Paladin's Sacrifice vs. Coup de Grace


Rules Questions


Suppose an enemy coup de grace's one of the paladin's allies, and the paladin uses Paladin's Sacrifice. What exactly happens?

Here's my take on it:

PRD wrote:
You open up a brief but powerful divine conduit between you and another creature, taking on the damage and any other effects that creature suffers. When a creature in range is hit by an attack or fails a saving throw, you can cast this spell and the wounds and/or effects are magically transmitted to you instead of the target. You are affected as if you were hit by the attack or failed the saving throw, taking all the damage and suffering all of the adverse effects.

So, situation (a): The paladin sees the coup de grace being performed, and casts it before the target makes the save. "You are affected as if you were hit by the attack" implies to me that the paladin suffers the coup de grace instead, and could well die, though her save against a coup de grace is likely far better than her comrade's.

Situation (b): The paladin sees the party member fail her save, and casts it. In that case I think, "You are affected... as if you failed the saving throw" applies and the paladin dies outright.

It seems perfectly clear, but I'm likely to have a paladin do it tonight so I'd at least like to make sure I'm not missing some nuance here.


I think you have a good reading of it.


Yeah, you seem good to go


I would say probably situation A occurs.

A coup-de-grace does not require an attack roll, but it can still fail if a readied action or attack of opportunity is used to kill the coup-de-grace-er while they are making a coup-de-grace. Thus, I'd take it as there is an auto-hit attack that requires a saving throw.


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Anonymous Warrior wrote:

I would say probably situation A occurs.

A coup-de-grace does not require an attack roll, but it can still fail if a readied action or attack of opportunity is used to kill the coup-de-grace-er while they are making a coup-de-grace. Thus, I'd take it as there is an auto-hit attack that requires a saving throw.

Oh, I'm talking about when the player decides to say he does it.

He's playing a great paladin right now, and they're about to go up against a critter with a Blasphemy that's likely to paralyze about half the party.

The critter will taunt the paladin as it kills all of her comrades. At some point, she's going to say, "Enough" and throw in her sacrifice.

To me as a GM, it's all about whether she does it before or after her companion makes the saving roll...

Of course, the player could surprise me and say, "Heck, no, I'm not doing THAT!", and that's OK, too.

It's mainly because this player's been willing to take a ton of hits for his companions, so I'm guessing he's going to take this one as well.

(And yes, his goddess is noticing all of this...)

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