Can someone tell me exactly what happens when the enemy gets hit by Enervation, say for example Enervated 2.
The condition states "You take a conditional penalty equal to your enervated value on checks that include a proficiency modifier.." What does that include, Saving throws, AC, ?
So what would my GM need to change on the enemys stat block.
Thanks all.
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This one does require actually checking a couple things in the rulebook and erratta. Checks are defined as any attack roll, saving throw, or skill check. "Includes a proficiency modifier" means anything that adds your level and uses the UTEML scale. So again, any attack roll, save, or skill check.
Also an FAQ in the errata clarified that anything that effects "All checks" also effects AC and any save or skill DC (Will DC, Athletics DC, etc.).
Spell rolls and spell DCs are effected by Enervation (And Frightened and Sick) too.
So yeah, Enervated is one of THE strongest debuffs in the game. It applies its penalty to basically ANY roll or stat except for damage and HP. It will mess you up and can turn even highly dangerous enemies into a borderline joke if you land it at 2 or higher.
Great! Thank you. Finally a devastating debuff we can respect.
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In my opinion it could be cleaner, right now it seems quite tricky for a GM to do this in the middle of combat, certainly it slows things down.
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Having a lot of debuffs that do not stack but debuff slightly different sets of stats certainly is one of the problems of the current number of debuff options.
I am not entirely sure what the solution could be, but easy of play is certainly a consideration.
Enervation being pretty unique could give an untyped penalty, once you have conditional penalties ya your right its pretty much not stacking with much at all at that point.
Draco18s wrote: Quote: Duration 1 minute ...and?
Atalius wrote: Enervation being pretty unique could give an untyped penalty, once you have conditional penalties ya your right its pretty much not stacking with much at all at that point. Hahaha, frick no. Enervation is powerful enough as-is by far, it's basically the king debuff. Allowing it to stack with other conditional penalties would be STUPIDLY broken.
Sebastian Hirsch wrote: Having a lot of debuffs that do not stack but debuff slightly different sets of stats certainly is one of the problems of the current number of debuff options.
I am not entirely sure what the solution could be, but easy of play is certainly a consideration.
This is actually something I really enjoy about the current debuff system. If you have things stacking more then there is more pressure to try to land more debuffs because it's much more optimal than just landing one. As it stands now landing one debuff is plenty effective, you get diminishing returns for landing multiple debuffs but there is still reason to.
Say we take Frightened and Sick.
If an enemy is Frightened then barring anti-fear effects they are sure to take a penalty to everything but only briefly.
If an enemy is Sick then they could be taking a penalty to everything for a while but they could shake it quickly by burning one or more actions.
If an enemy is Frightened AND Sick then they are taking the same penalty but they are sure to have it for a short time AND they have to burn actions to keep from having it longer.
So the combo doesn't have double the penalty but it's longer lasting than fear alone and harder to shake fast than sickness alone.
Other debuffs are similar but with less overlap potentially, still providing a situation where it's harder to shake everything, meaning your enemy goes through a bunch of extra work or just eats nasty penalties.
I feel that conditions stacking more would be a problem. First debuffs would just be too strong. Second, my take on things like this is that when you jack up the ceiling on things like this you also jack up the standard. Which means people who want to do that thing feel compelled to grind up to the new standard. It wouldn't be enough anymore to hit an enemy with one debuff and move on, that would be significantly subpar.
Same deal goes with buffs, PF1 showed us what reckless stacking does and it was insane. Fun for just a little bit bt then it gets boring real fast as it just shreds challenges, not to mention irritating for the GM to try and make challenges that stand to it.
But now it's sufficient to lay down a buff or two, with different reasons for different buffs. And honestly there are a lot of buffs that coexist just fine, it's just doing things other than jacking up your numbers to an unmanageable degree.
And even then you have stuff like Heroism's longer duration and later higher bonus vs. Bless's AoE encouraging use of multiple tools.
TL;DR I actually really like where buffs and debuffs are right now, not much I would change. They are powerful and don't require stacking on a bunch to achieve a reasonably optimal result, but you can still get some mileage out of throwing out multiples in at least some cases, perhaps quite a few.
Landing Enervation isn't easy, targeting most monsters best saving throw with a ranged touch attack isn't automatic. The enemy is likely going to make his saving throw more often then fail. Enervated 1 isn't a game changer and there are other conditions that are more devastating than that. Once they have Enervated 1 on them, frightened and some other conditions are now useless. I say untyped because this is a rare spell that has no Heightened version, this should be powerful. Its going up against some very good spells at that level on multiple spell lists (Divine, Primal, Arcane). I'm sure at the moment there are a lot of people who wouldn't even prepare this spell. Just my 2 cents.
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Edge93 wrote:
This is actually something I really enjoy about the current debuff system. If you have things stacking more then there is more pressure to try to land more debuffs because it's much more optimal than just landing one. As it stands now landing one debuff is plenty effective, you get diminishing returns for landing multiple debuffs but there is still reason to.
But it's also confusing as hell, because they partially overlap and partially don't. So for any given combination of debuffs, you need to know what they both do, and then take the union of that to get what's happening now, then combine it with all the other stuff that doesn't stack (and figure out if anything in that list actually does stack). As you add more, it gets more complicated.
Straight stacking is simpler. For the amount of things that are happening and how they don't interact, we have far more debuffs than we need right now.
Stacking also avoids creating situations where things just aren't worth doing. Had a situation in a combat where it wasn't worth bothering to flank something because it had no particular effect along with the other effects we already had up on the target, and that just strikes me as silly.
Quote:
Say we take Frightened and Sick.
If an enemy is Frightened then barring anti-fear effects they are sure to take a penalty to everything but only briefly.
If an enemy is Sick then they could be taking a penalty to everything for a while but they could shake it quickly by burning one or more actions.
If an enemy is Frightened AND Sick then they are taking the same penalty but they are sure to have it for a short time AND they have to burn actions to keep from having it longer.
So the combo doesn't have double the penalty but it's longer lasting than fear alone and harder to shake fast than sickness alone.
Other debuffs are similar but with less overlap potentially, still providing a situation where it's harder to shake everything, meaning your enemy goes through a bunch of extra work or just eats nasty penalties.
It also creates a case where getting rid of a condition doesn't have much of an effect, because another condition is providing most of the same (non stacking) effects. So you remove one, and you're barely farther ahead than you were before.
On the buff end, buffs from one class effectively shut down buffs from another class, which led me to "why did I even put this spell on my spell list?" moments. That was not great.
Tridus wrote: Edge93 wrote:
This is actually something I really enjoy about the current debuff system. If you have things stacking more then there is more pressure to try to land more debuffs because it's much more optimal than just landing one. As it stands now landing one debuff is plenty effective, you get diminishing returns for landing multiple debuffs but there is still reason to.
But it's also confusing as hell, because they partially overlap and partially don't. So for any given combination of debuffs, you need to know what they both do, and then take the union of that to get what's happening now, then combine it with all the other stuff that doesn't stack (and figure out if anything in that list actually does stack). As you add more, it gets more complicated.
Straight stacking is simpler. For the amount of things that are happening and how they don't interact, we have far more debuffs than we need right now.
Stacking also avoids creating situations where things just aren't worth doing. Had a situation in a combat where it wasn't worth bothering to flank something because it had no particular effect along with the other effects we already had up on the target, and that just strikes me as silly.
Quote:
Say we take Frightened and Sick.
If an enemy is Frightened then barring anti-fear effects they are sure to take a penalty to everything but only briefly.
If an enemy is Sick then they could be taking a penalty to everything for a while but they could shake it quickly by burning one or more actions.
If an enemy is Frightened AND Sick then they are taking the same penalty but they are sure to have it for a short time AND they have to burn actions to keep from having it longer.
So the combo doesn't have double the penalty but it's longer lasting than fear alone and harder to shake fast than sickness alone.
Other debuffs are similar but with less overlap potentially, still providing a situation where it's harder to shake everything, meaning your enemy goes through a
... Sorry for not replying to anything else on this yet, but if I may ask what effect did you have down that made flanking redundant? I'm not aware of many spells giving circumstance penalties.
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Atalius wrote: Landing Enervation isn't easy, targeting most monsters best saving throw with a ranged touch attack isn't automatic. The enemy is likely going to make his saving throw more often then fail. Enervated 1 isn't a game changer and there are other conditions that are more devastating than that. Once they have Enervated 1 on them, frightened and some other conditions are now useless. I say untyped because this is a rare spell that has no Heightened version, this should be powerful. Its going up against some very good spells at that level on multiple spell lists (Divine, Primal, Arcane). I'm sure at the moment there are a lot of people who wouldn't even prepare this spell. Just my 2 cents. "There are other conditions more devastating than that" the only conditions more devastating than Enervation are conditions with a higher number than Enervation, which are already having an effect over Enervation so the comparison doesn't matter. You hit someone with Enervation followed by a level 2 condition, Enervation still applies to anything the other condition doesn't and when the other condition ends Enervation is still there, nigh impossible to shrug before its time ends.
Also it's not a rare spell by any means, it's a staple. It's a level 4 Common rarity spell that's on every list except Primal. And having no heightened effect just means you never have to prepare it higher l=than level 4 unless you're trying to avert counteract checks. High level mages will prepare this multiple times over because it's such a strong spell at such a low level. True Strike if you're an Arcane Caster or a Cleric or Bard taking a path that gets it makes the miss chance way lower and jacks up the chance of a crit, which turns down the enemy's save a degree.
In short, it's one of the strongest debuffs already and isn't hard to come by, please don;'t make it stack with everything, it already has enough. XD
Edge93 wrote: Sorry for not replying to anything else on this yet, but if I may ask what effect did you have down that made flanking redundant? I'm not aware of many spells giving circumstance penalties. IIRC it was Shatter Defenses, a Fighter ability that imposes Flat Footed. As Flank also gives Flat Footed, it did nothing on everyone elses turn.
Getting flank would have helped on my turn, assuming the enemy didn't move to get out of it on its turn (as Shatter Defense lasts until the start of my turn), but for anyone else it didn't really make sense to burn an action moving to get flank.
Quote: "There are other conditions more devastating than that" the only conditions more devastating than Enervation are conditions with a higher number than Enervation, which are already having an effect over Enervation so the comparison doesn't matter. You hit someone with Enervation followed by a level 2 condition, Enervation still applies to anything the other condition doesn't and when the other condition ends Enervation is still there, nigh impossible to shrug before its time ends. Agreed. Enervation is a hugely powerful debuff. We got a lucky crit and got Enervation 4 stacked on something and it turned that creature into a joke compared to the other one of the same thing in the combat. It applies to so many things, attack (and thus crit), AC (and thus defense against crit), TAC, skills...
It's a hard spell to land effectively with the double chance at failure, but it's hugely powerful.
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Tridus wrote: Edge93 wrote: Sorry for not replying to anything else on this yet, but if I may ask what effect did you have down that made flanking redundant? I'm not aware of many spells giving circumstance penalties. IIRC it was Shatter Defenses, a Fighter ability that imposes Flat Footed. As Flank also gives Flat Footed, it did nothing on everyone elses turn.
Getting flank would have helped on my turn, assuming the enemy didn't move to get out of it on its turn (as Shatter Defense lasts until the start of my turn), but for anyone else it didn't really make sense to burn an action moving to get flank.
Quote: "There are other conditions more devastating than that" the only conditions more devastating than Enervation are conditions with a higher number than Enervation, which are already having an effect over Enervation so the comparison doesn't matter. You hit someone with Enervation followed by a level 2 condition, Enervation still applies to anything the other condition doesn't and when the other condition ends Enervation is still there, nigh impossible to shrug before its time ends. Agreed. Enervation is a hugely powerful debuff. We got a lucky crit and got Enervation 4 stacked on something and it turned that creature into a joke compared to the other one of the same thing in the combat. It applies to so many things, attack (and thus crit), AC (and thus defense against crit), TAC, skills...
It's a hard spell to land effectively with the double chance at failure, but it's hugely powerful. Our Heroes of Undarin Wizard used True Strike to crit an invisible level+4 boss with it, turning it's success into a failure for Enervated 2. Turned one of the enemies I was most worried about into an actual joke. It just flailed around ineffectively with attacks and debuffs that should have been devastating but that -2 made so many things whiff and it dies in 3 rounds, less than any of the other eight fights in the module.
Not always an outcome you will get but boy, when you do...
True Strike to Enervation = True Combo. XD
Ya that combo is sweet it helps a lot in landing it otherwise no doubt. I meant on its own it is quite difficult to land. It seems everything is either conditional or circumstances penalty in the game. Rather than introducing a different type of penalty/buff it would just be easier to give a few different unique spells maybe an untyped penalty/bonus even if this shouldn't be one of those spells.
Atalius wrote: Ya that combo is sweet it helps a lot in landing it otherwise no doubt. I meant on its own it is quite difficult to land. It seems everything is either conditional or circumstances penalty in the game. Rather than introducing a different type of penalty/buff it would just be easier to give a few different unique spells maybe an untyped penalty/bonus even if this shouldn't be one of those spells. I mean, giving untyped bonuses to MULTIPLE spells would be even worse. Far worse than an additional bonus type in fact. Because those bonuses will now stack not only with everything else but with each other. So you can now throw on every spell with an untyped bonus/penalty in addition to a coniditonal penalty and bonus and a circumstance penalty. This is a fast track to PF1's insane stacking game and I would very much like to move away from that.
Untyped bonuses need to be handled VERY carefully. PF1 probably started out with them manageable but they certainly ended up out of hand. Let's take that as a cautionary tale, yeah?
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Tridus wrote: Edge93 wrote: Sorry for not replying to anything else on this yet, but if I may ask what effect did you have down that made flanking redundant? I'm not aware of many spells giving circumstance penalties. IIRC it was Shatter Defenses, a Fighter ability that imposes Flat Footed. As Flank also gives Flat Footed, it did nothing on everyone elses turn. "Flat-footed" appears 114 times in the book.
Not all are in a "this condition is applied" context (the first one is Rock Runner: You are not flat-footed while..."
However all of the following apply the Flat-Footed condition:
Very Sneaky (Goblin)
Debilitating Bomb (Alchemist)
Come and Get Me (Barbarian)
[Improved] Combat Grab (Fighter)
Aggressive Shield (Fighter)
[Improved] Brutish Shove (Fighter)
Intimidating Strike (Fighter)
Shatter Defenses (Fighter)
Positioning Assault (Fighter)
Debilitating Shot (Fighter)
Reeling Blow (Fighter)
Stunning Fist (Monk)
Nature's Edge* (Ranger)
[Greater] Distracting Shot (Ranger)
Dread Striker* (Rogue)
Unbalancing Blow (Rogue)
Gang Up* (Rogue)
Instant Opening (Rogue)
Climb, Balance, Disarm, Being In Water**
Feint (Maneuver)
Critical Specialization (Swords)
Chill Touch (Spell, undead only)
Daze (Spell)
Nature's Enmity (Spell)
Uncontrollable Dance (Spell)
Cats (Work Together Benefit)
Being Unconscious (Asleep, Paralyzed, Prone, etc)
Attacked by Invisible (Sensed, Unseen) Foe
Uneven Ground**
Being Grabbed
Lightning Snare (Snare)
Bottled Lightning (Alchemical Item)
Giant Centipede Venom (Poison)
Hunting Spider Venom (Poison)
Malyass Root Paste (Poison)
Nightmare Vapor (Poison)
Fear Gem (Trinket)
Gallows Tooth (Trinket)
*These are "If [X] then also treat as flat-footed"
**These are self-inflicted in some manner (failing a skill check, attempting the action, etc)
Christ that is a lot of ways to become Flat-Footed.
The following also apply a circumstance penalty to AC (of value -1 or -2, therefor not stacking with Flat-Footed in some/most/all cases):
Challenge** (Cavalier)
Misc GM Rules (GM Fiat)
Weather? (Weather)
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