Staggered Construct

[Kifaru]

I had something come up in game recently.

It was declared that Frigid Touch does not cause a construct to be staggered. Looking through construct traits, I couldn't find anywhere that it states that they are immune to staggered. They are immune to effects that require a constitution save, but Frigid Touch does not allow a save.

Also, would a creature immune to cold damage be immune to the Frigid Touch staggered condition?

[Torbyne]

nope, frigid touch is just awesome like that. the rider is not dependent on the target taking damage or making a save. you still have to hit and get through SR but yeah, stagger away :)

[Kifaru]

Torbyne wrote:

nope, frigid touch is just awesome like that. the rider is not dependent on the target taking damage or making a save. you still have to hit and get through SR but yeah, stagger away :)

Are you sure about that? I spent an entire battle running for my life because I was informed the Frigid Touch staggered condition didn't work on things with cold resistance. If that spell had worked it might have saved me an ioun stone and the rest of the party a bunch of charges off CLW wands.

Anybody else have any thoughts on this? Is this just a "table variation" thing, or should I seriously down grade the value of that spell.

Also, does it work on constructs?

[Claxon]

The important thing is what type of construct. Golems tend to be the most commonly encountered construct, and they are usually immune to magic so anything that allows SR doesn't work.

[Kifaru]

Not sure what they were. I was just told they were constructs and that constructs are immune to the staggered condition.

[Kifaru]

These were separate encounters. I went and entire scenario where every bad guy was immune to the spell. The first encounter the bad guys were immune to cold damage. The second encounter they all had spell resistance, and the third encounter was constructs.

The bad guys with spell resistance was just a thing that happens. But I've been wondering about the 1st and 3rd encounter.

[Bob Bob Bob]

So, constructs (the type) are not immune to the staggered condition. Your GM may have confused it with Stun (which they are immune to) as staggered is often treated as a lesser form of stun. This is unfortunately fairly inconsistent though.

The second part is messier but I'm pretty sure Frigid Touch can stagger things even immune to cold, as the stagger effect is not described as conditional on the damage. Other spells specify this (like Sirocco) and say something like: "if they take damage from the initial effect they're also <some condition>". This one again may be GM confusion, as the default rules are that if the initial attack doesn't do damage, no rider effects (poison, grab, trip, etc.) can trigger.

[Ammoro]

Just to add to this from my digging further into this (4 years later). I am looking into the staggered/stunned condition regarding Staggering Critical and Stunning Critical to see the potential benefit late game for fighting more complicated enemies. For Frigid touch, it just applies the Staggered condition automatically, which does affect constructs (Bob Bob Bob is correct on that account). To go a little deeper, Constructs have: "Immunity to any effect that requires a Fortitude save (unless the effect also works on objects, or is harmless)."

So Staggering Critical (a fort save on crits) would not affect them because it is a saving throw. Which is a shame because the staggering critical states even if they save they are still staggered for 1 round. Sounds like the end result would be the same effect as Frigid Touch, but that may just be me. Hope this helps others down the road!

[dekova]

Since this thread has already been necroed, I'll add that constructs can also be sickened provided it doesn't require a fort save.