Sacred Geometry and Arithmancy.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Oh God, where is Grod?

You rang?

These feats are hilarious. Arithmancy would be pretty quick if you did the math ahead of time, but Sacred Geometry... I think I have a new favorite feat. It's just absurd on so many levels. It might be cool if it were a once per day thing-- then it becomes a sort of last-ditch power option that the whole table can get in on. But every turn... eesh.

[Hamste]

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.

Why would they use quicken over other things? They could make a bunch unavoidable level 1 daze spells that causes the opponent to fall over and can hit multiple targets. It can also make the dc to resist spells very hard even with low level spells or make them do a lot of damage if you care about that.

[Killer Angel]

Sacred Geometry is needlessly and stupidly complicated... and totally overpowered.
Sadly, from now on, I'll be condemned to see it in so many TO builds that my brain hurts...

[Snowbluff]

You rang?

These feats are hilarious. Arithmancy would be pretty quick if you did the math ahead of time, but Sacred Geometry... I think I have a new favorite feat. It's just absurd on so many levels. It might be cool if it were a once per day thing-- then it becomes a sort of last-ditch power option that the whole table can get in on. But every turn... eesh.

I mean, it's exploitable. Yay. With the way skills work, there's probably no reason not to take this feat.

Looking at the fluff, it sounds like you're telling the universe that 1 does, in fact, equal 3, through fallacious misuse of calculus. Thanks, math.

[CommandTortoise]

I just love how you get more power by doing math outside the game. Makes me think we'll end up sending in cereal box tops to gain a couple of GP ingame.

Think there'll be a melee version of it? For every point of Acrobatics you can attempt one shot with a basketball and deal one extra point of damage for every 3 shots that score. Usable Dex mod times per day, obviously. I think that's around the right balance point.

[Squirrel_Dude]

Someone on the Paizo boards posted this late last night.

Calculating Mind

It's a feat chain. Because of course it is, this is Pathfinder after all.

[Hamste]

Someone on the Paizo boards posted this late last night.

Calculating Mind

It's a feat chain. Because of course it is, this is Pathfinder after all.

Eh, once you have enough points in knowledge (engineering) using d8 instead of d6 won't help much.

[Squirrel_Dude]

Eh, once you have enough points in knowledge (engineering) using d8 instead of d6 won't help much.

I'm complaining less about the power increase than Paizo's love for feat chains that have one gem with lots of garbage attached to them.

[Snowbluff]

I'm complaining less about the power increase than Paizo's love for feat chains that have one gem with lots of garbage attached to them.

Hush, hush.

Welcome to Pathfinder.

We need a garbage OP mundane feat now. I feel too dirty in the brain, so I need sword dirt. I just got the idea to have a Druid/Synthesist/BeastmorphVivisectionist/ArcherCleric party, and I'm caster'd out.

[Hamste]

I'm complaining less about the power increase than Paizo's love for feat chains that have one gem with lots of garbage attached to them.

Yeah but in this case the garbage is attached to the end so it really doesn't matter, no one has to take it to get to the feat they want.

[Gemini476]

This feat is pretty great in how it requires the player of the crazy math wizard to act as a crazy math wizard, but it's also pretty crazy in how long time it would take once you get past low levels.

I can maybe see it working for Sorcerers, since they need two turns to cast the spells and can math it out in between, but for wizards? Sheesh. I'd personally adjust the casting time to take as many turns as are needed for the player to figure out the puzzle, but I doubt that would be a popular solution. Especially since wasting three turns of actions for a failed spell would be pretty terrible.

What on earth were the designers thinking of when they made the feat?

[Psyren]

Isn't there still a practical limit on how much you can go nuts with this?

"You can apply any number of metamagic effects to a single spell, provided you are able to cast spells of the modified spell's effective spell level."

So you can't, say, try to quicken all your spells at 2nd level, because you need to be able to cast 4th-level spells before you can use quicken, and you can't attempt to Enlarge + Empower + Maximize all your spells until you can cast 6ths etc. (And even when you can do the former, you can only try to autoquicken cantrips until you can cast 5ths, at which point you can try to autoquicken your 1sts etc.)

[DarkSonic1337]

It may be free metamagic up to your normal casting cap, but it is still FREE METAMAGIC!

Throw on extend to everything, throw dazing on all of your damage over time spells, Persistent Spell all those spells 2 below your highest to make saving against them absurdly difficult, ect. What this feat essentially does is turn your low level spells into effects closer to your higher level spells (though obviously not QUITE as good, which is the reason we don't really like to pay full price for most metamagics anyway).

[Erik Vale]

Some have pointed out apps to do it quickly, but I have a better point.
Use apps to do it, then record the results, write them down on a peice of paper like a cheat sheet. Then you can just reference which rolls work and which ones wont.


And it was used successfully in a game 13/14 times. Let that sink in a moment. Assuming quicken spell was used so as to not boost the time [unless you play sorcerer, in which case it's no different to normal], that's a 7% ASF, that you can turn on and off at whim, in order to boost your spells by ludicrous amounts.

Edit: Is there a metamagic combination that makes cantrips into credible threats though?

Final Edit: Maybe. Dazing Highten Acid Splash. Apply the two -1 metamagic adjustment traits [there could be more] and pump your DCs. You're now throwing around 1d3 acid damage orbs of high DC vs Daze, which prevents the enemy from fighting back, only works if you allow hieghtens level adjustment to be nullified while letting it counting as actually being of higher level to count for Dazing. It allows a wizard to 1 on 1 cherry tap things [I killed you, with a cantrip!].

[Yanisa]

Some have pointed out apps to do it quickly, but I have a better point.
Use apps to do it, then record the results, write them down on a peice of paper like a cheat sheet. Then you can just reference which rolls work and which ones wont.

I tried to convince someone I knew to make a program to calculate this, but he convinced me that this feat isn't to hard to use in practice. Especially when you remember certain key calculations to get close to the number you want and if you have too many dice just sort them in such a way they negate each other.

For example, for level 9th spell the key calculation is 4*5*5=100. Then you just need to get a 3, 5 or 9. from the rest of the dice.

So I start to feel this might be playable at the table, in real life, without taking much of the game time. Especially if you start a low level character, then you can fumble with 2 dice and 3 numbers, slowly working your way up each level, learning the key calculation and getting a feel for sorting dice. The numbers and calculation sound daunting, but it might be a lot less work then people think. I seriously want to try to play this, to see how right I am, but I don't really have a wizard lined up as my next character. (And then there is the issue of overpoweredness once you master math...)

[Kalaska'Agathas]

Arithmancy seems like a lot of work (which should honestly just be done before you get to playing - as Thanatosia pointed out, spells don't randomly change names) for the ability to turn a swift action into a +1 CL.

Sacred Geometry, on the other hand...

That feat is pretty spectacular. Practically getting two metamagic for the price of one feat is pretty awesome on its own (I say practically because it seems you can only use them when you're using Sacred Geometry (though since there's no limit on how many times you can use it per day, the real limit seems to be the "You cannot cast a spell at a level higher than your normal casting cap." thing)). Combine that with free spontaneous metamagic, with the only drawbacks being increased casting time (some of the time) and it being limited to your normal casting cap, however? That's not like icing on the cake - that's icing on the cake plus a whole 'nother cake complete with icing and ice cream to go with it.

I mean, seriously, why would you take one of those more situational metamagics when you could nab the feat you want, plus another one, by taking Sacred Geometry? Not to mention the fact that it looks like you could ignore any prereqs for the metamagics you choose for Sacred Geometry (the feat says "select two metamagic feats you do not yet have," not "select two metamagic feats you do not yet have but meet the prerequisites for." after all). Spectacularly good. Stupidly good, even. Why wouldn't you take this?

Oh, yeah, there's some basic arithmetic involved.

Which shouldn't stop you. Yeah, it can slow things down a bit, but really, not as much as you might think. Per Yanisa:

For example, for level 9th spell the key calculation is 4*5*5=100. Then you just need to get a 3, 5 or 9. from the rest of the dice.

Which basically looks like this:

Geometrician: "I'm going to cast a spell with Sacred Geometry, and an effective spell level of nine! I have seventeen ranks in Knowledge (Engineering) so I roll 17d6!"
Geometrician: rolls dice
Geometrician: "I got a pair of 5s and a 4 here, so I'll multiply those together to get one hundred! Now I need to a get one, a three, or a seven, and get all of my other dice to negate each other, or produce ones, which I can then multiply my previous sum by to get my desired number...okay, I'll take one of my 4s and these two 1s and a 2, which make 0 (since 4-(2+1+1)=0), and these two 6s make another zero (6-6=0), and these two 4s (4-4=0), and these two 3s and this 6 (6-(3+3)=0), and these two 1s (1-1=0), and that leaves me with this 3 which added to my (5*5*4) from before equals one hundred three, one of my prime constants!"

Nota Bene: It took me 18 seconds to do the above calculation, no joke. Just pair off or otherwise combine the dice in front of you, and bam, there you have it.

So yeah, you slow the game down a little bit (or not at all, if you're allowed to pre-roll) and have a small chance of failure, but in the end, get free metamagic, spontaneous metamagic, and two free metamagic feats in one fell swoop. Not quite Leadership, but still quite powerful.

[3WhiteFox3]

Isn't there still a practical limit on how much you can go nuts with this?

"You can apply any number of metamagic effects to a single spell, provided you are able to cast spells of the modified spell's effective spell level."

So you can't, say, try to quicken all your spells at 2nd level, because you need to be able to cast 4th-level spells before you can use quicken, and you can't attempt to Enlarge + Empower + Maximize all your spells until you can cast 6ths etc. (And even when you can do the former, you can only try to autoquicken cantrips until you can cast 5ths, at which point you can try to autoquicken your 1sts etc.)

1. As above it's still free metamagic.
2. You can take SG multiple times with each SG being equivalent to two metamagic feats.
3. You can use metamagic feats without requiring prerequisites.
4. Spontaneous Metamagic

I've run through about a dozen attempts and finding a solution has been trivial each time, taking at most five minutes. My main concern is trying to find out if a roll even has the possibility of success.

On the plus side, this actually opens up several builds that I'd been wanting to try out. On the minus side, it's cheesy and will probably not be open at most tables (if not for balance reasons, then because people will probably use it without a good grasp on doing the math quickly.

[caimbuel]

Want some tips, save odd dice rolls for the end as all final numbers are odd. And odd * even is even, even * even is even, so you need to save atleast 1 odd to make the final number odd. The other feat to make it d8's instead of 6'ss is a waste, plain and simple, if your knowledge in engineering is capped you should have 95%ish chance per the couple hundred rolls we have done. This from someone who does calculus in his head. And my players are math geek/roleplay nerds.

[Squirrel_Dude]

For those who were wondering, Yes, people have already written scripts to do the Sacred Geometry math for you. Arithmancy, too. Both are in Python.

Here is a free, in browser Python interpreter.


Oh, and the metamagic feat that no one has brought up yet in relation to this feat. Dazing, Persistent, Empowered, and Extend are all nice, but don't forget Echoing Spell.

[nedz]

These feats are just Countdown for 3.5.

I don't like them because they are completely metagamey, also some players would find them easy to use — other players, not so much.

[AnonymousPepper]

So my good friend Al wrote up a little program to have a look at this... and after setting it to do 1000 rolls for every combination of skill ranks and spell levels, it turns out that 12 ranks in Knowledge (Engineering), no Calculating Mind necessary, the chance of coming out with a valid solution is 100% for every effective spell level.

All credit to GitP user alcarithemad for this one.

Of course, the primes can be extrapolated further for higher spell levels, in the case of getting higher-level spell slots. Not sure what the required ranks would be for those.

[Necroticplague]

Hmm....When you roll dice, do you have to use all the results? it seems like it gets a fair bit less ridiculously hard if you can just select which dice to use.

[AnonymousPepper]

Hmm....When you roll dice, do you have to use all the results? it seems like it gets a fair bit less ridiculously hard if you can just select which dice to use.

Yes, it's all the dice.

[alcarithemad]

Yes, it's all the dice.

And it doesn't hurt your ability to succeed the rolls at all.

Here's the source for sd.af/geo/: https://github.com/AlcariTheMad/geo

[AnonymousPepper]

And it doesn't hurt your ability to succeed the rolls at all.

Here's the source for sd.af/geo/: https://github.com/AlcariTheMad/geo

Showoff.

[Ravingdork]

It seems imperfect. I tried a level 2 spell with 3 ranks and it worked. I tried it with Calculating Mind and it failed.

Seeing as Calculating Mind still lets you use d6s, the latter attempt should have succeeded as well.

[Squirrel_Dude]

Notes on using the program:
1. I wish that the program displayed the dice results even it failed to find the appropriate result.
2. Calculating Mind doesn't replace all the d6s with d8s. It's a player choice to how many d8s or d6s that you can use, but that isn't represented in the program.

[Killer Angel]

If the typical player needs a script to see the effects of a certain feat, then that feat is badly written.

[alcarithemad]

Notes on using the program:
1. I wish that the program displayed the dice results even it failed to find the appropriate result.
2. Calculating Mind doesn't replace all the d6s with d8s. It's a player choice to how many d8s or d6s that you can use, but that isn't represented in the program.

1: Sure, done.
2: Calculating mind is so useless I didn't see the point of allowing mixing.

This takes a pretty simplistic approach to solving it, so for low ranks you may be able to find solutions where it fails.

[Ravingdork]

This takes a pretty simplistic approach to solving it, so for low ranks you may be able to find solutions where it fails.

So it isn't mathematically perfect then? Doesn't that defeat the purpose of automating it in the first place?