| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
of course italics are important
How else are you going to show correct Linnaean binomial nomenclature?
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Feats for instance are described by:
Feat Name: The feat’s name also indicates what subcategory, if any, the feat belongs to, and is followed by a basic description of what the feat does.
Benefit: What the feat enables the character ... to do. If a character has the same feat more than once, its benefits do not stack unless indicated otherwise in the description.
I don't think a "basic description" should be considered rules-binding; that is what the Benefit section is for.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
of course italics are important
How else are you going to show correct Linnaean binomial nomenclature?
youre either trying to explain why italics are important or youre introducing a non-sequitur, i can't tell because i don't know if the italics should be skipped or not
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
In the case of monsters, the Bestiary Introduction defines that part as the "Introduction" to the monster, distinct from the Stat Block. Since it says of the Stat Block "This is where you'll find all of the information you need to run the monster in an encounter," you clearly don't need the monster introduction to run it. Therefore it cannot be a crucial element in any rules argument.
Feats are more complicated. The "Name" section says "The feat's name also indicates what subcategory, if any, the feat belongs to, and is followed by a basic description of what the feat does." The "Benefit" section says "What the feat enables the character ("you" in the feat description) to do." So the Name text is a "basic description" of the Benefit text. Presumably that means it should be usable for disambiguation purposes... but I don't really think it is, because they're pretty sloppily written.
P.S. Feat intros are not italicized.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Feats for instance are described by:
I don't think a "basic description" should be considered rules-binding; that is what the Benefit section is for.Feat Name: The feat’s name also indicates what subcategory, if any, the feat belongs to, and is followed by a basic description of what the feat does.
Benefit: What the feat enables the character ... to do. If a character has the same feat more than once, its benefits do not stack unless indicated otherwise in the description.
It's an area for reasonable disagreement. I don't see any really clear rule that will resolve this positively.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
you clearly don't need the monster introduction to run it. Therefore it cannot be a crucial element in any rules argument.That's one thought. The counter position (and the argument that made me start this thread) was that the Iron Golem is unaffected by the rust monster, not picked up by detect metal and not subject to the rusting grasp spell unless we take description into account.
Which admittedly does seem a bit odd.
Hmm, good point. Though you can still ignore the italicized part (Introduction), since the Description section (below Stat Block) specifies iron as well. I admit my argument required ignoring both.
RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
|
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
I've seen a pretty common thought on various forums discussing Pathfinder that italicized text at the heading of feats and monsters and other things doesn't matter.
This was a source of a lot of debate back when Pummeling Style was first printed and I've seen similar contentions with people arguing whether Iron Golems are valid targets for Detect Metal and Rusting Grasp and so on.
I haven't been able to find anything one way or the other in the rules though. So is there anything definitive?
Paizo doesn't italicize feat descriptions and such. They reserve italics for spell names and magic item names, so you don't get them confused with other rules elements (like feats, class features, or normal uses of similar words).
For example, if the rules refer to "darkness", they're talking about a specific spell; if they refer to "darkness", they're talking about the simple absence of light.
Open up your Core Rulebook. Look at the feats chapter. You won't see italicized descriptions like what you're asking about. Those are added by sites like d20pfsrd.com, specifically to make the italicized text look like it's separate from the rest. That is, the contributor at d20pfsrd.com already believes the line to be "flavor text", and so they italicize it so that it'll look that way to the reader as well.
Be careful. Sometimes they go beyond just italicizing things that they want to label as flavor text. I remember looking up something once and discovering that they'd chopped up a couple of sentences, rearranged the pieces, added a line of space between the resulting parts, and then italicized one of them. Somebody had an idea of how they thought that rules element worked, and edited it to demote the part they didn't like into "flavor text".
Any time you EVER have a rules question, Step One is to look at something other than d20pfsrd.com. Your question about the italicized text wouldn't even have come up if not for the way they re-format things.
EDIT: One exception: Paizo does actually italicize the opening one-liner on monster stat blocks. But they also have more (non-italic) descriptive text after the stat block that covers the same stuff and more anyway, so no big deal there.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Pretty much agree with everything above.
For your specific example, of course the Iron Golem is going to detect as metal. It's literally iron.
Now, as for Rusting Grasp, it's clear what happens. An Iron Golem isn't an object, it's a "ferrous creature", so the 3d6+1/caster level is pretty clearly aimed at things like the Iron Golem. It would not instantly disintegrate, nor would it lose armor, it would simply take 3d6+whatever from the touch attacks.
Similarly, the rust monster's attacks would deal the 3d6+5 against ferrous creatures, of which the Iron Golem is one.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Do people commonly claim that the text below the stat block is meaningless fluff text?
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Though that just changes the question to "Is introductory text on monsters and feats irrelevant".
Typically, a short statement that introduces a more in-depth description (such as the opening sentence of a paragraph, or a line leading into a list) is understood to be loosely accurate. The purpose of such an introduction is to take the full data that follows and compress it into a single idea that mentally prepares the reader to properly frame the information they're about be given. It intentionally sacrifices precision for the sake of brevity. When you want the full details, you read the full details. When you want a general idea (such as because there were too many details for you to process), you read the introduction. An introduction is a loose and imprecise summary.
However, the italicized text at the top of a monster entry in the Bestiary is not exactly an introduction. You can tell it's different both by its different formatting (being italicized) and by the fact that it's written in a narrative tone rather than a descriptive tone. The "voice" of this text is that of a GM describing to the players what their characters see, not of a manual informing the GM of how the mechanics work. Its purpose is not to summarize, but to provide an example of the mood and tone of a scene in which the monster might appear. It is a narrative suggestion.
|
RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
For your specific example, of course the Iron Golem is going to detect as metal. It's literally iron.The counter argument to that is that nothing in the Iron Golem's statblock mentions iron anywhere.
Incorrect. You didn't finish reading the Iron Golem's entry.
Look:An iron golem has a humanoid body made from iron. It can be sculpted into any shape its creator desires, but it almost always displays armor of some sort, from simple and utilitarian to ceremonial and ornate. Its features are much smoother than those of a stone golem. Iron golems sometimes carry a weapon in one hand, though they rarely use these, relying instead on their slam attacks.
An iron golem is 12 feet tall and weighs about 5,000 pounds. An iron golem cannot speak or make any vocal noise, nor does it have any distinguishable odor.
Although the practice has fallen out of favor in modern times, the ancients of certain powerful civilizations once took great pride in crafting iron golems of tremendous size and strength. These golems, which are never smaller than Huge, still exist in remote parts of the world, mindlessly following the orders of a long-dead empire.
Ergo...
Therefore, mechanically the Iron Golem is not made of iron, as the fluff text related to the monster is irrelevant. See also an earlier thread that concluded that an adamantine golem's fists aren't adamantine.
...this conclusion is flawed.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Jiggy, the part you quote is (formally) the Description, not the Stat Block.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
ALL TEXT MATTERS
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
ALL TEXT MATTERS
Not really. I mean there are examples where even the game doesn't acknowledge the flavour text.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
What about vorpal weapons? They can only decapitate creatures with heads, and whether or not a creature has a head is typically mentioned in the description and nowhere else
True, sometimes, with basic anatomy, the 'non fluff' areas never bother to mention it, since it rarely, if ever comes up- they don't appear to give direct benefit, so why waste the ink?
But at times, you may have items and feats that specifically rely on those body parts.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
