Sending Your Heroes to the Mirrored Moon

Ramanujan wrote:

For the Druid Archetype there should be dedication feats to gain their order abilities — like there is for the Barbarian Totems. Let me get Wildshape! (And also change it to function long enough to be useful outside combat, even if only for non-combat forms)

Uh...Wild Shape is a level 1 Druid Feat. It is thus readily available. You even get an Order and thus the extra uses per day (though what spell you can use it for will lag sharply behind).

You can take Wild Shape only using Basic Wilding.

Choose an order as you would if you were a druid. You become bound by that order’s anathema and count as a member of the order. You become trained in Nature and your order’s associated skill; for each of these skills in which you were already trained, you become trained in a skill of your choice. You don’t gain any other abilities from your choice of order.

So you do not get extra uses per day either. Am I right?

You can take Wild Shape only using Basic Wilding.

This is true, and I never said otherwise. I makes Wild Shape an investment, but a separate one from getting Spells for the most part.

It is written that the order only gives you skills and anathema:

Nope! Let me emphasize what else it gives you:

Choose an order as you would if you were a druid. You become bound by that order’s anathema and count as a member of the order. You become trained in Nature and your order’s associated skill; for each of these skills in which you were already trained, you become trained in a skill of your choice. You don’t gain any other abilities from your choice of order.

Counting as a member of an Order is precisely what gives you the benefits of that Order on Feats. So you get said bonus (which, on Wild Shape, is extra Wild Shape uses).

So you do not get extra uses per day either. Am I right?

No, you get the extra uses, in fact Mark Seifter backed me up as correct on this point here. The wording is admittedly unclear and should probably be clarified, but you get 'em.

Counting as a member of an Order is precisely what gives you the benefits of that Order on Feats. So you get said bonus (which, on Wild Shape, is extra Wild Shape uses).

Oh, yes, you are right. I missed that it is the Wild Shape that gives you the extra uses, not the order. Thanks for clarification.

First it attacked the monk. Crit. Second attack, crit monk is now dying. Third action swallow whole. The second round it did the same thing, except this time to me (alchemist) same results crit, crit, dying, swallow. We only survived by using hero points to stop the dying condition and because the other PCs were able to do enough damage to kill it on that second round. The ranger rolling two natural 20s in a row in the first round was helpful. If there was a third round, it probably would have been the same thing but for another player. We had 5 pcs, which probably also helped.

Wait, doesn't swallow whole require that the target is grabbed first? The Sea Serpent only has normal grab, not improved grab, meaning that it has to spend a second action immediately after a successful attack in order to initiate the grab (though that action is an automatic success). So it shouldn't be able to attack twice and then swallow whole in a single turn unless the target was grabbed on a previous turn (which also means it shouldn't be able to do this two rounds in a row).

It sounds like your GM may have just assumed that Grab worked like in PF1 without carefully reading the new rules. It's really easy to miss and I know that I didn't realize how grab worked until I carefully went through all the monster abilities while making my GM Sheet and realized that the benefit of Improved Grab was to lower it from an extra action to a free action.

Doktor Weasel wrote:

First it attacked the monk. Crit. Second attack, crit monk is now dying. Third action swallow whole. The second round it did the same thing, except this time to me (alchemist) same results crit, crit, dying, swallow. We only survived by using hero points to stop the dying condition and because the other PCs were able to do enough damage to kill it on that second round. The ranger rolling two natural 20s in a row in the first round was helpful. If there was a third round, it probably would have been the same thing but for another player. We had 5 pcs, which probably also helped.

Wait, doesn't swallow whole require that the target is grabbed first? The Sea Serpent only has normal grab, not improved grab, meaning that it has to spend a second action immediately after a successful attack in order to initiate the grab (though that action is an automatic success). So it shouldn't be able to attack twice and then swallow whole in a single turn unless the target was grabbed on a previous turn (which also means it shouldn't be able to do this two rounds in a row).

It sounds like your GM may have just assumed that Grab worked like in PF1 without carefully reading the new rules. It's really easy to miss and I know that I didn't realize how grab worked until I carefully went through all the monster abilities while making my GM Sheet and realized that the benefit of Improved Grab was to lower it from an extra action to a free action.

Hrm. Yeah we missed that, thanks for catching it. It is really counter-intuitive. You'd think a grab attack would be considered grabbed. Reading the Grab action in the ability glossary, it's still really unclear. The interpretation at the time was the action was about the extending the hold, and rereading it still makes that sound like that is the case. It required a reading of Improved Grab to get the idea that it must be an action for the actual grab itself because improved grab doesn't have it, but still has the action for extended duration. This does make the grab and knockdown attacks a bit less nasty than we thought. But they're still pretty rough. And they really need to be more clear about it. If it takes reading a separate ability to understand the first one, than it's not clear enough. This needs to be reworked for clarity.

In this case I don't think it would have changed too much. It could have just attacked twice and than solidified the grab, swallowed on the next turn and then done two attacks on the second person and made them unconscious without grabbing. We'd still have too unconscious characters, although only one swallowed. Or it could have done one attack, grab action, then swallow whole action each round to swallow both but we wouldn't' have been unconscious. It also doesn't change the power of Spine Rake and a long-range attack combined with a 90 swim speed.

The other fight I mentioned would be slightly different with my alchemist getting grabbed, but it would have taken an action to secure the hold before flying away, giving it one action's worth of movement less. And then again after the first escape. So the range wouldn't have been quite as dire, but still pretty bad.

The rule reading to make a tool does help you catch a lot of little details that a normal reading would miss. We caught some similarly unclear bits when creating a web-site to help work out and look up treasure pricing. That required a really close rereading of various item rules multiple times to get things right. It does seem that several of my group's problems in the playtest have been due to misinterpreted rules, so the clarity really does need some work (and/or our reading comprehension).

I think the problem is that while the ability section shows Grab with an Action Icon, the monster statblock only says "plus grab" under the damage of an attack, which makes it seem like something that is applied automatically with damage on a successful attack.

I'd say Grab should probably be listed as a separate monster action in the statblock for clarity, with a note saying what attacks it is associated with and can be used after.

FYI, this is also the same for knockdown attacks. that requires an action as well.

Hrm. Yeah we missed that, thanks for catching it. It is really counter-intuitive. You'd think a grab attack would be considered grabbed. Reading the Grab action in the ability glossary, it's still really unclear. The interpretation at the time was the action was about the extending the hold, and rereading it still makes that sound like that is the case. It required a reading of Improved Grab to get the idea that it must be an action for the actual grab itself because improved grab doesn't have it, but still has the...

I'm about to run this session so I'm glad this came up! I was under the same impression.