[ACG] - Twist Away feat question


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Twist Away
Your quick reflexes and dexterous movements make up for your lack of stamina.
Prerequisite: Evasion.
Benefit: While you are wearing light armor or no armor, if you are forced to attempt a Fortitude saving throw, you can use an immediate action to instead attempt a Reflex saving throw (at the same DC). If you succeed at this saving throw and the attack has a reduced effect on a successful save, you avoid the effect entirely. Whether the saving throw is successful or not, you are staggered until the end of your next turn

Does this feat ONLY work on effects that have a reduced effect on a successful fortitude save? I would think that it's intended for all fortitude saves, but i find the bolded text slightly confusing.

Regards


All fort saves. The bit about avoiding the reduced effect on a save is an added and quite awesome ability.

Basically once per turn on any forced fort save (so not usable vs ingested poisons? See your DM to define 'forced') you make while wearing light or no armor you get to sub your REF save for the FORT save, AND if you make the REF save AND if the thing you are saving against has lessened effect on a successful save you avoid the lessened effect as well.

The downside for basically making your best save do double duty is that any time you use this you are staggered until the end of your next turn.

A good feat. Strong plus side but a wicked price to pay.

Dark Archive

Awesome, i'll pick it out with my current rogue at KM to give a bump to my survivability. I wonder what would happen if you somehow you are immune to staggering? Either way, it's an immediate action, so it comes with all the usual drawbacks (once per turn and you don't have your swift action next turn). Thanks!

Grand Lodge RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32

I want to Twist Away from a phantasmal killer that I already believe is real. :)


I'd actually really like to get some clarification on the Twist Away Feat.

I love it, but my current DM is so against it that he's basically started punching kittens to sate his anger over it's introduction.

As far as I can tell, the basic issues most people have with it fall into three categories:

1) Was this intended to completely remove the need to roll Fortitude Saves?

The claims I keep hearing are that it's too powerful because it allows a character to completely ignore one of the functions of the game (Fortitude Saves).

My argument against that is that it has a prerequisite Feat and you have to take this Feat as well (obviously), so it basically requires two Feats. To me, that's more than fair considering you're also staggered until the end of your next turn whenever you use it.

Two Feats (yes, some classes, most notably Rogues, get Evasion early on) and the staggered drawback seem plenty worth this to me.

2) Does this Feat truly work on everything that could require a Fortitude Save?

Basically, this is a question about, "How does this work 'mechanically?'"

There are basically two ways that a character can be "forced" to make a Fortitude Save.

A) An enemy casts a spell that does NOT require a "to-hit" roll, but allows for a Fort Save.

B) An enemy makes some kind of attack, makes a "to-hit" roll, actually HITS the defender, and then the defender is affected by some property that allows for a Fort Save.

An example of the first case would be the spell Flare.

http://paizo.com/prd/spells/flare.html

It requires no attack roll but does allow for a Fortitude Save to negate.

In the second case, if a player were attacked and hit with a poisoned weapon or the Disintegrate spell:

http://paizo.com/prd/spells/disintegrate.html

Then the enemy has "already" hit that player.

So, does the defender "get hit," then claim, "I'm rolling my Twist Away as an immediate action." Roll, and then if they succeed on the roll, it retroactively makes it so that they weren't hit by the attack to begin with?

If this is the case, and they were dealt damage from the poisoned sword wound, would they then take no damage from the initial attack?

If this isn't the case, then do they take the sword damage but then somehow "twist away" from the poison?

If this Feat does contain this "retroactive" property, I think someone needs to clearly express that.

3) How does the "reality" of this Feat work?

This is dependent on the answers to the previous questions, but if you are able to "twist away" from a poisoned blade that DID successfully hit you that you took damage from, then... uh... Like... What's supposed to be happening there?

One guy on Reddit proposed that your character immediately vomits, and that's why he/she is staggered for a round, but my hunch is that wasn't what was implied by the design team.

Anyway, I think it's an awesome Feat. But any clarity on these points would be greatly appreciated.

Grand Lodge RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32

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If it was a spell effect (even an all-day ongoing effect), no one would bat an eye. Feats are allowed to shift from "reality" to "fantasy" too.


Critical Success wrote:
1) Was this intended to completely remove the need to roll Fortitude Saves?

No. It eats up your immediate action(swift for next round) and makes you staggered. Many classes have a lot of good swift/immediate choices. Some don't, this just gives them one. Still, I see plenty of situations where the player has to seriously question if its worth using this feat. Plus, not a lot of classes get evasion, and most are somewhat weaker anyway, so what, they get a toy now!

Critical Success wrote:
2) Does this Feat truly work on everything that could require a Fortitude Save?

Pretty much.

Critical Success wrote:
If this isn't the case, then do they take the sword damage but then somehow "twist away" from the poison?

This. It no where says it stops the sword damage, it stops the secondary effect of the fort save. Like if the poison still does 1d2 strength on a successful check(theoretical here people!). It applies more to like disintegrate, where it stops the 5d6+level in damage.

Critical Success wrote:
3) How does the "reality" of this Feat work?

Varies. Sucked the poison out. Dodged the disintegrate. Jumped over (or into) the horrid wilting. But seriously, this is a fantasy game. How does evasion work anyway. I've never heard of anyone actually dodging an explosion, yet we do it all day long in everyone's favorite game.

Trust me, I'm no fan of a lot of the ACG, and I'm the first person to shout it out (you can check!), but this is actually pretty fairly balanced and one of the better things to come out of the ACG.


1. Only when you can afford to be staggered.
2. Yes.
2A) Dodged!
2B) Ha, I pulled away from the syringe before you could inject your evil poison, Dr. Alchemaniac!
3. Flavor to taste. E.g.: The character reaches in and rips the poison out of the wound before it could take, causing intense pain.


I think the main problem is not that it's OP but that it makes no #&$%ing sense.

GM: The lich casts Horrid Wilting.
PC: I curl my body to retain my moisture!

GM: As you walk through the door, a Symbol of Pain glows pale as your body is wracked with torment.
PC: I dance away the pain!

Silver Crusade RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16

Wow. Yeah... that's the second feat ever made by Paizo that I'll have to ban from my home game. That's crazy overpowered and yeah... makes no sense at all.

Shadow Lodge

It does seem like you get 2 effects out of it.

1: You can roll fortitude saves as reflex saves
2: If it's a fortitude partial or fortitude half save, you treat it as reflex negates instead, ala Evasion.

The wording doesn't seem to really imply that you could only make reflex saves in lieu of fort saves only if it's a partial/half save, that doesn't make sense.

Fortitude negates is less of an obstruction than partial/half.

The use of the word 'forced' doesn't seem like it's meant to be carefully noted either - usually when you're making a save, it's because it's a reactive thing - you're usually "forced" to. I don't think it's important.


Thanks for responding, everyone. And thanks, Under A Bleeding Sun and Blahpers.

I completely agree with you guys. Your interpretations are basically exactly what I got out of it.

However, I do agree that there wasn't enough "exact wording" in the Feat, and that that has left a little too much ambiguity.

I'll see if I can work on my DM and get him to come around. ;)

Radiant Oath

cartmanbeck wrote:
Wow. Yeah... that's the second feat ever made by Paizo that I'll have to ban from my home game. That's crazy overpowered and yeah... makes no sense at all.

Overpowered how? Firstly you need Evasion, and secondly you need to be a Class with a bad Fort and good Reflex save. The classes that meet all the criteria are classes with terrible saves, and need the help.


it lets you dodge the damage from that high-level thundercaller who's throwing around 3 sound bursts a round...

Grand Lodge

Evilgm wrote:
cartmanbeck wrote:
Wow. Yeah... that's the second feat ever made by Paizo that I'll have to ban from my home game. That's crazy overpowered and yeah... makes no sense at all.
Overpowered how? Firstly you need Evasion, and secondly you need to be a Class with a bad Fort and good Reflex save. The classes that meet all the criteria are classes with terrible saves, and need the help.

This exactly. It's not overpowered. It's obviously for rogues which need as much love as they can get. You need to have a class with the Evasion feature. You're only going to take this if you have high Reflex and low Fort--if you're one of the classes that has this, you also have low will. This isn't overpowered. It's situationally good for bad classes.


claudekennilol wrote:
Evilgm wrote:
cartmanbeck wrote:
Wow. Yeah... that's the second feat ever made by Paizo that I'll have to ban from my home game. That's crazy overpowered and yeah... makes no sense at all.
Overpowered how? Firstly you need Evasion, and secondly you need to be a Class with a bad Fort and good Reflex save. The classes that meet all the criteria are classes with terrible saves, and need the help.
This exactly. It's not overpowered. It's obviously for rogues which need as much love as they can get. You need to have a class with the Evasion feature. You're only going to take this if you have high Reflex and low Fort--if you're one of the classes that has this, you also have low will. This isn't overpowered. It's situationally good for bad classes.

Yup. And the cost is HUGE! And as I said, I have no problem crying out on the ACG. It has more banned material in my games than any other core book, but this feat is not one of those issues IMO. And I have lots of Banned Paizo feats.

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