"While under this spell’s effect, the target ignores all effects that would entangle or hamper her. When she attempts to escape an effect that has her immobilized, grabbed, or restrained, she automatically succeeds unless it’s a magical effect of a higher level than the freedom of movement spell."
The latter sentence is clear enough. The first one however is incredibly awkward. It is not clear if it's just meant to be flavor text, but "ignoring effects" is a pretty far cry from getting a guaranteed success on escaping - amongst other things, escaping requires you to wait until your turn, potentially taking significant damage or statuses as a result of being grabbed in the meantime.
Assuming that the first sentence is saying that in addition to succeeding on escapes, some kind of effects are actually ignored, which are they? Grabbed, restrained, slowed, immobile, etc are all potentially "effects that would entangle or hamper [the PC]".
The first sentence of text for a spell is, usually, just flavor. Same for most rules elements, really.
Does that result in some awkwardness? Yup.
Is it ever going to change? Probably not, because then people would complain that there isn't any "flavor" to the rules and it reads like a technical manual as a result.
Not really. Just change it to "While under this spell's effect, the target can easily escape from anything that would hamper her."
Note that "can easily escape" and "is not affected by" are two completely different things.
The former says "if you're under the effect, you can leave" the second one says "you are immune to new applications."
For entangled and hampered this is...largely indistinguishable, but they are different.
That was kind of the question though - whether that first line is actually flavor or if it indicates you are immune to future effects of that type, and if so, which ones it includes (for example, a Slowed effect is likely to "entangle or hamper" the PC, even though it isn't immobilization, grabbing, or restraining)
If it's flavor, changing it to ".. can easily escape.." brings it in line with the actual effect. If it's rules, it needs to list the conditions involved.
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"Entangled" and "Hampered" are conditions, just like Immobile, Grabbed, and Restrained. Check page 321 and 323.
That would make it clearer, but it's still not completely clear.
* For starters, Entangle and Hamper aren't capitalised, which page 3 says should be the indication that a word is used as a technical rules term. This is important, because (for example) on page 220, the Earthbind spell says "you hamper a target's flight" even though the spell does not give the Hampered condition. Does Freedom of Movement help against it?
* It does not say you are immune to Entangled or Hampered, only to "ignore effects that would entangle or hamper you". Becoming Fatigued gives you the Hampered condition, so is it an "effect that would hamper you"?
* If this is supposed to be a technical usage, I think this is the only time when the verb equivalent of a condition is used. For example, tanglefoot bag says "that creature becomes entangled for 1 minute"; not "entangle that creature for 1 minute".
* Likewise, other effects that make you immune to these states explicitly say "you are immune to being hampered", eg, pg 241.
hyphz wrote: That would make it clearer, but it's still not completely clear.
* For starters, Entangle and Hamper aren't capitalised, which page 3 says should be the indication that a word is used as a technical rules term.
Conditions, for some reason, are never capitalized, eg:
Quote: Flesset Poison (poison) Fortitude DC 20; Maximum Duration
6 rounds; Stage 1 1d6 poison damage and sluggish 1 (1 round);
Quote: This is important, because (for example) on page 220, the Earthbind spell says "you hamper a target's flight" even though the spell does not give the Hampered condition. Does Freedom of Movement help against it? Yes, it prevents the creature from flying. If they are free to move then they should be able to fly.
Quote: * It does not say you are immune to Entangled or Hampered, only to "ignore effects that would entangle or hamper you". Becoming Fatigued gives you the Hampered condition, so is it an "effect that would hamper you"? This is worth a clarification, because rules interactions are weird.
As written? Yes, yes it would. You'd still have the Fatigued condition, but would be (temporarily) immune to (some?) of the downsides.
Quote: * If this is supposed to be a technical usage, I think this is the only time when the verb equivalent of a condition is used. For example, tanglefoot bag says "that creature becomes entangled for 1 minute"; not "entangle that creature for 1 minute". See Unfettered (p33):
Quote: Trigger You roll an Acrobatics check to Escape, an
Athletics check to Break a Grapple, or a saving throw against an
effect that would entangle or grab you, or you use your Fortitude
DC to resist a Grapple.
Flavor text should be italicized.
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