Winter's Strike Feat: Can you make targets exhausted?

[HighTechnocrat]

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/combat-feats/winter-s-strike-combat/

Winter's Strike allows you to make the target fatigued (assuming they fail the save). If I make the target fatigued for several rounds, and I hit them again within that duration, what happens?

Does the target become exhausted instead of fatigued? If so, for how long?

The condition summary for Fatigued states "Doing anything that would normally cause fatigue causes the fatigued character to become exhausted." However, the summary for Exhausted states that it takes an hour of rest to recover, and hitting someone twice to inflict Fatigue for an hour or more seems wrong.

[Serum]

Remember that fatigue also generally takes 8 hours of rest to recover from.

In this case, since the fatigue only lasts for rounds, I would rule that a second application makes the character exhausted for the number of rounds that the two applications overlap.

Failed twice in the same round (possible with two characters using Winter's Strike): exhaustion for [Wis] rounds.
Failed a second time after two rounds: exhaustion for [Wis -2] rounds, fatigued for 2 rounds.

[Claxon]

Winter's Strike feat specifically mentions how long its effects last, which is rounds equal to your wisdom modifier.

I would say, if you use it twice on the same creature the creature would be fatigue, but only for the duration that both effects were active.

So, if you had a +4 modifier and used vital strike to activate Winter's Strike that round the creature would become fatigued for 4 rounds. On the next turn if you did it again, the creature would have 3 rounds of fatigue left on them, so the would be exhausted for 3 rounds and then fatigued for 1 round.

[Backpack]

All effects that I know that stack into fatigue, specifically state that two hits would exhaust. While most effects that cause fatigue that do not stack into exhaustion state that the fatigue effect only stack for duration of the effect. Unfortunantly the rules are vague on this point and I don't beleive we can give you a hard yes or no. Talk to your GM and see how he wants to play it. Personally I'd rule it as "you hit an enemy who is fatigued for 1 more round, I would say that the duration would then be the higher of the two duration, ie. 4 rounds."

[Fuzzy-Wuzzy]

Backpack wrote:

All effects that I know that stack into fatigue, specifically state that two hits would exhaust. While most effects that cause fatigue that do not stack into exhaustion state that the fatigue effect only stack for duration of the effect. Unfortunantly the rules are vague on this point and I don't beleive we can give you a hard yes or no. Talk to your GM and see how he wants to play it.

^This.

Backpack wrote:

Personally I'd rule it as "you hit an enemy who is fatigued for 1 more round, I would say that the duration would then be the higher of the two duration, ie. 4 rounds."

I'd go with Stunning Fist's "additional hits do not stack but do add to the duration." So you hit an enemy who is fatigued for 1 more round, they are now fatigued for 5 rounds.

EDIT: That's monk Stunning Fist, of course, not the feat alone.

[Serum]

Backpack wrote:

All effects that I know that stack into fatigue, specifically state that two hits would exhaust. While most effects that cause fatigue that do not stack into exhaustion state that the fatigue effect only stack for duration of the effect. Unfortunantly the rules are vague on this point and I don't beleive we can give you a hard yes or no. Talk to your GM and see how he wants to play it. Personally I'd rule it as "you hit an enemy who is fatigued for 1 more round, I would say that the duration would then be the higher of the two duration, ie. 4 rounds."

I found the opposite. Most of the effects that don't allow for exhaustion specifically say so. See frostbite, touch of fatigue, waves of fatigue, psychic leech, Tiring Critical, Fatiguing Stare, etc.