Hey, all,
Quick question on Inquisitor judgements that came up in our group the other week.
Can a fourth level inquisitor have two judgements active simultaneously? Not *activate* them simultaneously, but *have them active* simultaneously. As in, first round, he swift actions to activate the first, then does the same thing for a second one the next round.
On the same vein, could an eighth level inquisitor then have four active by doing the same thing?
There was some contention on this between two of my players recently, and, upon a reading of the ability, it does not state that you can only have one active at a time, as do many other abilities. However, having only one instance of an ability active at a time seems to somewhat be the default, but without a definitive reading of the situation I'm disinclined to rule against the player, especially since he is using all of his daily uses of the ability in just one fight (and I usually enforce four fights a day).
Please and thank you. :)
~Brogue
At 1st level, an inquisitor can use this ability once per day. At 4th level and every three levels thereafter, the inquisitor can use this ability one additional time per day. Once activated, this ability lasts until the combat ends, at which point all of the bonuses immediately end. The inquisitor must participate in the combat to gain these bonuses. If she is frightened, panicked, paralyzed, stunned, unconscious, or otherwise prevented from participating in the combat, the ability does not end, but the bonuses do not resume until she can participate in the combat again.
At lv 1 they have to choose 1 judgment.
At 8 they get Second Judgment.
"At 8th level, whenever an inquisitor uses her judgment ability, she selects two different judgments, instead of one. This only consumes one use of her judgment ability. As a swift action, she can change one of these judgments to another type."
At 16 they get Third Judgment.
"At 16th level, whenever an inquisitor uses her judgment ability, she selects three different judgments, instead of just two. This only consumes one use of her judgment ability. As a swift action, the inquisitor can change one of these judgments to another type."
Thank you, Seranov. The first part of your comment is essentially the conclusion I had come to. Nothing in the language prohibits them from doing so that I can see. But I would say that, generally, only one instance of an ability at a time is permissible, hence my confusion.
There are times when two is ideal. Any difficult fight, really, could merit two uses of the ability. Recently the group decided they wanted to fight two rooms worth of enemies as a single encounter, so the inquisitor used both uses of the ability for the "one" fight.
Jarl, You entirely missed the point of my post, as I am looking for additional clarification on those exact citations you posted. Thank you for your participation, however. :)
Anyone else have any idea on how his works ? How it should work? How they do it?
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I believe RAI is that you cannot spend two uses of the judgment ability to activate two judgments during a combat. RAW appears to allow it, though.
If it were allowed, it would work exactly as you said in the first post: in the first round, the inquisitor activates one judgment (or two, if he has Second Judgment) as a swift action, and in the second round he spends another swift action and another daily use of judgment to activate another judgment effect (or two). He could not activate the same judgment effect twice because they grant typed (sacred/profane) bonuses and would not stack.
If you have multiple fights in a day this will not be a significant power increase, since the player is making a choice to spend more resources overcoming a difficult encounter and then will not have those resources for other encounters. However, it will be beneficial once the inquisitor has more uses of Judgment than daily encounters (probably somewhere at level 10+), since those extra uses of judgment won't go to waste. If it weren't for the fact that Second and Third judgment would make this strategy extremely powerful, I'd actually support this usage, since as an inquisitor player it gets pretty boring to gain an extra use of judgment that you will never actually need.
Maybe you could let him activate a second use of judgment but rule that only the first activated judgment gains the benefit of Second/Third judgment? So an 8th level inquisitor could spend one swift action and one use of judgment to get the benefit of two judgments, or could spend two swift actions and two uses of judgment to get the benefit of three (not four) judgments. Seems like a decent compromise to me.
Awesome. Sound thoughts. Thanks, all. :)