Multiple treat something as something abilities?


Rules Questions

Scarab Sages

1 person marked this as FAQ candidate.

Rather obscure and convoluted, but bear with me:

Okay, 1st level Human Druid. Takes Vermin Heart and Ooze Whisperer. Aside from effects on wild empathy, both of these feats allow me to treat the creature type in the title (Vermin and Ooze) as if they were animals for spells and such.

2nd, and all later levels, are as Serpentine Sorcerer. Bloodline Arcana allows me to treat animals (and magical beasts and Monstrous Humanoids) as if they were humanoids that understood my language for the purposes of mind affecting/language dependent spells.

So, since this character treats oozes and vermin as animals, and treats animals as humanoids, can I cast Charm Person (example) on Oozes and Vermin? Does it even work like this when I have multiple abilities that treat one as another?


1 person marked this as a favorite.

That's an interesting edge case. I can definitely see people nitpicking the exact phrasing of the text to support either ruling here. For my part I feel strongly that transitivity should always apply unless it's clear that it shouldn't, and these abilities should interact to allow you to treat oozes and animals as humanoids. The "sanity check" also checks out, since this ability combo isn't going to break anything (you had to do some very unfavorable multiclassing to get it anyways). So I'd say yes, and I'd be completely unsurprised if other GM's say no.


Quote:
I can definitely see people nitpicking the exact phrasing of the text

Hai!

You seem to be misrepresenting the feats somewhat. They say that you may 'target them with spells that normally affect animals only' not 'treat them as animals'.

Charm person can affect animals with that arcana, but it can also work on humanoids, monstrous humanoids, etc. It is not a spell that 'normally only affects animals'.


Actually, Vermin Heart and Ooze Whisperer don't have a 'treat as' clause, they have a 'you may target' them clause. So even though you may target them with an 'animal' or 'magical beast' spell, that doesn't make them an animal or a magical beast for Serpentine Bloodline Arcana.

I don't disagree with Dasrak that it isn't particularly broken, but that said, I don't think it is rules legal.

Scarab Sages

toastedamphibian wrote:


They say that you may 'target them with spells that normally affect animals only' not 'treat them as animals'.

Charm person can affect animals with that arcana, but it can also work on humanoids, monstrous humanoids, etc. It is not a spell that 'normally only affects animals'.

Hmm...re-reading...I think you might be right.


Dave Justus wrote:
Actually, Vermin Heart and Ooze Whisperer don't have a 'treat as' clause, they have a 'you may target' them clause. So even though you may target them with an 'animal' or 'magical beast' spell, that doesn't make them an animal or a magical beast for Serpentine Bloodline Arcana.

I don't think the exact phrasing here is a problem (although I'm not surprised that others might think differently). The Sorcerer bloodline in question allows language-dependent mind-affecting spells to affect animals, and the feats allows spells that affect animals to be applied to ooze and vermin. The feats may not be a general "treat as" clause, but we don't actually need them to be that broad for our purpose.

That said, I do find toastedamphibian's argument convincing. The word "only" here makes a big difference. The Ooze Whisperer and Vermin Heart feats apply to spells that only affect animals. A spell that normally affects humanoids that has been extended to affect animals using a Sorcerer bloodline affects both humanoids and animals. As such it's not eligible for use with Vermin Heart or Ooze Whisperer since it affects more targets than just animals.

Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder First Edition / Rules Questions / Multiple treat something as something abilities? All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.