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| 14 people marked this as FAQ candidate. Answered in the FAQ. |
I was looking over Druid related feats in UM today and ran into greater wild empathy. On the surface, this feat looks quite nice. You can intimidate with wild empathy instead of just using diplomacy and you get to choose an entire new group (fey, elementals, plants, lycanthropes, or vermin) and have the ability apply to them as well. Sign me up!
However, in closer examination there is a glaring problem with the feat as written. It limits the use of wild empathy against the new group to members who have an intelligence of 1 or 2. Ok.... that limits its utility quite a bit. Lets check the PFd20SRD for all Paizo published monsters that meet the criteria.
Elementals = 0
Fey = 0
vermin = 0 (they are all mindless by definition!)
Lycanthropes = 0
plants = 0 (I'll admit I didn't check every plant, as this was my last group and I was already seeing the overall pattern).
So, the 2nd half of this feat cannot be used with any creature existing in the game? To make matters more confusing, the feat offers rules for taking it multiple times (you may add another group for the feat to work with. or not work, actually). I suspect the feat was never intended to have the 1 or 2 intelligence restriction applied. Or perhaps this never came up during play testing. Can we get some official clarification on this please?
Thank you for making a great game!
The 'Ling
I am unsure where you are getting that these creatures have an INT score of 0.
I think he was saying that there are zero elementals, zero vermin, zero fey, and zero lycanthropes with an INT of 1 or 2 (as most have an int higher than 2, and vermin, being mindless, have no int), not that all those critters have an int of zero.
I believe if there is a mistake its that they are meant to work with higher INT as well, as even this creature by RAW would not be eligible as it has an INT score of 4.
I'd say this makes sense from a making the feat make sense point of view, but doesn't make sense from a world logic point of view.
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I am unsure where you are getting that these creatures have an INT score of 0.I think he was saying that there are zero elementals, zero vermin, zero fey, and zero lycanthropes with an INT of 1 or 2 (as most have an int higher than 2, and vermin, being mindless, have no int), not that all those critters have an int of zero.
Precisely. There are no qualifying creatures in the game right now. Vermin have no intelligence, and no other creatures from any published Paizo source (and any 3rd party I know of) qualifies either. That seems like a pretty good reason for some clarification, no?
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Maybe as a temporary fix allow it to work across the language barrier (Diplomacy and Intimidate normally require you to share a language, and a lot of those creatures don't speak common.)
Well, I'm not sure what you mean here. Wild empathy simulates the use of the skills. You actually don't need to speak the same language at all. As no language clause was written into the feat, it stands to reason language is unnecessary in this circumstance.
If any dev sees this thread, can we get some kind of information here? I saw another older post on this very issue, and no response was received there either.
Thanks,
The 'ling
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The more I have thought about this, the more I believe removing the intelligence restriction makes the most sense. Wild Empathy is described as primarily being conveyed through body language. This would work in situations with intelligent beings as well as those with animal intelligence (think pantomime, or proper body language for a foriegn culture. Eye avoidance and bowing in Asia for example).
Essentially, if treated this way, the feat is a limited form of the Bard's 'perform replaces skills' ability. Thoughts?
BTW, any dev willing to weigh in would be greatly appreciated (shameless bump? perhaps...)
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I was looking over Druid related feats in UM today and ran into greater wild empathy. On the surface, this feat looks quite nice. You can intimidate with wild empathy instead of just using diplomacy and you get to choose an entire new group (fey, elementals, plants, lycanthropes, or vermin) and have the ability apply to them as well. Sign me up!
However, in closer examination there is a glaring problem with the feat as written. It limits the use of wild empathy against the new group to members who have an intelligence of 1 or 2. Ok.... that limits its utility quite a bit. Lets check the PFd20SRD for all Paizo published monsters that meet the criteria.
Elementals = 0
Fey = 0
vermin = 0 (they are all mindless by definition!)
Lycanthropes = 0
plants = 1 (as pointed out below. plus an additional 3rd party plant).So, the 2nd half of this feat cannot be used with any creature existing in the game? To make matters more confusing, the feat offers rules for taking it multiple times (you may add another group for the feat to work with. or not work, actually). I suspect the feat was never intended to have the 1 or 2 intelligence restriction applied. Or perhaps this never came up during play testing. Can we get some official clarification on this please?
Thank you for making a great game!
The 'Ling
Any response? I can't be the only one wondering about this. Is this a candidate for the ask James Jacobs thread?
Bump, I'd sure like to know.
| 1 person marked this as FAQ candidate. |
This feat really needs to be FAQ'd.
Just checked the errata, and they went 1/4 of the way to fixing it before, apparently, becoming bored and wandering off. The feat now reads "You may influence creatures of that type with wild empathy, if their Intelligence score is 1 or 2, or they do not possess an Intelligence score." So vermin are OK, but apparently elementals, lycanthropes, and fey are still off-limits, despite still being specifically listed in the feat description.