"before the results of the roll are revealed...".But what, exactly, does this mean?
I don't think there's any way you must choose to re-roll before you look at the die. (Even though you change the result by observing it!)
They way I think it works: Someone rolls a d20, for any reason. Oracle looks at the die, and says he activates misfortune. The die gets re-rolled.
Yes, there can be some metagaming (IE: the player knows what the dragon needs to roll in order to hit him, and watches for any die roll over that number) but there's really no way around that.
The results of the roll would be "He hits you" or "He makes his will save" or whatever.
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I have an oracle with the Misfortune revelation, which has the verbage "before the results of the roll are revealed...". A quick search of the SRD, I saw other abilities with this clause.
But what, exactly, does this mean? There was a disagreement between us on how it works. He thinks it works before he reveals ANYTHING, which essentially means every time he rolls a d20, he asks me if I want to make them reroll it. I think that makes the ability completely useless, and that what it means by "before the results of the roll are revealed" is that he would say/show that it was a 17 on the die, but before he added the bonuses to it (say a +5 to hit). My understanding is that the reroll would occur AFTER the 17 is revealed, but BEFORE he says "Does a 23 hit?"
The "results" referred to are whether it succeeds or fails. I've usually seen this on friendly abilities - i.e., I roll a save or some such, see the total but don't ask whether I'm successful or not yet, and decide whether or not to use my reroll (it's good for when you roll a 1 and don't need to be told you failed - less useful when you rolled kind of in the middle and aren't sure).
Using such a thing offensively, though, seems kind of weird. If you use it before the GM even tells you the final number, the ability is completely useless. If you use it after the GM tells you the total, then you'll already know whether it failed or not (presumably you're familiar with your own AC and such) so you couldn't really call it "before the results are revealed".
I dunno, you should check with your GM on that one. Maybe he could tell you the natural roll (without modifiers) and you could decide then? That specific ability seems really badly done.
Agreed. But what do you do when the GM is rolling behind the screen? There is no "natural die" given. He rolls, he says the total.
If he doesn't want to roll openly, then he will have to tell you what he rolled before the result of the roll is revealed. This will get tedious, so hopefully he'll eventually start rolling openly like everyone else at the table is.
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"Before the results of the roll are revealed" is a question of success or failure. You know what the die roll is. You don't know whether that die roll is enough to hit or to make a saving throw. You have to estimate what sort of bonuses he may have. Your post is somewhat confusing. I think what you are saying is correct.
Let's take an example. If you cast Blindness on an opponent, you must decide whether to use misfortune before the results of the roll are revealed. If your saving throw DC is 17 and he rolls a 14, then if you knew his Fortitude save bonus, you would know whether or not he would save on that roll. So you know what the die roll is, not what modifiers are being applied.
...Using such a thing offensively, though, seems kind of weird...Maybe he could tell you the natural roll (without modifiers) and you could decide then?...
That is the way we have always done it. The X rolled a 12 on its bite attack. Before he adds modifiers and tells me the final total I can decide to make him re-roll.
On my own rolls it is much easier. I roll my dice and before I tell the GM my total I decide whether or not to re-roll.
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So, just to be clear, there's nothing that actually specifics what this means, just "common" sense?
To my knowledge, "results" is not a game term in the sense that it would appear in the glossary with a more-specific-than-common-english definition.
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So, just to be clear, there's nothing that actually specifics what this means, just "common" sense?
Definitely nothing in Pathfinder which defines it. The clerical Luck domain has had a power which uses this wording back to the 3.0/3.5 days, so people have handled it with common sense for a number of years.
So, just to be clear, there's nothing that actually specifics what this means, just "common" sense?
Well most likely because it simply makes no sense to say "Ok, I rolled a dice. It's somewhere between 1 and 20. Do you want me to reroll and take the second one?"
Because statistically speaking that doesn't make a difference, it's still the same random spread, if you have no information what the first roll was.If the ability is "takes the worst of the two" (i dunno how the revelation is worded), then yes, it might work like that though, then you trigger that revelation whenever you need something to succeed.
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If the ability is "takes the worst of the two" (i dunno how the revelation is worded), then yes, it might work like that though, then you trigger that revelation whenever you need something to succeed.
I had the same idea, so I checked and it's "take the second one". Which means the only way to handle it is for the GM to give you some sort of information without making it explicitly clear whether they succeeded or not. Which is kind of awkward.
I had the same idea, so I checked and it's "take the second one". Which means the only way to handle it is for the GM to give you some sort of information without making it explicitly clear whether they succeeded or not. Which is kind of awkward.If the ability is "takes the worst of the two" (i dunno how the revelation is worded), then yes, it might work like that though, then you trigger that revelation whenever you need something to succeed.
When I first thought about it, I thought it would be awkward, but then I thought:
Every roll has exactly three pertinent bits of information: the die roll, the roll modifier, and the DC.
If you use a this ability against an ally, you'd have two bits of information: the die roll, and your ally's modifier. You don't know the result of the roll because you don't have the third bit of information. You can sometimes make deductions to determine the third bit, ex. guessing a foes AC by which attacks hit.
If you use this ability against a foe, you still only have two bits of information: the die roll (which you GM tells you) and your own DC (or your ally's.) You still don't know the result of the roll because you still don't have the third bit of information. Again, you can make deductions to determine the third bit, but they won't be any more accurate than in the other case.
Thankfully my players tend to use these mostly on allies but everyonce in a while it comes up against enemies.
Though i tend to describe whats happening as i roll and pause for just a moment and give those characters a chance to intervene and ask for the dice number.
In the PBP-game I'm currently running, I'm allowing misfortune to be used after results with modifiers are known, since it would otherwise be far too tedious. It's only slightly more powerful than it should be, so I'd probably use this approach even in an RL-game.
Let's break it down:
There are two events specified in the description: die roll, results revealed. You make the decision to use the ability after the die roll. This always happens before any modifiers are added, so for the sake of discussion, I'll always be talking about the exact rolled number (natural).
Now, because the fact there are certain skill rolls that the rules recommend the GM make in secret, we know there are two classes of rolls for the sake of this discussion: open and secret.
Use of this on "open" rolls is pretty clear. Someone rolls a d20 on behalf of a creature. You consider the die roll and decide whether to use the ability or not.
However, rolls go fast, and you'll often miss your chance. On the other hand, it's not efficient to slow all rolls down. So when you feel like you're going to use Misfortune, announce it, and you likely have a target creature in mind. Its controller will announce all rolls and give you a second to consider. If you activate the ability, its controller rerolls, then the session resumes as normal.
Use of this on "secret" rolls is also clear going strictly by the rules: the roll is made, but you do not know which number came up. You can still force the reroll, but doing so is likely fruitless. It's basically a gamble.
Now, because your ability can be used a bunch of times per day (against different creatures), I'd say it's fair that secret rolls are out, but I could be convinced otherwise with a good argument. It would have to be a pretty good argument, though.
Metagaming: Is this metagaming? Maybe, but it's the nature of the ability. Metagaming happens, it depends to what level. Eventually, a melee fighter will figure out that he or she needs 11 on the die to hit some given creature. That can be explained as getting a sense of the foe's defenses. This is similar: the oracle can inflict misfortune on a creature, so surely he or she can get a vague sense of its current destiny.