| bobsayshi |
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blackbloodtroll wrote:Temporary increases to your Strength score give you a bonus on Strength-based skill checks, melee attack rolls, and weapon damage rolls (if they rely on Strength).
Nothing else.
Not according to Bull's Str:
http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/spells/bullSStrength.html#_bull-s-streng th"the usual benefits to melee attack rolls, melee damage rolls, and other uses of the Strength modifier."
Strength mod used in carrying capacity thus is affected.
Just so this isn't misused. Temporary Ability = Permanent Ability.
Recently the Pathfinder Design Team clarified the confusion in the description of temporary ability changes.Temporary ability bonuses should apply to anything relating to that ability score, just as permanent ability score bonuses do. The section in the glossary was very tight on space and it was not possible to list every single ability score-related game effect that an ability score bones would affect.
The purpose of the temporary ability score ruling is to make it so you don't have to rebuild your character every time you get a bull's strength or similar spell; it just summarizes the most common game effects relative to that ability score.
For example, most of the time when you get bull's strength, you're using it for combat, so the glossary mentions Strength-based skill checks, melee attack rolls, Strength-based weapon damage rolls, CMB, and CMD. It doesn't call out melee attack rolls that use Dex instead of Str (such as when using Weapon Finesse) or situations where your applied Str bonus should be halved or multiplied (such as whith off-hand or two-handed weapons). You're usually not using the spell for a 1 min./level increase in your carrying capacity, so that isn't mentioned there, but the bonus should still apply to that, as well as to Strength checks to break down doors.
Think of it in the same way that a simple template has "quick rules" and "rebuild rules;" they're supposed to create monsters which are roughly equivalent in terms of stats, but the quick rules are a short cut that misses some details compared to using the rebuild rules. Likewise, the temporary ability score rule is intended as a short cut to speed up gameplay, not as the most precise way of applying the bonus.
A temporary ability score bonus should affect all of the same stats and rolls that a permanent ability score bonus does.
—Pathfinder Design Team, 10/29/13