Enlarge Person on non-humanoids

[Togainu]

Well the things that are hard facts is as I said the spell is intended to work on more things than just humanoids. While the spell variation in MOST spellbooks would be the humanoid variant there are others. As indicated in "Pathfinder Campaign - First World Realm of the Fey". Page 11 (and pointed out by Mathias). There are basically variants for the spell making it so that there is an enlarge person for every type of monster and even a generic one. Meaning you would end up with a lot of identical entries that do the same thing all together.

Like entries like this on the d20pfsrd (and in the book): charm fey

"Targeting Fey
Since Golarion is a humanocentric world, many common spells developed there were created specifcally to target humanoids. On the First World, however, most of the residents are of the fey creature type, making spells like charm person, dominate person, and hold person almost useless. As it would make no sense for a whole plane of fey—notorious tricksters that they are—to be unable to target each other with such basic spells, there are several ways a GM can answer this problem. Both of the solutions below allow fey to cast as one would expect, and allow dedicated PCs to do the same, while still preserving the shock of realizing magic works differently in the First World.

One method is to assume that casters on the First World have different spells uniquely suited to a society of fey. Under this framework, all spells that specifcally target humanoids have First World corollaries that specifcally target fey. These are unique spells that must be learned as any new spell, with the only difference being the target creature type—see charm fey and hold fey below, as examples. While fey who deal regularly with humanoids might have the familiar versions of the spells, GMs should feel free to swap out these spells for the fey versions for creatures from the First World, while making PCs learn them the hard way.

Alternatively, if you don’t wish to introduce entirely new spells into the game, you can simply replace any spell with “person” in its name with a counterpart with “monster” in its name (i.e., charm monster in place of charm person) form monsters and NPCs from the First World.
While such spells are higher level and may appear to be signifcant power boosts for creatures receiving the substitution, this shouldn’t greatly affect combat with such creatures, as most PCs are humanoid, and therefore already able to be targeted by the lower-level version of the spell. Such a substitution simply adds verisimilitude to fey creatures that primarily interact with other fey in the First World. In this scenario, PCs should still need the versions of the spells that can affect fey to maintain the power curve"

 

[Kiirnodel]

I don't think it is unreasonable for the player/user to be responsible for being aware that they can or cannot benefit from a spell. Again, the adjustments are in Hero Lab to apply the effects of spells to the characters, they aren't meant to simulate the spell's being cast. The user is responsible for assigning the bonus value for many spells, for example. The full description of the spell is there for the user to read, even. But there are plenty of ways to be affected "as per enlarge person" that might bypass the normal targetting. Actually checking within the rules that you were actually legally targeted by a spell is totally an at-table issue, not in-program.

 

[Jamz]

Must...resist... nope. Can't do it haha (please read as gentle banter and counter/arguments, NOT ZOMG he's yelling at me!)

1. There is precedent set. Look at "Bestow Grace of the Champion". Can only be added to Lawful good creatures. Shows as invalid spell adjustment, red text. Warning in red ! area. I see no forum complaints on "please take this warning away, my GM lets me use this on my chaotic neutral ninja!" FYI Atavism only works on Animal, same affect as well.

2. It's called "Spell" Adjustments, so it's a reasonable expectation that such adjustments follow the spell rules. Lets say I never play/played a wizard. I don't know the spell. Another new player says, I cast Mass Enlarge Person. Weee, I add it to my fighter. oops. If you find a spell adjustment that does what you need for a different reason, cool. But if you sat at my PFS table and I saw the red flag for enlarge person, I'm going to ask, "Ok, what feat/ability lets you be a large Aasimar?" then you tell me xyz, and I'm like, ok.

3. There are "Other" Adjustments. I see these as the "no warnings, just add me!" area. There is a Size adjustment there, add that if you don't want the warning.

4. To the other comment regarding HL doesn't "know" the spell. However correct, as Shadow can attest, the person entering the adjustment does know and can account for it.

5. Regarding your bear, awesome. And probably legal if you are a druid and should be accounted for.

I haven't seen any examples where "but xyz gives the Enlarge Person bonus just like the spell but allows non-humanoid targets!" I would give this the 80/20 rule. If 80% of the time you add this adjustment it's to work exactly like the spell, then work like the spell. Don't accommodate the 20%.

And to be honest, I haven't gone over the list, and Enlarge Person may very well be the ONLY spell that needs...um..adjustment. (ok, and Reduce Person). So it's not I'm requesting a huge UI change and people's characters are all getting red ! tomorrow.

And I suppose, you could add a Other Adjustment that ignores rules for Adjustment x to hide said warnings or whatever.

PS I have slight OCD as well for such things. But mine is set off when Hero lab lets me do illegal things lol

 

[Minous]

I will note that a size increase adjustment is different than the enlarge person adjustment. (Mechanically they have significant differences). The classes where share spell can come into play are Wizard, Druid, Hunter, Summoner, Summoner (Unchained), Witch, and probably a few more plus a dozen or so archetypes scattered around the remaining classes. Trying to code all of that into HL isnt worth the massive checks needed to ensure validity. Keep in mind that not all traits actually change your subtype, some just say that you are considered human for the purposes of spell casting.

A suggestion, take HL and all of your source books and sit down and compare RAW with HL odds are you will discover a bug or two, having humans get in the habit if auditing HL is good practice. It ensures that the players know and understand the source material and their characters, and that if HL is incorrect bugs about the issue can be filed. You gave a few examples about alignment based adjustments. I dont think there is any RAW variance in that. However take a look at the RAW and Enlarge Person, the number of times there are exceptions created is excessively long.

 

[Jamz]

Minous, I'm genuinely curious, what specific traits allow you to target as a Humanoid subtype? I did a quick search for keyword humanoid and found nothing close?

If you mean Alternate Racial Traits, again, anything specific? I looked up Ifrit, Aasimar, Tiefling and Oread and all 4 specifically state they affect you in ALL ways and specifically say they change your Type and Subtype. I'd be surprised other races would be different but who knows. I couldn't easily search globally across race traits.

I've just been on a hunt to better understand Type & Subtype changes/rules as of late due to our Oread Goliath Druid and Enlarge Person, Wild Shape & Giant Form and how they all relate. I've learned a few things that I had assumed wrong as of late. Coming from a 3.5 campaign several years back, I still get surprised when I make subtle assumptions on mechanics that changed slightly when brought over to Pathfinder.

PS. I still haven't found any variances for Enlarge Person. The classes you list give specific class abilities (which can be tracked). Most affect target "you" spells though and out of scope/not needed.

 

[Azhrei]

That's all well and good, but many people (read: GM's) use HL as the Holy Grail -- if it has a ! on a given hero, that hero is invalid. Trying to explain why in the middle of a game takes time that the other players would rather be using to play.

And frankly, if HL is not going to be strict about the rules, they should say so up front. When you purchase it there should be a caveat that it does not implement all the rules and that it's possible that a valid character will be flagged as illegal, or that an illegal character will not be flagged at all. Either it works, or it doesn't.

While I agree that it's frustrating for situations like this one, where the interpretation of the rules can be a crux, I will also remind everyone that Lone Wolf has the ear of the king (so to speak) and can get answers and rule adjudications straight from the horse's mouth (apologies to Jason and team for the analogy ). If they can't get an answer, who can?

In summary, my opinion is the HL should make the attempt to implement ALL rules. If you're not going to do that, why do any of them at all?

 

[Togainu]

Jamz, again as I have posted above already there are other variation to Type/Subtype spells. Which the book "Pathfinder Campaign - First World Realm of the Fey" covers and I posted above here. (in that book they give a Fey example seeing it is a Fey centered book)

Meaning there is a variant of spells that can target other types. A creature from an outsider plane will have studied "Enlarge outsider" else he would never be able to target himself or anyone from it's plane. But instead of making an adjustment per type we currently have an enlarge person adjustment that can be applied to any type. Seeing all those spells will do the same thing with the only exception being the restriction of the chosen type.

And Azhrei that is a mistake from those GM's Hero Lab doesn't implement all rules and as the software currently is, can't even do so. Look for example at the Warpriest's bonus feats. Those will for a (long) while still give errors. They do count as fighters but Hero Lab as it is currently is set up can't implement it (easily)(this also affects an archetype that I know of) and thus gives a big error. So those GMs dont find Warpriest valid because Hero Lab doesn't have it implemented. Secondly Pathfinder has many exceptions on a lot of things and can easily be overlooked when implementing things in Hero Lab. Which the bug report is for. But if you and the GM's start blindly following it. Things will never be corrected and invalid things shown as valid and the other way around would never be corrected. Whether you or those GM's like it things still need to be validated by the GM and player and that will always be the case.

Hero Lab is a helper not a god

 

[Minous]

the Scion of Humanity Aasimar ability does not change your type to humanoid, and the summoner's are allowed to cast whatever they want on their eidolon regardless of type restrictions. The trait uses the text counts as an outsider (native) and a humanoid (human) for any effect related to race, including feat prerequisites and spells that affect humanoids. and specifically calls out that it only modifies the sub-type. If you work with any major group of PFS players you will realize that HL has a lot of issues. I am not one of those ant-HL warriors, but I do understand that HL is a work in progress and not 100% right. What I do, and what I tell every player that I GM and play with is to go to the source book verify wordings and double check all of the math and mechanics. If you do that you will have a better grasping of the rules and understand that there are pretty much exceptions for every rule. By forcing players to review and manually double check HL it ensures that players get a better understanding of how their character should work. This isnt meant to insult LW but I opened a ticket 253 days ago which is still pending a resolution with one of my fighter feats. HL is double adding values in its calculation meaning that several bonuses are wrong.

 

[Azhrei]

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But if you and the GM's start blindly following it. Things will never be corrected and invalid things shown as valid and the other way around would never be corrected. Whether you or those GM's like it things still need to be validated by the GM and player and that will always be the case.

Hero Lab is a helper not a god

You're preaching to the choir here, good sir!

I was a programmer by trade and I understand how complex it can be for software like this to cover all of the cases. It's why HL is scriptable -- there's no way they could account for everything in the main code and they wouldn't want to, since they'd have a different version for every game system. HL is a rules engine, and it's the game system data files that define those rules.

I wasn't advocating for or against the idea that HL should be used as the last word in legal character results, I was merely pointing out that my home GM (and others I've met) use it that way. As a player, I always try to check and double-check what HL decides is valid, but the game is complex and there are only so many hours in a day. For the GM to check the players results is... unrealistic.
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