SuperParkourio's page

I'm starting to have second thoughts about Seifter's interpretation. I've run an adventure featuring a dragon twice now.

And the dragon almost never recovers its breath by letting enough rounds pass, under either interpretation.

The dragon recharges their Breath Weapon whenever they score a critical hit with a Strike.

The vast majority of dragons have this feature, making it easy to use consecutive Breath Weapons, no countdown required. So now I find it hard to believe that the developers meant for this to never happen.

And I'm also having second thoughts about the argument that the turn on which the Breath Weapon is used cannot be a turn on which the Breath Weapon cannot be used. I don't think that actually matters. The round on which the Breath Weapon was used doesn't need to be one where it can't be used. It needs to be one where it can't be used again. After the initial use.

And in the Building Creatures rules, maybe we're not supposed to take that one comment about Breath Weapons not being consecutive to always be true. It's still generally true, since there's only a 25% chance of rolling a 1.

If you want to disable a hazard with Thievery, you use the Disable a Device action. If you want to disable a hazard with a different skill listed in the hazard stat block, you use an unnamed 2-action activity that does the same thing as Disable a Device except using the chosen skill.

It technically works as written, but why didn't they just write Disable a Device as a general skill action like Recall Knowledge or Identify Magic?

Spellstrike can also be used with acid grip. You can smack the enemy and move them elsewhere, allowing you to avoid ending your turn next to the enemy without having to spend your third action to Step.

graystone wrote:

SuperParkourio wrote:

I find it hilarious that in D&D5e true strike is utterly useless, but in PF2e it had to be nerfed.

As Kalaam said, it's really good. It's a solid spell that uses your casting stat to hit/dam and you can deal Radiant damage too. It's a fine melee cantrip for those that use a staff focus [it's a 1d8 attack] and it gets extra damage as it levels. You'll want Shillelagh though if you get more than 1 attack/round.

Most references to True Strike being weak in D&D 5E are likely referring to the 2014 version, wherein you had to spend an action to cast it in order to get advantage on your first attack roll on your next turn, and that was the only effect it had. Unless one were planning to use an attack with a precious resource, like... say, planning to slap an enemy with Plane Shift, most folks just preferred to attack twice.

The 2024 version is indeed more useful with the properties you mention.

I am indeed talking about the 2014 version, and it's even worse than that. The spell also requires concentration, which means any damage you take ends the spell unless you succeed a DC 10 (or half the damage, whichever is higher) Con save.

But I don't like the 2024 version either. Instead of actually fixing the spell, it feels like they just replaced it. The new Conjure Animals feels bad for the same reason. It did need fixing, but the identity of the spell is gone.

I find it hilarious that in D&D5e true strike is utterly useless, but in PF2e it had to be nerfed.

And it looks like they addressed inner radiance torrent as well, though the changes aren't on AoN yet.

Page 248: Live wire’s damage increases far too quickly due to a typo. Change “Heightened (+1)” to “Heightened (+2)“.

YEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSS! I can pick live wire in PFS without feeling guilty now!

I think RAW force barrage does not interact with concealed.

Concealed p. 442 PC1 wrote:

You are difficult for one or more creatures to see due to thick fog or some other obscuring feature. You can be concealed to some creatures but not others. While concealed, you can still be observed, but you're tougher to target. A creature that you're concealed from must succeed at a DC 5 flat check when targeting you with an attack, spell, or other effect.

Targets (under spells) p. 300 PC1 wrote:

Some spells allow you to target a creature, an object, or something more specific. The target must be within the spell's range, and you must be able to see it (or otherwise perceive it with a precise sense) to target it. At the GM's discretion, you can attempt to target a creature you can't see, as described in Detecting Creatures on page 434...

While Concealed does say that you need a flat check to target a concealed creature, targeting for spells states that you only have to be able to see the target and Concealed is distinguished in the rules by Hidden, which means you can't see them. I would note that targeting for spells, p. 300, is more lenient than the general targeting rules under Effects, p. 426.

The real kicker is that you can target a creature you can't see by RAW if the GM allows. Under this circumstance I think the flat check (at a minimum) is appropriate.

Bolded something you seem to have overlooked.

SuperParkourio wrote:

As I mentioned earlier, there are incorporeal creatures that have Strength-based Strikes (without ghost touch). Using the incorporeal trait RAW means the monster can never use these Strikes because they are Strength checks.

And yes, those same stat blocks (except Sié Goluo) also have a feature to become corporeal, but that feature also changes the damage type of the Strength Strikes, so the Strikes must be usable while incorporeal for the original force damage to matter.

The strikes would still be usable against other incorporeal creatures. The restriction only applies to incorporeal vs corporeal creatures.

Fear not, my people. I, Sié Goluo, shall vanquish these evildoers! What? They have bodies? Sorry, you're on your own.

The part of this debate which I always find interesting is that people are willing to bend the heck out of what "automatically hits" means in order to bypass concealment, but if the target is hidden/invisible they jump right on to twisting words so that "you can see" isn't take as literally as they want "automatically hits" to be.

This sidebar explains what "you can see" means as a targeting restriction.

SuperParkourio wrote:

Homing missile? Nothing in the spell indicates that the shard has homing properties.

How else exactly does it always hit then?

Who knows? Maybe it's just too fast to dodge?

As I mentioned earlier, there are incorporeal creatures that have Strength-based Strikes (without ghost touch). Using the incorporeal trait RAW means the monster can never use these Strikes because they are Strength checks.

And yes, those same stat blocks (except Sié Goluo) also have a feature to become corporeal, but that feature also changes the damage type of the Strength Strikes, so the Strikes must be usable while incorporeal for the original force damage to matter.

I thought of the anti Strength thing because becoming a ghost tanks your Strength and forces you to rely on finesse attacks. I thought that was the deal for all incorporeal creatures.

But it turns out that there are incorporeal creatures like the Sunscale Serpent that have decent Strength and are definitely supposed to Strengh-Strike while incorporeal.

Homing missile? Nothing in the spell indicates that the shard has homing properties.

Reddit Thread

Sorry if this not the sort of question you will be awnsering but I've always been baffled by this mechanic.

The Incorporeal trait says "An incorporeal creature can’t attempt Strength-based checks against physical creatures or objects—only against incorporeal ones—unless those objects have the ghost touch property rune. Likewise, a corporeal creature can’t attempt Strength-based checks against incorporeal creatures or objects."

And attack rolls say "When you use a Strike action or make a spell attack, you attempt a check called an attack roll."

Me and my group have assumed that this made Ghosts and the like immune to strikes using Strenght and one requires Finesse or Ghost Touch to hit them in a sort of "Martial Golem" , This however is not the concensus online as people use this only for Manuevers such as Grapple and Trip.

When I heard that Golem would be changed I tought that so would the Incorporeal trait but it remained the same.

Could you provide us with insight on how this is intended to work?

While it's my policy not to wade in on ambiguous rules, especially those that cause significant debates, in this case I feel that there's a genuine community consensus that the wording is a bit off and it would violate the "too good / too bad to be true" rule by being too bad to be true if you can't use Strength-based Strikes so I recommend allowing them. This is not an official FAQ or errata or anything, but I feel so strongly that not allowing Strength-based Strikes will cause huge problems for you and whatever few groups are denying Strength Strikes that it's worth saying something in this one case. It certainly does literally say what you quoted though, so an erratum or change in the remaster wouldn't have been remiss.

Thanks you so much for the response!

I'm very grateful that the game is easily readable and that ambiguities like this are very rare.

You're welcome!

I think of incorporeal creatures as supernaturally antithetical to Strength itself, which is why Strength-based Strikes don't work for or against them but Dexterity-based Strikes do. Vampires have a similar thing going on, in that they're so averse to light that they don't have reflections.

Additionally, incorporeal creatures tend to have abysmal HP. The Building Creatures rules recommend giving incorporeal creatures terrible HP (or low HP at higher levels), and the ghost adjustment even says not to alter the monster's HP even though its level is increasing by 2. So taking away their immunity to Strength-based Strikes might cause them to be destroyed too quickly.

Having been the one to write the Building Creatures rules guidelines where I recommended to give them terrible to low HP, I can tell you that we assigned them the lowered HP to deal with the effects of their having resistance all (except force/spirit/maybe vitality, double vs nonmagical).

That said, if incorporeal creatures are easy for your group even with making them immune to Strength Strikes, I guess do what works for you? Or maybe have a dream sequence that's not for keeps where your level 5 party with a Strength character or two fights an animate dream and see if they get a wipe?

Automatically hitting is part of the effect of the spell, but if you fail to even target the enemy with the spell, you can't achieve the effect. Some spells circumvent this by saying they ignore concealment, and magic missile was such a spell in 1e. But 2e removed that language, taking that capability with it.

Precisely that. If the area moved to the enemies, then the enemies entered relative to the area, but not relative to the ground. Likewise, if the enemies are on a moving platform that brings them into the area, they are entering relative to the area and to the rest of the ground, but not relative to the platform. Which matters more? And if the spell is cast by someone on the moving platform, does it stay still? Relative to what? The moving platform? The rest of the ground? The caster?

PF2e doesn't have rules for this either. I thought SF might because space travel.

Does this game account for relative motion? For instance, if an effect depends on someone entering an area, what should that motion be relative to for it to count?

An excerpt from FORCE BARRAGE

You fire a shard of solidified magic toward a creature that you
can see. It automatically hits and...

Concealed: Fog or similar obscuration makes you difficult to see and target.

Hidden: A creature you’re hidden from knows your location but can’t see
you.

Undetected: A creature you’re undetected by doesn’t know where you are.
.
.
All of the above have been copied from Player Core 1. You can see something Concealed, so it's auto hit. No flat check required.

You can't see someone Hidden or Undetected, so you can't even use Force Barrage.

The phrase "automatically hits" doesn't have that kind of power. Acid Grip says the enemy is affected depending on the results of the target's Reflex save. Since it doesn't mention the result of a concealed flat check, we can ignore the flat check, right?

No, of course not. Concealed applies to every targeting effect except for area effects, and those few effects that ignore concealed actually tell you to ignore concealed. "Automatically hits" is just there to keep people from reading it and saying "Oh, they forgot to say what save it is. I'll just assume it's supposed to be a basic Reflex save."

If you fail the flat check with concealed, then the target is unaffected. No auto hit property of the spell can help with that.

Whenever an enemy lists magic as an immunity, there's always a note in the stat block clarifying which magic it is immune to.

That's really weird, since it's the potency rune that renders the item magical.

Fundamental Runes

The language "automatically hits" is there to let you know that the absence of an attack roll or saving throw is 100% intentional. It doesn't do anything to overcome concealment.

It's not a huge stretch. Those rules establish decrementing at the start of the turn as how it works for effects that last a number of rounds, and a layperson will certainly think breath cooldowns qualify. Although those rules call out two other ways to count, nothing in breath cooldowns remotely suggests that either of those methods should be used instead. It lasts a number of rounds, so of course people will think of it as a regular duration to be decrement at start of turn.

Avoid Notice actually uses the enemies' Perception DCs to determine state of detection. The actual Perception checks only matter if the monster beats the Perception DCs but loses initiative. This causes the monster to be undetected but not unnoticed, allowing those who won initiative to Seek.

So if the monster loses initiative but still beats those DCs, it should be able to use Aquatic Ambush as long as it's still undetected by the time its turn comes around.

Additionally, it's strange to allow a requirement to assign power to something. By its nature, the requirement is a restriction on when the action can be used. Removing the requirement should cause nothing more than an increase in situations where it can be used. But by applying specific vs general as suggested here, it insinuates that removing the requirement would actually deprive the monster of the power to know when it is undetected. Isn't that a little strange?

So what should happen if the monster has Aquatic Ambush and doesn't use it? If it fails a Sneak, should it be allowed to just Sneak again because it knows it's undetected?

Or does the monster only realize it's undetected when it tries to use Aquatic Ambush but realizes it can't use that, leaving the action unspent?

Ghost touch weapons are definitely supposed to work against incorporeal, but I wouldn't go so far as to say that all Strength-based Strikes work against incorporeal.

An incorporeal creature can’t attempt Strength-based checks against physical creatures or objects—only against incorporeal ones—unless those objects have the ghost touch property rune. Likewise, a corporeal creature can’t attempt Strength-based checks against incorporeal creatures or objects.

The use of the word "likewise" indicates to me that the same principle for ghost touch overcoming the uselessness of Strength-based checks applies in reverse. Maybe it's not literally saying that, but nothing implies that all Strength-based checks should work with or without ghost touch.

And incorporeal creatures tend to have lower Hit Points to compensate for their obnoxious defenses. So letting all those Strikes work means that ghost has little staying power.

Finoan wrote:

I think that having a serious aversion or phobia of houserules is a symptom of PF1 trauma.

More than likely it is a symptom of trauma caused by bad house rules.

They rarely make the game better in my experience. 90% of the player base that regularly house rules seem to think that they'd make great game developers when, in practice, they'd probably be some of the worst.

And there is no shortage of first time players that house-rule away MAP and critting by beating the DC by 10.

I'm pretty sure the ghost touch weapons are still supposed to work against ghosts, even for Strength weapons. As for Dexterity working but not Strength, yeah, that doesn't make much sense. It's probably just that a creature with no body is anti-Strength in its very nature, similar to how a vampire is so averse to light that it has no reflection. It's supernatural.

Not sure what your issue with Strength Strikes not working on ghosts is. Makes perfect sense to me. It's a curveball, but not an insurmountable one.

Specific overiding general would be if the monster had a passive ability that allowed it to know if it was undetected, overriding the Sneak action's secret trait. Aquatic Ambush isn't actually giving the monster the ability to know its state of detection, it's just that the writer forgot that the monster isn't supposed to know that.

There are also player actions that have this same problem. Sense the Unseen and Hidden Paragon are both triggered by specific degrees of success on actions that have the secret trait, making them unusable by RAW. Again the thread I linked earlier goes into that more.

Choosing Adversaries' Actions says to have the enemy act on the information it actually has, not the information the GM has. It also clarifies that enemies do act on wrong information and are at least as susceptible to mistakes as the PCs.

Having a monster automatically know that it's undetected is simply not supported by the rules. A rule has to be made up here because there is a hole in the rules. If you want to make up a rule that says monsters with Aquatic Ambush always know whether their Sneak succeeded, that's your call.

You have the void healing ability, which means you are harmed by vitality damage and healed by void effects as if you were undead.

Looks to me like heal would damage the dhampir as though they were undead.

*elicit. Illicit means illegal.

The tricky thing is that there are no rules governing the use of an ability that you mistakenly thought you met the requirements for. This rule does come close though.

If you fail to target a particular creature, this doesn't change how the spell affects any other targets the spell has.

If you choose a target that isn't valid, such as if you thought a vampire was a living creature and targeted it with a spell that can target only living creatures, your spell fails to target that creature.

So it could be that the monster moves up to its swim Speed + 10 then reaches the target only for the Strike to be wasted because the monster wasn't undetected after all. Or maybe the monster doesn't get to move the full distance either.

For the record, prone prohibits move actions other than Stand and Crawl.

SuperParkourio wrote:

Guntermench wrote:

The reason it doesn't have a prerequisite is probably because this condition is per enemy. You can sneak against one enemy while fully observed by another.

There is a creature ability that does list a lack of detection as a prereq though. Aquatic Ambush requires the monster to be undetected to its target. This is a bit odd since the monster doesn't usually know if that's true, but that's a discussion for another thread.

I think that's okay, because the issue with secret knowledge comes from the notion that the GM knows, not the players.

The relationship between player and PC is not the same as between GM and NPC.

So while the players are outright unable to use contextual actions that require secret info preconditions, monsters can, because it's not actually secret info for the GM.

The GM should not have the monsters act on knowledge they do not have. Just like a player character doesn't know which defense is worst without RK, the monsters shouldn't magically know which player character has the worst AC simply because the GM asked for everyone's AC.

Besides, players can indirectly use Aquatic Ambush by summoning monsters and commanding them to do it.

The reason it doesn't have a prerequisite is probably because this condition is per enemy. You can sneak against one enemy while fully observed by another.

There is a creature ability that does list a lack of detection as a prereq though. Aquatic Ambush requires the monster to be undetected to its target. This is a bit odd since the monster doesn't usually know if that's true, but that's a discussion for another thread.

You should be able to Balance or Climb across a tightrope or beam, and there are times you might end up doing both. If you crit fail a Balance check, you fall, but you should be able to Grab an Edge. From there, you could Climb back up, but that's difficult without handholds. Alternatively, you could Climb sideways to keep going, but that is much slower than using Balance.

Hidden Paragon's trigger would be something you would have to glean from the secret check's descriptive result. If an enemy still looks at your direction after you perform an activity, then it's clear you didn't succeed, and doubly so if they react to your activity. But as far as it being a clear objective result, no, as the enemy might not look or react to you for different reasons.

If the enemy really did give such helpful and instantaneous feedback when you Hide or Sneak, the secret trait on those actions would be meaningless.

Which reminds me of the Investigator. They have many feats revolving around Recall Knowledge, and some of them actually remove the secret trait from Recall Knowledge to make other feats work.

The sidebar strangely only refers to fortune and misfortune effects, so Sense the Unseen doesn't apply.

Sounds about right. If something cannot see you, you are hidden by default from that specific thing.

In many cases, you don't need to Sneak. Hidden gives you protection against non-area effects. Undetected does the same and hides what square you're in. If all you want is the flat check protection and to make the enemy off-guard, a single action to Hide will be sufficient.

When I ran the Beginner Box, I had a mid-boss spam Hide and Strike in his own smoke. He gave the players more trouble than the final boss, even though both monsters are PL+2, the latter awards 40 extra XP, and the latter had an overtuned area effect (the Remaster nerfed it).

Why Hide? Because Sneak doesn't work if you are observed.

At the end of your movement, the GM rolls your Stealth check in secret and compares the result to the Perception DC of each creature you were hidden from or undetected by at the start of your movement.

If you don't Hide or otherwise become hidden before Sneaking, you won't become undetected.

I kinda like Darksol's approach since it preserves the secret nature of the trigger/requirements without invalidating the feat. Alas, I don't believe the text of Sense the Unseen supports it. The trigger is you failing a check to Seek, not failing to locate anything with Seek (which IMO would be a better trigger).

On second thought, potentially wasting reactions due to being mistaken about the trigger would lead to some feel bad moments.

Hidden Paragon is another reaction with a secret trigger: you successfully Hide/Sneak against all current foes. Its frequency is once per hour. So you'd have to guess whether you succeeded against all current foes or else your level 20 reaction is wasted and you can't try again for an hour.

I do think cooldowns should have been mentioned in the Duration rules. Perhaps something like:

"If an ability says you can't use it again for a certain number of rounds, don't decrease that duration at the start of your next turn after using that ability. This is because the round in which you used the ability isn't a round in which you cannot use the ability."

I kinda like Darksol's approach since it preserves the secret nature of the trigger/requirements without invalidating the feat. Alas, I don't believe the text of Sense the Unseen supports it. The trigger is you failing a check to Seek, not failing to locate anything with Seek (which IMO would be a better trigger).

The area for Seek is "almost always 30 feet or less in any dimension." And since Sneak only lets you Stride at half Speed, there are many scenarios where the enemy cannot possibly be outside the area, meaning any failure to Seek them would be guaranteed to be caused by a failed check. Then again, you would need to know the enemy's Speed.

Another example of an action in this weird design space is Aquatic Ambush, which requires the user to be undetected, a condition you can't reliably know that you have.

What about balance considerations? If one way is significantly overpowered or underpowered, that could signify RAI.

But I don't know of any spell quite like this. Are there any other game features that let PCs use Swallow Whole?

I'd say that since the spell doesn't say it's you that swallows and that you take that damage, you don't take it.

Well, it does say that you are the one doing the swallowing. It's just that the swallowed creature is going to an extraplanar space.