| 2 people marked this as FAQ candidate. |
There are several class abilities out there that are ambiguous in whether or not they need to be activated, and how long it may take for them to be activated.
Take the wings of heaven ability of the Celestial sorcerer bloodline or the cleric's animal domain speak with animals ability, for example. Do your wings sprout out as part of the move action made to fly? Or do you need to spend a standard action to "activate" your wings first? Is the first round of speak with animals always wasted? Or does it begin as soon as you begin talking to animals (a non-action in other words)?
I'm looking for clarification on these abilities, and others like them.
The general rule is that it takes a standard action to activate SU's, and SLA's.
I can see why a GM might allow someone to bypass that rule for thematic reasons, but I can also see why not allowing someone to by action economy should also be enforced.
Table 8-2 (page 183 Core book)lists a variety of actions. While this table is most often used to determine whether an action warrents an AoO, it can also help you determine what kind of action is involved.
You will find that all Extraordinary (Ex), Supernatural (Su) and Spell-like (Sp) abilities do indeed fall in the STANDARD ACTION list ;)