How does Ghoul Touch work?


Rules Questions


I have questions on a spell I really, truly want to give a foe that my party will encounter:

Spell Description:
Core under Ghoul Touch wrote:

Ghoul Touch

School necromancy; Level sorcerer/wizard 2
Casting Time 1 standard action
Components V, S, M (cloth from a ghoul or earth from a ghoul's lair)
Range touch
Target living humanoid touched
Duration 1d6+2 rounds
Saving Throw Fortitude negates; Spell Resistance yes

Imbuing you with negative energy, this spell allows you to paralyze a single living humanoid for the duration of the spell with a successful melee touch attack.

A paralyzed subject exudes a carrion stench that causes all living creatures (except you) in a 10-foot-radius spread to become sickened (Fortitude negates). A neutralize poison spell removes the effect from a sickened creature, and creatures immune to poison are unaffected by the stench. This is a poison effect.

(Question 1) What does Fortitude negate here?

(1a) Maybe the target gets a Fort save to not be paralyzed, besides getting their touch AC against the attack roll. Naturally, everyone in a 10-foot radius also gets their Fort save to not be sickened.

(1b) Or maybe the target is directly paralyzed upon the touch succeeding -- and the Fort save only negates everyone else's sickening. After all, normally targets of a successful melee touch attack don't also get the chance to save against the effect.

(Question 2) How long does the stench last?

(2a) According to the Core rules on Magic, a spread normally is a burst effect that goes around corners -- meaning, it is instantaneous. If they'd wanted to give the stench a duration, they properly should have called it an emanation. So technically, I should say that the stench floods the area and then clears, instantly.

(2b) However, in this case, the cause of the sickening stench has a duration: the target of the spell goes on being paralyzed for 1d6+2 rounds. And Entangle is an example of a spell that clearly has a lasting "spread." So I'm thinking that this spread actually has the same duration as the paralysis. Presumably, leaving the AoE effectively ends a character's sickened condition.

(Question 3) How do I adjudicate the stench?

(3a) I could say that you get one chance to save, and either you're sickened for the duration of the paralysis, or the sickening is negated. Obviously, that includes everyone but the caster who is in the spread on the round when the target is first paralyzed. It would presumably also include creatures who enter it on later rounds, if the stench lasts. So anyone who encounters the stench makes one Fort save, save-or-suck. But while this is normally how spell effects are adjudicated, the spell description doesn't actually specify that characters are immune if they save.

(Bonus question, given this adjudication) If the caster casts the spell again, on a different target nearby (as she is highly likely to do), does everyone have to make new Fort saves?

(3b) The stench is specifically called out as a poison effect. Admittedly, the rules on inhaled poisons in Ultimate Equipment only make sense if the spread lasts for the spell's duration. I just think it's reasonable to say that you make a Fort save at the beginning of every round that you're in the spread. And every time you fail a save, the DC for the next one goes up by +2. (Although the duration is still that of the paralysis.) OTOH, if you succeed in your save, the sickening is negated for that round and the DC resets for the next one. With this ruling, you go on with making saves every round for the entire duration of the poison.

{<groan!> (Added question 4) How do I define the "10-foot-radius spread?" (See the AoE diagrams here; I'm looking at a big difference -- and more if the target is enlarged!

(4a) I use the 10-foot radius diagram in gray (toward the top of the page); it spreads out from any one corner of the paralyzed target's square (my choice).

(4b) I use the diagram for a 10-foot effect "centered on you" -- except that in this case, it's centered on the target, not caster. (d20 gives it as the "Reach" diagram toward the bottom of the page, in this case for a 10-foot reach.) Honestly, this is what makes the most sense to me.}

Normally, when I look at a spell or item this problematic, I just skip right over it. But Ghoul Touch is soooo nasty, and so well suited not just to this foe but likely others in the future! So I'd really appreciate some help on handling the spell.

Sczarni

• Fort negates the paralysis.
• The stench lasts as long as they're paralyzed (1d6+2 Rds).
• Stench is a Universal Monster Ability.
• I would imagine that you could hold your breath for the 50% chance to avoid.

Sovereign Court

Pathfinder Starfinder Society Subscriber

1. (a)Fortitude negates the primary effect of the spell, paralysis.

2. (b)Many spreads have durations. Obscuring mist and similar spells are another example.

3. A poison effect is not the same thing as a poison. I wouldn't bring in the poison rules to increase DCs for subsequent rounds, but it might make sense for overlapping areas of effect.


A Universal Monster Ability!!!! Why couldn't they just have said that and let it go???? Answer: Because this is a spell in Core, and the Universal Monster Abilities are in the Bestiary. Oh, do we need a consolidated set of rules!

OK, what do I have now:

(1a) Nefreet, you're saying that you get a Fort to negate the paralysis. Why? I mean, it's an obvious interpretation of what they wrote, but why would you get two defenses?

(2b) I will just mentally add a phrase to that (you'll have to imagine the text I've mentally typed out here & then deleted) sentence in Core under Magic; my mental copy will say, A spread spell extends out like a burst or emanation but can turn corners. Clearly, they can indeed have a duration.

(3a) No, the spell doesn't say that a Fort save gives you immunity, because it says it does in the Bestiary.

Bestiary under Universal Monster Abilities wrote:
Creatures that successfully save cannot be affected by the same creature's stench for 24 hours.

They put in all the other rules that are found there, mind you, lots of piddly ones that waste text-space right & left compared to just referring the reader to the Universal Monster Ability, and then left the most crucial one out. There's a far longer mental deletion to imagine here. But definitely now, (3a) -- one save and you're done, no matter how many times my foe casts the spell in the one encounter she's likely to achieve.

Along with a bit of (3b): yes, you should be able to hold your breath for a 50% chance to avoid the Fort save at all. But only if a friend in the spread warns you!

So what about the question I was adding (4) -- even as you were typing out your ever so helpful answers?

Sczarni

Many touch spells allow saves for half damage, partial negation or full negation.

Liberty's Edge

Why would you get two defenses? Becuase paralyzed is one CDG away from dead. It is one of the strongest conditions in the game and hitting touch AC is trivial for much of the game against most enemies.


Stack, thank you so much. Now I understand, and will have an easier time interpreting such spells in the future.

So that just leaves which AoE diagram to use. Realistically, saying that the target is the center of an effect that spreads out equally in all directions makes the most sense, and is what I'll go with, barring hearing to the contrary. But I'd like confirmation that pfsrd's reach diagram (which I'd normally use for a spell effect "centered on you") is the one to use, rather than the normal 10-foot radius diagram, which spreads out from only one corner of the target's square.

Sovereign Court

Most of the questions have been answered correctly IMO, but maybe a slightly different angle is interesting.

Q1: what is the save for?
For resisting paralysis. By default the Save line in a spell is against the main effect, unless specified otherwise.

This is proportional, if you compare to Hold Person, which allows a new save every round, while this one gives only one to-hit and one save and then you're SOL.

Q2: how long does the stench last
It isn't officially the Stench from the UMR, but it's poorly described and everything we do know about it matches the UMR. Keep in mind that the Bestiary was published after the CRB so the CRB can't refer to it. I agree that using the better-described Stench UMR makes sense for adjudicating duration.

Q3: how big is the area of stench
The section saying spreads are like bursts is a bit misleading. The one thing spreads really inherit from bursts is that they're area effects that originate from a central point and then go ("spread, like a gas, around corners") outwards to a maximum radius. Duration doesn't factor into it.

Emanations are a bit more similar to bursts in that they also don't go around corners; an emanation is basically an ongoing burst.

All three of these are different from for example cylinders, which are usually horizontal circles where the magic comes from the ground upwards. This means a cylinder isn't bothered by corners/obstructions because it's not expanding horizontally like a burst or emanation.

So that answers your question: a spread is like a burst in that it bursts/spreads out from a center, unlike a cylinder.

Q3b: what do you mean "poison"?
Sometimes effect get a poison descriptor. That doesn't mean they follow the rules for poisonous substances with exposure vectors and multiple doses and all that; there's definitely no double dose of stench re-save going on here.

What it does mean is that if you have bonuses against poison (like drinking Antitoxin), or immunity (level 9 druid) they help against the effect.

In other words, this spell is excellent for use by a group of undead casters, because they're not hindering each other with the poison-stench effect.

Q4: where to center the effect
The core rules make no exception for creatures as origins of spells: all spreads are centered on a grid intersection. For a medium or smaller creature, that's one of the corners of his space.

An FAQ ruled differently for larger creatures, but with some important technical details:

FAQ wrote:

Big creatures and centered effects: If a Large or larger creature has up an effect “centered on you,” does that mean that sometimes the emanation doesn’t even affect the creature’s entire space, let alone anything else?

No, when such a creature uses an emanation or burst with the text “centered on you,” treat the creature’s entire space as the spell’s point of origin, and measure the spell’s area or effect from the edges of the creature’s space. For instance, an antimagic field cast by a great wyrm red dragon would extend 10 feet beyond her 30x30 foot space, for a total of a 50 foot diameter.

Strictly speaking this only applies to self-spells, not spells you could cast on other people; and not to spreads. So that wouldn't do anything for Ghoul Touch.

Whether such a narrow reading makes sense is left as an exercise to the reader... :P


Oh, I've been away, and ill -- but I am reading this now, and appreciating it! Thank you so much, Ascalaphus.

Sovereign Court

You're welcome :)

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