Many Mancies
So first thing’s first. For any of you GMs out there that want to expand your personal magical word bank, check the Wikipedia entry on methods of divination. Holy hieroscopy is that a treasure trove of esoteric arcana!
As for the unfortunate misunderstanding in today’s tasseography workshop, I’ll have you know that I pondered long and hard about which magic-user to pair with Oracle. I mean, Magus is usually the poster girl for remedial magic. And even if Witch is a good for a bit of the old ultraviolence, she’s usually a competent caster! Upon reflection though, I think it’s important to remember that advanced mages get stuff wrong too.
When you decide to play a spellcaster, it’s on you to know the basics. I’m talking stuff like spell slots vs. spells known; calculating DCs; the text of your freakin’ spells. But once you’ve learned enough to become a functional spellslinger, it’s easy to stop reading. To get complacent. To decide that a quick skim of the magic chapter is good enough. And if you don’t keep a sharp watch, all those tricksy little rules will find a way to bury themselves in the text.
Over in Pathifnder 1e, the most frequent offenders live in the subschool descriptions. Understanding the difference between a figment and a phantasm is by no means intuitive, but it can make all the difference when it comes to tricking mindless opponents. Just today I had to doublecheck with a colleague whether or not rays were considered weapons for purposes of a bard’s Inspire Courage ability. And even if 5e boasts a less byzantine system, it’s easy to get tripped up there as well. I know I’ve had to refer back to Professor Gnome’s diagrams on more than one occasion. I never seem to remember that cover adds to my enemies’ Dexterity saves. And let’s not even get started on the famously finicky rules for bonus action casting time.
What I’m saying is there’s a reason that Paizo hosts a rules forum. There’s a reason that WotC keeps Zoltar on the payroll. No matter how well you think you know the rules, weird corner cases will crop up. I’ve already mentioned a few of my recent rules confusions, but what about my brother magi? What esoteric oopsies and abstruse errata have you encountered in your magical studies? Tell us all about your favorite lesser-known magics down in the comments!
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I miss having the different illusion subtypes in 5E. It goes against the 5E design philosophy, of course, but it was really nice being able to look at the spell’s subtype and instantly know whether it could conceal things (glamer versus figment), whether it worked on mindless creatures (pattern and phantasm versus the others), whether people other than the specific target could perceive it (phantasm versus the others), and whether it had any physical substance (shadow). Some of the high-level illusions in 5E have some holes in the rules around them.
The biggest issues I see coming up in discussions of magic in 5E is people imagining rules that just don’t exist. The big one is “magical darkness” and how it interacts with darkvision. There is kind of a thing called “magical darkness”, but it doesn’t mean anything. A lot of people think that darkvision can’t see through “magical darkness”, but there simply is no such rule. Darkvision specifically can’t see through the darkness spell because the darkness spell says so, but darkvision works just fine on any darkness-creating spell that doesn’t say otherwise, like hunger of Hadar.
I assume you mean darkness that is created magically and not ‘magical darkness’ the light level. In 5e there’s no real difference but in pathfinder, 3.5 and similar editions lift level had a much bigger impact. ‘Magical darkness’ which was a step below regular darkness required abilities typically out of player reach. While regular darkness even if created by magic was much easier to overcome.
That said I too miss the sub schools, especially the concept provided by the conjuration school.
Um… Are there any other spells that directly create darkness directly? Im struggling to think of any off hand. The only ones i can think of are ones that would create some kind of obstruction around a light source, like putting a wall of stone in front of a candle, but thats not really the spell creating darkness,, thats just mundane physics.
Blindness-inducing spells and effects create infinite darkness for one creature!
Or at least it would be nice if I could ever keep the friggin’ things straight in my head. I have to look ’em up every time.
Illusion subtype mnemonics!
Glamer – They make something look or feel like another, glamered armor made of rusted metal looks like it’s gold or gilded.
Figment – Things that don’t exist and fool you into thinking they do, figments of your imagination, mirages.
Phantasm – The shoulder devil/angels, things only you and the evil vizier trying to make you go mad see.
Pattern – Epilepsy-inducing rainbows, prismatic spells, ‘ooh, pretty’ effects.
Shadow – It’s real if you believe it’s real, but only a little bit real otherwise.
In my experience in D&D 5e there are two spellcasting-related mistakes:
1) People forget that when you Ready a Spell, you a) spend a spell slot at the moment you ready it, not at the moment you release it and b) you are Concentrating on it, so dropping any ongoing cConcentration and risking losing a Concentration before the spell is released.
2) Fog Cloud/Darkness/Sleet Storm is often misinterpreted as “all attacks are made with disadvantage” or “no ranged attacks can be made into Fog Cloud”. In fact, unless creatures are Hidden through the Hide action, all the creatures in the Fog Cloud area can be targeted by attacks (not specific spells or abilities which require you to see the target) and are simultaneously Blinded and Unseen, providing simultaneous advantage and disadvantage to any attacks pertaining to the Fog Cloud (inside, from inside to outside, from outside to inside), thus removing any other source of advantage or disadvantage and making any attack rolls straight.
I mean, these are not THE ONLY TWO spellcasting-related mistakes, it is just two which I see come up very often.
Good call on the ready + concentration ruling. I imagine more than half of players miss that one.
On the point of #2, this is an easy thing to miss because it requires decrypting a sage advice statement to understand it. The actual text of Fog Cloud simply states that the area is heavily obscured, and the current errata of the PHB states that “A creature effectively suffers from the blinded condition when trying to see something in that area.”
This is compounded by the rules text for Darkness explicitly stating that “a creature with darkvision can’t see through this darkness.” Which, by the way, only heavily implies that you can’t see through the Darkness spell without darkvision and that you can’t see stuff on the other side of it.
Under a RAW understanding of these two things overlapping, you would be able to see things outside of the fog with no penalty since they are not considered heavily obscured, despite how complete nonsense that ruling sounds. Admittedly, the sage advice answers on the questions about Fog Cloud somehow never seem to successfully state that you can’t see out of it, they just strongly imply it as well…
This one may have been addressed in many a tweet or forum post, but one thing that I always wonder about is what happens when you point a cone up or down? Grid-based combat doesn’t deal well with the z-axis. But as Professor Gnome demonstrates, a cone is, you know, conical. The spell isn’t called Right Triangle of Cold.
It seems to come down to how much your DM is willing to entertain geometry during combat, especially since the diameter of the resulting circular effect is actually the distance from the caster times the square root of two. (Darn it, Pythagoras.)
I tend to go back to these Pathfinder diagrams when I’m running in 5e:
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/combat/space-reach-threatened-area-templates/
I imagine that there’s a more correct version. Damned if I can find it though.
Not related to obscure magic, but to the comic’s usage of divination, there’s a city in Golarion where Troll oracles do divination through entrails. Their own. They disembowl themselves to look at their own entrails (and survive, because regeneration). There’s even artwork (eww) of it!
It’s a piece of lore that’s both freaky and very, very cool and fitting/logical.
One of the better ‘weird but makes total sense given universe mechanics’ flavor bits on Golarion.
This is my favorite kind of worldbuilding. Jamming together multiple fantasy tropes and finding out what new weirdness you can make from them is amongst my favorite things.
To quote the Pathfinder wiki:
“Augurs are trolls who have taken up fortune-telling. They answer their client’s questions by cutting their own stomachs open and reading their own intestines. This method of fortune telling has questionable accuracy.”
Thanks, Pathfinder wiki. lol
The cleanliness of the knife makes me think that either Brutus is a master at stabbing things (“Et tu?”), or he’s waiting his turn and Witch used her magic/hair to do the deed.
Well Witch certainly doesn’t know prestidigitation. It’s not on her spell list. Does that mean Brutus has his own caster levels!?
Valet familiar archetype. Don’t leave your magic workshop without it.
!
What feat does Brutus (and the other animal companions) use to wield tools or weapons?
Witch takes a broad view on this clause:
Pathfinder has the Eastern Empire in it? Ok guys, pack your bags, we’re changing systems!
It’s got to be in there somewhere. They’ve got every other friggin’ thing: https://i.imgur.com/IKZeyo5.jpg
It’s Taldor (the bit labelled inbred nobles/spain).
This is why the grand prince has a bodyguard of “viking” mercenaries that are well paid but not part of local politics (they are the fantasy varangian guard).
See also their whole “we used to be the big empire on the block ruling basically everything around here, but now we have lost most of it” shtick. (not super accurate to the Eastern Empire for most of its existence but it fits the pop-history version and perhaps the last period.)
Must of my knowledge on the subject comes from a metal album:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phV-ruL4jAw&list=PLc7ucUZ_GB7PnSWF6-1OOewQruxHMCK6q
Pop history FTW!
Aaand Colin is a Turisas fan. Should’ve expected it, didn’t, glad to be surprised.
It’d be really interesting to examine the overlap between the metal community (especially power and symphonic stuff) and tabletop games, because even disregarding the original shared inspirations it must be fairly sizeable, especially amongst long-time players.
There is a surprising correlation between metal, classical, and drama:
Source: https://psychcentral.com/lib/preferred-music-style-is-tied-to-personality/
I think that narrative gaming falls neatly in line.
Obscure rules easily missed:
All the restoration spells are NOT instant like most condition-curing spells. They take three (!) rounds to cast. They are entirely intended to be non-combat spells as such, or extremely problematic to cast mid combat. If you’ve ever used the spell to save someone’s life mid-combat without concentrating three whole rounds to do it first, or if the person would have died the next round without it, you’ve outright cheated and the person you saved are effectively Schrodinger’s PC, alive but not by RAW.
There’s a few special spells with the meditation tag. These spells offer strong buffs that last an entire day, but are only available to prepared casters, as they effectively are ‘cast’ when you prepare/pray/fill out your slots with spells, eating up a slot immediately. They also don’t stack with other meditation spells.
Putting three ranks into acrobatics permanently improves your ‘defensive fighting’ and ‘full defense’ actions, granting an extra +1/+2 AC respectively. This makes putting 3 ranks in acrobatics almost always worthwhile, especially on builds that use it extensively.
Flying creatures can’t hover in place without a feat. You also have to make fly checks to do complex turns, or anything more complicated than going in a straight line. They can also fall if they take damage mid flight. The issue though is that the DCs are so low that 90% of flying creatures bever fail any of these checks even on a nat1.
Everyone knows that dragons have breath attacks, claws, a strong bite, and occasionally tail/wing attacks. But there’s another natural attack that is almost never mentioned or used – the ‘Crush’ attack. This is, in effect, the dragon belly-flopping on top of a smaller creature, crushing them under its sheer bulk. It’s easy to perform (assuming there’s room to fly, and the dragon is big enough) and if successful, it automatically damages AND pins any creature it hits!
My face after looking up restoration: https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/775113851241162059/90922572CF290C9A1F7D538A164ABD5864BA1D7E/?imw=200&imh=200&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=true
That’s the face of most Clerics (and Paladins) when they pray for theirs spells, really.
I think creatures can hover in place, even if they have clumsy maneuverability, as long as they make a DC15 Fly check.
That does bring up the question: can a creature take 10 on Fly checks in combat if its enemies have no means of reaching it in the air?
The real bitch is that there’s no explanation of what happens when you fail that check. Do you fall? Fall 10 ft.? Are you forced to move? Bleh.
I’m hoping it’s being forced to move. Have to use those mid-air collision rules somewhere.
Wall of force on a readied action was always my favorite for bird into a screen door shenanigans.
This comic makes me think of what a Wizard education might be like. How many toads did they have to dissect or harvest the eyes of? When did they learn the magical properties of bat guano and sulphur?
Once you graduate your apprenticeship, you’ve effectively joined a community of practice. Continuing your educations is a lifelong journey. For some it involves adventuring. For others, it’s all about workshops down at the adult learning annex.
Dont forget the fun of Light and Darkness descriptor interactions in PF1e.
You drop a level 2 darkness, they have a continual flame up, welcome to natural lighting conditions, which isnt explained remotely clearly. Getting a level 3 dark vs level 2, nothings going to be seen.
But that matched version of magic, light a torch, or natural darkvision applies now.
But the explained nuance, just stays within the early level 2-3, but can hose folks not expecting a deeper.
Look, it’s all very simple. Just follow this easy seven-step process with extended example:
https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo5lhfm&page=2?Illuminating-Darkness
Having been a 5e player recently, I’ve only just come to notice that “Drop a held item as a free action” doesn’t actually seem to be in the rules anywhere that I can find.
I might have been remembering that one from Pathfinder. I think in 5e it might use up your one interaction with an object per turn.
Jeremy Crawford to the rescue, apparently: https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/70237/is-dropping-a-weapon-free
This could be the only time an official ruling hasn’t immensely disappointed me. Usually it’s something like “dual-wielding lances doesn’t work that way”, or “actually, Paladins can barely share any spells with their steed”, or “Incarnum was just an experiment and we’re never doing it again” (that last one particularly stuck in my craw; Incarnum was awesome).
M20, Mage the Ascension 20° Anniversary Edition. How complicated the magic system is? There is a book: “How Do You DO That”. It’s all about how to do things. Yep a whole how do you do that book. Recommended lecture if you really want to play, or at least understand the game. And yes, the M20 Core rulebook has plenty of rules and explanations, 120 pages of them. And that is just the magic rules chapter. There still a lot more to read and understand magic 😀
On the other hand since we don’t use a single magic system for our setting many times in our table we end up having some serious questions about how things work 🙁
Specially when i twink something like the liches or how ethereal/immaterial things may be stuck with material objects 🙂
OK. I’ll bite. How do incorporeal beings interact with material objects?
They don’t. It’s the material object the one that interact with them. You charge the object with thaumaturgical power, power born from the soul, and so the object gets a spiritual as well as physical form that allows it to strike immaterial beings. Remember in Exalted gods and spirits’ dematerialization? This allows for the object to interact with both things at the same time 🙂
Here a cookie for you 😀
Valet familiar archetype. Don’t leave your magical workshop without one.
This reminds me quite suspiciously of our little exchange concerning RPG vocabulary.
Hmmmm…..
We cannot hide away such insight down in the comments. It must go into the blog, where all the good folk of Handbook-World might see and benefit.
I am flattered you would share my RPG word with the world in such a manner. …even if it just happened to be coincidental.
This bit of obscure arcane lore is technically not something with a rules effect but I certainly have changed many a wizards known spells after I learned it.
You know that popular second level spell Spider Climb?
It requires you to eat a live spider to cast, and sure you have a free one in your spell component pouch, but I’m certainly not eating one anyway that’s just far too gross.
(in dnd 3.5, pathfinder didn’t copy-paste the description of how material components gets used so it might not have gotten inherited there)
If ever there was an argument for taking eschew materials….
Okay, I am going to have to completely rethink how I’ve been interpreting all those spells in 5e that mention a material component being consumed on use.
My Pathfinder group’s casters have such limited spell lists that it usually isn’t a problem. However, there was a particularly egregious dungeon delve early on that looking back on it, I’d applied protective bonuses to myself and allies that shouldn’t have stacked due to being the same time (resistance and deflection bonuses from Protection from Evil, Shield Other, Shield of Faith and cloak of resistance). Bit of a whoopsie there.
Heh. You aren’t the only one to mess up that rule: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/armored-armor
For a brief period of time, I had assumed that if someone was on a different plane, one could cast “Banishment” on themselves in order to permanently travel back to their own plane.
However then I realized that the incapacitated condition would cause automatic loss of concentration, rendering it impossible to maintain the full minute needed to STAY in your home dimension.
BUT WAIT. Almost 2 years later, I would see a question about a fringe case of a multiplanar character, and how their “dual-home planes” might interact oddly with the spell. While I studied the wording of Banishment, I realized that the incapacitated condition was only mentioned in the portion of the spell referring to a creature being banished FROM its home plane. No mention was made about incapacitating a creature that is being sent back TO its home plane.
I had mistakenly shelved one of the most creative uses of Banishment for years due to a misread of the spell.