Handling Permanency

[Melcar]

Hellow fellow scribes...


So, I'm trying to write some general guidelines for use of the permanency spell, and I want to know what people allow and how people handle this spell. The thing is, that I want to use the spell to create more options for spells being turned permanent, but I would like to know how people handle this and what experience people have with maybe expanding the list of permanent options!

So any comments or advice is much appreciated!


Thanks!

[Lapak]

I mean, it's only two hours, so permanent might be overstating it, but...

[Melcar]

I mean, it's only two hours, so permanent might be overstating it, but...

HA HA... that cracked me up!

[heavyfuel]

I generally allow most persistable spells to be made Permanent and determine the XP cost on the fly.

I mean, it's only two hours, so permanent might be overstating it, but...

That was great, even if it took me a while

[Fizban]

The list of Permanency-capable spells is extremely short and specific. I've broken them down into categories and checked for other spells that meet those categories and. . .they've pretty much got them all on there. So if you want to allow more Permanency effects, you're sailing into uncharted waters.

I have no suggestions other than: check the xp cost for the spell against the Permanency formula (organize the existing spells by level and you'll see it), and if the xp cost doesn't seem high enough for what they'd get, then that spell cannot be Permanency'd.

[Florian]

A tale of two tragic feats: Once, we had some very cute, maybe a little shy feats called Persist and Devine Meta Magic. Once they met, madness engulfed the world, formerly friendly gaming groups broke apart in anger and form discussion were forever poisoned....

In short: Leave well be. If you really want to permanency something, craft a continuous item based on it. Now lookee ´ere, most players don't want to go with the official prices, way too expensive (yada yada), let's see if it can be done via Permanency or Persistent instead.....

[Lapak]

More seriously, if you're wanting to wander into house-rules territory to expand the list, I've tossed the idea around in my head to allow players to create a Permanent effect out of any spell measured in rounds, minutes or hours by permanently dedicating two spell slots to it (similar to the how the Archmage prestige class burns spell slots on its class powers) - one slot of whatever level the spell is they're making Permanent, and one spell slot of fifth level or higher for the Permanency. On the one hand, there are a bunch of spells that people would make permanent; on the other, two spell slots is not nothing and adds up fast if you make a bunch of spells Permanent.

Never having actually put it into play, I'm not sure if this would be 'so good it's broken' or 'so terrible no one would take it.' And you'd have to figure out how they re-establish such a spell after it's been discharged or dispelled - spending 10 minutes per spell level or work to re-establish it, or it automatically comes back up the next time they prepare spells, or whatever. But I'm throwing the idea out there.

[noob]

A tale of two tragic feats: Once, we had some very cute, maybe a little shy feats called Persist and Devine Meta Magic. Once they met, madness engulfed the world, formerly friendly gaming groups broke apart in anger and form discussion were forever poisoned....

In short: Leave well be. If you really want to permanency something, craft a continuous item based on it. Now lookee ´ere, most players don't want to go with the official prices, way too expensive (yada yada), let's see if it can be done via Permanency or Persistent instead.....

Persist is broken with many other tricks too.
An illuminan can get free persist, an incantatrixe can get free persists too.
Heck even an ultimate magus or a single classed bard can get free persists.
The problem is not the ways to get metamagics easier.
The problem is persist spell.
with free metamagics without persist you can just get a lot of firepower or cast two spells per turn but with persist it breaks down hard because you now get stuff like "all day long I am going to deal 160d6 damage as free actions while being in an antimagic zone and under the shape of an immortal creature"

[Melcar]

Thank you for those answers...

My thoughts was, that I did not see why some could be permanenced and some not. To me there did not seem to be a certain formula for determining which can and which cannot. My thought was then that the spell listed was simply examples, and that pretty much all spells that fit within these examples could be made permanent.

An example is Detect Magic... why not have all detect spell on it. They are inherently similar and so if one detect spell can be permanent, logic would suggest the other Detect spell being permanable too.

Another example is: Invisibility... To me, it would make sense that two inherently similar spells could be made permanent. Now, I'm not blind to the very potent advantage this would give... a whole team of bandits with permanent greater invisibility and see invisibility would be quite annoying...

The spell also only mentions two different wall spells and I again assume all Wall of XXX spell can be made permanent!


Now for one to add spells to the list of permanable spells, I would think that researching it as a new spell would be appropriate...

That was a few things... Comments?

[Fizban]

Permanency is not based on the even application of some rule to the written mechanics of a spell. It's a list of things the DM is willing to allow you to make permanent, mostly because they want to justify NPCs being able to make them permanent in an edition where NPCs are created almost exactly like PCs. That's it.

Link to previous thread here, where I broke down the categories. You check what spells are on the Permanency list vs the rest of the spells in the PHB and look for what's missing and why. If you want to discuss, remember that's an old thread so you'll want to respond here. I can spoiler it but nested spoiler quotes are more annoying to read.

Spoiler: quote self

Show

For example, should it only be harmless spells with a duration of hours/level or longer? Are there any exceptions to that, and if so do they follow a pattern?

All you gotta do for that is look at the spells and find the pattern- that also means looking at the 3.0 list and seeing what changed.

Self only: basic magical senses. Read/Detect Magic, Arcane Sight, Darkvision, See Invisibility, Comprehend Languages and Tongues. 3.0 Didn't have Arcane Sight, so you can see it was brought in as an extension of Detect Magic, but Analyze Dweomer isn't on either list. Darkvision is usually given out all but free as a racial ability, while See Invisibility is a very general effect- it can also be noted that Sor/Wiz does not have Spot/Listen, making permanent See Invis a very specific counter that doesn't help with serious stealth creatures that have the skills. No True Seeing.

Other creatures: Enlarge/Reduce Person, Magic Fang/Greater and Resistance. I'm not sure what compelled them to add Telepathic Bond, but it's the highest level of the spells, and Greater Magic Fang is really just an extension of the basic version. 3.0 didn't actually have Reduce on there either, or GMF, so we can see that they decided that greater version was worthwhile, and also both Enlarge and Reduce as a set.

Areas and locations, now this is where it gets interesting. There's no flat physical effects, terrain alterations or transmutations, it's all energy, wards, and creep.

-Creep: Stinking Cloud, Solid Fog, and Web are the most "physical," all of which can be pushed through or physically removed. Note the conspicuous absence of higher level Acid Fog or Incendiary Cloud.

-Manifestations of energy: Dancing Lights, Ghost Sound, Gust of Wind, Invisibility, Wall of Fire, Wall of Force, Prismatic Wall, Prismatic Sphere. Note that Wall of Ice is conspicuously absent, despite being the same level and having far fewer implications than Wall of Fire, why is this?

-Wards/symbols: Alarm, Magic Mouth, Symbol of X, Mage's Private Sanctum. Note the conspicuous absence of Dimensional Lock, despite them coming from the same 3.0 source, as well as the lack of Guards and Wards. Just permanent symbols, sound/talking program/trap, and creature detection trap. No Explosive Runes, Fire Traps, or Sepia Snake Sigils, and it can also be noted that Symbol was originally one spell with different options.

-Object manipulation: Animate Objects, Invisibility, and Shrink Item, with Animate Objects not being present in 3.0. I'm pretty sure that was added simply because there was no way to actually create animated objects, while permanently invisible and shrinkable objects are things that pop up in fantasy from time to time. There's no Magic Weapon, no Heat Metal, Levitate, or hardly much else though, so clearly this is a very limited category.

-"Because I said so": That all leaves Phase Door and Teleportation Circle. The former being an exceedingly good escape route/hidden passage for the owner, and the latter being both an official core one-way portal (for the same plane) and explicitly set up as the "you don't even know you were teleported" trap for making impossible mazes. This category could also include Prismatic Sphere, as it lets the caster simply 5' step into their own personal safety bubble, great for giving a high level caster advantages in their base.


So what spells are conspicuously absent? The missing creep spells are higher level and deal damage to those passing through, more weapons than a delaying tactic. The missing "manifestation of energy" spell that gets me is Wall of Ice: it deals damage, but so does Wall of fire- but Wall of Ice also impedes movement with it's own physical hp, worse than the creep spells that aren't allowed to damage people.

You can have what might be called environmental energy with Gust of Wind, Dancing Lights, and Ghost Sound, as well as the harmless but unbreakable Wall of Force, often featured as a building material in high level dungeons, and Prismatic Walls, a "more threatening" unbeatable wall with a gimmick also featured in high level dungeons.

There are specific traps you can make permanent, basically alarms, talking, and the high level Symbol trap which has a bunch of specific mechanics, but none of the one and done low-level traps. Symbol must explicitly be visible to function.

You're allowed to permanently shutter the curtains against divination, but not stop teleportation- that remains the sole domain of the clerical Forbiddance spell.

You're allowed to hide, shrink, or animate objects, but not make them better weapons or do anything outside of themselves.

You're allowed to make portals that can move people without their noticing.


What's the theme? Stuff that high level bad guys can use to harass the PCs and be "high level wizards," without "unfairly" causing them a bunch of damage on the way. Let them teleport in, but not scry the bad guy's plans. Let the bad guy see and understand them without wasting spells buffing, but not give him a bunch of free power buffs. Set up "magical terrain" that can be combined with minions but is only dangerous if they jump into it, traps that they can either see literally written on the wall or which merely move them around.

Edit: and to be clear, duration is not really a factor. There are spells with durations of rounds and even 1 round in there (Gust of Wind is actually impossible to Permanency thanks to the 2 round casting time), in addition to minutes or concentration or until discharged. Permanency is not about paying xp to stop cycling your extended long duration buffs.

In addition, Permanency is currently only a Wiz/Sor spell. Would it be game breaking to give it to Clerics and Druids at the same spell level? I cant see why it would, but you never can tell.

Aside from Magic Fang and Animate Objects, there aren't any permanent-able spells that are divine only. Divine casters have their own permanent effects: Hallow, Forbiddence, and Glyph of Warding for their traps. They don't have the "arcane science/boss tech" prerogative drawn from the "arcane magic does anything I want" theme.

There's one missing bit: Savage Species, as mentioned, has more permanent-able spells. These. . . are pretty clearly not written by someone who was paying attention. It's basically a lit of all the buffs in the book. Some of them can be justified: Blindisght is strictly better than See Invis, but at least it's similar, same with Scent (which is Sor/Wiz 2 in that book), and Low-Light Vision is spot-on, Greater/Superior Resistance are higher level versions of Resistance, Bridge of Sound and Illusory Pit are harmless terrain/traps.

But the rest are just straight power: Air Breathing has no allowed Water Breathing analogue from the PHB; Extend Tentacles, Fins to Feet, Cloud Wings, Fuse Arms, Girallon's Blessing, Rapid Burrowing, Weapon of Energy, and Wings of the Sea are just buffs (and Wall of Limbs is a physical wall with damage). The best that can be said is playing them off as mad science using permanency to make monsters, but it's a blatant pile of buffs that laughts at the PHB permanency list. They have Improved Enlarge on there when it isn't even an upgrade- it's a longer duration version of the 1st level effect, which has no reason to be made permanent, but it's on the list because Enlarge is on the list and they just slapped it on there.

So back to putting Permanency on the Cleric and Druid lists: well they only have a couple spells that even appear on the list, so it's hardly going to affect anything. Making a bunch of their spells permanent-able is the risk, and since you're the one who decides what game-breaking is, that's up to you.

-Edit: was skimming back through Tome and Blood and found more missing/official 3.0 permanencies. Enhance and Fortify Familiar, Familiar Pocket, Dispelling Screen, Spiritwall, and Dimensional Lock. So it's real odd they kept Arcane Sight and Private Sanctum but not Dim Lock. I was quite gratified to see Dispelling Screen and Spiritwall right after I'd put them on my own shortlist for expanding permanency.

[ezekielraiden]

As a general rule, I'd treat it like crafting a magic item, except that it has the extra cost of spending research time to figure out how to craft it. E.g. making permanent versions of any of the attribute-enhancement-bonus spells (bears endurance etc.) would be like developing a brand-new ioun stone, that can't be captured, but which is more vulnerable to dispel attempts (unless you make the common house-rule that permanent spell effects are merely suppressed the same way magic items are).

So my process would be:
1. Player must defend the application. The presumption is against extending permanency, so their case needs to be stronger than the case for maintaining the status quo. If they can make a good case, the process can continue; if not, that's fine, no penalties but they won't get this effect. Having the rule open for people to make use of is dependent on them accepting a final ruling. The DM should make every effort to work it out, but the player needs to be prepared from the outset for the possibility (perhaps even the strong possibility) of a "no" ruling.
2. Player must work with DM to determine the cost of actually doing this application of permanency. It should be comparable to either an already-established use, or scaled up in cost from a comparable item's effect (because it is slotless, always-on, etc.)
3. The character must spend time researching how this is to be done. This can be by paying gold and spending non-adventuring time researching, by digging up lost/forgotten lore, or by petitioning knowledgeable outsiders, but it needs to require meaningful effort, not just happen overnight. Probably paying 10%-25% of the final cost in gp, and researching for a number of days equal to the final gp cost/1000, or something. This will naturally be a campaign-specific thing, and thus one game's "meaningful cost" is another game's "horribly exploitable mess."

[ShurikVch]

Note: applicable spells already aren't limited with the list in the Permanency itself; Permanency Handbook have much more complete list of (RAW-legal) permanency-compatible spells; also, Book of Vile Darkness says it's possible to permanency Demon Wings (but didn't elaborated necessary CL or XP cost)

[Fizban]

There's a few on there I hadn't addressed, but they all fit the same bill: a number of 4th and lower sense spells from XPH and Races of the Dragon, some more energy or energy-esque walls, some more invisible/durable object stuff from Dragon Mag, a non-damaging alarm/trap from PgtF, and a mild physical alteration from BoED. The only standout (aside from repeating all the Savage Species problems) is BoED listing Silvered Weapon. Whereas I see Savage Species as simply having put every buff in the book on their Permanency list, BoED is more excusable.

Silvered Claws is much like Magic Fang, and thus seems appropriate, and then someone put the same note on Silvered Weapon because the two spells were almost the same- I wouldn't be surprised if Silvered Weapon was added just because someone thought it was weird to have an animal (companion, druid) version without a weapon (paladin) version, so they just made a weapon conversion of it.

Handy link though, bookmarked.

[Segev]

It's been mentioned, but bears repeating, that if you want a continuous/permanent effect, crafting magic items is the way to go most of the time. Honestly, I wouldn't waste the XP on permanency for even my generic perception buffs, because the magic item for them is more reliable and often cheaper. This is especially problematic because of dispel magic interactions. A spell whose duration has been rendered permanent at the cost of XP is still just gone when dispelled. A magic item that grants the spell effect, on the other hand, is merely suppressed for 1d4 rounds. Inconvenient and even dangerous, but not a permanent loss of something paid for at fairly great expense.


In short, I think permanency needs rethinking on a fundamental level, or magic item creation does. And since redoing magic item creation is a far more involved process....

[Melcar]

Note: applicable spells already aren't limited with the list in the Permanency itself; Permanency Handbook have much more complete list of (RAW-legal) permanency-compatible spells; also, Book of Vile Darkness says it's possible to permanency Demon Wings (but didn't elaborated necessary CL or XP cost)

Thats a very useful link indeed!

It's been mentioned, but bears repeating, that if you want a continuous/permanent effect, crafting magic items is the way to go most of the time. Honestly, I wouldn't waste the XP on permanency for even my generic perception buffs, because the magic item for them is more reliable and often cheaper. This is especially problematic because of dispel magic interactions. A spell whose duration has been rendered permanent at the cost of XP is still just gone when dispelled. A magic item that grants the spell effect, on the other hand, is merely suppressed for 1d4 rounds. Inconvenient and even dangerous, but not a permanent loss of something paid for at fairly great expense.


In short, I think permanency needs rethinking on a fundamental level, or magic item creation does. And since redoing magic item creation is a far more involved process....

Well, remember that it can only be dispelled by someone of a higher caster level, than the one casting the permanence, at the time of casting! That does help!

[ShurikVch]

It's been mentioned, but bears repeating, that if you want a continuous/permanent effect, crafting magic items is the way to go most of the time. Honestly, I wouldn't waste the XP on permanency for even my generic perception buffs, because the magic item for them is more reliable and often cheaper. This is especially problematic because of dispel magic interactions. A spell whose duration has been rendered permanent at the cost of XP is still just gone when dispelled. A magic item that grants the spell effect, on the other hand, is merely suppressed for 1d4 rounds. Inconvenient and even dangerous, but not a permanent loss of something paid for at fairly great expense.


In short, I think permanency needs rethinking on a fundamental level, or magic item creation does. And since redoing magic item creation is a far more involved process....

On the other hand, magical items are prone to being stolen, sundered, destroyed by unfortunate AoE, eaten by a Rust Monster or Spellgaunt
Also, in a "shipwreck survivor"-type scenario, you're much more likely to start without your items than permanency-affected buffs
And Disjunction will nuke both items and spells indiscriminately, so no difference there

EDIT:
Also, if both permanency and the spells affected by it are, actually, effects of (Su) abilities, it wouldn't be affected by Dispel spell line

[Melcar]

And Disjunction will nuke both items and spells indiscriminately, so no difference there

The way I read it, and AFAIR, even disjunction will have to be cast by someone of a higher caster level than the permanent spell at the time of casting... Thus, a level 17 wizard casting disjunction wont just strip a level 20 of his permanent spells...

[Segev]

The trouble with "oh, only if they're higher level than you were when you cast permanency" is that you're going to have to re-pay for it every level to keep "current," and even then, you're hoping your foes aren't boss-types who out-level the party. The longer it's been since you cast your permanent spell, the more likely it is that even a mook-wizard compared to you can successfully dispel it.

[Melcar]

The trouble with "oh, only if they're higher level than you were when you cast permanency" is that you're going to have to re-pay for it every level to keep "current," and even then, you're hoping your foes aren't boss-types who out-level the party. The longer it's been since you cast your permanent spell, the more likely it is that even a mook-wizard compared to you can successfully dispel it.

That is true, but the damage or offset will be determined more from what kind of campaign and level of characters, than anything else is my experience. Take my level 32 wizard... not too many in FR, who will be dispelling that... And the ones who can, well they are the ones I try to avoid. But I do agree, that it can become very very expensive in exp very quickly!

[Segev]

That is true, but the damage or offset will be determined more from what kind of campaign and level of characters, than anything else is my experience. Take my level 32 wizard... not too many in FR, who will be dispelling that... And the ones who can, well they are the ones I try to avoid. But I do agree, that it can become very very expensive in exp very quickly!

Yeah. And are you really not casting permanency until level 32? Then you didn't have those spells permanent for most of your adventuring career.

[Melcar]

Yeah. And are you really not casting permanency until level 32? Then you didn't have those spells permanent for most of your adventuring career.

The point was more on just how one would - if at all - go about expanding the list of spells that are possible to make permanent... and my example to illustrate the "I think the utility of Permanency is very dependent on the specific nature of the campaign"


If we however take our departure in my own mage, as an example, then yes I have actually not had any spell permanent at any time, but I have been forced to memorize and cast then often, thus taking up valuable space that could have been used for "better" spells... So that was my thought - lest not have to spend valuable spell slots on lesser utility spells. I do however think, you bring up some good point about the utility of permanency. Which, actually fit perfect for my initial question... namely how to expand the list - if at all - to increase the utility...