Boosting skills with masterwork and magic items?

[bean illus]

I remember reading about an item giving boost to all skills. Am i wrong (or did i read it, but they were wrong)?

I know about:
Guidance of the Avatar, +20 competence
Divine Insight, +15 insight
Tool, masterwork +2 circumstance

Bull's Strength is enhancment? These spells work?

So what skill boost can be given? Silent moves and such grant a +5/+10/+15 competence, and they won't stack.

Salve of Slipperiness provides a +20 competence, and also doesn't stack?

What do we got? Items or spells that grant other bonuses, or stack with Guidance of the Avatar, and Divine Insight?

[the_tick_rules]

there is a stone of good luck that gives a +1 luck bonus to all skills amongst other things. Pale green ioun stones gives a +1 competence to all skills and a few other things.

[Biggus]

The only items I know which boost all skills are the two the_tick_rules mentions. There are one or two items which give bonuses to specific skills which stack with all the types you mention, for example a Dark Blue Rhomboid ioun stone grants the Alertness feat which gives a +2 unnamed bonus to Spot and Listen.

[bean illus]

there is a stone of good luck that gives a +1 luck bonus to all skills amongst other things. Pale green ioun stones gives a +1 competence to all skills and a few other things.

The ioun stone is 30k, and +1 competence. Doesn't stack, and due to boosting attack, saves, skill checks, and ability checks it's pretty pricey for a +1 to saves.

Stone of Good Luck gains a +1 luck bonus on saves, ability checks, and skill checks. And is 20k, again due to it's continuous nature on so many checks.

Both worth mentioning, but pricey for their +1.

Would love a low level luck spell though. It reall needs at least 1 min+ duration, but instantaneous might work.

[Biggus]

Don't know of a spell that give luck bonuses to skills, but Heroism gives a morale bonus to all skills which stacks with all the others.

[bean illus]

Don't know of a spell that give luck bonuses to skills, but Heroism gives a morale bonus to all skills which stacks with all the others.

Hmm, 2nd level bard spell, also on the prid and courage domains as 3rd level.

I'll also be wanting help activating them quickly, making the ones with shorter durations into magic items that don't cost a fortune, etc, so the can be spammed. The build will max umd, so that's not a problem.

[Oberron]

Artificer has the infusion "skill enchantment" that gives a +2 (+1 per two lvl) to any skill the caster picks.

[Biggus]

Just thought, there is a low-level spell which can give luck bonuses to skills: Improvisation (SpC). It's Bard-only and only lasts 1 round per level, but if you can somehow get it at a high caster level it can give big bonuses to any skill.

[bean illus]

Artificer has the infusion "skill enchantment" that gives a +2 (+1 per two lvl) to any skill the caster picks.

Honestly, I've never looked at Artificer, and don't know what infusions are. Are they just another word for spells? Or more like potions?


Just thought, there is a low-level spell which can give luck bonuses to skills: Improvisation (SpC). It's Bard-only and only lasts 1 round per level, but if you can somehow get it at a high caster level it can give big bonuses to any skill.

I know of improvisation, but it's a 5th level bard spell, which could be expensive to spam. I suppose saving it for when you really need it?

Assuming UMD on ... say a rogue, what item would improvisation be delivered with?

[Troacctid]

There are a decent assortment of magic items based on heroism that grant a morale bonus to all skills, including the admiral's bicorne, candle of invocation, and standard of heroism.

[sreservoir]

Honestly, I've never looked at Artificer, and don't know what infusions are. Are they just another word for spells? Or more like potions?

Infusions are, well, "function just like spells and follow all the rules for spells" except with a funky clause that says that instead of casting them on someone who isn't a construct, you have to imbue them into an item they're wearing. They're basically spells, off a list of what feels a lot like mostly 10 min/level item-themed buffs with 1 minute casting times.


I know of improvisation, but it's a 5th level bard spell, which could be expensive to spam. I suppose saving it for when you really need it?

Assuming UMD on ... say a rogue, what item would improvisation be delivered with?

Sounds like you're looking at the CAdv printing. The Spell Compendium version is intended to supersede it and is a 1st level bard spell, which is much cheaper, but because its effect is CL-dependent you'd probably want to pay for a higher-CL version.

[bean illus]

Infusions are, well, "function just like spells and follow all the rules for spells" except with a funky clause that says that instead of casting them on someone who isn't a construct, you have to imbue them into an item they're wearing. They're basically spells, off a list of what feels a lot like mostly 10 min/level item-themed buffs with 1 minute casting times.

Does UMD work on them?



Sounds like you're looking at the CAdv printing. The Spell Compendium version is intended to supersede it and is a 1st level bard spell, which is much cheaper, but because its effect is CL-dependent you'd probably want to pay for a higher-CL version.

You're right. I got it now.

How would that work on a continuous item? Caster level 20 = 40k? Every 20 rounds another pool starts?

Sound reasonable? It doesn't sound game breaking to me. Is it? 20th level casters are stopping time, what's an automatic hide? No big deal. After all, a 20th level bard can still use improvisation to spot him.

[Biggus]

Sounds like you're looking at the CAdv printing. The Spell Compendium version is intended to supersede it and is a 1st level bard spell, which is much cheaper, but because its effect is CL-dependent you'd probably want to pay for a higher-CL version.

They dropped it to 1st level from 5th? I know they changed the levels of a lot of spells in the Spell Compendium but... o_O



How would that work on a continuous item? Caster level 20 = 40k? Every 20 rounds another pool starts?

Sound reasonable? It doesn't sound game breaking to me. Is it? 20th level casters are stopping time, what's an automatic hide? No big deal. After all, a 20th level bard can still use improvisation to spot him.

I don't think there are rules for that specifically, I think you're in "ask your DM" territory. Personally it would make more sense to me as a command-word item than continuous, but if you're using it for eg Move Silently you probably don't want to be speaking to activate it, and you probably don't want to spend a standard action every time either. There are items which can be activated by purely mental commands (and as swift or immediate actions) in the MIC, but I don't know of any rules for how that affects the price.

[sreservoir]

Does UMD work on them?

Yes.

What items you make of an infusion is a murkier issue. The RAW, at least, are clear: they follow all the rules for spells, items that normally duplicate spell effects can totally duplicate infusion effects, and nothing indicates otherwise—but an artificer (or warlock, or midgard dwarf, or equivalent) probably needs to emulate (or otherwise bypass) the spell requirement, because all artificers also have the Item Creation class feature, which says that


An artificer’s infusions do not meet spell prerequisites for creating magic items. For example, an artificer must still employ the Use Magic Device skill to emulate the light spell to create a wand of light, even though light appears on his infusion list.

(This is separate from the rule that artificers can't automatically use spell trigger/completion items that they have the equivalent infusion for, which is specified in the infusions class feature. The infusion rules are pretty sloppily written.)

The iffy bit comes from a bit of errata, which changes this sentence:


Like a spellcaster, an artificer can apply item creation feats and metamagic feats to his infusions.


In the Infusions class feature, the first sentence of the eighth paragraph should read as follows:
Like a spellcaster, an artificer can apply metamagic feats he knows to his infusions.

There are ... a few interpretations for this change:

The deletion of "item creation feats and" implies that RAI is that the artificer can't apply item creation feats to infusion. (In this case, however, the wording change has no mechanical effect as written, since the fact that artificers can apply item creation feats is already implied by following all the rules for spells; the errata hasn't added any actual rules text making an exception the blanket rule.)
An artificer cannot apply item creation feats to his infusions: that line in the Item Creation feature specifically says that artificers' infusions don't meet spell prerequisites, so claiming that the artificer could apply item creation feats to his infusions was a contradiction. An artificer must emulate infusions when they are spell prerequisites.

(Personally, I thought 4 xp CL 1 wands of spell storing item were a pretty neat trick: spend an extra minute and a nominal fee/xp cost and make a few skill checks to pull out low-level spells out of combat almost as much as you want! It's like ritual casting as a secret class feature.)

Minor schemas (MoE 122), on the other hand, explicitly can store infusions. Incidentally, minor schemas allow you to activate them in the infusion is on your class list:


If the spell or infusion contained within a minor schema is on your class list, then you can activate that minor schema as a spell completion item (much like activating a scroll) once per day. Schemas have no arcane or divine designation; they are usable by any character with the spell on his spell list regardless of the type of spells he casts.

It is not tremendously clear to me whether this is an exception to artificers' general lack of automatic ability to activate spell trigger/completion items just because they have the equivalent spell on their infusion list. It's possible that despite not keeping an arcane/divine distinction, minor schemas nevertheless distinguish spells from infusions, and an artificer would be able to activate a minor schema of an infusion the normal way, but would have to UMD to activate a minor schema of the equivalent spell. There are some infusions (the ones that normally target non-construct creatures) that function differently from the equivalent spells, after all, since they have to be imbued into an item. I don't know.

Nothing about minor schemas overrides the rule that infusions don't meet spell prerequisites, by the way. You have to emulate infusions to make a minor schema of them.

(As an aside, the other class that gets infusions, the Cyre scout? Its "Infusions" class feature refers to the artificer version, but it doesn't have the Item Creation feature. Which, you know, is the source of the rule that your infusions don't meet spell prereqs. So they might be able to make magic items out of their infusions directly, without rolling to emulate them.)


You're right. I got it now.

How would that work on a continuous item? Caster level 20 = 40k? Every 20 rounds another pool starts?

Sound reasonable? It doesn't sound game breaking to me. Is it? 20th level casters are stopping time, what's an automatic hide? No big deal. After all, a 20th level bard can still use improvisation to spot him.

It doesn't. Custom items are always ask-your-DM territory.

From one point of view, this is kind of like a +10 bonus to saving throws—or at least your first four every encounter—and by standard pricing ought to start from at least 100k, probably with a premium for the unusual bonus type, even before considering all the extra functionality; the skill bonuses alone are easily a few 100ks.
From another, the table (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/creatingMagicItems.htm#tableEstimatingMagicItemGol dPieceValues) estimates 160k (x4 for duration measured in rounds)—but Improvisation's mechanic translates really poorly to a continuous item anyway.

There are no hard-and-fast rules for this kind of thing.


They dropped it to 1st level from 5th? I know they changed the levels of a lot of spells in the Spell Compendium but... o_O

Another one of these is aiming at the target, which dropped from 5th to 2nd (and is still kind of jank, to be honest). Amanuensis went from 3rd to 0. Ray of Light went from 1st (Dragon Annual #5 23) to 6th—it is still weaker than blindness (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/blindnessDeafness.htm)—it is a mystery. Darsson's potion was dropped from 4th to 2nd, had its casting time bumped up from a full-round to 1 minute, and no longer requires XP. Bridge of sound, a Conjuration (Creation) [Sonic] spell, became dark way, an Illusion (Shadow) spell—it's still on the bard list. Minor servitor (sor/wiz 5, clr 7) was allegedly renamed to awaken construct (clr 9, sor/wiz 9), even though awaken construct is a different spell that previously appeared in the same book (Savage Species)—sometimes I wonder whether they really decided that only one was necessary or if they just got a row messed up in Excel.

Then there's the not-technically-renamed spells. Reciprocal gyre (SpC 170) is thematically quite similar to magical backlash (DoTU 62), and is 5th level instead of 2nd to questionable benefit.

Duelward is basically battlemagic perception (HoB 125) but worse in every conceivable way: sor/wiz 5 only instead of clr 3 sor/wiz 3, abjuration instead of divination (okay, that's not a huge difference, but abjuration is bannable), it doesn't have a bonus effect of detecting spells within 100 ft., the Spellcraft bonus is only +4 instead of +5 (????), it lets you counterspell as an immediate action (okay, HoB's "free action" predates swifts and immediates, so the HoB version should probably be handled as an immediate anyway), duelward ends immediately on explicitly any counterspell (BmP only ends if you use its reactive counterspell effect), the duration is 1 round/level (down from 10 min/level), it's explicitly "until discharged" now so you can't even argue for persisting it, and it adds a material component. (It's not a costly component, but it makes the spell gratuitously worse.) Nothing indicates, however, that they're supposed to be the same spell, so battlemagic perception still exists, I guess.

Oh, and defenestrating sphere had a line added to it so that if the target is near it window, they go that way instead of a random direction. As befits the name.

Yeah, SpC changed a lot of spells.

[bean illus]

Yes.

What items you make of an infusion is a murkier issue. The RAW, at least, are clear: they follow all the rules for spells, items that normally duplicate spell effects can totally duplicate infusion effects, and nothing indicates otherwise—but an artificer (or warlock, or midgard dwarf, or equivalent) probably needs to emulate (or otherwise bypass) the spell requirement, because all artificers also have the Item Creation class feature, which says that



(This is separate from the rule that artificers can't automatically use spell trigger/completion items that they have the equivalent infusion for, which is specified in the infusions class feature. The infusion rules are pretty sloppily written.)

The iffy bit comes from a bit of errata, which changes this sentence:





There are ... a few interpretations for this change:

The deletion of "item creation feats and" implies that RAI is that the artificer can't apply item creation feats to infusion. (In this case, however, the wording change has no mechanical effect as written, since the fact that artificers can apply item creation feats is already implied by following all the rules for spells; the errata hasn't added any actual rules text making an exception the blanket rule.)
An artificer cannot apply item creation feats to his infusions: that line in the Item Creation feature specifically says that artificers' infusions don't meet spell prerequisites, so claiming that the artificer could apply item creation feats to his infusions was a contradiction. An artificer must emulate infusions when they are spell prerequisites.

(Personally, I thought 4 xp CL 1 wands of spell storing item were a pretty neat trick: spend an extra minute and a nominal fee/xp cost and make a few skill checks to pull out low-level spells out of combat almost as much as you want! It's like ritual casting as a secret class feature.)

Minor schemas (MoE 122), on the other hand, explicitly can store infusions. Incidentally, minor schemas allow you to activate them in the infusion is on your class list:



It is not tremendously clear to me whether this is an exception to artificers' general lack of automatic ability to activate spell trigger/completion items just because they have the equivalent spell on their infusion list. It's possible that despite not keeping an arcane/divine distinction, minor schemas nevertheless distinguish spells from infusions, and an artificer would be able to activate a minor schema of an infusion the normal way, but would have to UMD to activate a minor schema of the equivalent spell. There are some infusions (the ones that normally target non-construct creatures) that function differently from the equivalent spells, after all, since they have to be imbued into an item. I don't know.

Nothing about minor schemas overrides the rule that infusions don't meet spell prerequisites, by the way. You have to emulate infusions to make a minor schema of them.

(As an aside, the other class that gets infusions, the Cyre scout? Its "Infusions" class feature refers to the artificer version, but it doesn't have the Item Creation feature. Which, you know, is the source of the rule that your infusions don't meet spell prereqs. So they might be able to make magic items out of their infusions directly, without rolling to emulate them.)



It doesn't. Custom items are always ask-your-DM territory.

From one point of view, this is kind of like a +10 bonus to saving throws—or at least your first four every encounter—and by standard pricing ought to start from at least 100k, probably with a premium for the unusual bonus type, even before considering all the extra functionality; the skill bonuses alone are easily a few 100ks.
From another, the table (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/creatingMagicItems.htm#tableEstimatingMagicItemGol dPieceValues) estimates 160k (x4 for duration measured in rounds)—but Improvisation's mechanic translates really poorly to a continuous item anyway.

There are no hard-and-fast rules for this kind of thing.



Another one of these is aiming at the target, which dropped from 5th to 2nd (and is still kind of jank, to be honest). Amanuensis went from 3rd to 0. Ray of Light went from 1st (Dragon Annual #5 23) to 6th—it is still weaker than blindness (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/blindnessDeafness.htm)—it is a mystery. Darsson's potion was dropped from 4th to 2nd, had its casting time bumped up from a full-round to 1 minute, and no longer requires XP. Bridge of sound, a Conjuration (Creation) [Sonic] spell, became dark way, an Illusion (Shadow) spell—it's still on the bard list. Minor servitor (sor/wiz 5, clr 7) was allegedly renamed to awaken construct (clr 9, sor/wiz 9), even though awaken construct is a different spell that previously appeared in the same book (Savage Species)—sometimes I wonder whether they really decided that only one was necessary or if they just got a row messed up in Excel.

Then there's the not-technically-renamed spells. Reciprocal gyre (SpC 170) is thematically quite similar to magical backlash (DoTU 62), and is 5th level instead of 2nd to questionable benefit.

Duelward is basically battlemagic perception (HoB 125) but worse in every conceivable way: sor/wiz 5 only instead of clr 3 sor/wiz 3, abjuration instead of divination (okay, that's not a huge difference, but abjuration is bannable), it doesn't have a bonus effect of detecting spells within 100 ft., the Spellcraft bonus is only +4 instead of +5 (????), it lets you counterspell as an immediate action (okay, HoB's "free action" predates swifts and immediates, so the HoB version should probably be handled as an immediate anyway), duelward ends immediately on explicitly any counterspell (BmP only ends if you use its reactive counterspell effect), the duration is 1 round/level (down from 10 min/level), it's explicitly "until discharged" now so you can't even argue for persisting it, and it adds a material component. (It's not a costly component, but it makes the spell gratuitously worse.) Nothing indicates, however, that they're supposed to be the same spell, so battlemagic perception still exists, I guess.

Oh, and defenestrating sphere had a line added to it so that if the target is near it window, they go that way instead of a random direction. As befits the name.

Yeah, SpC changed a lot of spells.

I guess a level of bard fixes it.
Thanks for the brief on artificer.

[Biggus]

Another one of these is aiming at the target, which dropped from 5th to 2nd (and is still kind of jank, to be honest). Amanuensis went from 3rd to 0. Ray of Light went from 1st (Dragon Annual #5 23) to 6th—it is still weaker than blindness (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/blindnessDeafness.htm)—it is a mystery. Darsson's potion was dropped from 4th to 2nd, had its casting time bumped up from a full-round to 1 minute, and no longer requires XP. Bridge of sound, a Conjuration (Creation) [Sonic] spell, became dark way, an Illusion (Shadow) spell—it's still on the bard list. Minor servitor (sor/wiz 5, clr 7) was allegedly renamed to awaken construct (clr 9, sor/wiz 9), even though awaken construct is a different spell that previously appeared in the same book (Savage Species)—sometimes I wonder whether they really decided that only one was necessary or if they just got a row messed up in Excel.

Then there's the not-technically-renamed spells. Reciprocal gyre (SpC 170) is thematically quite similar to magical backlash (DoTU 62), and is 5th level instead of 2nd to questionable benefit.


Funnily enough, I just came across Magical Backlash the other day and thought "hang on, that's like Reciprocal Gyre except it does more damage unless most of your buffs are very low level...and it's 3 levels lower? I didn't think RG was a particularly weak spell in the first place, given that it's impossible to avoid taking at least half damage unless you have Mettle and it has a very high damage ceiling for a 5th-level spell". Granted, Magical Backlash is SR: yes, but apart from that it's as good or better. I guess someone at WotC got really tired of excessive buffstacking...

As for the others, I knew SpC had changed quite a lot of spells' level by one or two, but this was the first time I'd seen one that had dropped four. It kind of makes sense with Improvisation, as the power of the spell is entirely dependent on your caster level, so it doesn't really gain anything by being a lower spell level. I didn't know Ray of Light had gone up five levels though, that's pretty extreme.