Page 134—In the Benefit paragraph of the Spring
Attack feat, at the beginning of the first sentence,
add “As a full-round action,”.
What are the consequences of this errata? Will the fat not be as stack friendly or what?
What are the consequences of this errata? Will the feat not be as stack friendly or what?
I don't think there are any significant consequences, honestly. Looks like it clarified that instead of a move action + standard action, you use a full-round action instead. The text was probably added in case people saw the feat as allowing movement without a move action, and then using a move action to retrieve an item, for example.
What are the consequences of this errata? Will the feat not be as stack friendly or what?I don't think there are any significant consequences, honestly. Looks like it clarified that instead of a move action + standard action, you use a full-round action instead. The text was probably added in case people saw the feat as allowing movement without a move action, and then using a move action to retrieve an item, for example.
Except now it is impossible to use cleave, vital strike, or similar maneuvers as they are standard actions. This makes me sad.
A lot of hit and run builds here on the forums have just been completely destroyed.
Where's the new errata?
Hmm.. with Spring Attack as a full round action, it is now nigh useless to a single hit build using vital strike / overhand chop etc, limiting mobile skirmishers to more piddly damage, encouraging the VS'rs to only use it on the first round and go toe to toe full attacks after the first round again with the feats they save by not taking it.
Seems to me somebody thinks that those huge single attacks aren't balanced unless they stay in range of their target afterwards, and that change is a big ol' brain surgery sledge hammer to make it so. Too bad, I like my samurai duels too much to accept that errata in my games.
Where's the new errata?
On the product page. Look for v3.0.
EDIT: Looks likes they haven't posted it there yet. It was originally brought to my attention via Paizo E-mail.
Hmm.. with Spring Attack as a full round action, it is now nigh useless to a single hit build using vital strike / overhand chop etc, limiting mobile skirmishers to more piddly damage, encouraging the VS'rs to only use it on the first round and go toe to toe full attacks after the first round again with the feats they save by not taking it.
Seems to me somebody thinks that those huge single attacks aren't balanced unless they stay in range of their target afterwards, and that change is a big ol' brain surgery sledge hammer to make it so. Too bad, I like my samurai duels too much to accept that errata in my games.
I know, right? This totally messes up most any mobile skirmisher concept! Edited the thread title to be a little more appropriate.
Except now it is impossible to use cleave, vital strike, or similar maneuvers as they are standard actions. This makes me sad.
A lot of hit and run builds here on the forums have just been completely destroyed.
Not sure if Cleave was allowed before since it is a standard action, and not a "single melee attack", but I do see the point with respect to Vital Strike.
Edit: Actually, I'm not sure Vital Strike was legit even before the errata. With Spring Attack "You can move up to your speed and make a single melee attack". With Vital Strike, it is "When you use the attack action". I guess they clarified that using Spring Attack != attack action, in essence.
IMHO, they didn't nerf the feat, they just made the intent clearer.
IMHO, they didn't nerf the feat, they just made the intent clearer.
I could buy that except for the fact that the combo was cleared by one of the game designers (and was even used in their games). It looks like their unofficial clarification has been officially overruled though (for the worse if you ask me).
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Except now it is impossible to use cleave, vital strike, or similar maneuvers as they are standard actions. This makes me sad.
A lot of hit and run builds here on the forums have just been completely destroyed.
Not sure if Cleave was allowed before since it is a standard action, and not a "single melee attack", but I do see the point with respect to Vital Strike.
Edit: Actually, I'm not sure Vital Strike was legit even before the errata. With Spring Attack "You can move up to your speed and make a single melee attack". With Vital Strike, it is "When you use the attack action". I guess they clarified that using Spring Attack != attack action, in essence.
IMHO, they didn't nerf the feat, they just made the intent clearer.
You are correct. Spring attack never allowed cleave or vital strike line. So basically, it changes nothing.
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IMHO, they didn't nerf the feat, they just made the intent clearer.I could buy that except for the fact that the combo was cleared by one of the game designers (and was even used in their games). It looks like their unofficial clarification has been officially overruled though (for the worse if you ask me).
Yeah it was used in a game...but even the dev eventually admited it was a mistake. It happen. The devs are not a computer.
I'm surprised there isn't more upset about this. There were builds all over these forums that relied on the spring attack/vital strike combo to be at all competitive with other builds. Heck! The feats even look like they were made for each other! (Excepting that whole attack action business, which I think started out as a mistake since it isn't even defined anywhere.)
As it is written now, though, both spring attack and vital strike are two distinctly isolationist feat trees with little synergy with anything else.
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I'm surprised there isn't more upset about this. There were builds all over these forums that relied on the combo spring attack/vital strike combo. Heck! They look like they were made for each other!
As it is written now, though, both spring attack and vital strike are two distinctly isolationist feat trees with little synergy with anything else.
Except those builds are based on a houserule so they are STILL perfectly viable. If you cared and actually played by RAW, it didn't work anyways and the errat STILL makes it not work so once again, it's a moot point.
Except those builds are based on a houserule so they are STILL perfectly viable. If you cared and actually played by RAW, it didn't work anyways and the errat STILL makes it not work so once again, it's a moot point.
To me it's not at all a moot point as I was told by the designers in the past that you COULD use the feats together.
I feel like they've backpeddled, which would be fine if the official ruling was something that improved the game. Since I don't think this particular errata does anything to improve the fun of the game, however, I'm extremely disappointed.
Why make a ruling that doesn't make a game more fun? Why limit perfectly feasible and balanced character concepts? Doesn't make any sense to me whatsoever.
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Except those builds are based on a houserule so they are STILL perfectly viable. If you cared and actually played by RAW, it didn't work anyways and the errat STILL makes it not work so once again, it's a moot point.To me it's not at all a moot point as I was told by the designers in the past that you COULD use the feats together.
I feel like they've backpeddled, which would be fine if the official ruling was something that improved the game. Since I don't think this particular errata does anything to improve the fun of the game, however, I'm extremely disappointed.
Why make a ruling that doesn't make a game more fun? Why limit perfectly feasible and balanced character concepts? Doesn't make any sense to me whatsoever.
And if you bothered to read beyond just the part you wanted to hear, he said opps I was wrong.
If you think giving a standard action instead of an attack action increase the fun for your group, then by all means keep playing by your houserule (and yes it was a houserule). The fact that your selective picking bits you want does not negate that.
Also the errata is NOT just for you. It's for everyone...and more importantly, it's for organized play. Since everyone can just houserule the rules how they like for home games, erratas are less important for that. They are however vitally important for oragnized play. And they are saying with clear itention that you should not be using VS with spring attack in organized play.
If you think giving a standard action instead of an attack action increase the fun for your group, then by all means keep playing by your houserule (and yes it was a houserule).
It's not a house rule if a game designer says that's how it was meant to work. I'll accept that it is a house rule should we keep playing it that way, but at the time, it most certainly was not.
Also, could you please link me to the point where he said "oops"?
It's kind of hard to justify spending the feats for spring attack without some feat synergies. It's not like any of the classes that might usefully take it have feats to burn. In my experience, nobody takes this unless they've their heart set on whirlwind attack, and frankly, since PF's change to great cleave, they generally just go that route instead for roomsweeper builds (and also, in my experience, the 2handed bruiser builds are the only ones that can really afford the feats to do that, sword and board TWF is super feat hungry as is the classic archer build). I bet I could houserule to combine the dodge and mobility feats into a single feat, and the spring attack with the whirlwhind attack as a second feat, and I STILL wouldn't have players queueing up to take them.
I'm surprised to hear that. Spring Attack is one of the most popular combat feats in our group.
What builds are they using? I'm seeing mostly these:
archer
sword/board TWF
2handed bruiser (with the falchion that I'm growing annoyed that everyone feels compelled to take :-) )Every now and then I'll see a reach weapon oriented build.
A lot of the spring attack builds in our group use polearms as it extends the reach of the spring attack. I also commonly see it combined with greater trip, power attack, and/or vital strike.
The most recent one was a beastly orc barbarian/monk (don't laugh) who would frequently slam his enemies with his fists or polearm, and then move behind total cover. He was a hard one to hurt on account of it.
What are the consequences of this errata? Will the feat not be as stack friendly or what?I don't think there are any significant consequences, honestly. Looks like it clarified that instead of a move action + standard action, you use a full-round action instead. The text was probably added in case people saw the feat as allowing movement without a move action, and then using a move action to retrieve an item, for example.
Except now it is impossible to use cleave, vital strike, or similar maneuvers as they are standard actions. This makes me sad.
A lot of hit and run builds here on the forums have just been completely destroyed.
It was always impossible to use cleave + spring attack since cleave is not a "single melee attack".
So now we know: Spring attack + vital srike = no :-(
So you see he orginally says it does work...then a few posts down says opps, okay it doesn't...but allowing it to work isn't a bad thing.
and a few more post down he says:
OK, so this isn't necessarily something you asked Jason the intent on...Nope, because he's been sick all weekend and as a general rule I don't make it a policy to call him up to get permission to post to the messageboards on the weekend even when he's not sick.
And anyway, you've all convinced me that Spring Attack and Vital Strike should work together. Which wasn't hard, since as I've said above, that's my personal preference.
BTW James is not Jason.
When it comes to official errata or FAQ Jason is the man, not James.That said I still perfer James' answer, but Jason has made in clear. SA + VS = no.
spring attack is feat that requires player skill to use effectively - as do all positining feats.
The main purpose is kiting, or specifically prevent opponents from making full attacks on you. The role of the spring attack fighter is not to do damage, but to keep the opponent from reaching the ranged attackers while taking minimal damage himself. Add movement feats, poison/bleeding, reach weapons and lots of cover, and you turn combat into a tactical game rather than a contest of stats.
On boring battlefields, in groups where the casters/ranged attackers don't understand positioning and group tactics, or against weak enemies (ie where a race to kill them fastest rather than a challenge to survive), then spring attack ends up as a weak feat.
all that said: you paid for the game, you play it however you like
spring attack is feat that requires player skill to use effectively - as do all positining feats.
The main purpose is kiting, or specifically prevent opponents from making full attacks on you. The role of the spring attack fighter is not to do damage, but to keep the opponent from reaching the ranged attackers while taking minimal damage himself. Add movement feats, poison/bleeding, reach weapons and lots of cover, and you turn combat into a tactical game rather than a contest of stats.
On boring battlefields, in groups where the casters/ranged attackers don't understand positioning and group tactics, or against weak enemies (ie where a race to kill them fastest rather than a challenge to survive), then spring attack ends up as a weak feat.
all that said: you paid for the game, you play it however you like
+1
Come to think of it It's probably good you can't use SA and VS.I'm not sure I want monsters with Greater Vital Strike and a weapon with 3d8 base damage to use it ;-)
I´m NOT at all surprised that it is a Full Round Action, but it IS very surprising that the component single attack was not ALSO specified to be an Attack Action - An action within an action is somewhat strange, but if the ability says you can do an attack action as part of a special Full Round Action, the exception over-rules the general rule... Essentially, forcing a ´complete action package´ but that allows synergy for things like Vital Strike.
The change does fix a problem, namely that Spring Attack had NO action typing whatsoever previously .
(3.5 Spring Attack also wasn´t explicit about the action type of the movement, though the attack action was clear)
Given that the design direction PRPG has been taking for melee has been emphasizing Critical Hits (with special Crit effects) along with AoO´s, it´s disappointing to see the primary avenue where high base damage weapons could shine be limited (never mind it´s a 3-deep Feat Chain). Obviously, Paizo´s AP writers and James Jacobs agreed that VS+SA is a reasonable combo that makes sense. Does this mean Paizo will rebuild the SA+VS NPC if they do another print run of that AP?
Worries about Monsters with Greater Vital Strike... well, if the combo makes them very over-powered, their CR should reflect that. Monsters generally AREN´T super optimized, and you can seriously screw with their balance by replacing their Feats such as for VS/IVS/GVS even without Spring Attack synergy.
All I can say is that I HOPE Ravingdork missed something and the Errata also includes the ´Attack Action´ wording.
@Raving Dork: ´Attack action´ certainly is defined within the rules, along with the other Standard Actions, it just is misleadingly structured because the Attack action contains the rules relevant for ALL attacks, i.e. attack rolls, damage, crits, ranged, unarmed, etc., which should properly be shifted to be under the general Attack sub-section and not the Attack Action proper. This is just copy and paste from 3.5, where such formatting was just as misleading, but there wasn´t special abilities that only kicked in on ´Attack actions´, so it didn´t really matter back then if people misunderstood the distinction between attack roll and attack action.
...Actually, was that formatting issue addressed? That would make the attack action alot clear for folks.
(i.e. moving general attack info to general attack section, not under attack action)
The change does fix a problem, namely that Spring Attack had NO action typing whatsoever previously.
It as always clear to me that it used up your normal actions (that is, your move and standard actions).
So you see he orginally says it does work...then a few posts down says opps, okay it doesn't...but allowing it to work isn't a bad thing.
Apparently some one decided to disagree.
Hurray, Spring Attack is re-relegated to uselessness.
To be fair, Spring Attack was intended to be useless.
Same as Charge doesn't work with Vital Strike even though Previews said otherwise.
To be fair, Spring Attack was intended to be useless.
Same as Charge doesn't work with Vital Strike even though Previews said otherwise.
Charge was still a useful ability though and has other complementing mechanics.
Hm, so it looks like the general attack rules WEREN`T separated from the attack action,
i.e. to stop confusing people about what an attack action is and isn`t.
Hopefully Paizo can hire an Errata editor who can focus on that
instead of trying to borrow the time from people working on new projects.
| 5 people marked this as FAQ candidate. |
What are the consequences of this errata? Will the feat not be as stack friendly or what?I don't think there are any significant consequences, honestly. Looks like it clarified that instead of a move action + standard action, you use a full-round action instead. The text was probably added in case people saw the feat as allowing movement without a move action, and then using a move action to retrieve an item, for example.
Except now it is impossible to use cleave, vital strike, or similar maneuvers as they are standard actions. This makes me sad.
A lot of hit and run builds here on the forums have just been completely destroyed.
You never could use Cleave and you could and still can use Vital Strike. Spring attack allowed you to move and take melee attack
Spring Attack: "You can move up to your speed and make a single melee attack without provoking any attacks of opportunity from the target of your attack."
Vital Strike: "When you use the attack action, you can make one attack at your highest base attack bonus that deals additional damage.
So first Spring Attack allows you to make a melee attack. A melee attack is an attack action. Therefore you can use it. Vital Strike is not a standard action as it applies to any attack action as listed in the combat section under standard actions.
Cleave being it's own standard action is not an attack action and therefore not a melee attack so you can not use it with Spring Attack and you can't use vital strike on cleave.
So full round action doesn't change a thing as you still get that melee attack and vital still applies.
Terrible option is now slightly more terrible.
What are the consequences of this errata? Will the feat not be as stack friendly or what?I don't think there are any significant consequences, honestly. Looks like it clarified that instead of a move action + standard action, you use a full-round action instead. The text was probably added in case people saw the feat as allowing movement without a move action, and then using a move action to retrieve an item, for example.
Except now it is impossible to use cleave, vital strike, or similar maneuvers as they are standard actions. This makes me sad.
A lot of hit and run builds here on the forums have just been completely destroyed.
You never could use Cleave and you could and still can use Vital Strike. Spring attack allowed you to move and take melee attack
Spring Attack: "You can move up to your speed and make a single melee attack without provoking any attacks of opportunity from the target of your attack."
Vital Strike: "When you use the attack action, you can make one attack at your highest base attack bonus that deals additional damage.
So first Spring Attack allows you to make a melee attack. A melee attack is an attack action. Therefore you can use it. Vital Strike is not a standard action as it applies to any attack action as listed in the combat section under standard actions.
Cleave being it's own standard action is not an attack action and therefore not a melee attack so you can not use it with Spring Attack and you can't use vital strike on cleave.
So full round action doesn't change a thing as you still get that melee attack and vital still applies.
Trying to specify what type of attacks different things were really hasn't helped the game.
That and James Jaccob posted this in another thread:
"#1: You win the internet for today!
#2:Because it's a good tactic. And because when I'm developing an adventure, I go with my gut more often than a microexaminaiton of every single rule... because that's the only way to get APs out on a monthly schedule. And because, as I've mentioned above, letting Spring Attack and Vital Strike work together is cool.
Since you found precedence where the two feats work together in print, LET THAT BE THE LAW!
Vital Strike and Spring Attack were made to be together, after all. :-)"
Notice the let that be law part.
What are the consequences of this errata? Will the feat not be as stack friendly or what?I don't think there are any significant consequences, honestly. Looks like it clarified that instead of a move action + standard action, you use a full-round action instead. The text was probably added in case people saw the feat as allowing movement without a move action, and then using a move action to retrieve an item, for example.
Except now it is impossible to use cleave, vital strike, or similar maneuvers as they are standard actions. This makes me sad.
A lot of hit and run builds here on the forums have just been completely destroyed.
You never could use Cleave and you could and still can use Vital Strike. Spring attack allowed you to move and take melee attack
Spring Attack: "You can move up to your speed and make a single melee attack without provoking any attacks of opportunity from the target of your attack."
Vital Strike: "When you use the attack action, you can make one attack at your highest base attack bonus that deals additional damage.
So first Spring Attack allows you to make a melee attack. A melee attack is an attack action. Therefore you can use it. Vital Strike is not a standard action as it applies to any attack action as listed in the combat section under standard actions.
Cleave being it's own standard action is not an attack action and therefore not a melee attack so you can not use it with Spring Attack and you can't use vital strike on cleave.
So full round action doesn't change a thing as you still get that melee attack and vital still applies.
A melee attack is not an attack action. They are 2 seprate things. Cleave, AoO, Deadly Stroke, and other things are also melee attacks, but they are not attack actions. You can use abilities that trigger off of melee attacks with them, like trip, which do not require you to make attack actions but do require you to make a melee attack. An Attack Action is a specific type of standard action. Vital Strike only works on an attack action. By your wording, you could also use it on AoO, which is not the intended result.
You never could use Cleave and you could and still can use Vital Strike. Spring attack allowed you to move and take melee attack
Spring Attack: "You can move up to your speed and make a single melee attack without provoking any attacks of opportunity from the target of your attack."
Vital Strike: "When you use the attack action, you can make one attack at your highest base attack bonus that deals additional damage.
So first Spring Attack allows you to make a melee attack. A melee attack is an attack action. Therefore you can use it. Vital Strike is not a standard action as it applies to any attack action as listed in the combat section under standard actions.
Cleave being it's own standard action is not an attack action and therefore not a melee attack so you can not use it with Spring Attack and you can't use vital strike on cleave.
So full round action doesn't change a thing as you still get that melee attack and vital still applies.
I hope you're right.
voska66, please read d20pfsrd`s FAQ page section on Vital Strike.
Jason Buhlman`s quotes are very clear on how the game intends `attack action` to function.
Hint: the `attack` action listed under standard actions is what references to `attack action` mean, not `any and every attack roll` (´action´ here is in the sense of Free/Swift/Move/Standard/FullRound, i.e. AoO`s are not `actions` in this sense). If you can`t make the `Attack` type of Standard Action, you can`t apply Vital Strike. `Attack action` doesn`t appear in the new Errata version of Spring Attack, thus you can`t Vital Strike - Spring Attack any more if you use the RAW version.
What are the consequences of this errata? Will the feat not be as stack friendly or what?I don't think there are any significant consequences, honestly. Looks like it clarified that instead of a move action + standard action, you use a full-round action instead. The text was probably added in case people saw the feat as allowing movement without a move action, and then using a move action to retrieve an item, for example.
Except now it is impossible to use cleave, vital strike, or similar maneuvers as they are standard actions. This makes me sad.
A lot of hit and run builds here on the forums have just been completely destroyed.
I don't think cleave was ever intended to be used with spring attack anyway, and vital strike was flip-flopped on enough times that I am personally counting it as a standard action until errata comes out for it.
What are the consequences of this errata? Will the feat not be as stack friendly or what?I don't think there are any significant consequences, honestly. Looks like it clarified that instead of a move action + standard action, you use a full-round action instead. The text was probably added in case people saw the feat as allowing movement without a move action, and then using a move action to retrieve an item, for example.
Except now it is impossible to use cleave, vital strike, or similar maneuvers as they are standard actions. This makes me sad.
A lot of hit and run builds here on the forums have just been completely destroyed.
You never could use Cleave and you could and still can use Vital Strike. Spring attack allowed you to move and take melee attack
Spring Attack: "You can move up to your speed and make a single melee attack without provoking any attacks of opportunity from the target of your attack."
Vital Strike: "When you use the attack action, you can make one attack at your highest base attack bonus that deals additional damage.
So first Spring Attack allows you to make a melee attack. A melee attack is an attack action. Therefore you can use it. Vital Strike is not a standard action as it applies to any attack action as listed in the combat section under standard actions.
Cleave being it's own standard action is not an attack action and therefore not a melee attack so you can not use it with Spring Attack and you can't use vital strike on cleave.
So full round action doesn't change a thing as you still get that melee attack and vital still applies.
No you are wrong. Caineach and Quandary are correct. You can't use a standard action or an attack action and a full round action.
Page 187
Full-Round Actions
A full-round action requires an entire round to complete.
Thus, it can’t be coupled with a standard or a move action,
though if it does not involve moving any distance, you can
take a 5-foot step.
my bold
Spring attack page 134
Benefit: As a full-round action, you can move up to your speed and
make a single melee attack without provoking any attacks of
opportunity from the target of your attack. You can move
both before and after the attack, but you must move at
least 10 feet before the attack and the total distance that
you move cannot be greater than your speed. You cannot
use this ability to attack a foe that is adjacent to you at the
start of your turn.
My bold.
Spring attack doesn't say you can use a standard action. Nor does it say you can use an attack action.
If you have any doubt look here
In that thread Jasons says:
Hey there everybody,
Let me see if I can clean this up a bit.
Cleave is a standard action, which means you can use it anytime you can take a standard action. It cannot be used as part of a full-attack action, which is a full round action. You cannot use Cleave as part of a charge, since that is a special full-round action (partial charge not withstanding). The same applies to Great Cleave.
Vital Strike can be used in place of an attack action. This means that whenever you take an attack action, you can use Vital Strike instead. An attack action is a type of standard action. While this is nearly identical to Cleave, there are a few subtle differences. Anything that applies to an attack action would apply to a Vital Strike attack, whereas it would not, necessarily, apply to Cleave. The two feats cannot be used in conjunction.
I am not sure that answers all the questions here.. but I will check back later to see if there is anything I have missed.
Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer
Paizo Publishing
My bold.
The attack action is is not the only type of standard action.Casting a spell is often a standard action. Drinking a potion is a standard action. Using a wand is often a standard action, etc.
Hurray, Spring Attack is re-relegated to uselessness.
It's still good if you are a rogue.
voska66, please read d20pfsrd`s FAQ page section on Vital Strike.
Jason Buhlman`s quotes are very clear on how the game intends `attack action` to function.
Hint: the `attack` action listed under standard actions is what references to `attack action` mean, not `any and every attack roll` (´action´ here is in the sense of Free/Swift/Move/Standard/FullRound, i.e. AoO`s are not `actions` in this sense). If you can`t make the `Attack` type of Standard Action, you can`t apply Vital Strike. `Attack action` doesn`t appear in the new Errata version of Spring Attack, thus you can`t Vital Strike - Spring Attack any more if you use the RAW version.
Just took a look. As per Jason's post just look in the book under the Actions in Combat section Page 182. In that section is a list of Standard Actions. Under that is a list of Attack Actions. Listed is Melee Attack. So Melee Attack is Attack Action which is a Standard Action.
So Spring attack allows a Melee Attack which is Attack Action. Vital Strike is no action at all, it modifies any attack actions. So that applies to Melee Attack, Ranged Attack, Natural Attack, and Unarmed Attack.
Interesting thing I just noticed though. A monk can't use spring attack to make an unarmed attack as you can only make a melee attack, they could use monk weapons though. Now that's that odd. Same thing with a bite attack. I can see not allowing ranged attacks though as they have Shot on the Run to do the same thing.
Neither you can use Vital Strike when charging.
True. VS + Charge = no. Let me quote JB
Edit:
Charge is a specific type of full round action, Vital Strike and its associated feats cant be used in conjunction with a charge as they use standard actions.This is correct.
Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer
Paizo Publishing