Question about triggers (mild spoiler for Fall of Plaguestone)

[Matt Haddix]

On page 27 of Fall of Plaguestone, the mutant wolves have the following action:

Tear (one action) Trigger: The wolf dealt damage to a creature with its jaws during the previous action. Effect: the wolf tears at the creature's flesh, dealing one d6 + 2 slashing damage and 1 persistent acid damage.

Does the triggered action have to be performed on the same round as the action that triggered it? For instance, if the wolf hits a PC with its third action on round 1, can it then Tear as its first action on round 2?

[Uchuujin]

I think not, because the previous action at that point isn't the wolfs action, it's whatever action was taken by the person in initiative order before the wolf.

[thenobledrake]

This is one of the things that my group had a bit of difficulty with during the play-test. Specifically with the way a Glabrezu could follow a pincer Strike with a Rake action that had seriously scary damage potential.

We came to the conclusion that, to us, it didn't matter if the intent was for these kinds of things to be able to be done based on actions taken in a prior round because if that were the case you'd run into unintuitive possibilities such as the wolf ending its turn with a jaw strike, the target of that jaw strike striding to a different position (and doing their other actions), and then the wolf's turn comes up and it can technically still use the Tear action because the rules don't specify otherwise.

It'd be nice if there were clarification, though. I can imagine some PFS games bursting into frustrated arguments on this topic.

[Alyran]

Matt Haddix wrote:

On page 27 of Fall of Plaguestone, the mutant wolves have the following action:

Tear (one action) Trigger: The wolf dealt damage to a creature with its jaws during the previous action. Effect: the wolf tears at the creature's flesh, dealing one d6 + 2 slashing damage and 1 persistent acid damage.

Does the triggered action have to be performed on the same round as the action that triggered it? For instance, if the wolf hits a PC with its third action on round 1, can it then Tear as its first action on round 2?

Since it says "during the previous action", as soon as any other creature has used an action, the trigger is no longer fulfilled. So it has to be during the wolf's turn immediately after hitting with a jaw attack.