Class and Level Geekery XVII - When you Wish upon a Stat...

[Peelee]

Well yes but most clerics or paladins of a deity go with the same color; like how the Sapphire Guard goes for blue. All the Thorian Clerics we’ve seen had that bluish-white dweomer.

I agree, but I'm just noting it's possible that they don't need to.

Also, paladins aren't connected to deities at all. They can be, but there's nothing in mechanics or fluff that states anything about a connection to a deity. Most of the Sapphire Guard we've seen were, but then I suspect that's more of an Azurite trait than a Sapphire Guard trait.

[Wildstag]

I know it's a facetious argument, but seeing as people were trying to argue that we couldn't properly argue that Minrah was included in the casting of Telepathic Bond on the basis that we didn't explicitly see her targeted by its effect (and even argued against that assumption despite the tendril of magic reaching out of frame in her presumed direction)...

Shouldn't we also assume that none of the party is affected by Mass Death Ward on account of Durkon's magic not affecting other party members? Especially since every instance of Mass spells being cast (that I can recall) shows the IME hitting everyone (the Mass Inflict vs Mass Cure during the Vamp fight, for example)?

P.S. wow that is a ridiculously fast time for the creatures to be skinned and carved (things having been taken off of them). And I guess this serves as concrete confirmation for some of the mechanical aspects of the dungeons, in that they respawn monsters every few months. Or was that already known from an earlier page.

[dancrilis]

I know it's a facetious argument, but seeing as people were trying to argue that we couldn't properly argue that Minrah was included in the casting of Telepathic Bond on the basis that we didn't explicitly see her targeted by its effect (and even argued against that assumption despite the tendril of magic reaching out of frame in her presumed direction)...

Shouldn't we also assume that none of the party is affected by Mass Death Ward on account of Durkon's magic not affecting other party members? Especially since every instance of Mass spells being cast (that I can recall) shows the IME hitting everyone (the Mass Inflict vs Mass Cure during the Vamp fight, for example)?

Whether he cast Mass Death Ward on himself or some of the party or all the party doesn't change anything statwise that we know of, so it is not relevant to this topic.

[Ephemera]

Well yeah, he's a Narrativist GM who really doesn't give a damn about the RAW. Which is why you can't take any of this seriously unless you like aggravation.

"You can't take any of this seriously unless you like aggravation" is also a decent thread title, but not as good as "Everyone's an Expert."

As far as the Telepathic Bond discussion, and ignoring a lot of the argument over what standards we do or don't use (for my money, we actually have an implicit and healthy bias towards making assumptions that actually let us measure things, otherwise we wind up with no stats at all and...everyone is just an Expert):

Since we clearly see Blackwing as part of the bond from more than 5 feet away, that means that Haley, Elan, Roy, Belkar, Durkon, Blackwing, and V are all targets. The simplest explanation until we hear Minrah "talk" this way is that there are 6 targets and V is level 17.

That said, this would be a little weird, and V's use of "all" in 1220 would be suspect, plus Minrah does look to be casting and wouldn't have known the plan that V mind-spoke to everyone in 1221. I don't think anyone will want to push for a "V is level 20" explanation, and I would say that while there is definitely precedent for ignoring the number of targets of a spell, I don't think we have enough information to say whether that's more or less likely than a house rule about Blackwing either being able to share spell beyond 5 ft (definitely would be a house rule, the SRD text is clear).

If there were 6 targets for sure, I would vote for it being good enough evidence of V being 17 that we should take it, but given that there are likely 7 targets (maybe we'll know for sure in a few panels or maybe not) we are probably left with a situation where don't have enough evidence to invoke a house rule, let alone know which house rule is in effect unless someone wants to propose a non-outlandish way for V to have included an extra target.

If we want to know what Rich was thinking, we still can't know whether he doesn't remember or don't know about the rules, but my guess would be that he knows the rules pretty well and maybe even looks up a spell description if he's not super familiar, so it's totally possible he decided to ignore the number of targets (since as noted he doesn't much care about that sort of thing), but I would slightly lean towards him either mis-remembering or handwaving the share spell rules.

However, authorial intent is pretty clearly _not_ the goal of this thread. I like to think that Rich reads this thread just for kicks, but he probably doesn't and definitely doesn't care what we think about details.

[Rogar Demonblud]

Go back and reread the strip where V casts Force Cage against the vampire spawn. I'm fairly certain that line about giving too much information was aimed at the Forum.

[Wildstag]

I mean, it wouldn't really give too much information, since the statement that they only have two Mind Blank spells would pin them down as being level 16+, which is not that different from 16 (without the plus).

[TooSoon]

"You can't take any of this seriously unless you like aggravation" is also a decent thread title, but not as good as "Everyone's an Expert."

As far as the Telepathic Bond discussion, and ignoring a lot of the argument over what standards we do or don't use (for my money, we actually have an implicit and healthy bias towards making assumptions that actually let us measure things, otherwise we wind up with no stats at all and...everyone is just an Expert):

Since we clearly see Blackwing as part of the bond from more than 5 feet away, that means that Haley, Elan, Roy, Belkar, Durkon, Blackwing, and V are all targets. The simplest explanation until we hear Minrah "talk" this way is that there are 6 targets and V is level 17.

That said, this would be a little weird, and V's use of "all" in 1220 would be suspect, plus Minrah does look to be casting and wouldn't have known the plan that V mind-spoke to everyone in 1221. I don't think anyone will want to push for a "V is level 20" explanation, and I would say that while there is definitely precedent for ignoring the number of targets of a spell, I don't think we have enough information to say whether that's more or less likely than a house rule about Blackwing either being able to share spell beyond 5 ft (definitely would be a house rule, the SRD text is clear).

If there were 6 targets for sure, I would vote for it being good enough evidence of V being 17 that we should take it, but given that there are likely 7 targets (maybe we'll know for sure in a few panels or maybe not) we are probably left with a situation where don't have enough evidence to invoke a house rule, let alone know which house rule is in effect unless someone wants to propose a non-outlandish way for V to have included an extra target.

If we want to know what Rich was thinking, we still can't know whether he doesn't remember or don't know about the rules, but my guess would be that he knows the rules pretty well and maybe even looks up a spell description if he's not super familiar, so it's totally possible he decided to ignore the number of targets (since as noted he doesn't much care about that sort of thing), but I would slightly lean towards him either mis-remembering or handwaving the share spell rules.

However, authorial intent is pretty clearly _not_ the goal of this thread. I like to think that Rich reads this thread just for kicks, but he probably doesn't and definitely doesn't care what we think about details.

I'd still argue for level 17+, which allows us to include the possibility of level 20 (pending more proof in upcoming strips), and means we only have to handwave 1 rule at most (familiar distance) not 2 (caster level). The prima facie assumption should always be the rules are in effect, and so far there isn't one example we can't explain away (not Shojo's wizard, not Tsukiko, not Durkon), and we've seen explicit evidence that caster level is not handwaved. Not when it's used to peg the duration of V's forcecage, and not when V can cast on exactly 13 pikemen and no more (if the rules were just ignored he'd have been able to cast on however many he felt like). We've seen more evidence caster levels are tied to spell effects than we have familiar rules being obeyed tbh. If we're going to handwave one rule, that'd be the better candidate.

While we're on the subject of caster levels, Durkon seems to have either proven he's level 14, or is very close to doing so given the spells he's cast today. Assuming he had to cast wind walk twice off panel, and given he just cast heal, he'd be level 14 to cast three 6th level spells. There's also the fact that he and Minrah were already Death warded and he just cast mass death ward again (Rich told us that his version of mass death ward is a 7th level spell, as he had no idea an official version existed). True, they could each have cast death ward on themselves, however even that will have some implications. I also query how that is even possible. Regular death ward is 1 minute per caster level. Could Durkon really have warded both of them prior to his chat with Redcloak and still have it in effect? Could Minrah, given the lower casting level? Minrah and Durkon have cast enough spells in the day that we're already pretty close to being able to say some things about their level regardless.

[Quartz]

ISTM there's actually a solution to the Telepathic Bond problem. Remember that The Order were originally 3E, not 3.5E characters. I posit that V cast Telepathic Bond with the 3E version of Empower Spell. He probably used this before when casting Owl's Wisdom on Belkar (strip, someone?). We had a big discussion about it. The 3E version increased all numeric effects, not just variable numeric effects. So a 3E Empowered Telepathic Bond can affect ten people at 18th level, which neatly can include Mr Scruffy and Bloodfeast and uses an 8th level slot.

[TooSoon]

ISTM there's actually a solution to the Telepathic Bond problem. Remember that The Order were originally 3E, not 3.5E characters. I posit that V cast Telepathic Bond with the 3E version of Empower Spell. He probably used this before when casting Owl's Wisdom on Belkar (strip, someone?). We had a big discussion about it. The 3E version increased all numeric effects, not just variable numeric effects. So a 3E Empowered Telepathic Bond can affect ten people at 18th level, which neatly can include Mr Scruffy and Bloodfeast and uses an 8th level slot.

I would hate this sort of explanation even if it proved V was level 17. We can't just go assuming 3E rules are used without explicit evidence, same as how we can't assume homebrew or obscure unseen stuff was used unless there is explicit evidence for it.

[InvisibleBison]

The prima facie assumption should always be the rules are in effect, and so far there isn't one example we can't explain away (not Shojo's wizard, not Tsukiko, not Durkon), and we've seen explicit evidence that caster level is not handwaved.

So what would you accept as evidence that a rule is not in effect, either in general or in this situation in particular? It seems to me that, given how many different scenarios in which we have to find some sort of rationalization, often a fairly contrived one, to explain how they are congruent with the rule, it's more reasonable to say that the rules for how many targets a friendly transportation or communication spell can affect are not being strictly enforced.

[ByzantiumBhuka]

"You can't take any of this seriously unless you like aggravation" is also a decent thread title, but not as good as "Everyone's an Expert."

Speaking of which, I'll put in a vote for "Everyone's an Expert" for the next thread title (there being only 18 more posts permitted in this thread).

[TooSoon]

So what would you accept as evidence that a rule is not in effect, either in general or in this situation in particular? It seems to me that, given how many different scenarios in which we have to find some sort of rationalization, often a fairly contrived one, to explain how they are congruent with the rule, it's more reasonable to say that the rules for how many targets a friendly transportation or communication spell can affect are not being strictly enforced.

There are ways we could see the rules were being ignored consistently; for instance, if people whose stat sheets we had a firm idea of were constantly breaking them (so if we knew Durkon's Mass Death Ward could only effect 3 people per level, but he was buffing 6 people and we had solid proof he was only level 14). Instead it's the other way around. The guys we have solid stat blocks for like V are hewing to the rules consistently (34 hour forcecage, 13 pikemen only for buffs, etc). It's a bunch of obscure examples of characters we don't even have stat blocks (or proper stat blocks) for that are wheeled out as examples, like Shojo's Wizard and Tsukiko (both of which perfectly reasonable explanations were trotted out for). Sometimes Rich actually tells us he's breaking a particular rule too (for eg, when the forum worked out Mass Death Ward was impossible for Durkon's apparent level, Rich came onto the forum and said "Jesus, I didn't even know there was a real Mass Death Ward spell that was 8th level... so mine is a homebrewed 7th, ok?!"

Here there is no specific evidence, just people hate levelling up certain characters. Nobody uses this sort of logic to argue against Miko or Hinjo or Hayley's levels based on attacks per round, because nobody cares about them enough. It's not consistent or fair. V apparently demonstrated level 17+ at least by the rules as written, arguably level 20+. He should get that until proof to the contrary is provided; not the other way around. If people are happy to argue for level 20 I'm willing to go with that too. Either 17 or 20 is more accurate than 16.

[Bilbo Baggins]

ISTM there's actually a solution to the Telepathic Bond problem. Remember that The Order were originally 3E, not 3.5E characters. I posit that V cast Telepathic Bond with the 3E version of Empower Spell. He probably used this before when casting Owl's Wisdom on Belkar (strip, someone?). We had a big discussion about it. The 3E version increased all numeric effects, not just variable numeric effects. So a 3E Empowered Telepathic Bond can affect ten people at 18th level, which neatly can include Mr Scruffy and Bloodfeast and uses an 8th level slot.

V said she only added Telepathic Bond to her spellbook recently, in Tinkertown. So she didn't have it before the conversion to 3.5, and we can't assume that 3.0 versions of spells are available for purchase out in the world. (Sabine's Fly was explicitly a house-ruled exception.)

[dancrilis]

V said she only added Telepathic Bond to her spellbook recently, in Tinkertown. So she didn't have it before the conversion to 3.5, and we can't assume that 3.0 versions of spells are available for purchase out in the world. (Sabine's Fly was explicitly a house-ruled exception.)

The issue would not be on the spell Telepathic Bond but instead with the feat Empower Spell - but I would be inclinded to discount that possibility unless we are given reason not to.
Also it was Zz'dtri's fly spell.

In relation to a feat that would allow Vaarsuvius to cast as a level of 21 caster while still being level 16 as mentioned Pious Spellsurge does this fine.

[Quartz]

V said she only added Telepathic Bond to her spellbook recently, in Tinkertown.

But what if she had the feat before the conversion? There is still a vestige in 3.5 regardless: you need to be level 12 to create a +6 Enhancer - i.e. cast an Enhanced Bull's Strength / Fox's Cunning / etc.

[Bilbo Baggins]

But what if she had the feat before the conversion? There is still a vestige in 3.5 regardless: you need to be level 12 to create a +6 Enhancer - i.e. cast an Enhanced Bull's Strength / Fox's Cunning / etc.

Ah I see, I thought it was the spell that was different - didn't realize it was just a feat.

[RMS Oceanic]

ISTM there's actually a solution to the Telepathic Bond problem. Remember that The Order were originally 3E, not 3.5E characters. I posit that V cast Telepathic Bond with the 3E version of Empower Spell. He probably used this before when casting Owl's Wisdom on Belkar (strip, someone?). We had a big discussion about it. The 3E version increased all numeric effects, not just variable numeric effects. So a 3E Empowered Telepathic Bond can affect ten people at 18th level, which neatly can include Mr Scruffy and Bloodfeast and uses an 8th level slot.

Metamagic'd spells always have their Metamagic component announced along with it. If this was empowered Telepathic Bond, V would say "Empowered Telepathic Bond"

[Quartz]

Metamagic'd spells always have their Metamagic component announced along with it. If this was empowered Telepathic Bond, V would say "Empowered Telepathic Bond"

I'm not sure that's correct and I believe it's been discussed before.

[dancrilis]

Pompey
Neutral Evil, Half-Elf male, Wizard: Conjurer 5+ (required to cast Still Silent Animate Rope).
Feats: Scribe scroll (wizard bonus feat), Silent Spell, Still Spell.

We are using Pompey being able to untie himself and Sabine as evidence of silent and still spell, however as animate rope has a duration of 1 round per level and he could have cast it to tie them up when Roy announced his presence and then untie them a few rounds later when Roy was in front of them it seems that his usage is not conclusive of his level or feat selection.

[danielxcutter]

We are using Pompey being able to untie himself and Sabine as evidence of silent and still spell, however as animate rope has a duration of 1 round per level and he could have cast it to tie them up when Roy announced his presence and then untie them a few rounds later when Roy was in front of them it seems that his usage is not conclusive of his level or feat selection.

I don’t know that spell well, but it’s one of those spells you can keep controlling after the initial casting like, say, Telekinesis? If so I’d agree with you.

Also I vote for the Expert one too for the next thread.

[Kurald Galain]

And here's the expertly written new expertise thread for experts: https://forums.giantitp.com/showthre...ne-s-an-Expert