Vexing Daredevil Archetype FAQ needed

[Kharonus]

I think I may be missing something with the mesmerist archetype, vexing daredevil, because to me it looks like they receive a feat for free that they can not use. At level 10 they receive the Greater Mesmerizing Feint feat, which would let them feint a mindless target, but can not use this feat because it requires that the target also be effected by thier Hypnotic Stare, which is a mind effecting affect, and that target that is immune to Hypnotic Stare because that target is mindless and immune to mind effecting affect. The mesmerist world normally use the Psychic Inception bold stare ability to target a mindless target with thier Hypnotic Stare but they give up the bold stare class ability for the archetype.

[Godferret]

This does seem to be a problem. FAQ'd.

[Kharonus]

Still looking for a FAQ.

[nennafir]

This obviously needs to be in errata, because it makes no sense currently.

[Imbicatus]

Faq'd. If this worked I'd actually play a Vexing Daredevil. As it is they can never affect mindless.

[TheAndyman]

Has Paizo still not addressed this issue? This is vexing indeed. After some discussion with my friend who is a GM, he said the he would house rule this feat to be used as intended, which is to feint against creatures that are mindless or otherwise immune to stare, but that you wouldn't get the benefits of the actual stare (so no painful stare and dazzling shennanigans). That makes the bonus feat only marginally less worthless here. What is the point of feinting against a creature when it otherwise does nothing for you? Stab him instead. But at least if you go the disengaging shot route, you have some positioning flexibility against them.

[PossibleCabbage]

I guess the question is, does a creature need to be *affected* by your hypnotic stare to be *subject* to a mesmerist's hypnotic stare.

The Mesmerist is only allowed to focus their stare at one creature, which limits who they can make gaze attacks against, but they might not know what they're staring at is immune to mind-affecting effects and could end up staring at the ooze anyway. If the mesmerist elected to stare at the ooze, that would mean they can't focus their stare at anything else. It doesn't take a class feature to stare at an ooze after all- anybody can do it, and if you're staring at an ooze you're not staring at anything else.

You could consider that if the mesmerist has decided to use focus their stare on the ooze, the ooze is still *subject* to the hypnotic stare, even though the ooze would suffer no penalties from a mind-affecting effect. It's reasonably simple to interpret Greater Mesmerizing Feint as working against any creature you elect to focus your stare at (i.e. that's the requirement for being [u]subject[/u] to one's stare), so Greater Mesmerizing Feint works for the Vexing Daredevil just fine. This is how I would run it- you can stare at anything you want, whether that has additional effects due to Hypnotic Stare depends on the targets susceptibility to mind-affecting abilities, but greater mesmerizing feint just requires you to be staring at whatever it is.

This doesn't obviate psychic inception on the vanilla mesmerist using Greater Mesmerizing Feint because they could use psychic inception to also inflict the normal penalties their Hypnotic Stare carries, in addition to feinting against an ooze.

[Chromantic Durgon <3]

I have a vexing DD in play and assumed the same as PossibleCabbage.

EDIT: the idea being implant a Dazzling feint.