PF - Need A Replacement For 3.x Quintessence

[Segev]

The Disguise check is for the appearance of the output - it has nothing to do with the sculpture (the material component).

My point is that only the GM can determine if you've been successful at providing "an ice sculpture of the target." My reading is that if you're trying to duplicate a specific individual, that sculpture needs more detail than one of a generic monster. This one of many aspects of the spell where I fully expect table variation, because "ice sculpture of X" is not clearly defined anywhere.

That's fair. DM call is necessary at times.

[unseenmage]

...
Imagining something / making it up doesn't cause it to exist, unless you are the DM.
I don't agree with the "three kobolds" example at all. Rather, as your sculpture is not of the actual Count Ravensblood, the spell would simply fail.

Unless you're literally dreaming then it factually exists in the dream plane, at least for a time. Or at least has a chance to, I'm not super up on my PF dream mechanics.
Pretty sure the Tulpa and maybe even the Alter Ego could be said to've been imagined into existence too if we squint at them hard enough.
Point being there's precedence for literally making up people/creatures albeit not necessarily intentionally.

I don't agree that something like a "generic 10th-level fighter" exists. Those are all individuals (because "10th level fighter" has no monster manual entry) ...

PF having literal monster stat blocks that I can search up on Nethys of generic NPCs that are very little more than class+race combos with a job descriptor would seem to challenge this position a bit.



As an aside, I wish I could find it but there was this excellent RAW thread on the Paizo boards that I stumbled across once which went into painstaking detail as to the Simulacrum RAW, all while another poster kept complaining about the RAI in a clearly marked and defined RAW thread.
Those being the only two things I remember about the thread and Sim threads being very common I've never been able to track it down again.

[Psyren]

Unless you're literally dreaming then it factually exists in the dream plane, at least for a time. Or at least has a chance to, I'm not super up on my PF dream mechanics.
Pretty sure the Tulpa and maybe even the Alter Ego could be said to've been imagined into existence too if we squint at them hard enough.
Point being there's precedence for literally making up people/creatures albeit not necessarily intentionally.

Do you mean Region of Dreams, the variant plane from 3.5? Or the Dimension of Dreams from PF, that doesn't actually have every creature?

As an aside, I wish I could find it but there was this excellent RAW thread on the Paizo boards that I stumbled across once which went into painstaking detail as to the Simulacrum RAW, all while another poster kept complaining about the RAI in a clearly marked and defined RAW thread.
Those being the only two things I remember about the thread and Sim threads being very common I've never been able to track it down again.

What a shame
Okay okay, I'll turn off the flip. I could see value in a thread attempting to hash out common boundaries for the spell - though I suspect those most willing to create such a thread would also be those most willing to push said boundaries as far as they could.