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Hi all,
I have an inquisitor with the preacher archetype in PFS. They gain the following ability:
Determination (Ex)
At 3rd level, the preacher is a person of few words on the battlefield, but those words hold great power and authority. Once per day, the inquisitor can use this ability to create one of the following effects. Each is a free action to use.
Aggression: The preacher may reroll an attack roll that she just made before the results of the roll are revealed. She must take the result of the reroll, even if it’s worse than the original roll.
Defense: When the inquisitor would be hit by a melee or ranged attack, as an immediate action she may add a +4 insight bonus to her Armor Class against that attack, and if this makes the inquisitor’s AC higher than the opponent’s attack roll, the attack misses.
Warning: When a preacher’s ally within line of sight would be hit by a melee or ranged attack, she may call out a warning to that ally, and the attacker must reroll the attack and use the results of the second roll. The ally must be able to hear the preacher and must not be helpless for this ability to have any effect.
(emphasis mine)
I've found a few threads that deal with this tangentially, but not specifically. My question is whether the "Defense" ability uses your swift action for your next turn, and if it can be used multiple times per round. The wording at the top ("Each is a free action") confuses me since they then go on to call out the Defense ability as an immediate action. I've been going with the more conservative interpretation (counting it as an immediate action with all the limitations therein), but I'm wondering if the writer meant it to be a 'free immediate action,' if that makes any sense. It's still been a very useful ability, so it would make some sense if they wanted to specifically limit the Defense ability to once/round.
To confound the issue, they don't label the "Warning" ability as an immediate action, but it has to be taken outside the inquisitor's turn.
What do you make of this ability, rules folk?
Well, it was just badly written, and then the source was never edited (or edited poorly).
Hey! A game book!
As a GM, I'd rule it by the actual, correct uses of action types: aggression a free action, defense and warning immediate actions.
There is no "RAW" because the action types for defense and warning are simply not compatible with free actions, so if it's PFS, you'd just have to deal with table variation.
It's an infrequent-enough ability (I think at max PFS level you can use it 4 times a day?) that it shouldn't pose too much of a problem; it's worth bringing up to the GM prior to play, though, to get a head's-up as to his or her ruling.
Yeah, no more than 4 per day. It mostly gets used for the Defense ability anyway. I'm fine with the strict interpretation, as it's still very useful (knowing the result before using it is a huge boon). I'll ask my VL and see what he thinks.
It's pretty handy when those 1's show up on an attack, and luckily that's a clear-cut ability.