So if you read Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, and thought...
"You know, HPMOR is pretty good so far as it goes; but Harry is much too cautious and doesn't have nearly enough manic momentum, his rationality lectures aren't long enough, and all of his personal relationships are way way way too healthy."
...then have I got the story for you! Planecrash aka Project Lawful aka Mad Investor Chaos and the Woman of Asmodeus, is a story in roleplay-format that I as "Iarwain" am cowriting with Lintamande, now past 1,000,000 words.
It's the story of Keltham, from the world of dath ilan; a place of high scientific achievement but rather innocent in some ways. For mysterious reasons they've screened off their own past, and very few now know what their prescientific history was like.
Keltham dies in a plane crash and ends up in the country of Cheliax, whose god is "Asmodeus", whose alignment is "Lawful Evil" and whose people usually go to the afterlife of "Hell".
And so, like most dath ilani would, in that position, Keltham sets out to bring the industrial and scientific revolutions to his new planet! Starting with Cheliax!
(Keltham's new friends may not have been entirely frank with him about exactly what Asmodeus wants, what Evil really is, or what sort of place Hell is.)
This is not a story for kids, even less so than HPMOR. There is romance, there is sex, there are deliberately bad kink practices whose explicit purpose is to get people to actually hurt somebody else so that they'll end up damned to Hell, and also there's math.
The starting point is Book 1, Mad Investor Chaos and the Woman of Asmodeus. I suggest logging into ProjectLawful.com with Google, or creating an email login, in order to track where you are inside the story.
Please avoid story spoilers in the comments, especially ones without spoiler protection; this is not meant as an "ask Eliezer things about MICWOA" thread.
Hmm, I am not quite sure that I know what you’re asking. I don’t know what you think your principle is, so I couldn’t say what violates that. I will note what problems I perceive; whether they violate your principle is, of course, something you’re more qualified to determine than I am.
First, a slight digression on the subject of tears to wine. (You may skip this section if you are in a hurry, though I do think the point I make here is relevant to discussions of how “munchkinable” Pathfinder is.)
It is a well-known feature of 3e-like systems (D&D 3rd edition, D&D 3.5, Pathfinder) that they get more complex with time, as their creators release more and more “splatbooks” and other rules content. There is no real “availability scoping” in the rules, so when Paizo publishes a new book of rules content, such as the Arcane Anthology, there is no hard distinguishing factor between, say, a spell that appeared in the Core Rulebook and one that appears in the newly-published book. In this way, the amount of stuff in the game system increases monotonically with time, and likewise does the number of possible interactions between system components.
This makes “munchkining” a “mature” 3e-like system easier than doing so with a younger such system—there’s simply many more things to potentially exploit (and “power creep” is a thing as well; for reasons of market incentives, later-published content tends to be more exploitable than earlier-published content). This is a problem for users of the system, but it is not as much of a problem as it could be, because the solution to this, as to many other things, is the Game Master. It is commonly understood that a GM is well within his prerogative not to simply allow the use of all published theoretically-canonical game content, but to limit what is available, to one degree or another. (Indeed, you will hear this recommendation perhaps most clearly precisely from those communities of D&D/PF players who specialize in analysis of “theoretical optimization” a.k.a. munchkining.)
After all, if Paizo publishes the Arcane Anthology (where the spell tears to wine is found), there is not, actually, any law that says that this fact automatically means that any of the content in said “splatbook” is true in your specific campaign setting (if you are a GM). It’s your choice! Now, of course, you can take it as an axiom that all canonical published content is true of your setting (the Eberron campaign setting for D&D 3.5 is, famously, built on this premise). But you don’t have to do that.
And given that you don’t have to do it, making that choice is, well, a choice. By selecting “all published canonical content” as the scope for what is true in your Pathfinder-based setting, you inherently make it much easier for yourself, if you want to do “munchkinry”. With a 3e-like system as mature as 1st edition Pathfinder, when all canonical published content is “in scope”, coming up with an exploit is more often merely a matter of finding the right spell in the right splatbook (a task made much easier by websites such as the Archives of Nethys) than it is of any particularly clever hack.
Note that such a broad scope also substantially reduces the value of the work to the reader, along the dimension I describe in the grandparent comment. After all, if I am reading along and thinking “hm, how will the Conspiracy handle this one, let me think now”, then even if I am fairly well familiar with Pathfinder, there’s no way I can recall every feat, every spell, every magic item, every exotic piece of rules content in every splatbook, Adventure Path, and anything else that Paizo has ever published! With such a vast universe of possibilities, I have little choice but to resign myself to the fact that I have no idea what’s going to happen next. It could be anything at all. In Pathfinder 1st edition ca. 2022, “finding an obscure spell that does <thing>” is, in practice, little different from “making up, de novo and for your plot convenience, a spell that does <thing>”. You are technically remaining within the genre-standard set of constraints… but the reader is almost entirely incapable of predicting your moves, because those constraints are so loose.
However, none of this is the sort of thing I had in mind when I wrote the grandparent comment. This is merely a digression—which is now over.
The most obvious problem with Project Lawful (and one of the most severe, due to how often it appears) is that message does not work that way.
Let’s first review the message spell. It is a 0th level spell (cantrip), castable at will by a spellcaster of any of the listed classes, if known (for spontaneous casters) or prepared that day (for prepared casters). It affects up to 1 creature per caster level (e.g., 3 creatures when cast by a 3rd-level wizard), has a duration of 10 minutes per caster level (e.g., 30 minutes for a 3rd level wizard), and a range of of 100 feet plus 10 feet per caster level (e.g., 130 feet for a 3rd level wizard). (Note that when a wizard is referred to as “second-circle” in Project Lawful, this appears to mean that they are able to cast 2nd-level spells but no higher, meaning that they have either 3 or 4 wizard class levels, in Pathfinder terms.) It has verbal, somatic, and focus components (the F component is a piece of copper wire, though this is mostly irrelevant). The spell’s description reads thus:
The procedure for using message to communicate thus looks roughly like this (we will assume a 3rd level wizard when specific numerical values are needed; modify as appropriate for casters of other classes and/or levels):
As a standard action (the spell’s casting time), select up to 3 creatures, all of which are within 130 feet of you, all of which you can see, and to all of which you have line of effect[1], and point to each of them as you cast the spell.
At any time within the next 30 minutes, you can whisper a message; the message will then be delivered to the target creatures.
The targeted creatures whisper a reply, which is delivered to you.
As the act of casting message and the act of using an active message spell to actually send a message are distinct, let’s consider each separately.
Casting the spell
The following conditions (among others) obtain when you cast a message spell:
a. You must be able to see all targets on which you cast message. (General rules for spellcasting.) You cannot cast message on someone in a different room, or around a corner, or with your eyes closed, or if they’re invisible (and you have no means of seeing invisible things), etc.
b. You must have line of effect to all targets on which you cast message. (Ditto.) Any solid barrier whatsoever blocks line of effect. This is another reason why you can’t cast message on someone around a corner or in the next room, but the line of effect requirement also prevents you from casting message on someone on the other side of a transparent glass window, or a wall of force, etc.
c. You must provide all of the spell’s components—in this case, a verbal component, a somatic component, and a focus (a piece of copper wire). Relevant rules include:
(That “negligible cost” provision does indeed apply to the piece of copper wire which is the focus for a message spell.)
To summarize: in order to cast message, you must speak an incantation in a strong voice; you must make a measured and precise movement of the hand; and you must provide, from your spell component pouch, a piece of copper wire as a prop.
An obvious question: are there any ways to avoid having to provide one or more of the spell’s components?
There are some such ways. Here is one which does not work: the Eschew Materials feat, which allows a spellcaster to ignore material components when such components cost less than 1 gp… but, unfortunately, does absolutely nothing about having to provide a focus, whatever its cost might be.
One might also use metamagic feats, such as Silent Spell and Still Spell; these allow a spellcaster to modify a spell so as to be castable without verbal or somatic components, respectively. (I am not aware of a metamagic feat that would let a spell be cast without a focus, if the spell normally has a focus.) However, such feats modify the spell’s effective level; so a wizard, e.g., would have to prepare message as a 1st level spell for it to be Still or Silent, or as a 2nd level spell for it to be Still and Silent. A message spell prepared thus would not be castable at will, as that is a property of 0th-level spells (cantrips) only.
d. You must point your finger at each creature on whom you wish to cast the message spell.
All of these things combine to create two important effects:
i. When message is cast, its targets—i.e., those creatures to whom the caster can, at any time in the spell’s duration, send whispered messages—are limited to those creatures who are in the same “room” (more broadly: between eligible targets and the caster there must be no solid barriers, not even translucent ones, nor can they be, in any way, hidden from the caster’s sight; nor can they be more than [100 + 10 per caster level] feet away).
ii. The act of casting message is—for low-level wizards such as the Project Lawful girls, anyway—very clearly noticeable by anyone in the vicinity.
Digression on spell manifestations (skippable if you are in a hurry):
Paizo’s official Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook FAQ includes the following entry:
If this rule holds, then all spells (certainly including message) have obvious-to-onlookers magical manifestations (regardless of whether the spell has any components!). This would then be an additional reason why the casting of message would be unambiguously noticeable to anyone in the caster’s vicinity.
Official FAQ entries constitute canonical game content; thus, if you have decided that all published official content is “in scope” in your setting, then this includes material found in FAQ entries as well. However, this particular FAQ entry is a famously controversial one. When it was published, there was a sense, among many Pathfinder players and GMs, that the designers at Paizo were trying to “retcon” into existence a rule which has never existed in any rules text, even by implication. (It is true that illustrations in published Pathfinder materials almost invariably show some sort of glowing runes or flashing lights or some similar sort of visible effect whenever they depict a character in the act of spellcasting—but are we to take artistic choices to constitute statements of rules intent, when they are backed up by nothing, not even so much as a passing mention, in the text? —thus went the reasoning, among many.)
I thus do not hold it against you, Eliezer, that you ignore this particular rule, in Project Lawful. Nevertheless, diligence demands that it be mentioned.
Digression ends.
Using the spell
Supposing that you (a hypothetical 3rd-level wizard) have cast message, selecting up to 3 creatures as the targets, you now have a 30 minute period during which, at any time and as many times as you like, you can send whispered messages to all of those creatures. When you wish to do so, the following conditions (among others) obtain:
a. Only those of your targeted creatures who are within 130 feet of you will receive your whispered message; any that are further away will not receive anything.
b. Should there fail to be a path (all parts of which are within 130 feet of you, and no part of which is blocked by 1 foot of stone, or 1 inch of common metal, or a thin sheet of lead, or 3 feet of wood or dirt, or a magical silence effect) between you and any of your targeted creatures, that target will likewise receive nothing.
c. To transmit a message, you must mouth the words and whisper. (You cannot just form the words mentally; nor can you use ventriloquism-like techniques to whisper without mouthing the words; nor can you mouth the words silently—remember that “the spell transmits sound”! Note that this requirement still holds even if the spell is prepared with the Silent Spell and/or Still Spell metamagic feats, as those feats affect a spell’s components, not its effect.)
Note that this condition means that not just casting, but also using, a message spell, is something that cannot be done without risk of nearby people noticing. Of course it is possible for someone to not notice when a person right next to them is whispering and mouthing words… but it requires that the former person be somehow distracted, not paying attention, not looking directly at the message-user, etc. (In particular, it is not possible, for instance, for there to be three people in a room, all of whom are looking at each other and who are not intensely concentrating on something extremely distracting, and for two of them to be exchanging messages via message while the third is totally oblivious to this “side channel” and the conversation taking place on it.)
Likewise, it’s clearly not possible to use message to send messages while you are speaking aloud (your mouth and vocal cords can’t do two things at once, after all).
d. Those nearby can hear these messages with a DC 25 Perception check.
For reference, another hearing-based task that takes a DC 25 Perception check is “ Hear a bow being drawn”. This is difficult, but not impossible. (Note that this is the DC to hear the messages, not the DC to notice that someone is whispering something—the latter would require a check at a lower DC!)
Summary
Casting a message spell is very noticeable, and is limited by your locale’s layout in the targets available to you.
Using an active message spell to send messages is not as obvious, but still unquestionably noticeable to anyone in your immediate vicinity, and is less limited in applicable recipients by your locale’s layout, but still limited (and one must re-cast message if one wishes to add targets which were not selected by an already-active message spell).
But in Project Lawful, people routinely use message as, effectively, a fully telepathic side channel for unrestricted verbal communication which can be used without any risk whatsoever of someone who is directly adjacent to sender or recipient(s) noticing anything happening. (I have many examples which I can produce, but this comment is very long already. Details, as before, available upon request.)
It is clear that this usage is not supported by the rules text. But this is no mere quibble; the deviation is consequential. The ability to use message in this “basically just telepathy” way is a substantial boost to the capabilities of low-level spellcasters. (No sensible GM would ever permit message to be used in the way that it is used in Project Lawful, and with good reason—spellcasters, already quite powerful in Pathfinder, ought not be further empowered by misuse of the rules!)
Furthermore and specifically, if the members of the Conspiracy had to stick to the Pathfinder rules as written in their use of message, they could not perform many of the deceptions which they perpetrate upon Keltham. Substantial chunks of the story would either not work at all, or would have to be rewritten, sometimes from scratch.
Final note
The abuse of message is not the only problem of this sort in Project Lawful. It is, however, perhaps the most glaring one (at least, to me), and one of the most pervasive. This comment is, as I said, already very long, so I will forbear to list other examples—but more examples are, indeed, available upon request.