The Wish and the word as the BBEG in crazytown.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Feb 19, 2015 9:08 pm

name_here wrote:Well, I left that part out because I don't think it's actually relevant. Yes, it tells you how the cost is assigned, but it doesn't say anything whatsoever about what items you can do it with. It doesn't even put in an XP cap that would allow you to declare that it means any item below that cap, like it does with nonmagical items.

It tells you precisely that the thing you're underlining as being a clearly more powerful option than the other things on the list is also listed as having a specifically higher cost. There is no cap, just increasing costs.

Lots of things are uncapped and having likewise uncapped costs. Epic items, for example, have no bonus cap, just stupidly titanic costs for bonuses that are very large. The part where that goes south is the thing where there is a second rule that lets you simply not pay the cost.

This is why making the Wish argument that an at-will 9th level spell is within the guidelines is a strong argument, while the sarrukh argument that an at-will 9th level spell is a weak argument. Wish has a calculable costs for an at-will 9th level spell. It's a very large number, but it exists. That means it isn't outside the guidelines. Almost anything you'd want to do with Manipulate Form is outside the guidelines, because there aren't any guidelines to discuss.

-Username17

RadiantPhoenix · Post by **RadiantPhoenix** » Thu Feb 19, 2015 9:58 pm

A comparison of Pun-Pun and The Wish:


Round	The Wish	Pun-Pun
1	"I summon Pazuzu"	"So do I"
2	"I wish for a Ring of Infinite Wishes"	"Wait, you can do that? Fine, I do too."
3	"I wish for a Belt of Magnificence +Graham's Number. Pre-donned, please."	"I wish to become a Sarrukh."
4	"I use my nigh-infinite wisdom to become aware of my opponent, then win initiative with my nigh-infinite dexterity, and use my nigh-infinite intelligence to make an impossibly perfect plan to defeat my opponent, probably involving using utilizing my nigh-infinite charisma to convince him to do something stupid."	"Wait, what?"

Summary: "modern" Pun-Pun plans have you become The Wish before you start using Manipulate Form at all.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Feb 19, 2015 10:19 pm

I think it's very telling that when Pun Pun's author was asked to fight The Wish and The Word, he said that he'd start by using unlimited Spell Resistance from a Golem to block The Word's Word, and then laugh at how clever he was. Note: The Word has the ability to cast killing words that do not check SR at all, which means that it was game over and TW&TW won a 1 round by KO.

The people who do Pun Pun crap are very good at finding obscure crap, but not actually good at understanding any of it. It's all spaghetti code and no one knows how any of it works. People submit shit into the great Pun Pun bullshit engine, and then it just gets repeated over and over again without anyone checking the primary sources.

It's like JaronK's class tiers, only way beyond that. It's not just a matter of the classes being ranked by what crazy bullshit one person happens to think each class deserves to get away with. It's an open source project that compiles itself. It's not even supposed to operate at a table, so the fact that there's no real textual support for much of anything in there is pretty much irrelevant. It just keeps chugging along adding more junk DNA.

-Username17

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Thu Feb 19, 2015 10:23 pm

Thing-Doer v1 (ex): Do a thing. Things you might do include:
*a backflip.
*a sick dance move.
*jazz hands.

Thing-Doer v2 (ex): Do a thing. Pay HP for the thing you did equal to 5*[(the spell level of a comparable spell)^2].

Neither of those abilities says the things you can do include "stop time." Nonetheless, because context actually does change the meaning of little bits of text, it is fairly obvious that someone claiming the latter can be used to stop time is on a much more solid footing than the former.

It is basically impossible to resolve what manipulate form actually does. It provides examples (which are all bullshit), and provides exactly zero guidelines for intrapolating within those examples (what are the value of those abilities? What other abilities might have values within that range?) or extrapolating outside of those examples (how far above those values can I go? What other abilities might have values within that range?). It is an incomplete ability. Someone realized what they were doing was difficult and just stopped writing halfway through and finishing the ability is left as an exercise to the reader.

Wish, on the other hand, provides guidelines for calculating the cost of an effect and those costs scale up as high as you need to them. In the absence of a statement to the effect otherwise, it actually is reasonable to assume that is because there are no limits other than what you can afford to pay and getting a 100% discount breaks the ability as a result.

schpeelah · Post by **schpeelah** » Thu Feb 19, 2015 10:49 pm

I think part of the reason why people want to believe in Manipulate Form is that they can't accept how unbelievably bullshit it actually is. Sarrukhs are supposed to be a progenitor race responsible for all the reptilian races in their setting. By the backstory, dragons have breath weapons because some sarrukh at some point enlarged some lizards and granted them a breath weapon. So it's easy to assume their ability to grant abilities is actually extremely powerful.

souran · Post by **souran** » Thu Feb 19, 2015 11:18 pm

I am not as badass at charop as other here, especially Frank but isn't the answer to name_here a lot simpler than what Frank posted?

A ring of 3 wishes is an item that exists, it has a gold cost. The wish spell lets you create or add properties to an item for X cost. You can add castings of wish to an item using wish spells for X cost The actual "Char Op" portion is where this cost gets dumped on some efreeti or jinn or something that you don't care about (who then doesn't pay it either because its innate).

Honestly, for how powerful it is the whole thing exists becasue the authors of the core rulebook didn't actually read 1001 arabian nights and forgot that wishing for more wishes needs to be against the rules of wishing because otherwise things get stupid quick.

Also, why wouldn't the Word blasphme the wish to tiny little bits, take his wishing ring and then give the ring to his own simulacra? This would seem to allow him to still do the big trick (blaspheme/holy word things into chunky salsa then wish away the mess) in one turn but he wouldn't have to give one single solitary fuck what another living creature thought.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Thu Feb 19, 2015 11:26 pm

souran wrote:Also, why wouldn't the Word blasphme the wish to tiny little bits, take his wishing ring and then give the ring to his own simulacra? This would seem to allow him to still do the big trick (blaspheme/holy word things into chunky salsa then wish away the mess) in one turn but he wouldn't have to give one single solitary fuck what another living creature thought.

They are brothers. If I had real ultimate power and the ability to share it, I would share it with my brother.

The only reason there are two of them is because the challenge they were created for specified two characters. Either one can completely do the other's trick, because one of them has a Ring of Wish which can wish a Thoughtbottle and a Wraith (or a Staff of Blashpemy at CL 9999999 and a +9999999999999999 item to UMD), and the other has the ability to steal a wish from a Gate Djinni and can therefore wish up a Ring of Wishes.

The fun part is that one of them has the most complex source diving bullshit in the game going on to get it's trick, and the other one has an arguably even more powerful trick that requires a DMG, a MM, and a PHB.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Thu Feb 19, 2015 11:36 pm

Okay, look, here's the entire entry

It specifics that it can grant minor physical changes, it can also grant major physical changes, it can also adjust ability scores, and it can also grant extraordinary, spell-like, or supernatural abilities. It then lists example physical changes and provides no examples for abilities. So it does four things and provides example uses for two of them and bounds for the third and we are discussing the fourth. And the first two categories are explicitly not equally powerful so there is no reason to declare that the fourth must be equally powerful to the second.

Now, it should be noted that there actually is an explicit limitation on it, namely that it doesn't work on the only race that is supposed to have it! So that ability score loop that Frank mentioned with two sarrukh? Doesn't work. Pun-Pun uses shenanigans to enable that by getting it onto a pair of creatures that are not sarrukh.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Thu Feb 19, 2015 11:38 pm

I'd also love to know why the fucking fuck we're discussing fucking Pun-Pun on the Gaming Den. Was there a vote that we should emulate 2005 WotC boards?

RadiantPhoenix · Post by **RadiantPhoenix** » Thu Feb 19, 2015 11:55 pm

Koumei wrote:I'd also love to know why the fucking fuck we're discussing fucking Pun-Pun on the Gaming Den. Was there a vote that we should emulate 2005 WotC boards?

Someone was having a slow day.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Thu Feb 19, 2015 11:58 pm

Yeah, it's cold here.

ubernoob · Post by **ubernoob** » Fri Feb 20, 2015 12:05 am

souran · Post by **souran** » Fri Feb 20, 2015 12:24 am

Kaelik wrote: They are brothers. If I had real ultimate power and the ability to share it, I would share it with my brother.

See, I would do a lot of things for my sister but I can't think of any member of my family that I would like to SHARE ultimate power with. Anyway, this if you were actually playing in an an adventure with these two that might be the way to win is to turn them against each other and then run for cover.

The only reason there are two of them is because the challenge they were created for specified two characters. Either one can completely do the other's trick, because one of them has a Ring of Wish which can wish a Thoughtbottle and a Wraith (or a Staff of Blashpemy at CL 9999999 and a +9999999999999999 item to UMD), and the other has the ability to steal a wish from a Gate Djinni and can therefore wish up a Ring of Wishes.

I know that they were created for a 2 on 2, and so there are two of them. However, again if you were going to play them or play with them as adversaries the fact that there of two of them seems like the sort of thing that would quickly go south. While they could each emulate the others trick with little difficulty it seems like it would take more TIME for the wish to acquire the Words power set than it would for the Word to get access to the Wishes main features.

Also, the thing with Pun Pun is that it only works if you accept (or are tricked) into accepting its premise before you see it. Its like somebody who has a "legacy" magic deck that just has 30 black lotus instead of any mana. Yes you can build a bunch of amazing decks that will win on turn 1 with that but even as a legacy deck 30 copies of 1 card still isn't legal.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Fri Feb 20, 2015 12:42 am

ubernoob wrote:Basically, OP trolled the fuck out of us by putting three things together that only existed at any point to have a circlejerk rules argument about Pun Pun.

Given how successful it ended up being, I'll award 8/10.

So anyway guys, I was looking through Complete Arcane, and I saw the Warlock class. I can't see where it says the limit is on their Eldritch Blast and invocations. How many times can they use them? It'd be overpowered if they got them at will.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Fri Feb 20, 2015 12:54 am

souran wrote:
Kaelik wrote: They are brothers. If I had real ultimate power and the ability to share it, I would share it with my brother.
See, I would do a lot of things for my sister but I can't think of any member of my family that I would like to SHARE ultimate power with. Anyway, this if you were actually playing in an an adventure with these two that might be the way to win is to turn them against each other and then run for cover.

I'd totally share ultimate power with my father, if he were still alive.
If i had ultimate power I'd ahve to resurrect him and share it with him.

We'd probably use our ultimate power to Wish for more episodes of Buffy.

Now here is an interesting question: If I were a D&D wizard and wished for a full DVD boxed set containing all 10 seasons of Firefly, what would I get?

Would the spell crap out because Firefly only ran for one season, or will the spell tap into an alternate earth where Firefly ran for 10 seasons?

RedstoneOrc · Post by **RedstoneOrc** » Fri Feb 20, 2015 12:55 am

ubernoob wrote:
Koumei wrote:I'd also love to know why the fucking fuck we're discussing fucking Pun-Pun on the Gaming Den. Was there a vote that we should emulate 2005 WotC boards?
OP mentioned playing an actual game with:
A) The wish and the word as the BBEG
B) Team PC including both Nanobots and Divine Minion template

The only thing I ever remember Nanobots / Divine Minion ever being used for were in the "try to achieve pun pun at the lowest possible level" nonsense.

Basically, OP trolled the fuck out of us by putting three things together that only existed at any point to have a circlejerk rules argument about Pun Pun.

God I wish I was trolling, I would feel all that smug satisfaction of being a master ruseman that pulled the wool over the eyes of the nerds of nerds, but no people just hijacked my thread by saying punpun in a mirror. Wait it was you and I already said we weren't allowing pun pun, all I wanted is to do is farm y'all for high level encounters ideas

So can we go back to what I want to do which is build awesome fights for a 22nd level master of many forms, a battle cleric of every spell ever, and three mystery builds. Like kandor is sitting in the bottom of a sea of acid with a thousand decoys superman, find before it melts.

all y'all.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Fri Feb 20, 2015 12:56 am

souran wrote:
Kaelik wrote: They are brothers. If I had real ultimate power and the ability to share it, I would share it with my brother.
See, I would do a lot of things for my sister but I can't think of any member of my family that I would like to SHARE ultimate power with. Anyway, this if you were actually playing in an an adventure with these two that might be the way to win is to turn them against each other and then run for cover.

If I had real ultimate power, I would buy KaeSis several libraries. I would share the power with KaeBro. I'm not sharing jack shit with KaeSis.

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Fri Feb 20, 2015 2:20 am

name_here wrote:Okay, look, here's the entire entry

Not to mention the entire book. Surruk are the proposed causal agent of all the weird snake-men and stuff that is concentrated in Chult. That rule for them is a thing which attempts to codify how they generate a wide range of true-breeding giant muscular snakes with arms and stuff. It's not even supposed to be used, it's just setting wank. More obviously it's not supposed to repeatedly stack the sort of stat modifiers you get for going up a size category as a feature of designing new monsters on any one PC.

That the rules can be read to say otherwise is irrelevant to every game ever, they will be ignored, banned, or fixed every time. Which is quite similar to the rules for spell-like Wishes in 3.5, or anything else where the limit of the sum approaches infinity.

--

I think a fine general rule is that anything allowing an infinite number of loops really only works once. If you can't argue for a fixed number of repeats by the book, it doesn't repeat at all. Most of the obviously broken stuff looks much more reasonable with that, even though tacking on one of each zero-cost function is still going to be stupidly powerful.

ubernoob · Post by **ubernoob** » Fri Feb 20, 2015 2:44 am

CapnTthePirateG · Post by **CapnTthePirateG** » Fri Feb 20, 2015 3:18 am

Sarrukh Description wrote:A sarrukh may use this ability to change a minor aspect of the target creature, such as the shape of its head or the color of its scales. It may also choose to make a much more significant alteration, such as converting limbs into tentacles, changing overall body shape (snake to humanoid, for example), or adding or removing an appendage. Any ability score may be decreased to a minimum of 1 or increased to a maximum equal to the sarrukh's corresponding score. A sarrukh may also grant the target an extraordinary, supernatural, or spell-like ability or remove one from it.

That, uh, sounds like a stack of abilities.

You may also wish to note that the "minor aspect" sentence is immediately followed by "It may also choose to make a much more significant alteration", the implication being that it's not limited to minor aspects at all.[/i]

EDIT: Also, I'm dumb and didn't see page 2. Ignore me.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Fri Feb 20, 2015 4:29 am

name_here wrote:It specifics that it can grant minor physical changes, it can also grant major physical changes, it can also adjust ability scores, and it can also grant extraordinary, spell-like, or supernatural abilities. It then lists example physical changes and provides no examples for abilities. So it does four things and provides example uses for two of them and bounds for the third and we are discussing the fourth. And the first two categories are explicitly not equally powerful so there is no reason to declare that the fourth must be equally powerful to the second.

I do not know why you think this matters.

The Pun-Pun argument is that "you may grant the target an extraordinary, supernatural, or spell-like ability" means "you may grant the target any extraordinary, supernatural, or spell-like ability in the game (and possibly even ones that aren't)." It is almost exactly like a man offering you a peanut and then punching him in the jaw until he spits out the one he just started chewing. "What? You should have been more specific."

The fact is that manipulate form doesn't actually tell you what it can and can't do, because it is a stupid ability written by a stupid person and is not finished. RAW, it tells you that you grant an ability and if you ask the question "what abilities can I grant?" you get a null pointer because no such list either explicitly or implicitly exists. The argument that because the list does not exist you can substitute your own ("all of them") is weapons-grade bullshit.

nockermensch · Post by **nockermensch** » Fri Feb 20, 2015 5:49 pm

DSMatticus wrote:The fact is that manipulate form doesn't actually tell you what it can and can't do, because it is a stupid ability written by a stupid person and is not finished. RAW, it tells you that you grant an ability and if you ask the question "what abilities can I grant?" you get a null pointer because no such list either explicitly or implicitly exists. The argument that because the list does not exist you can substitute your own ("all of them") is weapons-grade bullshit.

If the Sarrukh are by the fluff the creators of every reptilid race in FR and the authors intended that they did all that creating by using Manipulate Shape, then you implicitly have a list of abilities they can grant.

And while this list has some nice stuff on it like Acid Breath and Flight, it's definitively not the path to Ultimate Power.

EDIT: (dealing with the important questions):

Koumei wrote:So anyway guys, I was looking through Complete Arcane, and I saw the Warlock class. I can't see where it says the limit is on their Eldritch Blast and invocations. How many times can they use them? It'd be overpowered if they got them at will.

I had the same issue at my table and ruled it like this:

Eldritch Blast: can be used 3 + Con bonus times per day.
Invocations: the warlock can cast warlock level + Cha bonus invocations per day. All them share this same pool.

The player grumbled a bit, but relented when I showed him when both classes aren't using powers, the warlock still functions in melee as competently as a druid.

Hope this helps!

GreatGreyShrike · Post by **GreatGreyShrike** » Fri Feb 20, 2015 6:00 pm

Manipulate form is an obviously broken ability; there is no intended use for it where it's actually a good idea to include the ability in the game in any form. This means that a houserule for the ability is both simple and easy - "Manipulate form does not exist. If you want to change your base race and stats for whatever reason, or have someone else do it for you, we work out costs and requirements and so forth on a case-by-case basis, probably comparing the abilities gained to the cost of appropriate equipment that does similar stuff." Yes, this house rule is extremely unfair-sounding, but honestly it's better than the current situation and I don't think that the rule would be invoked often (the number of character concepts I have seen where the player plays a character who themselves wants to be something other than their race is zero, people tend to just play something that is what they want to be directly instead), meaning the huge amount of work you'd have to do to actually write coherent and balanced permanent-transformation rules would be a waste in a majority of games.

Arguing about what the ability does actually say is sort of pointless, because you're effectively distinguishing between the mildly overpowered, extremely annoying case ("Everyone who has an appropriate base race gets an additional +2-+4 or more on every skill and statistic they can convince the DM would be augmented by a changed body part - now you get to argue to the DM for the next few minutes about padded feet of moving silently, dextrous fingers of opening locks, symmetrical features of charisma-based skills, etc, then refigure half your character sheet to be slightly higher, except if you polymorph in which case you have to revert back to the old numbers...") to an extremely broken case (Pun Pun). Neither of those cases is actually good for the game, so you have to completely rewrite the ability or cut it if you allow Serpent Kingdoms material in your game at all...

Is there anyone who would allow the Manipulate Form ability in their home games in it's present form without extensive rewrite, even with the interpretation it can only grant bonuses in line with the actual mentioned bonuses?

RadiantPhoenix · Post by **RadiantPhoenix** » Fri Feb 20, 2015 6:29 pm

That depends -- does this count as an extensive rewrite?

Manipulate Form (Su): At will, a Sarrukh can modify the form of a scaled one native to Toril, except for aquatic and undead creatures. With a successful touch attack, it can alter a valid creature, using the retraining and rebuilding rules in the Player's Handbook 2. The target falls unconscious for 2d4 rounds due to the shock of changing form. A successful DC 22 fortitude save negates both the change and the unconsciousness. Sarrukh are immune to this effect.

GreatGreyShrike · Post by **GreatGreyShrike** » Fri Feb 20, 2015 7:12 pm

I would certainly consider that a fairly extensive rewrite. I mean, that would put some more explicit limitations and costs to it's use and so forth. I haven't looked at the PHB2 much since it came out in like 06 or whenever, so I'd have to look the details you reference up there - I think the only thing I saw it get used for really was the Beguiler and maybe some feats or something...

Certainly having the Manipulate Form ability just default to whatever retraining rules the DM normally allows but faster is probably the most 'fair' approach to that sort of ability, and won't typically be more broken than whatever retraining rules you allow are.