| GM Jeff |
If a character gets a temporary ability score increase, does that only affect what is listed under "Ability Score Bonuses" (pg 554-555) or everything related to that ability?
For example: Say a Paladin drinks a potion of Eagle's Splendor (+4 Charisma), what does it affect?
A) Only what's listed (pg. 555); Wisdom-based skill checks and bonuses to spell DCs based on Charisma.
B) The same as A), plus; the Paladin's class feature Smite Evil (+2 to attack and deflection bonus vs target of smite), Divine Grace (+2 on all saving throws), Lay on Hands (2 extra uses), etc...
| Cheapy |
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One of the developers talks about that here.
We can't give an exhaustive list of every single ability in the game and whether or not a temporary boost affects it, but we can give you these two guidelines:
(1) It should affect DCs based on that ability score modifier.
(2) It should affect rolls modified by that ability score modifier, such as Str mod affecting melee attack rolls and Wis mod affecting Will saves.
(3) It should not affect abilities that treat an ability score modifier as a "consumable." In this context, a "consumable" is one where your number of uses per round/day/week/whatever is based on the ability score or its modifier, such as channel energy uses per day, wizard school abilities usable {Int bonus} per day, bardic performance rounds per day, barbarian rage rounds per day, and so on.Everything else is on a case-by-case basis up to GM discretion, but avoiding (3) is much more important than limiting it to (1) and (2).
This means you could eagle's splendor to temporarily improve a paladin's divine grace ability, because that falls under the category of (2). Likewise, this means a temporary bonus to an oracle's Charisma should increase the DC of the oracle's revelations (even though oracle revelations weren't invented at the time the Core Rulebook was written).
The link has more details.