[EX-PATHFINDER] F%&@!$# WEIRD SCIENCE: HOW DOES IT WORK?

[Rymosrac]

Granted, the thing is 3rd party even for pathfinder, but can anyone with access to the artificer in Tome of Secrets / on the pathfinder SRD explain to me exactly how weird science is supposed to work?

Access: http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/3rd-party-classes/artificer

What does the table for Weird Science Inventions on their class advancement table indicate? The number of spells they know and can use to create weird science inventions?

What is the activation time for one of these items? Equal to the casting time of the spell in question? What about items incorporating multiple spells with different casting times?

How are the targets for spells adjudicated? They give an example of a weapon based on lightning bolt, inflict minor wounds, and shield - it shoots a line as normal for the lightning bolt, adds the damage from inflict minor wounds to everyone hit by the lightning bolt, and then activates a shield effect on the bearer of the device. How does the weapon know not to shield the people it just shot at instead of the wielder?

(Version on the SRD implies you'd have to use it differently to get the bonus damage from the inflict light wounds spell, while the printed version states that anyone taking damage from the lightning bolt also takes damage from the inflict spell)

Lastly, is there really no limit on how many of these things you can have at once? And no GP / XP cost for creating them, beyond available crafting time? Is there any limit to how many spell levels you can cram into a single device, given enough time to work on it?

Edit: Blegh, whole thing seems poorly written, if extremely fun. Will be rewriting it as a 3.5 Artificer ACF which replaces infusions and posting to the homebrew forum.

[ahzouroshadow]

[borg286]

Here's the way I see it.  At level 1 you may have 1x 1st level spell distributed among your inventions(you may have as many as you like, but since only 1 has a spell only 1 does anything).  You may use it 1+ceil(1/2*level) = 2/day
At level 5 you may have a 3rd level spell, a 2nd level spell and 3x 1st level spells distributed among however many inventions you choose (1 with all, or 5 with 1 each).  I know that the title of the subtable is labeled inventions, but this interpretation is the only one that makes sense to me.  You may shoot each invention gun 1+ceil(1/2 level) = 4 times / day.  Because he's not a spellcaster the additional spells do not apply, and indeed his weird science does not follow the convention of additional spells / day based on a high Int.  
The broken part of this class, as I've theorized, is when you use spells like guidance of the avatar to give you a huge boost to UMD and thus prep you for forcing another use out of it.  It will increase the DC, but not substantially enough given you have a +20 giving you an optimized UMD check of +60 thus allowing you to keep force casting it 12 and 15 times / day, if you can only boot-strap it with a gun.  The earliest this is feasible is level 5.
I've outlined my analysis here: http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=8882.0

[Rymosrac]

Yeah, check-dependent stuff tends to end poorly like that.

But as written, there's still no reliable way to determine how spell effects are resolved together. The SRD printing and the book printing directly contradict each other on how their example devices work, etc.

Anyways, posted my rewrite of it over on the homebrew forum. Here's a link to the thread:
http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=9013.0

And here's a link to my rewrite:
https://docs.google.com/document/edit?id=1GU5p7vy2v4yXbhGOxWQyCbycQ1HQPJlm2m-LvxGKKO0&hl=en&authkey=CO7ouqUI

[ahzouroshadow]

I think the only disagreement I have with your interpretation of the table Borg is that they also make the statement that you can have as many spells as you want in each invention it just ups the DC to use it.  I'm in no way saying you're wrong at all and I don't want it to come across that way I just differ in my interpretation.

As for the discrepancy between the book and the srd just remember that the srd has taken the errata into account so there will be an issue between the two.  So yes there is a clear cut way on how to interpret how spells work together you go with the most recent which is on the srd as they have the errata which supercedes the first release of the book.

[borg286]

I think the only disagreement I have with your interpretation of the table Borg is that they also make the statement that you can have as many spells as you want in each invention it just ups the DC to use it.  I'm in no way saying you're wrong at all and I don't want it to come across that way I just differ in my interpretation.

As for the discrepancy between the book and the srd just remember that the srd has taken the errata into account so there will be an issue between the two.  So yes there is a clear cut way on how to interpret how spells work together you go with the most recent which is on the srd as they have the errata which supercedes the first release of the book.

The reason I am of the opinion that the table indicates how many spells of what levels you may distribute to your inventions is that the example only uses 1 of each level spells, and that your interpretation would lead to the following exploitation.  Due to there being no other drawback of putting 100x magic missiles into 1 inventions other than making it impossible to make additional uses on top of the 1+1/2 level it would therefore break the game.  It says that no matter how many spells there are in an invention it has 1+1/2 charges/day.  Due to the class breaking if one were to have no limit of the number of spells put in each invention, that interpretation, although validated by a certain reading of the class, would lead to a broken system, and one must accept the simpler and less-broken interpretation, namely the table indicates the number of spells one may distribute.

[soulsabre345]

(i'm going off the srd version, i don't have the book)

I will say in your interpretation i have a issue with the principle of taking the lowest common denominator as the mechanics for the device.

The way i see that the rules are supposed to work is the total number of spells you can have in varying devices is according to the table, and once you have enough devices to make up that total you can't make anymore whatsoever. if you want to create a new device you can do so provided you spend the time, but you must choose as well what devices to deactivate when doing so. so, at level 5, you can have 3 level 1, 1 level 2, and 1 level 3 spell among your devices. if you opt to make 1 super device that has 5 spells within that's fine, but once that device is destroyed/spent you need to spend time to rebuild it. I think that just having the time spent as the balancer is fine though honestly, if it takes 4 hours of straight work to create a device that emulates a level 1 spell, i don't think it's entirely broken that if you bust that level 1 device you can spend another 4 hours to rebuild it and use it again in the same day. i think a 50g/level cost is wholly unnecessary, and just make it that it takes 1 hour of maintenance per day (and only once per day) to return the devices to a normal unused state.

Although, i do agree that using UMD+1 to determine if it breaks or not is fairly broken given you can buff UMD to radical numbers, atlhough i think that making it a 20% change of failure for the 1st use past normal, and then a 50% the following times is excessive. perhaps make it your umd ranks and ability mod only, no other bonuses apply

 the way they should be resolved is like how shadow posted, as in you treat each spell as normal, save that it all activates at once. if you create a device with conflicting effects it still activates, but only those effects that have a valid target initate. (as in if you create a device that 1 effect targets undead and another living, you've created a device that works on any target, but you still have 2 spells used in one device and are penalized as normal for it)

[Rymosrac]

Well, it would certainly be less complicated to do it that way. Far, far easier to break however. Shrug. Both look valid from where I'm sitting.

The cost I added primarily for flavor, as it was slightly bothersome to me to have the class essentialy conjuring the required materals out of thin air - iit's certainly not there for balance reasons, and as such wouldn't significantly affect the intended function to remove it.

[winter_soldier]

Yeah, it would have been nice if Adamant had been a bit better about support after this came out.

[ahzouroshadow]

I definitely see your stance and agree it's a completely valid interpretation, I wouldn't run it that way but it's just me.  I like that these boards while sometimes having outbreaks of verbal abuse doesn't happen all too often when people have differing views on something.  And if someone else in my group wants to play an artificer and going my way seems to make him a little off kilter then I'd have no qualms letting him rectify it to your interpretation to tone it down a little bit.