Magic

The rules that apply to every spell. What a particular spell does is on its own page - see Spells.

A spell's save DC

10 + the spell's level for the class casting it + your casting ability modifier + your Spell Focus feats.

The casting ability is the class's own: Intelligence for a Wizard, Charisma for a Sorcerer, Bard or Warlock, Wisdom for a Cleric, Druid, Paladin or Ranger.

A few abilities set their own DC instead, and say so on their page. Eldritch Blast is one: its Dark Pact effects use 5 + (Warlock levels / 2) + Charisma modifier.

What staying in one class is worth

Four classes get a DC bonus for staying pure. It applies only to spells cast from your own spellbook, never to a scroll, a wand or an ability.

Pure means all 40 levels in that class, or 30 for a prestige class. A level in any other class, God's Eye Scout included, breaks it. See Pure class.

A Pale Master has no spells of its own. Half its levels are added to your caster level for anything you cast as a Bard, Sorcerer, Wizard, Assassin or Warlock. Caster level sets how long a spell lasts and how many dice it rolls.

While you are in another shape

A spell you cast while polymorphed does not use the DC above, unless you cast it from an item or the spell is itself a shape change:

Your saving throw

Everything below adds together:

Spellcraft raises your own saving throw. It does not raise the DC of the spells you cast.

The first rank has to be a skill point you spend. Spellcraft that comes only from items and abilities adds nothing. Once 1 skill point is in it, the whole skill counts - your ranks and every bonus on top of them - and 1/10 of that is added.

It shares the +20 cap with your items and effects. Only what is left of the cap is added. With +20 from gear, Spellcraft adds nothing. With +14 from gear, a Spellcraft of 100 adds +6, not +10.

These add on top, each against its own kind of effect:

Damage, saves and metamagic

On an area spell, Empower makes the area last 50% longer instead of adding 50% damage.

A spell that needs a touch attack does double damage on a critical hit. Harm is the one exception.

Some spells damage doors and placeables as well as creatures. These do double damage to them: Earthquake, Destruction, Crumble, Horizikaul's Boom, Sound Burst, Hellball, Incendiary Cloud, sonic cones and howls. Ice Storm, Meteor Swarm and Bombardment double only their second damage type.

How many areas you can keep up

4, counting every area spell you have running. Casting a fifth destroys the oldest one.

2 of any single spell. A third Web of your own destroys your oldest Web, even if you have fewer than 4 areas running.

Healing

Heal, Greater Restoration and Heal Ally restore all of a living target's hit points, whatever the description says about a number. Mass Heal does the same from caster level 30.

The Healing domain adds +50% to everything a Cleric heals with a spell.

Negative energy heals the undead. A spell whose only damage is negative energy heals an undead target instead of hurting it, with no attack roll, no saving throw and no spell resistance check.

When you cannot cast

• No-magic zones. Nothing can be cast there, from a spellbook or from an item. Two exceptions: socketable gems and the winged pendant.
• A potion cannot be used on another player. Only on yourself.
• Full healing potions have a cooldown, shared across all of them.
• A PvP tournament in progress stops all casting in arena mode. Healing spells and etherealness count against a cap while a tournament runs.

Warlocks and armour

A Warlock casting from their own spellbook gets a lower arcane spell failure before it is rolled:

What is left is rolled on a d100, and the spell fails if the roll is under it. A stilled spell skips the check.

What a Warlock spends

A Warlock has no daily allowance. Every spell level draws on one shared pool of charges that recharge on a timer, and casting an invocation spends 1 charge, whatever its level. The pool size and the time a spent charge takes to return are on the Warlock page.

The invocation's level adds to that cooldown: +1 second per spell level, so a 5th level invocation adds 5 seconds to the wait for the charge it spent. Metamagic adds more seconds, never more charges:

Six Dark Pacts make their invocations free once you have the feat: no charge is spent and no cooldown starts.

Your invocations count as spells of level 1 per 2 Warlock levels, up to 9, not the level printed for the spell. Armor of Agathys and False Life scale with that level, and an area invocation of yours uses it against an attempt to dispel it.

Two things casting does to you

Expertise switches off. Starting to cast turns off both Expertise and Improved Expertise.

A scroll cannot be learned while you have the experience for a level you have not taken yet. Take the level first, then read the scroll.

See also

• Spells
• Feats
• Spellcraft
• Abilities