Can a Bloatmage cast a spell as an immediate action (feather fall, buoyancy, etc) out of his blood pool to prevent flying into a rage when going overboard during a bloat?
I can't either, clearly some abilities can be used after a dice roll but before it takes affect. I just wanted to check what others thought of this instance since it seems like a better way of preventing bloat rage than the option given in the text. I am considering having my PFS sorcerer go Bloat in a couple levels and this may be a deciding factor for me.
I would say that while there's no rules against it (RAW), it is likely not an intended situation (RAI). The way that the Bloatmage's abilities are written it is very much supposed to be a risk. As a GM, I would not allow it on those grounds.
Question: Bloatmage Bloat ability - the chart says it goes from 1d4 to 2d4 to 3d4. Text says 1d4 to 1d8 to 1d12. Text trumps by default, but I thought I'd ask (1d12 is much wickeder).
After discussing this with James, we like the 1d4/1d8/1d12 option in the text better, as it makes bloating a little more risky for the reckless character--which makes the class more appealing if you're a player who likes to take risks.
This was somewhat my thoughts from the get go, and why I asked this question. Part of me does feel this goes against RAI.
But Sean's very next line from where you quoted states "Note that if you play the class carefully, you'll probably never rage if you use your bloat ability." They also gave the Con loss route to help prevent rage. So the idea of mitigating the chance of rage in general is not off the table. Additionally, the immediate spell route is not without its costs. Beyond the obvious spell per day loss, it would likely lead to using some spell slots for things like Buoyancy, where a normal sorcerer would never bother burning the slot. I guess since this trade still feels significantly better to me than losing Con that I am on the fence for its legitimacy.
Since I was planning on maybe doing this for a PFS character anyway, do RAI even matter? Aren't RAW king in that format?
As a whole I don't know that it breaks the class. I almost never run out of spells per day in a PFS game anyway, and the hit to movement for this class is pretty big. It just seems like a very flavorful alternative I am considering.
I think you're correct that RAW is all that matters for PFS. This is the reason I'll never GM/play in PFS. Nothing against Paizo, I understand why they do it, when you have that many people GMing, you basically have to. However blindly following the rules results in some very poorly constructed rulings once you go more than one sourcebook past core. It's basically impossible for Paizo to consider every possible combination. This is something made clear (to me, anyways) with this comment on the Mythic Adventure playtest:
Core! Core is great because it sets the base-line level of power. It’s fine if you play some mythic tengu with 5 natural attacks at first level or some aasimar that through various rules hoops has some feats meant for tieflings, but if you find that with mythic rules it’s making a completely ridiculous character, consider how much of that is due to the mythic rules versus the non-core rules. In fact, keep that in mind with core rules as well.
I just thought of something else that may limit this sidestep a bit. The immediate action would have to burn points already in the pool. So if you did not have points in your pool and just rolled high, a quick spell would not save you. By the time you had the points to sink into the spell you have already satisfied the condition to cause the blood rage.
Edit: just reread and it appears this scenario can only come up your first level of BMage.