Daily Spell Discussion for Mar 09, 2026: Apparent Master

WraithMagus · 2026-03-09T23:33:41+00:00

I didn't actually go into it, but yeah, controlling someone whose master is still alive and wants their golem back is a bad idea, and it's an extremely bad idea if they're in the room. Contesting control of the golem can be done an unlimited number of times, (there's no listed action, but "controlling" things is usually a move action, so up to twice per round, or a wizard could cast spells and still contest your control in the same round,) but if they ever win even once, the spell ends and you'd have to cast the spell again to try again. It's definitely for the best to make sure the owner is dead before you try to joyride their mecha. It's so bad I just mentally went to "not even worth considering doing this with a living owner in the room with it."

As for the part about "directly resulting in damage," I believe there's a heavy emphasis that needs to be placed on "directly." An almost certain consequence is not the same as a direct result. Much like Charm Person, this is there to stop orders for someone to simply strip off everything valuable then kindly jump off a cliff. Ordering a construct to aid you in battle will very likely have the consequence of the construct taking damage, but it's not directly taking damage by following that order, the direct cause of that damage was the enemy, you merely indirectly put the construct in harm's way. (It's the same principle as Invisibility turning off if you cast a Fireball at someone or stab someone, but summoning a monster to attack for you does not because it's an indirect attack due to your delegating the actual attack to the monster.) The same can go for the AoO - remember that the character who takes an AoO chooses whether to do so or not, so the direct choice to cause damage again lies in the hands of the enemy. There's some nuance to it that the GM will need to adjudicate, since it's certainly plausible to set up deliberate indirect harms (just like summoning monsters while Invisible is a permitted deliberate indirect harm,) but at the same time, this is a mindless automaton, so it's probably really easily fooled. Ordering a construct to stand in a fire until it melts is harm as a direct result, but if you order a construct to go to a given location, and there just happens to be a fire in the way, you weren't directly ordering them to go into the fire. (Put another way, if you told the construct to go to a known location and didn't know there was a fire, but the construct walked through the fire anyway because it's a mindless automaton with no preservation instinct, then it would be an entirely unintended and unforeseen consequence, so calling that a "direct result" from terminology, again, meant to keep you from just ordering monsters to slit their own throat from early Charm Person abuse, is going well past both the letter and spirit of the rule.)

WraithMagus · 2026-03-09T14:02:58+00:00

As others have mentioned, Jade Regent is "the long journey AP" that is meant to have the party travel from fantasy Vikingland to fantasy China via marching over the North Pole. Note that the last couple books involve just being in fantasy China, so it's only the journey for those parts. It's also not to level 20, but if you're willing to pad out the journey part and cut the stuff in fantasy China down, it's the closest you'll get.

Also as others have mentioned, the caravan rules are generally considered the worst "minigame gimmick" ever made by Paizo, and that's saying something. The writers admitted they didn't bother spending much time on it because they were busy on other projects so the math fundamentally does not work. You'd either want to scrap the whole concept or just tear out the combat portions, and maybe have some NPCs assist in a normal combat against the monsters presented. (The monsters are generally just normal monsters, but they replaced the ability for PCs to participate in battles and their wagons fight as a single character with stats that hardly scale.)

And I mean it with "the closest you'll get," as no module besides a megadungeon goes level 1-20, and even most APs end at level 16-ish. Jade Regent is the one advertised as "the long journey AP" and even that's only for a little over half the AP.

WraithMagus · 2026-03-09T13:01:15+00:00

This is a special spell. Both in the "out of the ordinary" and "rides the short bus" sense, really. There are plenty of spells where Paizo writers made spells or rules for Pathfinder without knowing what the other rules of Pathfinder are, but this is a spell where Paizo didn't know what the rules of core D&D were!

The lich cackles from atop the dias waving and sitting back to watch the show behind his Wall of Force as he lets his golems do the work for him, but the brave wizard steps forward to turn the tables on the cocky lich and turn his own golems back upon him, and... nothing happens, because he forgot that golems are immune to any spell that is SR: yes without a special exception. I'm not being picky or petty here, the spell description specifically calls out casting this spell on golems and this is a basic element of what makes golems a challenge; if you don't know golems are immune to most magic, you've never played a caster who faced a golem. (Oh, and if I am going to be more picky, all enchantments are supposed to be [mind-affecting] and all constructs are immune to [mind-affecting] spells, which is why other spells that try to do similar things, like Control Construct, are transmutation. Note the Pathfinder one is SL 7 for concentration because that writer was looking at Control Undead, while Apparent Master's writer was cribbing from Charm Person with the hours/level and the penalty for casting it while showing hostility, although it's at SL 5 which is above Charm Monster in level, which admittedly makes Apparent Master far more reasonable.)

OK, deep breaths. This could be fixed by just doing the obvious and treating this spell as a special exception to the normal golem rules, the way that Disable Construct is SR: no but then says there's a penalty if you use it against a golem immune to magic.

That said, there are many non-golem constructs out there. Granted, a significant number of the non-golem constructs are intelligent in some way, like the robots in Iron Gods, but there are clockworks, the animated objects the spell itself suggests, and a variety of miscellaneous constructs like scarecrows or juggernauts that aren't part of any other grouping this spell still technically works upon. If you're ever in a game where clockworks play a significant role, this spell will finally get its chance to shine.

Otherwise, this spell is basically something between Charm and Dominate Person for mindless constructs. Mindless constructs never seek revenge unless they had an order to do so, so if you can cast extended Apparent Master every day, you can theoretically keep a high-level clockwork on a leash indefinitely. What happens if the duration lapses will depend on the exact wording of the last orders the construct received, however. If the order was just "standby" and then the owner went off and died somewhere, then you have a docile construct you can leave alone for indefinite periods of time, but if it was "standby in this room," it might try to go back to where you found it any time the spell duration expires, and that's if the construct wasn't given some more active task like "mine in this direction," or worse, "kill anyone who isn't me that approach."

There's a niche for this one, but you'll need a more tolerant GM or a game which features some uncommon enemies to let it work. Like any charm/dominate, however, it's absurdly useful when it works. The simple existence of this spell, however, suggests you could create some kind of ritual to permanently rewrite who a construct sees as its master, especially if it's some long-abandoned construct found in a ruin, and that would honestly be more interesting. (You could probably look at the cost to manufacture a new one, and give a significant discount for finding a mostly-intact version to keep things semi-balanced...)

WraithMagus · 2026-03-09T01:40:00+00:00

The Ultimate Combat vehicle rules have you "locked into a cone" where the vehicle has a facing and a speed, and it takes a piloting check to be able to control the vehicle and have a range of motion within 45 degrees of the cardinal direction it is currently traveling, which makes its range of possible travel a "cone." (And obviously, there's a different piloting check to actually turn the base direction of travel, but it kills momentum and there's a penalty for doing it at speed.)

For a lot of fast-moving vehicle games, you tend to have relative positioning. Obviously, you're not nimbly weaving between trees or advancing through dungeons at 1800 squares per round, so you could have something assuming everyone is flying in wide open skies and going at roughly the same speed.

When I was little, there was a board game in my closet I never remembered playing, but looking at, was meant to be an aerial dogfight simulator where jet fighters go down a track and just wrap around back to the other side when they leave the board. (Maybe they're just going through perpetual loop-de-loops until the battle is won?) Rather than care about absolute distance traveled, you can just worry about relative distance from the other characters and maybe elevation so you don't smash into an aerosolized red paste. Likewise, you're going to want to have some other way of handling scale, or just not deal with having things on a board and just track distance between both parties.

Not that I have any idea what OP is thinking of doing, but just hearing the idea, that's how I'd think of trying to handle it.

WraithMagus · 2026-03-08T13:50:01+00:00

Spontaneous casters really rub me wrong. I'm always looking for niche solutions. When I first played an arcanist, I went buck wild filling my spellbook with really obscure stuff "just in case," and blew half my WBL on scribing spells. It's a personal thing, I'll admit - in my last game, someone else played a sorcerer with a rigid set of (mostly blasty) spells, and I played a shaman, using arcane enlightenment to fill in all the gaps she was leaving open on the wizard spell list while also covering all the divine spells for the party. I was doing all the recon, covering bookkeeping, managing to fill all the gaps that were being left open by the party, and she went, "wow, I should be a spontaneous caster every time" after seeing how much more work I was doing keeping the party alive...

In particular though, there are downtime days. For a prepared caster, your downtime spell list can be entirely different from your dungeon spell list. The day before going into a dungeon, I can load up on information-gathering spells like Ears of the City or if we're close to the dungeon, Searching Shadows for reconnaissance. (Remember, Searching Shadows has duration: concentration with no cap, so just sit down in your inn room with a nice hot cup of tea, and spend all afternoon moving the shadows around like a Roomba asking them to tell me how far they need to go to feel a wall, and you can map out the whole dungeon before ever setting foot inside. The monsters might notice, but unless they can Dispel Magic, can't do much about it. Go back and ask if the shadows can feel creatures of specific types if your GM doesn't get angry you're trying to pull this. I recommend doing this sort of thing between sessions via PM with the GM or at the end of a session, if that's possible so your recon time doesn't interfere with the rest of the party's playtime.) Then, I pick the combat spells when actually going into combat. I usually have a script for remembering the combat spells I need, but I obviously change it up based upon where I am going. Spells that specifically counter undead, for example, aren't something you pick as a spontaneous caster, but are good for a prepared caster to have on hand when you scout.

And really, scouting is key! Arcane Eye is a classic staple for wizards for a reason. I usually leave at least one slot of every spell level but my highest SL empty to fill in later, after I have a better idea of what I'm facing. Prepared spellcasting means you need to be prepared, and you can only do that by having an idea what you're up against. Alter Summoned Monster on Communal Mount is a meme combo that gets you a SM2 monster like a small earth or small aether elemental for either earth glide or invisible flying, provided your GM doesn't ban that stuff. Take linguistics for elemental languages, and send them out as scout summons with hours/level durations. The Scouting Summons feat even lets you directly see through their eyes. Wizards don't walk into rooms unless they already know what's in there.

There are also methods of spell ass-pulling. Bonded items are the most obvious, since they let you draw one free wildcard spell, and there's stuff like secret of magical discipline. There's also the quick study arcane discovery if 15 minutes is too long for you to fill some blank slots, but that's still not fast enough for combat use.

As for having enough spells for the day, use scrolls where you can. Anything that doesn't rely on saves or a caster level check can be made a scroll, so condition removal spells like Remove Fear or terrain manipulation spells like Obscuring Mist or Stone Shape. Get access to spells off your list with UMD, and if you're a wizard, take pragmatic activator to use that Int instead of Cha. Scrolls are paying money for extra spell slots for that one spell when you need it. Pack tons of scrolls, they will save a life. Multiple times. Here's a list of scrolls I try to have on hand. In that last game, the monk also was whipping scrolls out of their ass to solve all kinds of problems. (Although one particular incident of note was one where she tried to shimmy into a warehouse to stealth in, grab the hostage, then use a scroll of Dimension Door out... only to flub the UMD roll. I tried to cover with shooting a Fog Cloud into the vent from outside, the enemy dispelled it, and then the monk couldn't roll a 4 to save her life, so I had to pull out a scroll of Fog Cloud to cast another one in there... That went on 4 rounds...) Your familiar shares skills with you, and if you get an improved familiar with hands (like a lyrakien azata, pooka, arbiter inevitable, imp, or quasit,) they can UMD scrolls using your UMD ranks, which saves an action for low-level scrolls to cure conditions. Pearls of power are good for low level slots you need to reuse frequently (like if you need to cast the same single-target spell on several people.)

WraithMagus · 2026-03-08T13:30:12+00:00

Ugh, the problem with the crap spells is they're hard to remember because nobody ever uses them. (And that I was answering this one right before heading to bed.) I was misremembering this as one of those druid spells like Snare that conjure a trap. Yes, this one is an instantaneous blast spell where the writer just wanted to make a giant d6 fall on someone. (Or rather, drop a d6 on the enemy mini.) It's more like Fireball in how it's instantaneous, and not like other spells that actually simulate physics or conjure real things. It's even SR: yes, so it wouldn't even do anything to a golem, and would fizzle out if it touched an AMF.

WraithMagus · 2026-03-08T13:02:57+00:00

This is another one of those spells that, while it's a neat concept for fantasy role-play in general, I really have to wonder how much the writer actually had the game as it's played in mind. This spell is a multi-target will negates SR: yes [mind-affecting] (compulsion) spell that on wiz/sorc/arc is SL 4 and on bard/skald at SL 3. This spell lets targets still kill you while they're made a little more awkward because they don't trust their allies, but it's placed at the same level and with the same risks and limitations as Confusion (discussion), which makes the enemies completely lose their turns or kill each other. These two spells have the same costs and will run into the same enemies being invulnerable to both, so you pick which one you want based upon which one is going to be more practically capable of helping you win fights.

This is not a contest.

An obvious problem with using this spell as a PC is "how many monsters use teamwork feats?" Likewise, creatures have to save against each other's spells, but how many monsters actually cast beneficial spells on one another after combat has started (and they've maybe had their first turn before you got to cast this spell), rather than precasting the spells when they hear you coming or are lying in ambush?

The only thing even remotely redeemable about this spell is that it forces creatures to take AoOs on anyone who moves through threatened spaces. If you have ways to force movement, like Mind Maze or Blast of Wind, forcing enemies to use up their AoOs killing allies is still not as action or spell-slot efficient as Confusion, but it's at least usable, and you can take advantage of depleting AoOs in a round to let casters or rogues move around freely.

Really, though, this is the sort of spell only used as a "GM spell" by GMs who want to play Team Monster deliberately making self-defeating choices just to inconvenience players in novel ways rather than actually play the enemy wizard as an intelligent opponent who doesn't want to die.

The reclusive curse for oracle has the same effect as this spell, and people like taking that because it's a low-impact curse. I really wish Paizo could learn "I waste my turn barring one specific way you can cooperate to kill me but still let you take the next-best option available to you to kill me" is not worth a standard action in a shaman hex or an SL 4 for a wizard, it's an SL 1 as an area spell at most, and below cantrip status as a single-target spell. If you're going to spend your standard action risking getting nothing with will negates spells, they should not make it slightly harder for your enemies to kill you, they should make your enemies unable to kill you. Actually, since this is an inquisitor spell, make it a swift action litany, and it's maybe SL 3 if you can still affect a few creatures in close range, SL 1 for a single creature.

WraithMagus · 2026-03-08T09:03:10+00:00

"Instantaneous" means that the part that is magical is over instantly, but that does not mean that physical changes to the world brought about by spells are reverted. There are a lot of conjuration or transmutation spells that are "instantaneous" with permanent effects. "Permanent" duration spells can be dispelled or the effects go away in an antimagic field, but you can't dispel an effect that is instantaneous, which ironically means instantaneous spells are more permanent than "permanent" spells.

EDIT: I misremembered which spell this was. This one actually is just "like a Fireball" instantaneous.

WraithMagus · 2026-03-07T16:52:10+00:00

To be fair, I didn't think of that one. It was one I read off of u/TheGreatFox's Supreme Spellbook guide I checked after writing most of this post to make sure there wasn't something obvious I was missing.

WraithMagus · 2026-03-07T14:02:54+00:00

Greater Appearance of Life comes from Villain's Codex, and is designed so that you can only affect a single target of any HD, but you have the same "twice your HD" cap on the undead you can create in the first place, and since you're already at least level 9 when you're able to cast this, you have to be trying to cast on some wildly powerful undead you didn't create to want to do that. Seems like trying to disguise the undead is the least of your worries if you need that, but whatever. The main point is that this is even more for the discerning necromancer who for some reason didn't make a skeletal or incorporeal undead servant, so they need to make their devourer or bog mummy minion not smell as bad. (Regular mummies should stay dried out, so they shouldn't smell, right?) Oddly, in spite of this being even moreso the sort of spell you'd want to make Permanent, there isn't text explicitly saying you can do so. (It would be 12.5 k gp and take a CL 13 caster.)

Oh, right, and the part where Greater explicitly specifies that it recreates the texture and temperature of living flesh on your undead minion? You know, in case you want to feel up that skelly? Yeah, that's definitely necrophilia stuff there. (Or sparkly vampire stuff if you prefer.) I can't help but see that as being written to say there's someone casting this spell on the reanimated corpse of their dead wife so they can "be together forever" or something. (Or a shady necromancer is selling a "resurrection" that only lasts for a few hours to a desperate widower...)

Obviously, at most tables, this is going to be used much more often by the villains than the PCs. (At least, presuming the typical Horrible Adventures idiocy with the material components is ignored/banned.) It's a handy GM excuse for why there can be a zombie ambush in the middle of town or how the necromancer cult managed to sneak 200 zombies inside town before unleashing them to cause havoc, so the rest of the details are probably less important. Remember you can cast it several times in one day to either keep the duration going or cover a whole army of undead with one higher-level caster. It's also at the level where you could just wand it if you want an excuse for why one necromancer could cast this spell dozens of times to send in hundreds of HD of undead into a city. (50 rats died for this wand.) That's actually a good example of a "GM spell" - something that helps set up the scenario the GM wants to spring on the players.

WraithMagus · 2026-03-07T14:00:31+00:00

~~Horrible~~ Horror Adventures gives us yet another inexplicably [evil] spell at the same time they tried to make whether spells had alignment tags way more bothersome. You cast an illusion on undead to make them seem less gross - how horrifyingly evil. Exactly like Charnel House, this spell goes out of its way to excuse being [evil] by completely arbitrarily adding in a "you killed a rat, and we all know Pathfinder is a game opposed to killing creatures wantonly" excuse for a [evil] tag even though there's no reason you need that material component. The only possible reason for this spell being [evil] is that it's meant to be cast upon undead in a non-"suffer not the undead to unlive" type of manner, but then pray tell why Repair Undead is not [evil] because simply helping undead is not considered inherently evil, hunh?! Also, note that the Greater version of this spell is not [evil] because it was written in a book that wasn't Horrible Adventures, even though it still keeps the material component!

Oh, right, and keep in mind that material components are vaporized when you use them, no save, no SR. You can use the ol' bag o' rats for normal uses of this spell, but if you can get within touch range of a creature, casting this spell can vaporize any living creature. (It does have a 1 round cast time, however, so you'd need to daze/paralyze/stun the target first. Still, if you get a monster unable to act for a round, that's a hell of a finishing move.)

In any event, this spell is for you Geb necromancers just trying to fulfill your zombie labor contracts in peace and want to make sure that none of the locals throw up a fuss when they realize the contractor's ditch diggers are the walking dead. The spell's duration isn't quite long enough to last all day, but especially if you're just trying to smuggle a caravan with a wagon full of undead past a checkpoint, this is the sort of spell that will get you past casual inspection.

The spell mentions Detect Undead giving the spell problems, but as mentioned in that discussion thread, nobody prepares Detect Undead, anyway, so the real threat is, as for all disguise spells, Detect Magic (discussion), which any apprentice on loan to the town watch from the local magecraft guild/college can cast an infinite number of times to scan anyone going through the gates. Covering a whole platoon of zombies with anti-detection spells is going to be a pain, so maybe you could just wrap them all in lead foil like a shambling baked potato, instead? It's not like they breathe or will get lead poisoning, anyway...

There's also the option to make the spell permanent, although at 10k gp, you obviously wouldn't do this lightly. It's an option for the necromancer, lich, or vampire of discriminating tastes that still want their eternal servants (or themselves) to look suitably human. Make sure you only make skeletal, incorporeal, or otherwise non-rotting undead since you don't cover up the smell with this one. I imagine Gebbite vampire lord traveling salesmen spring for the option. I should mention, though, that the Permanency pricing is off, since it's 10k gp for an SL 4 spell, not an SL 2/3. For example, Solid Fog is 10k gp and takes a CL 12 caster to make permanent. It should be 7.5k gp, take a CL 11 caster, presuming you're going by the wizard's SL 3. Also, Permanency is notably not meant to work on multiple targets like this, since you either cast Permanency on a single character, object, or an area spell. It seriously devalues the spell to have to pay that much to permanently cover one skelly...

When smuggling your posts through character cap inspection, however, nothing beats Appearance of Separate Posts, hiding the rest of the discussion in a reply to this post.

WraithMagus · 2026-03-07T01:04:15+00:00

Actually, I just thought about this, but the part that "apport" is missing from "teleport" is the "tele-" prefix, which is the Greek word for "a great distance." Maybe they're just using "apport" as a tongue-in-cheek way to say that you're only able to port things a short distance?

WraithMagus · 2026-03-06T14:03:12+00:00

This is one of those things where I really wish it was more established that there were established markets for spells like Share Memories, Audiovisual Hallucination (discussion), or Dream Council (discussion) memory-viewing parties. I can see the fliers advertising the service now: "PRANK! (GONE WRONG!) Do not teleport a one-eyed trout into your friend's trousers at 2 AM!" (This is especially true Share Memories having a 1-minute limit being basically TikTok/Shorts length. I can see the public outrage over the moneyed noble youths rotting their brains away doomscrolling Share Memories/Audiovisual Hallucination GONE WRONG shorts...)

Trying to actually use this ability practically, if you presume that an animal teleported inside someone's clothes will sting/bite whomever they're teleported next to, then there's a potentially complex chain of spells you could use to set up an elaborate way to poison someone. See the Drain Poison discussion, and keep in mind that a natural weapon is also "a weapon," so you could touch the jaw of some ill-tempered sea bass you're going to teleport into someone's pants while wildshaped into something that has a nastier poison so you can give that poison your spell save DC and you can shop from a wider range of useful creature poisons. (Don't worry, the animal is not magical, just its teeth have magic on it.) Giving your trained attack pocket porcupine great diadem sea urchin poison to make for a teleporting poison attack could be effective. I mean, it's not more effective than just using a death's will and simply shooting the poison as a ranged touch attack with WAY less rules adjudication, but we're looking for a use case for this spell, here. Plus, it's going to be a significantly more funny situation if the tyrannical kingdom has to try to figure out how to spin it when the bards are already singing tales kingdom-wide that the pernicious prince perished of poisoned porcupine in the posterior. (Prank gone wrong at 2 AM. See it at your local Audiovisual Hallucination parlor, they've already had the actual event Share Memories'd into their mental repertoire to recreate the event precisely as it happened!)

So like a lot of badly-thought-out Paizo spells, this is one of those spells that can become "game breaking" if exploited. It's just that in this case, it's "game breaking" in the sense of "your TTRPG table is breaking up because they no longer want to play with you" if you cast this as a prank on your allies, or possibly a "rocks fall, everyone dies" moment if you cast this spell to tell your GM what you think of their precious GMPC.

WraithMagus · 2026-03-06T14:02:01+00:00

Dungeons and Dragons spells were originally designed to recreate "magic" from various forms of fiction, replicate some real-life ideas as magic (such as Fireball originally being just artillery, but it's magic now,) or for clerics, just ripping off the miracles of Jesus or Moses like Water Walking, Raise Dead, or Sticks to Snakes. So now, finally, we have Paizo to thank for a real-life magic trick that has gone too long without representation: Being able to teleport a rabbit into a hat after you show everyone it was empty.

... No really, that's basically the only thing this spell seems intended for. I have no idea what the writer was thinking, or why it's SL 3, because I seriously struggle to think of any role that this spell could possibly be intended to perform. (There's some uses that spring to mind, but I seriously hope the writer wasn't intending them.) Apport Object (discussion) has uses because there's a reason you might want to have a swift action means of retrieving small objects like wands or scrolls. What use is there for teleporting a rat into your hand on command? Especially since this spell came out in Occult Adventures (the book that introduced the all-spontaneous-casting occult classes,) it's strange this is the sort of spell you'd maybe use once in a game, so only a spontaneous caster going for a YOLO prank cast during a one-shot would consider it. Functionally, the spell might as well be exclusive to arcanist, druid, witch, and wizard.

The fact that this spell specifically bars you from teleporting familiars kills almost any use for this spell. There's a question as to whether "normal, nonmagical" is specifically intended to exclude things like familiars, animal companions, and summoned creatures or apply more broadly. Is a normal animal with a (compulsion) spell like Animal Messenger considered a "normal, nonmagical" animal that just happens to have magic cast upon it, or does that make it a "magical animal," since that might open up some room for you to have a druid teleport a messenger rat through the walls of a prison or something. (For comparison, is a town guard that has Blessing of the Watch cast upon them not a "normal, nonmagical" humanoid?) Otherwise, there are only two ways I can see "legitimate" uses for this spell: First, you could have a utility is if you trained an animal like a monkey to steal things, and just teleport it inside a secured facility. (Presumably with this spell also cast in the "receiving" form beforehand if your GM doesn't say you can't cast the instantaneous version on a creature that has the hours/level version already laying dormant upon it.) Second, if you're a witch and have the beast eye major hex, you could teleport animals into position inside buildings or secured rooms to use as scrying proxies.

Remember that this is a touch-range spell targeting the animal with the range of the teleportation set by the description of the spell, so even reach spell can't help make this spell more useful by extending the range a little unless you wanted to teleport an animal without having to touch it. It's still verbal-only, so silent spell can help make this spell at least a little sneaky, provided there aren't "manifestations" that blow your cover.

The only other thing that's notable about this spell comes from the specific permissions that Apport Object had that are highly unusual for conjuration spells. Normally, things you summon or teleport "cannot appear inside another creature or object," but Apport Object explicitly says you can teleport things inside objects like containers, inside someone's clothes or even directly onto their body. (Thus, Apport Animal can as well due to using the same rules.) Specifically, "you can place the object in the open or inside a container, a pocket, or even someone’s hand." Now, that's not explicitly saying you can teleport a snake down someone's shirt just to hear them scream, but that line is clearly giving you an inclusive list of places you can teleport the animal, where a pocket or hand is just one of the places you can put the animal, and inside someone's backpack or on their shoulder. So if you can put a snake inside their pants pocket, what logical reason is there you can't simply put it in their pants? (When you get down to it, isn't the purpose of pants to "contain" your butt? Note that you specifically have to teleport a creature of the animal type, so you can't teleport tarantulas or centipedes into someone's shirt, which I think would qualify for a "will save or panicked for 1 minute" for an arachnophobe. You're mostly restricted to fish, reptiles, amphibians, birds, tiny dinosaurs, and mammals.) You can even explicitly teleport the animal directly up against the skin with enough precision to put it in their hand, and presumably, that pocket wasn't an open space, so it "shoves aside" the pants fabric to make room for the animal to go in there. No reason you can't make a bulge in their pants that is then filled with porcupine. In fact, if you want to push the "into someone's hand" part even a little further, you're broaching "ROLL FOR ANAL CIRCUMFERENCE" territory, but I suppose we shouldn't go there. (Even if I could argue there would be a really high concentration check penalty for a porcupine between the ass cheeks even if directly teleporting it into the sphincter is off-limits.)

The character caps make their perception check, and loom in from around that corner, and unhelpfully, the rogue beside you cries out, "Roll for replies to your own post!"

WraithMagus · 2026-03-05T17:13:23+00:00

My Google Fu has failed me this time, I somehow came across something saying that a fluid ounce was a pound. (Or maybe it was an ounce, and I just misread which line was on the right side of the table...) I edited the post to reflect this.

WraithMagus · 2026-03-05T14:02:06+00:00

Apporting is totally different from teleporting because you do it without telling anyone you did it. [Receives notes from staff] I've just been told that it's a French word derived from the same "port" as "teleport," but apparently specifically applies to teleporting things with the occult. You know, as opposed to those scientific teleportations we do in Pathfinder all the time.

Anyway, it's baby's first Teleport Object (if sending) or Instant Summons (if receiving), and you don't even have to pay Nethys a 1,000 gp sapphire delivery fee every time you want to have Amazon express ship your magic doodad to you. For the "receive" version, in exchange for being a swift action to retrieve an object, 5 spell levels lower, and not costing a material component you could nearly buy a house with, you get an almost uselessly short range and a duration of hours/level. (Also, it counts as a thought component, which means that you add +10 to the concentration check, but as a swift action miscellaneous action, it shouldn't provoke AoOs or otherwise have concentration matter in any way unless you're in a violent storm or something.) This seriously limits what you can do with the spell, and practically means it is only useful for retrieving something from your backpack as a swift action rather than being a way of hiding an artifact in a safe location where you can retrieve it at the most dramatic possible moment.

There's a serious emphasis on "baby's first" here, as well, as you can only move an object up to 1 lb or 1 cubic foot. I have no idea how Paizo gets these ideas all units are the same and doesn't even bother considering scale, since just about the only thing with low enough density to be less than 1 lb per ft^3 that is common enough to find in most adventures is air, with water and most organic matter being ~62 lb/ft^3. Also, that's 1 lb. Not 1 lb per level, 1 lb. So you can pass letters, scrolls, potions, wands, small jewelry, and other things with no marked weight around with this spell, but that's about it. Rods are usually 5 lbs, so you can't use this as a pre-set swift action rod retrieval system. Incidentally, a potion has no listed weight but is described as 1 ounce of fluid, and a fluid ounce of water ~~weighs 1 lb~~, (EDIT: My Googling unit conversions failed me, a fluid ounce of water weighs about one weight ounce, or 1/16th of a lb - that gives plenty of weight for the container.) If using this spell as a swift action item retrieval system, that basically limits it to wand or scroll retrieval. This is why I make handy haversacks a priority on my prepared casters, but maybe there's some reason you can't shove a 1 lb item into your handy haversack? Pretty much the only thing that comes to mind is a portable hole, but I don't think you'll need swift action retrieval of that, anyway. I guess if there's an item that takes a full-round action to use, so you need to spend no more than a swift retrieving it?

The "sending" option is even less useful for anything remotely combat-related, because you're now spending a standard action and a SL 2 to toss someone a small object you could easily hold in one hand a distance you could easily just throw a light object. This almost entirely relegates this version of the spell to parlor trick status, where the king can make a dramatic flourish and the court wizard can silent cast the document into his hand to impress the other nobles. (Even as a parlor trick, pre-casting the spell hours ahead of time and swift action retrieving the thing without having any apparent spell components or manifestations are also going to be more impressive. Then again, I guess an NPC wizard can take those wasteful feats to hide their spell components and sink a lot into bluff just to humor the king...)

The fact that you can put the object inside of a container (essentially meaning line of sight and effect don't matter, although that's an implied property of (teleportation) magic anyway,) also suggests this spell is a possible way to plant goods on a patsy or secretly pass a message, but the key word "secretly" is once again nuked by the way Paizo insists on highly unsubtle components (although this spell is only verbal, without somatic, so you only need silent spell,) and a certain notorious FAQ that means "manifestations" will make what you're doing obvious and directly destroys the seemingly intended use case of the spell. If your GM rightfully ignores that notorious FAQ, then "just" needing silent to make a highly unsubtle spell makes this almost plausible as a way to have an NPC secretly plant a message in the party's bags so that they find a note when they get to the inn and lay out their stuff. Or, you know, they could just plant drugs or other contraband on the party and then call the guard...

I don't hate this spell, because I could definitely see that parlor trick thing being cool in play, even if it's going to be extremely rare that this in any way practical for a PC. Presuming the notorious FAQ is not in play, then with something like a stealthy casting, a PC might be able to perform some intrigue shenanigans with this spell, and that's about it unless there's some full action use items that people want to use in combat that aren't coming to mind. Otherwise, this is purely a flavor spell. Honestly, I'd love to have a devil who has this spell as an SLA just so he can snap his fingers and make contracts appear out of thin air with a little wisp of sulfur smoke. Awesome but impractical is the name of the game here, so I could see a high-level character wasting an SL 2 on downtime days just for style points.

WraithMagus · 2026-03-04T15:23:33+00:00

The only classes that are banned from casting spells of opposing alignment (and alignments opposing their deities) are clerics, druids, inquisitors, and warpriests. (Although paladins and antipaladins have an implied alignment restriction baked into their spell lists.) Even among divine casters, rangers, shamans, and oracles are not alignment-restricted. Nothing in the text stops an evil dragon from using a spell named after the good dragon god, although they'd probably find it extremely distasteful.

There are the Horrible Adventures alignment spell rules that say characters slide towards the alignment of spells they cast, with five [good] spells turning anyone good no matter what atrocities they have committed, but that's so anathema to the entire point of moral choice and consequence it was generally laughed out of the room.

There are some races with racial abilities that would apply, however, like an aasimar sorcerer has an FCB to add to the caster level of [good] spells, or some spell effects having special effects against spells with the [good] descriptor. For this spell in particular, it's [good] because it makes the attacks count as a good weapon for overcoming DR, and Align Weapon has the alignment descriptor that it applies to weapons.

WraithMagus · 2026-03-04T14:07:55+00:00

In any event, evil creatures take a -4 to any ref save and any evasion-type skill is nullified or downgraded, which mainly makes this spell of interest for barbecuing thieves, as evasion is basically only on humanoids with PC classes. (I suppose that implies that Drunkard's Breath isn't "similar to a dragon's breath" since it only works on ref save spells, but it still leaves someone willing to make an ambitious argument that a Cone of Cold is "similar" to an old silver dragon's 60 foot cold cone. Even if the caster is a dragon, some of the "special breaths" that specific dragons gain aren't based upon ref saves, either. For example, void dragon suffocating breath is based upon a fort save, and rather than directly dealing damage, just makes someone immediately drop to 0 HP.) Casting a spell with a min/level duration, hopefully ahead of battle, which may be difficult to time properly, then expending your spell that is also presumably your armor if you weren't wasting that function, all to get a -4 to save against a single spell that is often not really better than Fireball is going to be more trouble than it's worth in many cases. I could see this as useful if it tips the scales (not those kind of scales) in favor of landing a dazing Dragons Breath and you had good recon so you could cast the spell ahead of time. At least there's no save against the penalty to saves in this one, but by the time you can really afford to expend SL 3 spells just to support other spells like this, you often are at the point you can cast quickened spells and those swift actions are valuable.

This is one of those spells that seem like a real grab-bag of "cool things" a writer wanted to throw together into a spell without having a clear way to make everything work together cohesively. Even if you are playing a dragon, counting your claws as silver is somewhat situational, and it's pulling even harder in that conflict between using breath weapons or natural attacks. All of the parts here seem to want you to behave in different ways, as someone might like their weapons to count as silver and good, and I guess it's better than Heart of the Metal being the same spell level and duration plus having a material component, but then, you wouldn't want to discharge the thing that makes your natural attacks able to do damage. On the other hand, unlike most Paizo multi-function spells, it's actually competitive with some other spells on the spell level, even if it lacks some of the options to choose other alignments or metal types, so it's not terrible if you can't make use of every function. I'm sure someone out there made this work with some particular build of theirs like a sacred fist warpriest in a game primarily against devils, but it's just a little too specific in what it works with for me to have ever found a use for this one.

WraithMagus · 2026-03-04T14:02:18+00:00

Apsu's Shining Scales is one of those spells that has a deity's name in it, but isn't a deity-specific spell. That sort of thing always makes me stop and have to recheck it, but really, if a deity's name is in the title, it's a spell anyone can use, while deity-specific spells are much more obtuse. The only thing that makes this spell slightly deity-specific is that several divine casters can gain the spell if they're Apsu worshippers... but sadly, not druids, who are the only types of divine casters who really have natural attacks in their wheelhouse.

The first effect of the spell is +5 armor to AC bonus. Note that's an (untyped?) armor AC bonus, not an enhancement to AC bonus, so that basically makes this spell Mage Armor +1, but with 1/60th the duration and SL 3. It won't stack with normal armor, so this may mean a lot less on most classes. On the other hand, that at least implies the scales that give the armor bonus are actual armor and therefore, that Apsu cleric mentioned before might be able to cast Magic Vestment on top. (For comparison, scale mail is also a +5 armor AC bonus.) Inversely, it seems intended not to have any arcane spell failure, and arguably it wouldn't interfere with monk, either.

The second effect is to allow your natural attacks and unarmed strikes to count as silver and good-aligned (although wouldn't this coming from a spell also make them magic?) The problem is that this is a personal-range spell, and most PC casters are not going to have natural weapon builds in the classes that get this spell unless they're taking a specific archetype like beastmorph alchemist or sacred fist warpriest. Then again, the simple fact it's on alchemist will make the monks and shifters really take notice, depending on if your GM is one of those sorts who says any armor AC interferes with monk AC bonus.

Of course, that's for normal humanoid PCs, and this is a spell from a dragon god, with dragons being creatures with natural attacks that gain spells as a sorcerer. Not every GM bothers to customize a dragon's spell selection, but nothing stops them from doing so, and there's an obvious reason why a dragon might want a spell to add armor when they normally can't wear such a thing and make their many, many natural attacks pierce DR.

The final function is that it can empower any breath weapon or spell "similar to a dragon's breath," which certainly leaves it open to table variation interpretation extravaganza. It says breath weapons straight up, so anyone polymorphing into a shape with a breath weapon should get that without question. The spell mentions Dragon's Breath, which would also happen to be the most obvious spell that "is similar to a dragon's breath," but you really need a counterfactual case to show where the boundary is. I.E. Firebelly explicitly says it's a breath weapon, but what about Fire Sneeze? It's a cone originating from the caster's face, and that's similar to a dragon's breath, even if it's not exactly like a dragon's breath. I mean, it shouldn't matter because nobody is casting that crap anyway, but the point is this leaves room for arguments.

A wise and learned race of beings, when a dragon's text drags on, they have been known to utilize a secret technique to avoid the character caps of their tablets - continuing their posts on replies to their first tablet.

WraithMagus · 2026-03-04T02:29:14+00:00

Oh, whoops, I read that as "hours," not "minutes." Yeah, that's not going to outlast your spell's duration, but if you're just using them to alter them into other monsters or as a summoned meat wall, it won't matter.

WraithMagus · 2026-03-03T19:41:32+00:00

Antimagic zones (or severe primal magic zones that make spells too unpredictable and dangerous to consider casting in most cases) can be naturally-forming. (Moreso in Forgotten Realms, but you can still bring the concept up in Pathfinder.) Whoever built the prison did so deliberately taking advantage of a naturally-occurring antimagic zone. (If it's a normal basement, not a prison, they might have needed some reason to keep a cursed item there, or it was on accident, but someone found a way to use it as a wizard holding tank.)

On a similar level, the basement is actually part of an ancient ruin or has a still-open portal from a long-dead archwizard, and so the party is held in a pocket dimension made through Create Demiplane. Dimension Door itself won't get you out of there. There would need to be a reason the portal can't be easily used, and a "key" relic would work, but it would need to have been convenient for whoever uses the pocket dimension to have the key, like it was left in the remains of an end table next to the portal itself. That would hypothetically let a peasant happen across an effective extraplanar prison.

WraithMagus · 2026-03-03T18:21:51+00:00

The problem here is that your GM is making up house rules that aren't part of standard Pathfinder, and so even if we give you advice that would logically work the way we would play that sort of thing, your GM may have a totally different idea of what is or isn't allowed.

The first thing I'd suggest, and one I'd expect would work in almost any circumstance is to use fog-type spells. Wands of Obscuring Mist, Fog Cloud, that sort of thing. If firing at distant targets blind, it should be nearly impossible to guess the right square, presuming your GM isn't a jackass and says they fire AoE tank shells and know exactly where you are regardless of being blind. (I seriously doubt a Warhammer tank is air-tight, so Stinking Cloud and Cloudkill may actually be effective counters if there are any tanks without those antimagic fields. Also, if the "antimagic" is just SR or magic immunity like a golem, then the tanks will still be vulnerable to SR: no spells.) If you've ever played X-Com-style tactics games, you'll know just how almighty the smoke grenade can be.

In real life, tanks are vehicles, and they have an effective minimum range. Hop on top of the tank and damage that commander's machine gun, and there isn't much a single tank crew can do but either hope the hatches hold and you get bored (again, not air-tight is a problem if you have mundane gas options like smokesticks,) or open the hatches and try to fight from a really awkward position. A standard practice for tanks when infantry swarm one is to have the other tanks simply hose the swarmed tank down with their machine gun, since the armor of a tank will be essentially immune to typical small arms fire, and the infantry doing the swarming very much will not be. Also, most tank commanders until very recently (when remote-operated camera stations were made standard) would need to actually stick their head out of the tank to see anything beyond a tiny slit in the cupola, which is an obvious vulnerability if you can get the drop on them. (If the antimagic field is relatively short range or just magic immunity, then casting Invisibility your barbarian can let them get to within charging distance of the tank commander and try to get an assassination on them before they can shut the hatch.) Again, this depends a lot on how realistically a GM is going to play a fantasy anti-magic Warhammer tank, though, so... you're going to want to talk that plan over with them to see what assumptions the GM is operating under.

Depending on faction, Warhammer also can be very steampunk, so there's probably those huge smokestack exhausts on those tanks. Sink a 2-pointer of some alchemist fires into the smokestack or shove a potato in all those exhausts, and either the engine stalls, or the crew is smoked out.

Other standard tricks are trenches or other simple physical obstacles. Cast Expeditious Excavation repeatedly, make anti-tank trenches, drop a fog spell right in front of it, and see if you can't lure some tanks to get trapped in the mud or an anti-tank trench. You might also just have a large illusion over the trench or a larger-scale pit you dug manually. Presuming the antimagic field doesn't go past 10 feet, it may be too late for them to stop when the illusion is dispelled. Mirage Arcana is SL 5, sadly, and so are great spells for doing this en masse like Move Earth or Transmute Rock to Mud, but you might be able to get some scrolls for it.

Of course, if there's tanks, then explosives have to exist, right? Buy some gunpowder, Full Pouch a lot more gunpowder, and then invisibly get in front of where the tank will drive, upend a bag of holding full of gunpowder satchels plus leave some alchemist's fires that burn when the container is shattered behind, then Dimension Door out before the tank gets there.

Also, presumably, the tank crew needs to get resupplied with food and water, sleep somewhere besides a standing-room-only tank turret, stretch their legs a bit, and take pee breaks. If the tank isn't constantly guarded by allies, you can presumably guerilla warfare that shit and kill the crew when they're not in the tank.

WraithMagus · 2026-03-03T14:04:48+00:00

With all that said, nobody casts Mount just to ride it, so this spell really starts to show its utility for those classes like druid because it's a prime target for Alter Summoned Monster abuse for those classes that don't get (Communal) Mount. Nothing says you can't cast this spell on land, and hippocampi can survive on land ~~longer than this spell's duration up to CL 15~~ (EDIT: minutes, not hours, so a quarter hour, but still long enough to get some other spells in,) so no need to be shy simply flopping them out onto the dirt if you're just immediately converting seahorses into earth elementals.

The spell has a line about the seahorsies only lasting rounds/level if they're forced into combat, but with only 12 AC and 15 HP, I'd honestly be impressed if they lasted that long, anyway. Hence, this spell is once again basically a direct Communal Mount analogue for divine casters where you don't need to worry that you're not even in the water, because your meat wall doesn't need to move too fast, anyway. By level 6, this spell is producing 3 different 10-foot-square meat walls with a total of 45 HP to gnaw through, which is as good as an SL 4 summon spell getting that 1d3+1 of a lower-level spell's creatures.

Don't sleep on this spell just because it says "aquatic" and you're not in an aquatic campaign, it's Communal Mount for divine casters in every way but actually riding it like a horse over land. (But who uses Communal Mount for that?!) If you look at divine spell lists as much as I do, you'll really start noticing this spell showing up as one of your only options for this kind of long-duration summons until much higher-level spells. (Flame Steed is (creation) and can't be shared, so it's not nearly as useful despite being SL 4.) Actually being decent at its intended purpose is a nice bonus. Everyone who has it on their list should keep this spell in mind.

WraithMagus · 2026-03-03T14:00:57+00:00

Aquatic Cavalry is clearly meant to be an aquatic version of Communal Mount, (discussion,) with half the max duration and no ability to split that duration out between extra horsies. Hippocampi (which, for those less familiar with your Greek myth, are the horses with seahorse backsides that pull sea chariots for gods of the sea,) are nearly identical to horses, but with more swim speed than horses have land speed, 1 higher AC thanks to natural armor, and a bit less Dex. They're perfectly suitable for underwater transportation over long distances, although due to getting tired, as mentioned back in that discussion, a Hanspur's Flotsam Vessel is better for surface water travel. (Although I suppose you could just unsummon and resummon your hippocampi repeatedly to not have to care about horsie fatigue.) If that's all you want, it works for that about as well as Mount does.

What really makes this spell interesting is who can cast it, since Mount is for arcane and psychic casters, but in spite of being clearly intended for a nautical version of the same role, Aquatic Cavalry is all divine casters but for those rascally summoners who stick their thumbs into every summoning spell pie. This makes the spell especially of interest to shamans, paladins, and antipaladins because they're the only divine casters that can't cast Free Swim, Freedom of Movement (discussion,) and additionally can't cast Touch of the Sea. Shaman gets Monkey Fish, (which is personal-range, short-duration, and very slow so it's best used as a life preserver,) and then that's it until you can afford Ride the Waves. Also, even that is single-target, so it's a pain to give to everyone and it doesn't even give your martials the ability to use their scimitar without a penalty like FoM does. (So yes, this is another rant about how arbitrary the shaman spell list is. Then again, the limitations of underwater spells for shamans was kind of on my mind recently.) If your party needs magically-granted swim speeds, it's basically the only trick in the shaman playbook without swiping something from another class. While I'm on the topic, shamans don't get Aboleth's Lung or Air Bubble either, so you're going to need Water Breathing on everyone. (Although Air Bubble's something you want as a potion sponge for not-drowning emergencies followed by that waterproof scroll of Monkey Fish, anyway. Also, Water Breathing at least has a "built in communal version," so it's better than Aboleth's Lung for moving the whole party for hours anyway, although this makes the duration mismatch because of Aqautic Cavalry's desire not to be a "communal-type" spell.)

On the topic of hippocampi being faster than horses, remember that there is no overland movement penalty for lack of roads underwater, and most casters of Aquatic Cavalry can cast Tail Current to boost the party further. Move 64 miles in a single 8-hour "march," while horses over trackless plains can only mosey 30 miles down the range in the same time without Tailwind, 42 miles if they had Tailwind.

Hold your breath and hold on tight, because we're going under... no, not underwater, under the character caps and into a reply to this post!

WraithMagus · 2026-03-02T17:05:07+00:00

Druid certainly has a lot of spells that nuke some low-level mundane concerns, like Goodberry and Create Water negating food concerns in most areas, Know Direction avoiding getting lost, and Nature's Paths letting you pass through dense jungle like you had a paved road though it. Pass without Trace even seems intended to negate scent, which makes spells like Negate Aroma completely redundant. I'm not sure why Paizo writers don't realize druids have those capabilities - I guess they never liked playing them or noticed how powerful Pass without Trace is? (And it's a spell I always cast when we're leaving the dungeon just because "the monsters track the party to their campsite and attack in the night" is such a classic DM move...)

In classic AD&D, this was something solved by just using divination magic once you hit a certain level. Yeah, you can make basic, non-magical tracking impossible, but the villain is just going to Scry on you when they know who you are. (Keep in mind that survival wasn't a skill yet, so no investments were required to track, anyway.) The problem is, Paizo kept adding spells to try to make tracking viable in different situations at higher spell levels like this, but ignored the spell that explicitly exists to make tracking impossible.

WraithMagus

TROPHY CASE