Voluntarily failing a save

[Atalius]

Just wanted confirmation on this one, a PC can voluntarily fail a save correct?

[Edge93]

I do not have a rules quote on hand but I believe this is indeed the case. Being a willing target for a spell or effect should mean the spell or effect automatically effects you.

Though I am unsure if this counts as a failure or crit failure on the save. This is where a rules quote is kind of important, as I am admittedly working from the PF1 assumption that voluntary failure is still an option combined with the fact that willing targets are still a thing in PF2.

[David knott 242]

It would have to be a critical failure, since otherwise you might voluntarily fail a save to avoid any chance of the worst possible effect (a very counterintuitive thing to be doing).

[Darksol the Painbringer]

Atalius wrote:

Just wanted confirmation on this one, a PC can voluntarily fail a save correct?

In PF1 yes.

In PF2 it's not as clean-cut, since there are no rules for it like in PF1.

As GM, I believe this was intentional, and if there are worse effects on a critical failure than a failure, I probably likewise wouldn't let a player choose just to suffer a regular failure when the dice may work otherwise.

In short, the PF1 rule only made sense when results were binary and much more clean-cut on what happens. Now, with multiple results of negativity, we can't let players accept a less-worse result. At best, you could let a character critically fail a save, but not simply fail.

[Nettah]

I agree that it would seem to only make sense if you crit failed and not failed if you volunteered it. However I am unsure whether this is situation that will actually come up in gameplay. Is there any spells or really situations where it would benefit the character to crit fail on their save instead of attempting a save as normal.

As far as I can recall all beneficial spells requires a willing target so I can't see a situation where a superstition barbarian would have to "save" against a spell cast by a friendly target that he would want to circumvent.

Are there any spells that require a target to fail to get the effect to bounce to others like a chain lightning kind of thing? (I just looked chain lightning up and there does seem to be the fringe case, where you want a friendly target to be a conductor but don't want them to critical succeed to end the chain).

So while I have a hard time seeing it actually coming up at most tables it would make sense to specify whether you can do this or not in the rulebook.

[Edge93]

Yeah, I can really only think of a situation like you accept a harmful spell willingly because the villain is threatening something if you don't, that kind of thing.