Darkfox's page

A creature is flat-footed (taking a –2 circumstance penalty to AC) to creatures that are flanking it.

Flanking is no longer a buff you get, but rather now results in the flat-footed debuff condition that the flanked creature receives. If it's now a condition, why does it only apply to some attackers? It's the only condition that is selective like that and kind of breaks Paizo's own rules. If a creature is flanked and has the flat-footed condition, that condition should apply across the board. Thoughts?

The idea of being "flat footed toward specific creatures" isn't new in Pathfinder 2nd edition. In D&D 3.5, grappling created scenarios where creatures involved in the grapple were flat footed to those outside the grapple, but not to each-other. Flat footed has always been a little weird like that.

I don't think it's too big of a problem, though I agree that the shift in focus to a penalty to AC instead of a bonus to attack takes a little getting used to (in the case of flanking).

Thank you for the information, I think I understand the intent now.

However, I do think that it would have made more sense for the wounded condition to be removed by Treat Wounds, or by magical healing and a 10 minute rest, so that you do not need to fully heal a PC with magical healing to remove it.

After all, there is no grantee that Treat Wounds would fully heal you. It just seems to make more sense to me, but anyway, thanks for the clarification!

I think you can house rule it anyway you want, and as long as you don't allow anybody to heal the wounded condition while in combat, you aren't really breaking the game.

If I had to guess, I'd say this isn't much more than a flavor decision.

Summoning an animal simply sounds like a lower level thing to do, regardless of the CR of the summoned creature. Summoning an elemental might sound like a step up.

But summoning a dragon at lvl 1 is, well... even if just happened to be a CR -1 dragon somehow, that's still a pretty epic thing to do. Perhaps too epic for a lvl 1 character.

That's all just speculation. I don't think it will unbalance anything if you house-rule those spells as lvl 1 spells and follow normal rules for heightening as Summon Animal. That is... assuming any homebrewed stat blocks you come up with for lower CR creatures of that type aren't broken.

It seems pretty clear to me that the intention is to specifically not allow magical healing to cure the wounded condition.

My understanding is that the wounded condition should be inherently more difficult to remove than simple HP damage, which provides added incentive to keep yourself from going to zero HP in the first place.

To add to that idea, I don't think it's an accident that treat wounds takes 10 minutes, and being at full HP for 10 minutes is the other way to recover from the wounded condition. Both methods take 10 minutes, so there's no instantaneous way to do it.

So this is not a two-sided debate about how the feat works according to RAW. It is a hold over of people hoping the rules as written will be changed because they do not like the way the feat works as RAW.

Definitely a +1 on this. RAW seems to be clear. People are arguing about RAI based on competing unofficial rulings in streams.

But most of the people arguing against the RAW are basically invoking "believability" or "common sense" in ways that clearly mess with the balance of this technique. That's their right as a GM, but I think this is actually much more clear than this thread seems to indicate.

That's definitely not RAW right now, but it's how I'd handle it at a table and how I've seen most groups adjudicate similar effects anyways.

I sort of hope that is how it turns after errata. Maybe my monk will start actually using flurry of blows during his regular turn instead of doing it as a readied action every round.

That's really problematic and I think makes it impossible for that reading of the ability to be accurate.

I agree it's problematic, but I think any of the possible interpretations are problematic in one way or another.

I disagree it's impossible. It's only impossible if you believe that losing an action is the same thing as being unable to use it... but we know for a fact that's not true, because those two situations are clearly outlined in the book.

After talking about this at length with my players, we've all sort of decided that the best interpretation of this scenario is the same as Beowulf describes. We don't believe RAW quite gets us to where we need to go, and none of the possibilities fully line up with what seems to be RAI.

Beowulf's interpretation is, I think, the closest you can get to adhering to all the rules set forth on the issue. Not that my opinion has any particular importance, I just wanted to chime in and stop lurking on this thread.

One thing that I think is actually and patently false is the following sentence from page 462:

"When you can’t act, you don’t regain your actions and reaction on your turn."

This seems to be in direct contradiction to the following phrase from paralyze:

"You have the flat-footed condition and can’t act except to Recall Knowledge and use actions that require only the use of your mind (as
determined by the GM)."

and also:

"That means if you are somehow cured of paralysis on your turn, you can act immediately."

In other words, saying "you can't act except..." seems completely contradictory to the sentence from page 462. If "can't act" means you don't regain actions... then it doesn't matter what you are subsequently going to use them for.

Granted... this is tangential to the issue at hand, but these two things have been used as evidence for different viewpoints, and it's clear they are in conflict.

It's a potentially neat ability but will involve table variation.

Absolutely. I love this concept of this ability. While I do think that some of the revelations in this thread help me considerably in adjudicating the use of it, I would be lying if I said I didn't wish the ruleset was a little more explicit in this case.

Wow. Thank you so much. That was actually incredibly helpful. I didn’t even notice sabotage had the incapacitation trait. I also really like your answer to thought number 1. Somehow that makes a lot of sense to me and makes me feel a lot better about it in general.

As a GM I think I’d rule that both strikes are resolved and the damage is added up before revealing if the enemy was killed or not. This seems to be the intention, given that the damage is combined before applying weakness and resistance.

In other words, I think the strikes happen nearly simultaneously.

I've spent an inordinate amount of time parsing out the text in the Core Rulebook, and almost every time I've come upon an issue that seems vague, or flexible, I've managed to see some way to outline a set of expectations for my players on how I might rule it.

The big exception to this is Sabotage. (Rogue feat)

No matter how I see it, I just can't understand what the intention was with this skill. It seems very obvious to me that this skill is intended to "break" certain items, but which items are able to be "sabotaged" seems completely arbitrary to me.

I want to breakdown my thought process, and see if anybody else has anything thoughts they can add to help me, as a GM, create a mutually agreed upon and predictable ruling for my table.

Thought #1: The "moving parts" clause.
The only actual hint we have toward targetable objects for Sabotage is objects that have "moving parts". An example is given that a bow can be sabotaged, but not a sword. What about a bow makes it have "moving parts"? It is because the wood and string are flexible, and therefore it's general shape can be altered? Is it because the string could theoretically be "detached" from the wood? I don't see a clean way to extrapolate this example.

Thought #2: Dealing damage to the item.
While the flavor of the skill seems similar to "Disable Device", the actual mechanic implies actually striking the targeted item. This seems very strange, since this skill actually requires a free hand, and in fact, does NOT require any kind of weapon. So what are is the character doing with this free hand? Keep in mind this is a Single Action, so it doesn't seem plausible that we are doing anything fancy.

Thought #3: Durability of items.
Because weapons themselves don't have durability entries, all we have to look for is the materials table as a guideline for how much hardness and HP a weapon has. The only explicit example of a weapon that can be sabotaged that we have is a bow, and as it happens, this is maybe one of the most problematic weapons to figure this out. Does it count as "Thin Wood"? "Thin Leather"? Some unlisted entry for "String"?

Thought #4: Balance
In most of the vague issues I've encountered in the rulebook, it hasn't seemed like it would make too big of a difference in overall gameplay balance, but this one stands out to me. A "broken" item is no longer able to be used for its purpose, meaning, a broken weapon is no longer able to be used to make attacks. This seems insane, because we now have a situation where with certain enemies, a rogue can actually use a one action skill to eliminate certain enemies' primary source of damage permanently. Obviously, limits to Sabotage such as which items can be sabotaged or not mitigate this problem, but those limits, and the intention of those limits, are so vague, that it's hard to make a ruling as a GM without feeling like you are drastically affecting the balance of many encounters.

This was a long post... but it's pretty much the only glaring issue I have with the core rulebook after spending way too much time the past month or so going over it with a fine toothed comb. Any thoughts on the matter?