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In PFS, unless tactics state otherwiseNot every monster has tactics.And even when they do this is not remotely true.
Tactics can and often are invalidated by player actions. Also creatures regularly make full round attacks with no-one else in reach. If I go bite/claw and a PC goes down I am still going to finish off the second claw if there is no-one else in reach or within a 5' step.
In fact I had this happen this weekend.
You know what, now that you mention it, I was told this flat-out by our Venture Captain so I never bothered to check, but I haven't seen it in writing. I'm unsure where he was referencing it from.
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If there is no specific pathfinder definition, then you have to use English. And in English a dead creature is a creature just like a blue car is a car.
A dead creature is a creature.. that no longer inhabits its body. The body is an object according to standard PF rules.
Careful about accidentally treading into philisophical territory.
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This is my interpretation of how it works.
Strength score is 15, and you took strength damage from a poison so you have 14 strength damage. The shadow hits you for one strength damage, so you die.
I don't believe there is "shadow ability damage" or "negative energy ability damage", but rather when a shadows strength damage Su ability affects you, and your score meets or exceeds, then you enjoy the create spawn.
I disagree. The shadow ability says "this damage" (the damage from the shadow) must equal or exceed your actual strength score. No ability damage reduces your actual strength score, so the shadow still has to do the full 15 damage to meet or exceed your strength score. It does not say "this damage (plus any other ability damage you might have)" or "If a shadow's attack causes your total ability damage equal or exceed".
Shadow strength damage is super-special strength damage that can kill you. No other source of strength damage can kill you. If you don't track them separately, you are making that poison a lot more dangerous than it should be (by giving it the ability to kill you with strength damage), which is really unfair to the players.
Grammatically, you could make a strong argument that "this damage" refers to the damage from a single, individual shadow, but that would be pretty unfair to the shadows.
Having it refer to "the total ability damage done by all shadows in the encounter" seems like a reasonable compromise between those two extremes.
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There is no explicit definition (that I have found) of what a creatures is.
PRD says "Wisdom describes a character's willpower, common sense, awareness, and intuition. ... Every creature has a Wisdom score. A character with a Wisdom score of 0 is incapable of rational thought and is unconscious."
So again, if you have a wisdom score, you are a creature.Except for one or two people willing to argue that dead bodies and meat still have wisdom scores, it is safe to assume that dead bodies are objects in game terms.
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Raise dead has no target to ever be useful according to fergie, and you should mend the bodies or animate object.
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Gwen, there are no rules for special ability damage though. It's just ability damage. Tracking it separately isn't a thing in the game.
Other people. Breath can work on undead and living things too.
Slay living has a target of living creature.
Dead is just a condition. Dead creature or living creature is just a more specific target requirement. You can still cast creature touched spells on either living or dead, but they sometimes yield no results, like cure light wounds won't heal damage, whereas breath of life will.
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If I might look at the whole picture here. It might not be necessary, but just for my own curiosity. PF SRD is reference, along with my interpretation.
Short form: Breath of Life should work; you will be alive and unconscious with all the Str damage you had before dying.
1. Ability damage reduces the stat, using a mechanic similar to HP damage: that is, the reduction doesn't lower the normal / maximum value, only the current value.
Diseases, poisons, spells, and other abilities can all deal damage directly to your ability scores. This damage does not actually reduce an ability, but it does apply a penalty to the skills and statistics that are based on that ability.
2. Ability damage, just like HP damage, does not have a "memory" of what caused it unless it explicitly needs to for some purpose (eg, if the damage can't be healed naturally.) Negative levels DO have such a memory, but they're a different case.
3. If a shadow's hit causes your current Strength to reach or drop below 0, you gain the Dead status; the status "remembers" that the shadow caused it for 1d4 rounds; if you still have it at that point, Create Spawn tries to resolve.
4. If you are hit by Breath of Life one round after the kill:
-You lose the Dead status (and won't be hit by Create Spawn);
-You remain unconscious because you have 0 Str.
-You gain one temporary negative level with 1 day duration.
The Str damage that's on you does not remember that the shadow caused it. On the other hand, the shadow can touch you again, putting you back to Dead status per step 3.
On the other hand, if it were Con damage, then Breath of Life wouldn't work because, having 0 Con, you would never lose the Dead status.
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Raise dead has no target to ever be useful according to fergie, and you should mend the bodies or animate object.
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Raise Dead - "Target dead creature touched"Works fine. So does Gentle Repose - "Saving Throw Will negates (object)"
Although why and how you get a save vs Gentle Repose is beyond me. Maybe, just maybe, these brief words in spell descriptions are not the true intents of how things are supposed to work?
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2010 Top 8
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Well, if someone were carrying your corpse they could make a save versus gentle repose for you.. Not sure why they would, though. Maybe they're an undead who wants your corpse to ripen first?
Or I'm carting your corpse away because I don't want your allies to raise you, and gentle repose will extend the amount of time they have to steal your body back.
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2. Ability damage, just like HP damage, does not have a "memory" of what caused it unless it explicitly needs to for some purpose (eg, if the damage can't be healed naturally.) Negative levels DO have such a memory, but they're a different case.
My argument is that a shadow's strength damage explicitly needs to be tracked separately because it is the only type of strength damage that can kill you. If we're supposed to track ability damage separately because one source might need a DC X Heal check to recover, surely we're supposed to track the "lethal" and "non-lethal" ability damage separately.
3. If a shadow's hit causes your current Strength to reach or drop below 0, you gain the Dead status; the status "remembers" that the shadow caused it for 1d4 rounds; if you still have it at that point, Create Spawn tries to resolve.
The problem is that a shadow can never cause your Strength to reach 0: it doesn't affect your strength score at all.
All a shadow can do is inflict Strength damage that equals your strength score. So a Bull's Strength (or rage) is actually better at fending off death from a shadow than Lesser Restoration: it's only a standard action, and the strength score boost is not subject to a dice roll.
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My argument is that a shadow's strength damage explicitly needs to be tracked separately because it is the only type of strength damage that can kill you. If we're supposed to track ability damage separately because one source might need a DC X Heal check to recover, surely we're supposed to track the "lethal" and "non-lethal" ability damage separately.
I'll try to explain based on how I read the shadow's ability. And my reference to 0 Str (and reducing to 0 Str) is admittedly based on 3.5 mechanics. It should translate easily enough.
A shadow's touch deals 1d6 points of Strength damage to a living creature. This is a negative energy effect. A creature dies if this Strength damage equals or exceeds its actual Strength score.
I could be reading it in an unintended way; but I see it as this. If the shadow hits you, and the result of the hit is that Str damage >= Str, you die. (This is basically how it worked in 3.5.) Otherwise, it's just Str damage.
It saves a lot of unnecessary headache by keeping things simple - at least I'd think.
Otherwise, you start getting weird interactions with other sources of ability damage / drain / actual decrease, as well as the problems of Breath of Life (and also Temporary Resurrection - which can be used after something like Limited Wish -> Hallow to block Create Spawn.)
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Do not FAQ this. Do not FAQ this. Do not FAQ this.
*FAQs*
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Raise dead has no target to ever be useful according to fergie, and you should mend the bodies or animate object.?
Raise Dead - "Target dead creature touched"
Works fine. So does Gentle Repose - "Saving Throw Will negates (object)"
Although why and how you get a save vs Gentle Repose is beyond me. Maybe, just maybe, these brief words in spell descriptions are not the true intents of how things are supposed to work?
you've been arguing that once a CREATURE receives the DEAD CONDITION that they're an object. By that logic, spells that target dead creatures wouldn't work.
I didn't find it when I looked, but someone else may have better searching skills then I do.
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Wasn't me.
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I only read up to the end of page 3 so I'm not sure what else has been said since then, but:
Regarding Breath of life and the shadow attack, you would not die again after BoL, unless it's considered that the shadow's attack places a permanent debuff that eternally persists on the character for the rest of their existence.
It doesn't have to be eternal. Only as long as the ability damage persists.
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It doesn't have to be eternal. Only as long as the ability damage persists.That's implying that you have to keep track of ability damage dealt by creatures that have special attacks separately from other ability damage though. Nowhere in the rules does it say that should be done, or that there are multiple kinds of ability damage.
It doesn't have to. You rarely have multiple sources of ability damage at the same time.
I don't find that a convincing argument to track it as special ability damage, Toz
In response to the original topic, I usually cry.
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I don't think anybody does. All the nitpicky RAW arguments have drained everybody's strength.
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