132 - Dearest Beloved
It’s just like before.
As he laid there, feeling Sonata’s legs wrapped around him while he held her close, Lex couldn’t help but revel in how he felt at that moment. Just like the first time they’d made love, the conclusion of the physical ecstasy hadn’t been the end of the joy it had brought him. Instead, the fading pleasure had given way to a powerful sense of…peace. Although he was still fully cognizant of all of his failures and frustrations, as well as all of the problems that still needed to be solved, at that moment none of them bothered him in the least. It was an incredible feeling, the sense of being so completely unburdened. Enough so that he couldn’t help but smile, feeling the corners of his mouth turns upwards.
“That’s, like, a really great look on you,” murmured Sonata, her voice heady.
“Hm?” Lex was only half paying attention as he turned his attention back to her. Her eyes were half-lidded, her face was flushed, and her mane was disheveled, mouth open slightly as she tried to get her breath back. To his eyes, she’d never looked more fetching than she did at that moment.
“Smiling,” she answered, giving him a tired grin. “I mean, like, really smiling. You look totes cute when you do that.”
“It’s because of you,” he murmured lovingly, his sense of peace being replaced-, no, being complemented by a rush of intimacy. “I didn’t have anything to smile about until I met you. You’re the only one who can make me feel like this.” Normally the prospect of talking like this would have been embarrassing to the point of mortification, but right now the words came easily. “I don’t tell you enough how wonderful you are, how every time I look at you I’m grateful that you’re here with me.” He leaned forward to whisper in her ear. “That you’re my dearest. My one and only. My beloved.”
Sonata gasped. “L-Lex!” It wasn’t just what he was saying; he’d used some spell on her to make her super sensitive, to the point where even the sensation of his breath in her ear was enough to send spasms through her body. Then she felt his teeth lightly nip the tip of her ear, and she couldn’t help but cry out. She made herself go rigid as she did, knowing that if she writhed she’d rub against him and then she’d be completely lost to the sensations again. “We, like-, mmmmnnngh! We should get back…” She was panting again, desperately trying to control herself as he leaned his head down and planted kisses along her neck. “Y-you still need to…to fix things about…” She had to pause again, fighting hard to retain the ability to talk coherently in the face of what he was doing to her. “Fix things with e-everything about Fencer…”
“In a little while,” he murmured, running a hoof down her side and causing her to squeal. She could hear the playfulness in his voice, and even if she hadn’t been under whatever spell he’d used on her, that would have been enough to heat her up. “Right now, I just want to watch you squirm for me…”
It was long minutes later before he finally had mercy on her, silencing her last scream of passion with a kiss before slowly disentangling himself from her, making sure to negate the spell he’d used on her as he did. As he stood up, he stretched before gathering up his cloak and other accoutrements that had been scattered when he’d begun their tryst, making himself look presentable again. Behind him, Sonata started to do the same, albeit at a much slower pace. “I thought you wanted to hurry back,” he smirked, unable to resist the urge to tease her.
She gave him a wry look from where she was checking her appearance, having pulled that ornate mirror of his out of his haversack. “Unless you want everyone to know what we were doing, I totes need to freshen up,” she replied, sticking her tongue out at him before adding, “of course, given how smug you look, they’ll probably figure it out anyway.”
“I do not look ‘smug.’ I’m simply…content.”
She chuckled. “Yeah, well, that kind of ‘content’ looks like just one thing, mister, so you might want to do something about that.” His only response was a snort, and a few minutes later Sonata judged that her appearance was suitable to be seen in public, giving him back his mirror satisfied smile. “Perfect.” Nodding perfunctorily, Lex cast a quick spell to dissolve the hemispherical one-way screen around them, and the sight made Sonata grin again. “I’ve gotta say, if I knew that you could conjure up a privacy-thingy like that, we’d have done it a lot more often before now.”
An uncomfortable look crossed Lex’s face at that. He’d prepared both the contraceptive spell – quickly cast on himself before their encounter just now – and the pleasure-causing spell in anticipation of making love to Sonata again. But that privacy screen wasn’t quite as efficacious as she was making it out to be. “About that…that spell creates an opaque hemisphere that blocks sight from the outside, but it doesn’t contain sound. That’s why I haven’t used it before now…for this, I mean.”
Sonata’s eyes widened as her cheeks reddened. “Are you… You mean everyone heard… You knew they’d hear me?!” Lex was relatively quiet when they were in bed together, but it was her nature to be vocal, ESPECIALLY with that spell he’d used on her! Glaring at him, she reared up onto her hind legs so she could start whacking him over the head with her fore-hooves.
“Hold on!” He danced away from her strikes and she pursued him, causing them to play an impromptu game of tag as he tried to calm her. “It’s unlikely that anypony heard you! We’re a good distance away from the shelter, and the intervening walls there also have a muffling effect! That and I made sure to…try to keep you quiet when you were loudest.” It was his turn to blush as he said that last part.
Mollified enough to stop trying to smack him, Sonata still huffed as she settled back down onto all fours. “What do you mean ‘keep me quiet’?”
The redness in his face grew heavier. “Kissing.” When she tilted her head in confusion, he elaborated. “I made sure to silence your noisiest…exclamations, with kisses.”
For a moment she just stared at him, not sure if that was considerate or manipulative, before deciding to let it go. “Fine…” What was done was done, and honestly she didn’t want to fight when she was still enjoying the echoes of their long-overdue time together. Just please oh please oh please don’t let Aria have been anywhere nearby, she prayed silently. Which reminded her… “Listen, are you really going to turn Aria into a pony?”
He blinked, caught off-guard by the sudden change in topic. “Strictly speaking, I believe that Sirens are ponies, albeit mutated versions thereof. My theory is that you yourself had your mutation undone after you were exposed to something on Everglow that acted as a counteragent to whatever caused you to be born as a Siren, and that your cutie mark-”
“I don’t want you to,” interrupted Sonata before he could really get going. Cutting him off before he could get lost in his own head was starting to come naturally to her.
Lex stopped, digesting this new information before coming up with a response. “Sonata, I already told her I would. It was part of the offer I made her in exchange for her obedience, that I’d fix her voice and make her into a pony.”
“Fix her voice,” conceded Sonata. “By all means, fix her voice. I’d be totes miserable if all I could do was whisper all the time. But you don’t have to make her into a pony to do that, right? Just use some super-healing magic or something.”
“I don’t have any such magic, nor any easy method of acquiring any.”
“But you do have an easy way to change what she is completely?”
“I wouldn’t call it easy,” replied Lex, “but I’ve already begun working on a ritual that should remove the non-equine aspects from her body, reconstructing it into a pony form. As a side-effect of that, it should repair the permanent damage done to her vocal chords.”
“Uh-huh, uh-huh. So why not just conjure up some ritual thingy to fix her voice and have that be it?”
Lex was already shaking his head. “It doesn’t work like that. Magic is just energy; it needs to be instructed with regards to what you want it to do. If I’m right about her being a pony, then her body’s genetics should have all of the information necessary to restructure her into a proper pony shape.” After all, the fact that he was the unicorn child of two earth ponies was all the proof necessary that each pony carried the genetic information of the other tribes. “So if I have the magic permeate her form, it can deconstruct and then correctly reconstruct her body, which will include reforming her throat.” Sonata opened her mouth then, but Lex beat her to the punch. “And no, I can’t simply do that for her throat alone; genetic reconstruction at that level is an all-or-nothing procedure. Her body doesn’t have regenerative properties, so the only way to fix permanent damage is to recreate her physical form in its entirety.” And more than that, it would prove to his satisfaction that Sonata herself really was a pony through and through…something that, in the wake of their lovemaking, suddenly seemed all the more important to establish.
“But why did you offer to make her into a pony in the first-, no. You know what? I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” She could feel her good mood souring, and was suddenly sorry that she’d brought it up at all. That’s Aria. She’s not even here and she’s still finding a way to totes ruin things for me. Instead, she decided to move on. “Come on, we should head back.” She started walking back towards the shelter, Lex moving alongside her. “Do you know what you’re going to tell everypony about Fencer?” That wasn’t a topic that was likely to be much better, but at least it was a lot less personal for her than her stupid sister.
To her surprise, Lex nodded. “I plan on having her publicly allocute before I sentence her.”
Sonata’s eyes went wide. “You’re going to hit her with lighting?!”
“What? What are you-” Suddenly her meaning became clear, and he rolled his eyes. “Not ‘electrocute.’ Allocute. I’m going to have her explain to everypony the details of her crimes and her reasons for committing them.”
“Oh, a confession! Why didn’t you just say that then?”
“It’s technically not a confession. She already did that when she admitted to having committed crimes where her culpability hadn’t already been conclusively determined. This is merely to satisfy everypony else that her guilt is beyond all doubt and that her punishment is deserved.”
Sonata glanced over at him then. “So…how exactly are you going to punish her?”
Lex opened his mouth to reply, but just as he started to speak a familiar voice could be heard. “Lex! Sonata! Where are you guys?!”
Lex frowned, recognizing Aisle’s voice, and immediately started to run towards it, Sonata following him. It took only a few seconds to locate the earth pony stallion, as he kept calling for them, his voice tight with worry. Eventually they rounded a corner and he caught sight of them. “There you are! Where were you guys?!”
Lex ignored the question. “What’s happening?”
Aisle pointed back at the shelter, several dozen feet behind him. “The doctors started shouting stuff. I couldn’t understand much of what they were saying, but it sounded like they were talking about Pillowcase.” He paused for a moment, then continued. “It sounded bad.”
Cursing, Lex ran for the shelter, the other two hot on his hooves. Knocking the door open, he immediately made for the medical area, only to find that everypony had crowded around it. Snarling, he had just started to shove them aside when a loud, horrible wail came from behind the hanging sheet. The sound was enough to make everypony gasp, and Lex recognized the agonized voice as that of Cozy. No…
Redoubling his efforts, he pushed his way through the crowd, shoving past the curtain and making for the far corner, where several doctors were beginning to emerge from, each of them with grim looks on their faces. Lex seized the nearest one. “What happened?!” he demanded. “What’s going on?!”
Surprised at the rough treatment, the medical pony hesitated, and Lex shoved her aside with a snarl. Making his way to the alcove the doctors were emerging from, he stormed into it, looking around the small space as he did. Off to the side was Cozy, with a stricken look on her face, while across from her a doctor was…covering Pillowcase with a sheet. A second doctor looked at a pocketwatch as she quietly spoke.
“Time of death, two-thirty-seven P.M.”
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And there goes the first casualty in the group and I doubt there's anything Lex can do about it. Once again the feel good beginning of a chapter plunges into sadness.
Perhaps Lashtada could do something but if I recall correctly, Cozy's access to divine magic is limited due to her restricting herself to a monogamous relationship instead of a polygamous one.
Putting that aside, any previous idea of punishment for Fencer in Lex's mind would likely have been discarded for something harsher after Pillow's passing, which will undoubtedly result in further widening the divide between Lex's group and Turbo's. Not to mention the fact how this will affect Fencer when she awakens.
The only hope to keep the group together now lies with Sonata calming Lex down so he doesn't do anything rash...totally no pressure there.
I wouldn't call turbo's group a group. To me it seems more like a bunch of scared out of their mind ponies who began listening to the first member of them who said anything.
8349936 That's certainly a valid way to view them. I just needed to make a distinction between them and the other ponies who've been with Lex for a while now.
8349919 After everything Lex did to make sure that everypony survived all of those battles, he's now lost somepony for the first time...or has he? He said he couldn't do anything for Pillowcase before, but he's also pulled off some miraculous wins from nowhere, too. Still, it he can't, then this will likely not be something he'll deal with very well. He'll almost certainly want to rethink what he's going to do to Fencer now, and that will have repercussions which will have further consequences...this will likely get worse before it gets better.
You know, I hadn't meant to imply that the reason for Cozy's limited magic was because she was monogamous, but now I wonder if I could have sent that message accidentally! The reason she's not strong enough to use resurrection magic is because that's a very difficult spell to use, and she (Cozy) is a relatively new cleric of Lashtada, and gaining enough power to use a spell like that is difficult.
8349955
Nah, you didn't do anything of the sort. I have a habit of reading between the lines very often and create theories based on that. Such as how Cozy married Pillow and put all her love into him instead of following the open relationships that Lashtada promotes so as to help her followers overcome the grief from the loss of loved ones(Did I get that right?).
I simply thought that the more a worshiper is in tune with their deity's alignment and what they represent, they'd be seen more favorably in their deity's eyes. Of course, I have barely any knowledge of the lore beyond what's shown in the stories you and David have written.
8349955
Actually... It SHOULD be guaranteed possible for Lex to resurrect Pillowcase (unless Pillowcase doesn't want to be resurrected). The privilege for him to count as a fey seems to imply that... well, he can shut it off. Further, since Ponyfinder has Fey as the base-type for ponies, I'd say it makes sense that an Everglow Glabrezu would be able to affect Fey instead of Humanoids (given Dominate Person and all these effects, it'd be somewhat broken if Everglow-Inhabitants where just flat immune against such effects anyway).
Lex can clearly summon one (or at least would have the power to be able to). Now, it doesn't accept "unreasonable" demands, but "fulfill the wish correctly" isn't unreasonable for a Glabrezu (due to "treacherous witchcraft"). He could also gamble and choose to get a Marid, but demanding it's 1/year Wish might be considered unreasonable. Of course, Lex could always just use a ritual, but where's the fun in that.
Nice to see Lex and Sonata have some relationship time.
I'm kind of surprised Sonata didn't correct Lex's misconceptions about the sirens, though maybe she just didn't pick up on the fact that he believes them to have been ponies who were warped by something on Everglow rather than having always been that way (at least on Equestria and, if only initially in Sonata's case, on Everglow). In fact if I recall the original story right, Sonata is pretty much the exact opposite of what Lex thinks, in that she was a full siren who was altered into an Everglow Seapony.
Poor Cozy...here's hoping Lex can pull something out of his horn again to save Pillow, but since he's not primarily a cleric, I kinda doubt it. He's gonna come down like a freaking hammer on Fencer and any of her gang responsible for this though.
If Lex cant do something himself, he can summon Stephen Magnets twin demonic brother in law to maybe do it for him?
Next up, look for a soundproof spell, Which I thought existed in the first 5 spell levels, and does the contraception spell have a fail rate?
8350056 This is one of those issues where the game rules are somewhat difficult to translate into an in-character narrative.
You're right that a character who closely follows their deity's tenets and dogma will likely earn more of that particular deity's favor, but at the same time the game rules also subtly imply that characters who selectively interpret or alter aspects of their faith (so long as it's not too egregious) will still be favored as well. That's because the game rules give all beings, even deities, an alignment; on a 3 x 3 grid - where the X-axis is Lawful-Neutral-Chaotic and the Y-axis is Good-Neutral-Evil - everyone falls somewhere. Clerics (and, to my mind, all divine spellcasters) must have an alignment that's within one "step" of their deity's. The Night Mare is Lawful Evil, for example, but Lex is Lawful Neutral. He's one step away from her in terms of alignment, and so can still receive divine spells from her.
Of course, this highlights that there's more to matters of faith than simply alignment compatibility, and indeed there is...but that's separate from issues of personal power. A character's power is still measured in terms of their level, regardless of whether they're beseeching a divinity for power or not (leaving aside special circumstances, such as being directly imbued with a template the way Lex was). From an in-game standpoint, that means that - outside of the aforementioned special circumstances - issues of religious compliance will have virtually no impact on personal power. Cozy could sleep with everyone in the shelter right now, but she'd still be a 2nd-level cleric when she was done.
With that said, your interpretation of why Lashtada encourages polyamory is interesting, and I suspect more thought-out than the actual reason Lashtada would put forward. As seen in David's fics (particularly The Everglow of a Twilight Sunset), Lashtada is a rather simpleminded deity. Her credo can be summarized as "love without limits." She doesn't so much encourage polyamory per se, but rather discourages anything that would limit who you love, and that necessarily includes the social norms of monogamy that are present in so many societies. So if a particular couple is happy and fulfilled unto themselves, then Lashtada is fine with that, but if one of them wants to be with someone else as well, Lashtada would encourage them to find a way to do that while maintaining the love they already have.
She's basically the goddess of "just say yes," which is why her religion is so forthrightly sexual (something that Cozy isn't very comfortable with, preferring to focus on the emotional aspect of love).
8350069 There are several things here:
In other words, I'm trying to lay groundwork so that the usual "wizards are demigods due to their versatility" argument can be seen as self-evidently not the case here. Hopefully it's working.
8350177 This chapter was probably the sweetest moment we've seen them have. Certainly, it was the steamiest.
Lex's theory is that he thinks the Sirens were born mutated, rather than having originally been ponies that were warped at some point during their lives. His bit about Everglow was him speculating that Sonata ran into something that undid her prenatal mutation and made her into the pony she always should have been. I thought that was clear, but now I'm worried that I was just assuming it was, and it isn't.
I've tweaked the language to hopefully make that clearer; did it work?
As for Lex's reaction to this...yeah, I really don't see how it won't be very, very bad.
8350455 Summons are a giant can of worms, one that Lex is rightfully reluctant to open. Every time he's dealt with the Night Mare, for example, it's been a near-disaster (the first time she gave him that tulpa in his shadow, the second time she stripped him of his divine spellcasting, and the third time she almost killed him before he talked her out of it). That's assuming he has any other summoning abilities, of course.
A soundproofing spell is doubtless on Lex's to-get list. He could have cast mage's private sanctum again, but that would have filled a large area with mist and traps and generally have caused more mayhem than it solved.
As for the contraceptive spell...I'll go ahead and reveal this little tidbit: it's 100% effective, but only versus non-magical effects. Any sort of magical inducements that aid conception will overcome it. It's an open question if Lex knows this or not (somehow, I doubt it).
8350703
1. Ah, okay... I thought that the privilege was somehow "granted" by spirits infusing him and can be taken away just as fast. I do wonder how it comes that it's a privilege instead of a transcendence though, since I thought race-changes were in that department.
2. When I meant an "Everglow Glabrezu", I meant a Demon hunting in Everglow that would've probably specialized into hunting non-humanoids. There's also the thing that it doesn't seem to mention humanoids in it's entry, but instead "mortals"... Though I have no idea what that means exactly. In 3.5, it used to mean "non-outsiders" and later on "beings without a divine rank", but in Pathfinder it feels kinda weirdly unspecified. Of course, there is also the fact that Everglow might have it's own "Abyss", as, at least if I remember correctly, the Plane of Shadow and the Far Realm are the only things that connect all settings and multiverses, meaning other worlds might have other Abysses... Abyssi? Not 100% sure on that one though, my knowledge on that lore is a bit outdated.
3. For the third... Even he kinda has to admit that Everglow sorta made his life better. Without it, he'd still be a powerless loner, basically on Fencer's level in terms of power and alienation from other ponies. The only reason ponies might even consider his words a possibility (that the princesses might be capable of being wrong) is due to the planar bleeds. A lot of the things he has right now are soley due to his power, and that power was something he acquired on other planes (well, Everglow). I feel like even if he distrusts it, he'd know that if he needs something beyond his power, other planes may very well be the only place he can look.
4. To be fair... If he doesn't know it and wants to use a ritual instead, he IS better off with a simple Raise Dead. You mean Occult Ritual from Eclipse, right? In that case, he doesn't exactly "need" components... though the side effects of not using them might be trouble. Still... He only has to hit a DC 28 Spellcraft check, which is doable. Even with just a single good component, or a lot of lesser one's, his chance of botching it is down to a mere 5%. Of course, if Lex wants to actually get it done right and perfect, a Planar Binding Ritual is only DC 32. While that might cause problems with the Binding itself, the Wish should be unaffected.
(The other thing) The way wizards are "supposed to be played" generally involves teleporting away when things go south only to scry-and-die later, though you probably need to put in the effort similar to a bachelor degree to play a wizard the way optimizatio boards feel like wizards should be played. The idea is one that primarily works by showing that a Wizard "can" counter everything and "obviously" would know to do so due to high Int (and Wish granting infinite money and that money going into contingencies). Effectively saying that a Wizard has infinite points in "Foresight" due to high Int and all that.
In so far, I wouldn't say that was ever something that needed to be disproven, although... well, self-evident is kinda a problem. When you want to prove "Every wizard can be beaten", you'd have to... well, beat every wizard to prove it. As such, making it evident that Lex can loose would actually require him loosing, which would require him dying, which would not only require a powerful villain to suddenly show up, but also someone on Team Lex to get access to some serious power to bring him back. I mean, don't get me wrong, I still find the idea of a Fey-Channeler snapping it's claws to instantly kill Lex and shock everyone before getting helplessly pummeled by Sonata/Aria pretty funny, but I think it would take readers out of the story.
So... self-evident no, but you didn't suggest "Wizards are demigods/unbeatable/whatever" in the first place.
8350718
Yeah the wording is much more clear on that now.
8350924 Okay, I'm going to use quote boxes to indicate what I'm replying to, since this is going to be long:
The idea of using Privilege to indicate racial interactions with race-based effects is an idea I originally got from Thoth's article on building standard races in Eclipse, where the half-elves and half-orcs had Privilege for being treated as elves/orcs "whenever this is advantageous."
In Lex's case, what happened is that he not only went to Everglow but subtly became one of that world's ponies in the process, rather than Equestria's, which entailed rewriting his racial stats to match. Since Everglow's ponies are fey, I made that his type also, and used Privilege to indicate that as per the half-elf and half-orc listings in the aforementioned article because I wanted the mechanics to indicate what his type was when type-based effects came into play...save that I changed the part about "whenever this is advantageous," since that sounded like it let you pick and choose when your type applied (e.g. "Well, being hit by that elf-bane sword isn't advantageous, so for the moment I'm going to call myself a human." I suspect that this is why Thoth ditched the use of Privilege when he wrote the Pathfinder versions of those races)...which is what you mentioned, so I suspect I'm not alone in thinking it looked that way. Nevertheless, as far as Lex is concerned he's a Fey-type creature and won't be able to change that without major effort on his part (and isn't even aware of it, anyway).
Bear in mind that the glabrezu entry does mention humanoids. It's wish spell-like ability, for example, can only be utilized by "mortal humanoids," which is what I thought you were referring to.
Even for a game as obsessed with keyword-typing as Pathfinder, some things still slip through the cracks.
The multiplicity of cosmologies has always been a rough fit, and in a very real way exemplifies the struggle that D&D has had between wanting to be a one-size-fits-all fantasy toolbox versus being a specific setting (or set of settings) unto itself. The 3.X answer to this was to suggest that there are multiple cosmologies out there, with the Plane of Shadow crossing over all of them (though the Far Realm also seems to exist outside of all of them, but that was more implicit than anything else, as it raised issues with Eberron's "Xoriat" having been sent away from that world). Moreover, Lords of Madness confirmed (in the section about the grell, pg. 8-9) that a gate spell can directly cross cosmologies.
For Pathfinder, the answers are less clear. The Witchwar Legacy implied that you can get to Greyhawk from Golarion, but it involved going beyond Golarion's entire cosmology (and so was stated to be something that Baba Yaga did...though as of the end of the Reign of Winter adventure path, we have her stats), whereas other works (e.g. an early article on demon lords in a Pathfinder adventure path book) implied that certain planes were the same everywhere (e.g. their Orcus is everyone's Orcus; he's just too busy with other worlds to care about Golarion very much). Of course, for several years now Paizo has stopped making references to other companies' settings at all that I've seen, so it's something of a moot point.
You're overestimating the degree to which being on Everglow served as a crucible for Lex. While it did much to make him grow stronger, he was already a powerful pony in his own right before that ever happened. He still had serious limitations, of course, but he was much stronger than Fencer is now. And, of course, it let him meet the love of his life. But Lex isn't the sort of pony who'd rank that above all of the death and devastation that the elemental bleeds have wrought.
This is a salient point, and one that I'm hoping I can revisit in the future. The fact is, Lex's suggested reforms weren't the necessity he held them to be before the elemental bleeds struck...but by contrast, if he'd been able to put them into practice, then it's quite possible that the impact of the elemental bleeds could have been blunted, perhaps markedly. That's sort of the point about taking proactive measures against threats that haven't manifested yet; they can seem silly, pointless, or even wasteful...until a related disaster strikes, at which point they look prescient, foresighted, and visionary. Lex would hold that if it hadn't been the elemental bleeds, something else would have happened eventually that the princesses' lazy rule would have left Equestria vulnerable to.
That's true, and he has admitted that Everglow helped to forge him into the powerhouse that he currently is. But he'd rather have stayed isolated and alone if it meant that Equestria could have been spared the elemental bleeds. He wants to rule, but not at the cost of a disaster ruining his home to make the point that he should be in charge. At the end of the day, he wants to sacrifice for others, and that means that he wouldn't wish something bad on them even for his own gain. The planes, therefore, might be useful in terms of resources, but he's very suspicious of what they require in exchange.
Yes, though I usually refer to it by the header title of "Ritual Magic."
Well...yes and no. My read on it is that if you want to avoid side effects (that is, avoid anything not listed in the spell description), you need to hit the DC+10-19 range. Moreover, raise dead has an expensive component: a 5,000 gp diamond (and I'm not treating Equestria's easily-found gemstones as being anywhere near that valuable). If Lex doesn't use that as part of the spell, then he needs to treat it as a 6th-level spell. Taking all of that into account, he would need to hit a minimum DC of 42. Given that, at the moment, his Spellcraft modifier is +22, that's just barely an option. It's far more likely that he'd get a 32 (if he rolled a 10), which would succeed...but even that's iffy (a 55% chance), and would have side effects of unknown nature and intensity even then. There's a reason why he doesn't go in for this option very often!
But all of that is secondary to the manner in which I'm depicting rituals in this story, which is that they can't simply be conjectured on the fly. Eclipse is fairly open about how a group finds out about the existence and structure of rituals (largely because, as Thoth has said, they're meant to be a way for the players to volunteer adventure seeds; I'm taking a slightly different tact). I've elected to treat the process as being similar to learning new spells, a la the spell research tables in The Practical Enchanter. If Lex wants to learn a new ritual, he needs to either find it or invent it - so far always the latter - in order to use it. He can't simply conjecture "this is a ritual that will let me bring someone back to life" and roll a Spellcraft check. Hence why it's taking him so long to figure out how to change Aria into a pony.
Given how a lot of planar creatures seem to hate being summoned for the purpose of granting wishes and so try to twist them, adding a ritual for summoning and binding such a creature (which likely means all sorts of side effects) is just asking for boatloads of trouble. Lex has a
1517 Wisdom, and so realizes that this isn't a road he wants to go down.I'm sympathetic to what you're saying here. Most "god wizard" threads are built around what's commonly called "Schrodinger's wizard" - one that just so happens to have the right spells/items for whatever threat they're facing. I've also heard numerous excuses being made for why a "Schrodinger's wizard" is entirely viable, due to leaving things like pearls of power to recall the spells you need, summoning creatures that have spell-like or spellcasting abilities that are perfect for that situation, having prepared scrolls of the right spell (or just a casting or two of psychic asylum), etc. That's without getting into the usual nonsense about "and all that while they're astral projecting from their private demiplane, just to be safe."
Personally, I've never seen anything like that happen in actual play (save for the one time I tried it myself, and all it did was upset everyone else that they were being so badly upstaged). But then, that wasn't the point - the point was that, while all of those things could potentially happen (in a vacuum), I wanted to show why that couldn't happen in the context of this story. Lex might have that level of potential, on paper at least, but there's a vast gulf between having potential and actualizing it.
I really don't think you need to go that far. You just need to show that "can be" isn't "will be" and leave it at that. Wizards are powerful primarily because they have, on paper, a wide range of options and a large degree of latitude for utilizing them, but there's always a way to put a check on that. Armchair theorizing is all well and good until you try to put things in actual play, at which point the question becomes one of imagination, not rules-crunching.
That's certainly viable, but I don't think that you need to go that far to showcase that Lex could potentially lose (at least some of) the fights he's gotten in. I've worked very hard to try and make defeat seem like a real possibility at several points, after all!
I'm not a fan of rocket tag, myself. Moreover, I think that overspecializing to that point - where you can essentially just instantly vaporize particular types of creatures - is asking for being defeated when something outside your specialty decides to make a meal out of you.
Damn right. Though I do love the idea that the sorcerer is "God's hot little sister."
8350997 Whew! I'm glad.
Thanks for letting me know that needed to be fixed!
8351179
It does make me wonder... What "social" process would cause such a change as to make Privilege a good choice for it? Maybe the "social" relationship between their parents allowed for such an advantage? It's really confusing for me (which is why I prefer the idea of spirits infusing you and Favors for something like this, even if a Favor like changing your species is probably Grandiose territory).
Huh... so it does. I actually read through the Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Demons Revisited ecology-entry of the Glabrezu (because it had the "Treacherous Wishcraft"-part in it) and it doesn't mention the humanoid part there. Though lookng at it now... I must have missed that somehow. I saw it in the statblock on the website and actually considered it kind of a misprint before (because it was in the first bestiary when most PCs were humanoids) and corrected in PCS:DR, but apparently not...
3.5 has/had something similar, in that most gods were different, but there is also only one Lolth. Fiendish Codex II seems to suggest that it is possible Asmodeus might be the same, though it might just be that it is always an Asmodeus that rebels. It IS kinda weird... maybe some deities just learned how to cross over while others didn't? No idea...
Technically yes, but it seems to me like he actually had to have a big power source with him to prepare his spells. Everglow provided him Severance, which I feel like is a big deal when it comes to how much power he can actually use now. And I feel like it's a big point, because it directly relates to his ability to put such spells into power words or gemstones. He still has Sombra's Horn (which I'd argue might not actually be HIS power, but that doesn't really matter) and the Fruits of Lesser Experiments. That IS a good draw, I will fully admit, but if I compare the difference of this state to the regular pony with the difference between this state and his past-everglow, I still can't help but feel that seven levels are a big deal.
Sonata better not hear that :3
Even DC+10-19 actually doesn't "avoid" side-effects. You'd need to hit DC+20 to have a chance of no side-effects, and even then it's no guarantee. I did forget to account for the expensive material component though. I mean, technically he doesn't have to do either: Saving Pillowcase or not is unlikely to make a difference in the grand scheme of things. So this is basically a matter of pride instead of something substantial. Of course, the more time he wastes, the harder it gets... Though if he gets a full set of components, it's a +40 to the check and can be done without trouble even if it needs a True Resurrection at a DC of 68 (10+19+19+20, it's still technically a miss chance of 30%, but there's no chance of anything below a "Success").
This is why I suggest the Glabrezu. By not warping it, it can instead inflict penalities on the wisher, which I count as something it may very well choose to do (if it were entirely against a Glabrezu's nature, why would they list it as an option?). Again, it's Lex choice: Is my convenience worth more or less than Pillowcase's life? He might even feel smart for specifically demanding the wish not to be warped like that if he chooses to got that route. Of course, that relies on Lex's ego... And I find him a bit hard to read in that regard. Possibly his racism that throws my confidence-detectors off ^^°
In all seriousness, you do a pretty good job of portraying a racist without making it look like a stereotype. It fits so naturally that I sometimes have to reread certain sentences to make sure I read that right.
Well, even in theory-wizard-wars, retreat is generally the first step after encountering a foe. The difference between honest defeat and setback is the ability to come back without trouble. We are still at a level where Death is troublesome (at least with the biggest player out of the picture). Then again, I'm a person that only truly considers an enemy harmless and down post-digestion, if that, so maybe I'm biased there
Exactly. That's why I'd find the beatdown of said opponent immediately thereafter so funny. Specialization can easily work, even to the point of total annihilation without resistance (I've seen some high level Rangers and Paladins hitting with some really big modifiers) if done right unless you make it extra silly. And even then it can be fun. I fondly remember Black Mage stealing and casting a spell that specifically makes him throw up.
The fact that you put Twilight (as the Element of Magic) there makes that sentence really amusing. Almost as if she is somehow affected by the previous statement :3
8351324
I'm not sure that there is a "social" method whereby Privilege could change your race/creature type, to be honest, but then that might just be a lack of imagination on my part. That's why I presumed that Privilege wasn't strictly limited to issues of social advantages; certainly, it's not like there aren't other Eclipse abilities that aren't used for purposes beyond what's explicitly written (e.g. Imbuement doesn't technically say that you can use it for armor, but we still see that happen with some regularity). That said, saying that it's an issue of spirits isn't a bad idea either, if for no other reason than it provides an explanation that doesn't allow for further scrutiny.
Hence why I'm somewhat dubious of how closely to hew to things like that. The issue is of whether or not such restrictions can be made into opportunities, rather than stumbling blocks (and, on a related note, on how much sense they make within the internal logic and self-consistency of the story). In this case, restricting it to "humanoids" when there's a technical distinction that ponies from Everglow are "fey" is the sort of thing that doesn't strike me as having any particular usefulness with regards to making the story interesting and entertaining.
Second Edition was much clearer, with its singular greater multiverse. If something happened to Lolth there, then that was that, because there was only one of her. Third Edition was less precise, which is why there's a lingering question as to whether the Silence of Lolth happened in the Greyhawk cosmology the way it did in the Forgotten Realms. The Asmodeus in Fiendish Codex II is definitely not the same uber-deity posited in Second Edition's Guide to Hell, who was one of the architects of the structure of the Outer Planes. Pathfinder's Asmodeus, according to Princes of Darkness, is a primeval deity - contradicting both AD&D 2E and D&D 3E - but that seems like it.
This is correct, but it also notes that he's close to finding the Tree of Harmony, which would be exactly that. That's still disadvantageous compared to Severance, of course; the Tree is immovable, and if he tried to do anything other than make use of the energy that radiates from it, it'd likely make him pay dearly for it (e.g. what it did when he tried to force open the box), but it's better than nothing.
Well yeah; I'm not suggesting that pre-Everglow Lex is anywhere near as strong as the current Lex - it's quite clear that there's a world of difference between them (eight levels' worth, in fact; Lex gained a level after the fight with Tlerekithres, making him an ECL 12 character). My suggestion was that, compared to your average Equestrian pony, even the level 4 version of Lex was still a powerhouse. Very few ponies could keep up with the level of power that he had at that point...provided he had most of his spells prepared, and was willing to use them. (That's a level of asymmetry - powerful but trying hard to conserve power - that I enjoy.)
She'd grumble, but I wonder if she'd be truly mad. She seems to have accepted that he's principled like that. Besides, she's less about "might have been's," and instead prefers "do it now's."
Fair enough; I did see that, but was overlooking them since they're "minimal," which I suspect would barely rise to the level of being an annoyance, much less a serious issue that couldn't be allowed to stand.
Yeah, but technically he doesn't have to do any of what he's been doing; this is all because he feels driven to do so. I'm not saying that Lex won't want to bring Pillowcase back (if everything in this chapter is what it seems to be). I'm just trying to say why he's not going to be able to shrug and say "eh, there's a ritual for that. I'll have him alive and kicking before dinnertime."
It's actually DC 64 (you only need to be 17th level to cast true resurrection), in which case he'd get a "spectacular success" on anything more than a natural 1, but your point is well-taken...though that overlooks the very-salient issue of finding eight components that are each worth a +5 bonus (the maximum that can be gained for a ritual). Bear in mind that these need not be items, but might very well be things like a particular place or time.
With regards to the "treacherous wishcrafting" option, that's quite clearly the glabrezu's choice to do that versus perverting the wish, but those don't seem quite as useful as what an imaginatively-perverted wish could do. I suspect that these options were given for GMs who had some issues with twisting a worded wish and just wanted standardized options so that they could impose the penalties and move on. That said, this isn't quite a question of "convenience," as some of those options seem outright debilitating or even dangerous to others. If Lex were to become Chaotic Evil and gain psychosis, that would be bad for everypony around him. A twisted wish could be much worse.
I'll let you in on a little secret, there: Lex's pony-supremacist beliefs are racist, but aren't based on simple bigotry. Rather, he's extracted a macro-level belief in pony superiority based on how Equestria has risen to the top of the proverbial food chain in every measurable sense compared to other nations. Equestria quite clearly has the most virtuous moral values, a rich and thriving culture, is notably wealthy, overflowing with magic, has ample food, etc. To his mind, that ponies have achieved these things is not a coincidence. The buffalo are morally virtuous, but that's about it. The yaks are strong and proud, but bellicose and isolationist. The griffons are venal almost to the point of corruption (at least the Equestrian version thereof). Dragons have great destructive potential, but otherwise are just thugs. Diamond dogs are slavers. None of them (possibly notwithstanding dragons, depending on how you view their innate abilities) have the degree of magic that ponies do (i.e. cutie marks). Is it any wonder Lex looked at all of this and said "ponies are the master race"?
The real kicker, of course, is that the show implicitly backs all of this up, as well. While it doesn't happen every time, a lot of the episodes that feature the Mane Six going to foreign cultures have them exporting their own cultural/moral values to the people they meet there, who are shown to (eventually, usually by the end of the episode) be happy to receive them, such as Ember being taught what friendship is, or Gilda starting to share her baked goods with the other griffons. Lex just took the underlying lessons to heart: that ponies are better than everyone else.
Yeah, it's bog-standard - under that line of thought - that wizards shouldn't ever expose themselves directly to danger. Hence the bit about them astral projecting from a private demiplane, summoning minions to fight for them (or animating undead servitors, of building golems, or charming other characters, etc.). Lex, as you noted, is at that level where death is a roadblock, but not an insurmountable obstacle...though at this point that's an issue of spell availability (e.g. he doesn't have limited wish), party composition (e.g. no 12th-level cleric to match his arcane spellcasting level), and gear.
To be fair, there is an object lesson in there, since specialization does make sense to a point. It's mostly a matter of degrees, but there's no real way to quantify that; all you can do is try to present what seems reasonable under the framework of the narrative and for the character in question. But that's not something that's easily done in Equestria, which is a low-level world compared to a place like Everglow. It could be, but that would be much harder to justify...though less so now, with everything that's happened.
She does seem very apropos there, doesn't she? But remember, she's an arcanist, not a sorcerer.
8351324 So in my previous post I wrote:
In fact, that was a mistake. Because true resurrection is a 9th-level spell, which normally requires you to be 17th level to cast it - and, more notably, is where basic spell levels top out - I didn't realize that you'd upped the caster level to try and compensate for the expensive material component to the spell (i.e. a diamond worth 25,000 gp). Simply put, the idea of "a 10th-level spell requires caster level 19" didn't occur to me.
There's a bit of an issue with presuming that a sub-epic caster level (that is, a caster level of less than 21) is suitable for a 10th-level spell, but given a lack of clear guidelines, continuing to bump the requisite caster level by 2 - at least for the purposes of using Occult Ritual - is probably as good as we're going to get. That said, there's one other caveat here: a 25,000 gp diamond is expensive enough that it counts as two effective spell levels, not one (Thoth subtly indicated this in his comments regarding the Innate Magic ability in the article Eclipse and Skills - Abilities Part I, where he noted that using wish, which also requires a 25,000 gp diamond material component, with Innate Magic would require an 11th-level spell slot).
So that means that in the case of Lex trying to develop a ritual to mimic a true resurrection would have a base DC of 52, +20 if we want to completely eliminate any side effects; so a DC 72 altogether. Since he has a +22 to his Spellcraft check, and could get up to +40 if he got the maximum number of best possible components, that still only leaves him with a 55% chance of success (i.e. he rolls a 10 or higher). That's still incredibly good...though receiving that level of component-based bonuses would be exceptionally difficult to pull off, from a practical standpoint.
8352990
Well, there IS a little something in 3.5's epic item crafting that suggests the minimum caster level for spells above 9th level is 11+Spell Level, but Eclipse somewhat overrides this with Invocation, stating that the formula is 2*Spell Level-1. I'm not 100% sure on how that interacts. Personally, I interpret that difference in the most favorable way possible: You can cram high-level spells into items with a lower-than-normal caster level. It would make sense to me: Epic items should have some benefit for all the penalities they attach.
The way Thoth argues in that article is easily explained: The way Innate Magic scales is based on the number of times you get to use the spell-like ability. In his example, he says that it requires a 11th level slot to use Wish 7 times per day... Which makes sense, as a slot of level 0/1/2... higher result into a spell-like ability that can be used 2/4/7... times per day.
8353044
You're right about that citation for epic magic item caster levels, but that's somewhat tautological; it's predicated on the use of the Improved Spell Capacity feat. While the listing in that feat's prerequisites only say that you need to have hit the maximum spell level possible in your spellcasting progression (and so could conceivably take it before hitting level 21+), the feat also has the [epic] descriptor and so can't be taken until you reach 21st level or above.
Eclipse's Invocation ability (or rather, Mighty Invocation) is its version of this feat, but in keeping with Eclipse's greater flexibility it doesn't muddle around with limitations on when exactly you can take that ability, which means that you could very well gain level 10 spells before hitting the putative "epic" levels, hence the more general formula of [(spell level x 2) - 1] for the minimum caster level. Which is to say, I think that you were correct to suggest that a 10th-level spell's minimum caster level would be 19...though I think that a diamond-free true resurrection would still be an 11th-level spell.
I asked Thoth about epic magic items as little while back; his answer was that, at least when using Eclipse and The Practical Enchanter, not to bother with them.
Hm, good catch there. Well, that said I still think that a material component of 25,000 gp counts as "using outrageously elaborate or expensive spell components" as per the guidelines in the Compact metamagic theorem (Eclipse p. 57).
8353130
That could be true... But in case of Innate Magic, it wouldn't matter, as Spell-like abilities do not have components either way.
The interactions between Compact and Easy are weird though, to the point in which I generally just ignore Compact when easy has the solution. I mean, Temporal is already expensive enough, I don't need to pay that extra SL for spells with an originally long casting time twice.
8353170
Yeah, which certainly helps to make Innate Magic more appealing.
I'm not sure I follow. The Temporal modifier lets you turn a spell with a normal (e.g. standard action) casting time down to a free action (though I suppose it'd be a swift action in contemporary parlance) for +1 spell level (aka "SL") after you remove all of the other casting components. If the spell has a lengthy casting time, then getting it down to a free action costs +2 SL, which matches with Compact perfectly (e.g. it's a -1 SL to turn a spell with a normal - again, standard action - into one with a lengthy action). If the spell is extremely lengthy (e.g. it takes hours to cast), then getting it down to a free action costs +3 SL, which fits perfectly with how Compact says that turning a standard action spell into one with an extremely lengthy casting time is worth -2 SL.
8353192
My question is how the two interact:
Compact says you HAVE to buy off the restriction first before you can apply Temporal. Does that mean we have to add +1 for the Temporal, +1 for the Compact and the +2 listed in Temporal for a spell that takes 1 hour to cast? Or is the +1 from Compact that way already accouted for in Temporal?
Assuming Easy does already account for all the things Compact let's you take by adjusting it's own cost... What does that mean for Material? Material states it removes ALL material component costs for +1 SL... something which takes +2 SL if we go by Compact. Further, it says that Material can't take away components absolutely necessary for casting the spell. If we reverse it that way... would that mean someone could invent a spell that can take away such necessary components for a cost of +2 SL? And if we apply both, can we just cast the spell at a flat -1 SL?
We got something similar in Elemental Manipulation and Lacing. Lacing say it can either make a non-flashy spell (+1 SL) or a flashy spell (+3 SL) invisible... But SFX says it can be a range of +1 to +3 SL to do something like that, which means it includes a middle where it requires +2 SL.
8353452
Okay, let's break this down:
One of the options for Compact is that you can lower a spell's effective level by 1 (making it easier to cast) if you increase the casting time ten-fold. It also notes that spells that have a "normal" casting time of 1 minute or more (that is, that's what's written in the spell's "Casting Time" entry) effectively have this modification already built-in. It then notes that if you want to add the Temporal modifier to a spell that uses that built-in modifier, you need to "buy off" the said built-in modifier first.
For example, if you wanted to cast a sending spell, you'd normally have to spend 10 minutes casting it, because that's what's in the spell's "Casting Time" listing. So if you want to cast sending as a free/swift action, you first need to buy off the built-in -1 modifier to the spell's level due to its long casting time (essentially making it a level 5 cleric, level 6 sorcerer/wizard spell with a casting time of 1 minute). You'd then need to buy off the spell's existing components with the rest of the Easy metamagic theorem's modifiers (i.e. +1 SL for removing the verbal, +1 SL for removing the somatic, and - for sorcerers and wizards - +1 SL for removing the material component), before finally buying off the remaining casting time via the Temporal modifier for one more +1 SL. So casting a quickened sending would be a 10th-level spell, effectively.
Basically, when trying to figure out if there's a "hidden" cost to using the Temporal modifier, look at the spell's normal casting time. If it's 1 minute or more, then there is, and that needs to come out in addition to the cost of the Temporal modifier. That fits with the nature of the Temporal modifier, which essentially relies on you having already bought off all of the other casting components beforehand.
Okay, I can see where this confusion might come from, as the Material line of the Easy metamagic theorem sounds all-encompassing for a +1 SL adjustment, whereas the Compact metamagic theorem makes two distinctions (i.e. expensive and extremely expensive materials, respectively worth -1 SL and -2 SL). Strictly speaking, the Material entry states that it removes "most" components, though the subsequent text makes that seem like it's excepting only focus components. In this case, I suspect that we're meant to intuit the Materials entry as being in the context of the immediately-preceding Compact metamagic theorem information - that is, my take on it is that if you want to use Materials to wipe out the 25,000 gp diamond requirement for a true resurrection, you can use it to do that, but it will cost you +2 SL. The text could be clearer in that regard, but to be fair the material in Compact that places it in context is on the same page.
In this case there's a slight difference; SFX says that it can alter the looks/sounds of a spell or even make it invisible, whereas Hidden/Improved Hidden (in the Lacing metamagic theorem) simply hide the spell. Since hiding a meteor swarm is different from (and harder than) making it look like a troop of dancing grenades, that explains why SFX has a middle ground that Hidden/Improved Hidden don't.
8353579
Yes, but is that in addition to the +1 SL for "lenghty casting times" mentioned in Temporal? And if it's not, why does Temporal make a destinction at spells that require 1 hour or more to cast while Compact only grants the second spell level if the spell requires days or weeks to cast?
Wouldn't the quickened sending require a +6 (+3 for V/S/M, +1 for Temporal, +1 for buying off Compact and +1 for "lenghty casting time") then?
Well, here's the thing: I would understand it if Material were written in the same way Eshew Materials is, as in it only removes "worthless" components (as you clearly can't remove expensive components, as that would require Compact), but Thoth notes directly below that it SHOULD work for things above 1 gp and you can get it together with a specialized streamline for that effect. In that case... wouldn't that make using Material for anything but Temporal entirely pointless?
Further, does that make the PF-Wish spells base level 11 then? So you cannot bring it below level 8, even if you were dying to cast it? This seems... very convoluted.
8353610
It needs to be reiterated that the Temporal modifier is is normally +1 SL (to reduce a spell with a typical, standard action casting time down to a free/swift action). It then states that it adds another +1 SL modifier (so +2 total) for spells with "lengthy casting times," (which isn't defined, but can be safely presumed to be minutes), and then says that this second modifier rises to +2 SL (so +3 total) for spells with a casting time in hours or days. This is entirely consistent with Compact, which presumes that the spell already has a standard action casting time, lowering the spell level by -1 if you increase it to minutes, or -2 if you increase it to days or weeks.
Admittedly, the language is slightly different for the two; "hours or more" versus "days or weeks," but overall they align fairly well.
It's a GM's call here, since if you didn't add the "lengthy casting time" modifier you'd essentially be making the jump from a normal casting time of 1 hour, down to 6 minutes (+1 SL for buying off the Compact modifier), down to a swift/free action (+1 SL for using Temporal). I can see why that might come across as awkward, since you'd be going straight from minutes to free/swift action, when it seems like you should be going down to rounds in between there. So +6 SL might be right after all.
As written, Material is supposed to get rid of non-worthless material components also. The issue is just that Compact implies that its +1 SL cost has an upper limit, after which you need to double it to +2 SL. I personally put that limit at about 10,000+ gp worth of stuff. As for why you'd use it...well, that's due to the particulars of what you'd do with it.
No, it doesn't. Built-in effects don't count for the purposes of how much metamagic you can dump on a spell, as per The Practical Enchanter (p. 114); you just can't double-up on a particular metamagic application by building it into the spell and then applying it again separately. You couldn't use Compact's "elaborately expensive material components" modifier with a wish spell to lower it to spell level 7, for example, because it already has that built in to get it down from level 11 to level 9. But you could absolutely add in -3 levels of other Compact modifiers to bust it down to level 6.
And I'm mostly sure I got that all right.
8354014
Well that's pretty bad :/ If I want Wish's cost to disappear entirely, I'd need to pay 3 Metamagic Levels for it (Remove very expensive things, expensive things, inexpensive things). And then the Temporal stuff... Thank the gods that Glory doesn't rely on Base Con or Metamagic would be unaffordable.
I'd have to disagree with this though: p.144 says that
Now this might be referring to different modifiers (or only build in Metamagic), not the same, but then we also have
Which implies to me that this is the new "standard". While I can see this work with Compact (it specifically mentions that we should consider the modifiers already inside the spell), I couldn't see this work with Amplify (as in, if I make a Double Maximized Cure Light Wounds, call it "The Most Inefficient Heal Spell" as it heals only 26 HP and is an 8th level spell, I see no reason why I couldn't double it again, given that the 26 HP are the new "standard").
There is also this:
Meaning stacking it totally possible. Otherwise, why even call it out?
Now for compact, I can see what you mean: Compact specifically forces you to buy off anything previously applied. However, I see no way where this would apply for other Metamagic, making Compact a special case where you can't stack the same thing if it's been build in. Otherwise, you'd have to look for a limit in dice to determine which spell has "Double" already applied. Which makes me wonder: Can you use Glory to get rid of Compact? I mean, you still couldn't reduce the level that way, but could you choose to die while casting Wish at SL 6 without compenents if you use Glory?
EDIT: You know, thinking twice about it... The only thing that actually mentions a buy-off requirement is the casting-time one, and that one actually has a similar +1-+2 thing in Temporal, so maybe these two are just the exact same things? Basically saying that you can use Temporal to buy-off that type of Compact even if you do not have Compact Metamagic. The only big things you have to consider in Compact for that would be increased casting time (which might be the thing detailed in Temporal), the favors that are inherent in most divine spells (which is probably already calculated into Theurgy) and the Material thing.
The reason why I was so skeptic of that before is that it would mean you could apply both Compact and Material (specialized too, so they only cost 6 CP) for a flat -1 SL... Until I realized that Thoth himself already put up a build that does something similar here and that there is no reason one couldn't assume a Privilege for the Compact-application that allows for a -1 SL to exist. Sure, such a Privilege would cover a wider area of spells than the one before (every non-divine one, basically), but we know for a fact that you can offset owning favors with a Privilege, as done here and unlike the one in the template, this would count against the limit specified in Compact.
In that case, we'd simply say that applying Compact twice the same way doesn't work, but it works for other Metamagic, which makes sense because Eclipse says that there is no limit to how far you can stack Metamagic directly on the page where Metamagic is introduced (even though I personally keep it to only one build-in and one normal, for sanity's sake). The additional -1 SL is in so far not even a big error because Streamline can do something similar anyway: You could just apply it to reduce the return-cost of Compact for 3 CP.
8354833
Two spell levels. The "expensive things" category subsumes inexpensive things when it's applicable. That's why the Compact listings don't have more than a -2 listing for very expensive material components. If you want to cast a wish without any material components, then it's effectively an 11th-level spell.
You realize you'd only add Temporal if you wanted to cast the spell as a free/swift action, right? In most cases that won't be an issue, because there usually isn't any need to cast it that fast.
Sure, but none of that speaks to what I said, which is that you can't double-up on a particular metamagic application - note that "application" is the operative word here - by building it into the spell and then applying it again separately. Or any other way, for that matter.
I don't disagree, I just think that you're reading what's there more literally than I am. If you want to increase the amount of metamagic you dump on a spell, then I don't see that as "doubling up" on what's there; you're achieving a greater effect for an increased cost, rather than paying for the same effect twice. If you want to quadruple a spell's effect, then that's +8 spell levels of amplify. This is why page 56 of Eclipse says that the effects of metamagic theorems aren't limited to what's there.
That's different from dropping expensive material components on a spell again and again and using Compact to lower its spell level to almost nothing, as that metamagic theorem highlights that higher-level reductions have commensurately greater costs, and that you can only stack lesser cost reductions among each other and not on themselves over and over.
Again, stacking is possible. You just can't layer the exact same effect on something multiple times (as opposed to increasing an effect for a commensurate cost).
I recognize that this sounds like a distinction without a difference, but there is a point there, even it's practical applications are largely limited to Compact.
Which is essentially the point I was making, even if I didn't state it very well. For most other cases, trying to double up on a particular metamagic is self-evidently pointless, since making the same alteration twice would make no sense. If you use Lacing's Improved Hidden modifier twice over to make a flashy spell "double invisible," then that's quite clearly a pointless application, and so it never occurs to most people in the first place.
Glory lets you spontaneously add a particular metamagic theorem that you know to a spell spontaneously. So if you wanted to cast a wish spell that had been Compacted but hadn't prepared it that way (if you're a preparatory caster), you could do it if you'd taken Glory for the Compact metamagic theorem (or had Improved Glory), but that's it. If you want to use Glory to spontaneously buy off Compacted reductions into a spell, then you'd need to use it in conjunction with the relevant metamagic theorem to channel the requisite metamagic spell levels into a spell to buy off the reduction spontaneously as you cast the spell. So if you were casting a wish, you could use Glory with Easy to drop two levels of metamagic on it and do so without paying the material component cost.
Well, yeah. If a spell already has a Compact reduction built into it (i.e. it already has something like a long casting time, expensive material component, etc. as part of the "normal" spell) then you can buy that off with the relevant metamagic (e.g. Easy) without needing to have Compact itself. Presumably the other Compact reductions could be removed in a similar manner with a different metamagic theorem, though which ones fit with which is debatable - though I don't think that Compact would be necessary for any of them. You use that to add restrictions for a cost reduction; you don't need it to do the opposite.
If you're saying that you need to have the Compact metamagic theorem in order to remove built-in reductions from spells, then I don't believe that you do. There might be other metamagic that can compensate for those, but in most cases you'd just research a higher-level variant of the spell with those limitations removed.
You've lost me here. I think you're talking about metamagic cost reductions, but Eclipse already has those anyway in the form of Streamline. Spending 6 CP to lower some metamagic by -1 spell level isn't really a big deal (heck, Streamline gives you two of those, albeit for different metamagic), even if you say that it's by Major Privilege instead.
This sounds suspiciously like what I was saying all along, albeit in a different way.
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My question is: What's stopping you from, let's say, taking Resistance (a level 0 spell that gives a +1 Resistance bonus to saves), building in "double" (now a level 3 spell (+4-1 SL)) for a +2 to all saves and then, after having learnt that level 3 version, using your own metamagic to "double" it again (for a +4 bonus)?
It seems like you don't count that as "doubling up", but I wanna be sure on this, because it's really confusing me. Even more confuses me that Phoenix Wings does Compact for 10000 XP despite the limit being 5000 XP in Compact.
EDIT: Also, out of curiosity, I looked up what the example outrageously expensive component (a large temple) is worth. It's 128.000 GP according to the pathfinder Kingdom Builder.
What stops you from specializing Streamline (does only apply to a single Metamagic) for double effect so you remove two levels from a single theorem... eh, nvm, doesn't really matter.
What I meant was: Wouldn't it just make more sense to just say that taking the -2 SL off of Compact and adding +1 via easy to remove it in the same stroke simply replaces the original components with the new very expensive ones? I mean, if someone made a spell with the -2 SL Compact and then someone uses just +1 SL from Materials via Metamagic, then he doesn't really do much more than someone under your interpretation could do if he spent 2 CP on Streamline (Specialized and Corrupted for reduced cost: Only applies to one theorem, only applies to spells with originally outrageously expensive components). Further, the only thing in Compact that actually mentions needing to be bought off first is the casting-time one. I feel like this might just be a case where the cost of stuff like this is calculated in, as you need to buy Easy and Compact to properly make use of that (Compact to create such a spell in the first place and Easy to make use of Material to have that -1 SL) and probably need Fast too if you are a spontaneous caster. Given that CP cost, I feel like the 2 CP "for free" might be justified. You know, in the same way it's given as an option to give a character who bought 6 of the 7 Witchcraft abilities the final one for free.
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The GM.
More seriously, I don't see a particular problem with that, in that I don't consider it to be "doubling up on the same application of metamagic," but rather going for a singular effect (i.e. quadrupling the resistance bonus) and paying for it in differing segments, one where you build it into the spell beforehand (and, as a reward for doing so, can cut down on the spell level by 1) and one where you apply it as it's being cast. As I mentioned before, my take on "doubling up" on metamagic is trying to achieve the same effect twice over, not combine two effects for something greater.
I'll certainly grant that that sounds confusing, because (as I noted previously) this distinction virtually never comes into play except where the reductions from Compact are in use, which is why those notations are explicitly called out there. I'm sure plenty of other GMs disagree, and wouldn't allow a situation like what you're outlining, for that matter.
Offhand, I don't recognize that spell. Can you cite where you found it?
Yeah, no. I'm sure it does list that, but the ultimate arbiter of what an "outrageously expensive component" is is the GM. Trying to objectively put a figure on that where Eclipse itself doesn't isn't going to conclusively determine anything. Particularly since costs for buildings varies wildly depending on where you look, such as if you combine rooms and make sure to have an altar (210 gp) and a reliquary (260 gp) with a few other rooms, call it a major temple, and you can have something significantly cheaper, but it still wouldn't be enough (for most GMs, including myself) to be worth an "elaborately expensive construction" reduction in a spell's level.
Nothing, that's completely viable.
Again, I'm not sure what you're asking, here. If you've reduced a spell's level by -2 with "very expensive components," then if you don't want to pay those components, you'll need to raise the spell level by 2. You can either research a higher-level version of the spell, or use the Easy metamagic theorem (Materials modifier) to add in +2 levels of metamagic.
Or...are you asking if you can replace particular very expensive material components with other very expensive material components? Because that's a completely different question that's only somewhat related to issues of spell levels.
I'm still having a very hard time understanding what you're asking. I know it has something to do with thinking that you can offset the -2 SL modifier in Compact (via very expensive material components) with the +1 SL modifier from Materials (which buys off expensive components). I'm telling you, that doesn't work. If you want to cast a spell with a very expensive (-2 SL) material component without paying for the component, then you'll need to make up that -2 SL somewhere else, either by researching a higher-level version of the spell itself or adding in +2 SL via the Easy metamagic theorem. Adding in just +1 SL from "Material" in the Easy metamagic theorem listing isn't enough. No, that listing for Material doesn't expressly say anything about that - making it sound like its +1 SL modifier should wipe out any-and-all material component-related costs - but that's, at worst, an oversight. It's taken as a given that you can't use its +1 SL modifier to wipe out a -2 SL modifier's worth of material components.
Don't get hung up on the use of "first" there; it's telling you that using the Temporal modifier to cast such a spell as a free/swift action alone isn't enough, and that you also have to pay back the reduction you made for spells that have a long casting time built into them. That's because otherwise you'd be getting those spells reduced to free/swift actions for no net increase to their base spell level.
You do not need Compact to create such a spell in the first place, as I understand it. You can research such a spell as a variation on a spell you already know. And of course, if you reduce the spell level by -2 by using a very expensive material component, you CANNOT just wipe that out with a +2 SL increase via Easy's Material application. Again, I know that the book doesn't list a +2 application for Material, but even so it is still there.
Again, if you want to buy off -2 SL of very expensive material components, you need to sink in +2 SL from somewhere else, or otherwise find another way to offset the cost. The +1 SL from Material alone is not enough.
I don't really see that as being the same.
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It's p. 147 in Eclipse.
Not on the issue of spell levels, but on the issue of "how do Material and Compact interact". As in, could you feasably use Material to get rid of the ruby dust for Simulacrum and then use compact to replace it with... let's say gold dust? Or would that be something different?
Well, I'm more hung up on the fact that no buy-off at all is mentioned. It also makes me wonder if Theurgy means a Wizard using Cleric spells now owes a hundred different spirits favors because Compact lists it. I can see the problem with solving it the other way, I'm just very hung up on the fact that something that affects about 1/3rd of all spells in a really major way is hidden away in the Compact section.
No mention of it at all in Easy is also very off-putting, given that it IS listed as what Material does, whatever the context. That's in addition to the fact that Easy cannot remove Foci or integral components either, so you basically have to invent a different spell if you want to truly cast without components. Sure, the compact thing didn't change that, but it's something that really bugs me.
I mean, I yield that you are right at this point. I think it's a really bad way to write it, especially given that a lot of the other abilities are rather self-contained or point to the ability they are referencing, but it probably is the intent.
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So it is. I wouldn't stress over the fact that "as written" you can only reduce a spell for 5,000 XP via Compact. Remember, what's listed is NOT the sum total of what those metamagic theorems can do. Just figure out a higher spell level that seems appropriate (-4 SL, by my eyeballing it).
Offhand, I don't see why not, presuming you were otherwise adding and then removing the same levels' worth of metamagic. If you're willing to sink two different metamagic feats into making such a relatively minor change, why not?
Again, I see this as an implicit acknowledgment about what the intro to the metamagic section says about what's there not being definitive.
I seriously doubt that Theurgy means that, since that isn't why the converted spells have a different level; that's because they're converted and some efficiency is lost. Remember, the rules are there to represent the why of things - you'll find lots of stuff that's mechanically identical if all you look at is the numbers. You need to look at what the numbers are supposed to represent.
Focus components are essentially integral to the spell, to the point where you can't really do without them. Scrying someone in a mirror requires a mirror, after all. That isn't really a level-adjustment issue so much as it is an intrinsic aspect of the spell itself. You can't really use magic jar without the gemstone, for instance. Instead you'd have to come up with a completely different set of spells, like possession, which is very similar but with several minor differences.
Given that they're all right there, and deal with the affecting the same thing in the same way (e.g. adjusting magic via altering its spell level) that can't really be helped, I suspect.
this is not a good thing as now Fencer will be gilt of murdering Pillowcase we need a miracle and fast.
8384373 Given how things have gone so far, how likely do you think that is?
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You two are adorable. And here I am, reading your comments, and basically making educated guesses as to what the actual rules and such are.
You two have also made the comments section over 3/4s of the entire page.
Like I said, adorable!
Alright, we left the cavern with the tent, but this one doesn't have much in it, so on we go!
8388613 Woot!
8388611 I make sure to write this story in a way that people who aren't familiar with the underlying game rules can still enjoy it, but I like to think that those who do know the d20/Pathfinder rules in general (and the Eclipse rules in particular) get a particular kick out of finding something and being able to say "ah! This is a reference to [particular rule]!" when they do. Naturally, I'm more than happy to discuss those things in the comments.