Terrible Remorse and Flying or Concentration Tasks

[RegUS PatOff]

What happens when a Flying creature is affected by Terrible Remorse? Does it keep flying, do a controlled glide landing or fall (possibly taking falling damage)?

Terrible Remorse:

Show:

You fill a target with such profound remorse that it begins to harm itself. Each round, the target must save or deal 1d8 points of damage + its Strength modifier to itself using an item held in its hand or with unarmed attacks. If the creature saves, it is instead frozen with sorrow, can take no actions, and takes a –2 penalty to Armor Class.

My reading of RAI is that since the completed save results in one round of no actions, then during the preceding failed save round or rounds the only thing the target can do is damage itself, not move. Also, my impression is that a target's concentration is broken upon a successful casting of the spell on the target.

Does that then imply that a target using a Fly spell would stop flying? The Fly spell would not be cancelled, so the effect of the end of spell (float down to ground) wouldn't occur, but without conscious direction, would the flying creature fall? Hovering is a specific maneuver requiring a fly skill check - so I'm pretty sure that's not a valid option.

I'm of the opinion that a flyer (either magical or natural) that fails it's first save would fall, but looking for arguments both for and against this point of view.

Note: I'm not looking for discussions of the overpowering nature of Terrible Remorse's 1 round/level RAW issue. That's already been resolved in a separate thread -

Jason Buhlman wrote:

Hmm..

This one has a bit of an error in it. The spell was meant to end after the "do nothing round" if you made your save, not continue on, round after round.

I will see to it that this get fixed.

Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer
Paizo Publishing

[RegUS PatOff]

Bump

My reason for asking is that I've just taken this spell for my Sorcerer 6/Dragon Disciple 3, and I'm expecting that we'll be running in to several flying creatures. Any thoughts?

[Josh M Foster]

Fly spell doesn't require effort to stay aloft any more than standing upright on the ground does. Creatures flying without wings, therefore, would just stay where they are.

Winged creatures, though, I'm less sure on. Hovering is an action for them. A creature takes no actions. They might fall. Though as a GM I'd rule that they simply roll their fly checks to hover, because they aren't held, they just won't actively go anywhere.

[Talonhawke]

Using the fly skill takes no action so yes you could still hover.