Stunning Critical & Stun Immunity

[Bernat]

Hi all. I've tried to search for an answer to this question with no luck, so here it goes...

How does Stunning Critical interact with Stun Immunity? I can think of the following possibilities:

• a) Target is immune to stun, therefore ignores stunning critical completely.

• b) Target tries to save, if it saves successfully, it is staggered for 1d4 rounds. If it fails the save nothing happens (due to being immune to stun). Saving would actually be worse than failing :/.

• c) Target counts as having succeeded the save automatically and is staggered.

Thanks everyone for your insight!

[Elicoor]

d/ Target decided to fail voluntarily its save and nothing happens as it's stun immune.

[Eltacolibre]

pretty much a). It's all or nothing.

[Imbicatus]

RAW, I think it's B.

Personally, I would rule that immunity to stun downgrades the feat to Staggering Critical. Failed save is Staggered for 1d4+1 rounds, Success limits it to one round. This make a save worthwhile, and makes sense as Staggering Crit is a prereq for Stunning Crit.

[Claxon]

The RAW is B, but that is a silly result. If the creature had failed the save they would be unaffected, its wonky for the result to be worse if they save successfully. I would probably rule that they are just outright immune.

The real question becomes, is there any evidence to say that stun immunity should make you immune to be staggered as well? They are not explicitly the same thing, but being stunned seems like a worse condition of being staggered.

[Imbicatus]

Claxon wrote:

The real question becomes, is there any evidence to say that stun immunity should make you immune to be staggered as well? They are not explicitly the same thing, but being stunned seems like a worse condition of being staggered.

I treat Dazed as a lesser condition of Stunned as a house rule, but Staggered is something else entirely.

Staggered occurs to everyone at 0 HP. Also, Zombies are immune to stun, but are explicitly staggered.

[Bernat]

Thanks all for your replies.

It seems that most of the people agree to what Imbicatus suggested about stunned and staggered being totally different.

Also, your suggestion about downgrading Stunning Critical to Staggering Critical would make much sense and would be fair, but B seems the right answer according to RAW.

I also agree with Elicoor, the monster would be able to choose to fail its save voluntarily.

So I guess I should ask the bard/wizard about the monster being immune to stun, or just combine both critical feats with Critical Mastery to be safe.

[Lifat]

This is an excellent example of RAW leading to absurd results and should be errataed... Personally speaking I would houserule like Imbicatus and let the stunning crit work like staggering crit against stun immune targets. Of course if the target is immune to both effects then you are out of luck and have wasted a critical effect on nothing.

[Jeff Clem]

I would say (A) and (B) apply the staggering critical as normal. These are two separate conditions which do not have the same type effect.

shaken frightened panicked
Dazed, Stun
Exhausted,Fatigued,Staggered