do you lose access to a feat if you lose the pre req?


Rules Questions


Say your character has a 13 str and you take power attack as a feat. Now, say your character takes a point of str damage from poison or disease or magic....your pick. Can that character make use of the power attack feat now that their str is 12?

That i can find, RAW doesnt speak to this. You need the pre req to select the feat. But there is no mention of needing the pre req to use the feat once its trained.

Anyone have an opinion, or better yet an official ruling?

Thanks

Sczarni

I believe only if you take a penalty to the stat, such as Enlarge Person giving you a -2 Dex, or if the stat is subject to a "draining" effect, would you lose access to a feat.


At least in 3.5 the rule was if you lose a prerequisite then you lose the benefit of the feat until you meet the prerequisite again.

Temporary ability penalties (like Enlarge Person's dex penalty, or ability damage) do not actually lower your ability scores, just inflict a penalty to rolls--so they do not affect prerequisites under RAW.
I think ability drain would actually mean you might not meet a prerequisite until you got a restoration.

Sczarni

137ben wrote:
Temporary ability penalties (like Enlarge Person's dex penalty, or ability damage) do not actually lower your ability scores, just inflict a penalty to rolls--so they do not affect prerequisites under RAW.

This is no longer the case.

The recent FAQ wrote:

Temporary Ability Score Increases vs. Permanent Ability Score Increases: Why do temporary bonuses only apply to some things?

Temporary ability bonuses should apply to anything relating to that ability score, just as permanent ability score bonuses do. The section in the glossary was very tight on space and it was not possible to list every single ability score-related game effect that an ability score bones would affect.

The purpose of the temporary ability score ruling is to make it so you don't have to rebuild your character every time you get a bull's strength or similar spell; it just summarizes the most common game effects relative to that ability score.

For example, most of the time when you get bull's strength, you're using it for combat, so the glossary mentions Strength-based skill checks, melee attack rolls, Strength-based weapon damage rolls, CMB, and CMD. It doesn't call out melee attack rolls that use Dex instead of Str (such as when using Weapon Finesse) or situations where your applied Str bonus should be halved or multiplied (such as whith off-hand or two-handed weapons). You're usually not using the spell for a 1 min./level increase in your carrying capacity, so that isn't mentioned there, but the bonus should still apply to that, as well as to Strength checks to break down doors.

Think of it in the same way that a simple template has "quick rules" and "rebuild rules;" they're supposed to create monsters which are roughly equivalent in terms of stats, but the quick rules are a short cut that misses some details compared to using the rebuild rules. Likewise, the temporary ability score rule is intended as a short cut to speed up gameplay, not as the most precise way of applying the bonus.

A temporary ability score bonus should affect all of the same stats and rolls that a permanent ability score bonus does.


Under "Ability Score Penalties," it says:

Quote:
Some spells and abilities cause you to take an ability penalty for a limited amount of time. While in effect, these penalties function just like ability damage
And "Ability Damage" says:
Quote:
This damage does not actually reduce an ability, but it does apply a penalty to the skills and statistics that are based on that ability.

So since a penalty is treated like damage, and damage does not "actually reduce an ability," I would say you still meet the prerequisite. This post by SKR would support this, I think. If only permanent bonuses apply for feat prerequisites, in the absence of a specific rule to contrary I would say that likewise only permanent penalties should make you lose a prerequisite.

Obviously people could differ on whether or not this is logical, independent of the rules.

EDIT: In relation to the FAQ, I agree it muddies the waters, but do not think it changes the prerequisites thing. Applying to "all the same stats and rolls" is not the same as actually reducing the score in relation to prerequisites, as meeting them is neither a stat nor a roll. It might also get weird in relation to meeting prerequisites through temporary bonuses, which seems to be something they have wanted to avoid.

Sczarni

I think of it like this. Say your Strength is 16. One a regular day, your Strength is 16 out of 16, or 16/16.

If you get poisoned, and take 2 Strength damage, your Strength would instead look like this: 14/16

Your base Strength is still 16, but functionally, temporarily, it's 14.

But, with a -2 penalty to Strength, it would now look like this: 14/14.

Same for ability drain.

At least, that's how I interpret it.

Sczarni

@Mort: ah, thank you for that. Then I suppose draining effects would be the only way for you to temporarily lose access to a feat.

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