Hmm, I am not quite sure that I know what you’re asking. I don’t know what you think your principle is, so I couldn’t say what violates that. I will note what problems I perceive; whether they violate your principle is, of course, something you’re more qualified to determine than I am.
First, a slight digression on the subject of tears to wine. (You may skip this section if you are in a hurry, though I do think the point I make here is relevant to discussions of how “munchkinable” Pathfinder is.)
It is a well-known feature of 3e-like systems (D&D 3rd edition, D&D 3.5, Pathfinder) that they get more complex with time, as their creators release more and more “splatbooks” and other rules content. There is no real “availability scoping” in the rules, so when Paizo publishes a new book of rules content, such as the Arcane Anthology, there is no hard distinguishing factor between, say, a spell that appeared in the Core Rulebook and one that appears in the newly-published book. In this way, the amount of stuff in the game system increases monotonically with time, and likewise does the number of possible interactions between system components.
This makes “munchkining” a “mature” 3e-like system easier than doing so with a younger such system—there’s simply many more things to potentially exploit (and “power creep” is a thing as well; for reasons of market incentives, later-published content tends to be more exploitable than earlier-published content). This is a problem for users of the system, but it is not as much of a problem as it could be, because the solution to this, as to many other things, is the Game Master. It is commonly understood that a GM is well within his prerogative not to simply allow the use of all published theoretically-canonical game content, but to limit what is available, to one degree or another. (Indeed, you will hear this recommendation perhaps most clearly precisely from those communities of D&D/PF players who specialize in analysis of “theoretical optimization” a.k.a. munchkining.)
After all, if Paizo publishes the Arcane Anthology (where the spell tears to wine is found), there is not, actually, any law that says that this fact automatically means that any of the content in said “splatbook” is true in your specific campaign setting (if you are a GM). It’s your choice! Now, of course, you can take it as an axiom that all canonical published content is true of your setting (the Eberron campaign setting for D&D 3.5 is, famously, built on this premise). But you don’t have to do that.
And given that you don’t have to do it, making that choice is, well, a choice. By selecting “all published canonical content” as the scope for what is true in your Pathfinder-based setting, you inherently make it much easier for yourself, if you want to do “munchkinry”. With a 3e-like system as mature as 1st edition Pathfinder, when all canonical published content is “in scope”, coming up with an exploit is more often merely a matter of finding the right spell in the right splatbook (a task made much easier by websites such as the Archives of Nethys) than it is of any particularly clever hack.
Note that such a broad scope also substantially reduces the value of the work to the reader, along the dimension I describe in the grandparent comment. After all, if I am reading along and thinking “hm, how will the Conspiracy handle this one, let me think now”, then even if I am fairly well familiar with Pathfinder, there’s no way I can recall every feat, every spell, every magic item, every exotic piece of rules content in every splatbook, Adventure Path, and anything else that Paizo has ever published! With such a vast universe of possibilities, I have little choice but to resign myself to the fact that I have no idea what’s going to happen next. It could be anything at all. In Pathfinder 1st edition ca. 2022, “finding an obscure spell that does <thing>” is, in practice, little different from “making up, de novo and for your plot convenience, a spell that does <thing>”. You are technically remaining within the genre-standard set of constraints… but the reader is almost entirely incapable of predicting your moves, because those constraints are so loose.
However, none of this is the sort of thing I had in mind when I wrote the grandparent comment. This is merely a digression—which is now over.
The most obvious problem with Project Lawful (and one of the most severe, due to how often it appears) is that message does not work that way.
Let’s first review the message spell. It is a 0th level spell (cantrip), castable at will by a spellcaster of any of the listed classes, if known (for spontaneous casters) or prepared that day (for prepared casters). It affects up to 1 creature per caster level (e.g., 3 creatures when cast by a 3rd-level wizard), has a duration of 10 minutes per caster level (e.g., 30 minutes for a 3rd level wizard), and a range of of 100 feet plus 10 feet per caster level (e.g., 130 feet for a 3rd level wizard). (Note that when a wizard is referred to as “second-circle” in Project Lawful, this appears to mean that they are able to cast 2nd-level spells but no higher, meaning that they have either 3 or 4 wizard class levels, in Pathfinder terms.) It has verbal, somatic, and focus components (the F component is a piece of copper wire, though this is mostly irrelevant). The spell’s description reads thus:
You can whisper messages and receive whispered replies. Those nearby can hear these messages with a DC 25 Perception check. You point your finger at each creature you want to receive the message. When you whisper, the whispered message is audible to all targeted creatures within range. Magical silence, 1 foot of stone, 1 inch of common metal (or a thin sheet of lead), or 3 feet of wood or dirt blocks the spell. The message does not have to travel in a straight line. It can circumvent a barrier if there is an open path between you and the subject, and the path’s entire length lies within the spell’s range. The creatures that receive the message can whisper a reply that you hear. The spell transmits sound, not meaning; it doesn’t transcend language barriers. To speak a message, you must mouth the words and whisper.
The procedure for using message to communicate thus looks roughly like this (we will assume a 3rd level wizard when specific numerical values are needed; modify as appropriate for casters of other classes and/or levels):
As a standard action (the spell’s casting time), select up to 3 creatures, all of which are within 130 feet of you, all of which you can see, and to all of which you have line of effect[1], and point to each of them as you cast the spell.
At any time within the next 30 minutes, you can whisper a message; the message will then be delivered to the target creatures.
The targeted creatures whisper a reply, which is delivered to you.
As the act of casting message and the act of using an active message spell to actually send a message are distinct, let’s consider each separately.
Casting the spell
The following conditions (among others) obtain when you cast a message spell:
a. You must be able to see all targets on which you cast message. (General rules for spellcasting.) You cannot cast message on someone in a different room, or around a corner, or with your eyes closed, or if they’re invisible (and you have no means of seeing invisible things), etc.
b. You must have line of effect to all targets on which you cast message. (Ditto.) Any solid barrier whatsoever blocks line of effect. This is another reason why you can’t cast message on someone around a corner or in the next room, but the line of effect requirement also prevents you from casting message on someone on the other side of a transparent glass window, or a wall of force, etc.
c. You must provide all of the spell’s components—in this case, a verbal component, a somatic component, and a focus (a piece of copper wire). Relevant rules include:
A verbal component is a spoken incantation. To provide a verbal component, you must be able to speak in a strong voice.
A somatic component is a measured and precise movement of the hand. You must have at least one hand free to provide a somatic component.
A focus component is a prop of some sort. Unlike a material component, a focus is not consumed when the spell is cast and can be reused. As with material components, the cost for a focus is negligible unless a price is given. Assume that focus components of negligible cost are in your spell component pouch.
(That “negligible cost” provision does indeed apply to the piece of copper wire which is the focus for a message spell.)
To summarize: in order to cast message, you must speak an incantation in a strong voice; you must make a measured and precise movement of the hand; and you must provide, from your spell component pouch, a piece of copper wire as a prop.
An obvious question: are there any ways to avoid having to provide one or more of the spell’s components?
There are some such ways. Here is one which does not work: the Eschew Materials feat, which allows a spellcaster to ignore material components when such components cost less than 1 gp… but, unfortunately, does absolutely nothing about having to provide a focus, whatever its cost might be.
One might also use metamagic feats, such as Silent Spell and Still Spell; these allow a spellcaster to modify a spell so as to be castable without verbal or somatic components, respectively. (I am not aware of a metamagic feat that would let a spell be cast without a focus, if the spell normally has a focus.) However, such feats modify the spell’s effective level; so a wizard, e.g., would have to prepare message as a 1st level spell for it to be Still or Silent, or as a 2nd level spell for it to be Still and Silent. A message spell prepared thus would not be castable at will, as that is a property of 0th-level spells (cantrips) only.
d. You must point your finger at each creature on whom you wish to cast the message spell.
All of these things combine to create two important effects:
i. When message is cast, its targets—i.e., those creatures to whom the caster can, at any time in the spell’s duration, send whispered messages—are limited to those creatures who are in the same “room” (more broadly: between eligible targets and the caster there must be no solid barriers, not even translucent ones, nor can they be, in any way, hidden from the caster’s sight; nor can they be more than [100 + 10 per caster level] feet away).
ii. The act of casting message is—for low-level wizards such as the Project Lawful girls, anyway—very clearly noticeable by anyone in the vicinity.
Digression on spell manifestations (skippable if you are in a hurry):
What exactly do I identify when I’m using Spellcraft to identify a spell? Is it the components, since spell-like abilities, for instance, don’t have any? If I can only identify components, would that mean that I can’t take an attack of opportunity against someone using a spell-like ability (or spell with no verbal, somatic, or material components) or ready an action to shoot an arrow to disrupt a spell-like ability? If there’s something else, how do I know what it is?
Although this isn’t directly stated in the Core Rulebook, many elements of the game system work assuming that all spells have their own manifestations, regardless of whether or not they also produce an obvious visual effect, like fireball. You can see some examples to give you ideas of how to describe a spell’s manifestation in various pieces of art from Pathfinder products, but ultimately, the choice is up to your group, or perhaps even to the aesthetics of an individual spellcaster, to decide the exact details. Whatever the case, these manifestations are obviously magic of some kind, even to the uninitiated; this prevents spellcasters that use spell-like abilities, psychic magic, and the like from running completely amok against non-spellcasters in a non-combat situation. Special abilities exist (and more are likely to appear in Ultimate Intrigue) that specifically facilitate a spellcaster using chicanery to misdirect people from those manifestations and allow them to go unnoticed, but they will always provide an onlooker some sort of chance to detect the ruse.
If this rule holds, then all spells (certainly including message) have obvious-to-onlookers magical manifestations (regardless of whether the spell has any components!). This would then be an additional reason why the casting of message would be unambiguously noticeable to anyone in the caster’s vicinity.
Official FAQ entries constitute canonical game content; thus, if you have decided that all published official content is “in scope” in your setting, then this includes material found in FAQ entries as well. However, this particular FAQ entry is a famously controversial one. When it was published, there was a sense, among many Pathfinder players and GMs, that the designers at Paizo were trying to “retcon” into existence a rule which has never existed in any rules text, even by implication. (It is true that illustrations in published Pathfinder materials almost invariably show some sort of glowing runes or flashing lights or some similar sort of visible effect whenever they depict a character in the act of spellcasting—but are we to take artistic choices to constitute statements of rules intent, when they are backed up by nothing, not even so much as a passing mention, in the text? —thus went the reasoning, among many.)
I thus do not hold it against you, Eliezer, that you ignore this particular rule, in Project Lawful. Nevertheless, diligence demands that it be mentioned.
Digression ends.
Using the spell
Supposing that you (a hypothetical 3rd-level wizard) have cast message, selecting up to 3 creatures as the targets, you now have a 30 minute period during which, at any time and as many times as you like, you can send whispered messages to all of those creatures. When you wish to do so, the following conditions (among others) obtain:
a. Only those of your targeted creatures who are within 130 feet of you will receive your whispered message; any that are further away will not receive anything.
b. Should there fail to be a path (all parts of which are within 130 feet of you, and no part of which is blocked by 1 foot of stone, or 1 inch of common metal, or a thin sheet of lead, or 3 feet of wood or dirt, or a magical silence effect) between you and any of your targeted creatures, that target will likewise receive nothing.
c. To transmit a message, you must mouth the words and whisper. (You cannot just form the words mentally; nor can you use ventriloquism-like techniques to whisper without mouthing the words; nor can you mouth the words silently—remember that “the spell transmits sound”! Note that this requirement still holds even if the spell is prepared with the Silent Spell and/or Still Spell metamagic feats, as those feats affect a spell’s components, not its effect.)
Note that this condition means that not just casting, but also using, a message spell, is something that cannot be done without risk of nearby people noticing. Of course it is possible for someone to not notice when a person right next to them is whispering and mouthing words… but it requires that the former person be somehow distracted, not paying attention, not looking directly at the message-user, etc. (In particular, it is not possible, for instance, for there to be three people in a room, all of whom are looking at each other and who are not intensely concentrating on something extremely distracting, and for two of them to be exchanging messages via message while the third is totally oblivious to this “side channel” and the conversation taking place on it.)
Likewise, it’s clearly not possible to use message to send messages while you are speaking aloud (your mouth and vocal cords can’t do two things at once, after all).
d. Those nearby can hear these messages with a DC 25 Perception check.
For reference, another hearing-based task that takes a DC 25 Perception check is “ Hear a bow being drawn”. This is difficult, but not impossible. (Note that this is the DC to hear the messages, not the DC to notice that someone is whispering something—the latter would require a check at a lower DC!)
Summary
Casting a message spell is very noticeable, and is limited by your locale’s layout in the targets available to you.
Using an active message spell to send messages is not as obvious, but still unquestionably noticeable to anyone in your immediate vicinity, and is less limited in applicable recipients by your locale’s layout, but still limited (and one must re-cast message if one wishes to add targets which were not selected by an already-active message spell).
But in Project Lawful, people routinely use message as, effectively, a fully telepathic side channel for unrestricted verbal communication which can be used without any risk whatsoever of someone who is directly adjacent to sender or recipient(s) noticing anything happening. (I have many examples which I can produce, but this comment is very long already. Details, as before, available upon request.)
It is clear that this usage is not supported by the rules text. But this is no mere quibble; the deviation is consequential. The ability to use message in this “basically just telepathy” way is a substantial boost to the capabilities of low-level spellcasters. (No sensible GM would ever permit message to be used in the way that it is used in Project Lawful, and with good reason—spellcasters, already quite powerful in Pathfinder, ought not be further empowered by misuse of the rules!)
Furthermore and specifically, if the members of the Conspiracy had to stick to the Pathfinder rules as written in their use of message, they could not perform many of the deceptions which they perpetrate upon Keltham. Substantial chunks of the story would either not work at all, or would have to be rewritten, sometimes from scratch.
Final note
The abuse of message is not the only problem of this sort in Project Lawful. It is, however, perhaps the most glaring one (at least, to me), and one of the most pervasive. This comment is, as I said, already very long, so I will forbear to list other examples—but more examples are, indeed, available upon request.
It’s meant to be reasonably hard fantasy, not necessarily conformant to Pathfinder canon because that doesn’t describe a world in near-equilibrium relative to the smart people running around with +6 headbands of vast intelligence (that do exist in-universe), but once the characters see something it ought to go on being true. Above all it’s hard decision theory.
Well… but in that case there’s still a problem: as I noted elsethread, the first use of message in the story (when Keltham first learns to cast it) does actually seem to be correct as per Pathfinder RAW. Uses later in the story are inconsistent with that one.
I certainly wouldn’t think to hold Project Lawful to a standard of conformance to Golarion setting canon; that would be somewhat silly, from a literary standpoint. But as far as mechanics go, if you’re trying to do “hard fantasy”, then, yeah, it does seem like there are flaws. The message thing is one; another is protection from [chaos/evil/good/law]. (Does the spell’s protection against mental control work only against mental attacks made by opponents of the targeted alignment, or all opponents? In Pathfinder it’s the former, and that is how it’s described in the currently most recent section of story, but earlier it is described in the latter way. I suspect this might be a case of one of the authors getting the 3.5 and PF versions of the spell mixed up, as its anti-mental-attack functionality was changed in PF to function in the alignment-limited way.) There’s more, but I haven’t been keeping meticulous track; those two inconsistencies are just the ones that jumped out at me.
More broadly, while I am not quite sure what you mean by “hard fantasy” (I can make the obvious inference from context and by analogy to “hard sf”, of course, but mapping that concept to fantasy, with magic and so on, seems non-trivial, though not impossible), I do think that aside from any questions of internal inconsistency, changes like “buffing” message in the way that you did are problematic. As I say upthread, this is a noticeable boost to the power of (at least) low-level spellcasters, relative to the PF RAW baseline. A world such as described in the story, and where anyone who can cast a cantrip effectively has at-will, robust, undetectable-by-bystanders telepathic communication with nearby targets of their choice, should look noticeably different from a world where all else is equal but message merely works the way that it does in Pathfinder. It does not seem to me that the world of the story is worked out with such a capability in mind from the start (which makes sense if this change was made accidentally midway through).
(And then, aside from all of this, there is one deviation from the Pathfinder rules that is so big and so bizarre that I genuinely can’t tell whether it’s deliberate or… some sort of very, very odd house rule / practice that I’ve never heard of… or what. But it’s not an inconsistency, at any rate…)
So the main thing I missed about Message was the chance of it being overheard. Most of what you are reading as ‘pseudo-telepathic’ communication is usually a character having their mind read by Security running Detect Thoughts, and then those thoughts being relayed to others via Security using Message, rather than by characters Messaging each other.
I remember checking Protection pretty carefully at the time and I think at the time it blocked against all the mental control, not just mental control originating from the targeted alignment. Possibly a rules change to PF2? But if not, Keltham is still running Enchantment Foil at the time.
There’s multiple big deviations from RAW; the main one I can think of that I homebrewed for this is ‘oracles go with gods and a god can have at most one oracle’. If that’s not what you’re referring to then I don’t know what you’re so coyly hinting about, and that kind of coy hinting is not something I find particularly pleasant.
So the main thing I missed about Message was the chance of it being overheard. Most of what you are reading as ‘pseudo-telepathic’ communication is usually a character having their mind read by Security running Detect Thoughts, and then those thoughts being relayed to others via Security using Message, rather than by characters Messaging each other.
Yes, there is definitely some of that, but also cases where that can’t plausibly be happening. (Also, in cases where it is happening, there ought to be a noticeable communications lag, e.g.: think message → Security reads via detect thoughts → Security transmits to recipient via message. In some cases there are intervening walls, etc.—i.e. the characters are in different rooms—so there would then be the additional step “Security transmits to another Security via message”, which second Security then transmits to recipient.)
I remember checking Protection pretty carefully at the time and I think at the time it blocked against all the mental control, not just mental control originating from the targeted alignment. Possibly a rules change to PF2?
Indeed not. All functions of protection from [alignment] are alignment-limited in PF1, and always have been. (You can verify this, if you’re so inclined, by checking early printings [in PDF] of the Core Rulebook; if you don’t have access to such, feel free to PM me, and we can rectify that. But probably this is not important enough to go to any such lengths.) My best guess remains that you accidentally happened to look at the 3.5 version of the spell text.
But if not, Keltham is still running Enchantment Foil at the time.
True enough. (Of course, enchantment foil is only a +4 bonus to the save, not immunity… but there’s certainly no reason not to assume that that +4 bonus did happen to make the difference between success and failure, on that particular save.)
There’s multiple big deviations from RAW; the main one I can think of that I homebrewed for this is ‘oracles go with gods and a god can have at most one oracle’.
Ah, I don’t think I’d consider that a deviation from RAW, as such. It’s true that this is not at all Golarion canon, but I don’t think there’s actually any rules that forbid this from being the case in a setting, or even in Golarion as such. (I don’t think it’s a particularly consequential change from setting canon, either.)
If that’s not what you’re referring to then I don’t know what you’re so coyly hinting about, and that kind of coy hinting is not something I find particularly pleasant.
Apologies; it wasn’t my intent to “coyly hint”, only to avoid cluttering up the comment thread with what might not be of interest to you.
What I was referring to was the idea that gods can, e.g, bestow seven cleric levels on someone, or four oracle levels on someone else, etc., i.e. that a god (in Golarion) can decide to just give a mortal a bunch of character levels. This is definitely not how things work in Pathfinder, where one gains character levels when one gains experience points, and where it’s not clear what it even means for someone to spontaneously become, e.g., a 7th-level cleric without “leveling up” in the usual “acquire XP, gain character levels” way. (What is Ione’s base attack bonus, for example, or her base save bonuses? How many feats does she have, how many skill points? Do these questions have any meaning, even? It seems like they should, given the other references to [very close in-world analogues of] game mechanics, but who knows… Is there a connection between character level, class level, level-dependent benefits such as BAB/BSB/feats/skill points, or should we assume that there’s no such connection? If there is a connection and it’s the usual one, then is there consequently no connection between these numbers and what they normally represent, i.e. improvement of ability via training and practice? If a 16th-level cleric cast blasphemy and Ione were caught in the area of effect, would she be killed, or only paralyzed? etc., etc.)
(Of course, one could make the argument that as the gods are not given game-mechanical definitions in Pathfinder, we can therefore ascribe any powers we like to them without violating any rules, but then it’s not clear why we should expect any kind of predictable world at all.)
As I said, this isn’t an inconsistency, as such (at least, not definitely one, though it does seem hard to square with the other limitations that the gods are described as having with respect to their involved in the mortal world—but I wouldn’t lean too hard on that impression), it’s just… very, very strange, for multiple reasons. I would have to give more thought than I thus far have, to all the setting implications of this apparent divine capability. (Any potential conclusions I might draw would probably also be underdetermined by what we’ve seen in the story so far.) At the very least, I am fairly confident that Golarion as it is described in canon is built with the assumption that this is not a thing that the gods can do.
Well, that one is standard in lintaGolarian, not an innovation of ezerGolarion, and happens in an earlier continuity as well. We’ve reinterpreted a lot of mechanics like that for reasons of “They are not actually living in an RPG and experience points are not actually a thing.” Spell durations go up continuously rather than in discrete jumps per level, similarly.
Hmm… I am not quite sure how to take the “lintaGolarion” / “ezerGolarion” stuff (it doesn’t seem relevant? but possibly I am just not familiar enough with this terminology to get the implication)… but I think that perhaps I’ve not gotten my meaning across. Let me try again:
That the characters in Project Lawful are not actually living in an RPG and are not actually governed by literal game mechanics is clear enough. The same is almost to the same extent true of characters in an actual Pathfinder game, though! As mechanics in 3e-like systems, including Pathfinder, tend overwhelmingly to be associated, those mechanics do represent things that are ostensibly true from an in-world perspective.
With that in mind, here’s a concrete example. The blasphemy spell, which affects nonevil creatures, has an effect that is determined by the difference between the caster’s caster level and the hit dice of potentially affected creatures. If cast by, say, a 16th-level cleric, blasphemy will kill nonevil creatures of up to 6 hit dice (assuming they fail their Will save), but will only paralyze creatures of 7–11 hit dice (ditto).
We can accept that experience points are not actually a thing in-world, likewise “levels”, etc., but it remains the case that if an evil “eighth-circle” cleric walks up to Ione and casts blasphemy, and she fails her save, there does need to be an answer to the question: what actually happens to her? Does she die, or is she only paralyzed?
Of course you can evade this question by altering blasphemy to not be HD-dependent, or removing it entirely (but I think it’s been mentioned in the text already? but perhaps you could retcon that, if so); but then are you going to remove all HD-dependent or level-dependent effects that have discrete “breakpoints”? There are quite a few of those! Deciding to remove from Pathfinder all mechanics that force you to make determinations of what level a character is, or how many hit dice they have, etc., seems to me to commit you to making some rather substantial changes to the system (with non-trivial knock-on effects).
Let’s assume that you don’t make such sweeping changes, and in particular that you leave blasphemy unchanged. Well, we know that Ione is (at the start of the story, anyhow) a ~3rd-level wizard (again, we do not need to believe that “levels” are a real thing in-world, only that Ione’s relevant properties map, for the purposes of resolving interactions with spells such as blasphemy, to “3rd-level”, give or take a level). So if our hypothetical “eighth-circle” evil cleric walks up and casts blasphemy, and Ione fails her save, she instantly dies.
So far, so good. Now we read on, and see that Ione has been granted four oracle levels. Now if that same evil cleric walks up to Ione and casts blasphemy, and she fails her save, then… what? Does she still die (as would be the case if Ione gained the spellcasting ability[1] and class features of a 4th-level oracle, but did not gain any hit dice, nor increased in character level)? Or, is she now only paralyzed (as would be the case if Ione did gain character levels and hit dice)? Note, we’re still perfectly happy to concede that there’s no such thing as “character levels” and “hit dice” in-world, but “what actually happens to Ione in this in-world quite coherently describable scenario” does need to have some answer!
I can keep going, but I think my point should be clearer now (if not, by all means let me know and I’ll try to clarify further). Note that we can construct similar scenarios for the other questions I asked in my parenthetical, i.e. we can construct those questions in such a way that we’re asking about concretely describable, observable, in-world facts, rather than making reference to dissociated game mechanics. You can answer all of these, I’m sure; my point is only that however you answer them, it seems to me that you’ll end up with a setup which is, at least, very weird and not really anticipated by the Pathfinder system (and which is therefore likely to require unforeseen alterations, adjudication of unusual interactions, etc.).
Do we actually see Ione or Pilar cast any oracle spells, by the way? It now occurs to me that I can’t recall such a case, so perhaps they only gained the class features and not the spellcasting? Or did I miss them using oracle spells?
Hmm, I am not quite sure that I know what you’re asking. I don’t know what you think your principle is, so I couldn’t say what violates that. I will note what problems I perceive; whether they violate your principle is, of course, something you’re more qualified to determine than I am.
First, a slight digression on the subject of tears to wine. (You may skip this section if you are in a hurry, though I do think the point I make here is relevant to discussions of how “munchkinable” Pathfinder is.)
It is a well-known feature of 3e-like systems (D&D 3rd edition, D&D 3.5, Pathfinder) that they get more complex with time, as their creators release more and more “splatbooks” and other rules content. There is no real “availability scoping” in the rules, so when Paizo publishes a new book of rules content, such as the Arcane Anthology, there is no hard distinguishing factor between, say, a spell that appeared in the Core Rulebook and one that appears in the newly-published book. In this way, the amount of stuff in the game system increases monotonically with time, and likewise does the number of possible interactions between system components.
This makes “munchkining” a “mature” 3e-like system easier than doing so with a younger such system—there’s simply many more things to potentially exploit (and “power creep” is a thing as well; for reasons of market incentives, later-published content tends to be more exploitable than earlier-published content). This is a problem for users of the system, but it is not as much of a problem as it could be, because the solution to this, as to many other things, is the Game Master. It is commonly understood that a GM is well within his prerogative not to simply allow the use of all published theoretically-canonical game content, but to limit what is available, to one degree or another. (Indeed, you will hear this recommendation perhaps most clearly precisely from those communities of D&D/PF players who specialize in analysis of “theoretical optimization” a.k.a. munchkining.)
After all, if Paizo publishes the Arcane Anthology (where the spell tears to wine is found), there is not, actually, any law that says that this fact automatically means that any of the content in said “splatbook” is true in your specific campaign setting (if you are a GM). It’s your choice! Now, of course, you can take it as an axiom that all canonical published content is true of your setting (the Eberron campaign setting for D&D 3.5 is, famously, built on this premise). But you don’t have to do that.
And given that you don’t have to do it, making that choice is, well, a choice. By selecting “all published canonical content” as the scope for what is true in your Pathfinder-based setting, you inherently make it much easier for yourself, if you want to do “munchkinry”. With a 3e-like system as mature as 1st edition Pathfinder, when all canonical published content is “in scope”, coming up with an exploit is more often merely a matter of finding the right spell in the right splatbook (a task made much easier by websites such as the Archives of Nethys) than it is of any particularly clever hack.
Note that such a broad scope also substantially reduces the value of the work to the reader, along the dimension I describe in the grandparent comment. After all, if I am reading along and thinking “hm, how will the Conspiracy handle this one, let me think now”, then even if I am fairly well familiar with Pathfinder, there’s no way I can recall every feat, every spell, every magic item, every exotic piece of rules content in every splatbook, Adventure Path, and anything else that Paizo has ever published! With such a vast universe of possibilities, I have little choice but to resign myself to the fact that I have no idea what’s going to happen next. It could be anything at all. In Pathfinder 1st edition ca. 2022, “finding an obscure spell that does <thing>” is, in practice, little different from “making up, de novo and for your plot convenience, a spell that does <thing>”. You are technically remaining within the genre-standard set of constraints… but the reader is almost entirely incapable of predicting your moves, because those constraints are so loose.
However, none of this is the sort of thing I had in mind when I wrote the grandparent comment. This is merely a digression—which is now over.
The most obvious problem with Project Lawful (and one of the most severe, due to how often it appears) is that message does not work that way.
Let’s first review the message spell. It is a 0th level spell (cantrip), castable at will by a spellcaster of any of the listed classes, if known (for spontaneous casters) or prepared that day (for prepared casters). It affects up to 1 creature per caster level (e.g., 3 creatures when cast by a 3rd-level wizard), has a duration of 10 minutes per caster level (e.g., 30 minutes for a 3rd level wizard), and a range of of 100 feet plus 10 feet per caster level (e.g., 130 feet for a 3rd level wizard). (Note that when a wizard is referred to as “second-circle” in Project Lawful, this appears to mean that they are able to cast 2nd-level spells but no higher, meaning that they have either 3 or 4 wizard class levels, in Pathfinder terms.) It has verbal, somatic, and focus components (the F component is a piece of copper wire, though this is mostly irrelevant). The spell’s description reads thus:
The procedure for using message to communicate thus looks roughly like this (we will assume a 3rd level wizard when specific numerical values are needed; modify as appropriate for casters of other classes and/or levels):
As a standard action (the spell’s casting time), select up to 3 creatures, all of which are within 130 feet of you, all of which you can see, and to all of which you have line of effect[1], and point to each of them as you cast the spell.
At any time within the next 30 minutes, you can whisper a message; the message will then be delivered to the target creatures.
The targeted creatures whisper a reply, which is delivered to you.
As the act of casting message and the act of using an active message spell to actually send a message are distinct, let’s consider each separately.
Casting the spell
The following conditions (among others) obtain when you cast a message spell:
a. You must be able to see all targets on which you cast message. (General rules for spellcasting.) You cannot cast message on someone in a different room, or around a corner, or with your eyes closed, or if they’re invisible (and you have no means of seeing invisible things), etc.
b. You must have line of effect to all targets on which you cast message. (Ditto.) Any solid barrier whatsoever blocks line of effect. This is another reason why you can’t cast message on someone around a corner or in the next room, but the line of effect requirement also prevents you from casting message on someone on the other side of a transparent glass window, or a wall of force, etc.
c. You must provide all of the spell’s components—in this case, a verbal component, a somatic component, and a focus (a piece of copper wire). Relevant rules include:
(That “negligible cost” provision does indeed apply to the piece of copper wire which is the focus for a message spell.)
To summarize: in order to cast message, you must speak an incantation in a strong voice; you must make a measured and precise movement of the hand; and you must provide, from your spell component pouch, a piece of copper wire as a prop.
An obvious question: are there any ways to avoid having to provide one or more of the spell’s components?
There are some such ways. Here is one which does not work: the Eschew Materials feat, which allows a spellcaster to ignore material components when such components cost less than 1 gp… but, unfortunately, does absolutely nothing about having to provide a focus, whatever its cost might be.
One might also use metamagic feats, such as Silent Spell and Still Spell; these allow a spellcaster to modify a spell so as to be castable without verbal or somatic components, respectively. (I am not aware of a metamagic feat that would let a spell be cast without a focus, if the spell normally has a focus.) However, such feats modify the spell’s effective level; so a wizard, e.g., would have to prepare message as a 1st level spell for it to be Still or Silent, or as a 2nd level spell for it to be Still and Silent. A message spell prepared thus would not be castable at will, as that is a property of 0th-level spells (cantrips) only.
d. You must point your finger at each creature on whom you wish to cast the message spell.
All of these things combine to create two important effects:
i. When message is cast, its targets—i.e., those creatures to whom the caster can, at any time in the spell’s duration, send whispered messages—are limited to those creatures who are in the same “room” (more broadly: between eligible targets and the caster there must be no solid barriers, not even translucent ones, nor can they be, in any way, hidden from the caster’s sight; nor can they be more than [100 + 10 per caster level] feet away).
ii. The act of casting message is—for low-level wizards such as the Project Lawful girls, anyway—very clearly noticeable by anyone in the vicinity.
Digression on spell manifestations (skippable if you are in a hurry):
Paizo’s official Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook FAQ includes the following entry:
If this rule holds, then all spells (certainly including message) have obvious-to-onlookers magical manifestations (regardless of whether the spell has any components!). This would then be an additional reason why the casting of message would be unambiguously noticeable to anyone in the caster’s vicinity.
Official FAQ entries constitute canonical game content; thus, if you have decided that all published official content is “in scope” in your setting, then this includes material found in FAQ entries as well. However, this particular FAQ entry is a famously controversial one. When it was published, there was a sense, among many Pathfinder players and GMs, that the designers at Paizo were trying to “retcon” into existence a rule which has never existed in any rules text, even by implication. (It is true that illustrations in published Pathfinder materials almost invariably show some sort of glowing runes or flashing lights or some similar sort of visible effect whenever they depict a character in the act of spellcasting—but are we to take artistic choices to constitute statements of rules intent, when they are backed up by nothing, not even so much as a passing mention, in the text? —thus went the reasoning, among many.)
I thus do not hold it against you, Eliezer, that you ignore this particular rule, in Project Lawful. Nevertheless, diligence demands that it be mentioned.
Digression ends.
Using the spell
Supposing that you (a hypothetical 3rd-level wizard) have cast message, selecting up to 3 creatures as the targets, you now have a 30 minute period during which, at any time and as many times as you like, you can send whispered messages to all of those creatures. When you wish to do so, the following conditions (among others) obtain:
a. Only those of your targeted creatures who are within 130 feet of you will receive your whispered message; any that are further away will not receive anything.
b. Should there fail to be a path (all parts of which are within 130 feet of you, and no part of which is blocked by 1 foot of stone, or 1 inch of common metal, or a thin sheet of lead, or 3 feet of wood or dirt, or a magical silence effect) between you and any of your targeted creatures, that target will likewise receive nothing.
c. To transmit a message, you must mouth the words and whisper. (You cannot just form the words mentally; nor can you use ventriloquism-like techniques to whisper without mouthing the words; nor can you mouth the words silently—remember that “the spell transmits sound”! Note that this requirement still holds even if the spell is prepared with the Silent Spell and/or Still Spell metamagic feats, as those feats affect a spell’s components, not its effect.)
Note that this condition means that not just casting, but also using, a message spell, is something that cannot be done without risk of nearby people noticing. Of course it is possible for someone to not notice when a person right next to them is whispering and mouthing words… but it requires that the former person be somehow distracted, not paying attention, not looking directly at the message-user, etc. (In particular, it is not possible, for instance, for there to be three people in a room, all of whom are looking at each other and who are not intensely concentrating on something extremely distracting, and for two of them to be exchanging messages via message while the third is totally oblivious to this “side channel” and the conversation taking place on it.)
Likewise, it’s clearly not possible to use message to send messages while you are speaking aloud (your mouth and vocal cords can’t do two things at once, after all).
d. Those nearby can hear these messages with a DC 25 Perception check.
For reference, another hearing-based task that takes a DC 25 Perception check is “ Hear a bow being drawn”. This is difficult, but not impossible. (Note that this is the DC to hear the messages, not the DC to notice that someone is whispering something—the latter would require a check at a lower DC!)
Summary
Casting a message spell is very noticeable, and is limited by your locale’s layout in the targets available to you.
Using an active message spell to send messages is not as obvious, but still unquestionably noticeable to anyone in your immediate vicinity, and is less limited in applicable recipients by your locale’s layout, but still limited (and one must re-cast message if one wishes to add targets which were not selected by an already-active message spell).
But in Project Lawful, people routinely use message as, effectively, a fully telepathic side channel for unrestricted verbal communication which can be used without any risk whatsoever of someone who is directly adjacent to sender or recipient(s) noticing anything happening. (I have many examples which I can produce, but this comment is very long already. Details, as before, available upon request.)
It is clear that this usage is not supported by the rules text. But this is no mere quibble; the deviation is consequential. The ability to use message in this “basically just telepathy” way is a substantial boost to the capabilities of low-level spellcasters. (No sensible GM would ever permit message to be used in the way that it is used in Project Lawful, and with good reason—spellcasters, already quite powerful in Pathfinder, ought not be further empowered by misuse of the rules!)
Furthermore and specifically, if the members of the Conspiracy had to stick to the Pathfinder rules as written in their use of message, they could not perform many of the deceptions which they perpetrate upon Keltham. Substantial chunks of the story would either not work at all, or would have to be rewritten, sometimes from scratch.
Final note
The abuse of message is not the only problem of this sort in Project Lawful. It is, however, perhaps the most glaring one (at least, to me), and one of the most pervasive. This comment is, as I said, already very long, so I will forbear to list other examples—but more examples are, indeed, available upon request.
Yup! I originally didn’t understand how Message works very well. Having misunderstood it, I played it consistently from there.
If you think this is Terrible then you’re holding the story to a standard it’s not particularly intended to meet.
I admit, I’m curious to hear what standard the story is intended to meet / “what you think is your principle”.
It’s meant to be reasonably hard fantasy, not necessarily conformant to Pathfinder canon because that doesn’t describe a world in near-equilibrium relative to the smart people running around with +6 headbands of vast intelligence (that do exist in-universe), but once the characters see something it ought to go on being true. Above all it’s hard decision theory.
Well… but in that case there’s still a problem: as I noted elsethread, the first use of message in the story (when Keltham first learns to cast it) does actually seem to be correct as per Pathfinder RAW. Uses later in the story are inconsistent with that one.
I certainly wouldn’t think to hold Project Lawful to a standard of conformance to Golarion setting canon; that would be somewhat silly, from a literary standpoint. But as far as mechanics go, if you’re trying to do “hard fantasy”, then, yeah, it does seem like there are flaws. The message thing is one; another is protection from [chaos/evil/good/law]. (Does the spell’s protection against mental control work only against mental attacks made by opponents of the targeted alignment, or all opponents? In Pathfinder it’s the former, and that is how it’s described in the currently most recent section of story, but earlier it is described in the latter way. I suspect this might be a case of one of the authors getting the 3.5 and PF versions of the spell mixed up, as its anti-mental-attack functionality was changed in PF to function in the alignment-limited way.) There’s more, but I haven’t been keeping meticulous track; those two inconsistencies are just the ones that jumped out at me.
More broadly, while I am not quite sure what you mean by “hard fantasy” (I can make the obvious inference from context and by analogy to “hard sf”, of course, but mapping that concept to fantasy, with magic and so on, seems non-trivial, though not impossible), I do think that aside from any questions of internal inconsistency, changes like “buffing” message in the way that you did are problematic. As I say upthread, this is a noticeable boost to the power of (at least) low-level spellcasters, relative to the PF RAW baseline. A world such as described in the story, and where anyone who can cast a cantrip effectively has at-will, robust, undetectable-by-bystanders telepathic communication with nearby targets of their choice, should look noticeably different from a world where all else is equal but message merely works the way that it does in Pathfinder. It does not seem to me that the world of the story is worked out with such a capability in mind from the start (which makes sense if this change was made accidentally midway through).
(And then, aside from all of this, there is one deviation from the Pathfinder rules that is so big and so bizarre that I genuinely can’t tell whether it’s deliberate or… some sort of very, very odd house rule / practice that I’ve never heard of… or what. But it’s not an inconsistency, at any rate…)
So the main thing I missed about Message was the chance of it being overheard. Most of what you are reading as ‘pseudo-telepathic’ communication is usually a character having their mind read by Security running Detect Thoughts, and then those thoughts being relayed to others via Security using Message, rather than by characters Messaging each other.
I remember checking Protection pretty carefully at the time and I think at the time it blocked against all the mental control, not just mental control originating from the targeted alignment. Possibly a rules change to PF2? But if not, Keltham is still running Enchantment Foil at the time.
There’s multiple big deviations from RAW; the main one I can think of that I homebrewed for this is ‘oracles go with gods and a god can have at most one oracle’. If that’s not what you’re referring to then I don’t know what you’re so coyly hinting about, and that kind of coy hinting is not something I find particularly pleasant.
Yes, there is definitely some of that, but also cases where that can’t plausibly be happening. (Also, in cases where it is happening, there ought to be a noticeable communications lag, e.g.: think message → Security reads via detect thoughts → Security transmits to recipient via message. In some cases there are intervening walls, etc.—i.e. the characters are in different rooms—so there would then be the additional step “Security transmits to another Security via message”, which second Security then transmits to recipient.)
Indeed not. All functions of protection from [alignment] are alignment-limited in PF1, and always have been. (You can verify this, if you’re so inclined, by checking early printings [in PDF] of the Core Rulebook; if you don’t have access to such, feel free to PM me, and we can rectify that. But probably this is not important enough to go to any such lengths.) My best guess remains that you accidentally happened to look at the 3.5 version of the spell text.
True enough. (Of course, enchantment foil is only a +4 bonus to the save, not immunity… but there’s certainly no reason not to assume that that +4 bonus did happen to make the difference between success and failure, on that particular save.)
Ah, I don’t think I’d consider that a deviation from RAW, as such. It’s true that this is not at all Golarion canon, but I don’t think there’s actually any rules that forbid this from being the case in a setting, or even in Golarion as such. (I don’t think it’s a particularly consequential change from setting canon, either.)
Apologies; it wasn’t my intent to “coyly hint”, only to avoid cluttering up the comment thread with what might not be of interest to you.
What I was referring to was the idea that gods can, e.g, bestow seven cleric levels on someone, or four oracle levels on someone else, etc., i.e. that a god (in Golarion) can decide to just give a mortal a bunch of character levels. This is definitely not how things work in Pathfinder, where one gains character levels when one gains experience points, and where it’s not clear what it even means for someone to spontaneously become, e.g., a 7th-level cleric without “leveling up” in the usual “acquire XP, gain character levels” way. (What is Ione’s base attack bonus, for example, or her base save bonuses? How many feats does she have, how many skill points? Do these questions have any meaning, even? It seems like they should, given the other references to [very close in-world analogues of] game mechanics, but who knows… Is there a connection between character level, class level, level-dependent benefits such as BAB/BSB/feats/skill points, or should we assume that there’s no such connection? If there is a connection and it’s the usual one, then is there consequently no connection between these numbers and what they normally represent, i.e. improvement of ability via training and practice? If a 16th-level cleric cast blasphemy and Ione were caught in the area of effect, would she be killed, or only paralyzed? etc., etc.)
(Of course, one could make the argument that as the gods are not given game-mechanical definitions in Pathfinder, we can therefore ascribe any powers we like to them without violating any rules, but then it’s not clear why we should expect any kind of predictable world at all.)
As I said, this isn’t an inconsistency, as such (at least, not definitely one, though it does seem hard to square with the other limitations that the gods are described as having with respect to their involved in the mortal world—but I wouldn’t lean too hard on that impression), it’s just… very, very strange, for multiple reasons. I would have to give more thought than I thus far have, to all the setting implications of this apparent divine capability. (Any potential conclusions I might draw would probably also be underdetermined by what we’ve seen in the story so far.) At the very least, I am fairly confident that Golarion as it is described in canon is built with the assumption that this is not a thing that the gods can do.
Well, that one is standard in lintaGolarian, not an innovation of ezerGolarion, and happens in an earlier continuity as well. We’ve reinterpreted a lot of mechanics like that for reasons of “They are not actually living in an RPG and experience points are not actually a thing.” Spell durations go up continuously rather than in discrete jumps per level, similarly.
Hmm… I am not quite sure how to take the “lintaGolarion” / “ezerGolarion” stuff (it doesn’t seem relevant? but possibly I am just not familiar enough with this terminology to get the implication)… but I think that perhaps I’ve not gotten my meaning across. Let me try again:
That the characters in Project Lawful are not actually living in an RPG and are not actually governed by literal game mechanics is clear enough. The same is almost to the same extent true of characters in an actual Pathfinder game, though! As mechanics in 3e-like systems, including Pathfinder, tend overwhelmingly to be associated, those mechanics do represent things that are ostensibly true from an in-world perspective.
With that in mind, here’s a concrete example. The blasphemy spell, which affects nonevil creatures, has an effect that is determined by the difference between the caster’s caster level and the hit dice of potentially affected creatures. If cast by, say, a 16th-level cleric, blasphemy will kill nonevil creatures of up to 6 hit dice (assuming they fail their Will save), but will only paralyze creatures of 7–11 hit dice (ditto).
We can accept that experience points are not actually a thing in-world, likewise “levels”, etc., but it remains the case that if an evil “eighth-circle” cleric walks up to Ione and casts blasphemy, and she fails her save, there does need to be an answer to the question: what actually happens to her? Does she die, or is she only paralyzed?
Of course you can evade this question by altering blasphemy to not be HD-dependent, or removing it entirely (but I think it’s been mentioned in the text already? but perhaps you could retcon that, if so); but then are you going to remove all HD-dependent or level-dependent effects that have discrete “breakpoints”? There are quite a few of those! Deciding to remove from Pathfinder all mechanics that force you to make determinations of what level a character is, or how many hit dice they have, etc., seems to me to commit you to making some rather substantial changes to the system (with non-trivial knock-on effects).
Let’s assume that you don’t make such sweeping changes, and in particular that you leave blasphemy unchanged. Well, we know that Ione is (at the start of the story, anyhow) a ~3rd-level wizard (again, we do not need to believe that “levels” are a real thing in-world, only that Ione’s relevant properties map, for the purposes of resolving interactions with spells such as blasphemy, to “3rd-level”, give or take a level). So if our hypothetical “eighth-circle” evil cleric walks up and casts blasphemy, and Ione fails her save, she instantly dies.
So far, so good. Now we read on, and see that Ione has been granted four oracle levels. Now if that same evil cleric walks up to Ione and casts blasphemy, and she fails her save, then… what? Does she still die (as would be the case if Ione gained the spellcasting ability[1] and class features of a 4th-level oracle, but did not gain any hit dice, nor increased in character level)? Or, is she now only paralyzed (as would be the case if Ione did gain character levels and hit dice)? Note, we’re still perfectly happy to concede that there’s no such thing as “character levels” and “hit dice” in-world, but “what actually happens to Ione in this in-world quite coherently describable scenario” does need to have some answer!
I can keep going, but I think my point should be clearer now (if not, by all means let me know and I’ll try to clarify further). Note that we can construct similar scenarios for the other questions I asked in my parenthetical, i.e. we can construct those questions in such a way that we’re asking about concretely describable, observable, in-world facts, rather than making reference to dissociated game mechanics. You can answer all of these, I’m sure; my point is only that however you answer them, it seems to me that you’ll end up with a setup which is, at least, very weird and not really anticipated by the Pathfinder system (and which is therefore likely to require unforeseen alterations, adjudication of unusual interactions, etc.).
Do we actually see Ione or Pilar cast any oracle spells, by the way? It now occurs to me that I can’t recall such a case, so perhaps they only gained the class features and not the spellcasting? Or did I miss them using oracle spells?