But this isn't really helping me determine the actual difference between these two questions as all of this could be put into a proper answer to the older question very easily.
@DavidCoffron Potentially. My opinion is the rules dont say you cant identify the spell and it's not exactly fun to have to spend more time on top of the copying
@goodguy5 part of the confusion is that the old answer seems to be a poor one that doesn't actually address the OP's problem. But I don't think that is enough of a reason not to dupe.
If I am an evil necromancer with powerful magics, I might encode my spells in which case, the spell could only be identified by the mystical cipher of the spell text
@DavidCoffron Well its possible i guess, but I think the purpose of the spell is identifiable from the information on the page, without any decoding required
I disagree. Let's use books as an analogy. Pick a language you can't read.
You find a bunch of books in other languages. You only care about deciphering some books. Do you need to decipher the entire book before you can figure out the title?
@goodguy5 Counter analogy: If I know the process required to translate the entire book (old question) don't I know how to translate the title as well (new question)?
@DavidCoffron And if the person who wrote it was skimming their book for a spell had written it with zero info about what it does they might cast the wrong spell
The rules dont say spells are unidentifiable, i would argue they indicate the opposite. It's neither fun nor interesting to ask for an extra few hours to pick a spell to copy so why bother
@SirCinnamon Except they transcribed the books in the first place. Just like how I recognize that as Schrödingers equation, the caster would recognize their equation as Fireball
@SirCinnamon Except there is an implication that the notations are not all alike. Sure, a chemist will always recognize this (below) as a chemical equation, but what about a wholly unique notation?
@DavidCoffron A wholly unique notation is harder to parse but identifiable as a reaction of 2 compounds becoming 3, after all the notation is decipherable in 2 hours so it's not impossible to believe parts can be parsed quickly for intent if not exact meaning
"Copying that spell into your spellbook involves reproducing the basic form of the spell, then deciphering the unique system of notation used by the wizard who wrote it."
reproduce the spell THEN decipher the notation
if you can reproduce the spell you know what it does
@DavidCoffron This is driving me crazy. If I may ask, what is your gender? "david coffron" is pretty obviously a male name, but your profile says ninja cowgirl, which may be a reference to something
The way I would do it as DM would be to just handwave the issue away. If it mattered at all maybe 15 minutes per spell identifying what they are. But honestly, I would just tell them.
Interesting thing I just learned: When you cast a scroll the words fade and the scroll crumbles to dust. When you fail to cast a scroll, the words fade but the scroll itself remains.
@goodguy5 the one flaw in the RAI potential flaw is that the DM could say "you try to copy it and fail" (spell level too high). So the PC wouldn't have to know the level. Of course this seems to make things even less fun actually... Also I'm not sure how strong your argument actually is that those are the RAI
@NautArch I think it's more "how do I avoid situations wherein I'm useless in combat because I use a slashing/piercing/salmon weapon and those are ineffective against some creatures"
@Rubiksmoose I just realized another thing. A snake oil selling wizard could copy a bunch of level 2 spells and sell them as anything else and skimp town.
@MikeQ Well if this is the ruling, wouldn't all scrolls be mystery scrolls? He can say it's anything and without several hours to verify, what can a wizard do?
Today's CoS session: I picked Dart as a new kensei weapon and proceeded to kill the only enemy in an encounter with those before anyone else got to act at all.
(granted, with those HP it wouldn't have been a real combat anyway)
@NautArch It's nice, there's enough options in combat and the damage dealt is pretty awesome.
I haven't really compared it against other Monk paths though, because I picked Kensei from a flavor POV (I'm trying to emulate a Avenger-type character, a more offensively oriented religious warrior)
@GreySage give the goblin boss a specific objective to achieve outside of pumelling his enemies, for example, something to smash (that'll take 2 or 3 actions to properly smash). "soon" will be if the PCs manage to stop him doing that.
(though WBL guidelines would suggest even if they don't get that reward now, they should get the equivalent to it later)
@GreySage Or have some counter that increments (or decrements) each round. For example, if the goblins are raiding something, then each round they steal/destroy some quantity of it. Or if the goblins are trying to accomplish something that takes X rounds to complete, like loading, aiming, and firing a siege weapon.
@doppelgreener There's also rockseer elves and deep elves.
(Part of the point of the exercise is that, as much as the proliferation of elf subtypes has become a memetic joke, it's useful to showcase how much D&D pigeonholes and stereotypes most races into very narrow roles.)
(Most D&D races could be re-skinned as humans of a different culture and nothing of value would be lost in the process.)
That reminds me, I wanted to ask yall a question about experiences: Has anyone built/encountered a "dopple-party" NPC team, either in or out of combat? And are there suggestions on what (not) to do?
The system matters a LOT, as does your goals for doing the thing.
I think the most successful was 4e, where I just had the players roll up their own evil characters working for the other side of the war, and every five or so levels we'd spend a level playing as the other side.
Usually we'd be setting up some plot that the main PCs would have to deal with later down the road, like planting an evil cult in the capital city of the main PCs.
Ok, specifically, I'm building... 1. A recurring antagonist group in a Pathfinder game, such that 2. the NPCs are a few levels above the PCs, and 3. each NPC in the doppleparty is built in a way that mirrors one of the PCs
So far, I've been informed not to overdo the "mistaken identity" gag
Also, it's been suggested that I treat one of the NPCs as the spokesman, to avoid overwhelming the players in RP
@BESW Any specific tips on habits/events that were well-received by your players?
Hmmm. Very good point. Unfortunately that still might not work for me, because: 1. Not all of the PCs are well-characterized, or necessarily have a defined personality, and 2. Since the doppleparty are antagonists, they know things that the PCs don't, and so the players would have to RP blindly to avoid metagaming
A doppelparty functions as a foil in the literary sense. Each doppel that doesn't have something to contrast against is going to fall flat and feel unnecessary.
Well, maybe if I let the players RP them, they would be filling in the details for me...
It is certainly tempting. Maybe if I run out of content for a session, I could cut to the evil mini-session.
Then again, "slightly more evil version of your current character" doesn't sound fun or unique. I'd have to shuffle the roles around, e.g. the player who normally plays the frontliner PC will be given the role of the doppleparty's squishy caster.
Alright. Aside from giving temporary control to the players, what else did you do that worked well?
Most of the time, no; the two groups would interact by one setting up a plot and the other taking it down later.
But our grand finale session to cap the whole campaign had the evil PCs infiltrate the palace of the good PCs' emperor to assassinate him, and the good PCs had to protect the emperor.
For that session, the players controlled two characters each.
I think I could make it work if the players don't realize that they're RPing the antagonists, but that involves deceiving my players, which is kinda a gray zone for me
Primarily because I'm bad at it, and secondarily because I'm kinda uncomfortable tricking people I consider friends
YMMV, but it's been my experience that a simple pre-game discussion about what makes stories fun (facing legitimately challenging obstacles) often helps groups embrace that kind of play where they deliberately give themselves challenges to overcome rather than seeing their role as solely to find the most efficient way to overcome the GM's plans.
As for NPCs... that's why I had my players make their own doppelparty members.
