Bride of the FAQ Attack!

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

She’s ready to pounce!

If I have the pounce ability and I charge with a lance, do my iterative lance attacks get the extra damage multiplier from charging?

No, for two reasons.

One, because a lance only deals extra damage when you’re riding a charging mount—not when you are charging.

Two, even if you have an unusual combination of rules that allows you to ignore the above limitation, it doesn’t makes sense that those iterative attacks gain the damage bonus. To make that second attack, you have to pull the lance back and stab forward again, and that stab doesn’t have the benefit of the charge’s momentum. (The Core Rulebook doesn’t state that you only get the damage multiplier on the first attack with a lance because there is no rule in the Core Rulebook that allows a PC to charge and take multiple attacks with a weapon, so that combination didn’t need to be addressed.)

If I drink a potion, do I automatically forgo my save against that potion?

No. Nothing in the potion rules says it changes whether or not you get a saving throw against the spell stored in the potion. Even if someone hands you a potion of poison and tells you it’s a potion of cure serious wounds, you still get a save.

Does the dodge bonus from the “offensive defensive” rogue talent (Advanced Player’s Guide, page 131) stack with itself? Does it apply to everyone, or just to the target I’m attacking?

There are two issues relating to this rogue talent.

One, in the first printing it provided a +1 circumstance bonus against the attacked target, which was a very weak ability. The second printing update changed it from a circumstance bonus to a dodge bonus, but accidentally omitted the “against that creature” text, which made it a very strong ability.

Two, it doesn’t specify whether the dodge bonus stacks with itself, and because this creates a strange place in the rules where bonuses don’t stack from the same source but dodge bonuses always stack. While we haven’t reached a final decision on what to do about this talent, we are leaning toward this solution: the dodge bonus only applies against the creature you sneak attacked, and the dodge bonus does not stack with itself. This prevents you from getting a dodge bonus to AC against a strong creature by sneak attacking a weak creature, and prevents you from reaching an absurdly high AC by sneak attacking multiple times in the same round.

Sean K Reynolds
Designer