Sacred Geometry and Arithmancy.

[Squirrel_Dude]

So, skimming through other forums that talk about 3.5e (minmaxboards.com. Libertad) led to my discovery of the Sacred Geometry and Arithmancy Feats. It's best if I don't try to explain them, and instead let you read them.

Sacred Geometry
Arithmancy

[OldTrees1]

Sacred Geometry seems overpowered. It costs 1 skill point per level to gain a pretty decent chance* of getting 2 free metamagic effects without even taking those feats.

*chance not calculated

Arithmancy seems underpowered. It looks like, Spellcraft DC 19+spell level => +1 caster level.

[Raven777]

These are both the weirdest and coolest feats I have ever seen.

[Snowbluff]

Oh God, where is Grod?

TT.TT

The first is OP, but a huge pain in the ass.

[Raven777]

Grod is busy stalling everyone at the table, calculating Sacred Geometry for his next spell. Duh.

[Snowbluff]

Grod is busy stalling everyone at the table, calculating Sacred Geometry for his next spell. Duh.

He's totally against this sort of thing.

I take it that it would be better to have more ranks in the skill to make it more powerful. That would mean it would be even more annoying to deal with.

[avr]

Also discussed here.

Even if you could make SG work in a reasonable time it'd distract you from everything else happening at the gaming table. Which would cause misunderstandings and confusion with my group at least.

[Snowbluff]

I would combine with with Spellhunter and Magical Lineage for a cantrip. Then, I would quicken what I was casting. That way, the worst I get is a lost swift action.

[caimbuel]

For a math geek Sacred Geometry is quick easy and absurdly OP, you know those types that in 30 secs they can say yes or no. For the average persona it is a time waster and discouraged at my table.

[NamelessNPC]

These feats are obviously for cheating optimizers. Bogging down the game that hard only increases the chances of Orcus

[inertia709]

These feats give me a math boner.

Anyway, Arithmancy, like others have said, seems like a "meh" feat at best. Even without the spellcraft check, it still wouldn't be nearly game breaking to get +1 CL as a swift action every turn. Personally, I would likely take it as a Sorcerer or Wizard if it weren't for the Spell Focus(Divination) prereq, but as it stands it seems a bit weak.

With Sacred Geometry, the power depends a lot on the probability of the ability working, and of course the mathematical ability (and patience!) of the player. The probability looks difficult to calculate (that'll be my project for the weekend haha), but on the surface seems to be fairly high with a lot of ranks in Knowledge(Engineering). Do note that the final spell level is limited to the highest level of spell that the player can cast, so that this won't lead to Incantatrix-level shenanigans. That being said, it has the potential to add a lot of "sticking power" to a primary caster in that they can get a lot of extra spells that are effectively at the highest level that they can cast. Quicken + Sacred Geometry in particular would be incredibly potent once the caster gets 5th-level and higher spells. In summary, I could definitely see this being broken in the right player's hands at mid to high levels.

Edit: I just noticed that Sacred Geometry effectively gives you access to 2 new metamagic feats as well as the other benefits. Yeah, this one's almost as broken as the Arcanist.

[oxybe]

Echoing spell+Extend Spell.

Basically with this one feat via Sacred Geomancy, you double the spell slots of any spell 3 levels under your highest. as a 7th level wizard if you roll well enough/can math good enough you get to cast each of your 1st level spell slots twice. And it only goes up from there, because who doesn't want 10-12 castings of their low-level utility spells at that level, especially if the second casting is at double duration (hooray extend! as the option to add SG to a spell is done upon casting the spell, not during your preperation).

Note you can also apply non SG-gained metamagic feats to SG'd spells, so your level 5/10/15/20 bonus metamagic can apply to these too.

And as a wizard, it's not hard to get a stupid high spellcraft, allowing you to easily cast most (if not all) your spells at an additional +1 caster level.

[Thanatosia]

Arithmancy seems really stupid. You can just calculate the 'digital root' of any spells you know or are likely to use ahead of time. Since spells don't randomly change names or spell level, you then have a set DC for the spellcraft check with every spell you know or would use. If your Spellcraft modifier is high enough to guarantee sucess and you have nothing else to use a swift action on that round, you just invoke the feat (+1cl is probably never worth gambling a chance of spellfailure).

It's just a +1 caster level feat with a really stupid and completely arbitrary spellcraft check attached. The way the feat is writtain it's like they expect you to do the calculation on the spot when you cast it and possibly be suprised by the spellcraft DC..... I just don't see any reason anyone would actually play it that way.

[Averis Vol]

What jackass thought it would be a good idea to make these feats? It's such a horridly needless waste of time. Agreed, the first is ridiculously strong (because wizards totally weren't strong enough, and don't waste a huge amount of time with their spells anyways) and the second is by no means worth the effort. Geeze

[Yanisa]

If it didn't had the awfully game slowing down math, Sacrad Geometry is beyond overpowered.

When casting a spell, you can perform the steps below to spontaneously apply the effects of either or both of these metamagic feats, as well as any other metamagic feats you have, to the spell without expending a higher-level spell slot.

So not only can you pick the two meta-magic feats with this feat, if you posses any other meta-magic feat you can add them to the cause.

AND

You can take this feat more than once; each time, select two additional metamagic feats, adding their effects to the list of possible effects you can apply to spells with this ability.

Basically this feats boils down to 2 metamagic feat for the price of 1.

So in a couple of levels every level spell you cast has an effective spell level of 9 due all the FREE metamagic applied.


As soon as I can get my hands on a smartphone app that calculates this without taking 5 hours of the game session, this is going to ruin games.

[Nilehus]

If someone ever tried to math out how 10 numbers can math to 101 in the middle of a fight, I would destroy them.

Using an app would streamline it, but then they'd essentially be getting two free metamagic feats that they could apply spontaneously. So yeah, gonna agree. OP, cumbersome, and really annoying.

Wizards don't need the help anyway.

[Aliek]

Do you have to use all your die tough?

[Alex12]

Not gonna lie, Sacred Geometry looks weird and stupid and I want to try it.

[Nilehus]

Do you have to use all your die tough?

Seems like.

Then roll a number of d6s equal to the number of ranks you possess in Knowledge (engineering). Perform some combination of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division upon the numbers rolled that gives rise to one of the relevant prime constants.

Doesn't say anything about dropping dice or anything, so I'd say that you have to use all of them. With how many you'd get that could easily cancel each other out ( /x1, +2 -2, etc.), I'd be very surprised if you couldn't reach it with 15 dice.

That wouldn't stop the other players from trying to feed you your own character sheet, though.

[meschlum]

Math!

Math is go(o)d!


You have at least 2 dice (required for the feat), and you get feats at odd levels, so you can typically get this at level 3+, guaranteeing 3 dice at least.

With 2 dice, you have 16/36 (44.4%) chance of getting Level 1, and 2/36 (5.56%) chance of getting Level 2
With 3 dice, you have 198/216 (91.7%) chance of getting Level 1, 111/216 of getting Level 2 (51.4%), 54/216 of getting Level 3 (25%) and 15/216 (6.94%) of getting Level 4.

So from this non representative sample, it looks like Level 1 is going to be easy to get. Level 2 should be feasible with 4-5 dice, and higher levels will follow.


As another guesstimate, each die is worth 3.5 on average (via sums), so you need 10 dice for the average sum to be close to the Level 4 requirements. Level 9 would require 30 dice, and is therefore never going to be easy - it will require multiplication to reach even with 17 dice (when 9th level spells are available), so it's not going to happen too often.

With 2 dice, the average sum is 7, and Level 1 happens about half the time - not bad.
With 3 dice, the average sum is 10.5, and Level 2 happens about half the time - again, not bad.

So it looks reasonable to assume that Level 4 will work about half the time when there are 9-11 dice, Level 5 is half the time around 12-14 dice, and so forth. This does mean that a Level 7 spell is never going to be a sure thing - if the assumption holds.

[oxybe]

you do know you can multiply the dice, right?

so at level 7, when you roll your 7 ranks worth of d6 and get (1, 4, 5, 5, 4, 5, 1) trying to reach the Prime Constants of an effective spell level of 4: 31, 37, 41, it's not just adding them to get 25, but rather:

"Perform some combination of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division upon the numbers rolled that gives rise to one of the relevant prime constants."

so with our rolled numbers we actually get

1+(4x5)+(5x4)-5+1
1+20+20-5+1
21+15+1
36+1
37

we hit our effective level 4 spell and cast at the normal slot.

[Yanisa]

Going by the average of 3.5, four dies would get us: 3*3*4*4 = 144, very much overshooting even effective level 9 spells.

So I guess you need 5-8 dies to hit that sweet spot of effective level 9 spells. Imagine at level 7, being able to apply 6 metamagics to a spell without any drawbacks? For 3 feats?

And then there is Calculating Mind, to improve the odds? I dunno but its insane to think there are feats to boosts an already broken feat.

[Thanatosia]

Seems like the key is just multiply 2 dice, or 3 for the real big numbers, to get in the general ballpark, then add/subtract to zero in on a key number. If you can't find a way to get close with 3 multiplied dice, then use 2 multiplied dice as an add/subtract. Try to hit the key number the quickest most direct way you can, then try to find a way to make any remainder dice cancel out.

[ericgrau]

Sacred geometry is op and so rewards math nerdiness. There is a penalty for failure but success is almost assured. When it is hard... then you only bog down the game more as a nerdy jerk. You can't use it to cast higher level spells than you normally could which is good. It still gives a 2 for 1 deal on metamagic feats and gives spontaneous metamagic to prepared casters. Meanwhile to spontaneous casters it says, "screw you, have a two round casting time if you want to use this feat, making it effectively worthless for you.". If that wasn't enough, it conserves high level spell slots.

Ya, way overpowered for one feat. Needs to be 4 feats at least, if not 6. But since it bogs down the game so much it is better to outright ban it.

Arithmancy is usually +1 caster level for a feat and a swift action, which is fair. At lower levels the check is less reliable making it weaker then. As long as the player adds it up before his turn it shouldn't bog down the game ad much but it is still a pretty dumb idea for a feat.

[stack]

Wow, I would expect that from and obscure 3rd party that didn't really know what they where doing, but wow. Kinda neat flavor, which I expect matches the theme of the product it was printed in, but terrible clunky mechanics. Bad Paizo, bad! Where is my rolled up newspaper...hard to smack them on the nose with digital media, breaks the screen.

[Slithery D]

What jackass thought it would be a good idea to make these feats?

They were trying to make something with the right flavor for the occult handbook they published a couple of months ago.

[Hamste]

You can also take the feat multiple times for 2 more metamagic feats each time, why ever buy a single meta magic (other than quicken) when you can two for the price of one? Also did anyone notice that in the example you can get one of the numbers for a 9th level spell if you wanted to? I found that a bit funny that even with just 5 points in engineering (at level 17 for some reason) it is possible to make a 1st level spell have 8 more metamagic levels worth of stuff added onto it.

[Alleran]

I noticed that it was mentioned in the other thread linked above that you might be able to use an app to have a computer do the number-crunching. Does anybody know of such an app?

[Saidoro]

There isn't an app for it. There isn't likely to be an app for it. Figuring solutions for Sacred Geometry is NP-Hard, it's unlikely even a good computer could find a solution for more than a dozen dice or so in a reasonable time-frame. It's a rare feat which you can point to and say "our best current understanding of computer science says this is a bad idea".

[caimbuel]

The only limiting action is doing math, for those that are freaky good like my wizard player this is OP, he did 14 tests in last nights game, took upto 1 min each and made it 13 out of 14 times. I allowed him to roll and math it out before his turn. Biggest effect I saw was casting quickened lvl 1's and 2's. Allowed a ton more versatility to a wizard. I honestly cant say they even remotely needed it. He is going to train back out of it.