Fun Pathfinds

[zook1shoe]

not seen anything like the Balor's Whip before

it'd make a nice addition to a dirty trickster or disarmer

[Power]

Until you run into an enemy with 5 fire resist and that's 10k gp down the drain.

[zook1shoe]

true... never thought of that o.o

[zook1shoe]

Nidalese Recluse: Some fetchlings learn how to deflect
unwanted attention. Fetchlings with this racial trait can use
sanctuary once per day as a spell-like ability. When such
a fetchling reaches 9th level in any combination of
classes, he gains nondetection (self only) as a spell-like
ability usable once per day, and at 13th level, he gains
veil (self only) usable once per day. A fetchling’s caster
level is equal to his total Hit Dice. This
racial trait modifies the fetchling’s spell-like
abilities racial trait.

they forget to mention that these SLAs replace the normal ones, only that the ability modifies the fetchling's SLA racial trait. other ones, like Umbral Escort do mention the lose or replacement

[Nanashi]

Trade Items allows the old Beguiling Gifting a necklace of strangulation trick, at range, against anyone with a necklace. It's a lot higher level (+3 for wizard, +2 for partial casters) , but on the Wizard list.

Goblet of Quenching is a really cheap magic item that provides the water needs of two characters (or one in desert). For a mere 180 GP it saves almost 24 pounds of weight between the water and waterskins that don't need to be carried. Not so useful if you have a divine caster casting Create Water whenever you want, but some party compositions will love it. It's a 3.5 item, but PFS legal without alteration which is essentially saying it's fine for PF.

[Power]

Trade Items allows the old Beguiling Gifting a necklace of strangulation trick, at range, against anyone with a necklace. It's a lot higher level (+3 for wizard, +2 for partial casters) , but on the Wizard list.

PF doesn't have any rules for intentionally crafting Cursed Items though. I think you can intentionally fail crafting checks to force a random cursed item of the same type but that's about the extent of it.

Goblet of Quenching is a really cheap magic item that provides the water needs of two characters (or one in desert). For a mere 180 GP it saves almost 24 pounds of weight between the water and waterskins that don't need to be carried. Not so useful if you have a divine caster casting Create Water whenever you want, but some party compositions will love it. It's a 3.5 item, but PFS legal without alteration which is essentially saying it's fine for PF.

Honestly Create Water is worth spending a Two-World Magic trait to obtain. There are some really ridiculous things you can do with Create Water spam, courtesy of PF's at-will cantrips system.

[zook1shoe]

PF doesn't have any rules for intentionally crafting Cursed Items though.

incorrect

pg16 Black Markets has a section for intentionally crafting cursed items. the chart is for the base price of the item

Necklace of Strangulation is 95k
Scarab of Death is 6k

(click to show/hide)

Crafting Cursed Items
Intentionally crafting cursed items requires the same item
creation feats and skill checks as does crafting a normal
item of that type, but in addition to such requirements,
intentionally cursed items require bestow curse or major curse
as a spell prerequisites. Crafting cursed items is generally
cheaper than creating fully functional items, depending on
the type of curse involved, as detailed below. The table above
indicates the price and spell prerequisites of some of the
most common deliberately created cursed items.
Delusion: Cost is reduced by 90%.
Drawbacks and Requirements: Cost isn’t reduced for
cosmetic drawbacks or requirements with no direct game
effects. Cost may be reduced by 10% for minor drawbacks
or requirements such as minimum skill ranks or worship
of a specific deity; by 30% for harmful or costly drawbacks
or requirements such as alignment change, ability damage,
sacrificing wealth, or performing a quest to activate the
item; or by 50% for severe drawbacks or requirements such
as negative levels or sacrificing sentient creatures.
Intermittent Functioning: The cost of uncontrolled or
unreliable items is reduced by 10%. The cost of dependent
items, which function only in certain situations, is reduced
by 30%.
Opposite Effect or Target: Cost is reduced by 50%.

[Abyssin]

Worth noting that the more recent Horror Handbook has a somewhat contradictory set of rules for crafting cursed items where the cost reductions are basically only applied when attempting to sell the thing. It doesn't provide a price for specific items, so it's not super relevant to the Trade Items spell trick, but it does curb cost reduction curses.
If it doesn't take precedent due to being an optional rule or something though that'd be pretty cool, don't know how pathfinder handles conflicting rules.
Edit: Ah, guess I should link a source: https://aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?Name=Crafting%20Cursed%20Items&Category=Cursed%20Items

[zook1shoe]

Worth noting that the more recent Horror Handbook has a somewhat contradictory set of rules for crafting cursed items where the cost reductions are basically only applied when attempting to sell the thing. It doesn't provide a price for specific items, so it's not super relevant to the Trade Items spell trick, but it does curb cost reduction curses.
If it doesn't take precedent due to being an optional rule or something though that'd be pretty cool, don't know how pathfinder handles conflicting rules.
Edit: Ah, guess I should link a source: https://aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?Name=Crafting%20Cursed%20Items&Category=Cursed%20Items

Looks like that's for the Drawbacks and Requirements, not Delusion

[Abyssin]

Looks like that's for the Drawbacks and Requirements, not Delusion

I've, uh, never actually made an item with the delusional curse. HH prevents stuff like making a holy mace only useable by followers of your god here for 10% reduction, but I guess you can still slap unreliable on an out of combat wand of healing or something for a... 5.26% saving?

[Power]

PF doesn't have any rules for intentionally crafting Cursed Items though.

incorrect

pg16 Black Markets has a section for intentionally crafting cursed items. the chart is for the base price of the item

Necklace of Strangulation is 95k
Scarab of Death is 6k

That's a limited list and at 95k gp you're not going to be making a Necklace of Strangulation. You also don't see prices for a Helm of Opposite Alignment and so on.

[zook1shoe]

i agree, its very limited. but it's still there ;-)

[Power]

So here's a weapon that can give its bearer a +4 sacred bonus to charisma. That seems good.

LUTHIER'S RAPIER
Price 5,020 gp; Slot body; CL 11th; Weight 2 lbs; Aura strong transmutation
Source Second Darkness Player's Guide pg. 25;

Many stories feature Luthier, Knight of the Vineyard, champion of good and Cayden Cailean’s trusted ally. These legends often mention Luthier’s elegant rapier, and while the original Luthier’s rapier undoubtedly remains with its owner, copies surface from time to time—usually when a faithful follower of Cayden Cailean requires assistance.

Rose-hued steel forms the length of the blade, and gold flowers seem to blossom in the filigreed basket-hilt. A large ruby glimmers at the hilt’s center. Luthier’s rapier is a +1 holy rapier. Once per day, you can activate the power of the ruby embedded in the rapier’s hilt to gain a +4 sacred bonus to Charisma and a +4 morale bonus on saving throws against fear effects. These bonuses last for 10 minutes.

Also, once, you can command the gem to shatter in an explosion of red light. Every creature except you within 30 feet must make a DC 20 Will save or be dazed for 3 rounds. Once you shatter the gem in this fashion, the rapier becomes just a normal +1 rapier.

CONSTRUCTION REQUIREMENTS
Cost 2,510 gp
Craft Magic Arms and Armor, bless weapon, eagle's splendor, creator must be chaotic good

Was sort-of errata'd by James Jacobs in a forum thread to up the cost by 20k gp, which is what PFS went with. It's shitty 3.5 Paizo material, but PFS legal for some reason.

[zook1shoe]

I always got annoyed at the shadow errata/FAQ from deep in the forums

[Power]

So do I. It's hideous. FAQ erratas by means of "subtle" "clarifications" are bad enough, but forum rulings are even worse. That said the item is clearly absurdly strong, and even at 25k gp it's still worth buying (or banning). I'm mostly annoyed at it being a forum errata and James Jacobs going "the price must be a typo" as a ridiculous excuse to add 20k to the cost and pretend this is somehow not a modification of the rules content.

Reminds me a bit of the FAQ on the Shifter where they nerfed the level scaling damage from Shifter's Edge by half by making up an absurd FAQ question ("Is the damage really meant to be this high?") so they could give themselves an excuse to "clarify" some heavy nerfs. Paizo has some rather awful ways of announcing changes to mechanics, and the retroactive "clarification" method always lends itself to inconsistent rules and absurd gotchas because book C retroactively interprets the rule in book A in a completely different way while book B applies the rule in a different way inconsistent with Book C or a FAQ somewhere completely changes the functionality because of balance issues or some designer not liking it for whatever reason. The result of all this is that Pathfinder is quite awful when it comes to being able to trust the rules text in front of your eyes to actually work as the text in front of you describes. I've mentioned the "actions at a distance" programming anti-pattern before and "rulesbook modifications at a distance" are vastly more perverse.

The fact that paizo's own designers cannot keep their rules straight and occasionally write new content that relies on rules functioning differently from the latest rulings just adds to the mess. Then again Pathfinder Core was the beneficiary of a series of rules "simplifications" which resulted in missing blocks of rules texts and rules no longer making sense, causing people to refer back to 3.5E to attain a consistent ruling, except when PF differed from this, especially in the retroactive "this is how it always worked (even though 3.5E has clear examples to the contrary)" sense, like no longer permitting people to combine armor spikes with 2H weapons in TWF or not permitting people to take 5-foot steps during a Cleave for some bizarre reason.

Hell PF has a lot of content that is blatantly odds with how the rules work as described by Core. For instance, there are a number of class archetypes that require you to have taken a feat at 1st level before taking the class, or if you use Racial Heritage to qualify for a racial class archetype at 1st level for that matter, even though in PF Core you explicitly have to take feats after class levels.

PF has always been a goddamn mess, honestly.

[zook1shoe]

a human with Planar Heritage (half-fiend serpentfolk) qualifies for the serpentfolk feats?

[zook1shoe]

Interesting idea.... use metamagic rods on rituals, like Bouncing Spell.

You could Spell Perfection with a ritual, and not need the rod.

Or mess around with Sacred Geometry and rituals.

[Power]

I don't think rituals count as spellcasting, really. If it did that would open up some crazy early entry prestige class shit.

[zook1shoe]

Hidden within dusty libraries and amid the ramblings of lunatics lie the mysteries of another form of spellcasting—occult ritual magic. These spells are rare, coveted by both those eager to gain their power and those wishing to hide their existence.

Since it is possible for those lacking the ability to cast arcane, divine, or psychic spells to cast rituals, variables that would normally rely on caster level (such as range and spell resistance) use the character level or total Hit Dice of the primary caster instead.

[Power]

Well, that is one dumb rule. Feel free to try it out in PFS, which is pretty much the holy land of hamstringing GMs by ill-conceived rules text and FAQ "clarifications" (ie. rules retcons).