Random DM nagging.

[Corwin]

Unrelated to the above, a reminder that I want to do more with Light. And I could pay for it with stuff, like the Anarchic bloodline or what not.

Considering taking these spells for my blank lvl11 slots:
Beaming Blade
Moonlight Revelation

At least until you get inspired on something.
Re: Beaming Blade, it'd be a Beaming Spear variant, totally not pirated from the church.

Nothing quite does the same thing, or I would've grabbed that spell. But!

First there's Weapon of Energy (Cleric 3, Sorcerer 3, Wizard 3, Spellthief 3)
Target: One weapon
Duration: 1 round/level

It gives +1d6 of energy to each hit with the weapon (you pick which energy at casting), and quite importantly stacks with existing energy enchantment. So you can use it on a Flaming Sword +1 and it'd hit at +2d6 fire.

Then there's Persistent Spell, which turns spells into duration 24 hours at a +6 level adjustment.

So a Persistent Weapon of Energy would be a lvl9 equivalent doing +1d6 energy of your choice with one weapon for 24 hours.

In addition, there's a bunch of regular and epic spells that have short durations but also tack on +2d6 damage to your attacks for various reasons.

Holy Sword, Pal 4. Transforms the weapon, explicitly doesn't stack with weapon enchantments.
Celestial Valor, Clr 10, Glory 10, Good 10, Pal 8, Sor/Wiz 10. Explicitly states the 2d6 extra damage doesn't stack with the Holy weapon property.
Might of the Solar, Sor/Wiz 11. While it talks of sacred and bane, the spell doesn't state it doesn't stack with existing weapon buffs the way similar spells like say Celestial Valor do.

I'm sure other examples exist. If you think it's unreasonable for a spell that specializes in long-term damage boosting rather than short term damage and everything else boosting to exist, that's fair.

[Anastasia]

Unrelated to the above, a reminder that I want to do more with Light. And I could pay for it with stuff, like the Anarchic bloodline or what not.

If you wanna pay a feat for it - and not a bonus feat like that, as it was a gift from Renbuu and can't be retrained - you can. If you do, design a feat around it and post it. Is that what you wanna do?

Paying a feat gives you control plus more leeway from me, but well, it costs a feat. Your call if that's an avenue you want to explore. If not, I'll come back to this.

Considering taking these spells for my blank lvl11 slots:
Beaming Blade
Moonlight Revelation

At least until you get inspired on something.
Re: Beaming Blade, it'd be a Beaming Spear variant, totally not pirated from the church.

No on Beaming Blade. It's a Lathanderite secret and an epic spell. It hasn't spread beyond that faith. Your options from there are:

1. Develop a copy. Possible and your intent as noted. This may well draw a reaction from Lathander's clergy though or at least Moonlight, so your K:P ranks suggest some diplomacy and asking nicely would be in order.
2. Try and get them to give you the original spell to work with or simply copy directly. Hello diplomacy times.

Moonlight Revelation's fine. It's not a church secret and Balyss is here to crib notes from. She's fine with it, it's merely a moon themed spell rather than something intimately tied to the church. Besides, part of the Triune is Sehanine Moonbow, so there's a theological argument that you deserve access even if it was. She's not touching that theological clusterfuck, so draw your own conclusions.

Nothing quite does the same thing, or I would've grabbed that spell. But!

First there's Weapon of Energy (Cleric 3, Sorcerer 3, Wizard 3, Spellthief 3)
Target: One weapon
Duration: 1 round/level

It gives +1d6 of energy to each hit with the weapon (you pick which energy at casting), and quite importantly stacks with existing energy enchantment. So you can use it on a Flaming Sword +1 and it'd hit at +2d6 fire.

Then there's Persistent Spell, which turns spells into duration 24 hours at a +6 level adjustment.

So a Persistent Weapon of Energy would be a lvl9 equivalent doing +1d6 energy of your choice with one weapon for 24 hours.

In addition, there's a bunch of regular and epic spells that have short durations but also tack on +2d6 damage to your attacks for various reasons.

Holy Sword, Pal 4. Transforms the weapon, explicitly doesn't stack with weapon enchantments.
Celestial Valor, Clr 10, Glory 10, Good 10, Pal 8, Sor/Wiz 10. Explicitly states the 2d6 extra damage doesn't stack with the Holy weapon property.
Might of the Solar, Sor/Wiz 11. While it talks of sacred and bane, the spell doesn't state it doesn't stack with existing weapon buffs the way similar spells like say Celestial Valor do.

I'm sure other examples exist. If you think it's unreasonable for a spell that specializes in long-term damage boosting rather than short term damage and everything else boosting to exist, that's fair.

Quick note about Might of the Solar: It doesn't mention stacking or not, but says the following.

Your natural attacks and weapons are filled with sacred power, allowing you to treat any attack you make as a bane attack against the target; adding a +2 bonus to hit and damage, as well as 2d6 points of damage.

Since it doesn't mention if it stacks or not, the basic rule about identical effects not stacking comes into play. You can't have a sword with bane (evil outsiders) twice, you can't make a double holy sword, so on and so forth. So I'd rule it doesn't stack with a bane weapon. I believe this was the intent of the spell when I wrote it, but I'd have to check my notes to be sure. I may change this later, as in either case I'm going to clarify that bit of the spell later tonight. I'll post in nagging when I do.

Anyway.

It's not that a spell that does +1d6 damage for hours at a time is mechanically wrong. I'm pretty sure there's a spell or two (in the spell collection or never posted, I forget) that does that on my end. I'm just a bit wary of it and trying to convert an aura spell to a direct bonus damage spell wasn't working.

As I alluded to, I'm wary of hour/duration spells, especially ones that are combat boosters. Most spells that have that sort of duration (that I write, anyway) are certain defensive and utility spells. There's one exception: thunderous voice, which gives a standard action lightning bolt attack. The reason why is the same reason why persistent spell and divine metamagic aren't ever going to be approved by me: I feel turning those sort of spells into day long fire and forgets is fundamentally unbalanced and has undesirable effects on gameplay.

In this case, is it broken? Probably not. Beyond Jaela's damage probably being high enough already, adding +1d6 damage per attack probably isn't going to change much overall. So I'd allow something like that, write it up and I'll see about approving it.

---

Since it came up indirectly, do bear in mind the escalation stakes. The various enemies and traps in Benfal had force I felt sufficient to challenge the party as well as tactics worthy of the level of intellect directing them. You all (especially Jaela, Afina and Ithea due to being long runners) are powerful. So are your enemies. Be careful about pushing the boundaries too far - what you feel might be a neat upgrade could blow up in your faces when the enemies do something like that.

Not a warning or anything, just a friendly reminder.

[Corwin]

If you wanna pay a feat for it - and not a bonus feat like that, as it was a gift from Renbuu and can't be retrained - you can. If you do, design a feat around it and post it. Is that what you wanna do?

Paying a feat gives you control plus more leeway from me, but well, it costs a feat. Your call if that's an avenue you want to explore. If not, I'll come back to this.

It's understandable that my intention won't get across fully since it's been a while since we talked about this. Luckily, a clarification is a post away!

While I wouldn't mind it being retrained or what not, I was thinking along different lines. The millennial chainmail, for example, allows me to sacrifice a lvl4 slot to get fast healing 3 with it. And there is that cleric/favored soul ACF that lets you sacrifice a lvl4 slot to get a pool of healing similar to a paladin's. No idea why both are lvl4, btw.

Other options are that sorc acf/variant that eats up a spell known per spell level to give you weapon focus and more hp, or arcane strike and its weaker divine variant that burn spells for attack/damage boosts.

So I was thinking along the lines of how I could invest spell slots/spells known/whichever to pay for better light-themed abilities if that's what it took to make things balanced.

The key issue, however, is that I want to see some examples of what I could actually do here. Once you tell me what I can actually aim for here, we can work on how to make it happen. Given that one of Lathander's guys offered me several choices before giving me the anti-evil DC-lowering aura I figure you have some ideas? Plus, light-based powers have been in use for a while, and I want to get them legitimately rather than beg powerful dudes for power-ups.

[Anastasia]

It's understandable that my intention won't get across fully since it's been a while since we talked about this. Luckily, a clarification is a post away!

While I wouldn't mind it being retrained or what not, I was thinking along different lines. The millennial chainmail, for example, allows me to sacrifice a lvl4 slot to get fast healing 3 with it. And there is that cleric/favored soul ACF that lets you sacrifice a lvl4 slot to get a pool of healing similar to a paladin's. No idea why both are lvl4, btw.

If I had to guess, clerics don't have much to trade away besides spells. I'd imagine they aimed for a level where it's obtainable in most games that go past low levels, but also of a level that'll have an impact for a longest possible time. A full caster gets those at level 7 or 8, which is a good spot before levels get too high for a normal game. Anyway, this is a digression so let's get to the meat of this.

So I was thinking along the lines of how I could invest spell slots/spells known/whichever to pay for better light-themed abilities if that's what it took to make things balanced.

The key issue, however, is that I want to see some examples of what I could actually do here. Once you tell me what I can actually aim for here, we can work on how to make it happen. Given that one of Lathander's guys offered me several choices before giving me the anti-evil DC-lowering aura I figure you have some ideas? Plus, light-based powers have been in use for a while, and I want to get them legitimately rather than beg powerful dudes for power-ups.

Sure. Do me a favor and dig up what the other offers were real quick?

[Corwin]

I don't know since I had to choose blindly.  :(

[Anastasia]

I don't know since I had to choose blindly.  :(

Oh okay. Lemme think a few then.

[Anastasia]

Okay, first of all I need my ducks in a row. You'd probably know this better than I would, so what have I let you do with your light and how?

Sorry for ten questions here, it's just way easier to ask you than to logdive while DMing several topics.

[Corwin]

Okay. So we fought this dude, Salanadriel.

Here's one example of us fighting him and him using light (fluff-wise). Here's another.

He eventually offers us a blessing, which I claimed. Here are the relevant posts: one, two, three.

The ability he gave me is:

Jaela's body glows with light before it fades, yet she seems somehow brighter than before.

Jaela gains the following ability.

Body of Light (Su)

At will as a free action, Jaela can shed light equivalent to a torch. Evil creatures within this light suffer a -2 penalty to saving throws against Jaela's spells, spell-like abilities and supernatural abilities. This penalty increases to -4 against evil outsiders and undead.

I've since managed to copy his clothes trick from the first link (his intro post). I also tried some weapons with moderate success in the thread here.

[Iron Dragoon]

With a semi-impending transformation/rebuild on the horizon, I've got a question and a couple notes.

First off, with Specialist Wizard, I had to pick two schools to ban. I picked Illusion and Necromancy. Assuming that I gain Sorcerer casting on Dragon side, will those bans apply to Sorcerer casting? Here's the text quote:

Specialization allows a wizard to cast extra spells from her chosen school, but she then never learns to cast spells from some other schools.
A specialist wizard can prepare one additional spell of her specialty school per spell level each day. She also gains a +2 bonus on Spellcraft checks to learn the spells of her chosen school.
The wizard must choose whether to specialize and, if she does so, choose her specialty at 1st level. At this time, she must also give up two other schools of magic (unless she chooses to specialize in divination; see below), which become her prohibited schools. A wizard can never give up divination to fulfill this requirement. Spells of the prohibited school or schools are not available to the wizard, and she can't even cast such spells from scrolls or fire them from wands. She may not change either her specialization or her prohibited schools later.

Having gained experience with magic, I realize now that banning Necromancy was a terrible choice, and Enchantment would have been a much better choice to ban (as I've only ever cast a single spell from Enchantment: Greater Heroism). Would I be able to get those Necromancy spells via Sorc?

Second, do ACFs work with Dragon casting at all? I can't really see that they do, but if there's some obscure thing I'm missing, I might be able to get something out of it.

Third, I plan to swap some feats that I basically never use for something that'll help me much more: Metamagic School Focus and Magic Disruption in favor of Spell Penetration and Greater Spell Penetration.

[Corwin]

Since it's been a while, I decided to write my own draft. Comments?

Terror Fog
Conjuration (Creation, Teleportation)
Level: Clr 11
Components: V, S
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Medium (100ft + 10ft/level)
Effect: Fog spreads in 100ft radius, 100ft high
Duration: 1 round/level
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: No

The spell was originally designed by Jaela of Aurora as a training exercise after learning of the variant used by Bubbles. This spell creates a fog similar to solid fog but greatly enhanced. The fog has all the properties of solid fog.

You appear in the fog wherever you wish. You are immune to all of the effects of the fog and may move normally within it. Your reach changes, allowing you to always threaten anyone within the fog with you. Those threatened by you are considered flanked with you. Additionally, you enjoy a +10 bonus to attack rolls and armor class while within the fog.

[Anastasia]

With a semi-impending transformation/rebuild on the horizon, I've got a question and a couple notes.

First off, with Specialist Wizard, I had to pick two schools to ban. I picked Illusion and Necromancy. Assuming that I gain Sorcerer casting on Dragon side, will those bans apply to Sorcerer casting? Here's the text quote:

Specialization allows a wizard to cast extra spells from her chosen school, but she then never learns to cast spells from some other schools.
A specialist wizard can prepare one additional spell of her specialty school per spell level each day. She also gains a +2 bonus on Spellcraft checks to learn the spells of her chosen school.
The wizard must choose whether to specialize and, if she does so, choose her specialty at 1st level. At this time, she must also give up two other schools of magic (unless she chooses to specialize in divination; see below), which become her prohibited schools. A wizard can never give up divination to fulfill this requirement. Spells of the prohibited school or schools are not available to the wizard, and she can't even cast such spells from scrolls or fire them from wands. She may not change either her specialization or her prohibited schools later.

Having gained experience with magic, I realize now that banning Necromancy was a terrible choice, and Enchantment would have been a much better choice to ban (as I've only ever cast a single spell from Enchantment: Greater Heroism). Would I be able to get those Necromancy spells via Sorc?

Yes, banned schools only apply to your wizard casting. Comes up in Complete Arcane.

Second, do ACFs work with Dragon casting at all? I can't really see that they do, but if there's some obscure thing I'm missing, I might be able to get something out of it.

No, as they aren't class levels but an ability gained by racial hit dice.

Third, I plan to swap some feats that I basically never use for something that'll help me much more: Metamagic School Focus and Magic Disruption in favor of Spell Penetration and Greater Spell Penetration.

Knock yourself out.

[Anastasia]

Okay. So we fought this dude, Salanadriel.

Here's one example of us fighting him and him using light (fluff-wise). Here's another.

He eventually offers us a blessing, which I claimed. Here are the relevant posts: one, two, three.

The ability he gave me is:

Jaela's body glows with light before it fades, yet she seems somehow brighter than before.

Jaela gains the following ability.

Body of Light (Su)

At will as a free action, Jaela can shed light equivalent to a torch. Evil creatures within this light suffer a -2 penalty to saving throws against Jaela's spells, spell-like abilities and supernatural abilities. This penalty increases to -4 against evil outsiders and undead.

I've since managed to copy his clothes trick from the first link (his intro post). I also tried some weapons with moderate success in the thread here.

Do you mean burning a daily spell slot for the day, or a permanent sacrifice? Sorry I didn't catch that earlier, I'm just now getting to nagging catch up.

[Anastasia]

Since it's been a while, I decided to write my own draft. Comments?

Terror Fog
Conjuration (Creation, Teleportation)

You appear in the fog wherever you wish.

So I presume this is meant to be a teleportation effect, based on the descriptor? Assuming so, when do you teleport? Is it an action? How often do you teleport?

You are immune to all of the effects of the fog and may move normally within it. Your reach changes, allowing you to always threaten anyone within the fog with you. Those threatened by you are considered flanked with you.

Okay, fairly reasonable within the paradigm and sanest way to implement it.

Additionally, you enjoy a +10 bonus to attack rolls and armor class while within the fog.

Okay, that part's hitting the blender. When I did that for fog trap, it was me tossing on a booster rather than making advanced elder elementals for the sake of one spell. It isn't really meant to translate to a self-booster, let alone an untyped one.

[Anastasia]

Bonus Material 1: Chat logs. Ones worth saving. Nothing really IC relevant, just some world details. If this doesn't make sense, read Moore's current thread first.

> There's a lot Creation hides for various reasons. The light's one of them and one you still don't know the real answer to. Hopefully it's not as terrifying as Cantasa Alexandria, since that concern coming true could be catastrophic.
> When I wrote Morwel's stat block and flavor block, I had to do some dancing to step around issues like that without being too blatant about it, and also leave little allusions to it. It's one of the reasons some of the greatest forces don't get stat blocks posted, because it's a bloody pain to do that.
<Nephrite> Well, we've already seen that somehow the devils can poison The World Tree (thanks a lot for the help there Titania and Oberon for making sure your own garden wasn't infested with worms)
> There's a level of conceptual dickery that deities deal with and that spills over onto mortals occasionally. Numerology for example or things like that.
> Deities have the tools to deal with it. Mortals generally don't.
> Of special note are the High-One and Zaphkiel. The three are the greatest pure exemplars of good and meet once per twenty one years at the High-One's behest. Here matters of profound importance to the continued unity of law and chaos within good are discussed.These meetings take place deep within Elysium, in holy places seen to none other besides the three. Strategy, information, cooperation and conflicts are resolved by the three; Morwel takes these meetings quite seriously and shows none of her normal flightiness.
> For example, that paragraph makes a lot more sense after that.
> Morwel is 6. High-One is 7. Zaphkiel is 8. Together they are 21 letters. High-One, as pure Good, is 7. Morwel and Zaphkiel are one off in different directions, as the touch of chaos and law change them. Sometimes I wonder if anyone ever gets this stuff or if I get way to into stuff like that.
<Nephrite> I was just thinking High-One was another name for Ao.
> No.
> Ao (and the Three Incarnations) are above anything within Creation, as they came from beyond it and made it.
<Nephrite> Ahh, okay.
> Good is a direct result of Creation and it's something the Incarnations don't really understand. 21 was created as a tool to understand it, incidentally, which came up before.
> The Incarnations understand law and chaos naturally. Good and evil's a new twist they weren't expecting.
<Nephrite> It's interesting, then, that the doctrine of both Morwel and Zaphkiel are two rather distinct ends for Creation that in theory have no room for each other.
<Nephrite> But obviously they have to have some understanding that it's "okay" if both of them are there as long as evil is not.
> Yeah.
> Good manages to get law and chaos to co-exist.
> Evil makes it even worse.
<Nephrite> I figure at that point that Creation just exists between Mount Celestia and Arborea that they can tell their followers "yeah hey this is fine don't worry about it"
> If you read Morwel's flavor block, it goes into her end game and how she could potentially win. It's safe to say that if the High-One won, law and chaos would both survive and all the Heavens would.
<Nephrite> I would think that both sides on the law/chaos angle respect each other enough to just accept their co-existence at that point.
> If Good wins outright, there will be a reckoning with the three - not violent or anything - where the question of law and chaos within Good is finally settled.
> Once done, Zaphkiel, the High-One and Queen Morwel shall meet. In that meeting, Queen Morwel's dream of many truths will prove superior to the single, absolute truth Zaphkiel embodies and the strength of unity the High-One holds. They will be folded into Queen Morwel, and in that their children will become her children. All the celestial host will come to join Morwel's dream and Morwel's dream will become Creation. All will live an eternal cycle of perfect and wonderful lives, reincarnating to find yet more joyous and varied experiences. Creation will be a celebration that knows nothing of suffering, despair of misery. Queen Morwel will then rule over all Creation, content to ensure the dream continues forever.
> Of course, the other planes and deities would not agree with this vision.
> If CG wins, that's what happens. If NG wins, you get the status quo of all the Heavens surviving, more or less.
> Well, the thing about that is that your thought there is very NG by the standards of how that's reckoned. Nothing wrong with that at all.
<Nephrite> Ah, so it's more of NG coming out on top and telling the other two to play nice, more or less.
> But if Good wins and gets to that point, a decision has to be made? Co-existance or has one of the extremes proven to be superior?
* Space_Cat nods.
> Any of the three good alignments winning would be a good end in any sense of the word. It's just different in execution. Is it one perfect heaven and ideal? It is endless variety within good, always changing at a dream's whim? Or is it a balance between that and what lies between, a final acceptance that the final war between law and chaos doesn't have to happen?
<Nephrite> I wonder what Ao would say.
> That's the big question. What happens when Creation finally serves its purpose to the Incarnations? Of course, it has to survive Ao being a tremendous dick and get that far.
<Nephrite> Yeah, it would be interesting if there was peace between law and chaos and Ao was not OK with it.
> Seira and Alicia should get on that.
<Nephrite> He's probably just mad the other two Incarnations went to the store to get something and still aren't back yet.
> I shouldn't have laughed so hard at that.
<Nephrite> I mean how long does it take for someone to get milk? Really.

[Anastasia]

Bonus Material 2: Fun with names.

Cantasa is a feminized name based on cantas. Translated roughly from latin or spanish, cantas means 'to sing' or 'I sing'.

Alexandria means defender of men.

Roughly, her name means 'I sing to defend'. No real point to it besides a bit of personal amusement and an obtuse OOC clue to her function. I do things like that sometimes.