Cheng Wu's page

Thank you all! I appreciate the help very much.

Thanks so far. I guess, I got it right then.
Just to be sure: If the rogues turn is before his targets one in the FIRST round of combat, the target is flat fooded for the whole round. If not, then suprise attack won´t work (and just if he rolled stealth/deception for initiative).
If the rogue manages to be hidden, not matter what round, for the first action, his target is flat footed due to the "hidden" status, which fizzles because of / after his first attack of his turn, although he can try to get hidden afterwards again.
So, there is no more "surprise round" like in PF1, where the whole party can make one turn for each member, before the initiative kicks in, but the rogue still manages to get enemies the "flat footed" status for his own attacks with his suprise attack in the first combat round as long as his initiative is higher?

So the big advantages are:

1) The rogue doesn't have to use cover or concealment, making a melee sneak attack feasible.
2) The rogue doesn't need to Hide or Sneak, saving her actions and a chance of failure.
3) The rogue can still potentially treat an enemy as flat-footed even if her initiave wasn't high enough to be unnoticed.
4) The rogue can treat the target as flat-footed to all of their attacks, not just the opening move.

That last advantage makes Surprise Attack REALLY good on an archer who wants to be rifling off as many attacks as possible, potentially allowing sneak attack on all attacks for a rogue or just increasing their flurry potential for a multiclassed ranger.

Hello everyone,

just started to play PF2 and find the spelling of some rules, talents, etc. quite tricky, so I hope, you can help me out with this one, cause I just cannot read out the "big advantages", you wrote in the concerning passives (sneak attack and surprise attack).
1-4) From which source(s) do you get your conclusions?
As far as I can understand, if the rogue is "Unnoticed" by enemies as long as he used Stealth beforehand, they just do not know, the rogue is there and so cannot defend themselves against him. So they are flat footed against him and his first attack will do the extra damage from sneak attack. IF the rogue acts before them in the first round of combat, the enemies are also flat footed for the rest of the round of combat. (This reminds me of the surprise round of PF1, but it seems to me, just the rogue can do this in PF2 due to surprise attack.) So, if the rogue was walking up to one enemy in the first round, he would get two more actions, while the enemies are flat footed. I can imagine, that it is also possible, that the GM says, if the rogue starts the combat, after he had sneaked up to one enemy, he could even have three actions, since his first attack-action starts the combat and initiative is rolled afterwards. But other than that, I cannot understand a way statement "4)" ist even possible.
Since it makes a huge difference to rogue players if the enemies are always flat fooded or not, I hope, you can clarify why the four statements are correct and my assumption is not.

Thanks and greetz,

Wu

It has. Thank you so much, not only for the detailed explanations, but for helping me getting a better understanding of how these class abilities and feats correspond with each other. I am sure, my comprehenson of these rules have improved a lot.

Hi RAWmonger,

thank you so much for your detailed answer. Unfortunately I am still not sure in two of your points. And yes, I read your very last sentence and believe in your words, but I also want to fully understand why it is so, since I am a new part time GM.

Why does the feat stunning fist gives me one use per day per brawler level? The second sentence of martial training counts me in as monk, nice, but afterwards in the feat stunning fist it is said: "A monk may attempt a stunning attack a number of times per day equal to his MONK LEVEL." The first sentence of martial training just tells me to count the brawler level for qualifying for feats, but not to count as monk level when I already got the feat, so I do not understand, where the scaling of uses of stunning fist comes from.

The second unsure point is:
You wrote: "The Monk Class ability includes that text. Regardless of if you dip a level into monk, you will not get to count your brawler levels as monk levels for the purpose of this class ability, because it is a class ability that grants those new conditions, not the feat."
When I dip into another class, e.g. here monk lvl 1, I do qualify for the Monk class abilities, given to the monk class at lvl 1.
When I read in the monk ability stunning fist:
"At 4th level, and every 4 levels thereafter, the monk gains the ability to apply a new condition to the target of his Stunning Fist" is it then meant: "At 4th level, and every 4 levels thereafter (AS A MONK), the monk gains the ability to apply a new condition to the target of his Stunning Fist"? Sorry to be that nitpicking, since english is not my mother tongue I guess it is too obvious, but I just can´t read it out of the context.

There comes another question in my mind:
The feat dragon Ferocity ( https://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/combat-feats/dragon-ferocity-combat/ ) has a "special". Part of this special is: "A monk with this feat can use Elemental Fist as if he were a monk of the four winds." If I understood you correct, this means the second sentence of martial training would qualify a brawler for the quoted special. Since the feat elemental fist ( https://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/combat-feats/elemental-fist-combat/ ) has a special itself: "A monk of the four winds receives Elemental Fist as a bonus feat at 1st level, even if he does not meet the prerequisites. A monk may attempt an Elemental Fist attack a number of times per day equal to his monk level, plus one more time per day for every four levels he has in classes other than monk." But the only time the monk of the four winds is called in the text of this feat, it speaks about getting this feat, while the rest of the special just speaks about how often a monk (and so brawler <3) can use this feat per day. So, does the special of the feat Dragon Ferocity gives a monk and a brawler, if they also take the feat elemental fist, the ability Elemental Fist of the Monk of the four winds? And if yes, am I correct, that a monk would benefit from the scaling of this ability and the brawler would not like you already wrote for stunning fist?

Last question in this concern: Having read your last sentence, I already guess that a brawler character, who makes at the very first character level a dip into the monk archetype Master of Many Styles ( https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/monk/archetypes/paizo-monk-ar chetypes/master-of-many-styles/ ), will get the ability "fuse style", but the ability does not scale any more since there won´t be any more monk level ups, but just brawler ones? Am I right?

Greetz,

WU

Hi,

I have a few questions concerning how martial training works and I hope, some of you can bring me enlightment, what it can do and what not. I try to answer them myself, but feel free to correct me, so I can fully understand how this ability works.

First of all, the text: „Martial Training (Ex)
At 1st level, a brawler counts her total brawler levels as both fighter levels and monk levels for the purpose of qualifying for feats. She also counts as both a fighter and a monk for feats and magic items that have different effects based on whether the character has levels in those classes (such as Stunning Fist and a monk’s robe). This ability does not automatically grant feats normally granted to fighters and monks based on class level, namely Stunning Fist.“

I guess, the first sentence covers some feats like e.g. Disruptive „Prerequisites: 6th-level fighter.
Benefit: The DC to cast spells defensively increases by +4 for all enemies that are within your threatened area. This increase to casting spells defensively only applies if you are aware of the enemy’s location and are capable of taking an attack of opportunity. If you can only take one attack of opportunity per round and have already used that attack, this increase does not apply.“
But that is all I understand with total certainty.

I guess the last sentence means, when you are a brawler, you do not get any feats, which both parent classes would gain by leveling up the brawlerclass, so that the Brawler does not get everything from the monk AND the fighter class or to be more accurate, Brawlers do not get anything.

But what does the second sentence mean and how does he correspond with the third one? If I dip a level in Monk, I would get everything a lvl 1 Monk would get, that includes e.g. stunning fist (ex), which let´s me get stunning fist (feat). In my opinion, this does not connect with martial training at first, but stunning fist (ex) says: „The monk may attempt a stunning attack a number of times per day equal to his monk level, plus one more time per day for every four levels he has in classes other than monk.
At 4th level, and every 4 levels thereafter, the monk gains the ability to apply a new condition to the target of his Stunning Fist. This condition replaces stunning the target for 1 round, and a successful saving throw still negates the effect.“
And here my mind is not very sure how martial training works.
I guess, if I take at first one lvl in monk and afterwards just brawler lvl, I get one stunning fist per day plus at character lvl 5 (=1 lvl Monk + 4l vl Brawler) a second one and so on. But what about the changes of stunning fist (EX, not the feat) starting with lvl 4? It speaks about „monk“, but not about „monk lvl“? Even if the Charakter would be an Ex-Monk beeing a brawler starting with lvl 2, he still would count as monk. So would the EX stunning fist even scale for the brawler at character level 4?

Thanks for reading, please correct me, if I got something wrong.