Hello community,
I was wondering if I could decrease the STR my char uses for an attack voluntarily?
There are some situations, in which this might be handy. I'm currently thinking of:
a) Bull rushing with the knockback rage power that deals ST mod as damage. I am playing a Blood Conduit Bloodrager and when one of my team mates is surrounded, I would like to bull rush him out of danger and by this way heal or boost him with a touch spell. I don't want to hurt him with the rush, so if I could lower my STR to 10, there would be no harm (although the bull rush won't get the ST Bonus of course)
b) Torturing someone with lethal damage, but not too fast, so that they have enough time to overthink their uncooperative behavior ;-)
Besides, can someone who wants to be attacked/bull rushed/... voluntarily lower their DEX to make it easier?
Considering logic, both should be possible. You can punch someone hard or soft, which is exactly what STR stands for rulewise. Same with dexterity, which represents the ability to dodge.
I would be glad though, if it was possible RAW. I haven't found anything so far.
Thanks in advance.
There are no established rules outlining how to go about doing it. It's also a major plot point to One Punch Man so... if you do figure out a good way, let Saitama know.
Not in RAW as far as I know but I would figure the dex lowering would work like a harmless spell. You allow yourself to fail the defense against the attack. The person making the bullrush would still need to make a good check but I picture it like selling a wrestling move in that the other person is deliberately opening themselves up for the hit.
There is no way written in the rules to do it. But if I wee DMing I would allow it. I would treat it the same as casters lowering their caster level. (It would have to effect everything about the attack). For example it would lower both your damage and your "to hit". If you were using feats that required a certain strength you could not lower your effective strength below that level and still use the feat (like power attack).
There are plenty of things not explicitly covered in the rules. These enter the realm of DM calls. One of the advantages of having a DM is they can adjust to ideas not explicitly covered in the rules (unlike a computer game). Let common sense reign and have the DM make a DM call.
My first inclination wad to say 'yes of course' but after thinking about I would say no in both circumstances and require a reflex or other appropriate save in most others.
The game assumes you are trying to hit an opponent as hard as you can, so to pull your blow would require a reflex save of DC20 - BAB to avoid hitting too hard as you are still trying to do lethal damage, but less of it. If the save was made then I would still require you to roll for damage normally but allow you to reduce the amount delivered by 1 for every point you made your save by.
Because you were raging at the time I would rule you didn't have the control to pull your blow.
In the second example, the art of torture is often about maximising pain for minimal damage and has nothing to do with strength
Kazaan wrote: There are no established rules outlining how to go about doing it. It's also a major plot point to One Punch Man so... if you do figure out a good way, let Saitama know. But Saitama already knows how. He pulls pretty much every punch, which is why the One Punch Man world is still in one piece.
Some people recommended to me that a -4 to hit (same penalty as dealing nonlethal) would be reasonable (not RAW) as a GM penalty. Treating it as if your strength was 10 for hit and damage until your next turn would also be reasonable, since that's a fairly hefty hit penalty. Although I suppose rage would make it so you can't really control yourself as well, as Hugo Rune mentioned.
As far as the rules go, there is no rule that allows a character to pull their punches (outside of perhaps some special abilities which specifically mention it).
But if you're going to house rule it, there's nothing particularly special about a strength score of 10. If you allow the character to lower their effective strength to 10 you might as well allow them to lower it to 2, 0, or other values.
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You dont need to hit everything as hard as you possible can. this is as obvious as that dead people stop fighting.
If you are strong enough to open a slightly stuck bottle of coke - then do always and without exception squishy every banana you want to peel to a pulp?
Have you ever slapped someone, without it suddenly mutating into a strong right-handed knock-out punch?
This is clearly a case of trying to read the rules in a way too litteral case if you are honestly asking if a normal person can control his own body strengh ingame.
I agree that it can make sense in general, although when you're in the middle of a combat situation you may not have the luxury of moderating your attacks by carefully tweaking how hard you swing.
Then there's always the question: "If you can lower your Strength voluntarily, can you also choose to lower your other stats? What about other character numerics?"
I think you'll quickly find that different people would allow different subsets of stats to be voluntarily lowered. It just becomes a huge mess.
Thus, it's a very reasonable house rule, but it's nothing official. Particularly because of the can of worms it opens.
Well, it might make sense to "hold back" Dexterity and purposefully be more clumsy, but can a real person "hold back" the other stats? Moreover, would it serve any practical purpose? Con, Int, Wis, and Cha (and maybe Dex) don't seem very conducive to "holding back" in the same way as Str. The point is that it seems odd that a physical attack is always cranked up to full output and there's absolutely no capacity to hold back. Probably chock it up to another thing to be addressed in the Pathfinder rewrite.
Dex? Purposely not focus on a task. Intentionally be sloppy about it.
Int? Intentionally empty one's mind (similar to meditation).
Wis? Choose to not pay attention; daydream.
Cha? Hold back and be quiet or pretend to be anti-social.
Con? Might be the hardest to justify. But they do say one's mental state can influence how well you can recover from sickness/injury. Or you could intentionally put stress on your body by various means.
And that's just the basic characteristics. Can you intentionally lower your movement speed by dragging your feet (actual speed, not just used movement)? How about caster level? How about effective character level? There's also all the things based on stats such as saving throws and skill checks, which could also be lowered if you allowed stats to be.
Kazaan wrote: Well, it might make sense to "hold back" Dexterity and purposefully be more clumsy, but can a real person "hold back" the other stats? Moreover, would it serve any practical purpose? Con, Int, Wis, and Cha (and maybe Dex) don't seem very conducive to "holding back" in the same way as Str. The point is that it seems odd that a physical attack is always cranked up to full output and there's absolutely no capacity to hold back. Probably chock it up to another thing to be addressed in the Pathfinder rewrite. Can you choose to not lift a heavy weight?
Can you choose to fall when you step on ice?
Can you choose to play stupid?
Can you intentionally make "bad" choices?
Can you choose to act less charming?
The developers have already stated the rules are written with the assumption people will apply common sense.
Silly developers; never assume anything.
Acting stupid and pulling a punch, while similar on a superficial level, are far more different than people seem to be giving credit for. When you "play stupid", you aren't "pulling your brain" on your knowledge roll; you ace your knowledge roll but then keep that information to yourself or outright lie about it and overtly claim not to know. A charming person is charming. It isn't particularly anything they are trying to do. But remember, Charisma isn't qualitative, it's quantitative. It doesn't tell you what type of personality or appearance you have, just relative strength. If someone finds you charming, then high Cha means they find you more charming and low Cha means they find you less charming. But if they find you annoying, then high Cha means they find you more annoying and low Cha means they find you less annoying. How do you "pull your personality" in a situation like that? If you stay quiet, you'll be charmingly quiet or annoyingly quiet based on their opinion of you. It's hard to willingly toggle your "force of presence" because you don't have conscious control over it. Same goes for Intelligence, Wisdom, Constitution, and (to a lesser extend) Dexterity. But physical Strength, you have almost complete conscious control over and it can be a practical benefit to throttle it down in certain circumstances. I see no practical benefit in throttling any of the other attribute scores.
As far as other "variables" in the game, I can see throttling BAB but, again, what would that accomplish? The only attribute in the game I can really see as needing some functionality in this regard, and also making sense, is Strength. This is actually the very matter that brought me to these messageboards a few years ago, the notion of "holding back" Strength on an attack; that was nearly 4 years ago, and people are still asking about it today. But I don't think I've ever seen anyone asking to toggle down any other attribute. That should say a lot.
Thanks for all those answers.
I would disagree with having to make a Reflex or whatever check, that just seems to weird for something which is that easy.
However, the rage argument is kind of valid and it could make it more difficult to estimate the power of my blows. But on the other hand, rage does not make you go full Hulk. A raging character can distinguish between foe and friend, a Bloodrager can even cast buffing spells on allies by touching them. So when you can touch someone without knocking him out, you should probably be able to not purposely hurt someone with a bullrush.
After all, my bull rush only deals damage because of a feat I took.
Now we could discuss if Iˋd be able to turn off the feat, but that would result in the same arguments, and there is no written rule about it either.
I think I like the idea of a -4 penalty for having to be more careful than you are used to. I will talk with my GM, but since he never played pathfinder before this round I am usually the one who has a look on rules and balancing, so I could probably make it the way I want to - which is not my aim of course.
Concerning the other abilities: Dex, Str and Wis seem reducable to me. Con seems rather impossible and Int and Cha depend on the situation: I think Int is quite difficult, because you cannot tell yourself to be dumb. Acting like being dumb is something different, you still understand whatˋs going on and still know the stuff you know, although you donˋt appear so. Cha-skills like Diplomacy, Bluff, Intimdate can purposely be failed (generally everything that relies on speech), but the "Appearance"-part of Cha is difficult to overcome. You canˋt chose to look like a cute bunny when you are a scarred, intimidating Boxer. And if someone finds you really attrative, it is rather impossible to make it undone.
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Didn't performance combat rules cover pulling punches?
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Prof. Löwenzahn wrote: ...but the "Appearance"-part of Cha is difficult to overcome. You canˋt chose to look like a cute bunny when you are a scarred, intimidating Boxer. And if someone finds you really attrative, it is rather impossible to make it undone. Charisma is a quantitative measure, not a qualitative one. When it lists "appearance" as something governed by Charisma, that means that Charisma measures your appearance; it doesn't control what you look like, it controls "how much". It isn't an objective scale with Ugly on one side and Attractive on the other and high Cha slides it towards attractive and low Cha slides it towards ugly. If your character is attractive to another character (beauty is in the eye of the beholder), then Charisma governs how strongly that beauty is exhibited. A pair of identical twins, physically identical, can have differing Charisma and, even though both are blonde bombshells, the one with higher Charisma would be considered the "more attractive twin". Charisma is purely a mental trait; that's why reincarnated characters retain the exact same Charisma even though they might have gone from a Human or Elf to an Orc or Bugbear. Or, to put it another way, lets say John, the Human, has a "thing" for Half-Elves, especially blonde ones. He sees a Half-Elf with a Cha of 16 and finds her very attractive. He sees another Half-Elf with a Cha of 22 and she is outright gorgeous. He sees a third Half-Elf with a Cha of 7 and, while he still considers her pretty (mainly because she's a Half-Elf), he's seen far better. Then, he sees two Half-Elves, one with black hair, the other blonde, and both have a Cha of 18. They are both very attractive, but the blonde one moreso because he likes blondes better. Now, he notices an Orc with a Cha of 18. He finds orcs very unattractive and this one seems to be far more unattractive than most. But another Orc might find that one a specimen of high quality, a beauty among Orcs (at least for other Orcs).
Prof. Löwenzahn wrote: Thanks for all those answers.
You canˋt chose to look like a cute bunny when you are a scarred, intimidating Boxer. And if someone finds you really attrative, it is rather impossible to make it undone.
There are lots of images of "celebrities looking unattractive". I agree a scarred boxer will not be able to disguise themselves as a cute bunny.
But lowering your attractiveness is quite easy. It's partly body language (slumped shoulders, bent head, downcast eyes) and partly clothing.
Sam Calinean wrote: Didn't performance combat rules cover pulling punches? http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/combat-feats/stage-combatant-combat
Indeed. This is the closest we can get to this topic, although this assumes we attack with a weapon. The feat could however be applied to bullrush via weapon focus, though Iˋd argue it is far more difficult to deal no damage with a greataxe than with a tackle.
Iˋm still content, because the -4 penalty implies dealing no damage. No need to lower your Strength, you can bullrush with full Strength and thus your full bonus (-4).
You mean my +29 Acrobatics means I cannot jump less than 30'?
Sure, you can put less effort into the action. But as said before, it applies to the whole action: BAB & Damage.
As to the mental stats, you cannot change them, but you can allow less effort to your casting and thereby lower the save DC.
For skills, you can use all your ranks, or fewer if you want.
/cevah
Cevah wrote: You mean my +29 Acrobatics means I cannot jump less than 30'?
Sure, you can put less effort into the action. But as said before, it applies to the whole action: BAB & Damage.
As to the mental stats, you cannot change them, but you can allow less effort to your casting and thereby lower the save DC.
For skills, you can use all your ranks, or fewer if you want.
/cevah
That's not how skills work.
The DC is determined by the difficulty of the task.
If you make a check equal to or greater than the DC then you succeed, otherwise you fail.
Yes, this technically means that if (a normal person) tries to jump further than they can, they will simply fall prone. Sanity and realism dictates that they should fall short by an amount proportional to the failure amount, but that's a GM call and not how skills work in general.
Byakko wrote: Cevah wrote: You mean my +29 Acrobatics means I cannot jump less than 30'? That's not how skills work.
The DC is determined by the difficulty of the task.
If you make a check equal to or greater than the DC then you succeed, otherwise you fail.
Yes, this technically means that if (a normal person) tries to jump further than they can, they will simply fall prone. Sanity and realism dictates that they should fall short by an amount proportional to the failure amount, but that's a GM call and not how skills work in general. Actually, it is RAW. Check the PRD:
Acrobatics wrote: For a running jump, the result of your Acrobatics check indicates the distance traveled in the jump (and if the check fails, the distance at which you actually land and fall prone). Halve this result for a standing long jump to determine where you land. And PRD:
Above and Beneath the Streets wrote: Use the guidelines in the Acrobatics skill (a horizontal jump's peak height is one-fourth of the horizontal distance) to determine whether a character can make a jump. It is not a GM's call how far they jumped. The dice control it explicitly.
If you fail the DC by 4 or less, you can make a reflex save to succeed. If you fail by 5 or more, splat.
/cevah
Cevah wrote:
It is not a GM's call how far they jumped. The dice control it explicitly.
If you fail the DC by 4 or less, you can make a reflex save to succeed. If you fail by 5 or more, splat.
/cevah I believe it was stated in the Jump FAQ that you are not obligated to jump the full distance.
In addition, the Adaptive property for Bows says this:
Ultimate Equipment wrote: This ability can only be placed on composite bows. An adaptive bow responds to the strength of its wielder, acting as a bow with a strength rating equal to its wielder's Strength bonus. The wielder can fire it with a lesser Strength bonus (and cause less damage) if desired. So this looks like RAW saying one can voluntarily use less strength.
N N 959 wrote: I believe it was stated in the Jump FAQ that you are not obligated to jump the full distance. What FAQ is that? It should be with the CRB FAQs, since it is about skills, but the only one that mentions jumping is the DC for 10' pit which does not address the issue.
/cevah
Apologies, I meant the thread with the Jump FAQ. It could have been another thread with a designer response. But seriously, the idea that actual jump distance is determined by the dice is nonsensical. Insisting as such would mean that no one could jump less than their jump modifier.
Can I lower my STR voluntarily?
I sure hope so... Imagine how awkward the world would be if every time you shook hands with someone you broke each other's finger and every hug ended in spinal injury.
Let's not even think about sparring matches! oO
Cevah wrote: Byakko wrote: Cevah wrote: You mean my +29 Acrobatics means I cannot jump less than 30'? That's not how skills work.
The DC is determined by the difficulty of the task.
If you make a check equal to or greater than the DC then you succeed, otherwise you fail.
Yes, this technically means that if (a normal person) tries to jump further than they can, they will simply fall prone. Sanity and realism dictates that they should fall short by an amount proportional to the failure amount, but that's a GM call and not how skills work in general. Actually, it is RAW. Check the PRD:
Acrobatics wrote: For a running jump, the result of your Acrobatics check indicates the distance traveled in the jump (and if the check fails, the distance at which you actually land and fall prone). Halve this result for a standing long jump to determine where you land. And PRD:
Above and Beneath the Streets wrote: Use the guidelines in the Acrobatics skill (a horizontal jump's peak height is one-fourth of the horizontal distance) to determine whether a character can make a jump. It is not a GM's call how far they jumped. The dice control it explicitly.
If you fail the DC by 4 or less, you can make a reflex save to succeed. If you fail by 5 or more, splat.
/cevah I should have been more specific. I was looking at the vertical jump rules.
In any case, the running horizontal jump has specific rules which override the default case, so of course you follow them. This doesn't change the fact that the DC is set based on the target distance. If you make the check then you make the jump set by the DC. If you fail the DC, you fall short as it described. No where does it say you jump a total distance equal to your check when you succeed.
You did read my post where I quoted the PRD telling you exactly how far you go? :-)
/cevah
Cevah wrote: You did read my post where I quoted the PRD telling you exactly how far you go? :-)
/cevah
Yes, the result of your Acrobatics check is either a success or a failure. :-)
Okay, maybe I picked a bad example. Per the PRD quote, if you try to jump over a 5' pit with 5' of floor before a wall on the other side, and you roll really high, then you will indeed smack into the wall. I guess.
But that's more a problem with how the skill is written. Note that you'd have this same nonsensical result even if you were allowed to lower your modifier: if you roll too high, you'll go too far. I'm pretty sure the intent of rolling a high acrobatics check isn't to cause you to fly unintentionally far through the air (I hope!).
Anyways.
In general (barring more specific rules), you assign a DC to a task and if you make the DC or higher on your check then you succeed.
Damage rolls, on the other hand, do not have a target number. You simply roll the damage and apply it.
Byakko wrote: Cevah wrote: You did read my post where I quoted the PRD telling you exactly how far you go? :-)
/cevah
Yes, the result of your Acrobatics check is either a success or a failure. :-) Jumping is not success/failure. The result of your acrobatics check explicitly defines how far you travel while airborn and what happens if you fall short of your target distance, in increments.
If we rule that a character cannot chose to reduce the results of a check, good luck hopping from pillar-to-pillar. Ridiculous example: lets hope you don't have to jump a 10' wide pit onto a 5' wide ledge with a 20 acrobatics. You're going to be face planting into the wall.
Byakko wrote: Cevah wrote: You did read my post where I quoted the PRD telling you exactly how far you go? :-)
/cevah
Yes, the result of your Acrobatics check is either a success or a failure. :-)
Okay, maybe I picked a bad example. Per the PRD quote, if you try to jump over a 5' pit with 5' of floor before a wall on the other side, and you roll really high, then you will indeed smack into the wall. I guess.
But that's more a problem with how the skill is written. Note that you'd have this same nonsensical result even if you were allowed to lower your modifier: if you roll too high, you'll go too far. I'm pretty sure the intent of rolling a high acrobatics check isn't to cause you to fly unintentionally far through the air (I hope!).
Anyways.
In general (barring more specific rules), you assign a DC to a task and if you make the DC or higher on your check then you succeed.
Damage rolls, on the other hand, do not have a target number. You simply roll the damage and apply it. Actually, I picked that example. :-)
I picked it to show the problem with RAW on the skill.
Yes, the roll determines success, almost success, or failure; but it also determines distance.
While you might not be able to lower the number, you can choose to Take 10 and eliminate the variability.
As a GM, I would rule you can jump any distance from 0' to whatever the Take-10 result gets as a sure thing. Any longer needs a roll.
/cevah
Snowlilly:
Thanks for reminding me why I should never try to insert a bit of humor into my posts - there will always be someone who misses it.
Cevah:
That's a reasonable thing to do. Something I'd expect any sane GM to do, actually. :) Anyway, the obvious non-RAI result of the Acrobatics rules is a completely different matter.
Back to my key point: skills only care about whether you meet or fail to meet a specific DC (except where it specifies something different, such as Acrobatics). But if it does matter, you technically have no way, per the rules, to lower your modifier... apart from clever uses of circumstance modifiers, and the like.
Cevah wrote:
While you might not be able to lower the number, you can choose to Take 10 and eliminate the variability.
As a GM, I would rule you can jump any distance from 0' to whatever the Take-10 result gets as a sure thing. Any longer needs a roll.
/cevah
Take 10 is a player choice, not a character choice. From the character's perspective, there is no difference in the effort or output on Take 10 vs rolling. So there's no reason you should allow anything different with Take 10 compared to actually rolling a 10.
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