is spell resistance applicable to you. Only objects held or in use (attended) by another person receive saving throws and spell resistance.

"Voluntarily Giving up a Saving Throw
A creature can voluntarily forego a saving throw and willingly accept a spell’s result. Even a character with a special resistance to magic can suppress this quality."

But no, tell me how you always have the unconscious party members roll saving throws to resist the teleports that would take them to safety.

You seem to be very very confused here Kaelik. Teleport is saving throw:none for creatures. This is the rule text relevant for teleport when it comes to creatures

Some spells restrict you to willing targets only. Declaring yourself as a willing target is something that can be done at any time (even if you're flat-footed or it isn't your turn). Unconscious creatures are automatically considered willing, but a character who is conscious but immobile or helpless (such as one who is bound, cowering, grappling, paralyzed, pinned, or stunned) is not automatically willing.

Note how that has absolutely nothing at all to do with saving throws.

ishy are you arguing that he's right or that he's ~right? Because being willing vs being automatically willing is the same thing as far as this damn conversation goes.

They are different things. One applies to spell targets and the other applies to the saving throw part of a spell.

For example, you can target only willing creatures with a teleport spell. Unconscious creatures automatically become willing targets. Creatures who are not willing don't even have to make a save.

While for example death knell can target an 'unwilling' creature. Who can still make a saving throw even though it is unconscious since unconscious creatures don't automatically become willing to forgo their saving throw.

[Username17]

Only objects held or in use (attended) by another person receive saving throws and spell resistance.

That's the normal rules for attended objects. You quoting that and bolding it means you still don't know what you're talking about. Please. Stop. Digging.

That's just reminder text in the teleport spell description. It's not interesting or worth quoting. It's not a thing specific to Teleport.

-Username17

[Koumei]

For example, you can target only willing creatures with a teleport spell. Unconscious creatures automatically become willing targets. Creatures who are not willing don't even have to make a save.

While for example death knell can target an 'unwilling' creature. Who can still make a saving throw even though it is unconscious since unconscious creatures don't automatically become willing to forgo their saving throw.

I have no idea what you are trying to say there, or how you are twisting words such that the same thing leads to two opposing conclusions.

[maglag]

For example, you can target only willing creatures with a teleport spell. Unconscious creatures automatically become willing targets. Creatures who are not willing don't even have to make a save.

While for example death knell can target an 'unwilling' creature. Who can still make a saving throw even though it is unconscious since unconscious creatures don't automatically become willing to forgo their saving throw.

I have no idea what you are trying to say there, or how you are twisting words such that the same thing leads to two opposing conclusions.

I believe his point is that there are two different things, "willing target" and "willingly failing a saving throw".

Teleport only affects "willing targets". Creatures never make a save against it. If somebody doesn't want to be teleported they don't need to bother rolling.

Death Knell on the other hand is a spell that specifically targets unconscious creatures since they're at negative HP. They are "willing targets", however Death Knell does not reference "willing target" anywhere and thus unconscious victims are allowed a saving throw to resist Death Knell. Otherwise it would be kinda pointless for that spell to allow a save in the first place.

[ishy]

For example, you can target only willing creatures with a teleport spell. Unconscious creatures automatically become willing targets. Creatures who are not willing don't even have to make a save.

While for example death knell can target an 'unwilling' creature. Who can still make a saving throw even though it is unconscious since unconscious creatures don't automatically become willing to forgo their saving throw.

I have no idea what you are trying to say there, or how you are twisting words such that the same thing leads to two opposing conclusions.

It is not the same thing. Context matters. "Unconscious creatures are automatically considered willing" That doesn't mean unconscious creatures are now willing sexual partners (the joke that so many shitty forums make when they read that line) because it is talking about the targets of a spell. I'm not going to quote the entire section, but here. In the aiming a spell section.
Then check out the saving throw section and notice how it talks about something completely different.

TL:DR, forgoing a saving throw after you've been the target of a spell and being a willing target for a spell is not the same thing.

Maybe I can explain it with water breathing. It is a [range:touch], [target living creatures touched], [saving Throw Will negates (harmless) spell].

You can touch up to 6 willing targets as part of the casting, but all targets of the spell must be touched in the same round that you finish casting the spell.

So if you've 6 willing targets you can touch them as part of the casting of the spell, yet if they choose they can still make a save or willingly forgo their save and undergo the effect of the spell.

---

Only objects held or in use (attended) by another person receive saving throws and spell resistance.

That's the normal rules for attended objects. You quoting that and bolding it means you still don't know what you're talking about. Please. Stop. Digging.

That's just reminder text in the teleport spell description. It's not interesting or worth quoting. It's not a thing specific to Teleport.

-Username17

No, it tells you only attended objects get a saving throw. Since creatures are not attended objects, they don't get a saving throw. Or would you argue you'd have to check for spell resistance for an unconscious party member with spell resistance (say a monk)?

[Username17]

Ishy, you're being really really dense. Teleport has a weird target line where it can target creatures only if they are willing and can target objects whether they are attended by unwilling creatures or not. That's really very strange, and it creates a situation where you get a save if someone tries to teleport your armor away but you don't need to make a save if they try to teleport you, because the fact that you're unwilling makes you an invalid target.

But that's all the information you get from there. Teleport isn't a master stroke to your weird idea that willing people get saves against harmful spells, because that's stupid and insane. Unconscious allies don't make saves against plane shift. The party Fighter doesn't routinely make a save against enlarge person. These are not things that happen.

Teleport is a weird and dumb spell to talk about with regards to your stupid idea, because it has a weird and dumb target line that excludes it from being a point of contention. Note also that the thing that brought it up in the first place (Beguiling Touch) is not a thing that will ever come up in a real game, because as virgil pointed out it has one weird exclusion clause where it literally cannot affect anyone you successfully target with it.

-Username17

[Kaelik]

TL:DR, forgoing a saving throw after you've been the target of a spell and being a willing target for a spell is not the same thing.

Maybe I can explain it with water breathing. It is a [range:touch], [target living creatures touched], [saving Throw Will negates (harmless) spell].

You can touch up to 6 willing targets as part of the casting, but all targets of the spell must be touched in the same round that you finish casting the spell.

So if you've 6 willing targets you can touch them as part of the casting of the spell, yet if they choose they can still make a save or willingly forgo their save and undergo the effect of the spell.

TL;DR Forgoing a saving throw because you are willing happens when you are willing, and you are willing when you are unconscious, so they have a 100% overlap.

Maybe I can explain this with Water breathing, when you are on a sinking shit, and someone is unconscious, you don't roll a saving throw to see if they resist Water Breathing, no matter how much you keep claiming that you do.

Buff spells, all of them, have saving throws. You don't roll those saving throws because people are foregoing saving throws.