Furious Finish and Oracle Lame Curse


Rules Questions


1 person marked this as FAQ candidate.

I have a player with Furious Finish and the Oracle Lame Curse.

Furious Finish allows you to maximize vital strike, but then your rage ends and you are fatigued, even if you wouldn't normally be.

The Oracle Lame Curse makes a character immune to fatigue.

I'm not sure how to rule on this. Should he become fatigued or not?

On one hand Furious Finish says he should be fatigued even if he wouldn't normally be. But with the Lame Curse he is immune. It's not just that he normally isn't fatigued, he is immune to the condition.

Is there a standard ruling on this?


A view is that the barb normally stops being fatigued by rage at lv17, so furious finish was just meant to override that ability causing them to be fatigued again. That immunity and other forms of preventing fatigue still work like normal.


Ok, thanks. That's the way I've been ruling is so far. But they were abilities I was not at all familiar with, so I figured I better get some input.


I feel like you could rule the other way too. Normal people of a high enough level with the Lame curse aren't able to be fatigued, but the feat gets around that.

Likewise, undead and constructs would similarly become fatigued if they used this feat. It's really weird though.


The fear would take precedence.


Immune means immune. But the feat is clear that "even when you normally would not be".

Frankly that tells me it overrides his immunity because of that.


I guess the rule of thumb is specific overrides general. The question is, which is more specific and which is more general.


If something says "screw your immunity", it is more specific.

-------
General: Status X does _____

Specific: I am immune to Status X

More Specific: Even if you are normally immune to Status X you have to deal with Status X anyway.


Lame Oracle and Barbarian rage use the general usage of fatigued.
There is no "special case" of fatigue for the barbarian, nor are their special rules involved in the fatigue immunity of the Oracle.
It would be pretty difficult to argue that either of these are special case, instead they both use the generic rules.

Furious Finish has a special line of text explaining how it does not follow the normal rules, ie special case.

If you are going to argue "Specific vs General", then I would imagine that it would be pretty clear which was which?

I had not thought of undead immunity before. Unexpected corner case? Then again, you need to have an undead barbarian (who is immune to moral bonuses) who then rages (a moral bonus) just to gain an effect that makes you fatigued, which you then circumvent via your undead immunities.
It my be possible, but you are sure wringing the rules something fierce to force such a senario.


Kifaru wrote:
I guess the rule of thumb is specific overrides general. The question is, which is more specific and which is more general.

I'd say Furious Finish is the general. Furious Finish is talking about a Rage class feature, so it seems safe to infer when it's talking about immunity to fatigue that it's talking about the barbarian version which isn't a true immunity to fatigue but only to rage fatigue.

It's just my educated guess though. I see it like when it's said 'the rules are written with a 2 armed, 2 legged humanoid in mind'. This feat was written with a barbarian in mind. ;)


I'm starting to think I made a bad ruling on this. I may have to reverse that ruling. Time to have a talk with one of my players.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Okay, so the barb with fatigue immunity gets fatigued, it then goes away cause he's immune to fatigue, end effect is barb not fatigued.

When furious finish came out the only way to not be fatigued after rage was the barb lv17 ability. This feat comes out, then more stuff comes out like becoming immune to fatigue.

This clearly makes sense the way it is written to be working with the barb ability and I feel it's not clear enough that it was meant to overcome immunity or other such stuff.

Scarab Sages

A Cord of Stubborn Resolve has a replacement effect that can be helpful in cases like this.


I still feel it overrides immunity because it says clearly "even when you would normally not be". It doesn't give specifics. Just a straight up "if you wouldn't normally be fatigued you are."

Immunity doesn't ummeduatelybend that either as fatigued has a set time before it wears off.


see, in a casual reading immunity is immunity which means it can't happen ever no matter what. Using the casual style that was even more prevalent in earlier books, furious finish is for the lv17 barbs who gained the ability to not normally become fatigued when they end rage.

Like if they released the feat with the wording now then I'd be more open to think they intended it to bypass immunity, but I'd be complaining that it's very poorly worded for that power. But having it be released when it was it makes the most sense that this wasn't someone supposed to bypass immunity without explaining how immunity interacts with it.


Cavall wrote:

I still feel it overrides immunity because it says clearly "even when you would normally not be". It doesn't give specifics. Just a straight up "if you wouldn't normally be fatigued you are."

Immunity doesn't ummeduatelybend that either as fatigued has a set time before it wears off.

So you're saying that you're fatigued until you rest for 8 hours right? Since that's the normal duration for fatigue and the feat doesn't say anything other than you're fatigued.


That would be correct.


Cavall wrote:
That would be correct.

So not even tied to rage, wow, this might be the first time I've heard that view


The way I see it, the barbarian is not immune to fatigue, he just is not fatigued at the end of his, as normal when he gets tireless rage. Becoming fatigued at the end of the rage would be appropriate after using Furious Focus, as he would not NORMALLY be fatigued but still has rules in place to determine how long he would NORMALLY be fatigued after a rage.

If a character is flat out immune to fatigue, he never suffers the effects of fatigue, even if he was somehow fatigued. Furious Focus hits him with fatigue but he doesn't feel the effects (ignores them).

That is how I rule at my game table. Immunity is final unless something specifically states that the immunity is ignored. Terminology like "even if he would normally not be" doesn't apply.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

On my reading, it ignores immunity. Immunity normally says "You ignore this." But Furious Finish states even if you normally wouldn't be, which includes immunity. So that supersedes immunity. Now, I'd tie it into the Rage's fatigue. So you are fatigued for number of rounds raged x2.

If they meant it to be just ignoring the feature at 17th level, it would specify it by saying something like: "you are fatigued (even if you have the Tireless Fatigue Barbarian class feature)."


TrinitysEnd wrote:
If they meant it to be just ignoring the feature at 17th level, it would specify it by saying something like: "you are fatigued (even if you have the Tireless Fatigue Barbarian class feature)."

At the time it was made, there wasn't any way to get around fatigue. The only thing that was relevant was the barbarian's 17th level ability. As such, it doesn't seem unreasonable that it didn't occur to the author to future proof the feat and/or link it to the feature.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

Furious Finish came out in Ultimate Combat (2011). Lame Oracle Curse came out in 2010 with the Advanced Player's Guide.


TrinitysEnd wrote:
Furious Finish came out in Ultimate Combat (2011). Lame Oracle Curse came out in 2010 with the Advanced Player's Guide.

Ah, got them mixed up. So there was 1 way to do it. Still seems possible they weren't thinking of lame oracles when making the feat, especially if it was in the works before the oracle came out.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
graystone wrote:
TrinitysEnd wrote:
Furious Finish came out in Ultimate Combat (2011). Lame Oracle Curse came out in 2010 with the Advanced Player's Guide.
Ah, got them mixed up. So there was 1 way to do it. Still seems possible they weren't thinking of lame oracles when making the feat, especially if it was in the works before the oracle came out.

Definitely possible, but that's something that would require a change in writing to fix (or an FAQ). As it stands now, the writing would go against that intent. I don't really have a personal stake in this, and either way seems fine to me.

That is the wonderful thing about Pathfinder. You can pick and choose what you want.

Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder First Edition / Rules Questions / Furious Finish and Oracle Lame Curse All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.